Is Elon a Drag on Trump?

Summary

Pod Save America: "Is Elon a Drag on Trump?"

Release Date: February 14, 2025
Host/Author: Crooked Media
Description: Pod Save America is a no-bullshit conversation about politics hosted by former Obama aides Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor. This episode delves into the intertwined dynamics between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, exploring how Musk's actions may be impacting Trump's administration and broader Republican agenda.

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1. Trump’s Reciprocal Tariffs and Economic Promises

The episode kicks off with a critical discussion on President Donald Trump's recent announcement of reciprocal tariffs. The hosts express skepticism about Trump's claims that these tariffs will strengthen the U.S. economy despite rising inflation.

• Dan Pfeiffer highlights the contradiction:
  “Prices could go up somewhat short term, but prices will also go down. There's nothing to study.” ([04:04])

• Tommy Vietor critiques the feasibility:
  “It seems everything is going exactly as planned... Inflation has gone up. He is doing things to raise prices.” ([04:45])

The hosts argue that Trump's tariffs are likely to exacerbate the inflation crisis rather than alleviate it, especially since tariffs typically lead to higher costs for consumers.

2. Republican Budget Cuts and Tax Legislation

The conversation shifts to the Republican Party's budget proposal, which aims to cut $1.5 trillion in various sectors to fund a $4.5 trillion tax cut benefiting billionaires and large corporations.

• Tommy Vietor underscores the political peril:
  “$800 billion in cuts to Medicaid... Something Donald Trump just reiterated he wanted to do. That is so unpopular.” ([08:05])

• Dan Pfeiffer adds context with poll data:
  “66% of voters think that Trump is not doing enough to focus on prices... 43% of voters said cost of living is either the biggest or second biggest issue facing the country.” ([07:09])

The hosts point out that these budget cuts are highly unpopular and likely to alienate Trump’s base, jeopardizing his legislative agenda.

3. Elon Musk’s Oval Office Press Conference

A significant portion of the episode examines Elon Musk's unconventional press conference at the Oval Office, where he discussed his Doge cryptocurrency initiative amidst several blunders.

• Dan Pfeiffer describes the event:
  “Elon's press conference was a weird rambling monologue... Some of the things he said would be incorrect and should be corrected.” ([12:41])

• Tommy Vietor questions the professionalism:
  “It was interminably long and incredibly awkward... It was like a clown show.” ([15:50])

The hosts criticize Musk for undermining government credibility and highlight a court filing where Doge was mistakenly granted full access to the Treasury’s payment system, exacerbating concerns over his role in government operations.

4. Republican Party’s Subservience to Trump

The hosts argue that the Republican Party has lost its independent policy stance, becoming merely a vehicle for Trump’s personal agendas.

• Tommy Vietor asserts:
  “It is proof that the Republican Party as an independent entity is dead. It is now just a vehicle for Trump’s whims and desires.” ([11:31])

• Dan Pfeiffer echoes the sentiment, noting the erosion of independent policy positions:
  “They have no independent policy positions. They just confirmed someone who spent most of their life being pro-choice to be in charge of the healthcare system.” ([11:31])

This subservience is further illustrated by the unanimous support from GOP senators for controversial cabinet confirmations, excluding only Mitch McConnell.

5. Media Accessibility and Press Freedom Under Trump

The episode highlights the Trump administration’s efforts to marginalize mainstream media, focusing press briefings exclusively on outlets that comply with Trump’s terminology preferences.

• Dan Pfeiffer points out the AP's exclusion:
  “The AP refuses to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America... it's a plain violation of the First Amendment.” ([29:36])

• Tommy Vietor likens the situation to authoritarian regimes:
  “It's like North Korean television... Just fawning questions from Newsmax and OAN... it’s going to just sound like North Korean television.” ([34:21])

The hosts express deep concern over the diminishing press access, equating it to democratic backsliding and the chilling effects on free speech.

6. Public Opinion and Polling Insights

Leveraging Echelon Insights' recent polling data, the hosts discuss public perceptions of Trump and Musk’s initiatives.

• Tommy Vietor interprets the data:
  “Elon is actually a drag on what would be an otherwise more popular effort.” ([21:53])

• Dan Pfeiffer shares poll specifics:
  “Only 40% approved of Elon’s role in government; 51% disapprove.” ([20:05])

These insights suggest that while there is support for cutting government waste, Elon’s involvement is detrimental due to his low approval ratings.

7. Strategic Communication Against Republican Agenda

The hosts strategize on how Democrats can effectively combat the Republican legislative agenda, emphasizing the need for vivid storytelling over numerical data.

• Tommy Vietor advises specificity:
  “Be very specific about what is being cut... talk about specifically what Medicaid funds.” ([45:02])

• Dan Pfeiffer emphasizes personalizing the impact:
  “Attach people to it, whether it’s the cuts or the tax cuts... more stories, more people on everything.</ ([45:43])

The recommendation is to focus on detailed narratives that illustrate how proposed cuts will harm everyday Americans, thereby galvanizing public opposition.

8. "Wait, Did That Really Happen?" Segment

A humorous interlude features clips mocking Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center and his interactions with Elon Musk, highlighting the absurdity of their actions.

• Dan Pfeiffer mocks Trump appointing himself:
  “Donald Trump is the new chairman... How did you finagle that one?” ([46:29])

• Tommy Vietor jokes about renaming places:
  “He's gonna start calling India Indiana... The Indian Ocean.” ([52:14])

This segment serves to undercut the gravity of Trump and Musk's actions through satire, reinforcing the hosts' critical stance.

9. Interview with Rohit Chopra: Defending the CFPB

In the latter part of the episode, Lovett interviews Rohit Chopra, the recently fired director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). They discuss the administration’s attempts to dismantle the CFPB and the broader implications for consumer protection.

• Dan Pfeiffer sets the stage:
  “Rohit Chopra discusses why Trump and Elon are so hell-bent on closing the agency.”

• Rohit Chopra outlines the CFPB’s role:
  “The CFPB works on medical bills on credit reports, fees on bank accounts, mortgage or auto loan costs... prosecute big corporations for cheating people.” ([57:13])

• Chopra warns of the consequences:
  “If the CFPB is defunded, large companies will continue to exploit consumers without accountability.” ([59:50])

Chopra underscores the importance of the CFPB in safeguarding consumers from financial abuses and the detrimental impact of its potential dismantling.

10. Conclusion and Call to Action

The episode wraps up with a strong call to action for listeners to support progressive initiatives and defend democratic institutions against the Trump administration's disruptive policies.

• Tommy Vietor and Dan Pfeiffer encourage strategic opposition:
  “We need to be specific and attach stories to the numbers... use our voices and power to protect consumer rights.” ([45:02], [87:05])

• Rohit Chopra emphasizes public involvement:
  “Users need to call their members and protest... ensure that our government serves the people, not corporate interests.” ([85:10])

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Notable Quotes

• Dan Pfeiffer ([04:08]):
  “Prices could go up somewhat short term, but prices will also go down. There's nothing to study.”

• Tommy Vietor ([04:45]):
  “Trump is doing things to raise prices... What a giant tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits corporations and the wealthy would do.”

• Dan Pfeiffer ([07:09]):
  “66% of voters think that Trump is not doing enough to focus on prices... 43% are still concerned about the cost of living.”

• Tommy Vietor ([11:31]):
  “The Republican Party as an independent entity is dead. It is now just a vehicle for Trump’s whims and desires.”

• Dan Pfeiffer ([12:41]):
  “Elon’s press conference was a weird rambling monologue... Some of the things he said would be incorrect and should be corrected.”

• Tommy Vietor ([34:21]):
  “It's like North Korean television... Just fawning questions from Newsmax and OAN.”

• Rohit Chopra ([57:13]):
  “The CFPB works on medical bills on credit reports, fees on bank accounts, mortgage or auto loan costs... prosecute big corporations for cheating people.”

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk's Role: Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration, particularly through initiatives like Doge, is viewed as counterproductive due to his low approval ratings and missteps, potentially hindering effective governance.

• Republican Legislative Agenda: The GOP's plan to implement substantial budget cuts to fund massive tax breaks for the wealthy is highly unpopular and poses significant political risks for Trump.

• Subservient Republican Party: The Republican Party is criticized for lacking independent policy positions, functioning instead as an extension of Trump’s personal agenda, undermining traditional party dynamics.

• Media Marginalization: Efforts to exclude mainstream media outlets like the AP from Trump’s press briefings signify a troubling decline in press freedom and democratic transparency.

• Consumer Protection Risks: The potential dismantling of the CFPB threatens to leave consumers vulnerable to financial abuses by large corporations, emphasizing the need for strong regulatory bodies.

