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- [00:01]
A
Today we're going to talk about Elon's fatal mistake with Doge.
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B
And I have three interviews. I speak with Congressman Jamie Raskin about his own feud with Elon and Trump's broader overreach. Senator Brian Schatz joins to discuss his plan to stall Trump's progress.
- [00:14]
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And I interview Senator Chris Murphy about.
- [00:15]
B
Trump's effort to distract us with his flooding the zone strategy. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to no Lie. So the talking point being trotted out about Elon is that if you support getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse, then you would support him and Doge's mission. And it makes sense on its face, right? In fact, that's a mission that I personally agree with. But here's why. What Elon is doing actually undermines his own stated mission. Think about where he started, agencies like USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So let's start with usaid. Probably helpful to begin with this point. The USAID Inspector General was investigating how Musk's SpaceX Starlink satellite terminals, which were purchased with agency funds, were used in Ukraine's war with Russia. So Elon was under investigation by the very agency that he immediately moved to dismantle. Already reads as a pretty massive conflict of interest. But let's get into the practical implications of his move to dismantle USAID. USAID costs about half of 1% of the federal budget. It offers essential life saving programs around the world, like clean water and HIV prevention. But it's not just that. Just as importantly, from a geopolitical perspective, it is a tool for American soft power. When you hand out food or medicine with an American flag on the container, you buy goodwill around the world. That's goodwill that you can cash in on during conflicts, that you can cash on for favorable trade terms, that you can cash in on for military or intelligence purposes, that you can cash in on to build up alliances. So it's a win win. But by dismantling that agency, not only.
- [01:54]
A
Do we leave actual human beings hanging.
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B
Across the world, which will absolutely have real life on people who require medical care, who require water, who require food, but we lose a very inexpensive and effective tool for soft power. And guess what country is going to fill that void? China.
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A
They've got what's called the Belt and.
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B
Road Initiative, which involves more than 150 countries and organizations. When we move out, China moves in. That means when it comes to trade, to alliances, to cooperation, to minerals deferences paid not to the US but to but to China, does That seem like it's in our national interest? Not really, no. But you know whose interest that is in favor of? Perhaps a billionaire who's invested a lot of time building up his portfolio in China. Tesla's Shanghai plant opened in 2019. It's the company's largest factory. It accounts for about half of Tesla's global car production. So Elon has a vested interest in kowtowing to China. In other words, while dismantling USAID hurts America, it is a gift to the country that Elon stands to benefit from helping.
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A
And again, it ends an investigation into.
- [02:59]
B
His own possible corruption. Bad for America, good for Elon. Another example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Elon tweeted, cfpb RIP Now, I want to be clear about what the CFPB does. It literally exists to protect consumers from predatory banks and financial institutions. That's it. Its budget is about $800 million, but it has returned over $21 billion to 205 million consumers so far. It sent almost 7 million consumer complaints to companies. For response, 63 million unique visitors used Ask CFPB. That's an online resource for answers to a variety of common financial questions. And the CFPB levied a historic $2 billion fine in one single enforcement action against Wells Fargo bank for mismanagement of auto loans, mortgages, and deposit accounts. This agency, again, literally only exist to help consumers. The sole result of this move is.
- [03:55]
A
That Americans will have no recourse when.
- [03:57]
B
They get screwed over by a bank. $800 million annual budget for a $21 billion return. Talk about an ROI. With the USAID example, at least I could figure out how Elon could derive some financial benefit for himself. This one, I don't even see an upside for him. It is a handout to predatory banks. There is no upside for anyone other than financial institutions that are looking to screw people over. So look again, getting back to the main thesis of this thing, I am absolutely in favor of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. But when you start off by dismantling one agency that just so happens to be investigating you, an agency that barely costs anything, an agency that offers invaluable resources to the world, an agency that affords us major soft power benefits, and another agency whose entire purpose is to help victims of financial crimes, then the message that you're sending is that you're not actually serious about your own stated mission of rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. That, like so much else that the Republicans do, is nice branding. But once you dig an inch beneath the surface, you see that? There's nothing there. I mean, hell, the Pentagon has failed seven audits in a row. Seven audits.
- [05:09]
A
You've got an agency that is literally.
- [05:11]
B
The poster child for financial mismanagement. But you start with the cfpb, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That's why Elon's commission looks, sounds and smells like a sham. Because thus far the biggest beneficiary isn't working class Americans. It's not Trump's own voters, it's not Americans more broadly, but rather Elon Musk himself.
- [05:31]
A
You do not get credit for rooting.
- [05:33]
B
Out abuse if your execution raises more questions than it answers. Next up are my interviews with Jamie Raskin, Brian Schatz and Chris Murphy.
- [05:44]
A
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- [05:48]
B
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- [05:51]
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- [07:02]
A
I'm joined now by Congressman Jamie Raskin. Congressman, thank you for joining me.
- [07:06]
C
You bet. I'm delighted to be with you, Brian.
- [07:07]
A
All right, so we are in a constitutional crisis right now where the executive branch led by the unelected richest man in the world is basically usurping all power in government and unilaterally accessing sensitive.
- [07:20]
B
Information, has access to the Treasury.
- [07:22]
A
He's shutting down agencies, deciding where con nationally allocated funding can go and whether it can go. So I want to start off by channeling the voices of millions of people out there who want to know really what the hell is going on right now and what Democrats are doing to push back against this.
