← Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
Explosive Debate: Trump’s Orders, Gender Affirming Care, Gain-of-Function Research
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- [00:02]
A
Today I'm bringing you a spirited debate with political commentator and strategist Jessica Tarloff.
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B
Don't go all Rand Paul on me. We're having such a nice time.
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A
She's known for her sharp analysis and bold takes.
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B
Mark Zuckerberg goes on Joe Rogan and conveniently forgets that he ever existed while Trump was president the first time.
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A
And Jessica's here to go head to head with me on some of the most polarizing issues of our time. We're diving into the world of gender affirming care. When the current head of HHS moved to remove any age restrictions for sex changes on kids. Nope.
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B
But these kids and the families undergo very strenuous psych evaluations before they even get on. Puberty blockers.
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A
Tulsi Gabbard's confirmation hearings. The. The ethics of censoring misinformation. The implications of gain of function research.
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B
That we do need.
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A
You realize that Obama put a moratorium on this research in 2014 because it's so deadly. And we're gonna tackle Donald Trump's most divisive executive orders and their lasting impact on the nation. Buckle up. Keeping it Real with Jillian Michaels. Keeping it real, real, real. Jessica Tarlab. At long last we meet.
- [01:25]
B
We find each other on your podcast. Thank you for having me.
- [01:29]
A
Thank you for coming on. And I am in desperate need of a more left wing perspective on the show. I really believe that it's imperative we listen to both sides of every argument. I find you to be reasonable, unbelievably accomplished and intelligent and the exact voice to provide some perspective on what those of us who have shifted more center. Center right need to hear. So I want to start with the first 30 days of Trump. We've got 26 executive orders, 12 memoranda, four proclamations, and he rescinded 78 executive orders from the previous administration. What are you okay with here of these things? What are you like? Yeah, I like that. If anything, I mean, I think there's.
- [02:27]
B
A difference between what are you okay with? And expecting versus, you know, what did I wake up on January 20th and say, like, please, Lord, grant me, you know, troops to the southern border. That's one of the things that I'm fine with. I mean, there was an expectation that Trump was going to do things like, say there are only two genders. And that's just. It's part of it. It was a huge part of the campaign. It was a huge part of the very successful messaging, I think, against Democrats, that we were obsessed with letting trans women and women's sports at the competitive level, like the Lia Thomas's of the world. And it's a 70% approval issue in the Republicans direction. So all of that stuff I was expecting, I think the national emergency along the border, deploying more resources to the border, expected and fine with. I think that that's somewhere where everyone can say after dealing with this crisis for the last few years and understanding the impact in real terms, once the governors of Texas and Arizona and DeSantis helped out as well from Florida, you know, shipping migrants up north, and we got a little taste of what it's like in El Paso that people are pretty uniformly fine with saying that we have emergency down there. So those are the ones that I'm looking at and just saying expected. And I get it. I think aspects of the conversation and moves around DEI also expected and fine. I think some of it goes too far. And they've already had to correct an error where they took down the recruitment video under the DEI section at DoD that profiled the Tuskegee Airmen and the female pilots from World War II, the WASPs, and Katie Britt, the senator from Alabama, flagged that. And Pete Hegseth on X said, we're gonna address it. And then a few hours later, it was reinstated. So I think that one of the main problems that they're facing is when you try to do too much too fast. And it's not to say that the goals aren't worthy. And I understand that there are a lot of people who are just starved for what they perceive as leadership and action. And I think that's what Trump is really good at doing, at saying, like, I'm going to show up and I'm going to do the thing. But this is complex, right? All of DEI is not created equally. Some of it is silly and some of it is quite legitimate and has been around for decades and for a very good reason. And my caution, I guess, to the right on these moves as they continue to. To work at breakneck pace, is just be focused and be specific about what you're doing. Like the flights of, I think it was 1660 Afghans who had been approved for resettlement here, including people who worked as translators for us and people who are targets of the Taliban. That seems at odds with what the American public would want and one of those too fast, too furious moves. So that's about where I am, like, trying to be thoughtful and considerate about this, accepting the fact that my side lost and elections have consequences. And so some of this, you're just gonna have to deal with, but that we can be smart about it and probably get to a place where about 50 to 60% of the American public actually agrees.
- [05:49]
A
You know what? I did not expect that answer. And so I would love. I thought you were gonna be upset about far more of it. And I would like to break down.
- [05:57]
B
Not today. I'm getting ready for the five. I'm, like, in the mood to. I wanna have the fights I wanna have. And I wanna. I want Janine to leave me alone about certain things. So I have my list of what I'm okay with and the list of.
- [06:08]
A
What you want to push back on. Okay. I want to get back to that in a minute. Which was my primary focus. But you said my side lost, Jessica. I was on that side for my entire life.
- [06:23]
B
We miss you. I loved having you come back.
- [06:26]
A
I can't even wrap my head around how. And I wanna. Why do you think that the Democrats lost? I wanna get it from your perspective. Cause I wonder. And this is a conversation I also wanna have with someone like Chen Kugur, who I love. I love you both equally. In other words, I respect the crap out of you. Your pedigree's unbelievable. Your knowledge is so extensive. But sometimes I wonder if you guys see where things went so wrong and where people like myself just kind of had to step over to the center. And in some cases, which now. Which is now considered center right. Although previously wasn't. As a 90s liberal. Where do you think the Democrats lost people?