• Strategic Opposition Needed: Democrats must adopt strategic communication focusing on personal stories and specific impacts of Republican policies to effectively counteract the legislative agenda.

Conclusion

This episode of Pod Save America provides a comprehensive analysis of the detrimental effects of Elon Musk's involvement in the Trump administration and the broader implications of the Republican legislative agenda. Through incisive discussions and impactful quotes, the hosts shed light on the challenges facing democratic institutions and consumer protections, urging listeners to engage actively in defending these against partisan and corporate overreach.

Transcript

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

On today's show, the free speech warriors in the White House are kicking out media outlets that still call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico. Elon Musk holds an Oval Office press conference where he admits that he and the dogebags haven't quite gotten everything right while breaking our government and our laws. And while they brag about finding a few billion in cuts, we'll take a look at the trillions that Republicans in Congress want to cut from the budget in order to help pay for their $4.5 trillion tax cut for people like Elon and Trump. Then Lovett sits down here in studio with Rohit Chopra, who Trump forced out as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week so that banks and credit card companies can go back to screwing us. Great times, great times. But first, big congrats to Bashar Al Assad and the measles for getting Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr confirmed as cabinet secretary. Big congrats to measles. In the end, every Republican senator but Resistance hero Mitch McConnell voted yes on Gabbard and Kennedy. So rest assured that our health and national security are in good hands. Dan, things also look good for Cash Patel, even though he was reportedly purging the FBI before even being confirmed. But the big news this week, at least according to a very excited President Trump, was his announcement of reciprocal tariffs. He said this was the big one. This was the big one. He said, I had three great weeks, but this is the biggest one yet. He was asked about those tariffs after announcing them in the Oval Office. And here's part of the presser and.

[Donald Trump]

Prices could go up somewhat short term, but prices will also go down.

[Tommy Vietor]

Would you also direct agencies to study the impact they would have on prices.

[Donald Trump]

In the U.S. no, there's nothing to study. There's nothing to study. It's going to go well. The United States is going to become a very, very strong economically country.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, prices could go up, prices could go down. There's nothing to study. Don't worry about it. So an announcement that lots of shit we buy is about to be more expensive. Just a few days after we learned that inflation is rising again, the biggest one month jump since August of 2023. What do you think, Dan? Promises made, promises kept, promoting.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it seems great. Seems everything is going exactly as planned. I mean, it is noted that Trump went to the, at the convention, declared that the inflation crisis would end immediately. Inflation has gone up. He is doing things to raise prices. And that's even before we get into the potential impacts of his mass deportation plan. What a giant tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits corporations and the wealthy would do. And I think it is just worth. We're like living this in truly insane time. We're going to talk about a lot of the really insane, dangerous and dumb things that are happening over the course of this podcast. But it's also possible that politics really hasn't changed that much. And Donald Trump simply won the presidency because people were really mad at the incumbent administration because prices were too high. And now Donald Trump is the incumbent administration and people are still mad the prices are too high. And instead of trying to address that, as he promised he would do, he is doing things would actually exacerbate the crisis. And so we will find out soon enough whether political gravity is a thing that still exists.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that people still think that prices are too high. On Tuesday's show, we talked about the CBS poll that showed 66% of voters think that Trump is not doing enough to focus on prices. Echelon Insights, which is a Republican run polling firm, they just came out with their latest poll right before we started recording. 43% of voters said cost of living is either the biggest or second biggest issue facing the country. And the next closest issue was immigration at 29% and then political corruption at 23%. Seems like there's plenty of that these days. But number one, 43% are still concerned about the cost of living. So, no, it wasn't vibes. No, it wasn't just in people's heads. It was a real concern about prices throughout the Biden administration, a real concern about costs. And people are still concerned that Donald Trump is not focusing on costs. And now these reciprocal tariffs, which is basically any country that has levied a tariff on our goods, now we're levying tariffs on any goods that are imported from them. But again, tariffs are charged to the US Companies that are importing the goods, and then the companies pass on the price increases to us. So we will be paying more. It's like someone said, it's like we're shooting ourselves in the foot for other countries shooting themselves in the foot. That's what a reciprocal tariff is.

[Tommy Vietor]

The other thing about this that is notable is because inflation went back up again, the Fed is now less likely to and highly unlikely to cut interest rates again. Which we often treat interest rates and inflation as two separate but related things when they're actually for the voter, the same thing. Right? If interest rates stay up, credit cards are more expensive, buying cars is more expensive, getting a home loan is more expensive, your costs are more expensive, you're locked into your homes. And so Trump, maybe he will just fire the Fed chair against the law, he will bully him into lowering interest rates. But in a world in which he is not demonstrating to the Fed that he is trying to bring down inflation, he is going to make his own situation worse because they are not. They're going to feel like Trump is an untrustworthy partner in this or an unreliable partner, and are therefore going to keep interest rates high for a much longer period of time.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And again, we're going to talk about the Congress moving, trying to move Trump's legislative agenda, which is just a giant tax cut. And that tax cut is not primarily for most people in this country who are concerned about inflation. Most of the tax cuts are going to billionaires, big corporations, the wealthiest people. And, you know, he's got his no tax on tips thing. If that gets through that, I guess if you're in the restaurant industry, if you get, if you work on tips. Right. Anywhere, then that helps you. But there's nothing else in that agenda for middle class people. In fact, there's a lot of cuts coming to healthcare and education that are gonna hurt middle class people. Something to watch. Certainly something to watch. Any comment on the confirmations on Gabbard and Kennedy going through? I know you wrote a message box Thursday morning about what we can learn from the Gabbard vote.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, it is deeply alarming that we have an anti vaccine conspiracy theorist at the head of our healthcare system and someone who has played footsie with Bashar Al Assad and Putin and has also embraced all kinds of conspiracy theories in charge of our intelligence agencies. That is a. Just like if you had told people six months ago that that's how this was going to end. People would have laughed at you. Right. People would have treated it as liberal msnbc, positive America hysteria to suggest such crazy things. And look, I think as it relates to the Republican Party, and this is particularly true of the Gabbard confirmation, but also true of the RFK junior One as well, is that the fact that every Republican Except Mitch McConnell voted for these folks is proof that the Republican Party as an independent entity is dead. It is now just a vehicle for Trump's whims and desires. They have no independent policy positions. Right. They just confirmed someone who spent the most of their life being pro choice to be in charge of the healthcare system. They just confirmed someone who is the closest person to Russia in the United States Congress when they were there to be the head of the intelligence agencies. And this is different than what it was before. If you remember, in 2017, the Republican House and Senate passed a bill to keep Trump from taking sanctions off of Russia when, during the Biden administration, when a bunch of Trump's allies, at the behest of Trump, wanted to get rid of funding for Ukraine, it was the Republican Senate who stopped them. And now it's just like, we will do whatever they want. And even on foreign policy, the one place they had held the line over the years, and it's just like this is the end of the party as an actual entity that will survive Trump. And they gave it all up for nothing more than avoiding a primary challenge in the next election, because that's how, you know, that's what this is about. Because Mitch McConnell is almost certainly retiring now, and so he's the only one who feels like he can vote his conscience without suffering the repercussions because he's immune from them.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I don't really get what Murkowski and Collins were doing on these, though, either. Their statements are basically like, well, I got assurances from them and they've put my. You know, that both nominees sort of like, put our concerns to rest. So I guess we'll just trust them. And I guess that means that Collins is maybe. Collins is worried about a primary challenge, so I guess that means she's thinking about running again and not retiring, though she could very well retire. She's old enough. And Murkowski, too. Like, I just. The credulousness.

[Tommy Vietor]

None of them believe it. Not a single one of them believe. Like, maybe like Tommy Tuberville believes this bullshit. But if you gave truth serum to the Republican Senate caucus overwhelmingly, they would say was fucking insane to confirm Tulsi Gabbard for this job, that it was ridiculously irresponsible to confirm RFK Jr. For this job. They all believe that, but they won't do it. And what's. I think this is really interesting about Trump's brand of politics is normally, if you don't need the votes, and they weren't going to need every single Republican this time, you let people take a walk on a tough vote, particularly someone like Susan Collins, who is in a blue state, like, give her a chance. They don't need her vote to confirm either of these people. Let her vote the other way so she can show her brand of independence or whatever else. But Trump does not do that. He makes you. Everything's a loyalty test, right? You have to walk across the hot coals for him, even at your own peril, and you do it because he is so vengeful, he's so petty that you don't even Know what he could do? He and his allies could unleash upon you if you vote. And like that says just how sort of perverted the political incentive structure has become under Trump.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, no, it's, I mean, this what happens in authoritarian governments. Like, it's just exactly that. Right? Like he's got the whole, the party belongs to him and they are scared of him. Scared of both, like their professional careers. And in some cases, people are literally scared of death threats. So, I mean, it's, it's wild. It was another big week for Chancellor Elon Musk, who held his first Oval Office press conference while two fidgety toddlers looked on impatiently. Elon's 4 year old son and his 78 year old boss, Donald Trump. Elon droned on about Doge in a. It's like a weird rambling monologue that did include one newsworthy admission. Some of the things that I say.