- [07:40]
C
Well, thank you, Brian, for putting the question so clearly. I do believe that as despondent as it is, we need to be very clear about what's going on. And I think the easiest way to wrap your head around it is that this is a coup, which is a seizure of state power by unelected actors, by taking control over the central institutions and functions of government. So Elon Musk has essentially seized control over the financial payment systems of the US Government, much of the communications systems of the United States, the data infrastructure, and of course, he's got his clause also into the military infrastructure as well. So, you know, in addition to everything that Donald Trump is doing to dismantle every part of government that doesn't profit him personally and his friends personally, we have this additional problem of Elon Musk essentially trying to consolidate state power under him and transform the nature of our constitutional order.
- [09:03]
A
So as it relates to Elon, I know that the answer is that he can't do the things that he's doing, but the reality is, the practical reality is that he is doing them. So given that we're beyond the point where he and Trump are respecting the law, what is our recourse then here?
- [09:20]
C
Well, we're going to have to fight them in every channel and social context and governmental arena that we can. We're going to fight them in subcommittees and in the committees of the House and of the Senate. We're going to fight them in court. There have already been several setbacks dealt to the administration in court. As you know, Donald Trump tried to impose a new birthright citizenship rule, basically taking millions of people who are United States citizens in the country and then making them into undocumented immigrants based on who their parents were. That was shut down by a Reagan appointed judge. They're appealing it, but that's a win. As you know, they froze federal spending at the end of last week and over the weekend, completely nullifying congressional power over appropriations. That's a central power of the legislative branch of government, the power of the purse. And again, a United States District court judge in the District of Columbia shut that down and enjoined it. And there were Oral arguments on that yesterday that went very well for our side. So we are going to assert the Constitution, the rule of law, the civil service rules as a blockade against what they're doing at every turn. And public pressure, public vigilance about what's happening are going to be essential in this process.
- [10:57]
A
Congressman, among your Republican colleagues, is there any red line for them? I mean, to see an unelected bureaucrat basically on the pretense of trying to block other unelected bureaucrats, even though that's what he is at this point, to see him going in there and putting his claws into everything, getting access to sensitive information, putting high school graduates in charge of payment processing systems that include Social Security numbers. Is there any red line in public.
- [11:25]
B
Or private among your Republican colleagues?
- [11:27]
C
Well, we'll see, Brian. I mean, we weren't in session last week, and we weren't in session the last couple of days. I think that they sent us out of session early, actually, because there was such popular and political rejection of their mass pardons of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and the Insurrectionists. They wanted to change the subject. That's what I think gave a lot of people the impression that our leadership wasn't doing anything and people were beating up on the Democrats. We weren't here. I mean, for someone like me, whose district is right next door to Washington, it's easy enough for me to go down to USAID and, and to protest and to object. And we had a bunch of the Maryland and Virginia people there. But in any event, we have gotten our fight back. People are ready to fight this now. As for the Republicans, we don't know there are one or two who have been uttering some of their reservations and their objections to what's going on. But I've been absolutely shocked and really devastated the way that they've fallen into line for these completely corrupt and unqualified Cabinet nominees that Trump has put through, including Cash Patel, an election denier, a J6 enthusiast and supporter, and, you know, an avatar of MAGA lawlessness who is just about to become the director of the FBI. I mean, it's just dumbfounding to me. This is taking place, and Lincoln's party of liberty and union has become Trump's party of chaos and dysfunction.
- [13:09]
A
You know, you'd mentioned that, that there were all of one or two who have been, you know, issuing some rumblings behind the scenes. What do you think that these same people, these Republicans would say if George Soros all of a sudden was anointed some special government adviser and got access to every sensitive agency, every sensitive piece of information, all of Americans private data, Social Security numbers. What do you think those same Republicans, all of whom are falling in line right now, would say about that?
- [13:36]
C
Well, Brian, I used to perform that mental experiment all the time, including during the impeachment crisis, where I said, imagine if Bill Clinton or Barack Obama had incited a mob of tens of thousands of people to go and fight and fight like hell, and if you don't, you're not going to have a country anymore. And sat back and watched it. Eating hamburgers outside of the Oval Office and not saying anything other than my vice president didn't have the courage to do what needed to be done and would always flip it over and I would pose it to them. And then I realized that that represents an obsolete mode of thinking, which is that the GOP members will act according to principles and to principled reasons for action. They have dissolved into complete tribalism. They believe, including the ones they've stuck on the Supreme Court, that Donald Trump can do no wrong. Or as Trump so vividly put it, I could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and I wouldn't lose their support. He was right about that. He understood the cultish dimensions of their support. So I try to flip these over in the mental thought experiment that you proposed, but it's meaningless to them. They don't understand it. For them, whatever Donald Trump does goes. They will defend it no matter what. And whatever he says about the foes or the enemies of Donald Trump, they will believe and they will follow. That, too, right?
- [15:07]
A
Is a complete moving target. Gone are the days where there's any longstanding principles that you can pin them to at this point, to your exact point. It's just complete deference to whatever Trump says and does. And if that changes by, by the week, the day, the hour, the minute, so be it. They're just along for the ride.
- [15:24]
C
It's a completely humiliating thing to them. I mean, you have members over there like Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, whom Trump has personally insulted. He's called their lives ugly, said Ted Cruz's father assassinated John F. Kennedy or was in on the plot to do it. I mean, just outrageous things. And they all come and they kiss his ring. And that's not all. And so it's utterly abasing and humiliating and denigrating for them, but they do it. So ours, in addition to being the party of democracy and freedom, now is the party of self respect.
