Trump's Art of the Fold

Summary

Pod Save America: "Trump's Art of the Fold" — Detailed Summary

Episode Information:

• Title: Trump's Art of the Fold
• Release Date: April 11, 2025
• Hosts: Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, with guest Dr. Atul Gawande

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1. Trump's Trade War and Economic Strategy

Overview: The episode opens with a deep dive into President Donald Trump's latest economic maneuvers, particularly his implementation of tariffs as a strategy to bolster American manufacturing. Trump’s actions have significant repercussions on global markets, consumer prices, and the overall health of the U.S. economy.

Key Points:

• Tariff Announcement and Market Reaction:
  • Trump's Announcement: Trump declared the largest tax increase in history by imposing tariffs on all imported goods, sparking immediate economic turmoil.
  • Market Impact: The announcement led to a staggering loss of over $6 trillion in market value within days. The bond market experienced a significant sell-off, raising concerns about a potential global financial crisis.
  • Tariff Pause and Adjustment: Responding to market pressures, Trump announced a 90-day pause on some tariffs but simultaneously increased tariffs on China and maintained a 10% universal tariff on most other countries.

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Favreau [02:58]: "Trump announced the biggest tax increase in history on everything we buy from the rest of the world."
• Dan Pfeiffer [05:00]: "Told you this was going to happen."
• Jon Favreau [05:13]: "Donald Trump is the best negotiator that there is."

Analysis: Favreau and Pfeiffer engage in a satirical discussion, initially praising Trump’s "Art of the Deal" approach. However, they swiftly transition into a critical analysis, highlighting the detrimental effects of the tariffs on American families, who are projected to pay an average of $4,600 more per family due to increased prices.

Notable Quotes:

• Dan Pfeiffer [06:21]: "The bond market is very tricky."
• Jon Favreau [07:12]: "Markets were cratering and you were worried about it, that this is part of your plan."

2. Implications of the Tariff Strategy

Overview: The hosts dissect the underlying issues surrounding Trump's tariff strategy, emphasizing the disconnect between political rhetoric and economic reality.

Key Points:

• Economic Consequences:
  • Increased Consumer Costs: Tariffs have led to higher prices for goods, affecting everyday Americans.
  • Investment Uncertainty: Businesses face hesitancy in hiring and investments due to unpredictable trade policies.
  • Global Financial Instability: Persistent tariffs, especially the universal 10%, continue to destabilize international trade relations.

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Favreau [09:11]: "The issues in the bond market have not been solved, and that's going to push up the cost of borrowing."
• Dan Pfeiffer [12:00]: "It's just the opposite. The rationale are all conflicting, and they don't make a lot of sense."

Analysis: Favreau and Pfeiffer sarcastically commend Trump's negotiation tactics while underscoring the economic chaos resulting from inconsistent tariff policies. They argue that Trump's inability to stabilize the bond market has negated any perceived strategic genius.

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Favreau [11:55]: "They're actively making it so that only Trump can levy tariffs and continue to tank the economy."
• Dan Pfeiffer [14:39]: "People are paying more, which is why Donald Trump is president."

3. Republican Support and Democratic Messaging

Overview: The discussion shifts to the Republican Party's unwavering support for Trump, and how Democrats can effectively counteract his economic policies.

Key Points:

• Republican Alignment:

  • Congressional Support: Republicans in Congress are pushing provisions that tie tariff powers exclusively to the President, solidifying Trump's control over trade policies.
  • Internal Conflict: Efforts to pass budget resolutions face opposition from moderate Republicans concerned about Medicaid and clean energy tax credits.

• Democratic Strategy:

  • Simple Messaging: Favreau and Pfeiffer advocate for Democrats to adopt a straightforward narrative that paints Trump as the sole culprit behind economic downturns.
  • Pressure on Republicans: They emphasize the importance of Democrats urging Republicans to reclaim tariff powers to hold Trump accountable.

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Favreau [22:32]: "Donald Trump is single handedly tanking the economy because he's a lunatic surrounded by sycophants."
• Dan Pfeiffer [25:25]: "Make sure that Republicans aren't just letting this happen. They are actively making it so."