- [07:14]
B
Well, I think there are kind of practical answers and then there are vibes answers. And I think the vibes answers actually dominated a lot of this. And I think that we lost track of common sense and talking like normal human beings. And that's not to say that we didn't recognize those things, at least for some people who had to kind of toe the party line in private or for people like me who I believe am actually more free to speak my mind because I work in conservative media. So I don't have the Biden administration when they were in office, you know, hot on my tail. Right. About whatever I'm saying on MSNBC or a cnn, which I know is more close monitored. And I'm quite thankful for that kind of freedom. I think it's great. I think it makes me a more authentic representative of the left that people see that I can call balls and strikes more than. More often than not. I'm obviously a partisan and I would never want to deny that. So I think that we stopped just stating the obvious and that was particularly hard, I think, for people when it comes to Joe Biden being the president, because he was someone who. Who always kind of shot people straight. Right. He was the guy that told it like it is. He doesn't do well with rhetorical flourishes. He's a gaffe machine. Right. But he's Scranton Joe, and he was the empathizer in chief, and he was the grandpa that everyone wanted during COVID who understood the. The importance of the. I feel your pain. Right. And I understand what's going on. I understand you're scared for your loved ones who may be sick. You're scared for yourself. The economy has been ravaged by this. The supply chain is totally effed, and I'm the guy that can fix it. So that's what people thought they were getting.
- [09:00]
A
And a moderate. I thought he was going to be a moderate. To be honest. I was never a fan of Biden's because I didn't like his history on the social justice issues.
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B
I hated a 1994 crime bill person.
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A
That's me.
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B
Excuse me.
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A
Bingo. I was like, you are systemic racism, buddy. Like, I thought he wasn't up until I felt the left started to go way too far left. Then I thought, okay, we need somebody who's more moderate. It's getting a little nuts over there. But not only was he not moderate, he poured accelerant on that wokeism crap. But yes, I did think maybe that's who we were going to get. Who you describe.
- [09:43]
B
Yeah. I think that the right does an exceptionally good job of amplifying kernels of truth and making it seem like it's the entire party. So Joe Biden in the 2020 primary got through because he was the one talking common sense, right? He's like, we can't have an open border. We can't be giving health care out to everybody. You know, all the things that you wanted to hear and what happened on the border, they still have given no good explanation for. And I've listened to every interview with Mayorkas, with Biden, with Kamala Harris, and obviously they had to cop to something going wrong because they had to put in executive orders come year three. But that should have happened from the jump. And I'm sure there's a ton of regret within those folks circles because maybe we could have won. But that brings me to the practical side. So I just talked about the vibes, right? We're not speaking like normal people. That Charlemagne, the God and A.D. where it says, you know, she's for they them, I'm for You, which people took to be about a trans issue, which it was in part, but it really was an economic message, right, that the Democrats are going to spend your hard earned dollars on something that you don't care about and I'm going to make sure that your price of eggs comes down. Now, I just was in Whole Foods, there are no eggs to speak of. And when you can find them, they are very expensive. Also, executive order wise, let the NIH and the CDC put up health updates, but for another time. So the practical stuff is this was also an incumbency election. Incumbents across the world have been thrown out of office because people have sustained a high rate of inflation for the last few years, even though we had the best recovery in the G7 by far and away. We are the. Our economy is the envy of the world and yet it's still not good enough. You can't go into an election when 70% of the public thinks we're on the, quote, unquote, wrong track and expect to win. And Kamala did not do herself any favors in separating herself from Biden. I don't know what went down between the two of them, but I do know I take Nancy Pelosi as my North Star for a lot of practical political maneuvering. Whether you like her or not, she's Machiavellian in the best way, right? Like Nancy Pelosi gets done what she needs to. And Nancy Pelosi has always told her caucus, if you need to go out on the campaign trail and trash me, do it. If you want me to come and campaign with you, do it. I'll be there. And I don't know what the Biden side of the House told Kamala, if that's why she went on the View and said, no, I agree with everything, right. Or I wouldn't necessarily do anything different. Then they have a commercial break. She obviously gets a flurry of texts that's like, are you kidding me? And you have an easy answer, right? You have this great Medicaid proposal that you're on the show to launch. Why don't you just say, these are things that I would do differently? So I don't know if that came from Biden or she just felt that level of loyalty to him and didn't want to trash him. Or she's not quick on her feet, which I think is obviously part of this. But that's the practical side of it where I wonder if this actually was a winnable election because clearly the public perception of Donald Trump has changed dramatically. I mean, he's over a 50% approval rating. Folks are seeing a different side of him because of all this time on long form podcasts, the, you know, freewheeling press conferences that hurt my soul. But I understand are refreshing for a lot of people who just want to have access. They just want to feel like they're seeing a real person. Even if some of what they're saying they know to not be true, they think they're owed that. And you are. You pay their. Their check. Right. Like we are Donald Trump's employer and we have a right to see him when we want, when we want or when he's available to do it. So those are the two sides of it for me.
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A
Okay. So for me personally, it was honestly the extremism on the left that became more and more alarming and the fact that nobody on the left was calling it out and quite the contrary was shaming the individuals who express concern. And I'll give you some of the more extreme examples, but it was the extreme stuff that I just felt like I. This is an absolute. No, it's a game changing. No shot, won't participate. When the current head of HHS moved to remove any age restrictions for, for sex changes on kids. Nope. Like it's a. What the actual f. Like I don't need to get trigger the algorithm here. It was so deeply alarming. And I'm the kind of person, like I said, 90s liberal, live and let live. Do you. I don't care what you want me to call you, how you want me to address you. You should have every right that I have. When your personal choices impact the freedoms of others, there's nuance and I want a deep discussion on it. But that kind of stuff, the fact that borders are wide open and criminals are being released after they beat up cops in New York, like just the craziest stuff that you were seeing across gender ideology, race baiting, open borders, chaos that reigned where Democrats, for example, when you add the Chaz, do you remember this? I think it was Portland, but it might have been Seattle and it was 2020, but this group, the Chop Zone, had taken over the downtown.