- [16:02]
A
Yeah. You know, you got into a public argument with Elon Musk over the last couple of days where, you know, you were standing up along with some colleagues to protect usaid, Elon came out, he called it a coup because of course he's trying to draw some false equivalency between January 6th and rightfully standing up for an agency that Elon Musk has no power to dissolve. While you were standing up for usaid, Elon Musk wrote back, and I'll put the tweet right here on the screen. What Raskin actually means is that he wants his kickbacks and bribes to continue. So that was obviously a defamatory statement by Elon, because Elon and Trump and Republicans now clearly have their marching orders, and that is to destroy everything that really doesn't serve the ultra wealthy, doesn't serve these Republican donors. And so they're on this scorched earth mission to just denigrate every agency that doesn't help them. First off, can you very briefly explain what USAID is and why it's important?
- [16:57]
D
Sure.
- [16:57]
C
Well, it was created originally by President Kennedy and by Congress to engage in what today we call soft power or the projection of American influence and American foreign policy objectives by rendering aid to people. And that could be anything from helping people build effective water projects to fighting HIV AIDS, to malaria nets and anti malaria campaigns, to building up development projects. Democracy. We're all over the world with aid. It's less than 1% of the overall budget. It's the whole foreign aid budget's around $40 billion a year compelled, compared to 900 billion that goes to the Department of Defense alone without getting into other national security agencies and departments. So it's a tiny fraction. But that money means something, has helped to buy lots of goodwill for America and also help to prevent diseases that come back and haunt us and also prevent the disease of authoritarianism and autocracy. Which is one of the key reasons that Elon Musk and Donald Trump want.
- [18:11]
B
To dismantle it right now.
- [18:13]
A
At the risk of getting too wonky here on that exact point, this is a really important point, I think, about usaid. China has what's called the Belt and Road Initiative. So why is USAID important to combat Chinese soft power? And what are the implications going to be if we cede that ground to the Chinese?
- [18:31]
C
Well, we're already hearing now with them having pulled the plug on all foreign aid projects on USAID all over the world, that China is moving in to say, well, they don't want to help you, but we're happy to help you. I mean, one of the things people love about America is the compassion of America, the democratic solidarity of America, the fact that we're a country with a big heart, made up of people, come from all over the world, and we stand with people, and then suddenly we're sending the message that we are going to stop programs to help pregnant women and infants all over the world. We're going to stop programs to bring food raised by farmers in Iowa and Louisiana and California to starving people in Asia and in Africa. It just makes no sense. But it is coherent from a political philosophy, which is that America can only get its way by being a bully.
- [19:32]
A
And we're seeing that same strategy play out right now with these tariffs and these trade wars, in your estimation, Trump basically pushing all of our allies away, showing them that America's word is no good anymore, that if we negotiate a trade deal, by the way, a trade deal like the usmca, which Trump himself signed into law, that those are only as good as, you know, the person in power in the term that he's in it, and maybe not even beyond that. And so can you just speak on what that is, what the implications are going to be, what the impacts are going to be more broadly on America's standing in the world and our ability to even have alliances, when even among our own closest friends, we are instantly picking fights from Canada to Mexico to Panama to Greenland and on and on.
- [20:18]
C
I mean, I've seen TV ads that the Canadian government and Ontario government are running in America, just saying, remember, we are allies, we are closest trading partners, we are friends. We go back and forth. We were together in World War II fighting the Nazis, and so good for Canada, reminding the American people of the relationship that we actually have. And that's something that obviously people who live in Michigan and Minnesota and the northern states understand better than people who live, you know, in the south and so on. But, you know, the Wall Street Journal itself called this the dumbest trade war in American history. Nobody can even understand why Donald Trump is doing it. It just makes no sense. It's incoherent. More chaos, more dysfunction.
- [21:07]
A
Can you speak on the fact that, really, at the end of the day, what he was able to extract from the Canadians was border security that they had announced back in December. And so it would seem to me that what Trump is trying to do is just create a crisis, manufacture a crisis out of nowhere, look for whatever vague excuse of a. Of a concession he can cast out as some PR win and then beat his chest as some master negotiator and that none of this is really amounting to anything.
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C
They're building ill will all over place the the world, including from our closest allies. You know, it may be that you're right, Brian. That he knew all along he was going to have to give nothing essentially, or rather get nothing, because right, what was given by Canon, Mexico was already given. I think they pulled the wool over his eyes. I mean, Mexico said they're going to put 10,000 troops on the border. They already had 15,000 troops on the border that been negotiated I think a year or two ago. So, you know, he just likes a lot of razzle dazzle and noise. But the leaders of the world are laughing at him and we can recognize what like fraudulent pretense this whole thing was.
- [22:20]
A
And at the same time, you've got Mexico and Canada's leaders who recognize that Trump really just look, is looking for some PR win, that he's looking for anything he can slap his name on and say, look, I've averted a crisis that, by the way, I created. But then you look at the Chinese, for example, they have placed retaliatory tariffs on the US and so now this trade war is happening. We're in it because they're not playing into his gamesmanship. And so his effort basically to stave away again a crisis of his own making, at least as it relates to Canada and Mexico, is not gonna work with the Chinese.
- [22:53]
C
That's right. That's right. Well, in fact, you know, Elon Musk, who's obviously pulling Donald Trump's strings now, is completely in bed with the CCP and the Chinese government. So they're not going to do anything to help people in Taiwan or Hong Kong or the Tibetans. They're not going to do anything to challenge the authoritarian autocrats who they emulate. They think that there might be some political mileage and having a fake trade war with China. But everybody understands the game that's being played. This is like Orwell's 1984. They basically want to cede a sphere of influence to China so China can just stomp on the human rights of anybody under them. And they want to be able to do the same thing here. I mean, to the, to the point of ridiculousness of saying they're going to take over Panama and Greenland as states. We do need two new states in America, but it's not Panama and Greenland, it's Puerto rico and Washington D.C. that's what we're fighting for.