[Charlie Sykes]

Will be incorrect and should be corrected.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So nobody's going to bat a thousand. Oh, well, nevertheless, you know, and sure enough, sure enough, many things he has said over the last several weeks and months have been incorrect. Here's a real doozy from this week. The Justice Department had to admit in a court filing that one of Musk's Doge bags didn't just have read only access to Treasury's payment system, but was accidentally given full access. Accidentally. So all this time that Elon and Doge were like, no, no, they only had read only access. No big deal. And then the Justice Department of course, believes that, and then they file in court and then suddenly the Justice Department talks to treasury, talks to Elon. Oh, shit. Whoops. Our bad. So that happened. Doge is also, at least so far, having a rough go at it in court. They've been kicked out of the treasury payment system. The federal funding freeze has been temporarily blocked and the gutting of USAID and the National Institutes of Health have been temporarily blocked as well. What'd you make of Elon's weird Oval presser? And in all the latest Doge news.

[Tommy Vietor]

I have so many questions about the press conference. So many questions. How did it happen? Why is he like, why was he there? Why was his child there? Why was he dressed like that? Why was he wearing a hat?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He had on a hat and some sort of. That's his Make America great hat.

[Tommy Vietor]

But it's in the dark. The dark Maga hat, which you know because he replied to your tweet this morning.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He did reply to my tweet, yeah. No, he's about this. The Story that the State Department looked like they wanted to buy like a couple hundred million dollars worth of Tesla armed Tesla trucks. But apparently it was a request made in the Biden administration and it was to armor, maybe electric vehicles that they already had. But then someone in the State Department, once it was reported, changed it and erased Tesla so they would get in trouble and just made it like the whole thing. But Elon wanted to tell me that it was fake news, so there you go.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, congratulations on reaching this boss level of clout you now have and can't wait for Cash Patel to come crashing through the crypto media doors.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Now, don't necessarily want to be on.

[Tommy Vietor]

That radar screen, but the key if you're a mole, the key to not getting whacked is keeping your head in the hole. So there you go.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So much for that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Look, I think the whole thing was ridiculous. It was strange. It was interminably long and incredibly awkward. Yes. I mean, it's just, it just, it is in many ways just sort of like a metaphor for what the Trump presidency been. Trump is just sitting there quietly while Elon Musk holds court and sort of runs the government.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Though I will say though, that he was sitting quietly, like surprisingly quietly for Trump. But you know, we've all watched Trump enough now for the last however many years, decade. He looked like alternately sort of annoyed and kind of like, come on, hurry it up. He had to like interject once in a while, he's like, and tell them what you found, Tell them what your team found. Like he was, you could tell. I don't know if Trump's gonna let that happen again.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, he was also trapped cuz he was sitting down.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

So it's like he really was in like this terrible position where he could not get up from where he was without, I guess, I mean, just. It was very. It was like a strange thing I like for people like you and I. We watched the whole thing. It seems like it should be a disaster for everyone involved. Elon seems strange and weird and incorrect and Trump, look, you know, Trump is being basically told to shush his mouth by a, by a small child. All kinds of weird things are happening and it's like, ah, what a clown show. But I do. It's worth, like just stepping back and recognizing that this does fit within Trump's strategy the first few weeks, which is just grab all the attention all the time. And this dominated attention. The cable news covered it the whole time. Just went live for this whole thing. It led the network news that night. Now no one should really give a lot of shits about what leads the network news these days or goes live on cable.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But.

[Tommy Vietor]

But cause more. But more importantly, it became like a moment online. It was a thing that broke through. It became this topic of conversation. It was immediately memeified. And there were all these memes going around about with Elon, with his kid around on his shoulders, answering the questions. And I'm not sure to the extent that the public consumed any of it. And they're probably at most just like glancing by it or seeing moments on TikTok or Instagram or whatever else. It is just sort of like this political outsider who's such an outsider, he's dressed like a weirdo in the Olavas with his kid on his shoulders, defending his efforts to cut government and get rid of waste. And that's not in itself totally bad. It's just. I just think as we look at all these things, it's just another reminder that in this day and age, the quantity of attention is more important than the quality. And this was a massive quantity of attention.

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

So, you know, you raise a debate that's been going around in Democratic circles. And it's like, what do people really think of Elon and how do we talk about doge and cutting government knowing that people do want to, you know, get rid of government waste? But maybe what Elon's doing isn't so popular and he's not so popular. So I got some more data from Echelon on this right before we recorded. Trump's Approval is at 52:46. Right. So he is still above water. Elon's approval is 4350. So he is underwater. They asked what you think about Elon's role in government. Right now, only 40% approved, 51% disapprove. So that's underwater. Then they asked two questions. One, Elon is right to try and fix broken D.C. bureaucracies that waste hundreds of billions of dollars and spend taxpayer money on radical ideologies that most Americans don't agree with. Agree or disagree. And it was 50 agree, 42 disagree. Then they did a statement, Elon is wrong to dismantle vital aid programs and other agencies when he wasn't elected and has no expertise in government. And people agree with that statement, 5743. And then they asked, which of those statements do you agree more with? And by 50 to 44 people agreed with, Elon is wrong to be doing this and not right. So it's, you know, one indicator, one poll, but it's an early indicator that, like, A, it tells you, I think, how to talk about this, but B, that, you know, while people don't like bloated government and do like cutting waste, they are not super excited about the way that Elon has gone about it.

[Tommy Vietor]

The way I think to read that poll is that Elon is actually a drag on what would be an otherwise more popular effort.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Tommy Vietor]

I could only get to 50 on the idea of getting rid of bloat and waste in government because Elon's name's attached. It's because if you send the world's richest man into government to who has, you know, billions of dollars in government contracts to manage federal spending, that seems pretty sketchy to Just about any person. And so like it's just there is this secondary debate about how much we focus on Elon, how much we focus on Trump. I think there's real advantage of focusing on Elon. And I've been sort of playing with a little. Not a message per se, right. Not a slogan, but a framework to think about how to describe what's happening in the Trump administration, particularly as it relates to Doge. Because how you talk about this does matter somewhat, but is to center it the like the two themes of the Trump presidency to date are chaos and corruption. And I think if you. The way to get into the Doge stuff is yes, talk about all the vital programs that are being and be specific about what they are, but it's also just pure fucking chaos, right? There's a story, I think it was in the Times about this school that's been, has this federal grant to get a, get new school buses. And they're like, they've made four of the five payments but they didn't withdraw the fifth payment before Trump was sworn in and now they can't get the school bus.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Now they're gonna have to pay out of their own budget for the school buses, even though they were promised the money and now they can't hire the new teachers they needed.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's just like, you know, just a very close friend of mine who works in education, just doing consulting for school districts, a bunch of her, you know, these are like long term grants. They've been working with these school districts on like teacher accreditation and teacher training for years. Just all gone two days ago, just in the middle of the program, right? Just like they're working through like you're halfway through. It's one thing to stop new money from going out the door, right? Or looking at. Not, I don't mean like the fifth of the seven payments, but to say here are the new grant applications that have come in since Trump was president or it is time to renew the grant. And then you can, you, the voters voted for you. You can put a, put within all legal frameworks, your ideological framework on what kind of grant should get approved, but you stop things in the middle, right? I mean, you guys talked a lot about what's happening to the folks in USAID who just, but just it's pure chaos. It's wrecking chaos in people's lives. And then the fact that you have on top of that the world's richest man doing it while he is cutting agencies that are regulating his businesses, I know, is just like that that is what everyone hates about politics. Right. It is the cynicism that drove many of them to vote for Trump and it could be the cynicism that caused and the rightfully well earned cynicism about government in this case that causes them to go the other direction.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, and to your point about like Elon being a drag on Doge or on the effort echelon did like a battery of approval disapproval on various public figures and agencies. The least popular in the whole list was Elon, by the way, which is great. Doge was at 3933 approve, disapprove. So like slightly above water for Doge, but Elon was very much underwater. And then even USAID was, was 3928 approve. And so I know everyone says that everyone hates foreign aid and it's bad and stuff like that, but I do think that it's been in the new. My guess would be it has been in the news so much that, you know, people are sort of hearing stories about the funding, the humanitarian assistance that's gotten cut and it's not as unpopular as foreign aid might usually be in a poll.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's reflexive partisanship. Right. This is the same impulse that caused in 2017 Democrats to become huge fans of the New York Times has caused us to become huge fans of usaid. It's like Trump's against it. It must be good.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

And I would say actually in the long run for the world, one half of America's two parties becoming, you know, full throated advocates for humanitarian assistance is more valuable than subsidizing wordle acquisitions at the New York Times.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You really, I just like that you really swerved to hit that. That was what I, that's what I enjoyed.

