Trump Comes for the Judges

Summary

Pod Save America Episode Summary: “Trump Comes for the Judges”

In the March 21, 2025 episode of Pod Save America, hosts Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and Jon Lovett delve into a series of alarming actions taken by former President Donald Trump and his allies to undermine the U.S. judicial system, eliminate critical government departments, and reshape the political landscape. This comprehensive discussion highlights the threats posed to democratic institutions, the manipulative tactics employed by the MAGA regime, and the implications for future elections.

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I. Trump Administration's Assault on the Judiciary

A. Impeachment Attempts Against Judges

The episode opens with a heated discussion on Trump’s aggressive push to impeach judges who oppose his administration. Chairman Dan Pfeiffer outlines how Trump's billionaire advisor, Elon Musk, has been leveraging social media to call for the impeachment of judges unfavorable to Trump. This escalation reached a peak when Congressional Representative Brandon Gill introduced articles of impeachment against James Boasberg, the Chief Judge of the D.C. Circuit Court, following Boasberg's attempt to block Trump's unauthorized imprisonment of individuals in foreign prisons.

B. Trump's Public Statements on Judicial Impeachment

Jon Favreau highlights Trump's vehement rhetoric against Judge Boasberg. At [03:14], Trump is quoted saying:

“This week, many people have called for his impeachment. The impeachment of this judge. I don't know who the judge is, but he's radical left... I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.”

Trump's language portrays judges as antagonists to his agenda, labeling them as “radical left” and “lunatics,” thereby attempting to delegitimize judicial decisions unfavorable to his administration.

C. Chief Justice John Roberts' Response

Favreau and Pfeiffer discuss a significant development where Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement clarifying that impeachment is not an appropriate response to judicial disagreements. At [04:03], Roberts stated:

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Pfeiffer commends Roberts for maintaining judicial independence, noting:

“John Roberts is trying to walk a fine line between defending the judiciary’s independence and preserving his legacy.”

This statement marks a critical stand against the erosion of judicial checks on executive power.

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II. Elimination of the Department of Education

A. Trump's Executive Order and Its Implications

One of the most dramatic moves discussed is Trump’s executive order to eliminate the Department of Education, signed on March 21, 2025. At [19:34], Trump proclaimed:

“Today we take a very historic action... we are going to eliminate the federal Department of Education.”

This order threatens the abrupt dismantling of an agency overseeing $1.6 trillion in federal student loans and significant funding for public schools, particularly impacting Title 1 programs supporting disadvantaged communities.

B. Impact on Public Education and Student Loans

Favreau questions the feasibility of maintaining educational services without the Department:

“The White House claims that none of the department's services or benefits will be disrupted, though they aren't saying how they'll do that without, you know, an actual department with actual employees.”

Dan Pfeiffer emphasizes the unpopularity and impracticality of this move, referencing historical attempts:

“Ronald Reagan ran on it... After winning more than 500 electoral votes in 1984, he couldn't get any traction on it... Only 17% of people wanted to eliminate it.”

C. Democratic Strategies to Counter

The hosts discuss strategies for Democrats to counteract these attacks. Pfeiffer suggests framing Trump and Musk’s actions as means to "gut public education to pay for tax cuts for billionaires," thereby highlighting the real-world consequences on teachers and students.

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III. Targeting Higher Education

A. Department of Education Cuts and University Funding

The episode details how the Trump administration's efforts extend beyond eliminating the Department of Education to targeting individual colleges and universities. Trump froze $175 million in federal funds at the University of Pennsylvania over issues related to a transgender athlete, Lia Thomas, labeling such actions as part of a broader strategy to intimidate educational institutions.

B. Consequences on Research and Education Quality

Dan Pfeiffer warns of the long-term damage to academic research and innovation:

“We’re gutting research here and innovation... There's a huge brain drain. Scientists and researchers are going to go to other countries.”

Favreau adds that the reduction in federal funding could lead universities to cut essential programs, hindering the next generation of scientists and technologists.

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IV. Social Security and USDA Under Attack

A. USDA Cuts to Food Banks

The hosts highlight Politico’s report on the USDA stopping millions of dollars in deliveries to food banks across at least six states. This move exacerbates food insecurity, particularly in rural areas reliant on these support systems.

B. Social Security Office Closures and Impact on Seniors

Another critical issue discussed is the Social Security Administration's closure of nearly 50 offices, making it difficult for seniors to apply for or manage their benefits. At [38:16], Pfeiffer states:

“Donald Trump is waging war on his own voters. The people who are going to be affected most are those in rural parts of the country...”

Favreau underscores the severity:

“39 million people live in households without any Internet connection... 25% of Americans 65 or older have reported never going online.”

These actions disproportionately harm vulnerable populations who depend on these services.

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V. Attack on the US Institute of Peace

A. The Armed Invasion Incident

A particularly disturbing event covered is the armed intrusion by Trump supporters into the US Institute of Peace. Politico reported that agitators forcibly accessed the facility, disregarding staff warnings and approaching sensitive security areas. Judge Beryl Howell’s emergency request to deny Doge (Trump’s ally group) access was notably denied, though she criticized their tactics.

B. Implications for Government Nonprofit Agencies

Pfeiffer describes the incident as emblematic of the administration’s disregard for lawful processes:

“It's an extreme example of brute force activity... They keep getting stopped in court and it keeps being messier and dumber than it needs to be.”

This assault on a federally funded nonprofit underscores the lengths to which the Trump regime will go to dismantle institutions it views as oppositional.

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VI. Influence of Elon Musk on Politics

A. Campaign Contributions and Judicial Influence

Elon Musk’s role as a major financier for Republican efforts to impeach judges is dissected. Favreau criticizes Musk's inability to understand governmental processes:

“I don't think Elon does [know how impeachment works]. He's just a dumb shit who has not spent a lot of time studying up on the government he's trying to destroy.”

B. Wisconsin Supreme Court Race

Musk’s substantial financial contributions to the Wisconsin Supreme Court race are highlighted as pivotal in potentially flipping the court’s balance. At [12:51], Favreau notes:

“He's also spent well over $10 million on a Wisconsin Supreme Court race that could flip the state's liberal majority back to a conservative majority.”

Dan Pfeiffer urges voters to focus efforts on this race to curb Musk and Trump’s influence:

“If you want to send a message to Elon Musk and to every Republican in the country about how toxic it is to be associated with what Elon Musk is doing, the best way is to win this election in Wisconsin.”

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VII. 2024 Election Postmortem

A. Key Findings from Blue Rose Research

The hosts analyze a postmortem study from David Shore and Blue Rose Research, which surveyed 26 million voters to understand the 2024 election dynamics. Significant findings include:

• Demographic Shifts: Hispanic, Asian, young voters, immigrants, and politically disengaged voters swung toward Trump. At [56:06], Pfeiffer notes:

  “A 75-year-old white man was more likely to support Kamala Harris than an 18-year-old white man. That's the exact opposite of what everyone thought after Trump won in 2016.”

• Trump's Favorability: Trump maintained similar favorability to 2020, while Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party saw declines.

• Issue Salience and Trust: Key issues like the economy, inflation, and taxes saw low trust in Democrats, while Democrats maintained higher trust on healthcare, poverty, housing, mental health, and Medicare.