- [23:53]
A
All the while, by the way, with this trade war, in effect, that means prices are going to go up on Americans, because China, we import goods ranging from clothing to electronics to shoes to toys and everything in between from. From China. And so that's going to have absolutely adverse impacts on everybody in this country, thanks to a president, by the way, whose entire election campaign was predicated on this idea that grocery prices were too high. And that's something that he himself admitted, that the cost of groceries is why he won this election. And his first act as president is to launch a trade war for no reason at all. Where the consequence of that is that Americans are gonna be paying more money for all goods under the sun.
- [24:35]
C
The price of eggs, by the way, have never been higher in U.S. history.
- [24:39]
A
Yeah, I wanna end with this. What can Americans be doing right now? I get a lot of emails from people saying, look, I understand this is what Democrats are doing in Congress. This is what Democrats are doing in the Senate. This is what our elected officials are doing. But what can we do out here? We may not be having women's marches with, you know, millions of people taking to the streets, but there are people agitating at home that are looking for some way to help. What can they do?
- [25:03]
C
Well, first of all, we're not having marches of millions of people right now because Trump would undoubtedly deploy his private militia of pardoned Oath Keepers and proud boys and 3 percenters and violent insurrections to come and clash with protesters to claim antifa is there and to create street violence so as to give Trump an excuse for imposing martial law. So I think that the forces of opposition, which represent a majority of the American people, are being far more nimble and clever than that. And there are lots of rallies and demonstrations breaking out all over the country in different ways, in different places, but not allowing one to be the focus that they can try to go and crack down on. But we need to be expressing solidarity. That's the watchword, solidarity with everybody who's under attack, whether it's, you know, high school kids in the LGBTQ community, whether it's refugees and immigrants who are under attack, whether it's federal civil service workers, people who just did their jobs as FBI agents and prosecutors. We are defending the whole American constitutional order. So when people say, what do we need to do? I say, what day and what hour are you talking about? Because we need everybody to be vigilant, to be awake to everything that's taking place, because we are witnessing an attempt to replace the American constitutional order. But they don't know what they're messing with on their side, because every time they attack Another institution, another community, another person. That's one more ally for us. And our forces are growing. We get stronger every day.
- [26:50]
A
Well, Congressman, I appreciate you being in this fight and for taking some time out to talk to me today.
- [26:54]
C
Thanks for everything that you're doing, Brian.
- [26:59]
A
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E L-P.com Nolie I'm joined now by.
- [28:01]
A
The senator from Hawaii, Brian Schatz. Thank you so much for taking the time.
- [28:04]
D
Thanks for having me.
- [28:05]
A
So we have been kind of put in a situation where Trump is engaged in his shock and awe campaign. The latest affront that he caused was basically trying to shut down usaid. There's been a lot of consternation among Democrats out here more broadly or in this country more broadly, in that it feels like there's nothing that we can do to prevent all of this stuff from happening. You've taken a different approach and you have actually done something. Can you explain what you've done?
- [28:32]
D
Well, I've placed a hold on all State Department nominees. And, you know, I don't want to exaggerate our power here. We lost the Senate 53 to 47. So eventually they will get all of their nominees, but this will, you know, gum up the works and make it a little more difficult for them. I think we need to use whatever leverage we have, which over the next several weeks is pretty minimal, because when it comes to nominations. They have their majority. And I think we've seen with RFK Jr. With Tulsi Gabbard, with Cash Patel, that they're. They're not going to block any of these nominees. They're just not. They're going to get their cabinet after that. Democrats in the United States Senate are needed in order to enact a spending bill, in order to do any number of things. So it's one of those things where in the first month of any presidency, the legislative branch is way less relevant. We then there's a kind of recalibration of they're going to have to start to talk to us, and I think we intend to use our leverage. Now, I'm not here to preview exactly how we're going to use our leverage, but I think one of the couple of things have happened. There's been a disconnect, I think, with voters out there, people out there who want to see us fighting sort of between, are you fighting hard enough? And then sort of randomly tweeting out things that really would be ineffectual. Right. And I would have all the impact of like a sternly worded memo. I mean, I've actually told my staff there are going to be exceptions, but, like, no more letters to Trump saying, you shouldn't have done that. Right.
- [30:05]
A
The sir, excuse me, sir, letters.