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B
I think Chop was Seattle.
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A
Okay.
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B
I think.
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A
And Democrats are calling it the Summer of Love.
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B
Love, okay.
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A
And Trump's like, this is bananas. We need to send in the National Guard. And you've got white guys arguing with a black police chief after taking over the police department. And I just thought the Democrats, they're unrecognizable. To me, it were. It was these moments, these things that were so bonkers, or wanting to take away freedom of speech over what they called misinformation. That was absolutely the truth. For example, Covid came from a lab, Ivermectin, as a potential therapeutic for Covid, which much of the research shows that it was silencing doctors, shutting down people's social media. This became such a threat to me that the stuff Trump does that I see that I don't like, and I wanna talk about some of that stuff with you, like, pardoning the guys who beat up cops during January 6th felt very hypocritical to me, but it was so alarming on the left that I just was like, I can't. I cannot even. I just think the threat to civilization as we know it is too serious. Tell me where I'm getting this wrong.
- [16:57]
B
I'm not really here to tell you that you've gotten it wrong. Like I said a few minutes ago, I think that there are kernels of truth in all of this, and then you can make a more expansive argument for it. And I think that's what Trump does really well. Like, they had that with the migrants, the Haitian migrants that are eating the cats and the dogs, right? And J.D. vance had that great interview with Martha Raddatz where she was like, well, this isn't happening. And then he tells the story about what is happening. And she. And she said, well, that's one case or something like that. And he, he said, do you hear yourself? And that went everywhere, right? I mean, with the help of Elon Musk, who's obviously giving a big algorithmic lift to a certain point of view at this point. But in terms of the gender ideology stuff, I have two young daughters, three and nine months. I think about this. I grew up in New York City. I went to very progressive schools. I am paying attention to what kids are being taught about gender, how open the schools are to people changing who they are or living as somebody else. If a, you know, a five, six year old comes in and says, you know, I feel like I'm a boy and they were a biological girl, what they do about those kinds of things. But the data in terms of minors that are even just on puberty blockers or any of these drugs that then. That you have to take to get to the point where you have a sex change is so minuscule. And so I feel like that issue was really blown out of proportion. Yes, there were terrible cases where parents had to go to court to sue to make sure that the mom didn't take the kid. Out of state. I think the dad was based in Texas. In order to get a sex change, I, I tend to err on the side of when you turn 18, you can make decisions for yourself before that. I want to do everything that I can to make you happy and for you to have the fullest life possible without creating irrevocable damage to your body. Because on the off chance that you regret this, I don't wanna have played a part in that. But these kids and the families undergo very strenuous psych evaluations before they even get on puberty blockers.
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A
And I feel like that's not the case, Jessica. And I know I'm interrupting you, but did you ever see the WPATH files that Michael Shellenberger dropped and the cast review?
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B
Was this his, his part of the Twitter files?
- [19:22]
A
Like the. No, no, no, no. So the WPATH is the. Yes. This is a little bit different. So you had two things that came out within about a month of each other. So one was the cast review, which was done by the United Kingdom's top, arguably top pediatrician who was like, at the Royal College of Pediatric Medicine.
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B
Physicians. Yeah.
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A
Forgive me. Yeah, I'm a little bit, I haven't looked into it in about a month, so I'm iffy. But it had taken her four years to do the systemic review. And off of it she had said that there wasn't enough therapy done, there wasn't enough data, their long term results of the studies was totally insufficient. And ultimately she ended up suggesting that in large part we should not be medicalizing this problem. There was an over medicalization of it or this issue, however you wanna address it. And then, then there's this organization called the wpath and they consider themselves to be the global authorities on gender affirming care. And they were the ones that were refuting the cast review. So they were the ones saying, she's wrong, she's wrong, she's wrong. Whistleblowers, through whistleblowers on the inside and FOIA requests, all of this information ended up coming out about how kids and parents didn't really understand that their child was going to be sterilized for life. Or when they were interrupted in stage 10 or two of puberty, they would never have an orgasm again. And they were engaging in, and you could define this however you would, like surgeries where teenagers were ending up with both sets of genitalia. It is some dark evil.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And mama, it's, it's, it's so wrong to me. And again, I agree with you. At 18, if you want to do this, and also when you have the mental capacity to wrap your head around it, by all means, as long as you understand, like, listen, you'll never have a kid of your own. I even think 18 is too young to really understand what that means. But.
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B
But we can't say you can go to war, but you can't do this.
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A
Listen, I'm with you on 18. I get it. I agree with you. I also think that when your body is fully developed, so there are issues with brain development, bone development and puberty blockers impacting literally their bone dents, teeth, crack in your skull. I mean, it is just. That's the. It's. I don't think it's as small of an issue as you. As you think it is. There are thousands of kids that have been transitioned over the past decade who regret it now. And Abigail Schreier has actually done a great job of exposing this in her work. But I just don't think it's as small of an issue as you think it is. I also know it's a billion dollar business. Oh, sorry, go ahead.