[Tommy Vietor]

That was. I didn't even plan that. That was just like came naturally. I don't know why.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Before we move on from Elon, did you see that weird ass photo of Elon? So, so Prime Minister Modi of India is in D.C. i think he's like doing a presser with Trump probably after.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, he's doing what he's doing. He's got a meeting, a bilateral Trump today.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He also though met with Elon Musk and there's a picture of Elon shaking his hand, sitting down, shaking his hand like, Elon's the fucking president. And then it's also very funny because like when you zoom out, it looks like a traditional bilat with like all of Modi's staffers and officials from India on one side and then on the other side, it's just like a couple kids. Elon's. A couple of Elon's kids.

[Tommy Vietor]

Several of Elon's kids. Yes. There was this funny line in one of the stories. It was like, Modi had this, you know, obviously all of his staff, and it said Elon was only accompanied by this woman who's a longtime lieutenant and the mother of three of his children. So it's like, that's your game.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's also just. And Trump was asked about it in the press conference that he did, and they're like, oh, do you know Elon met with Modi? And he's like, no, I was not really aware. And he's like, well, do you know why he met with them? He's like, well, I assume he. I assume he wants to do business in India. Do you know about what he. Like, he had. He had no clue. He's like, yeah, I assume he wants to do business.

[Tommy Vietor]

I would. I would really like some real reporting. You know, especially we came from those Wordle people. I just. I just unfairly attacked. But about how the meeting came to be, right? It had. When you look at the picture, that is the classic State Department setup for a bilateral meeting. Whether, you know, if. If the Secretary of State is traveling abroad or even, like a more a lower government official is traveling abroad as an official representative of something, it's always that, right? It's the flags, the chairs, the handshake. And so was that set up? Like, who booked that? Who talked to Modi? Who did the. Who in the White House, signed off on it? I mean, this is small pennies, but I assume that's all State Department stuff that was put together for that meeting, right? Like, just how did that happen? And just the fact that Trump just acknowledged in that Q and A that Elon was doing this because he wants to do business in India, which he definitely does. And that Trump had no problem with Elon using his special government employee status to get meetings with foreign leaders in places where he wanted to do business. Like, that gets to the. Like, we just did the chaos part of the equation. I wanted to get to. This is the corruption part.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's just unbelievable. It's like, yeah, he's Elon Musk, so he gets to meet with all the people that President Trump gets to meet with. Only for him, it's purely financial.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's this. It really is like White House fantasy camp. You know, it's like these people who pay, like, a ton of money to go to Duke Basket basketball program. Like, Grown, grown adults and like put on the uniform and they run out through Cameron and they go to a practice with Coach K back in the day and it's like, this is the same thing. Like he spent a quarter of a billion dollars of his own money and he gets to play pretend president with some actual real authorities for as long as he wants.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And he gets to break government and he gets to make sure that his friends and his allies, Trump's thing, his companies, everyone's friends, allies, ideological allies, they get stuff right, they're taken care of for now. And then everyone else, yeah, go fuck yourselves. One outlet that was not in attendance at the Oval Office presser or any White House press availabilities this week, the Associated Press. Why? Because the AP refuses to use Trump's preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, even though the body of water doesn't belong to America. The AP put out a statement on Tuesday calling the ban alarming in a plain violation of the First Amendment. This comes after Trump's lawsuits against ABC and cbs. And as Trump's new FCC commissioner, Brendan Carr, has launched investigations into NPR, PBS and now NBCUniversal for of course DEI. Carr said in a statement on Wednesday, I would encourage any business that wants the FCC to approve a deal to end any invidious forms of DEI discrimination with all deliberate speed. I don't know if I've never heard the word invidious before, have you?

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, it's kind of an awkward thing to say.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, was it ordle word.

[Tommy Vietor]

Too many letters for wordle. I have heard it, but I certainly couldn't spell it and I'm not sure I could. I could maybe win a multiple choice question on what it means, but kudos to Brendan Carr for using it and.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Kudos to him for nothing else. What do you make of all this, all the AP thing, the FCC investigations? I mean, you know, he's got, they gone. They went after a, a local radio station in your hometown here of San Francisco, just for reporting on ice raids.

[Tommy Vietor]

It is very scary. It is quite scary. This is in all of the major Supreme Court cases on free speech over the years. The ultimate time when the reasons they ultimately put real limits on what the government can do, whether it's on New York Times versus Sullivan, whether it's on the Online Decency act, when they, whether it's stuff that was done in, you know, in the anti communist push at points in our history. It's because government action has a chilling effect on free speech. And that's exactly what's happening with the San Francisco radio station because the government has unlimited power and unlimited money. So if you're a local radio station, a local newspaper, an individual, you know, reporter, you know, who just like works, has their own newsletter or whatever else, you have to think very carefully about what you say and what you do, because if you become one of the targets of one of these attacks, you don't have the resources to fight back. You will be bankrupted in this process. And then on the other end, you have this with the fcc with the threat about DEI from Brendan Karr, invidious or not, is you have all of these businesses, these large corporate entities of which journalism is usually a money losing part of it or a, or it's not, at least not a part of their revenue future. And they are making decisions about the larger company that's affecting the journalism of the entity there. And that, you know, we, there is this whole thing about whether Paramount, which has a merger before the FCC, is going to settle this ridiculous lawsuit for 60 minutes just as a way to ensure that they can get their merger greenlit by the fcc. It's like, it's. And then, and then just. Sorry. The other thing I say is just like, that is very, very real. I'm always torn. Like it is insane that the White House is so petty that they're not gonna let the AP in because they won't give Trump's fake name to something real. You know, and it's like, is that, you know, it's sort of like we the way. And sometimes the press over states or overreacts to smaller things and claims it's in a free speech, like the way people treated Barack Obama, not doing enough press conferences was or not taking enough questions on the rope line as the end of the free press or when Jim Acosta lost his White House badge briefly. But trying to bully the AP has an impact on what others will do. And I think it is quite concerning.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, I mean, just look at how many times Donald Trump, since he's become president again, has gone and taken questions from the press. Right. Which is a lot of times. And in some of those instances, and we've talked about them on the show, people have asked a challenging question or a critical question of Trump. If you get to the point where they kick out the ap, they kick out all the legacy media outlets or all the outlets that they think might ask difficult questions, and all you get is just fawning questions from Newsmax and OAN and, and, you know, the Ruthless podcast and all the other fucking idiots that they let into the briefing room. Now, if that's all the questions that we get, then it's going to just sound like North Korean television.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. It's like this is, this is like a longer conversation about the differences between press access and press freedom.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right. And you know, and I think Caroline Levitt, the Trump press secretary, said the AP doesn't have a right to cover these events. Right. Because ultimately what the freedom of the press is about is the government cannot stop you from printing what you want to print.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

But it is like democracy suffers when there is not press access. There is less transparency, there's less scrutiny. And we've already saw this in the Pentagon where it's not that Pete Hegseth is keeping out mainstream press, but he has kicked the mainstream press out of their offices and allowed a bunch of ideological allies to come in and sit and cover those places. And that's just, it's all like, this is the same thing. Point you made earlier is this is what happens in authoritarian regimes. Like it is slowly, over time, the very tired metaphor, the frog getting boiled, but the water is boiling and you can see it happening.

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

Let's talk about Congress, which apparently is is still a branch of government, I guess. Republicans have begun their attempt to pass Trump's legislative agenda and the cuts they want make what Doge is doing seem like couch money. The House's budget proposal would cut at least $1.5 trillion in health care, education, food assistance and other spending in order to help pay for a small portion of the $4.5 trillion Republicans want to spend on tax cuts, which would mostly benefit the biggest companies and billionaires like Elon Musk, Donald Trump and most of the Cabinet. And since they're not paying for all those tax cuts, they also want to raise the debt limit by $4 trillion. This seems like it should be a huge political problem for Trump and the Republicans. But what do you think and how do you think Democrats should make sure that's the case?