B. Shifts in Demographics and Voting Patterns

Unexpectedly, immigrant voters—previously a Democratic stronghold—swinged toward Trump. At [60:09], Lovett points out:

“Our best estimate is that immigrant voters swung from a Biden plus 27 voting bloc in 2020 to a Trump plus one group in 2024.”

This reversal challenges conventional political strategies and necessitates a reevaluation of outreach efforts.

C. Implications for Future Elections

The data suggests that traditional Democratic bases are not as reliable, and new strategies are required to regain support. Pfeiffer emphasizes the need to:

• Rebuild Trust on Key Issues: Focus on healthcare and other areas where Democrats still hold trust.
• Counter Republican Messaging: Actively work to diminish trust in Republican handling of economic issues.
• Highlight Democratic Strengths: Bring issues where Democrats are trusted to the forefront of political discourse.

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VIII. Democratic Messaging and Strategies

A. Building Trust on Key Issues

Dan Pfeiffer advocates for Democrats to strengthen their positions on trusted issues like healthcare and Medicare. He suggests:

“There is our opportunity right there... Trust advantage on healthcare... fighting for people.”

B. Highlighting Strengths to Reclaim Issues

Favreau adds that Democrats should also focus on issues where they already have a slight trust advantage, such as education and civil liberties, to reclaim these topics and build broader support.

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IX. Conclusion

The episode concludes with a sense of urgency and concern over the Trump administration’s continuous efforts to dismantle critical institutions and alter the political landscape. The hosts urge Democratic listeners to mobilize, particularly in pivotal races like Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, and to adopt strategic messaging to counteract the MAGA regime’s tactics. By understanding the shifts revealed in the 2024 election data, Democrats can better formulate responses to reclaim trust and influence in key areas affecting American society.

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Notable Quotes:

• Donald Trump on Impeachment of Judges ([03:14]):

  “The impeachment of this judge. I don't know who the judge is, but he's radical left... I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.”

• Chief Justice John Roberts’ Statement ([04:03]):

  “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

• Dan Pfeiffer on Eliminating the Department of Education ([22:56]):

  “It's just this is sort of like the birthright citizenship EO he did. He can say promise is made, promises kept, and he did this. And then it goes nowhere.”

• Jon Favreau on Social Security Office Closures ([39:15]):

  “39 million people live in households without any Internet connection... 25% of Americans 65 or older have reported never going online.”

• Dan Pfeiffer on Immigration Voter Shifts ([60:03]):

  “Immigrants... he won immigrants. And we have to really dig in to why that is.”

---

This episode paints a concerning picture of the Trump administration’s relentless push against democratic institutions and highlights the critical need for strategic Democratic countermeasures to preserve and restore the integrity of the U.S. political system.

Transcript

[Silenia]

Listen. As Silenia tells us why she chose to vaccinate her daughter.

[Mother]

I definitely felt like the pros far outweighed the cons. The diseases that I am protecting my child against, they're still here. And at the end of the day, it's my job as a mother to keep my child safe.

[Silenia]

Talk to your child's doctor and learn [e-mail] brought to you by Merc.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The.

[Jon Favreau]

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

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

[Jon Favreau]

On today's show, we'll talk about Donald Trump's probably unlawful order to kill the Department of Education and has moved to starve colleges of funding that have political views he doesn't like. Doge is busy making it harder for seniors to get their Social Security, which seems efficient, and they literally staged an armed invasion of the US Institute of Peace. We'll get to that wild story, and because we're nerds, we're going to dive into the election. Postmortem from David Shore and Blue Rose Research, which is notable because it includes 26 million survey responses. So lots of data to dig through. But first, now that we have a Republican Congress that seemingly exists only to do whatever Trump tells them to do, the last remaining check on the president's power is the judicial branch, which Trump and Elon and the MAGA regime are now going to war with. So for several weeks now, the president's billionaire top advisor has been using his social media platform to call for the impeachment of judges that rule against the Trump administration. But the situation escalated last week when James Boasberg, the chief judge of the D.C. circuit Court, tried to block Trump from jailing people in a foreign prison without due process, an order that the Trump regime partly ignored, arguing that some of the flights were already over international waters when the ruling came down. Uh, the MAGA position is apparently that the president should be able to lock up whoever he wants in an El Salvador mega prison run by a brutal dictator. So long as he tells us they're a threat to America, we just have to take his word for it. So one of Trump's minions in Congress, Brandon Gill, introduced articles of impeachment against Judge Boasberg. Trump himself also called for the judge's impeachment. And here's what he said when asked about it by Laura Ingraham.

[Donald Trump]

This week, many people have called for his impeachment. The impeachment of this judge. I don't know who the judge is, but he's radical left. He was Obama appointed. We have very bad judges, and these are judges that shouldn't be allowed. I think they, I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge. The judge that we're talking about, he's, you look at his other rulings, I mean, rulings unrelated, but having to do with me. He's a lunatic. You have local judges, local federal judges, local judges, period, and DAs and prosecutors. DAs, state attorney generals, attorney generals that want to really take over. I think some of it's for the publicity. They love the publicity. All of a sudden they're on the front page of every newspaper, but they have no right to be.

[Jon Favreau]

So we are only about 60 days into Trump's second term and we are in a very dark place already. So dark. We even got this highly unusual statement from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts this week. Quote, for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. What do you think, John Roberts? Welcome to the resistance.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, good job, John Roberts. Not a sentence. We say very often on this podcast. Yeah, the fact of the statement is very notable. Right? And I will say that the statement was like there was a lot of sort of criticism online that he never mentioned Trump's name. But then when I actually went and read it, it's actually a lot less mealy mouthed than I assumed. And John Roberts is pretty mealy mouthed in a lot of ways. And so to his credit here, and I think the statement probably speaks to what we're going to see from John Roberts over the course of the next few years here, which is trying to walk this fine line between defending the independence of the judiciary and preserving his legacy. Right. He has overseen the greatest drop in trust in the Supreme Court in its history during his period of time as Chief justice, while not going so far as to poke the bear to the point where Trump will outright defy in order, or even begin to radicalize people against the Supreme Court. Because if Republicans stop liking the Supreme Court, no one's going to like the Supreme Court because they already turned off a whole bunch of Democrats with everything they've done, but most notably the Dobbs decision.

[Jon Favreau]

We should also say this about Judge Boasberg. He was elevated to the D.C. circuit Court by Obama, but he was not appointed by Obama. That is incorrect. From Trump, from the White House, everyone, every Republican has been saying that he's a George W. Bush appointee. Some of the things he dismissed Trump's tax return lawsuit so that we couldn't see Trump's tax returns. He ordered the release of Hillary's emails, limited grand jury material, disclosure in Trump's classified documents case. So, not exactly.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Maybe we should impeach him.

[Jon Favreau]

Not exactly. A radical left lunatic. He used to be the head of the FISA court, which is the court that approves surveillance warrants. So this is not some lunatic leftist. So the White House and Republicans in Congress, they have to know that they don't have anywhere close to the votes needed to impeach anyone, let alone a judge. You need 67 votes in the Senate to convict. So why do you think they keep pushing this? Like, is the hope that the constant threats and accusations are just gonna undermine the legitimacy of the judicial system? Is that the play, do you think?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You're sure they know that it takes 67 votes?