- [22:33]
B
100%. And I think doctors are hot to prescribe no matter what it is. They're like, oh, adhd, you know, gender dysphoria, all of it. And I'm not trying to minimize it because I think it is one of those cases akin as well to when someone who's here illegally brutally murders someone where you have to make a big deal out of it. And I think that it's worth it. I'm just saying, I think a lot of the examples that you're talking about, especially if you're talking about a board from the United Kingdom, is international. And I'm saying in the US I believe it is more stringent than that. And either way, and we can pull up the exact numbers about how many. I know the Times has covered this extensively. The narrative became that California, for instance, was welcoming people from other states to come there and have trans surgeries. Like, as if kids could just show up and get their whatever lopped off, go to Disneyland and come home. And it is so much more complicated than that. And I feel like in the heat of an election, especially with a messenger like Trump who lacks specificity in a lot of what he says, I'm going to be generous and say it like that.
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A
No, no, don't be generous. I want the true criticisms.
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B
Because the true criticism is he throws a lot of shit at the wall and sees what sticks. And that because he says so much so often that he can get out of it pretty easily. I mean, even what's going on about, you know, lowering prices, for instance, I'm going to do this on day one. I'm going to bring together all the bureaucratic heads, right? And your price is going to drop right away. Your gas is going to be under 2 dol. You know, cost of eggs. I will fix this. I alone can fix this. And this is what he has been saying for nine years. And again, I tip my hat to him. It is incredible what he has pulled off. But because there's so much out in the ether, he doesn't have to be held to account for specific things. And like with the trans surgeries for undocumented people in prison, Right. That he says, you know, Kamala swore she checked a box on an ACLU form in, like, 2018 or 2019 that said she'd be supportive of that. That was a mistake. You should always read those forms when you're signing them. But there was somebody who was getting the meds, first of all, as a prisoner in Donald Trump's America during his first term, who the surgery ended up getting delayed. I think it was completed in 2021 or 2022 when Biden was in office, but it was authorized under the Trump administration. You would never know that from listening to Trump talk about these issues or from watching that Charlemagne ad, which he was hugely upset about. Right. That he became the kind of face for the ad that ended up being the most consequential in swaying the election. I think it was 83% of swing voters said that that ad was meaningful to them in making their decision. So that's what I'm talking about in terms of the gender issue. Right. And again, not minimizing it, just saying that. I think it gets amplified to a level where people know what's actually going on. And it's complicated and it takes a lot of research. And it's part of why I take what I do so seriously. Because I know, especially if I'm one on four, that I have to have all of my ducks in a row, right. If I'm going to go out there and say, oh, no, actually, this is the real number of border crossings, or actually, this happened under Trump. Like you talk about the censorship online, I find that people play fast and loose with the timelines of all of this. Like, Donald Trump was president until early 2021, period, end of story. And every administration works with social media companies to make sure that the fact checkers are out there. I mean, maybe no more since Mark Zuckerberg has been red pilled. But that was going on under Trump and a lot of the main conspiracy theories surrounding Covid itself, the vaccine, et cetera, happened under the Trump administration. And no one acknowledges that. And that's hugely frustrating to me. That doesn't that I don't think that the Biden team may have leaned on the social media companies more. But when people say you know and then Biden had the Hunter laptop story taken down, that's not true. Joe Biden was a private citizen running for office when that happened and it was only down for 24 hours as an aside and would not have swayed an election I don't think. But those are the kinds of things that frustrate me. I just want everyone to be fair about it.
- [27:01]
A
Here's another okay, so so it looks as follows. Trump is saying it came from a lab in Wuhan, calling it the China virus, which you know I did see Bill Maher ironically defend this where he's like well we called it the Spanish flu and we called it the he's.
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B
Like people didn't walk around punching Spanish.
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A
I get it. In which case you're absolutely right if it begets any sort of which seems absurd to me but it did happen. And this is where I would say okay, you're right, unhelpful. We could just say it came from a lab. And ironically I think it's now generally accepted that we funded this study through the NIH to the EcoHealth alliance and the research was being done in a lab in Wuhan, but we were just.
- [27:46]
B
As responsible as the gain of function.
- [27:48]
A
Yes.
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B
Research, yes.
- [27:49]
A
And now the Ciara.
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B
I mean debatable on that one.
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A
I would say we would need don't.
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B
Go all Rand Paul on me. We're having such a nice time.
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A
You realize that Obama put a moratorium on this research in 2014 because it's so deadly.
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B
Not a complete moratorium as far as I understood it. I understand that there have been concerns about it but if we cease doing this kind of research it was more likely that we would be susceptible to bioweapons attacks is my understanding.
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A
I don't agree only because I actually just interviewed a PhD about this who specializes is an evolutionary biology and her argument is that the cleavage fear in site that was spliced into SARS cov2 never would have evolved organically and that's how her and her husband were able to identify instantaneously that it came from a lab because it never existed in a Covid Pathogen and the chances of it evolving in a Covid pathogen were like one in billions. So the question becomes like, are you really doing it to help us develop therapeutics and vaccines which we still don't actually have, or are you developing bioweapons? So I think gain of function is an existential threat. I think lab leaks have happened historically with things like anthrax and Ebola. You know, we're human, we're gonna make mistakes. And I definitely am not confident in that position. But if somebody could show me the other side of the argument, you might push me. But one mistake here and you could lose 50% of the population. I mean, this was a novel cold virus, not a novel flu virus. And it might not just kill. I hate to say this, not to sound like an a hole. People are kind of okay with losing their 90 year old grandma. Cause they expected, but not their 6 year old. Like next time, what if it's your 6 year old? You know, I don't know, Jessica, I'm iffy on that one. But why did they hide it if they were so confident?