[Tommy Vietor]

It is a huge political problem for Trump and the Republicans. This is the exact rhythm of Republican governance since Reagan run on reducing the deficit and government being too large, getting in office and then having to actually make the cuts and having the public turn on you very quickly for doing so, getting booted out, getting Democrats in office, rinse, repeat. And you know, I think this is and for Trump this is particularly dangerous because unlike all those other Republicans, he didn't run on any of this. That was one thing Elon kept saying in the weird white Oval Office presser was the public voted for this. Public vote for this. The public did not vote for this. This is not what Trump ran on. He did not run on cutting spending. He ran as Pat Buchanan and he's now governing like Paul Ryan. Like this is exactly. He has lost touch with what he's not a populist anymore. This is not a populist agenda. This is very improper stuff. And let's just take Medicaid, for instance. Navigator Research had A poll out in late January, 81% of voters oppose cuts to Medicaid. 75% of Republicans oppose cuts to Medicaid. This is incredibly unpopular stuff. And then you get to all the other spending cuts, right? You're looking at $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid. That is cuts to healthcare, cuts to nursing home, it cuts to children's health care. That is a huge deal that will be felt by huge swaths of the population. And then after that, even if they did that, then they have to cut billions and billions and billions more from all the stuff that what Elon's doing is small potatoes compared to this. Right? You're going to have to slash food safety, slash medical research, slash public education, slash emergency response to natural disasters. All of those things. We've seen this happen every single time. And they want to eliminate the prime of education, something Donald Trump just reiterated he wanted to do. And that is so unpopular. Huge majorities oppose it. And we've seen this before. After Newt Gingrich took power in 1994, the Republicans had the majority. They tried to eliminate the Department of Education. They got in a huge fight with Bill Clinton about it. Bill Clinton won that fight. The Republicans lost it so bad that when George W. Bush ran For President in 2000, he ran on increasing education funding. This is such politically toxic stuff. And this is where Trump's honeymoon ends. Because right now he's out there, he's just signing the things he wants, saying the things he wants to do. But now if he wants to actually do something, he has to get in the fucking muck with Congress to do this stuff. It's incredibly unpopular and as we know, also painfully well, once you start doing difficult legislative stuff with Congress, you lose the post election sheet and you start looking pretty weak and pretty much like a typical politician.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So I think I agree with all of that. I want all that to be true. The things that worry me this time around, that I think the advantages that Trump has that Republicans didn't have in the past is, number one, the information environment now favors them in a huge way. And so we can all be screaming about all these cuts that we're seeing in numbers. And look at this in the budget, and it's crazy, blah, blah, blah. And he's going to be out there being like, well, what are you talking about? I'm giving everyone a tax cut and I have this, you know, he's got some small provision here and there, like they might close the carried interest loophole or they saw something like, you know, they're going to, they're going to take away tax breaks from billionaire sports team owners. You know, like flashy stuff that gets attention. Right. That like breaks through. And, you know, on med, they're going to say we're not going to touch Medicare and Social Security and like he promised. And then on Medicaid, all we want to do is just add a work requirement. Don't we think that people who get healthcare from the government, if they're able to work, should work? What's so crazy about that?

[Tommy Vietor]

That can't get you the numbers he needs, though.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No, I know, I know. But I'm just, I do think that fighting this is going to be difficult and also really important to make this about. I think people who are going to be hurt by these cuts and not just the numbers. And also, you know, I wouldn't underestimate, like, it's obviously difficult once you get to Congress and you have to deal with Congress. That's true for every president. But. And they have a very narrow majority Republicans. But also they have proven themselves to do whatever he wants and not oppose him on almost anything so far. So I do wonder about, you know, some of the troublemakers in the Republican House, like the Freedom Caucus, and some of those people, like, I wonder if they'll behave this time around just because their guys in charge in the White House and they want to show unity and get something done. I don't know. What do you think?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, so let's just. So I guess there's two separate questions. I'll take the second one first, which is, can they pass this? Yeah, they absolutely can. It's not going to be easy. It'd be incredibly messy and it may end up where the Senate has to go first. And then the Republicans are put in this position to just like eat it or have Trump agenda fail. And I think that that's probably more likely. I mean, the House Republicans have not passed some sort of consequential budget measure without Democratic help in other than sort of the fake debt ceiling thing that McCarthy did, I think that might be the only one in like a decade. Like, they always need Democrats because they cannot agree on this stuff. But push comes to shove, it's very possible that they will put aside anything they possibly care about to help Trump. So we should assume that. So it's like, how do you win the fight? And you're 100% right. This is not the media environment in which Democrats had previously succeeded in these fights at all. Because there's one thing the press loves it's like stories about cuts. What's going to go away? What are the specifics? Let's interview the people who are going to lose their program. And particularly in a world, especially when Bill Clinton did this with a very robust regional press, it is death. Republicans, they're doing local standups outside the nursing home. That's going to close without Medicaid funding. Right. That kills them. None of that exists anymore. And so we're going to have to be deft and strategic and loud in a way in which our party has been unable to do so at any point in recent history. So that, that is hard, but can. But we have the political high side and we have the better story to tell. So it is possible to do it. The most important thing here is to. There are two important things, message wise. One, be very specific about what is being cut. Right. Even though Medicaid actually has a quite popular brand, don't just say Medicaid. Talk about specifically what Medicaid funds, right? Children's healthcare, nursing homes, prescription drugs, all of it. Be specific when you get to the other cuts, be incredibly specific about what they are. There's a lot of language, guidance we can get to when these cuts actually happen about how to talk about education cuts and things like that. But to connect, why are they doing these cuts? To pay for tax cuts for huge corporations and rich people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. That is why they.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And again, like, everything has got to be a story and we've got to attach people to it, whether it's the cuts or whether it's the tax cuts. And we should have, like, which companies are going to be benefiting, how much they're going to get into the tax cut, how many billions they're going to get in a tax cut, which billionaires are going to benefit and then which people are going to be hurt and how they're going to be hurt across all the different kinds of spending areas, whether it's education, whether it's health care, whether it's food, whatever it may be. Like, we just have to be very vivid and detailed in order to, like, break through in this environment. Like, fewer numbers, more stories, more people on everything that we do around, around this fight. I think.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that's right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Okay, before we get to Lovett's interview with Rohit Chopra, it's time for a new segment we're calling Wait, did that really happen? Just three quick, hard to believe, Holy shit, are you serious? Clips from this week that you may or may not have missed. First up, The Kennedy center for the Performing Arts, the nation's cultural center, right here, has a new board and a new chairman. Let's listen.

[Donald Trump]

So we took over the Kennedy Center. We didn't like what they were showing. It's a very exciting development. It's gonna be great. I think we're gonna do something very special. It got very wokey. I think we're gonna make it hot. We made the presidency hot, so this should be easy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Gonna make it hot.

[Tommy Vietor]

Just like the presidency.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It was getting too wokey. Why was the Kennedy center too wokey? He was saying something like, no more drag shows. Were there drag shows at the Kennedy Center? That would surprise me.

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't know. But it's like, this is so funny.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That he fires the whole board and the chairman and he makes. He names himself chairman and then he puts a post up that's like, congratulations, Donald J. Trump is the new chairman. Like, oh, wow. How did you get that? How did you finagle that one?

[Tommy Vietor]

It is. Lovett made this point on Twitter, but on the day we find out that inflation's going up, Donald Trump appoints himself programming opera program director.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I like that. He also. He originally put Rick Grenell as the acting director. Rick Grenell, who some people thought was going to get Secretary of State. Man, what a prize. That's right. Temporary acting director of the fucking Kennedy Center. Or maybe he's the permanent director. Maybe Trump's the chairman. I don't know. I couldn't keep track.

[Tommy Vietor]

Trump is the chairman of the board, and Rick Grenell, as of the last time I looked at the Internet, was the interim director.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He's still got it. Oh, congrats to Rick.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I mean, as of, like, I wouldn't say I'm tracking the story as closely as, I don't know, the Medicaid cuts or Elon Musk. But at one point, he was the interim director.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Think Lee Greenwood's on the board? I think, obviously, Vance. I think they got a whole. They got a whole. Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff. It's just going to be some great entertainment there. I mean, at the Kennedy center.

[Tommy Vietor]

The whole point of the Kennedy center board was to raise money for the Kennedy Center. The chair of the board was David Rubenstein, the incredibly wealthy private equity hedge fund guy who owns so Rich. He owns a copy of the Constitution, I think. So when you get rid of him, like, is Donald Trump going to raise that money and give that money?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No, I think Donald Trump just wants to. He just wants to be a Host, Right. This is like the whole thing of this. He just wants to have a lot of shows at the Kennedy center that are extremely tacky and he gets to go on stage and welcome everybody. Like he's just like. It's just, you know, it's an apprentice thing.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, I think he never went to Kennedy center honors when he was president, I think because I think he would knew he would be made fun of by everyone because it's all the comedians. And so this is just his way. If he can't be invited to the club, he's gonna just by the clubhouse.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Good luck, buddy. Good luck. Next up, the Kennedy Center's new chairman welcomes the anti vax Kennedy in his cabinet with a brand new health conspiracy of his own.