- [30:08]
D
How dare he? Look, he's doing it. But the other part of this is, is that I actually think the grassroots is waking up, too. Like, I've talked to a number of grassroots organizers, and the truth is, like, on Inauguration Day in Trump won, there was a mass movement against him. And that mass movement, in my view, still exists, but it was dormant. Right. And so I remember being home in Honolulu and one of the, you know, and people sticking their head out the window, you know, saying, you know, go get them, you know, that kind of thing. And for the like, I would say the weeks after the election, that was not the vibe. Right. And once these executive actions started, the grassroots sort of started to sort of awake, and now they're appropriately putting pressure on their Democratic leaders to try to do more, and I'm going to try to do more. But I also think that, you know, given the fact that we kind of went through this in one term, we have to be as honest and direct as possible about where we actually have leverage and where it's just like, you know, I was talking to the folks from one of the big organizing progressive groups, and I said, look, I just don't want to consider success being like, oh, Today, I didn't get yelled at online, right? Because I could go through this whole period of time, like, thinking that that constitutes a good day's work. But the point here is to win, right? And the strategy, at least as it relates to these illegal executive orders, is to not stipulate to the idea that we just elected a monarch. Do not stipulate to the idea that he gets to. The President, gets to shut down any agency, USAID or the Department of Education or the Bureau of Indian Education or the National Science Foundation. Like, it's a. We can talk about all the impacts, and we should. And we should say it's outrageous, but we should not stipulate that this is the end of it. A lot of what they tried to do is going to be overturned in the courts now. Lots of people are going to be hurt in the meantime, and we ought to fight it, and we ought to recognize how much harm is being caused. But I really don't want anybody to think that this guy gets to wave away federal law with the stroke of a pen. He's finding things inconvenient. He's writing an EO to try to get rid of things he finds to be a nuisance. I mean, the best example for that was in the wake of the terrible, terrible plane crash in the Potomac. They signed an EO saying, this is Joe Biden's fault. It was the weirdest eo. So some of these have real force of law. And for instance, in the area of tariffs, the President has very broad authority. But the idea that you can just, like, do a broad payout of government employees that goes beyond the expiration of the appropriations bill, or that he can announce that he's going to, like, purchase Gaza. None of those things are within his authority. They're scary, they're stupid. But we also have to kind of sort out what's actually happening versus what he wants us to believe is happening. And that is different from not being alarmed. Everybody should be sufficiently alarmed and mobilized. But we also have to. You know, our high ground is that we are still a country of laws. And he is still constrained by what the federal law says, what the Constitution says, and he's still constrained by what's unpopular. Like last week, the federal funding freeze, it both lost in court, but it also lost in the court of public opinion. And they quickly backed off and said, we never meant to cut down the Medicaid portal. We never meant to shut down Head Start. And that was because there was an immediate nationwide backlash against their actual actions. And so obviously the last two weeks have not been good, but there have been glimmers of hope where we just, there are the seeds of a strong democratic system. And part of that depends on us continuing to believe in it and not believe that all is lost.
- [34:07]
A
I want to dig into the prospect of, okay, there's going to come a point where the legislative branch will, will become front and center. But my worry, and I think, and I think I'm speaking for a lot of folks who are watching this unfold, is that in fact the legislative branch, or at least the Republicans who have the majority, are completely content not to jealously guard their, their control over appropriations, over the purse, over their own, whatever their prerogatives are, and instead are allowing Donald Trump to do what he's doing.
- [34:37]
B
So to what extent are his actions.
- [34:40]
A
Right now kind of given the being given the green light by these Republicans who would otherwise have control over the purse?
- [34:47]
D
Well, there, let me be more precise then. Yes, let's not count on Republicans. Like, let's, I mean, I think we should put pressure on Republicans. I think there is an outside chance.
- [34:57]
A
That depending on, let me rephrase because I want to be clear, like, to what extent is he able.
- [35:06]
B
If the.
- [35:07]
A
Bulwark to Trump's worst excesses here, these executive orders, whatever it is, if the bulwark is, for example, the Congress coming forward and saying, look, you can't do this. This is our prerogative. We're the ones who get to determine whether aid is congressionally allocated, funding is actually allocated, but they don't do it. And there's really nobody to stand up to him. And the DOJ is in his pocket and Mike Johnson's in his pocket and John Thune's in his pocket and the Supreme Court is in his pocket, then really, what is the bulwark to him being able to say it is what it is? I'm moving forward with this stuff, and the people who would be in place to stop me aren't willing to do that. And so on I go.
- [35:50]
D
I'm not going to preview the precise strategy here, but what I'm trying to say is not that the legislature generically is going to push back, but that the way the votes line up on some things, it's just a close enough call where they may actually need Democratic votes because they have some people who are going to go south on them, but in some instances, they just need 60 votes, which means they need Democratic participation. And that's, that's where we have an extraordinary amount of leverage, considering that we're the minority party. And so, you know, I'm not here to announce exactly how we will use that leverage. But yeah, this is not just a wing and a prayer that, like these guys just wake up and say, you know what, we got to be separate and co equal and we're going to assert ourselves. They won't do that. But there is a point at which, assuming the filibuster stands, they're going to have to talk to Democrats. And, you know, our price is not going to be like, you know, please do this small thing on like Medicare and dental health, by the way. I don't want to say that's a small thing. I'm sure that's very important.
- [36:53]
A
No, I understand your point.
- [36:54]
D
Like this is, this is they're going to need us and they don't need us right now until they get through their cabinet and then they're immediately going to say, hey, can we have a conversation? And that's one of the things I've conveyed, is that, you know, so you're putting us in a very difficult position to display any degree of inclination towards bipartisanship. And I have told, like, let me just give you a good example. And I understand foreign aid is not the motivating factor for even Democratic voters, but I'll just give you an example because it's my area of jurisdiction. I told them, like, look, I'll talk to you about reforming 4 and 8 actually think that there's a legitimate point of view that we should focus on our core responsibilities of preventing disease. Right. And preventing suffering and creating economic stability and having good political and military alliances. Like, that's a fine thing. And I was in the middle of that conversation, I'm not kidding with my Republican counterparts, when they just decided to shutter the whole agency. And so a couple of Republicans have come to me and said, hey, can we, you know, can we talk about reforming usaid? I said, sure, if you open it. Right, yeah. Because, like, I mean, so look, I am, I am, I am trying to find a way so that the center can hold, but right now it's not holding. Right now these guys are moving with impunity, but that doesn't mean they're going to be able to make the stuff they're doing stick. If the purpose is arson, that's a little harder to reverse. But if the purpose is to have any of these things sort of withstand legal scrutiny, they just won't. Like, I understand the courts are tilted towards Donald Trump, but you know, that's when it's a close Call right. When the, when there's a duly enacted statute, President can't just ignore the statute. And even this Supreme Court is not going to uphold the ignoring of a duly enacted statute. So I just don't want to. Look, this is bad enough. We don't need to like put extra spin on the ball and catastrophize it. You know, exactly what we're dealing with and is a deadly serious thing. But one of the most deadly serious, I think, disadvantages we have right now is this sense that we, that there are no checks here, that there, of course there are checks. Anybody who is in office by virtue of being elected, doesn't want to do unpopular things. And so one of the things that I thought was most important over the last week, and we've been talking about it a lot, is that people are now showing up in real life in three dimensions, right? Like at the treasury building, at local meetings and town halls. Like, people have to see it, right? You know, back in Hawaii, on the campaign side, people do yard signs and they also like, stand on the corner and just wave with the sign of the candidate they like. And the reason that that matters because obviously it's not, you're not in the persuasion business if you're just standing next to a name, but it's a three dimensional representation of, hey, my neighbor thinks this and is willing to put themselves physically out there on the street corner for this candidate. And that counts for something. And so part of what I think is very important, important over the next couple of weeks is to show a mass movement again. And yeah, it won't be pink hats. And we've learned a few lessons here and we're certainly not going to call it the resistance, but there is a mass movement that is growing in a non linear fashion over the last week or so. And to me that's my most hopeful sign. And I think what we need to have, maybe unlike, you know, two terms ago, is a kind of more constructive, more direct conversation about what powers do we have and what powers do we not. I'll just give you one example. There's a bunch of people who are like, put the Senate into a quorum call. And I'm like, that's 10 minutes, man. Like, that doesn't do, like, you know what I mean? Like, literally 10 minutes. And like, I guess if, if what you're trying to effectuate is to be able to say, I didn't agree to anything. And it's like, I think I've got a better plan than just making people vote One extra time.