- [30:04]
B
So I'm not sure I would like all these same answers. I was most persuaded by Jon Stewart, right, when he went on with Colbert and he said, there's been a chocolate flood by the Hershey's factory. And I think it was a penguin, whatever penguin actually is. And I actually, I had a friend who had Covid early. She got it in Singapore, like before it even got on the boat. And I was talking to her and she said, this is, this is intense. This is beyond anything that I've felt in regular life, right? Like where you get the cold or you get the flu. And then a couple months later, we obviously knew what it was. But yeah, there was to my earlier point, like stop. We stopped talking. Like common sense people. Common sense might bring you to think that it came out of this lab, right. If they were doing that kind of.
- [31:04]
A
Research, I mean, all. When you hear the cases from people who were allowed to speak and they explain it to like, there's no host animal, there's no incubation population. Finding this fear and cleavage site in the virus's genetic makeup is unprecedented. And then you see it reflected in the emails, the flurry of emails that Fauci was initially on, where they were like, hey, listen, this is not good. This is highly suspect. And he says, well, you know, in the interest of science and global harmony, let's not go down this rabbit hole. But my point is simply that Biden, the Biden administration leaned more heavily into silencing lab leak theories. Whereas my perception of it was that Trump was saying like, hey, it came from China even though we funded it. And he neglected to mention that. And he lifted the moratorium on gain of function research, which he neglected to mention, although he has seemingly in one of his new executive orders, blocked it going forward because of Dr. J. Bhattacharya, I think has a Stanford doctor has supposedly advised him of that.
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B
But that's how it seems.
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A
I'm just explaining to you how it seems to a person like myself. Right. And then you hear Mark Zuckerberg say we were instructed by the Biden administration to silence people.
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B
But that's how it seems, don't you think?
- [32:27]
A
Tell me push back because I don't know.
- [32:30]
B
No, but just logically. Cuz we're being very logical here. Don't you think Mark Zuckerberg has an imperative and a goal of ingratiating himself with the current president? Right. He wants to be in good favor. He gives a million dollars to the inaugural. Him and his wife get to sit there in the inauguration ahead of many cabinet secretaries and you know, governors like Greg Abbott are in the overflow room and Silicon Row is sitting there. That's not a Lauren Sanchez joke. That's just, you know, Silicon Valley. Got it. And he goes on Joe Rogan and conveniently forgets that he ever existed while Trump was president the first time. And Donald Trump has as well praised people like Deborah Birx. Right? Dr. Birx. Yes. Amazing.
- [33:18]
A
Yep.
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B
And Foushee.
- [33:19]
A
Yes.
- [33:19]
B
And he. Against his will, I guess, but he stopped saying some of the trickier things or the more conspiracy theory focused things like you remember when Clorox. I get it that some people. Yes, I remember, inject the bleach hoax or whatever, but they had to release a statement. He had to, you know, stop talking about light therapy and he had to stop talking about hydroxychloroquine and those things. I mean, all of that is happening in conjunction with the administration and the civil servants who have been there forever, like Fauci and Dr. Birx and the social media companies who have to be out there to make sure that we're not letting bad information out into the public whose people are desperate. When you are scared to lose your life like that, you'll do anything to cure it, to protect your loved ones. And I just, I don't like this re rewriting of timeline, history and all of it. And Zuckerberg is trying really hard. He has a trial coming up in April Scared of the ftc. I mean, the whole interview, if you listen to it. That is a guy who is really freaked out that people are going to come after him because his company has been selling the to advertisers personal information about young girls whose mental health and safety has been directly damaged by his company.
- [34:46]
A
Oh, I see what you're saying. You, he, you think he wants protection from Trump. So because this is come.
- [34:50]
B
I guess he's running to a safe place. I'm not saying some of it he doesn't agree with.
- [34:54]
A
Okay.
- [34:55]
B
But that's a really enormous reversal for someone to go under with Bezos. He talks less. Right. About what he's thinking. And maybe the Washington Post should have never done endorsements. Right. Maybe that's the way that it should have been. But I don't know as much about what Bezos thinks about Trump as I do, certainly about what Zuckerberg now thinks and what Elon Musk thinks. You know, talk about someone that the left shouldn't have given the cold shoulder to. Wish we had him at the EV Summit. Rogan, we would be having a very different discussion.
- [35:28]
A
Tulsa. Tulsi. Well, Musk. You don't like Tulsi? I love Tulsi. You don't like. Tell me.
- [35:34]
B
Go ahead. I work with a lot of people who do. I actually, I've never met her personally. I'm sure I've heard she's very friendly, super nice, etc. I have some real issues with her politics and her transformation and concerns over, you know, her trip to Syria, the kinds of things that she said when she got back about how the general populace actually liked Assad. You know, Russia Today or the news over in Russia are a little too hot on her for my taste. They usually know someone that will help them get out their message. I'm not in any way calling her a foreign agent at all. But those talking points are no good. And I think her confirmation hearing will be very difficult. But I don't know how you. I mean, life can be a horseshoe, right? You could be a Bernie Sanders person and Trump is the other side of it. And in the 2016 election, Bernie Sanders and Trump sounded very similar on their economic populism. But there are so many things that are core to the Democratic Party orthodoxy, including the right to choose, believing in equity and inclusion, believing in a strong social safety net that the right doesn't hold up. And so I'm not really sure how she ended up there, but again, I've heard that she's awesome. She's an awesome, Hank.
