← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
8/26/25: Market Panic Amid Trump Fed Firing, India Defiant On Russian Oil, Trump Approves China Student Visas, Dem Voter Crisis
01:05:25
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- [00:00]
Christina Quinn
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:06]
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- [00:41]
Peter Navarro
It's a new season and every morning.
- [00:44]
Sagar
We'Re here to help you take it.
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Peter Navarro
All on as the forecast calls for football all across the country, blockbuster stars.
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- [00:55]
Krystal
We're getting back to all of it and the best way to start start is together.
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- [01:37]
Sagar
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [01:39]
Krystal
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
- [01:46]
Sagar
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [01:52]
Krystal
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.
- [02:03]
Sagar
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com.
- [02:11]
Dave Weigel
Good morning everybody.
- [02:12]
Sagar
Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today.
- [02:14]
Krystal
We have Crystal Indeed we do. Lots of breaking news to get to this morning. So first and foremost most is fed independence over. Trump has fired one of the members of the Federal Reserve Board. So we'll take a look at all of that and how markets are reacting at the same time we also have some economic news from India. Basically they are saying screw you to our attempt to cajole them into not consuming Russian oil. So very consequential as well. Dave Weigel is gonna join us from Minneapolis to break down the Dems DNC summer meeting and see how they are grappling with their existential crisis. You don't wanna miss that one. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released that he was rearrested. He's now threatened with deportation to Uganda. Ongoing court battle. Break all of that down for you. Israel is expressing regret after they murdered a number of journalists and also aid workers after an attack on a dou. Attack on a hospital. And the Free Press, Bari Weiss's Free Press very upset with us. So have to get into that.
- [03:12]
Sagar
Yeah, we'll tell you why. We'll tell you why. Sorry, Barry, sometimes we have to tell the truth about your bullshit valuation. Appreciate that. Speaking of that, by the way, thank you very much to everybody who's been signing up for the show. BreakingPoints.com if you're able to support us. We've got monthly and yearly memberships and of course we're doing our AMA live for our premium subscribers today. I'm told that everything technically should be working out. So before I speak too soon, I hope that that's the case. Anyways, as you, we're always on top of it. If you can't afford it, no worries. Please just go ahead and hit subscribe to this video on YouTube if that's where you're watching Rumble wherever. And if you're listening to this on a podcast, please go ahead and leave us a five star review and then send an episode to a friend. One of your favorites doesn't have to be this one in particular. It really helps us grow. So with all of that, as Crystal said, let's get to the Federal Reserve. Some late breaking news last night. Late for me at least. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. Donald Trump issuing a new letter to Dr. Lisa Cook, a member of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve. He says, quote, in light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter that cannot and I do not have such confidence in your integrity, at a minimum, the conduct of your issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator. I think we can safely say Trump is using a pretext of alleged mortgage fraud by Dr. Cook as to fire her from The Federal Reserve. So I'm not even gonna get into the Federal Reserve like the mortgage stuff, because honestly, even they know that it's not the real cause for firing. This is about the Fed. Now let's explain here about the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve. Trump has had a longstanding feud with Jerome Powell over their refusal to lower interest rates. Powell did say recently in his meeting that he would consider a rate cut coming up in the future, which sent the stock market up some 2%. But that is not even close to the liking of Donald. Now, previously a member of the Federal Reserve Board had actually resigned, which allowed Trump to fill that seat. One of the reasons why Trump in particular wants to get rid of Cook is that she was one of the more controlling votes on backing Jerome Powell's strategy. Whereas if she is gone, that would actually give Trump not control per se, but people who share his views on the Federal Reserve Board, which would influence the direction of the overall interest rate cut. So there has been a lot of market reaction to this Federal Reserve. We'll talk about this in a bit. But the Federal Reserve amongst the markets and amongst the economists is the sacrosanct institution. You can't touch it, you can't even say anything about it. And that explains some of the market movement now as a result. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. For example, immediately after the announcement, you saw this large dip in the United States dollar. We can put the Wall Street Journal story up here on the screen. It's actually quite interesting the way they, they say, quote, uncharted waters. Trump's attempt to take charge here of the Fed, the intention to fire him could give sway over the central bank's rate setting power. So again, let's just hammer home that is what this entire fight is all about. Now, Dr. Cook has actually responded to this and has said that she has not been fired, that she will be contesting this in court. This will all come down to the Supreme Court, most likely over Trump's ability to influence the Fed. It is actually very complicated. There was a recent Supreme Court reeling about the quasi legal status of the Federal Reserve where the President does not have the unilateral authority to remove somebody just cause he doesn't like what they're doing, but does have the authority to remove somebody, quote for cause, hence the mortgage fraud or whatever. Maybe it is true, I don't know. But my point is just that's the reason. Now this is a more open for discussion type of thing where I think there are a lot of actually very interesting views. I've spent all morning kind of engaging with them about the role of the Federal Reserve itself. And they're, as I said, on Wall street street and amongst the conventional economists, like Federal Reserve, independence is sacrosanct. It's not supposed to be democratic. I personally have a very, very different view of that. I think the current worry, even amongst people who share my view, is that this will just be Trumpian to its most extent, which could result in financial disaster. And I'm not writing that off at all. So, anyway, that's the.
- [07:37]
Krystal
Where I find myself. That's the thing is, like, this is a Trumpian power grab. Like, consistent with the taking the stake in intel and with the tariffs and with the crackdown in D.C. this is Trump consolidating even more power. And so while even with pushing, even if he's able to push Dr. Cook off of the board, he still won't technically gain control with his people on the board. What is he doing? He's setting an example. Right? Everybody knows that this mortgage fraud thing is bullshit, whether or not it's true. So it's bullshit. It doesn't pertain to her job whatsoever. By the way, Donald Trump of everybody knows a little thing or two about mortgage fraud, let's say.
- [08:19]
Sagar
Wait, I thought it just got vacated.
- [08:20]
Krystal
Right?
- [08:21]
Sagar
Just got vacated in the state of New York. He's been vindicated.
- [08:23]
Krystal
Right? I mean, this is a guy who, like, empirically true, bragged about lying about how much various assets were worth in order to obtain a loan he wanted.
- [08:32]
Sagar
I don't concern myself with the value of Mar A Lago personally.
- [08:36]
Krystal
But anyway, in any case. In any case, and as you said, I think we can all acknowledge this is a pretext, and every other member of the Fed Board of Governors is going to know this is a pretext and know that they themselves are also vulnerable if they don't just shut up and do what Trump wants. I mean, it's the same thing when we talked to Shahid yesterday, who got fired from the State Department, and he said the same thing, you know, this was about, yes, getting me out, but it was also about sending a message to everyone else in the building. So I think that through that lens of Trump's authoritarian instincts and constant desire to accumulate more and more power for himself, that is the lens through which we should view these actions. Let me talk a little bit about the court piece that you referenced.
- [09:16]
Dave Weigel
Yeah.