[Donald Trump]

Well, I feel sorry for Mitch. He's not equipped mentally. He wasn't equipped 10 years ago mentally. In my opinion. He'd let the Republican party go to hell. If I didn't come along, the Republican party wouldn't even exist right now.

[Tommy Vietor]

He had polio, obviously.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And his.

[H]

I don't know.

[Donald Trump]

I don't know anything about. He had polio. He had polio.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Are you doubting that he had polio?

[Donald Trump]

I have no idea if he had polio. All I can tell you about him is that he shouldn't have been leader. He knows that. He voted against Bobby. He votes against almost everything now. He's a, you know, very bitter guy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Donald Trump is a Mitch McConnell polio truther.

[Tommy Vietor]

Of course. Of course he is McConnell who voted.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Against RFK Jr and explained why it was partly because he had childhood polio. And he thinks that the, you know, Kennedy's stance on vaccines is just outrageous and he couldn't do it. And Donald Trump is like, oh, he had polio. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I don't know anything about that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Prove it. Prove he had polio.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Prove he had polio. What a. That is just fucking wild. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I hope all the. Hope all the Mitch McConnell lackeys out there that have become full, full MAGA bros are all happy about that one.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm sure they dropped. Now Michigan condo doesn't have the authority and power in Congress to hook up all their lobbying clients. They've dropped them like a dirty sock.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Embarrassing. Totally embarrassing. And finally, I saved the best for last. Georgia Congressman Buddy Carter gets in on the hot new trend of renaming places we don't own.

[Tommy Vietor]

The bizarre bill has been introduced in Congress to allow the United States to acquire Greenland and rename it Red, White and Blue Link. The bill was presented by Republican Lawmaker Earl. Buddy Carter from Georgia.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's the stupidest fucking people. We are. We are. Our country is being run by the stupidest fucking people.

[Tommy Vietor]

I learned about this directly from you this morning at our production meeting. And I laughed so hard. I mean, that it hurt my gut.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, it happened earlier in the week and I, I made a quick note to myself in my to do list that just said don't forget Greenland. Because it just sort of went under the radar, as it should have. And there's a lot of other important things and who the, you know, some fucking backbench congressman from Georgia, Republican Yahoo. Decided to do it. But wow, Red, White and blueland.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay, it is like, this is obviously Freedom Fries type stuff. And if you ever just want to just have an interesting experience, find a much younger person and try to explain to them the time in American history 20 years ago when we renamed all of our French fries Freedom Fries because France would not follow us into a really stupid and losing war.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Honestly, it's not going to sound so shocking to them now. If they have paid attention to the news in the last several years, they'll think, oh, that seems quaint.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, actually, if you hear that story, then everything that's happened since probably makes a lot more sense to you.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Telling you he's gonna, he wants. He's gonna. What is he gonna rename Europe? He's gonna rename Europe like East America? Is that what it's gonna be?

[Tommy Vietor]

We are recording this before the Trump modi press conference and I've been wondering whether there's a chance Trump's gonna announce in there. He's gonna start calling India Indiana.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

At least, at the very least, the Indiana Ocean.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, the Indian Ocean. That's right.

[Elon Musk]

That's very good.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Indian Ocean. Yeah, it's all of it. He's gonna. Everything is America. Everything is something about America in the world now.

[Tommy Vietor]

Still waiting for him to discover New Mexico.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

New Mexico. Watch out. Okay, when we come back from the break, you're going to hear Lovett's conversation with Rohit Chopra, the now former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, about why Trump and Elon are so hell bent on closing the agency. Two quick things before that, if you're wondering just how we let billionaires hijack the government tune into the newest episode of Assembly Required. This week, Stacey Abrams talks with Wired editor Leah Fager about Elon and Doge's grip on the Treasury. Then Strict Scrutiny's Kate Shaw joins to talk about the legality of it all. Listen to Assembly Required wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. Also this month, Vote Save America's anxiety relief program is donating to black led organizations and candidates of color, including Kimberly Pope Adams, who's running for a Virginia Statehouse seat this year, a prime opportunity to expand the Democrats one seat majority. Here's how the Anxiety Relief Program works. You set up a recurring donation at any amount that feels right for you and Vote Save America. We'll use it to build progressive power in 2025 and beyond. Go to votesaveamerica.com donate to donate now paid for by votesave america votesaveamerica.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. When we come back, Rohit Chopra.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Charlie Sykes]

Feel like a big jump, but on deck small business loans can help keep you afloat with lines of credit up to $100,000 and term loans up to $250,000. OnDeck lets you choose the loan that's right for your business as a top rated online small Business Lender On Deck's team of loan advisors can help you find the right business loan to fit your needs. Visit on deck.com for more information. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by On Deck or Celtibank. On Deck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

[I]

Joining us now, he was until being fired by the Trump administration a little over a week ago, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Rohit Chopra. Welcome to Pond Save America.

[H]

Thanks so much for having me.

[I]

So, weird week for you. I imagine you were fired on a Saturday.

[H]

I believe I was.

[I]

And what was the rest of that day like?

[H]

You know, in some ways it was pretty clarifying that we have big issues that we're gonna have to deal with, including agencies that this administration may want to destroy and defund.

[I]

So two weeks before the election, the CFPB put out a rule to protect consumer privacy that led to praise by the Republican chair of the Financial Services Committee in the House. A foe of the CFPB for a long, long time. Foe somebody who was when the agency was first proposed got into an argument with Elizabeth Warren before the agency even existed and she was the creative founder of it. There was a moment where people thought, you know what, Republicans are actually going to become populous. Republicans are going to become anti Big Tech. And now because of what the administration is doing, there's a bunch of regulations that would have reigned in Big Tech on hold, specifically on hold at the cfpb. Can you talk about the like long term impact of this Republican antipathy towards cfpb? And then how does that fit in with at least their like public posture of claiming to be these economic populace?

[H]

Yeah, I think that when you really boil it down, what you see is that most of the things that the CFPB works on are not particularly sexy in some ways are your medical bills that are showing up on your credit reports, you know, the fees that you're paying on your bank account, how much you're paying for a mortgage or auto loan. And really what we did in these past few years was prosecute some of the biggest corporations in the country for cheating people repeatedly. So obviously the CFPB's work is pretty popular. It doesn't matter what your political affiliation is. The only place it is unpopular is with lobbyists and politicians in Washington. And it seems pretty obvious to me that big tech giants who are increasingly entering banking and payments do not want anyone looking under the hood and do not want to follow the laws of our land. So I think that's really the big question is are we in a moment where they are going to defund the police over Wall street and Silicon Valley or they're actually going to stand up for people and lower their costs? And I think it's looking more and more like the people are gonna get the short end of the stick on this.

[I]

Let's just talk actually about the like, kind of the specifics here. What happens when, I mean, CFPB is in the middle of a bunch of investigations? There's a bunch of ongoing, very important investigations going on right now. What happens if those are just stopped in their tracks?

[H]

Yeah, that would be a big wet kiss to a lot of the defendants who want to get off scot free. There is active courtroom battles right now on many of the cases we have filed. We sued JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, bank of America for their role in fraud. On Zelle, we've sued the nation's biggest pawn lender for cheating military families. We've sued one of the nation's biggest subprime auto lenders for their misdeeds. And the list really goes on and on. There's also advanced investigations against big Wall street firms and big tech firms that that means that that will just stop. And it means that we will not be able to get justice and money for the people who have been harmed by that.

[I]

So Trump just announced the replacement, your replacement, somebody that was at the fdic. Now, is there any hope that once that person's in place, some of these investigations can get unpaused? Or does the leader not matter when there's such a. When you have the doge boys scrambling around the basement?

[H]

I have no clue. I mean, it's all a mystery as to what would happen. But ultimately I think you'll see a Senate confirmation process. I've been through two of them. You get they're hard. And I think we'll see a lot of questions as to whether or not the law enforcement mission of the CFPB is going to actually, actually be fulfilled.

[I]

I think people, certainly listeners have heard about the various successes of the CFPB of clawing money back. What is one of the most just shocking and egregious kinds of fraud you've seen? Not from. I think people who just for lack of a better term, expect it from payday lenders. They expect it from sort of skeezy financial institutions, but from big blue chip companies that are supposed to be respectable. What's the most disgusting or outrageous thing you guys were able to find and.