- [36:56]
A
But here's where. All right, let me try. I can't speak to this as eloquently as I would like to. My general understanding of Assad, and again, I could be very wrong, is that the situation obviously in that region is unbelievably nuanced and that the opposition to Assad also not good, guys. That she was there to get all sides of the story. And if you're not willing to talk to somebody, you're gonna end up having to fight somebody, which is something that Sebastian Younger had told me that I'm stealing now. Okay. I don't believe that she apologized for Assad's behaviors. If I'm wrong about that, please correct me. I was under the impression, though, that there was no apology about that, that she went there on a fact finding mission. And I have also heard, and I could be very wrong about this. I wish I could fact check it in real time that Assad had protected, like, the Christians. I don't understand the geopolitics in that region whatsoever. So this is something I had heard and didn't really dig further into, but that he was protecting the Christians and the Shiites and the Muslims. And it's very, you know, I don't know that there's necessarily a good guy. He absolutely killed millions of innocent people and he has a monster. It's questionable, though, if there's monsters on both sides of the equation. I was under the understanding she was trying to get to the bottom of it and stop it with the Putin situation. I think she's deeply concerned about the bio labs in Ukraine that are doing gain of function research. And that's alarming. And what happens with that, I also know, and I should. I mean, I hate to speak for her, but I also am under the impression that to a certain extent, we have provoked the situation with Russia and Ukraine with our interventionist policies. By no means my ability to speak to you on geopolitics is like this big. So that is my general assumption of what she was trying to point out is that we had provoked that situation by encouraging Ukraine to join NATO and so on and so forth. Now I could be wrong. My impression is that she's a combat veteran who wants people to stop dying and will talk to anybody to solve a problem. Could be wrong about that.
- [39:26]
B
I think she definitely will talk to anyone to solve the problem. Was it like doing quick Googles while we were talking?
- [39:33]
A
Tell me.
- [39:34]
B
She said that. I mean, I don't have the full thing because we would need more time for that but said that Syria is not the enemy of the United States. And then this is Nikki Haley talking during the campaign. She went to Syria in 2017. And I should note as well that she didn't tell the Democratic caucus that she was doing that. And that was a big issue on the Democratic side that she was going and doing something like that. If you're going on a fact finding mission and you are a representative of the US Government, that should be part of the group. So Nikki Haley said she went to Syria in 2017 for a photo op with Bashar Al Assad while he was massacring his own people. She said she was skeptical that he was behind the chemical weapons attack. I need to do another Google search on that one. But either way, if you think that there should have been the red line, that Obama should have stuck to his red line, which I do. So if you're gonna turn chemical weapons on your own people, that there should be consequences to that. And I think that was a major failing of the Obama administration's foreign policy. That was something Hillary didn't agree with. She wanted to do something about it. But if you're going to then go just a few years later and have an even remotely rosy evaluation of what's going on there when you see now that Syria has been liberated and it remains to be seen what this new leadership actually ends up being and the future of Syria and the Syrian people. But those two things just don't really add up to me. And I don't think that Russia invading Ukraine had anything to do with bioweapons labs. I think Vladimir Putin wants to recreate the USSR and he wants Ukraine for himself. And I was over in Yalta right before he illegally annexed Crimea, which was the beginning, right, of moving into this world of re establishing power that way. And it's not about bioweapons. It's a sheer land power grab and doing whatever he can and people who diminish that motive in favor of these other counter narratives. I think do the people of Ukraine an injustice for how valiantly they are fighting and how brave they are and how much meaning their home country has to them and downplay is how serious of a threat Putin is. And that's one of the main concerns that even establishment Republicans like the Lindsey Graham's of the world and the Mitch McConnells of the world have with a.
- [42:15]
A
Tulsi Gabbard, okay, I want to push back. And this doesn't mean I'm right. This is the other side of it that I've Heard. And again, like your knowledge in this area is extensive, but. And mine is not. This is. The pushback is coming from a historian that I had interviewed who wrote a book about this called Provoked and Listening to different debates on the Internet from different pundits. So here's the argument, theoretically is that there was an independent election in 2014 in Ukraine, right? They put a guy in power. He was kind of neither here nor there, stayed neutral between us and Russia. Then the CIA has this NGO that they formed. It was like the Democratic something National Defense, I can't remember the name of it. Forgive me, but Jeff Katz speaks about it very eloquently. And these guys then stage a revolution. We fund this revolution through this organization in these color coded revolutions that we've done around the globe. Zelensky's installed. He's essentially a pup. He's elected, I thought, I mean, is he really elected? He was an actor who was Donald Trump. I'm under the. Was he actually the guy who.
- [43:43]
B
Is that even a thing? I didn't even know that people didn't think that Zelensky ran for office. I mean, he certainly revealed himself to be capable of doing the job. Right.
- [43:54]
A
The perception is that he's absolutely a puppet of our government. In the same way other leaders that were put into power just the way we funded the Taliban until it didn't serve us any longer. Like we constantly fund.
- [44:07]
B
Okay, Ukraine and the Taliban are not.
- [44:10]
A
Well, Ukraine was exceptionally corrupt. No. And there are resources in there, like this port that Putin has on the Black Sea. That's how he sells his oil and has had this for hundreds of years.
- [44:22]
B
There's definitely corruption there. Anywhere that you have oligarchs, there is going to be corruption. But I, I was, I had never heard this before about Zelensky. I understand that he is partial to the west and he knows who's funding and providing him with the weapons that he needs to be able to do this to defend the country. After Putin woke up and decided to send hundreds of thousands of people in to massacre his people and, and to take back his land. But did he not say installation?