- [41:04]
A
Yeah.
- [41:05]
D
And unfortunately, I can't, like, delineate exactly what we're going to do, both procedurally and strategically on Twitter or Blue sky or Instagram. But there has to be a little bit of, like, you know, it can't just be a couple of people defining what it means to resist. I also feel that there's a little bit of, you know it when you see it. Right. When I saw Jasmine Crockett in front of Treasury, I thought, well, that's it. Right. Is it a procedural move? No. I think when people saw me deciding to block all State Department nominees, they said, that's it. So it is one of those things where, you know, what. What is it Steve Jobs used to say? People don't know what they want until you show it to them.
- [41:45]
A
Right.
- [41:46]
D
And I think we just have to show them, because understandably, if we're not doing anything, then people go, like, I don't know, put it into a court call, like, around with them.
- [41:54]
A
Yeah.
- [41:55]
D
I think we have to do things that will work, and that is a strategy of litigation. It's public opinion. It's oversight. We do still have some procedural roadblocks we can put up. We can, at a later date, use the need for our votes for leverage. Like, we're not without power here. We are out of power, but we're not powerless. And I think that's the message that people need to kind of internalize.
- [42:18]
A
Yeah. And I think, by the way, to your point, I think the message that Trump is trying to conveyor, the sentiment he's trying to convey is with this whole shock and awe campaign, that there is no power on the left. And so the point is to kind of leave everybody feeling completely disillusioned and disenchanted and kind of in a position where we just throw our hands up and say, look, there is no bulwark. The courts aren't gonna do anything. Mike Johnson and John Thune are not gonna do anything. And so he's just gonna get away with everything. So we have to just take a step back. I think that is his strategy. And the Republicans are feeding into that strategy, which is why a lot of folks on this side, you know, do are left feeling that way, because that's the deliberate strategy being put forward by the Republicans. Which, by the way, is why it was so heartening to see, for example, that you were willing to stand up and install all of Trump's nominees. Because I think just the sense of knowing that, okay, we've got fight in us and that there are Procedural maneuvers we can take, you know, in pushing back is at least gonna be important as more and more people start to key into this process, recognize what he's doing, and kind of wake up from the dormancy that we've been in for the last few weeks, at least.
- [43:34]
D
Yeah. And I think, you know, my advice for anybody watching or listening is like, pick one winnable fight. And it could be at the school board. It could be for the legislature. It could be a public policy thing. It could just be you've got a friend who. Who leaned Trump or voted for Trump or didn't like Kamala or is frustrated with Biden or whatever and just start to soften them up. Right. Like, I just did that with an old friend from college, and he said, you know, I don't vote blue anymore, but I like what you're doing. And I said, you know, maybe you were just frustrated with Democrats. And I listed some of the reasons and I got it right. Yeah, but, like, you're welcome back. And he said, yeah, you know, that's it. Just, yeah, this is a friend from college. And. And that's the listen. You know, you've got millions of people who listen to you. So it's not actually unimaginable that the main thing all people can. That people can do out there in the world is not effectuate, like, whether RFK Jr. Becomes the HHS secret. That is a matter of how many Republican votes they've got. And I think they've got them. But if we. If 10 or 20,000 of your listeners change one mind each, we're now talking about, you know, getting close to the margin of victory in some of those swing states. So, look, everybody's got a role here. I think it is fair to see, say, that they have created. That Republicans have created a bit of a fog here intentionally. And we have to, you know, forest and trees here. But even I have to triage, right, and say. I can't literally say ten times a day. I can't believe he did that. It's so unlawful. And so I am focusing on the very precise question of Russ Vogt, who is going to run the Office of Management and Budget, which normally people should not care about, except that this guy is the architect of Project 2025. And in Project 2025, in addition to all the crazy ideas, there's a very specific, like, passage about how the OMB director should be essentially, be the king's hand, you know, represent the president in all things. That it is a physical manifestation of the. Of unitary presidential Authority. It's a very weird idea. And by the way, not, not a little bit self serving if it's like, hey, what if this position were all powerful? And then what if I had it? And so we're going to the floor and we're going to actually have, I think more than 40 senators and we are going to maintain presence on the floor, take the full 30 hours and talk the whole time about the damage that Russ Vogt is going to do to the American experiment.