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, I don't think Elon does. He's been tweeting about it forever. And I think he's just a dumb shit who has not spent a lot of time studying up on the government he's trying to destroy. But that's him.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I think, Elon, maybe in some of these members of Congress, there is a collection of people with broken brains who spend too much time online, have time reading books, who don't know it. But Stephen Miller was tweeting about this. Those people do know. And I think the goal here is pretty clear. It is to set the stage to till the ground for the moment when Trump wants to defy a court order, because he has not done that yet. He has said he's not going to do it, and he does not have the public on his side. Right. There is a Washington Post Ipsos poll that shows that 84% of voters, including strong majorities of Republicans, believe that if a court declares something the Trump administration is doing as illegal, that Trump must abide by that order. Only 11% think he should defy it. And so if you want to get to the point where you can actually do that, you have to do what they did to the media, do what they're doing in the universities. You have to destroy trust in that institution. And this is the beginning part of that process.

[Jon Favreau]

We should say that just before we recorded, Judge Boasberg just accused the government of evading its obligations and moved closer to holding them in contempt for not explaining. They still haven't explained why they didn't abide by his order to turn the planes around. So he is not backing down with all these threats, but he is. He's pretty angry at the government, and he. I think he should be. This is the mo. The Trump administration thinks that they are on solid ground on this one because it's a. They think, you know, who really wants Venezuelan gangs in the United States. But the more we learn about this and the more information that's come out, not because of the government, but because of reporting and because some of these people's families have. And lawyers have learned about where they are, it is shocking, shocking what is happening. The New York Times reports the Trump folks believe that the Alien Enemies act, which is what Trump invoked to, you know, do this, allows federal agents to enter homes without a warrant. So currently, immigration agents without a warrant can basically just knock on your door and ask to come in. And. And that's all they can do unless they have a warrant because of the Fourth Amendment. But Trump and the government are basically now saying, well, Alien Enemies Act. If we think that there's a Venezuelan gang in there and we've labeled them a domestic terrorist organization, then we can just send federal agents in, federal ICE agents into people's house without a warrant. Now you may say, okay, well, if I'm a US Citizen, then they're not going to come to my house. Well, how. How is anyone going to know? How's anyone going to know they could show up at a US Citizen's house and say they suspect that Trende Aragua is hiding in your house and then take you away. And who's going to know, since we're not doing due process anymore, we're just fucking putting people on planes, sending them to El Salvador and locking them up for indefinite periods of time.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It is just truly astounding that they have taken all of the checks and balances out of the system. Right? You don't need to go to a judge to get a warrant to go in the house. And the person you get in the house, you do not have to present to a judge before you send them out of the country. And if the Trump administration can be so fucking stupid as to accidentally cancel an Ebola prevention program, do we really think they're not gonna make some mistakes on the people they're deporting? And we're already hearing stories of these, that people waking up in an El Salvadorian mega prison that is famous for how horrible the conditions are. Infamous for how horrible the conditions are. Who were not members of these gangs, right? Who were not sub. Should not have been subject to this. Because the point is, you stop in front of a judge and a judge helps verify that this is the person that the Trump administration says it is. And then if they are a member of this gang or if there's another reason why they should be deported, then they're deported. But now this is just. It is. I mean, it is fully and totally authoritarian. It runs against everything that our system was set up for.

[Jon Favreau]

They grabbed this guy who's a professional soccer player in Venezuela. This guy showed up at two protests to protest Maduro, the dictator in Venezuela. And Maduro's regime tortured him and he got away. He came to the United States, he applied for asylum, and. And they mistakenly think his tattoo is trend when it's actually a fucking soccer tattoo. And so they got the tattoo artist to like sign an affidavit to say this. And so the family was waiting for an immigration hearing and all this because the guy had been held for a while and then just woke up one day and was just taken to this El Salvadoran prison. So a man who was tortured by the Maduro regime is now being held indefinitely in a prison in El Salvador because they mistakenly think he's a gang member. And then when DHS was asked about this, they're like, well, that's one tattoo. And there was also a social media post where he had a gang sign. And then everyone's like, no, that's just a, like a thumbs up, like soccer sign that they have. I mean, it's fucking ridiculous. This is what's happening. No hearing, no evidence, no nothing. It's not good. It's not good. You see, Elon's maxing out on donations to Republicans who support impeaching judges.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Of course he is. Right? The guy loves to buy a politician. And it giving federally regulated campaign contributions is a pretty inefficient way for Elon Musk to flex his muscle because he can only get the same amount as people like you and I or anyone else out there. But it's just. It creates this incentive structure for more people to act like morons and supporting engagements. Yeah, exactly right. So you're gonna get more people that. Because they want the money, they want the support, they want the attention that come to be associated with Elon. And that is one thing Elon Musk is very good about doing. It is leveraging his money for attention and influence. And this is another way in which he's doing that.

[Jon Favreau]

He's also spent well over $10 million on a Wisconsin Supreme Court race that could flip the state's liberal majority back to a conservative majority. So early voting is now underway in that race, and the election is April 1st. Dan, you want to talk about the stakes here?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. So if you live in Wisconsin, this is an absolutely essential race because the balance of the Supreme Court is once again in question. You may remember not that long ago, we talked about on the show a lot. There was a race to. A couple years ago, Janet Prosewitz, who I think you guys even campaigned with, we did in Wisconsin, won an election, gave the Democrat, gave the liberals a majority. These are not. These are technically nonpartisan races, but the parties have lined up behind the candidates. Democrats behind Susan Crawford and Elon Musk, and Republicans behind Brad Schimmel. And when the liberals have the majority now, were able to undo one of the nation's most unfair gerrymandering systems and make it so that you have more free and fair elections. Because Wisconsin, as we all know, is the quintessential battleground state. But Republicans were dominating the legislature and the congressional delegation because of that. And going forward, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear cases on things like abortion, personal freedom, civil rights. And if you think about this with respect to people who aren't in Wisconsin, many of the big cases that are about how the 2026 and 2028 elections are going to be conducted will come before that court. So you're either going to have a majority of people who abide by the rule of law or a Supreme Court majority that is bought and paid for by Elon Musk. And just even beyond that for everyone else, is this is the first major election in a battleground state since Trump won. Elon Musk is on the ballot here. He has spent $10 million. The Democrats and the Crawford campaign have made Elon Musk a centerpiece of it. Brett Schimmel has not committed to recusing himself of any cases involving Elon Musk come up before the court, even though Elon Musk has spent already $10 million to elect him. And this is a.

[Jon Favreau]

And Tesla is currently suing the state of Wisconsin. So the case may come to Brad Schimmel. Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And if you want to send a message to Elon Musk and to every Republican in the country about how toxic it is to be associated with what Elon Musk is doing, the best way to do that right now, the best way to inflict some measure of political accountability on Elon Musk and Donald Trump is to win this election in Wisconsin on April 1st.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And it's. And it's close, as they always are in Wisconsin. So it's going to be a really tight race. In order to tip the race, we're sending John Lovett to Wisconsin this weekend. He's doing six kickoffs, and he's going to be around Madison on Saturday and Milwaukee on Sunday. So go see Lovett if you're in. If you're in Wisconsin. And.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And he'll be with Ben Wickler. Just so, just, you know, he chaperoned on this trip. Yes, to be clear, he chaperoned.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. We don't send. We don't send him to Wisconsin by himself. And you can also go to votesaveamerica.com Wisconsin and there's gonna be. There's plenty to do as we get to Election Day here. Also, Tommy and I are not going to Wisconsin, but we are going to Norco, California this weekend.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Dan, that is not Norcal California. That is Norco California.