- [44:55]
A
There's a hard red line here. So there was a WikiLeaks document that went to Condoleezza Rice from the head of the CIA. Gosh, obviously, when Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State and it was about bringing Ukraine into NATO and we had promised, okay, so forgive me if I'm wrong, we had promised not to move NATO 1 inch to the east and we ended up adding like 14 countries and putting it right on Russia's border, which was a hard line in the sand. Do not do this. This will be catast. Then this document leaks, which is a memo from. I can't remember the guy's name. Forgive me, but he was like head of the CIA to Condoleezza Rice. And it was. This is an absolute disaster. If you add Ukraine to NATO, don't do it. And we continued to push and push and push, and we put NATO on Putin's border, and we arguably provoked it. And when there was an opportunity and why. Okay, well, who has the contract? Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
- [45:55]
B
Well, the reason we didn't put NATO on Putin's border, like, we woke up and we were like, we should do this. There's a real threat to those countries, and they're sovereign, democratic nations that share a lot more in common with us than they do with him. And they live in constant, abject terror of what he might do to them. That's a daily freak out of people that are in those nations. And what are you supposed to do? Pacify a dictator? Pacify an authoritarian, because he's gonna get pissed off.
- [46:26]
A
I mean, when you go to take. Think about this, okay, you've got the breadbasket, which supplies food to so much of Europe. And historically, the Nazis took over that land to starve out the Russians in World War II. When you're trying to take that. When you're trying to take his port on the Black Sea, when you're putting. I mean, if Russia put bases in Mexico, we wouldn't tolerate it. I definitely think we've provoked it. There were ways out. There were off ramps along the way, and we didn't take any of them. There was an opportunity in 2022, wasn't there, to revive the Minsk Accords and to strike a deal. And we didn't strike it. Didn't we urge Boris Johnson to go in there and nuke that? To a certain extent, it seems as though our defense contractors are getting rich. BlackRock has the contract to go in and rebuild Ukraine. Ukraine is having to seemingly work with organizations like Monsanto now, which are owned by BlackRock in large part to give away so much of that breadbasket or allow them to use it to farm genetically engineered crops in this land. Like, there's so many dirty people involved in this that I just think it's far more nuanced. And they're the ones that stand to make money off the bombs, off stripping Ukraine of its natural resources, off rebuilding Ukraine and then capturing, essentially its resources. And 35xing them for billionaires who are part of Black Rocks investment fund. That kind of stuff is real. And I wish I understood it better, but I feel like Tulsi sees this, understands it better, and is trying to say, like, hey, the wrong people want this thing to happen. There are off ramps here and we didn't take them and we need to. And if the bio labs fall into the wrong hands, I think was part of her. Like there are a host of concerns that is, that is the other side of it. Tell me you think it's crazy. So, yeah, it's okay.
- [48:43]
B
People want to get rich and no, all of that, the military industrial complex, the way that it operates, it's sick. It's totally messed up. We've had a lot of bad outcomes because of the impact of greed. And I completely agree with you on that front. I would say though, that sacrificing the future of a democratic and sovereign nation that hasn't been anything but an incredible ally and partner to the United States and offers us amazing intelligence sharing, which is one of the most important things that we share with our allies and one of the chief concerns that people actually have about Tulsi Gabbard becoming the Director of National Intelligence. That our allies will not be sharing information with us in the same way that they would. For someone who hasn't taken a shining to people that are authoritarians or that endanger the democratic way of life is a massive concern. And I just, while you were talking, I got it, I found it from this interview where she, the issue was that she said that she's skeptical that Assad was behind the gas attack. I don't know anybody that is skeptical that Assad gassed his own people. It is one of the primary reasons, again, like I was saying, that folks think that Obama really dropped the ball and had this red line and then didn't go in, and that the entire world is cheering the Syrians as they liberated themselves In a mere 13 days from this horrific human being. Who, by the way, is hiding out in Russia. Yes, because Putin is the one that thinks Assad is an ally in all of this. He has basically nowhere else to go in the world except Moscow or St. Petersburg. I don't know where he is exactly.
- [50:31]
A
So he's a monster. I, I'm absolutely with you on that. I, I just think that her intentions, or my perception of her intentions, is that she wanted people to stop dying. I, I, I absolutely see, we all do where you're coming from.
- [50:45]
B
It's a bit of a Pollyanna idea that you could just, you know, flip a switch and that that would happen. And guess what? The people that want the kind of outcome that you're advocating for, which is an American retreat from the world stage, the people smiling the most at that are leaders of Iran, China, Russia, and they're not the Ukrainian people, who are more like us than they are like them.
- [51:11]
A
But my argument would be, you could have negotiated a ceasefire, and now we're in a position where you've lost leverage. I mean, I don't know where we're gonna net out, but there was an opportunity in 2022. These are the off ramps that weren't taken. And I am under the impression they weren't taken because certain very powerful forces, in order to enrich themselves greatly, pushed this agenda forward, and we can move on from it. And I.
- [51:43]
B
Very well, I'll just quickly say, I think that all of the potential ceasefire arrangements involved Ukraine having to cede territory. So they'd say, like, oh, no deal, right? Let's just give up the Donbas, and then everything will be fine. And, like, if you came in here and you said, okay, we could end the war. Just give us Illinois, we might be like, no, we're not going to do that. So. And they may end up having to make those kinds of compromises. And I think Zelensky is more open to that than ever. But that's the kind of negotiations that were going on. And you see this, even with how complicated it is getting the Israeli Hamas ceasefire. Yes, right. You know, asking people to cede what they believe to be their territory. And obviously that west bank is more complicated in terms of what is actually yours versus Russia and Ukraine, which, you know, it's clear, like, Ukraine is Ukraine and Russia is Russia.