- [09:17]
Krystal
Dr. Cook is saying, I'm not going anywhere because you didn't legally fire me. And I think she has a pretty strong legal case to make there. Even given the makeup of this Supreme Court and their willingness to accept a lot of arguments from the Trump administration. They had issued a previous ruling. It had to do with a different agency. I don't remember if it was an NLRB or the cfpb, but it had to do with another one where it was like, okay, well, can Trump just come in and get rid of someone just because he feels like it? Or it was a similarly structured sort of independent, quasi independent agency. Or do they have to go through a process? Does there have to be cause? Does it have to go through Congress, et cetera. And they sided with the Trump administration on that firing. But in their justification, they put in this sort of like, carve out, like, yeah, but the Fed is different for reasons. So that's why a lot of people are looking at this and thinking that it is possible that the Supreme Court comes in and says, you can't actually do this. And also when they say, okay, you can fire someone on the Federal Board of Governors for cause, that cause is supposed to be relevant to their job, not some paperwork error on a mortgage application. So that's the sort of. That's the legal piece. But. But yeah, the reason why people are freaking out is because a lot of analysts look at this as basically, this is the end of Fed independence because of the coercion that you're using in this regard. Jerome Powell's term is gonna be up in another year. So he's gonna have his Fed chair, he's going to have a board of governors that is going to be more amenable to him. He's going to have used his power to discipline them. And so he will effectively be able to do whatever he wants, whether that's in the country's interest, the world's interest, capital's interest, his interest, et cetera.
- [11:04]
Sagar
Well, I'll tell you, I mean, look, I understand your concerns. I still think degrading the principle is a good thing. For example, if anyone has never read it, I highly recommend Jonathan Alter. He's a very neoliberal guy, but he wrote a book about Jimmy Carter. It's probably the best Carter biography I've ever written I've ever read. What I was struck by is that Alter worships Jimmy Carter for having the wherewithal to apologize. Appoint Volcker as his Federal Reserve chair, who basically destroyed the economy and it caused a recession in 1980. And look, I don't think the economy's the only reason Carter lost, but I think it's a big reason why. And reading that, I'm like, wait, Carter was an idiot. I'm like, this is a disastrous idea, by the way. I don't even think the whole Volcker thing, that everyone looks on it as a good idea. I don't even think that's basically even true.
- [11:52]
Krystal
Agree.
- [11:52]
Sagar
We can put that all out.
- [11:53]
Krystal
He basically crushed labor permanently.
- [11:55]
Sagar
That's what I'm saying. If you go back and you look at it, you're like, wait, this was a disaster. So my point is that this, this is all in the context of the, quote, independent Fed. Is the independent Fed doing a good job? I would say no. And I think there are a lot of people who think that. I mean, even if you look at the way that we've dealt and had inflation over the last four years, we've had supply side inflation and the only response we've had is crush the demand side, which has been in my opinion, devastating for a lot of households on top of the overall housing skew, which is happening right now for mortgage rates. So yeah, I'm like, we're gonna go after the Fed. Great. I mean, I think the Fed should have a lot more democr. Now I'm gonna say that is definitely going to cause some little blips. All right, I'll admit that. And this is my point where I want the liberals who are anti Trump to grapple with is the smart set of the people. I'm reading people like Adam Tooze and other are like, yes, we are now entering the realm of democratic control of the fed. And that Dr. Cook and Jerome Powell and all these others, they come from that Volcker style school with their theories about how the Fed should operate. I think that has been genuinely disastrous for the American people. Hasn't been so disastrous for Wall street or for American industry, but the people themselves have suffered as a result of this policy. So I like to think of it here where I think there's great risk with Trump trying to take control. I will fully acknowledge that and we'll talk about Erdogan and all of that in the future. And I already know the economists listening to this are ripping their hair out. But I mean, you have to acknowledge that at a very basic level, monetarism and debates over monetary policy were fundamental to the American republic for almost a century and we lost that after the independent Fed was established. We need to go back. I mean, remember the William Jennings Bryan speech? I used to have a poster of him back here at we mankind shall not be crucified upon a cross of gold, silver. This was central. Farmers at an individual level understood the medium of exchange. The greenback itself was deeply controversial. People argued about this cuz they understood that the exchange and the value of money was directly impacting them in their goods. And now we have moved that off to this temple here in Washington. So I say let's go back to it so we can actually debate People should be more well versed not only just in the policy, gold standard, whatever, we can all argue about it but the point has to be more fundamental as to not let it in the hands of the quote experts. Cuz you know, people say there's a lot of risk with Trump. I agree, I'm totally being real. But there's also a risk to the current strategy. The risk is every single day these interest rates stay at 6,7% somebody's not buying a house, putting off family formation, destroying, I mean the home builders. The interest rates right now are crushing the economy. And yeah, you can look at GDP and everything else, it's all fake. Especially when we consider that the vast majority of only reason that we even have decent enough GDP numbers is cause these AI companies are spending all gobloads of money trying to create all these data centers. So that's like my big picture view. Out of all of this we can always acknowledge that Trump can screw it all up and if anything he might negatively polarize the idea of democratic control.
- [15:11]
Krystal
Very possible, very possible, very possible.
- [15:13]
Sagar
But I'm willing to have the fight. I think it's important. I can't stand these experts on CNBC and other and be like my God, the free market and all this. This is bullshit.
- [15:24]
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- [16:24]
Christina Quinn
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- [16:56]
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- [17:25]
Krystal
Part of the reason why the Fed is taking the course that it is is because Trump's economic policy has put them in a complete and total bind where we are now heading towards stagflation, which is basically impossible for the Fed to be able to deal with because it goes, okay, you lift interest rates, then you know, to get inflation under control, then you screw the economy and the labor market, you lower interest rates to juice gdp, juice the labor market, and you end up with potential hyperinflation. So I don't wanna let Trump off the hook for the disastrous economic policy tariffs. That's what you're saying? Yeah. The disastrous economic policy that he's pursued that has led to an impossible policy landscape for the Fed in order to. So I don't think it's crazy that Jerome Powell has said I'm just kinda to hold steady for now given the uncertainty in the economic landscape. The other thing is we also have to acknowledge we put up the, you know, the dollar falling off a cliff. This there is going to be very likely significant short term pain. If analysts continue to assess that, this is going to be like the end of Fed independence. The dollar dropping means that it is more expensive for you to pay for imports. That's what it means. And we import a whole lot of stuff stuff. At the same time, we don't have a chart for this. At the same time the interest rate, the yield on treasury bonds is going up. What does that mean? That means things like Your mortgage are going to be even more expensive than they already are. So the short term fallout of this move is going to be devastating at a time when Americans already have lost confidence in Trump's business acumen. And I think that this is one of the most significant blows to Trump's brand and his image is that people have lost faith in his economic stewardship. So I don't think that. I don't know how much people are gonna vote based on this sort of technical. Was the Fed independent and who got fired and whatever. But if you were looking for a moment when people have confidence in saying, just hand it to Trump, put it in Trump's hands. We elected him cuz we trust him cuz he's a good businessman. This is certainly not that moment.
- [19:32]
Sagar
Look, I, again, I accept that I would, I would disagree a little bit on the tariff part. Just because a lot of the inflation has not yet shown up. That's mostly because some of the tariffs appear to be fake in terms of the way that they're being set up. I mean, even on the dollar. So, yeah, it fell by 0.03%. It's not like devastating. It's not like full blown. Probably because she said that she's gonna fight it. It could be. I wouldn't dispute the bond market part. That's definitely possible. We're not yet sure how that's all gonna work. And yes, the, the Institutional Investors Markets, bank of Japan, all these other people, they absolutely could force Trump's hand. I'm not gonna put any of that out, but I just have to come back to looking at the way that they talk about both the Fed and worship at its altar without ever acknowledging all of the downside. Yes, Trump, I think, is a very imperfect messenger in all of us. And everyone's comparing it to Erdogan. That's fine, we can do that. Let's put a five, please, up on the screen. For example, this was about inflation in Turkey. And the person who put this chart together is like, what happens when a strong man with idiosyncratic preference for low interest rates undermines a central bank and appoints loyalists.