Analysis: The hosts argue that Democrats should focus on the blatant economic failures under Trump, leveraging the public's frustration with rising prices and market instability. By blaming Trump and his aligned Republicans, they believe Democrats can galvanize support and shift the political narrative.

Notable Quotes:

• Dan Pfeiffer [26:20]: "People have to know that Republicans are on board with these price increases and they're so feckless and so lame that they are going along with it."
• Jon Favreau [27:23]: "Republicans who might run in 2028 need to face the consequences of these tariffs."

4. Executive Orders Targeting Trump Officials

Overview: The episode addresses President Trump's recent executive orders aimed at former administration officials critical of his presidency, marking a concerning authoritarian trend.

Key Points:

• Targeted Individuals:

  • Chris Krebs: Former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, dismissed for declaring the 2020 election fraud-free.
  • Miles Taylor: Former Department of Homeland Security official who exposed internal resistance within the Trump administration.

• Authoritarian Implications:

  • Security Clearance Stripping: Trump revoked the security clearances of Krebs and Taylor, severely limiting their professional capacities.
  • Directed Investigations: The executive orders instructed the Department of Justice to investigate these individuals for allegedly committing crimes by telling the truth.

Notable Quotes:

• Dan Pfeiffer [52:24]: "This is possibly the most authoritarian, scariest thing that Trump has done."
• Jon Favreau [53:49]: "Trump's strategy is to divide people and pick them off one by one."

Analysis: Favreau and Pfeiffer condemn these actions as classic moves by authoritarian leaders to suppress dissent and intimidate critics. They highlight the lack of significant Democratic response, attributing it to the party's focus on the economy over human rights abuses.

Notable Quotes:

• Dan Pfeiffer [55:47]: "This is how you continue our descent into authoritarianism."
• Jon Favreau [57:01]: "Democrats must speak out with solidarity to counteract Trump's divisive tactics."

5. Positive Developments Amidst Chaos

Overview: Despite the tumultuous economic and political climate, the episode highlights a few positive stories where public pressure has led to beneficial outcomes.

Key Points:

• Social Security Administration Reversal:

  • Doge's Plan Halting: After significant public backlash, the SSA abandoned Elon Musk and Doge's proposal to cut the phone hotline service, preventing potential chaos for beneficiaries.

• Immigration Rulings:

  • Supreme Court Decisions: The Court unanimously ruled that all deportations without due process are illegal, ensuring that individuals have adequate notice and opportunity to contest their removal.
  • Community Activism: In Sackets Harbor, New York, community efforts led to the release of a family wrongly detained by ICE, demonstrating effective grassroots resistance against harsh immigration policies.

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Favreau [63:22]: "It's horrifying that these kids had to go to a detention center in Texas."
• Dan Pfeiffer [63:11]: "People have to take to the streets and make their voices heard to push back against Trump."

Analysis: Favreau and Pfeiffer emphasize that collective action and public outcry can influence governmental decisions, even under a controversial administration. These instances serve as examples of hope and resilience, encouraging listeners to engage in activism and community efforts.

Notable Quotes:

• Dan Pfeiffer [63:11]: "The only way to actually push back is for people to take to the streets and make their voices heard."
• Jon Favreau [64:24]: "Public political pressure can make a difference, as seen with the SSA's reversal."

6. Healthcare System Challenges and RFK Jr.'s Influence

Overview: The conversation transitions to the deteriorating state of the U.S. healthcare system, exacerbated by policy cuts and misinformation promoted by figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Key Points:

• Healthcare Infrastructure Decline:

  • Agency Cuts: Significant reductions in funding and staff at health agencies like the FDA and CDC undermine public health efforts.
  • Measles Outbreak in Texas: A severe measles outbreak highlights the failure of public health responses, attributed to reduced funding and weakened infrastructure.

• RFK Jr.'s Misinformation:

  • Vaccine Safety Claims: RFK Jr. continues to propagate unfounded conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism, despite overwhelming scientific evidence proving vaccine safety and efficacy.
  • Policy Impact: His influence contributes to vaccine hesitancy and undermines public health initiatives, posing serious threats to community health.