[Jon Favreau]

Norco, yeah. It's about an hour and a half.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Stay on your side of the grapevine.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay. It's about an hour and a half east of la. We're gonna be with Ro Khanna, who's doing a town hall in the district of a House Republican who refuses to hold a town hall. Ken Calvert. We've already been to Ken Calvert's district once when we were trying to elect Will Rollins in this last cycle. So we're heading back this time with Ro Khanna. Ro's doing much like Bernie and AOC are doing these town halls. Ro is doing a series of town halls as well. So that'll be fun. We're going out to see some folks. So come say hi if you're in Norco or come out to Norco if you're in la. POD Save America is brought to you by Lumen. Did you know that when your metabolism is working properly, you will feel the benefits in literally every aspect of your life?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I did.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Silenia]

Listen, as Silenia tells us why she chose to vaccinate her daughter, I definitely.

[Mother]

Felt like the pros far outweighed the cons. The diseases that I am protecting my child against, they're still here. And at the end of the day, it's my job as a mother to keep my child safe.

[Silenia]

Talk to your child's doctor and learn more at yvaccines.com brought to you by Merck.

[Jon Favreau]

Big day at the White House On Thursday, Trump signed an order eliminating the Department of Education, which has already seen its workforce halved, promises made, promises kept. The AP notes that the department handles $1.6 trillion in federal student loans and billions of dollars in programs for colleges and school districts. It also accounts for roughly 14% of public school budgets. The White House claims that none of the department's services or benefits will be disrupted, though they aren't saying how they'll do that without you know, an actual department with actual employees. Here's what Trump had to say at the signing.

[Donald Trump]

Today we take a very historic action that was 45 years in the making. In a few moments, I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the federal Department of Education. And it sounds strange, doesn't it? Department of Education, we're going to eliminate it. And everybody knows it's right. And the Democrats know it's right. And I hope they're going to be voting for it because ultimately it may come before them, but everybody knows it's right. It's doing us no good. We want to return our students to the states. Look, Denmark, Norway, Sweden. I have to tell you, I give them a lot of Credit. China's top 10. And so we can't now say that bigness is making it impossible to educate because China is very big.

[Jon Favreau]

What the bigness. So, as you heard him there, like, they're acknowledging that they'll need Congress to officially shutter the department, though they certainly don't have 60 votes in the Senate for that. Republicans have already said they'll introduce legislation right after Trump's announcement. What do you think happens here? What do you make of all this?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

As you mentioned, they're not passing this bill. Right. That is not that it's not. The Congress is not going to act on this. To put that in some perspective about how hard it is to. To shut down the private education. Ronald Reagan ran on it. It was a big part of his campaign platform. After winning more than 500 electoral votes in 1984, he couldn't get any traction on. It's not become any more popular since then. The Economist YouGov ran this interesting poll where they asked people about the Department of Education. Do you want to expand it, keep it the same, reduce it, or eliminate it? The plurality was expanded at 39%. The combined keep it the same and expand it was over 60, and only 17% of people wanted to eliminate it. There is absolutely no appetite for this anywhere. What it is, is. It's just this is sort of like the birthright citizenship EO he did. He can say promise is made, promises kept, and he did this. And then it goes nowhere. But it does sort of create the predicate for Musk and Doge to go in there and eliminate it even further. Right. Like maybe the building will still stand and there will still be an office that Linda McMahon will have the opportunity to go to periodically, but the core functions, absent some judicial intervention, are going to be gutted and it's going to have devastating effects.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. I mean, you know, they keep, I think they know how unpopular it would be to sort of cut the funding or disrupt benefits and services. You got student loans in there. You got the education. The federal Education Department is responsible for Title 1 funds for the state. Title 1 funding is for public schools in disadvantaged communities. So poor working class families. It's for children with disabilities. And so you have kids with disabilities, low income schools and all the student loans in the country. And the Trump administration is trying to say, well, they're either going to move the distribution of those under other departments or they're going to have a smaller, or they're going to have, I don't know what they're going to do. But the idea that those services are going to be completely uninterrupted just doesn't square with what most people in education believe, experts in education believe, and also how the entire Doge process has gone so far.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's the key point. That's the key point.

[Jon Favreau]

Like they might think to themselves genuinely, that they're not going to disrupt any services, benefits, but they keep firing everyone who knows anything about education.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's like, to what end. Right, is that, is that they want a real estate transaction to sell the building. It's just right. This has been, this is, they think.

[Jon Favreau]

They'Re saving so much money, just like getting rid of those, all those employees. And they're not, because that's not where most of the money that the Department of Education oversees is coming from.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's just, it's also stupid. Like, this is a way to check off something that was on the wish list long before Project 2025. It was a big part of Project 2025. This has been, Newt Gingrich ran on this in the 90s with a contract for America. This has been a Republican pipe dream. And this is a way to get the chance to say they did it. Even if they're not accomplishing the specific goal because they do need Congress for it, they can accomplish the goal in spirit, which is to gut public education in this country.

[Jon Favreau]

It seems like a good fight for Democrats to take on. What do you think?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I very much think so. In fact, if you're a message box subscriber, you have in your inbox right now a full messaging guide on this. If you are not a message mark subscriber, you're lost, I guess. Well, then I don't know what you've been doing. So I go through a whole bunch of the polling on a bunch of the message guidance. But let me give the short version of how I think Democrats should talk about this, which is Elon Musk and Donald Trump are shutting down the Department of Education and gutting public education to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. The result of this is going to be teachers are laid off, more kids in the classroom, dilapidated schools and huge cut to special education funding, all to pay for tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. Like, like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Like that. That is how you talk about it. It is not about cutting individual funding streams. It is, it is important to say, like, why they're doing it, what is happening. It's be specific about what's going to happen and, and who it benefits.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's, I think along with some of the healthcare cuts, this has got to be probably what's going to piss people off the most. Especially if and when we start getting the stories about people whose benefits or loans or whatever else or funding for certain schools was disrupted, then I think it's really going to blow up.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's just a context for limited part of education that does not exist for usaid, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or the Institute of Peters. We'll talk about in a minute. It's just that people have been talking about this for a very long time. This country, Republic's been trying to do it for a long time. Voters keep rejecting it time and time again. And now Trump is doing it unilaterally at the behest of the world's richest man in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. And so this is a huge opportunity for Democrats. It is one of the things that has the best chance of breaking through in the flood of all the terribleness that's happening.

[Jon Favreau]

So. And Trump is also targeting colleges and universities. He doesn't, like we have mentioned before, the $400 million in federal funding he's threatened to withhold from Colombia unless the school acquiesces to the administration's demands, the deadline for which is Friday. When you're listening to this, some of those demands, banning masks because they were used at the protest last year. Giving campus law enforcement wider latitude to arrest, quote, agitators who foster an unsafe or hostile worker study environment. And placing the school's Department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies in, quote, academic receivership, which means it's no longer overseen by the actual faculty who teach within it. Now Trump is also going after his own alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, where the administration froze around $175 million in federal funds because of a trans athlete and swimmer, Lia Thomas, who competed and graduated in 2022. The White House Rapid Response account posted a clip of Fox News announcing the move with the words promises made, promises kept. Given that Lia Thomas graduated three years ago, is this promises made, promises kept, or just another way to own the libs that's going to end up just hurting a lot of students at the University of Pennsylvania?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, it's clearly punitive. It's clearly not based on any sort of substance or reality. And I think we have to view it in the context of the larger conservative project to systematically and strategically take out any institution that they view as an opposition to right wing thinking in this country. It's why they spent so much time to try to take down unions, right, passing right to work laws. It is why they have gone after the media, which they view as an incorrectly, in my view, but view as an ally of liberals and Democrats in part because they are fact checking and calling out the hypocrisy of what's on the right. And universities that they've always believed to be a breeding ground of liberal thought. And so they are trying to destroy them. They are trying to cow them into acting a certain way and they are trying to gut their funding and it is part of a bigger project. And we have to view it in that context.