- [20:41]
Krystal
Justin Wolfers, who's a liberal economist.
- [20:43]
Sagar
Yeah, this is the conventional view. And again, I think that's fair because it's Trump, but I do think that the actual question should still remain there. And, you know, to your point, nobody in the world is gonna vote on. Okay, not nobody. They'll all be.
- [21:00]
Krystal
Well, they'll vote the economy.
- [21:01]
Sagar
That's what I was gonna say.
- [21:02]
Krystal
I don't Know that they'll vote on the Fed.
- [21:03]
Sagar
That's my thing about Volcker. People didn't necessarily vote about Carter appointing Volcker, but when the interest rate was, I think, what was it, 19, 20% at one point they were like, yeah, fuck this. I mean, I'm not dealing with this. And like you said, whenever organized labor and all those people literally got destroyed and we had a full blown recession from 1980, what is it, till 1982, I wanna say they were not very happy about it. And that's kind of my point, but more broadly is people who kind of follow and look at all this stuff for a living are deeply familiar with inner workings of the Board of Governors. But every single one of us deals with this every single day. I mean, every person who doesn't get a raise because the borrowing cost is too high from their company, every company that decides not to invest more in infrastructure or whatever because again, the interest rates are high, every person who doesn't buy a house, every person who wants to move but is locked into a low interest rate, all of us are experiencing the Federal Reserve for what it is. And so at a basic level, I do think making it, quote, Democratic and impacted by overall Democratic politics is important. Otherwise we'll get Volckered again. That's basically what Powell and them wanted to do. They didn't go as extreme, but they close enough. I mean, went from zero to seven, like it was a genuine shock for a generation that lived with 10 years of zero interest rates.
- [22:22]
Krystal
I don't know that this rebuts your argument, but I mean, Volcker himself was a Democratic expression since that was Jimmy Carter getting the policy that he wanted.
- [22:30]
Sagar
I guess, I mean, but part of the problem, kind of. So my point though is that if you read the book, when Carter interviews him, Volker's like, I'm gonna have to do some things which are gonna make you very unpopular. They're gonna do this, this and this. And Carter's like, well, is it the.
- [22:42]
Dave Weigel
Right thing to do?
- [22:43]
Sagar
And he's like, yes sir, it's the right thing to do. And he's like, let's do it then.
- [22:46]
Dave Weigel
I don't think it was the right.
- [22:47]
Sagar
Thing to do, first of all. But second is politically incredibly foolish. But if you would ask the American people, is that how you wanna deal with inflation? I think most of them would've said no. So my point won't bother me.
- [22:57]
Krystal
Yeah, I mean, it's not like we're putting the Fed chair to a democr vote. We're putting it in the hands of whoever the President is.
- [23:05]
Sagar
Yeah, absolutely.
- [23:05]
Krystal
And, I mean. And that is what happened with Carter. He decided, I'm democratically elected. I believe this is in the best interest of the country, even though it's gonna cause all sorts of pain, even though it's likely to screw over labor and farmers and all these different groups. So, I mean, that was probably the sort of most directly Democratic influence on the Fed chair that we've had. And in my opinion, it was a disaster for me.
- [23:31]
Sagar
I kind of see how you're getting. I would actually kind of flip it, because what he decided was that even though he knew, literally knew, that it was going to be democratically unpopular, he decided to do it because he trusted the economic establishment. And I'm saying, let's do the opposite. We actually shouldn't do that.
- [23:46]
Krystal
Right. I just. I mean, in a similar way that I don't have confidence in Jimmy Carter to. To, you know, make those decisions, I also don't have confidence in Donald Trump to be, like, looking out for the best interests of the American public or handling this in any sort of a fashion that reflects what people would actually want or what would be beneficial, et cetera. I mean, I fully admit that, for me, this is complicated because I agree with the points you make about the Fed being subjected to the Democratic will. I think that's sort of like a fundamental populist principle, frankly. And the idea that it has to be, oh, you guys just don't understand. It has to be handled by this cadre administration. Right.
- [24:26]
Sagar
It's like, no, we do want to.
- [24:27]
Krystal
I really reject that. In the same respect, I see the way that this is just like another Trumpian power grab with the president, who I think is an authoritarian fascist that I have zero trust for. So that's fine.
- [24:36]
Sagar
Then you can continue to vote. You expressed yourself in the election. So did I, so did many others. And we got the 1% popular vote. You can vote again if you want to, and then we'll see how that works out. The problem that I'm seeing for a lot of these Democrats is they're like, no, we must stand with the sacrosanct Fed. And I'm like, yeah, that's why you guys are a bunch of losers, okay? Cause you're gonna come into office and you're gonna pull a Carter again, and you're gonna be like, oh, well, the experts told us this is what we're gonna do. And then Trump, Trump or somebody else is gonna beat your ass again in the election.
- [25:03]
Krystal
I think more likely I mean, we'll see what the economic fallout is. That's what the vulnerability is for Trump, not the mechanics of Fed independence. But do people feel like things are getting better or do people feel like things are getting worse? And I think there is a decent chance that in the short term this sets individual Americans back economically and makes the landscape even tougher for them possible.
- [25:28]
Sagar
But in six months, if the interest rate gets dropped ahead of the elect, which if I were a policy was the first thing I'm gonna do, I'm gonna slash that interest rate by half leading up to the midterms boom. It's gonna be boom times all over Wall street, in the housing market and everywhere. Pretty much everyone, I think, would be happy. So, you know, people have short memories as well, especially if you do it right before the election, which again, I still can't believe Carter was dumb enough to do this in August of 79 before the November 1980 election. It boggles the mind.
- [25:58]
Krystal
But again, you're assuming that an interest rate cut would not come with corresponding inflation. And we know the way that infl inflation destroyed not just the Biden administration, but destroyed incumbent administrations around the world.
- [26:10]
Sagar
Definitely. I mean, again, the reason I don't think it would is because I still think a lot of it is supply side. Even the inflation today, the vast majority of is supply side. What's the coffee cup I'm drinking is roughly up by like 50%. Why is that? Is it because of the tariffs? Bingo. Because it's because of tariff policy and because of a devastating storm in Brazil. That's it. So it's a supply side factor and or government policy factor factor. The Trump government can, you know, can do that. But there's not a fundamental reason, at least in my opinion, why there is so much inflation or if you look at all the categories which have experienced the vast majority of inflation, most of it is policy and supply side driven. Anyway. We'll keep that in mind.
- [26:51]
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- [27:50]
Christina Quinn
If you eat too many ultra processed foods, you could be starving your gut microbes and they'll get hangry. That's one of many things I learned after working on a new audio course about the gut microbiome. You can learn how to keep your gut happy by listening to Try this from the Washington Post. I'm Christina Quinn. I host Try this Dig in with me on practical advice for life's common challenges Follow. Try this right now, wherever you're listening. Seriously, try it.