- [52:38]
A
Here's the one thing that I absolutely am disappointed in, and I'm disappointed in this on both sides, is the constant hypocrisy. So pardoning the people that beat up cops on January 6, this is the mea culpa. This is the part where I'm like, God damn it. You know, isn't there one party that can just hold the line? If you're going to be the party of law and order, then you have to uphold that. And it's. There's so much of this hypocrisy on both sides. Like, oh, look at the rich people that are here for Trump. And I'm like, well, let's not forget about the Soros family. Reid Hoffman, BlackRock, like Bill Gates, all the billionaires on the other side, the Constant pearl clutching and outrage. But then they all do the same shenanigans. They all engage in the same shenanigans. They take money from, you know, mega donors and super PACs.
- [53:42]
B
They Citizens United is maybe the worst, one of the worst, certainly Supreme Court decisions in American history and has completely decimated our politics. So what would you advise in defense of our approach to billionaires? So I think it's 13 billionaires that are going to be in the Trump administration and in ambassadorships. And yeah, of course the, you know, Pritzker gets an ambassadorship, but our administrations have never been stocked like this. And there has never been the level of influence that like an Elon Musk exercises, that he gets his own agency, he gets a West Wing office, he Twitter. I mean, you know, you're active on social media, what X looks like now in terms of, you know, supposed to be a bastion of free speech. But the algorithm is obviously working against a particular way of thinking of the world and for another way for the Trump way of thinking about the world. And, you know, it's between the Trump coin and the Melania coin, which, you know, friends and family own 80% of that, which will vest by the end of the Trump administration. Jared Kushner just got sign off on a new luxury hotel project in Albania. They have business before us. You know, I don't think these two things are the same. But what you are describing, I think is the reason that 7 million Biden voters from 2020 sat home in 2024 where they just said I think they're all the same and that nobody cares about me. Now, I would say they're not the same and that one side does care about you more. But I understand if you're living paycheck to paycheck, if you actually are tracking the cost of eggs because, you know, that's your chance to have fresh food, that a lot of the stuff that we sit around busying ourselves with or debating is irrelevant. And we lost that conversation, the Democrats did, to our great, great detriment. And you see even the difference between folks that are more local representatives, like a congressman or congresswoman or even senators, I mean, we performed pretty well down ballot. The margin in the House is going to be 1C, which is the slimmest since 1917. And folks like Jackie Rosen and Tammy Baldwin and Alisa Slotkin and Reuben Gallego all won in states that Trump won. So people showed up and they said, who's the fighter? Who's going to fight for me? And they said, it's Ruben Gallego and Donald Trump. And so we need to take the lessons from what those people were saying on the campaign trail and make that more nationwide and get our economic self together when we're talking and push aside the culture war issues, because we're not gonna win on that, that's for sure.
- [56:28]
A
Definitely not gonna win on that. And the one thing I will say on the economy, and then I do know you need to leave, is that it looks as follows. Again, I'm just showing you what the layman perceives, because this is how I perceive it. When Trump left office, gas, let's say California gas in California was like $3 and something cents. Now it's like $6 and something cents. A house in Los Angeles or a house in Miami hasn't inflated by it 3%, 9%, 14%. It's 100%. In some cases, it's this kind of stuff that people are looking at. A plane ticket to get from Los Angeles to Miami was 200 bucks. Now it's $800. For coach, it's gone up 200, 300%. That's what they're seeing and they saw it over the last four years. So I'm certainly not an economist, but when I go to buy things that I've bought my entire Life and they're 100% higher, 200% higher, 300% higher, like a plane ticket, a home, a gallon of gas, that's what it looks like. I don't understand it any other way. That is what they see totally.
- [57:36]
B
I mean, inflation, high prices for cost of living items was a global problem. And it's not a sexy campaign sticker to say inflation was 9.5% and now it's 2.8%. Nobody cares. They're like, I don't want any percent. But the problem and the challenge is going to be for the Trump administration. You know, as Jay Powell has said, the interest rates are not going to come down. Right. This economy is now the Trump economy to deal with. And all of the things that he said he was going to be able to do with the snap of his fingers. It takes time. Like J.D. vance is the one who's messaging properly on it. But Trump is still like, you know, I'll take care of it, you know, tomorrow it'll be done, and his most loyal supporters won't care. But as a Democrat, I'm thinking about the people who can be swayed back by making a strong argument that it's actually our policies that are going to effectuate the best outcomes and that you know Trump was selling a bad bill of goods.
- [58:35]
A
All right, I know you're off to go record the five. I hope you've warmed up a little bit.
- [58:41]
B
Oh, totally. I didn't. I don't know if today's a gain of function day, but I am feeling primed and ready to go, so. So tune into the five, which I absolutely adore doing. I have a podcast called Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway, the NYU business professor, of course, which is a lot of fun, and we try to have discussions like this. Scott and I are both center left, but to talk about the more moderate middle and a good way forward, and that's about it. I met Axe on X at X. I'm on X. My feed is pretty brutal because it's so Trump leaning, but if you want to dive in and say something even more nice to me, come on. And this was such a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
- [59:26]
A
Thank you for coming on and sharing your perspective and being willing to engage in this dialogue. This is what the world needs more of. You're as fantastic as I imagined you to be, and I look forward to continuing this conversation. I hope in the future.
- [59:42]
B
Me too.
- [59:43]
A
Thank you.
- [59:43]
B
Thank you. I appreciate it.
- [59:45]
A
Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the podcast, please, like, comment, subscribe and share. And make sure to let me know what guests you want to see on in the future.