[Jon Favreau]

I think Alan Blinder at the New York Times reported on Thursday about layoffs, hiring freezes, lab shutdowns at universities across the country. What'd you make of that story?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, this is the end result of what they're doing. I thought what was notable in that story was that they wrote that academia was caught flat footed. I was like, oh, the one time the famously nimble academia was asleep at the wheel, I mean there is a longer term challenge. There is more appetite for what Trump is doing here. And it's not just because of the protests around Gaza and the controversy of how a lot of universities handle that and what some of the president said before Congress. Pew, this was in the New York Times. I know Pew tracks how people feel about the impact of various institutions on American society. And they ask people at universities. And in 2012, only 21% of Americans thought that universities had a negative impact on our society. And by last year it was up to 45%. And that's not just Trump and Republicans. That is the high cost of college. It is student debt crushing people. And this idea that people have been sold on this idea that the best pathway to success is a four year college education, but you're going to leave there with so much debt that it is going to crush you financially. And universities have done a very bad job of both in the short term around Trump and in the time before that of one, dealing with the sort of indefensible rise in tuition, but in sort of explaining the role they play because they are these nonprofit institutions, some of whom, like the most famous ones, who have billions of dollars in endowment but then take taxpayer money. And what we have not explained and they have not explained, and maybe people before Trump did not explain well, is that these universities are the laboratories for America. Right? They are the ones doing the research that is helping us, you know, build new technologies, discover new medicines, figure out how to fight disease, and we have it. And the universities haven't made that case. And people supporting that sort of R and D funding have not made that case.

[Jon Favreau]

Well. And the two problems you just mentioned are undoubtedly going to get worse because of what the Trump administration has already done. Universities have not kept tuition down. They haven't done a good job. And so, you know, therefore, we are subsidizing higher costs at universities through financial aid, student loans, and all the other stuff that the federal government does to help students attend school. Meanwhile, the costs keep rising and rising and rising. So that's a huge problem. But gutting a bunch of federal funding at universities, do we think that's going to make tuition go down? We think that's going to help costs at college.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, they're not interested in. They want fewer people to go to college. Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And then the other. And then the big one that you mentioned is between what the Trump administration is doing to colleges and universities, between what they're doing to the nih, what they're doing to other public health agencies, other agencies that are responsible for medical research, for technological research. I mean, it's not. Look, part of this is you gut research here and innovation and medical research and scientific research, there's going to be a huge brain drain. And a lot of these scientists and researchers and experts are going to go to other countries, and other countries are going to develop the breakthrough technologies and discoveries and cures that usually happen in the United States and the industries and jobs and everything else is going to go overseas as well, and we're not going to have them here. But then there's a broader issue, which is like, the United States is the place where a lot of these discoveries happen, and if they don't happen here because we're gutting the funding for them, they're just not gonna happen. And there's like, there's like there was a diabetes study that was like a 30 year diabetes study that they just canceled the contract for. And like that. You're not getting that back.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You can't turn this stuff back on. There was a report right before Trump took office about how close we were coming to a vaccine to deal with colorectal cancer.

[Jon Favreau]

I thought it was pancreatic, wasn't it? Or maybe it was both.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Maybe.

[Jon Favreau]

I think there was an MRNA for pancreatic cancer.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, we can leave all of this anyway.

[Jon Favreau]

There was multiple.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But we're on the cusp of something incredibly important. All the progress it's made on Alzheimer's research, all of that stops and it doesn't start again. So that's the, as you pointed out, that is the progress on very specific things can have tremendous benefit to people in the world. It's going to stop and it's not going to happen. And then there is sort of the economic impact in the United States where these universities, like in this story, they talk about how they may have to stop teaching biochemistry at universities because the labs are funded by research grants. And if the research grants are not there, the labs are not there, and then they won't teach that. And so the next generation of scientists, researchers, doctors, technologists, all of that is not going to happen because of this idiotic, shortsighted effort from the Trump administration and this fixing this for nothing.

[Jon Favreau]

For nothing. This is not saving us much money. This is not changing like bloated budgets that, you know, needed to be changed. This is just destroying shit because they don't know what the fuck they're doing. They're going in with a sledgehammer. Elon Musk doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Doge doesn't know what the fuck they're doing. Donald Trump certainly doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Neither does his dumb fucking cabinet. And na and like, and the saddest part is like, we're not going to know, you know, like there's just going to be these, these studies are going to go away and these researchers are going to lose their jobs and we're not going to know all of the potentially life saving discoveries that we lost like 10 years down the road.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, it is deeply depressing because there's so much in between. Administrations can be turned back on. Right. There's tremendous damage in the four years. But you come back in, you can put in new policy, sign executive order, pass a new law. The, the things that Trump is doing both to universities and the federal government itself are not things that can be fixed in one four year term.

[Jon Favreau]

I know. I keep thinking about the next Democrats running for president, or God willing, the next Democratic president. And there's gonna have to be a sort of a massive nationwide, maybe even global effort to try to recruit really good smart people back into government and public service and researchers and scientists and medical and just like an experts. And I think it's gonna be really fucking hard too because again, why are you taking like maybe you want to work for the next Democratic administration, but what happens when another a JD Vance or another Trump comes into office and then you don't have job security anymore? Right?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like can the next Democratic president bring in a bunch of incredibly talented political appointees to tackle these problems? Absolutely. And I suspect that will happen. There will be a mobilization of the best and the brightest to come in and do that. But what about the people who keep the government running all the time? The ones who have these jobs in part because of job security? They could do other things, but they're in it for public service and they're in it because there's a stability in government employment with good benefits. You know what the pay structure is. You can be there a long time and if that security will no longer exist, having those people there is going to be deeply damaging. I don't know what we would have done when we arrived in the White House if there hadn't been a whole bunch of people who'd been there for the last three presidencies, who had been making everything work, who knew things with institutional knowledge. I mean just. It is deeply concerning.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Silenia]

Listen as Silenia tells us why she chose to vaccinate her daughter.

[Mother]

I definitely felt like the pros far outweighed the cons. The diseases that I am protecting my child against, they're still here. And at the end of the day, it's my job as a mother to keep my child safe.

[Silenia]

Talk to your child's doctor and learn more at yvaccines.com brought to you by Merck.