- [28:20]
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- [28:51]
Sagar
Let's go to India, shall we? We've been wanting to cover this story for a while and just give everybody an update, you know. So Trump officially has written into the federal record that tariffs on India will go into effect tomorrow. 50% import duties on all goods from India because they continue to buy oil from Russia. So of course the conventional view was oh my God, India, they can't stand this. They're gonna buc immediately. Yeah, not happening. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Here's the latest from New Delhi. Quote, India will buy oil from wherever it gets the best deal. According to their envoy from Russia. They say they will continue to protect the interests of their 1.4 billion people. According to their ambassador for Russia, they've disregarded the economic leverage from the United States. New Delhi media has turned dramatically against the Trump administration. They're literally burning Trump in effigy, which we'll show you graphs in a little bit. But more broadly, Peter Navarro the entire administration has decided that India, who is the second largest purchaser of Russian Oil, not China, is apparently the villain here. For reasons that remain completely mystifying. They at the same time wanna end the war in Ukraine, but at the other side of their mouth are pursuing the neoconservative fever dream of punishing other countries, strategically important countries, for buying Russian oil. So, okay, I guess that makes a lot of sense. Here's Peter Navarro, the trade guru, going off on India, which by the way, this interview has gone massively viral in India from what I have seen. Let's take a listen.
- [30:28]
Peter Navarro
There's a general perception that somehow India needs Russian oil to basically power its domestic economy, but that's just wrong. What's going on is the Russian, Russian refiners got in bed with the Indian refiners. Russia offers these refiners a steep discount on the crude and they partner with the Indian refiners and then they sell the refined products at premium prices to Africa, Asia and Europe. And that funds the war machine. What that means is that we wind up having to pay more. Europe has to pay more for defense. The US have to send Ukraine more, and it's because of the Indian profiteering. And think about what India is doing to the United States. Right? It steals our jobs, it slows down our growth with their unfair trade practices. Okay, so we take a hit there. And then when it gets into this profiteering scheme with Russia to send oil to basically the Kremlin Laundromat for the crude oil, basically it forces US taxpayers to pay more to help Ukraine in the war. India needs to stand up here for the world, for democracy. It's the biggest democracy in the world by the amount of people, and it's basically in bed with the Russians and, and that's not conducive to peace. If India tomorrow stopped buying Russian oil, that would go a long way towards getting Putin to the ultimate yes that we need. They don't create a lot of jobs, they just profiteer. So that's wrong, as is the high tariffs and non tariff barriers and insurgents. I mean, look, they can keep doing what they're doing, but Donald Trump is going to keep doing what he's doing. And that's going to mean the high tariffs to stop them from selling Russian or buying Russian oil and high tariffs to get their trade barriers down.
- [32:39]
Sagar
Yeah, might as well have voted for Joe Biden, you know, I mean, India's gotta stand up. Why? Who gives a shit if the oil comes from a democracy or not? Yeah, all of our oil is coming from a democracy. Crystal, were you aware of that? I had no idea that we only bought oil from democracies. Okay.
- [32:56]
Krystal
There's another question she asked in like, okay, but India said they're not gonna do this. And he gives. I mean, he just sort of like changes the subject, but it reminds very much of. It recalls very much when Biden was asked this question about the policy vis a vis the Houthis. And he was like, is it gonna work?
- [33:14]
Dave Weigel
No.
- [33:14]
Krystal
Is it gonna continue? Yes. And this is basically what Navarro was like, well, India's gonna do what they're gonna do, but here's what we want them to do. It's like, okay, but they're not going to do that. So now you're just putting tariffs on this country, country, damaging your relationship, like trashing your relationship with them, turning a country that was previously pretty, like, pro American against America altogether. And by the way, I mean, those tariffs that you're levying on India are going to have impacts again on American consumers. All to do what? Accomplish literally nothing.
- [33:44]
Sagar
Yeah, exactly. It's the point. Oh, and how is that? How is the maximum pressure going, by the way? Are we closer to peace? Yeah. No. Can we go in of front? Put B4 up here on the screen. Shocker. Lavrov says no plan for a Putin Zelensky meeting. In fact, he basically was like, zelenskyy is illegitimate. We're not even sure if we really need to meet with him. So, yeah, we're actually a lot closer after the Putin summit. And this is all because Trump has basically embraced this neocon framing on India specifically, not China. Just so we're all aware, the actual geopolitical adversary, the one that buys up most of the Russian oil. Nope, completely. Is actually getting a free pass. There are Chinese negotiators on the way over here. Sure, the tariffs and the trade duties remain, but there's so many exclusions. He's talking nothing but nicely about China. It's like the opposite of how you would wanna conduct this. And by the way, again, this presumes that the war in Ukraine is such a fundamental interest that the United states should tariff one of its top 10 trading partners 50% higher than any other duty than any other country to make. Make it to try and bring about peace in Ukraine. Oh, and by the way, that's not even working. At every single step of the logic chain, it all falls apart. This is the same problem with the entire administration strategy right now. They go tough on Japan, on Korea and India soft on China. You should flip it. Those three are the ones that you want on your side if you wanna Quote, isolate China, China and, or pivot to Asia. You want great trading relationships all around the Asia Pacific, making sure that these are rock solid, happy US Allies or strategic partners, and then you use your leverage on the Chinese government to try and extract some benefit. Instead, we're quite literally doing the opposite. I mean, Trump, just yesterday, I'm loving this too. You know, the immigration restriction crowd is going wild because Trump said yesterday that part of his deal with the Chinese is he's going to allow 600,000 Chinese students to come and study in the United States. Let's take a listen to that.
- [35:50]
Peter Navarro
President Xi would like me to come to China. It's a very important relationship. As you know, we're, we're taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs and different things. And it's a very important relationship.
- [36:03]
Sagar
We're going to get along good with China.
- [36:05]
Peter Navarro
I hear so many stories about we're not going to allow this students, we're going to allow their students to come in. We're going to allow, it's very important. 600,000 students, it's very important.
- [36:15]
Sagar
But we're going to get along with China.
- [36:16]
Peter Navarro
But it's a different relationship that we.
- [36:18]
Dave Weigel
Have now with China.
- [36:19]
Peter Navarro
It's a much better relationship economically than it was before with Biden. Boy, what, he allowed that. I mean, they just took him to the cleaners.
- [36:28]
Sagar
So, yeah, okay. The administration, which is America first and is attacking universities for not being pro Israel enough, is now going to be overrun by Chinese. I'm sure you do, but that's not what I did.
- [36:43]
Krystal
Look it up. Right now there's roughly 300,000 Chinese students in the country. So this would be a doubling of the number that are here. And it's, it comes on the heels up, he says this thing in that clip, which is funny to me. He's like, somebody said we're not going to let him in. It's like that was Marco Rubio, your Secretary of State, who said, we're going to be, you know, screening all the visas. We're not going to let you know, anyone who has any ties, the Communist, the Chinese Communist Party, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so Trump's like, nah, we're gonna let, we're gonna double the number that come in. The defense that was given of this too, by Hassan, I wanna say maybe it was Ludnick, I can't remember. Anyway, one of them was basically like, well, if you don't let the Chinese students in, then the bottom tier schools in the country is basically gonna fail. Yeah, Good was their analysis. But in any case, I mean, my own personal view is that that in addition to the extraordinary exorbitant privilege that we get from the dollar being the global reserve currency, the other major advantage that the US has long had is that the top students from around the world want to come here. And oftentimes after they study here and get their degree, oftentimes they stay. And so we benefit from this global ability to attract some of the top students and top minds from around the world. And President Trump apparently feels the same in embracing that saga.
- [38:01]
Sagar
Here's the thing, you gotta square that with what you just said, which is that if the 10 to 15, 15% of the bottom tier universities are gonna fall out because they can't get Chinese students, and those are not the best and the brightest. Cause they're going to the bottom tier universities.