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. Atul Gawande [78:56]: "This is not the right steps. The measles outbreak in Texas has spread to 20 states."
• Dan Pfeiffer [89:00]: "Democrats should be speaking out against Trump's mass deportation plans."

Analysis: Dr. Gawande provides expert insights into the catastrophic consequences of dismantling health agencies, emphasizing the critical role they play in disease prevention and public health. The hosts critique RFK Jr.'s pseudoscientific stance on vaccines, reinforcing the necessity of evidence-based policies to safeguard public health.

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. Atul Gawande [85:21]: "Vaccines are remarkably effective and have been a driver of our doubling of human life expectancy."
• Dan Pfeiffer [87:56]: "We have to stop the direction of travel here. Vaccines are safe and essential."

7. Conclusion and Call to Action

Overview: In wrapping up the episode, Favreau and Pfeiffer reiterate the critical need for unified Democratic messaging and proactive community engagement to counteract Trump’s destabilizing policies.

Key Points:

• Unified Messaging: Emphasizing Trump's detrimental impact on the economy and public institutions.
• Community Engagement: Encouraging listeners to participate in activism and support policies that promote stability and public health.
• Future Outlook: Recognizing the challenges ahead but maintaining a stance of resilience and hope through collective action.

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Favreau [67:07]: "This is how he went. This is how we continue our descent into authoritarianism."
• Dan Pfeiffer [69:38]: "It's absolutely crazy. It was a huge mistake to wave the white flag on that."

Analysis: The episode concludes with a strong call for Democrats to adopt clear, impactful messaging that holds Trump accountable for economic mismanagement and authoritarian tendencies. By highlighting successes in public resistance and the importance of protecting public health infrastructures, Favreau and Pfeiffer provide listeners with both a critique of current policies and a roadmap for effective political opposition.

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Additional Notes:

• Guest Contribution: The episode features insights from Dr. Atul Gawande, who provides a medical and scientific perspective on the ongoing public health crises and the impact of political interference on healthcare systems.
• Call to Action: Listeners are encouraged to stay informed, participate in community activism, and support policies that promote economic stability and public health.

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Conclusion: "Trump's Art of the Fold" offers a comprehensive analysis of President Trump's recent economic and political strategies, highlighting their far-reaching implications on the U.S. economy, public health, and democratic institutions. Through incisive discussions and expert insights, the hosts advocate for robust Democratic responses and community-driven activism to counteract the administration's destabilizing actions.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[Roman Mars]

Hi, I'm Roman Mars, host of the podcast 99% Invisible Design is Everywhere in our lives, but it's easy to not notice or take it for granted. 99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture. It's stories of who we are through the lens of the things we build. Like have you ever wondered why we use the 1kHz bleep sound to cover up inappropriate words on radio and TV? Or what aspects of infrastructure allow 5 year old in Japan to run errands by themselves while kids in the US are completely dependent on their parents or their parents cars? Or why the historic flag of South Vietnam shows up at right wing protests all the time? Or why people are obsessed with houseplants and when did we start bringing plants from halfway around the world into our homes to begin with? 99% Invisible will explore all of that and more every Tuesday. Follow and listen to 99% invisible wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jon Favreau]

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 Trump ordering investigations into two former Trump officials for the crime of telling the truth about him and the 2020 election. We'll cover the vote in the House on Trump's big, beautiful bill and why passing it may be a bit of an uphill climb. From here, we've got just a little bit of good news on the fight against Doge and deportations. Then Dan talks to legendary physician and writer Atul Gawande about RFKJR's mission to destroy the agency he now runs, which has already led to him forcing out the FDA's top vaccine regulator. But let's start with the latest on Trump's trade war. So I just want to quickly walk through the facts of what happened this week. No spin on the ball here, so you can all make your own judgments about the strategic genius of our president. First, Trump announced the biggest tax increase in history on everything we buy from the rest of the world. Then the markets tanked and lost more than $6 trillion in value over the course of a few days. Most economists and CEOs said that a recession was much more likely and Trump World responded by saying that they weren't backing down, that rumors of a 90 day pause on the tariffs were false, and that all the economic pain would only be temporary. Then there was a big sell off in the bond market, which happens when people believe that U.S. treasury bonds, usually one of the safest investments in the world, are too risky, which drives up interest rates on mortgages and other loans, which could cause a global financial crisis. Then on Wednesday, Trump suddenly announced that actually there would be a 90 day pause on some of the tariffs, but China would get hit with even higher tariffs and there would still be a universal 10% tariff on just about every other country. Though apparently he's going to spend the next 90 days negotiating trade deals with each of these countries. The markets recovered their losses and this was the reaction from Trump World. We begin with the art of the deal.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Told you this was going to happen.