[H]

Stop Well, I mean, I could go for a whole hour on this. We've seen everything. We've actually seen people charge fees. One of them a paper statement fee where the company didn't even print anything or mail anything. Those are small, they're egregious. But you know, maybe it's not going to affect someone's financial life that much. The thing that I think is so high stakes actually relates more to healthcare. You have so many people, whether it's an emergency room visit or they have a chronic condition, whatever it may be, they deal with this slew of paperwork and bills where they're covered by insurance and get stuck in this doom loop between the insurance company, the provider, the facility, the long list of players, and you know what happens. Their medical bill gets parked on their credit report and all of a sudden they can't pass maybe even employment verification checks, or can't get an apartment, can't get a loan because of a sickness that they've had and for a bill that they do not even owe. And I think a lot of people are sick and tired that these credit reporting conglomerates, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax, have so much power over what happens in our financial life. And in some cases don't take the basic steps to make sure that the information on your credit report is real. Allowing people to put phantom debt or park it on the credit report as a means to coerce you into paying a bill you don't owe, I think is absolutely egregious. The CFPB finalized a rule to ban that practice, and I hope that it actually takes effect.

[I]

And those rules, obviously, I think the future is unknown here, but like telling people to stay home, trying to gut the agency. Are some of these rules still gonna keep moving forward passively, or does it require, Are they able, are they, by sending people home, are they stopping those rules right now?

[H]

Well, someone needs to enforce those rules. But we also have seen reporting that they've instructed the staff to try and delay them, to make sure that they never see reality. Or maybe if the CFPB has been sued by these big industry players to stop it, maybe they just won't defend against that. So to me, I think there's.

[I]

It just makes your blood just boil.

[H]

But that's why this matters so much, is that maybe it's small, this issue of a credit report, but for somebody who's dealing with it in the moment, it is a big, big deal. You know, maybe that one single overdraft fee doesn't matter to A person. But for somebody who got hit with four fees rather than one, it can send them on a treadmill of debt. Maybe one student loan payment being misallocated is not a big deal, but when they screw up your entire loan so that you don't get to qualify for a public service cancellation, that's a big deal.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's just.

[I]

It's the. Like the. You know, we're in this moment where, you know, oh, Democrats are falling into a trap of defending institutions. And it's like, man, this is. I know people don't. Don't believe government works for them, but I think a lot of that is people have no fucking idea that this is happening. And, like, this to me is like, if there's anything you would want your government to do, it is to have a consumer watchdog empowered with enough force and might to actually take on these institutions and win. It's an extraordinary story of government at its best. And I'm glad to hear you still think there's value in telling that story right now.

[H]

Yeah. And I hear every day we would get thousands of people who would file complaints with us on our website. And what was great is it didn't go into some black hole. We actually sent it to the company and told the company respond. And without really any resources at all other than the tech that we created, people every day were getting refunds. They were getting their credit report fixed. Sometimes they saved their home or their car. And for those individuals you hear, I read the letters that they would send about, finally, they felt like their government was doing something that they really benefited from. And I think that's just so important that we demonstrate we don't do this just because there's some acronym that maybe people won't remember. We do it because we want to give people power and dignity in their life. And I think that's exactly what the CFPB has done for so many.

[I]

Well, I called the CFPB helpline before we recorded, and I called it during business hours, and it is no longer open right now. That number leads to go straight to voicemail. So they have. They are trying to stop people from having that experience, which I think tells you a lot.

[H]

Well, that sounds like censorship to me.

[I]

So nine days before Elon's Doge initiative got into the cfpb, Musk made a deal with Visa to add a digital wallet feature to X as part of a broader plan to turn it into an everything app. It seems like a lot of inspiration is being drawn from these Chinese super apps. There's WeChat, there's Alipay and I want to get your sense on what the dangers are there, especially if there isn't a active cfpb.

[H]

Yeah. So I think everyone realizes there is a totally different way that we pay for things now. When we go in the store, we tap online, it's different. There's a whole set of new choices. But here's what's really shifting. The more and more that tech companies and big financial firms know about our purchase history, know our transaction history, know our location, know our friends and social networking, the more and more we are going to creep into a world where there aren't price tags for goods, but instead we're going to have surveillance based personal pricing based on our mood, based on what we're searching for. And you see a lot of big companies, Google, Facebook wanted to create its own currency, in fact, and now we're seeing how even X, even Twitter wants to be a way that you can move money and pay. And there's enormous value in all of that. And you know, I don't know, I cannot, I have no idea if DOGE is there to snoop or to find out what its competitors are up to, to find out the plans that other companies have. I just don't know. But certainly that is something that many are worried about.

[I]

So this would be, I like, just so people understand. I like, what's so bad about that, right? Like what's so bad about having like surge pricing for pizza or like Google knows that Google knows based on my mood or whether or not I've had an edible, how much I want this takeout right now, like what, what's the negative consequence of having these companies with this level of access to data?

[H]

Well, I certainly think that for those of us who have serious medical diagnoses when we're targeted or charged different prices because they know we need certain medication or we, they know we need certain medical supplies or for teenagers who are maybe in a rough place personally being able to target them with certain information or to be able to extract from them from older adults who might be lonely. I think actually the price tag is probably one of the best consumer protections we have out there. And when we individualize every single price, we're setting ourselves up for an economy that I don't think we want. I've long been worried about people who call for an Uber or Lyft and late at night that maybe a woman calling a ride share is getting a higher price than a male in the same exact place or that there are Ways to discriminate based on our personal characteristics. And I also don't think that we want these big companies knowing everything that goes on in our life before we are about to purchase something thing.

[I]

This is why they were afraid of you. Mark Zuckerberg, in a recent interview, he did this kind of aw, shucks routine about. It was so weird. All of a sudden, CFPB was looking into Facebook, which doesn't make sense because we're not a bank. And he kind of implies that. What if he. Or suggests that it might have been political in some way. You talked about the fact that they were introducing a currency, which would obviously be a reason for them to be looked at. But, like, beyond that, like, why would CFPB need to be a watchdog when it's supposed to be a consumer financial protection agency? Why would it have to go after Facebook?

[H]

We're supposed to police banking, lending, and payments. And when companies like Facebook are creating their own currency and fortunately it got killed. But you see more of these big giants lurching into lending and payments. It's not the CFPB expanding into tech. It's these companies expanding into the core work that we do. So it is true that Google actually sued us because we were asking questions or wanted to ask questions about how they were handling people's money and their data. So I think that this is really about power, is that there are certain companies who feel that they should not have to follow the laws that our Congress passes, that they are somehow special, that there is an exemption for fancy technology. But I think we as people should want a lot of technological progress, but not if it comes at the expense of our dignity, our democracy, and, frankly, fairness in our economy.

[I]

And you've been accused of being anti tech or sort of anti capitalist or whatever it may be because of this position. But you were a McKinsey person or.

[H]

Yeah, it's funny. I actually think most business people want there to be some rule of law.

[I]

Well, that's what I was gonna say. Like, presumably these companies would like to compete on a level playing field in which they don't have to be in a kind of race to find the most kind of invasive forms of data monitoring or the most kind of rapacious kind of pricing. Presumably some of these companies would be interested in having a clear set of rules that they know allows them to compete without having to do these kinds of things.

[H]

Actually, I really feel for all the businesses out there who sometimes think that they're chumps because they're following the law, especially small players While big giants can break the law with impunity, pay a fine, and move on. I mean, you asked about Facebook. When I was an FTC commissioner, Facebook was embroiled in a scandal related to Cambridge Analytica. It had flagrantly violated an FTC law enforcement order. And what happened was that they paid billions of dollars so that Mark Zuckerberg and other executives could get an immunity clause in the settlement. And I actually think most people, it's not just everyday citizens, it's even business owners are asking themselves, how do these big CEOs seem to always get off scot free? You know, after the financial crisis, John, it felt like there was absolutely no accountability. Millions of people lost their home, but barely any executives were held accountable. In fact, their companies were bailed out and they got bigger. And I think that's just fundamentally wrong.

[I]

Are there any lessons you have from being at cfpb? You know, there's a way in which right now I think it feels a little bit like, oh, Democrats are like, we didn't know you could just dispatch your favorite billionaire into the bowels of every agency and start slashing and burning things that you don't like. Obviously, we have this very difficult challenge, the classic challenge of we are trying to defend democracy. And one of the ways we're trying to do that is to demonstrate why the rules are important, which means we're following rules that the other side doesn't, and we're trying to defend the game. And you can't defend the game while, while breaking the rules because then you're no longer playing the game. But are there ways in which, looking back, you think, man, if I knew how bad this was going to be, I would have pushed harder here. I would have fought this harder. We were a little too conciliatory here. We were trying to reach compromise with the Republicans there. Are there any places like that where you look back and think, the lesson for me here is we should have gone harder?