- [38:12]
Krystal
No, no, but that's not what he actually argued. The Chinese students are going to the top students and it's the Americans who will fill up will get pushed down.
- [38:18]
Sagar
This is an important thing because it's actually true because the Chinese graduate students and others are the ones who pay full freight and actually make it so that it is disadvantaged for most of the people who are American citizens to go.
- [38:28]
Krystal
No, no, no, no, quite the opposite. I mean, because they're paying full freight. That's what helps to subsidize the tuition for a lot of Americans.
- [38:35]
Sagar
That is. No, it's not true. Because what has happened is that tuition, if that were true, then tuition would go down. Instead the tuition has gone sky high, quadrupling.
- [38:44]
Krystal
Yeah, but that's because of separate reasons. You're conflating things.
- [38:47]
Sagar
Because what happens is that they know the Chinese will pay everything and they also know the US government will backstop their student loans. And on top of that, more broadly, this is a more of a question of competition and who these slots should go to. Over 50% of the graduate students in most of these places are foreign. Why they don't want to give them to Americans because they might have to give them scholarships, financial aid and everything. Much easier to admit somebody from China, India, anywhere else in the world. Cause they'll pay full freight. It's massively profitable to the university. Almost none of it goes down to the student. If it were true that the money.
- [39:17]
Krystal
Charged, then they should do some affirmative action for white people. Sagar.
- [39:20]
Sagar
No, not white people. American. This isn't affirmative action for white people. This is affirmative action for the US citizen. I mean, I don't think that's even affirmative Action.
- [39:28]
Dave Weigel
What?
- [39:29]
Sagar
American students are getting easy privilege at Shanghai University?
- [39:34]
Krystal
Well, no, there's no evidence that foreign students are, you know, getting. Getting some sort of affirmative action or some sort of benefit. They do benefit schools. 50% are foreign because they pay full freight. But, you know, that actually benefits Americans because it helps to lower tuition overall.
- [39:54]
Sagar
But your presumption is that. Then why is tuition as high as it is? That doesn't make any sense.
- [40:00]
Krystal
Of course it does, because these are run like businesses rather than academic institutions. So if you're concerned about the price of tuition, then you should support, as I do, public college for all.
- [40:09]
Sagar
I think that's a terrible idea because.
- [40:11]
Krystal
It will just be a great way to provide more equitable access.
- [40:14]
Sagar
Let's write checks for everyone to a bunch of DEI administrators so that the University of Michigan can build more lazy rivers for everybody. That's a great idea.
- [40:23]
Krystal
I thought that the only reason that the tuition was going up was because the foreign students. Now it's the DEI administrators in the lazy rivers.
- [40:29]
Sagar
My point is that the high tuition costs these Chinese, Indians and all these other people are paying subsidizes. Yes, them, as well as making sure that the tuition goes. Goes up. None of. Most of it does not go. Most of it doesn't go down to the student. If you're paying $50,000 a year to go to college, and then the next year or 10 years later it goes up to 75,000, then it would square the circle that the tuition should go down if more of the foreign students are coming. The opposite has happened. Tuition has universally gone up. Free public college or whatever at the current rate would subsidize the massive some 40 to 50% increase in the overall number of administrators. It's a disaster.
- [41:04]
Krystal
No, that's where you have to use government policy to keep prices reasonable. And right now it's just left to the market. It's a laissez faire capitalist system. That's why tuition is constantly jacked up. And it has really nothing to do with foreign students coming in. It has to do with what they can get away with. And that's where we are right now. In any case, overall, this comes down to our very different view of the benefits of immigration to the country. I think that studies prove that immigrants tend to be a net benefit to the country. I think having foreign students who are the top of their class who want to be able to come here and go to our institutions and then contribute to our society, I think that's a positive thing and I'm glad to See that presidential.
- [41:45]
Sagar
If that were broadly true. Again, okay, maybe that's true with the 300,000, although I don't even think that's true. So doubling the amount is supposedly make it better. Look, this is also the presumption that our universities are like some great place. And that is true at the highest of the highest levels and sometimes at the public level. But really what Lutnick gave the game away is that a lot of these places are just money making printing machines. They're not actually giving any real benefit. 10 to 15%. 10 to 15% cut would probably be a good thing just broadly because they're putting so many people in debt and not actually delivering any economic benefit. If anything, you should siphon much of that away to a trade school, something economically viable, valuable to the person who's actually going to participate in education. But I mean, this gets to the whole idea of like why we even have 45%. The foreign student thing though, I mean again, we should debate and look at it more because there is a ton of evidence that has actually increased the cost not only for the overall, overall US student, but and again this is very important, is that it is actually making it more competitive for actual citizens also because of the transfer from H1B where they drive down the overall wage, especially in the engineering category. This is like, look, I know the left response is like, okay fine, let's do some wage, whatever. But like at a basic level, it is broadly true right now that the current foreign student pipeline, especially to Silicon Valley and engineering, is driving down wage and making it less competitive for the.
- [43:09]
Krystal
Actual citizens who are also graduates than college. But those two things are direction. But only because of the way that the policy is set up. The way that H1Bs are effectively like an indentured servitude with something that, you know, that I oppose. Yes, that's the nature of the post college landscape. That's something different than what we're talking about with regard to university admissions. So listen, you believe in merit if these, you know, American citizens should be able to compete with the best and brightest in the world.
- [43:37]
Sagar
No, they shouldn't. Because so our, so our tax. So we should all allow the best and the brightest of the whole world to have to compete against our citizens. This is preposterous. The university, the American university system is set up for the American.
- [43:49]
Krystal
You know how much it's actually not.
- [43:50]
Sagar
No, it actually should. Well, okay, and why do I as a taxpayer have to subsidize the University of Virginia and don't take Any of my money.
- [43:57]
Krystal
You just said they come in and they pay full freight. So you're not subsidizing them. No, the reality is we benefit tremendously from attracting the best minds from around the world. The world. That has been one of the biggest benefits that we have had as a society. And so for President Trump to embrace that, I think is a beautiful thing.
- [44:20]
Sagar
Okay, I think that's great then. If the universe. I'll tell you this, if universities want to be purely based on merit for citizens and everyone else, don't take a dime more of my tax dollars every single time that I have to pay for the state of Virginia or anywhere else where you people live. Otherwise, if you're going to take our money, then yeah, actually your education is supposed to work, work for us. This is kind of like the public school thing.
- [44:39]
Krystal
Most of the public school is supposed.
- [44:40]
Dave Weigel
To work for everybody.
- [44:41]
Krystal
The support that you give as a taxpayer in Virginia, that does primarily support. That's why in state tuition is so much lower than even out of state tuition, let alone what foreign students pay.
- [44:51]
Sagar
No, I totally agree with that. But you're saying, you were saying that we should be open for that we should have to compete against the whole world. I think it's the opposite. It makes it much worse.
- [45:00]
Krystal
And you want to talk about the reasons why tuition has gone up? Part the of. Of why tuition has gone up so much. Part of the story is the fact that there is actually less tax revenue that's going to support public educational institutions. This comes from Ronald Reagan pulled a bunch of the support from the California system. That has happened across the board. It certainly happened in the state of Virginia. And so that has been part of the trend too, is pushing the burden onto students rather than it being something that societally we invest in and see as an asset for the country that we want to support.