- [46:12]
E
All right.
- [46:12]
A
Well, Senator, I appreciate all the steps that you're taking and giving us a glimmer of optimism out here. Thank you again for taking the time today.
- [46:21]
D
Thank you.
- [46:25]
F
Iman is always on call to her kids and her patients. One day she got the best ping ever. It was the Expedia app. Flight prices to Cozumel had just dropped. So it was a great time to book on the beach. Iman finally felt on call to herself almost. You were made to use your do not disturb mode. We were made to track flight prices to out of office Expedia made to travel available as a member benefit.
- [46:55]
A
I'm joined now by the US Senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy. Thank you so much for taking the time.
- [46:59]
E
Yeah, awesome to be with you.
- [47:02]
B
So I want to turn your attention.
- [47:03]
A
To a tweet that you posted that I think really perfectly encapsulated the moment that we're in right now. I'll put that on the screen right here. I have news for you. We aren't taking over Gaza, but the media and the chattering class will focus on it for a few days and Trump will have to succeeded in distracting everyone from the real story. The billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people. So we've seen this strategy before. And by the way, they're not shy about actually imposing this strategy. Steve Bannon calls it outright flooding the zone with shit. And that's what we're seeing at play right now.
- [47:32]
B
I mean, he is.
- [47:33]
A
They're calling it the shock and awe campaign. They're freeing insurrectionists, they're signing executive orders. They're, you know, whatever they can do to basically scatter Everybody's attention in 15 different directions is what they're doing right now. But to the exact point that you were making with your tweet, the billionaire seizing government to steal from regular people. Can you explain what's happening right now as far as Elon Musk is concerned, wherein he's effectively running unaccountable to every different government agency with no oversight by anybody else in the executive branch or even Those in the legislative branch whose job is to jealously guard their own prerogatives.
- [48:11]
E
Well, thanks for amplifying that post because I've spent the last 24 hours avoiding reporters questions here at the Capitol about Trump's comments on Gaza. Not because they don't have impact. I mean, no, we're not occupying or invading Gaza, but just saying that makes America less safe. But right now, we need to be laser focused on what is happening in the United States of America because we are literally losing our democracy as we speak to the billionaires that are brazenly taking control of the government so that they can turn the government into a fountain of profit for themselves. So why does Elon Musk want to shut down usaid? Well, a couple reasons. First, he makes a lot of money off of American foreign policy and off of his relationship with China. So he makes have his cars in China. He wants American foreign policy to be friendly to China. And a really nice gift to China is the erasure of usaid. This is the agency that essentially chases China around the world trying to reduce their influence. And now that it's gone, China can expand its influence and the amount of money that it makes.
- [49:17]
A
And just digging into that for a second, they have basically a counter program that's the Belt and Road Initiative, is that correct? Where they basically try to try to imbue their own soft power across the world as, as kind of a counter to, to usaid. Is that correct?
- [49:32]
E
Yeah, there's a race that's underway right now who is going to control, you know, the piping of the international economy, the, the highways, the information highways, the port infrastructure, the supply of critical minerals that are necessary for chips and batteries. In order to control that infrastructure, you've got to have governments all over the world that are willing to sell it to you. And, and USAID helps us create relationships with countries so that when they're selling a port, they don't automatically just go to China, that they at least let the United States make a bid. Now that USAID is gone off the playing field, the only place those countries have to go for, you know, help confronting viruses or addressing a famine or economic development is China. And so China will be able to, you know, build all of these relationships around the world. And then all of a sudden, we'll wake up one day and the United States economy doesn't have access to the global economy because China owns it all. So when USAID steps off the playing field, China benefits. And I do not believe that that is coincidental. To Elon Musk having a number of very open issues through his businesses with the Chinese government. They may be willing to do him some nice favors given that Elon Musk has taken USAID off the playing field.
- [50:44]
A
But, but Senator, that's, it's so nakedly obvious how that is is not beneficial to the long term success of the like sure. Being able to say, okay, we've, we've cut X amount of dollars out of the budget. And the immediate benefit, the short term benefit of that is obvious at least as a talking point for Republicans. But by basically taking away any of our ability to be able to have relationships and optimize those relationships, leverage those relationships across the world, how that's going to hurt us in the long term.
- [51:14]
B
How is that not blatantly obvious to.
- [51:16]
A
Every single Republican in government right now who's blindly going along with this? I mean, really, the only person on its face that this seems to benefit is somebody who just so happens to be doing business in China, which is Elon.
- [51:28]
E
No, that's right. Although frankly it benefits a lot of other billionaires because a lot of them make massive amounts of money off of China. Why did the Chinese tariffs come in at a much lower number than the Mexico and Canada tariffs? That's because the billionaire class wants to continue to make money off of making stuff over in China. Listen, the whole thing is a fraud. The reason that the billionaires led by Elon Musk are shutting down all these government contracts is so they can turn back on the ones that benefit them or their political interests or economic interests and shut off the ones that perhaps help their competitors. I mean, don't believe for a second that Elon Musk's money is going to dry up. But Elon Musk's competitors money might dry up now that he has control over the treasury system and he can determine who gets paid and who doesn't. This, this is a capture of our government by Musk and his billionaire friends. And it is pretty amazing to me, to your point that Republicans don't see it, it speaks to how much control the billionaires and Donald Trump have over Republicans, that they are just trying to pretend that this corruption isn't existing right in front of our faces.
- [52:43]
A
Can we, can we dig into the last thing you said, which is this idea that Elon Musk now has control of who gets paid in the treasury and who doesn't. This isn't the job of the, it's not the prerogative of the executive branch to determine whether somebody gets paid through funds that were already allocated by Congress.