[Jon Favreau]

Speaking of Doge, let's check in with the Doge bags and Trump's broader effort to destroy the federal government. Politico reported Wednesday that the Department of Agriculture USDA is stopping millions of dollars worth of deliveries to food banks in at least six states. And earlier this week, the Social Security Administration announced that you can no longer apply for benefits or change the account where your benefits are delivered over the pH. You either have to verify your identity online or go in person to your local Social Security office, which will be tough because the AP reported that almost 50 Social Security offices have shown up on Doge's list of federal government site closures. Is this government efficiency at its finest? Dan we're just making it Making it harder for seniors to obtain their Social Security benefits.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It is Donald Trump waging war on his own voters. The People who are going to be affected most are the people in the rural parts of the country where they are not near a Social Security office. And probably the nearest one just got on that list of 50 that's going to get closed and it's going to make it impossible for people to get their benefits. There was a report today that there was a two hour wait time for calls right now and a one month waiting period for appointments in an office that may close sometime soon. It is truly insane. These are the kind of things that have real political impact. Congressman Mike Lawler, the Republican today put out a statement attacking, criticizing Trump and Musk for trying to close the Hudson Valley Social Security office. So I think you're going to see that from a lot of people because this is where it matters. This idea that you're going to make it impossible for people to access their benefits, you're going to make older folks have to verify their identity online as opposed to be able to call, is deeply damaging and I think is going to hurt politically too.

[Jon Favreau]

39 million people live in households without any Internet connection. 25% of American 65 or older have reported never going online. So, and those are, those are Social Security beneficiaries. And like you said, if you, the, the low income areas, rural areas, people with disabilities, people who just can't get around because they're older, those are going to be the people hurt by this. And I don't know, maybe Mike Lawler, because he's a Republican in good standing or will do something crazy. Maybe he'll, maybe he'll, Mike Lawlor will introduce a couple articles of impeachment against a federal judge and then they'll open up the Hudson Valley office and they'll close one down in a, in a blue district. That's, that's probably where we're headed. I do think this is, I'm sure Democrats are going to be all over this one because every single poll you see everywhere is Social Security is like the number one issue for folks and it's probably, it's the number one vulnerability for Republicans. And it's probably why Donald Trump has said over and over again he's not going to touch Social Security. So hoping that the Democrats jump all over this one.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Go. I mean, this is old school, but go do press conferences outside the Social Security offices on that list.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's a good idea.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Invite some influencers. We'll make it new age communications. But go stand in front of them. Take a vertical video of yourself in front of one. But go to Social Security.

[Jon Favreau]

Bring all your canes, wave them around. Go from the Tesla dealers to the Social Security offices. Right, Fewer Tesla dealers, more Social Security offices. Again, peaceful. One last Doge item. Not so peaceful. We gotta talk about Doge's armed invasion of the US Institute of Peace. This is unfortunately a real story, Dan. Here's the short version. Some Doge bags gained access to the Institute of Peace on Monday night. The Institute of Peace, we should let you know, is a non profit organization. It is not part of the Executive branch. It is funded by Congress. It was founded by Congress. Funded by Congress. It's a nonprofit, but of course it has government money. And the job is to of the Institute Peace is to help resolve conflicts around the world, as the name suggests. Yes, so. But Donald Trump decided we're going to zero out the Institute of Peace, a couple other agencies, just like they're doing everywhere else. Okay, so the Doge bags get access to the Institute of Peace on Monday night by apparently threatening the federal contracts for the outside private security firm that the Institute employed. This is according to Politico. Some of the staff at the Institute of Peace tells the dogebags that they're trespassing, but then they ignore the Institute of Peace staffers, the doshbags, and they, quote, proceeded to walk towards the gun safe. Then the Institute of peace staffers contact DC's Metropolitan Police Department on the trespassers, on the Doge people. But in an alarming twist, the police end up detaining the Institute of Peace's head of security and lawyers instead, at the direction of a State Department flunky who has since been declared the US Institute of Peace's new acting president, and who by that time had shown up with even more doge bags. D.C. police said in a statement that they were contacted by the US Attorney's office. Our pal Ed Martin, his office in dc, Eagle eyed Ed, who's threatening, you know, members of Congress and everyone else. Crazy man. The Institute then filed an emergency request in court trying to deny Doge access, which Judge Beryl Howell denied, though she did question Doge's tactics. Good for her.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Thank you.

[Jon Favreau]

She said, quote, this conduct of using law enforcement, threatening criminal investigation, and using armed law enforcement from three different agencies. Why? Just because Doge is in a rush, feels like all this could have been handled in a few emails. Like, I mean, hey, could you clear out of the office, we've zeroed out your budget. Like what? Or, or if they refuse to, like, hey, we're going to take you to court then. Because we believe we can shut your agency down. And you don't think we can, but we. Like, what. What did you make of all this?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, just, it's truly perfect. A bunch of tech flunkies arranging an armed invasion of the Institute of Peace. I mean, it's just. I mean, they don't have. Probably don't have the authority to shut the thing down. Like, that is, you know, it is not, as you said, not a part of the executive branch per se, created by Congress. And like this sort of like brute force activity taking on the deep state. Ooh, we bullied the Institute of Peace guys. Is like bravado. It's just, it's like there's like that is. That'll get you plaudits in Maga Trump world. And so you could just. You'll see more of this absurdity. Like, they seem so tough the way they got the cops to help them get into the Institute of Peace. And as opposed to just doing it like. I guess another way to think about this is there is a right way and a wrong way to do these things. Even if you disagree, even no matter what you feel about the value of the Institute of Peace, there's a, you know, a way to go about it. But they, Elon Musk and Doge will not and cannot do it the right way, which constantly keeps hurting their efforts to do the thing that we disagree with because they keep getting stopped in court and it keeps being messier and dumber than it needs to be. But this is just like the extreme example of that.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And it's what's really. I mean, it is. There's a lot of humor to that story because it's so fucking absurd. What's really worrying about it is like, so now we have the Department of Homeland Security and ICE agents deciding that they don't need a warrant anymore and that they can now, you know, go in and look for Trende Aragua in any house that they want. We are flying people to prisons in El Salvador with no due process. We have a U.S. attorney in D.C. who is now, like, sending FBI agents and D.C. police in to detain these staffers at this agency who just didn't want to let a bunch of people in to shut them down. And it like, who, who. What kind of like government bureaucrat or person at a nonprofit is gonna wanna live in Washington D.C. and you start thinking like, oh, yeah, that's what they're trying to do here. They're trying to make the city Trump city now.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. To make everything so uncomfortable that People will just leave. And they've had great success at that. They've had great success.

[Jon Favreau]

And like the number of examples now of using the power of the state force, police, FBI, like, just against Americans, against immigrants, against people they don't like, it's very scary.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We are so far past right now what even some of the most hyperbolic, like, arguments about what Trump would do are. We are, we are, we are right there.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep, yep. And it is, I don't know if it's like, part of it is the, I know. Part of it's the media environment. I keep wondering why there's not more alarm every day. And I don't know if it's just some people are like, I can't, I can't tune in all the time. I can't, you know, get worried about this all the time. If it's just that people don't know if people aren't hearing about it all, if Democrats aren't fighting hard enough or making enough noise, like, I don't know what it is, but it feels oddly quiet for the level of insanity that's taking place right now.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I've been thinking a lot about, there are a million reasons for this. I think we as a society, like political stakeholders, the media, just average everyday people, lack the vocabulary and the imagination to talk about what's happening here because it's not something that we ever thought would happen in this country. And so we just don't know how to do it. And almost every other country in the world has been on the, has faced this down at some point or they've gone through it, right, where they've had an authoritarian regime or they've been a dictatorship and they've come out of that in some way, shape or form. That's never happened here. It's never been a fear here since the very beginning. And so we just, we can't comprehend it. And I got a New York, I'm not complaining about the New York Times headlines here, but as an example, when Trump gave that insane speech at the Department of Justice where he goes to the Department of Justice, a place where presidents almost never go, and gives a speech calling out his enemies while surrounded by his self appointed law enforcement hacks. And it was like, Trump gives unusually fiery speech at the Department of Justice or something like that, just like, we can't, we don't, no one knows how to talk about it. But there is a media environment change here too. Like, think about what it felt like in 2018 when people became aware that Trump was putting Kids in cages in detention centers and the outrage, it dominated the conversation. I mean, I was on a book tour at the time. I got, I lost all my interviews. Right. Because that's all I didn't want to talk about. For good reason. Right. That was the right choice. But it became the dominant national story. Now think about the first week, the.