- [45:31]
Sagar
It's part of it. The other part is that we backstop student loans and that we let these cut universities fleece the student and the taxpayer for their, you know, lazy rivers and their nice fancy new dorms and their cafeterias with all their bullshit in it.
- [45:45]
Krystal
We should, we should have free public college education, in my opinion. But to, you know, to just end the policy of quote unquote, backstopping student loans without any sort of reform is not going to solve anything. It's just going to make things even more difficult for college students.
- [46:02]
Sagar
That I wouldn't disagree on either. I mean, look, I think these universities endowment should be taxed to hell. Vast majority of that benefit should go to student loan forgiveness. And then from there we can build from a different story. But the current system, which I think this would just make these people even more filthy rich over at these universities, I think it's a bad idea and I'm hopeful that actually the policy will get reversed, although not entirely helpful because Trump decides to punish India instead of China and Japan and South Korea and all these other people, which again, it just doesn't make any sense. Same with the Philippines, Brazil, all of these countries. We're literally uniting half of these brics nations together, even though they were all squabbling before.
- [46:43]
Krystal
So yeah, that was with Professor Jeffrey Sachs. You guys should watch that interview.
- [46:47]
Sagar
He made such a good point.
- [46:48]
Krystal
He was so, I guess shocked, not really disgusted because he supports brics, as I do too. So he was sort of like tacitly endorsing the Trump administration moves with regard to India, which have just helped to coalesce brics into a more cohesive and aligned unit. So congratulations.
- [47:06]
Sagar
What a joke. Thank you, Mr. President. Okay, let's get to the Democrats. Dave Weigel standing by.
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- [49:14]
Sagar
Joining us now is Dave Weigel. He's a politics reporter for Semaphore. But for our purposes he is with the DNC at their current meeting meeting where they are evaluating how to deal with the Trump era. So we wanted to check in with Dave. Good to see you man. Thanks for joining us.
- [49:28]
Dave Weigel
It's good to be here. Thanks guys.
- [49:29]
Sagar
All right. So Dave, you've put out a number of videos and some analysis here from the DNC chair Ken Martin about how Democrats are trying to quote meet the moment. Let's take a listen.
- [49:39]
Ken Martin
I'm sick and tired of this Democratic.
- [49:41]
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- [49:44]
Sagar
We cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore. Anymore. We've got to stand up and fight.
- [49:50]
Peter Navarro
We're not going to have a hand.
- [49:51]
Ken Martin
Tied behind our back anymore.
- [49:53]
Sagar
Let's grow a damn spot and get in this fight. Democrats, Americans are hungry for leaders. They're hungry for candidates who are on.
- [50:01]
Homes.com Advertiser
The side of working people.
- [50:02]
Sagar
They're hungry for leaders who give a.
- [50:04]
Ken Martin
Damn about their circumstances.
- [50:06]
Sagar
And they're hungry for a government that.
- [50:08]
Ken Martin
Gives people freedom, not fascism.
- [50:11]
Sagar
To every American who is hungry for.
- [50:13]
Ken Martin
That kind of government, I invite you to join us. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I invite you to join us. Together.
- [50:19]
Sagar
We will fight with every fiber of our being against Trump in his power hungry circus. Talking about fighting, Dave, but what is the mood inside of the building there? You've got that rhetorically, but you've got some reporting from on the ground that.
- [50:33]
Dave Weigel
Captured it pretty well. It is a grim mood. It is not a resolve to lose mood. It is not a the party cannot come back. But that word fashion fascism that Martin used, every speaker used that. That was how Keith Ellison was talking. There was, that was how Tim Walls, the governor of Minnesota, gave a speech there. That was how he was talking. And there was a lot, a lot of cheering for California and the gerrymander gambit that Gavin Newsom is running. But the, the overall context of that is that the party is going to lose the country, maybe for good if it, if, if it does not do something. What is the something that they need to do? That is a tougher question. There's not really, the DNC's not always a place for it, but there's not an analysis of we've gone too far in this direction. We need to abandon this idea. For example, there was a really compelling meeting of the LGBTQ caucus at the party and Martin came by and said, we're not going to give an inch on this. We're not going to give an inch on trans issues. Do not worry that when we say we're going to do whatever it takes to win, we're going to abandon anybody. So it's a little, well, I wouldn't say confused. The mood here. It is a confidence that Democrats are right and the country will come around to them eventually. And not really a reckoning with was there anything we've done so wrong that people have banned us? And frankly, part of this is nobody here, and I don't think they will even in 2028, wants to talk about Joe Biden or say that was a mistake to follow him to the Hill. Nobody's talking about Gaza. It's not really a self examination. It is, the party needs to make it clear that we're serious about fighting fascists and the other details are less important. People can come into our coalition when they realize how big the stakes are.
- [52:10]
Krystal
Well, and it seems like we're not gonna abandon anyone. Except if you support Palestine, judging by the reception that Zoran Mamdani has received and also the candidate whose name I'm blanking on for Minnesota, for Minneapolis mayor, which is, you know, given that that's the location of the DNC meeting and you know, you've got Ken Martin there talking about fighting. I know he is backing a sort of watered down resolution with regard to Palestine. Do you talk a little bit about how Gaza factors into all of this? Because I'm not sure I've ever seen an issue where the Democratic base and Democratic electeds and elites are further apart.
- [52:46]
Dave Weigel
No, you can pick a poll. And if the question is just should the United States stop sending money and weapons to Israel until the end of the conflict or to stop the conflict, overwhelmingly popular Democrats, and you pinpointed it, that's not something that Democrats are talking about very openly here. They have a resolution we'll vote on today that Martin supports that is basically calling for it. Enter the conflict, release the hostages, but not a policy change on Gaza. There's another resolution from a smaller group of DNC members. I haven't polled every member, but the expectation is that will not pass. And that is to your point, elucidating what Democrats want, which, which is a recognition of a Palestinian state that's not as popular, but that's mostly popular Democrats and ending arms to Israel until the war ends. That resolution will probably get defeated. I'll be there and I'll see what happens. But the expectation is the party is still not going to change direction on Gaza and they're not saying that. We're worried about donors, we're worried about being called anti Semites. It's very complicated. Part of it is frustration that there were protesters getting up and making life difficult for Kamala Harris when she was trying to win the election. Again, it all comes back to the Democrats self analysis that they need to save the country from a dictatorship and anything that's complicating for them is it needs to be. People need to get over it, basically. I'm not trying to explain every single thought here in Democrats because there is a diversity of opinion in those rooms. But you having people with different gossip opinions like Barbara Lee get on stage and they're not talking about it. You can imagine a different party, a different set of circumstances and say, okay, this seems to be a gaping vulnerability for our party. We can't defend anymore. Let's talk about it. They want to have one resolution that pushes that issue off the table and then hopefully in 2026 people aren't thinking about it.
- [54:42]
Sagar
You mentioned the age thing and it reminds me of the Democratic autopsy story that came out about how they wanna ignore that. And then all of the things that Kamala did during the. It's like, so what are you gonna write an autopsy about? I mean that's one of the things that seems so central to this fundamental question, Dave. And it also gets to Democratic approval. We actually have a CNN segment where they've been diving more into the Democratic brand. I wanna get your reaction to that segment in the context of what you see in the room. C2 guys, let's go ahead and play it.