[H]

Well, you always have some regrets. And I think when it comes down to it, there is so much abuse of power by some of the biggest powerful companies. And it takes a lot of effort to stand up to that and prosecute that when they violate the law. And we could always use more energy from the public to unearth that fraud. So yeah, I mean, look, at the end of the day, we always made sure that we were following every law, and we did. And I don't regret any of that. I think we cannot have a strong society if individuals feel that they can just sidestep the laws of the land.

[I]

So one aspect of CFPB that's hard to measure is where it has had an impact by scaring institutions preemptively from doing shady stuff with fees, misleading rules, interest rates, whatever it may be. What are you worried about right now? That, like, you know, banks that are, that some of these that are like kind of raptors testing the fences. What is the next iteration of consumer abuses that you're worried about?

[H]

Well, you know, it's really interesting. When I got actually to both the CFTC and the CFPB, it really was so clear to me that it was asleep at the wheel. I mean, we saw so much crime against consumers that really it was almost a catch and release policy. You find them and you let them go. And I do think that just having someone who is a watchdog, it actually does scare off some of the worst, worst abuses against people. And this is why I really do think that corporate law enforcement, where people can actually stop those abuses. It doesn't just. It's not just the tens of billions of dollars we've gotten back for people, but we have stopped market abuses like we saw in the financial crisis that destroyed trillions of wealth and led to so many people losing their homes. And look, John, you ask like, what are we learning from this moment? I do think that there are sometimes places where we need to say openly, this part of government isn't working. That was certainly true in the start of the cfpb. We actually shut down a corrupt and failed agency called the Office of Thrift Supervision and created a new one.

[I]

I remember when the letters came down off the building.

[H]

Yeah. And I do think sometimes we gotta find places that aren't working and shut them down. But when we do it, it's because we are doing it to serve people better, not to serve the powerful even more.

[I]

Are there ways you're worried about AI being used to harm consumers in a way that like the CFPB could have protected against or could protect against in the future?

[H]

Well, one thing that we have not really reined in enough is the explosion of chatbots. And now when you are struggling with something, it is very hard to talk to someone to fix it. You're often speaking to a chatbot. The cfpb. When I was there, we did a study of these chatbots that banks use and they all had these human like names. For example, bank of America called their chatbot Erica. And you ask, you say to them, something is wrong. This is not my, I did not make this charge. This. The, the. My Payment wasn't processed right. And sometimes you just want to get things fixed and instead you feel like you're in a doom loop with the chatbot where you're saying something and they're saying the same thing back to you. We also really worry about AI being used to impersonate people. A lot of older adults in our country are getting very realistic texts, calls that are mimicking the voices of their loved ones. And I think that that's a place where there's a lot we can do with technological progress to make life better. But we should not delude ourselves that it can also be used as a weapon. And it can also be used as a tool by foreign nations that are seeking to do our people harm.

[I]

So when Elon Musk posted Delete CFPB on social media, he replied to someone, and it is, you know, an unfortunate reality of our current dystopia that I have to, like, describe in detail the posts of this unelected billionaire. But he said, with such generosity, CFPB has done a non zero amount of good or something to that effect. Have you considered trying to reach out to him? Have you reached out to him? Have you spoken to him about this? And if you did or could, what would you want to convey?

[H]

Well, I guess my view is that I don't think any of us should be groveling to billionaires to save our country. We should believe that people control our country. And I think we should be worried that when there is a clique of CEOs that seem to call the shots, and frankly, I do think that that's part of the problems that not only that, everyone is worried about when it comes to the massive mismatch in power. It's why I think so many of us are huge fans of Lina Khan and all the work she has done to really challenge that power. And I think that that is going to be something that we have to continue to do. We shouldn't be asking these individuals for permission. They are not our elected officials.

[I]

Well, you could just tell them to fuck off.

[H]

Well, look, it's very clear that there are individuals who have an agenda and they're going to pursue that. And it's going to take us to make sure that people are following the law and we're using our own voices and our own power.

[I]

You're not giving me an inch on this.

[H]

Well, look, I mean, do I like what he says about the cfpb? No. But I don't think we should be saying. He may have his own motives for this, but it's up to us to make sure that we can rein that power in, not ask them to just be nice.

[I]

Well, for sure, it's a pretty worrying time for people at the agency. What's your message? It's a group of dedicated, nonpartisan people who are there to kind of protect the interest of consumers. It's returned an extraordinary amount of money to consumers. It's hard to come up with a better example of government that is currently being lied about and undermined by this unelected clique. There are people on that agency that are worried about people who have been fired. They're worried about being fired. They don't know whether or not the right thing to do for their families is to try to stay and fight or leave if there is some kind of an offer to get out. What is your message to the people at your former agency?

[H]

Well, look at people all across our government. There are people who specialize in certain roles. Some of them prosecute terrorism. You can't really do that in the private sector. There are just some things that are done for the public's sake. And I think that this is a moment where it's really hard to tell them what they should do because they have to really live their life. And I always encourage them to serve as long as you possibly can. But look, this is a real moment for everybody who is trying to serve the public. I think that it forces all of us to reflect on how do we talk about those who serve the public. I can tell you a lot of people who work at the CFPB can make a lot more money if they were in the private sector. And many of them choose to do that work because they believe that people shouldn't be treated poorly by a bank or a mortgage company or a student lender. Because it's about people's personal dignity and they believe it so deeply.

[I]

After you crack down on ITT Technical Institute for its illegal recruiting tactics, the former chief executive called you an economic terrorist who should be sent to Guantanamo Bay for about a decade of R and R, which should include an aggressive regimen of water sports. So what is your favorite water sport?

[H]

Sometimes in this business there will be CEOs that threaten you, that hire people to follow you. And it's pretty damn scary. But we just gotta keep going because we know that these. These individuals clearly feel that the law doesn't apply to them and that their answer when we ask questions is to tell people that that are to fundamentally threaten their lives. And I think it's pretty disgusting, you.

[I]

Know, you just had this period of you, you ran this agency that has been, that has survived from its inception a concerted effort by major financial interests, lobbyists, right wing conservatives, Republicans, to destroy it. First of all, they tried to make it so it couldn't exist. They wouldn't let Elizabeth Warren run it from the jump. They have lied about it from the beginning, claiming it's a sludge fund, which is a lie, claiming it's trying to debank conservatives, which is a lie. Right.

[H]

Actually exactly the opposite. We put into place policies to block that and the bank lobby sued us for it.

[I]

What right now do you see as the most hopeful path for the CFPB to survive until a time in which we can put a leader in charge of it who believes in it?

[H]

Well, it's really what the public says and does and calls their members about what they protest. We need everyone's voices. And you know, John, I think a lot of people, including many people who probably listen, they probably feel pretty fatigued, they feel beat down. They feel like this is such a chaotic moment and they just need a break. And I understand that. I know how that can feel. But I also feel like it's so important to remember why we love this place, this country, and part of it is because we can fight back and really make sure that we do not lose the things that are so important. And I just think that's really important to remember even when times are really tough.

[I]

And I just think it's really impressive that you simply will not acknowledge how maybe cathartic it could be to tell Elon Musk to go fuck himself.

[H]

Well, even if it is, I think that I'm not going to dignify any individual billionaire and their what they want to dictate about our country. Because the whole whole game of why this country is better is because we're not supposed to allow that to happen. We fought hard for one person to have one vote. We fought hard to make sure that we weren't being controlled by royalty. And that's maybe some of those lessons applied today too.

[I]

Rohit Chopra, thank you so much for your time.

[H]

Thanks so much, John.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's our show for today. Thanks to Rohit Chopra for joining us here in la. We will be back with a new show on Tuesday. Bye everybody.

[Tommy Vietor]

Bye everyone.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our friends of the pod [e-mail] friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more. And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari, Reed Churlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Naomi Singel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kiril Pelaviev, and David Toles. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[Charlie Sykes]

Building a business may feel like a big jump, but on deck small business loans can help keep you afloat. With lines of credit up to $100,000 and term loans up to $250,000, OnDeck lets you choose the loan that's right for your business. As a top rated online small business lender, OnDeck's team of loan advisors can help you find the right business loan to fit your needs. Visit ondeck.com for more information. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by Ondeck or Celtibank. Ondeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

[Elon Musk]

Hey friends, Ted Danson here and I want to let you know about my new podcast. It's called Where Everybody Knows yous Name with me, Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson. Sometimes doing this podcast is a chance for me and my good bud Woody to reconnect after cheers wrapped 30 years ago. Plus, we're introducing each other to the friends we've met since, like Jane Fonda, Conan O'Brien, Eric Andre, Mary Steenburgen, my wife, and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And trust me, it's always a great hang when Woody's there, so why wait? Listen to where everybody knows your name. Wherever you get your podcasts.