[Jon Favreau]

First week when people flooded the airports because of the Muslim ban.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, that's the response. Right. That's another, that's, that's another point, is that there was, is that there was a way in which the quote, unquote, resistance was involved in attention getting tactics that did drive some of these things, which is not happening now to the same extent. But just think about everything you said about what's happening in El Salvador. If that had happened in a 2017, 2018 media environment, it would be a dominant conversation. But nothing can be a dominant conversation right now in the same way. And that's not just because Trump is a more effective flood the zone strategy now. It's because just the world has changed so much and people are living in these algorithmically designed bubbles. The power and reach and influence of the people who could drive the conversation on a mass scale is just massively diminished from where it was years ago. This is how this happens. This is exactly how it happens, is that people aren't paying enough attention and the people who are opposing it are not drawing enough attention or grabbing people by the lapels to make them pay attention. And we are headed someplace very dangerous.

[Jon Favreau]

I've been wondering if this also partly explains sort of the odd polling numbers for Trump that we've been getting, which is he's so underwater on the economy and it's like the one issue that's dragging him down the most and on a lot of other issues and his overall approval rating, it's not as low as you would think. And I would. I wonder if it's because the economy and inflation and cost of living is like the one issue that people are experiencing every day, even if they're not tuning into the news and the Trump show version two and all the other stuff is just not breaking through as much because people aren't paying as close attention and because the media environment's so diffuse.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Your news consumption is not correlated with your exposure to high prices. Right. Like your news consumption is correlated with whether you know about what's happening in El Salvador or shutting down Department of Education or any of the other 12 terrible things we're going to talk about on this pod in future pods. But Whether you could follow no news. You still have to go to the store and buy eggs, gas, food. You have to pay your rent, your mortgage, et cetera. And that's always been true, right? Even before we entered this fucked up era. The one issue that you cannot make go away is the economy. Whether that's layoffs, high unemployment, or inflation.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Silenia]

Listen, as Silenia tells us why she chose to vaccinate her daughter, I definitely.

[Mother]

Felt like the pros far outweighed the cons. The diseases that I am protecting my child against, they're still here. And at the end of the day, it's my job as a mother to keep my child safe.

[Silenia]

Talk to your child's doctor and learn [e-mail] brought to you by Merck.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay, before we get to the new 2024 postmortem, it's time for our weekly corruptdate. What do you think, Dan?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think it's pretty good. I think that's pretty good. We've been through a lot of options here and I think that's well done.

[Jon Favreau]

It gave us corruptate. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who's become a real hype man for the administration's griftiest stunts. Was focused this week on the only commerce that matters. The kind that puts more money in the pockets of the world's richest man. Here's Lutnick on Jesse Watters with a free ad for Elon and free stock tips for all of us.

[Howard Lutnick]

Buy Tesla. It's unbelievable that this guy's stock is this cheap. It'll never be this cheap again. People are going to be dreaming of today and Jesse Waters and thinking, gosh, I should have bought Elon Musk's stock. Elon Musk is probably the best person to bet on I've ever met. He's building the coolest robots you've ever seen. Go online and look up Optimus. It is the coolest thing you've ever seen. We're all gonna be buying robots. They're gonna cost about $30,000. You're gonna be buying a Tesla robot. And anybody who doesn't buy a Tesla robot is going to be silly. No one's gonna be key in anything.

[Jon Favreau]

Here's a tough headline from Axios that followed Lutnick's appearance. Tesla Falls After Commerce Secretary recommends buying Stock. That's a good one. What do you think? Are we all idiots if we don't buy $30,000 Tesla robots?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It feels like there's a real chance those robots are gonna turn on people and I don't want them in my house.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, you got $30,000 laying around, you buy a Tesla robot, Buy some stock.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The Commerce Secretary telling people to buy an individual stock like everyone else has to specifically put like in, like, lead their tweets about it. This is not financial advice. Right. And here he is, a official of the federal government who is theoretically an expert in the economy, just pitching the stock of the President's biggest donor.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, his boss was hawking Tesla's on the White House lawn. So it's kind of all fits.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Did you see that Pam Bondi announced, quote, severe charges against violent Tesla arsonists who she's accusing of domestic terrorism. Now that vandalism against Tesla dealerships is domestic terrorism. Up to 20 years in prison for lighting Teslas on fire.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I have three thoughts on this. One, don't light Tesla's on fire. Don't light anything on fire. No. Arson is bad, right?

[Jon Favreau]

Arson is bad.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Two, I don't know.

[Jon Favreau]

That's our squishy centrist opinion.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's right. Make it the episode title. Arson is bad. 2. Arsonists should go to jail. Although I'M not sure this is technically domestic terrorism. And three, there is a bigger thing here in it. You see it in the Lutnik comments. You see it on Trump selling Teslas in the White House lawn is that the world's richest man spent $300 million to get this president elected. Now he has basically bought a government right where you have the Commerce Secretary pitching his stock, the president pitching his cars, and the Attorney General of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer going before the cameras to threaten the people who are protesting at his dealerships. Specifically, she's not doing that for other things. She specifically, she like he has his own government to do his bidding. And it is truly wild.

[Jon Favreau]