- [55:11]
Ken Martin
Let's look at the clip. Key four swing states that in fact do keep track of registration by party. Look, the Republican Party is in their best position at this point in the cycle since at least 2005 in all four of these key battleground states. We go out to the southwest Arizona. How about Nevada? Republicans haven't done this well since 2005. Oh, my goodness gracious. At this point in the cycle, North Carolina, I couldn't find a point at which Republicans were doing better at this point in the cycle. It's at least this century. It probably goes way back in the last century. And Pennsylvania, very similar. Republicans doing better at this point than at any point, at any point this century. At least as far as I could find as the Republican Party gains in party registration compared to this point back in 2017 during the Trump first administration. In Arizona, you got a Republican gain of three points. Okay, how about Nevada? Up the hill we go, even though we're sticking in the Southwest, a gain of six points. How about again, we come to the East Coast? North Carolina, a gain of eight points for the Republicans. And in the Keystone State, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, again, we're talking about a gain of eight points. My goodness gracious for Republicans, they are converting old former Democrats to their side of the ledger as well as picking up new voters, registering new voters, and it absolutely paid off for them back in the 2024 election.
- [56:31]
Sagar
What's the grappling in the building with that, Dave? This voter registration data just seems existential for them.
- [56:36]
Dave Weigel
It does, yeah. There's not a lot of grappling with that. Before I got here, there was a reception for members on Sunday. I got here Monday morning on Sunday, there was a reception that the AFLCAO had had helped with. And my friend Brittany shepherd of ABC News tried to ask about registration and was cut off. She just answered the question by the aflca. They didn't want the discussion to go into that. The couple things are happening. One is that older Democrats, and this is people who were Democratic Democrats at this point, they're very old from the New Deal Democrats from the 1960s. Older African American Democrats always rush the party. They're simply dying. If you look at Northeast Ohio is a good example. Jared Brown runs in 2018 and 2024. More people turn out to vote across the state in those elections, but he loses votes in Northeast Ohio. And you look at the data, that's just there are not many people moving in and Democrats have passed away younger voters to the point we were just discussing. Discussing. The party's brand is associated with a number of things that are toxic to them, including Gaza. And so that I have. I was talking to some of the younger Democratic Party chairs last night. And even in places where they're gaining when they. When there's an election, they can turn people out. They can win a special election. They're having that issue that people under 30, when they go to register, maybe they go to the DMV for the first time to do it or they're on campus. Their approach, the Democratic Party has a terrible brand. They want to be an independent, they don't want to be a MAGA Republican, but they don't want to associate themselves with this party. So that the optimistic take for a Democrat is that is solvable. The less optimistic take is how, because you're not confronting that issue. And one thing they'll also say a lot at this conference or meeting and elsewhere is, well, we can't wait for some savior to come and make the party competitive again. We can't wait for another Obama, because that did solve a lot of the problem. Obama was so appealing to younger people that they fixed that for years. There isn't an alternative. It is that we are going to be the anti fascist party. We are going to be a fighting party of the resistance. And that is not very enticing to younger people who, look, they might be souring on Trump, they actually have in a lot of polls, but the offer of the Democrats is pretty lame.
- [58:49]
Krystal
Well, we also don't know who it's appealing to because they haven't really done it. Newsom is starting to get in the mix and doing his memes and all of that stuff, and he's gaining credibility at least with the Democratic base and certainly gaining prominence in terms of the national conversation. But I mean, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have been utterly pathetic in terms of their response. And at this point, they're some of the most prominent leaders of the party. The other thing is, I feel like a broken record continuing to go back to this. But you have this almost like manna from heaven in Zoran Mamdani, who comes out of nowhere, genuinely excites people. You had thousands of people turn out New York City for his fricking scavenger hunt over the weekend. He has very high approval rating. Look, I get it. New York City is different than the rest of the country. But with the very groups that Democrats have been failing and losing ground with, young men, Latinos, working class, et cetera, Zoron is doing extraordinarily well. And rather than looking at that and saying, my God, okay, what is he doing? How can we support him? How can we make him emblematic of the Democratic Party? They've done everything they can to trash him and bash him and like sort of low key back this scandal ridden, wildly unpopular Andrew Cuomo, even though he dramatically lost the Democratic primary.
- [60:06]
Dave Weigel
Yeah. And Jeffries and Schumer are not here. I think they probably would get a good reception from DNC members given even who makes that up. But not, not much of a reckoning with that. It is more frustration that young people don't see the threat of Trump than and we've given them something inspiring that they should be celebrating. There was a mention, Sager mentioned the, the autopsy. So there is an autopsy they're working on of the party and it might have come out at this, this conference, this meeting. It's going to be delayed to later in the year. The thing we, all of us who cover this and talk to people who are talking to the dnc, no times he's going to conclude that just the Democratic Party has this constellation of groups of consultants that are outside the party that are not helpful at all. And there is this desire for more of a concentration inside a coherent Democratic Party structure. But yeah, that's less entrepreneurial. That suggests there might be a problem. For example, when DSA gets very organized when they supported candidate like Zoram Dani and you've got New York Post and Fox news headlines about DSA's platform and Democrats having to answer for it. There really is this, I wouldn't say Trump envy, but Trump's command on the Republican Party answers every question voters have about what Republicans stand for. And some of them are contradictory and some of them are things he promises and can't pull off. But there is a Republican Party brand built around Donald Trump. It is popular enough to win elections in most of the country. What is their alternative? They're very worried about entrepreneurial left wing politics coming up and making it harder to reach those voters they lost. And some of this is who did we lose? It is unclear. How many of those voters did we lose were young people who bolted over Gaza? How many are older people who think the party is too left wing? How much of this is about the backlash to protest? That's another theme that was in our discussion yesterday at the main meeting is how Democrats can talk about crime in the context of Trump moving the military into D.C. it was a left wing criminal justice reform group that had the presentation. It was a little, I had one post about it that about their we should talk less about something crime, more about strong unsafe. There was a little more to it than that, but part of it was this worry that look, if crime goes down because of the military crowd in the streets, that'd be kind of hard to scan to scale across the country. Maybe Americans wouldn't even want it. But Republicans will take credit for crime going down. And we don't have a crime message. Everything comes back to we don't have a message. And why don't they have a message? It's not because consultants, again, they don't like them. It's because what are the first principles of the party? The closest they've come to an argument is Martin likes to quote Paul Wellstone, the late senator of Minnesota, and say when we do better, we all do do better. Which doesn't answer a lot of those questions. Yes, when we're doing economically better, is somebody who does that include our tax dollars going to bombs to kill people we don't know. There is a lot of dodging of the problems of the party. So you're asking good questions because this meeting is not. Okay, here's a 10 point blame. We come up with this fixes. This is a meeting for a party that thinks we can win the midterms. We, we can fix these problems, but tbd, we're not quite sure how to fix them.
- [63:23]
Sagar
Got it?
- [63:24]
Krystal
Yeah. I mean, it's funny because there's a lot of thought about the potential existential crisis that the Republicans could face whenever Trump ultimately is out of the picture because they are so centered around him. The Democrats will face their own existential crisis because they are also similarly just centered around Trump and sort of polarizing and messaging against him rather than having those first principles. There's one more existential threat here on the horizon for Democrats, on the near horizon for democrats who put C1 up on the screen. So it's the way the population trends are moving with people moving out of New York in particular and some of the other sort of quote unquote, blue wall states and into states like Florida and Texas as well as Utah and I Idaho. You are gonna have a very different likely in 2030, you're gonna have a very different electoral college, which means it's no longer possible for a Democratic presidential candidate to win with the blue wall states as it is now. So what do you make of those potential shifts and what it means for Democrats? I read through this whole article and the strategists were like, maybe we can win Arkansas. Like really you can. Okay, good luck with that. That seems like it's a, you know, pretty far reach. And I don't know, what do you think of this dynamic for Democrats and how dire is that situation?