- [52:58]
B
Whose sole prerogative is to determine who.
- [53:01]
A
Gets paid and who doesn't get paid. And so how effective can they actually be? Like, the disconnect here is that I understand that you're gonna say that they can't do it, but then also, it looks like they're doing it. And so that's where the disconnect happens for me. Because I understand in theory one thing should be happening, but in practice, it looks like another.
- [53:19]
E
Well, it is happening. So Musk and his allies empowered by Trump. Right. Trump is part of this. They've taken control of the Department of Treasury payment system. This is a system that basically pays every bill and benefit in the federal government. This is where your tax refund gets written out of. This is where your Social Security benefit gets written out of. This is where every grant to every preschool funded by the federal government gets written out of. Musk now has control of that system, reportedly, and he hasn't been shy about announcing that he is going to apply his own standards as to who gets paid or not. And that means that agencies that are run by Democrats might not get paid. That means one day your mom might post something snarky about Elon Musk on social media and her Social Security check might be interrupted. It's, it's, it's unthinkable that an unelected billionaire with a clear political agenda, Right, he hates anybody that's not loyal to Donald Trump and him is now determining who gets paid and who doesn't. Now, this will be shut down by the courts, but other things have been shut down by the courts that Donald Trump has tried to do in the first week, and he's still doing that. So the next step is what you would commonly refer to as contempt. So you have these court orders that are saying, donald Trump, you can't turn off usaid. You can't stop payments to states and to not for profits, and he's continuing to cut off those payments. The next step will be going back to court and holding Trump or the people that are controlling those payment systems in contempt. So we still have legal remedies here, but we need to up the outside political pressure as well so that they know that there is ultimately a massive political price to pay for what they're doing.
- [55:08]
A
What about the Republican colleagues? I mean, isn't, isn't, isn't it that the legislative branch should be jealously guarding their own responsibilities here, their own power as a co. Equal branch of government, and yet there is conspicuous silence among all of your Republican colleagues? In the Senate, as well as the members in the House conference, Are they perfectly content to just contract every ounce of their power over to the executive branch and just basically become an extension of Trump's Cabinet?
- [55:40]
E
Well, this is what is the most dangerous development. And of course, this is development four years old. On January 6, 2021, Republicans essentially decided that they'd given up on democracy, that they cared more about holding on to power permanently than they did about the people getting to decide. Donald Trump lost. And most Republicans in Congress endorsed the assault on the Capitol because they just didn't care that the American public had voted for Joe Biden. They wanted Donald Trump in power. And so, yes, most Republicans are very consciously looking the other way as Trump and Musk seize control of the government because they absolutely see it as a mechanism by which they can crush dissent. They believe that if there are threats of violence against activists, if your parents Social Security check is going to be interrupted if you show up at a rally, that they ultimately can bury the opposition to Trump and Musk and that the Trump family can rule permanently. Now, they are wrong. There are more Americans that want to keep control of their government and want to preserve democracy. And that's our job right now, is through civic action and ultimately perhaps civil disobedience to show the American public and show this administration that they're not going to get away with this.
- [56:58]
A
To that point, then I know that, that your colleagues in the Senate are actually taking some action against the impending Russ Vote confirmation battle. Can you explain what you have planned?
- [57:10]
E
So Russ Vote is not a household name. People aren't talking about him like they're talking about RFK Jr. Or Tulsi Gabbard. But Russ Vote is the author, the organizer of Project 2025. That's the game plan to essentially convert America from a democracy to some version of an autocracy. And so all the things that are happening right now, the mass firings of public health employees, the eventual shutdown of the Department of Education, all of that is Rose Voits plan. He is nominated to be the secretary of the Office of Budget and Management, which kind of oversees the entire budget for the White House. And his nomination is going to be voted on tomorrow. Normally, you know, we would debate during the day today, come back again tomorrow, debate and then vote. Democrats are going to keep the Senate in overnight. Tonight, we're going to use every single hour that the rules allow for us to explain the danger of putting somebody like Russ Vote in omb, somebody who has such disdain for democracy and whose allegiance is to the billionaire class, not the American people. Now that's an easy thing to do, Brian, to say that you're going to hold the floor all night. And so when we started signing up for shifts, there was this gap of 2:00am to 5:00am and so I will be taking the 2:00am to 5:00am shift. So I'll be on the floor from 2 to 5. I've certainly got three hours of material to talk about Russ vote and to talk about the fraud, the steel that's being perpetuated on the American people. But hopefully, you know, this will match the energy that we're seeing out there in the public as you're seeing the crowd swell at these rallies in town.
- [58:52]
A
Well, look, I understand that Democrats have limited political capital to use or limited political power, given that we're in the minority everywhere. But I think having this fight and getting caught trying counts for a lot here and sends a signal to Americans that we're not gonna take this laying down and that by using every avenue that we have, even if they're not ultimately gonna be successful, even if it serves the purpose of delay, by showing people that there is fight here and that we have folks who are willing to stand up, I think does send the message that we're looking for right now. So appreciate you taking the time today and appreciate the work that you're doing and Good luck from 2 to 5am here.
- [59:28]
E
Thanks, man.
- [59:30]
B
Thanks again to Congressman Raskin and Senator Schatz and Murphy.
- [59:33]
A
That's it for this episode.
- [59:34]
B
Talk to you next week.
- [59:38]
A
You've been listening to no Lie with.
- [59:40]
B
Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graeber.
- [59:42]
A
Music by Wellsy and interviews edited for.
- [59:44]
B
YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me at brianteller Cohen on all of my other channels or you can go to briantylercohen.com to learn more.