[Jon Favreau]

Took great courage, great courage for him to stay the course until this moment.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Trump created maximum leverage for himself and now his team sitting pretty, taking meetings.

[Jon Favreau]

And doing deals that put America first.

[Atul Gawande]

Yeah, I know we had a massive.

[Jon Favreau]

Market rebound after Trump's 3D chess move tonight. You can definitively say this was not a walk back. This was not something that the bond.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Markets were cratering and you were worried about it, that this is part of your plan. Many of you in the media clearly.

[Jon Favreau]

Missed the Art of the Deal. You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

A huge win for the president.

[Jon Favreau]

A huge win for the country.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

His biggest accomplishment of the second term.

[Jon Favreau]

And there have been many. Donald Trump is the best negotiator that there is.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We're so fucked.

[Jon Favreau]

Biggest accomplishment of the second term. Wow. Even bigger than Gulf of America. Now, some of you may be thinking, isn't it more likely that the bond market sell off and the sudden prospect of a global financial crisis is actually what led Trump to back down? Well, if so, you are not the only one markets that persuaded you to reverse. I was watching the bond market.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The bond market is very tricky.

[Jon Favreau]

I was watching it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But if you look at it now, it's.

[Jon Favreau]

It's beautiful.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The bond market right now is beautiful.

[Jon Favreau]

But yeah, I saw last night where.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

People were getting a little queasy.

[Jon Favreau]

People were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippee.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You know, they were getting a little bit yippee. A little bit afraid. Unlike these champions.

[Jon Favreau]

It's just, it is just so classic that he has everyone go out there and say, big win. We didn't back down at all. This was the plan all along. It's strategy. Art of the deal. He's a genius. What are you talking about? Fucking bond markets. That's crazy. Mr. Trump, why'd you do it? Oh, yeah, there's a bond market. Fucking clowns.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They deserve everything they get.

[Jon Favreau]

So, sure enough, the markets tanked again on Thursday. Dan, do you think the problem is just that not enough people have read the Art of the Deal, have the markets not fully priced in the strategic genius of Donald Trump.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I was just thinking that we are probably weeks away from an executive order that ties access to federal education funding to making Art of the Deal required for summer reading.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm sure every world leader is going to get it. They're going to send a copy. They're sending them is start negotiating.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes, that's probably Howard Lutnick's. Howard Lutnick is right now just licking envelopes and sticking in copies of Art of the Deal to send all over the world. Look, what happened here is this immediate sense of relief on the first day that Trump was actually not going to drive the Car completely off the cliff. And then a lot of institutional players saw the opportunity to buy low, buy the dip, if you will, on some things. And the markets bounced back. But then everyone woke up and realized we were still fucked. That the three countries that still had large tariffs on them, Canada, Mexico and China, make up more than 40% of U.S. imports. That most of the things that we care a lot about, car parts, computers, electronics, smartphones, are all coming from these countries, toys. And it's going to be massively destabilizing. And then we discovered that the Trump administration couldn't even figure out what the exact right tariff was on China. And it was at 125, as they said. It's actually 145 because they put so many tariffs on and taken so many tariffs off, they forgot they still had the 20% fentanyl tariff on China. And so it just, it like it. We're still in a very, very bad place. There's a cap analysis out today which shows that actually, under this tariff regime we're currently in right now, with the increased tariffs on China, American families are going to pay more, on average, $4,600 per family than they would under the global tariffs that Trump. Reciprocal tariffs that Trump had in place on Monday morning.