- [64:52]
Dave Weigel
They're not panicked about that because the party has become more competitive in Arizona, North North Carolina and Georgia. And the Biden Map, if you, if you won the Biden states again in 2032 with these census projects, elections, yes, you would win the presidency. There's more worry about how you're competitive in the Senate ever again. Because that map, if you lose every Senate seat outside those states, you can't get the Senate. So that's not loomed as much of a threat as even the voter registration piece we were talking about. The party can't imagine being competitive in those places. I talked to the North Carolina chair yesterday and her focus is being competitive, having good 2028, flipping the state's appreciation, Supreme Court. It's doable. That's one of the states where people are still moving in into growing cities and suburbs and the Republican vote is balanced out a little bit. So they're not. I'd say another thing Democrats learned from the Obama experience is they looked at a map and looked at demography and thought, okay, well, this is our destiny. We can hold and build this maybe for 40 years. And they couldn't. They dealt with a Trump challenge to the party that blew up their demographic plans. And part of that was non white voters moving towards Trump, which they thought was impossible. And so that's not. This is more, I guess more question for reporters to answer over years than probably answering this this week is, okay, what changes in America that they, that they get more white voters or they reverse their decline with Latino voters, or they get more black voters. They, they do not know yet. But they, they stop thinking that there is a inexorable chart that moves up or down in, in these states because, because the idea of an Ohio that was totally uncompetitive for them after Barack Obama won it twice, even after the quote, unquote, we're on call, they had an idea that, okay, the Republicans have maxed out with white voters and as long as we get non white voters, we can win. Totally true. Had they held onto non white voters, Kamala Harris, I'd say by Obama levels, Kamala would won the election. So what do they do? And that's the thing. The answers are not very compelling. The answers are we need to fight more, we need to talk to more people.
- [66:54]
Sagar
People.
- [66:55]
Dave Weigel
It's not. We need to compromise on this. It's not. We need to abandon this position. You're seeing more experimentation by candidates and you, the Platner in Maine, the Maine, Dan Osborne in Nebraska. What they have in common is that they are not identity politics candidates. They're not expecting some sort of shift of the electorate that just gets more Democratic. They're saying look, a lot of people hate us and they hate corporate power and we need to be credible on that. And credibility means not being one of these Democrats who is part of the problem. Not saying because you're. That's the dialectic. It's not so much it's Trump and anti Trump but it's also a party of Trump and a party of defending the pre Trump professional, professional, managerial classes. Order from defending. I live in a neighborhood where people have we love our federal worker science and I'm not impugning that. I'm saying that the Democratic version of the country, vision of the country is what we had a couple of years ago with some tweaks.
- [67:49]
Sagar
Yeah.
- [67:50]
Dave Weigel
So what is the, what is an alternative that's more popular in these states that have gone far to the right even when the economy is pretty good? Look at unemployment, North Dakota. It's not been terrible. People are not saying we want, we want the party to give us more jobs. What is it the party needs to change? That's what I think. It's a party meeting. I'm not talking myself out of being here. But the change is going to come from the Zoram Donis and from the Dan Osbornes and from the candidates who say I have nothing to do with these guys. I do not want to support this system that I grew up in. I'm going to blow it up and do something different so important and that might be independence. That might be some progressive independents who are not Democrats and the Democratic Party will make peace with that as it, as it's done with Bernie Sanders. It's done with independents.
- [68:28]
Sagar
Absolutely. I do want your take last thing here on Gavin Newsom. Let's go and put C5 up here on the screen. Newsom has found himself center online a lot of love here talking about the Patriot Shop. He sold some hundred thousand dollars in like MAGA Newsom style merch. What is the feeling in the Democratic meeting around Newsom? Are they enjoying the tweets like the online energy? Does it fit in square with some of the questions you're asking? I'm just curious how the Democratic Party elite think about this.
- [68:59]
Dave Weigel
Oh they love it. There is a appreciation that Newsom is trying something different and that he also is not bound up in that we Democrats are better than this. We, we don't post like that. We don't make these memes. We there. Yeah. I'm probably more sympathetic to the anti AI people who don't like making memes of politicians with bodies they don't have riding lions and stuff. However, if they exist and people are organically making about Gavin Newsom, that's great. And that's. That gets back to the Democrats are just kind of waiting for some energy to come from elsewhere organically that they didn't have anything to do with, and see why that worked. So a lot of appreciation. I knew Newsom, the biggest applause lines. And there's one general meeting where everyone's in the room, so not everything's getting a plaza meter. But they were for Newsom in California, and they were for defending trans rights and LGBT rights, and they were for opposing military occupation in D.C. but the Newsom stuff especially. And that is what people might laugh at, the way Martin phrases this, but that is the sense. So one of the other themes of the conference is, you know, this is a couple months after the assassination, Melissa Hortman, the former former speaker of the Minnesota House, and the way that Martin pays tribute to her is that she, when she won, they won a trifecta. And she said, quote, let's fucking go. And they passed everything progressives wanted to do, even some with one vote margin, even though Republicans didn't want to pass some of it. That's the attitude is we need to learn from these Republicans to just be audacious people, do what we want do to do, and that includes pissing people off. And Democrats are not maybe attitudinally that good at pissing people off because they just don't think like MAGA Republicans. They don't like to be told that something was offensive. But when they see what people are doing around Newsom, they say, well, all right, that doesn't come naturally to all of us. But he is fighting. People are excited. I think if he wins in the California Supreme Court and gets to have this measure on the ballot, it's going to help not forget his presidential prospects, but it'll help them even more. Saying, we don't need to worry about whether this idea we have is defensible to Republicans. We just need to do it, roll over them and be fighters. And that's the final thing I'll say about it. Another theme that they're saying for every Democrat in every room is that we can't look weak. That's where the defense of LGBT rights and immigrants comes from, is, look, yes, we know the polling might be bad from time to time, but when people see Democratic Democrats wring their hands and look weak and appeal to some other authority, they don't want to vote for us. What does that mean? What does that mean for the Democratic Party? Again, that sounds more like a Zoran description. Somebody who's not afraid to say things that'll piss off the media that covers him. But they can see that it works for people. It's just not coming naturally to the party of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Joe Biden, whose whole message for his campaign and his presidency was getting back to normal. They're not so not saying, sorry, Joe Biden, we're writing you out of history. We're erasing you from the photo. But they're, they're quietly saying, that's never going to work again. We can't be the party, we can't be the party that appeals to tradition and appeals to norms and thinks it's gross if you put up AI meme photos.
- [72:04]
Krystal
Wow. A decade later, a decade too late, they're finally learning that. I mean, and it to your point, it's one thing to say it and intellectually understand it. You're talking about a group of people who were selected for various different qualities, who got to their positions, whether it was through support from a broad donor base or whatever, or the leadership was comfortable with them because they know how to phrase things to not piss anyone off. A lot of the new MAGA types come to promise because they're able to stoke controversy online and be that influencer who's constantly in a firestorm. So it's gonna be a difficult transition for them, I think. Dave, always a appreciate your reporting. Thank you so much.
- [72:48]
Sagar
Appreciate it, man.
- [72:49]
Dave Weigel
No, thanks, guys. Great questions. I appreciate it.
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