It's a good corrupt date. All right, so we're finally getting some higher quality data about what happened in the 2024 election. At least higher quality than exit polls. David Shore and the folks at Blue Rose Research combined precinct level data from across the country with the 26 million survey responses they got from voters in 2024 to give us a pretty clear picture of who voted and why. Here are a few of the big takeaways, none of them too surprising, but they really just sort of confirm some of the initial findings that we have been going over over the last couple of months. Number one, Hispanic, Asian, young voters, immigrants and politically disengaged voters swung towards Trump by significant margins. In fact, politically disengaged voters swung towards Trump by so much that if everyone who stayed home in 2024 had voted, Trump would have won the popular vote by nearly 5 points. Number two, Trump's favorability rating on Election Day 2024 was almost exactly the same as it was on election day 2020. The difference was that Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party or much less popular. And number three, the issues most important to voters were the issues where trust in Democrats were lowest cost of living, the economy, inflation, taxes and spending. The next most important issue to voters was health care, which is the first issue where Democrats were more trusted than Republicans. In fact, the only five issues that were ranked important by more than 50% of voters where Dems were also trusted more than Republicans were health care, poverty, housing, mental health and Medicare. And by the way, except for Medicare, maybe mental health, health care, they weren't trusted that much more than Republicans.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And Republicans are trusted more on Social Security than Democrats.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. Oh, thank. Thank you. Yes. All right, where do you want to.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Start so we can get into the details here? And I encourage everyone to read the whole study. I will stipulate at the beginning here that this report has some controversy in Democratic circles. There are people who disagree with some of the conclusions from it. This is one report, right? We're going to get other reports. I think David's a pretty smart guy and he's been pretty pressing on a lot of things. But we're looking at one report here. My takeaway from this is it adds some granular detail to what we've been talking about since the election. But one way to think about these results is that everything that we thought was going to happen after Trump was elected in 2016, to politics, right, to the Republican coalition, to everything, the exact opposite happened, right? It just, the idea was that Trump was, this, was, came in with this racist rhetoric and he was doing all this horrible immigration stuff and he was going to forever cost the Republicans votes with Latinos and black voters. Instead, he made gains there. And in fact, now race politics actually become less racially polarized with Donald Trump as president, where black and Latino voters who identify as moderate conservative are now voting for Republicans at levels similar to white moderates and conservatives. Young voters. The belief was that Donald Trump was going to radicalize all these young voters to be Democrats. The view was that in 2017, people who were young voters then were the most progressive generation in history. Now, by some measures, you could argue that Gen Z is the most driven mostly by young men, but not entirely that Gen Z is the most conservative generation out there. And this is one stat here that just, we have to just germinate on. A 75 year old white man was more likely to support Kamala Harris than an 18 year old white man. That's the exact opposite of what everyone thought after Trump won in 2016.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, it's also the numbers around naturalized citizens.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is going to be my, my other huge.

[Jon Favreau]

Our best estimate is that immigrant voters swung from a Biden plus 27 voting bloc in 2020 to a Trump plus one group in 2024. He fucking won. Immigrants.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And this is, and they note here, this is not a small group either. Naturalized citizens make up around 10% of the electorate. Now again, this is, that is based largely on precinct data. And of course, you can look at heavily immigrant precincts and look at the swings. You know, Lovett and I were talking about this. You might also guess that, okay, maybe in these precincts where there are a lot of immigrants, maybe the white voters swung more or maybe other voters swung more or Americans by birth swung more. But when you combine that with their survey responses and you look at the districts they looked at or the precincts they looked at which were heavily, heavily immigrant. That just can't. That can explain maybe some of it on the margins, but it can explain.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The whole swing that can make a little bit difference in the battleground states. When you look at precincts in like Queens and the Bronx and some of the other ones where we saw huge Trump swings, this is one of the reasons that Trump was that the Republican advantage, electoral college diminished this time because Trump was making these gains in immigrant communities in blue states.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Are there any charts or other takeaways that jumped out at you the most? And we could always put the charts up on the screen because we have the presentation here.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I think I would say the immigrant chart was the one that really stuck out to me because that once again just goes. Runs counter to the. It's the exact opposite of what you would think. Here is someone who ran on building a wall to keep immigrants out, who passed a Muslim ban or signed a Muslim ban to keep immigrants out, who put kids in cages and then ran on mass deportation in his next presidential campaign. And he won immigrants. And we have to really dig in to why that is and where it is. We failed to be able to make a case to those voters before we move on.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, overall, real quick, what kind of messaging strategy and attention strategy would you take from this data that you already, that you haven't already taken away from the results?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So when you look at like that chart that runs issue salience with issue trust, it obviously it's devastating for Democrats. But when you look at that, you sort of are saying how do we win power back? And so you have. There are two potential paths there. One is you can look at the issues that voters already care about that they don't trust us on. And we can try to win trust back there. And we should definitely do that. That is a medium and long term strategy. But in the short term, the strategy is to erode trust in the Republicans and Trump on those issues. And you're seeing that already on inflation in the economy. And so we have to keep doing that. There is a seesaw effect to politics where if one side goes down, the other side goes up. So that will help us there. But the other strategy that you have to think about is you have to is can you take the issues where we are trusted and make them more front of mind and salient. You're never going to get, as we were mentioning before, you're never going to make inflation not top of mind to voters. The economy will always people's personal Financial system will always stop. But immigration is an issue that Trump made front of mind. He made it front of mind even before the border crisis. He created the idea that in people's minds, completely fabricated, that we were living in a wave of, of migrant and immigrant crime. And Democrats are defeatist on this sometimes. And so we sort of say we don't have the power, the gumption, the megaphone, the messengers to take an issue that people trust us on and make it a top issue. Some of that is true, some of that's a reality of our messages vision. But the thing I look at is that health care. You say there is our opportunity right there and there's two opportunities right in front of us. One, the Republicans in Congress do not act. Premiums are gonna go up for millions of Americans because the additional funding and tax credits that went in place during the pandemic are gonna expire this year. And so Trump reforms gonna raise people's premiums. And the second one is Medicaid. Right. Medicaid is healthcare for many Americans. It pays for so much of healthcare. You know, what is it? Something like 40% of births in America are paid for by Medicaid. And the Republicans wanna gut that. And so here's a chance where there is an issue that voters care about, where we have a huge trust advantage on. And we have two opportunities to drive that message home this year. And raising trust like these things are, they're not, they don't operate independently of each other. Right. If we raise the salience and trust of us on health care, that's going to help us on the other economic issues. Right. Because it's going to seem like we're fighting for people and that's, that's what we have to do.

[Jon Favreau]

Almost as you were talking, I was looking at some of the issues. There's a cluster of issues in this chart where people rank them above 50% importance and people trust Republicans more, but only slightly. So those are issues that I think we could like. And education is one. We just talked about that. Housing, we're slightly more trusted. Civil liberties and privacy, which they are destroying right now. The Trump administration. Social Security, which is talked about, and political division. So all issues that people really care about and they trust Republicans slightly more, those seem like issues that we can claw back some, some trust on. Okay. So because we're nerds, we have a lot more we want to get into on this. If you really want to hear us go deep on this, you can listen to the rest of this conversation on Dan's Subscriber Exclusive Show Polar Coaster. We're going to talk about it now and then we're going to have the rest of the conversation on Polar Coaster. So you can listen by subscribing to Friends of the [e-mail] friends. So go check out the rest of this conversation because we have a lot more to talk about with these results and we're going to answer some of your questions about them. Two Quick Housekeeping Notes Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams Check out the latest episode. Stacey faces each executive order, legislative policy, and every news cycle, no matter how terrifying or absurd, by asking, what can we do to learn more about what's happening? What can we do to solve problems, however small, and how can we find the kind of hope that can sustain our work in difficult times? Listen to Assembly Required every Thursday on Amazon Music. Also check out the latest episode of Inside 2025. Dan and Alyssa are on to break down what a government shutdown actually is, who's affected the political fallout, and what really goes down behind the scenes. To access this exclusive subscriber series, enjoy ad free episodes of Pod Save America and more. Subscribe [e-mail] friends or directly on Apple Podcasts. That's our show for today. Have a great weekend. Talk to everyone soon.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Bye everyone.

[Jon Favreau]

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 episode 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. Reid 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 Sengel is our Executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Heathcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelaviev, and David Toles. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America eas.

[Silenia]

Listen as Silenia tells us why she chose to vaccinate her daughter.

[Mother]

I definitely felt like the pros far outweighed the cons. The diseases that I am protecting my child against, they're still here. And at the end of the day, it's my job as a mother to keep my child safe.

[Silenia]

Talk to your child's doctor and learn more at yvaccines.com brought to you by Merc.

[Jon Favreau]

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