[Jon Favreau]

Also, the issues in the bond market have not been solved, and that's going to push up the cost of borrowing. So if you want to get a mortgage, car loan, anything else, I don't know why you need a car loan, because it's going to be pretty hard to buy cars.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, that's why you need the loan, because they're so fucking expensive.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, it's funny. It's not funny. But yes, it was the bond market that scared Trump. We know that. There's a lot of other reporting aside from Trump just telling us. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was willing to push us into a recession, but not a depression, not a hero. That was what one of the sources for the Wall Street Journal article said. CNN found another source that said the bond markets did spook the president. So all the reporting matches up with, again, what President Trump just told us himself. Yeah, no, I think that. I think what happened this morning is. We're recording this Thursday. What happened this morning is, even if. Which we can talk about the, the prospect of Trump making deals with every one of these, the White House wants us to think that all the countries now are just lining up to make deals with Donald Trump because he has all the leverage. And they're. Please, Mr. Trump, please make us A better deal on trade. Say we make a deal with every one of these countries and get rid of the reciprocal tariffs that he imposed on them and somehow get a better deal there. Kevin Hassett, as top economic adviser was out today saying, but the 10% universal tariffs, 10% on every single country, just about every single country, he's never gonna get rid of that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Kevin Hassett is a particular moron. Like, just like he is just on TV all the time. He has no fucking clue what he's talking about. He's got a shitty green the whole time he's doing it. I mean, he actually makes Howard Lutnick look like an effective spokesperson. And that's saying a lot.

[Jon Favreau]

And then you realize, like, apparently the overall effect of tariff rate for the United States, when you, like, sort of average out all the different tariffs he's imposed together, it was about 27%. With the pause, it's down to 24%. When he took office, it was 3%. So I think everyone woke up, saw that, and was like, oh, yeah, we're still pretty fucked. And on top of all that, there's the uncertainty of what happens over the next 90 days and whether he gets rid of the pause after 90 days. And so businesses were thinking about hiring or making investments or opening a factory, all that kind of stuff. They can't do any of that because there's no certainty here in the United States or anywhere around the world. He has just, like, thrown the whole global economy into turmoil for nothing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And companies can't. Who have factories overseas, whether it's in China or elsewhere, are nervous to place orders because there's, like, a long lag time. So if you want to decide how many iPhones or certain types of Nike sneakers or whatever else you want to have available in the holiday season, you're making those decisions now, but you have no idea what they're going to cost. Then you probably wouldn't make as many iPhones if you thought they were going to cost 145% of what they cost already. Or the same thing with shoot what he has done. And we can get into all the politics of this, but for the markets, for world leaders, for business people who have to make decisions about hiring and investment and new products is he can't be trusted. It's like we have a true lunatic surrounded by morons in the White House. And now you cannot, like the fundamental idea of any sort of stability in American government. Economic policy has been forever eroded and cannot come back when Donald Trump is president, even if these things don't come back. You just puts a tariff on, takes it off. Could they add another one? Like a normal person who was. It's hard to imagine a normal person dumb enough to have gotten themselves in the situation, but who backed off at the 90 day mark, like right here, and put in the place in 90 day pause. The natural assumption would be there's no way they're doing this again in 90 days. But could you really say that with Trump? Of course not.

[Jon Favreau]

I really feel like it's underappreciated that this 10% universal tariff is gonna stay in place too. Because that is just, I mean, like, here's what I'm trying to figure out. We should talk about the politics now, which is say, I'm trying to figure out like his way out of this. Because I think what the White House has in mind is, you know, they're gonna start announcing deals with countries, right? And whether or not we actually make out on these deals, and it's a, it's a good deal for the United States. They're gonna pretend it is, right? They're gonna, We've seen this with what they did with Canada and Mexico, right? Like, oh, Canada appointed a fentanyl czar. And so they, they, you know, they've art of the deal again. Trump, Trump bent them to his will, you know, all that shit. So they're gonna make any deal seem like it's a huge win for Trump and they'll probably love the idea that he gets to go out and announce deals one after another. But the facts on the ground and the economic reality is only going to get worse as the, you know, automobile tariffs, the Chinese tariffs, which is huge. And I don't think that's going to get solved anytime soon. And the 10% universal tariff, like all that's still going to be in effect. And so that's going to make the economic reality worse, even as Trump is going out there and touting whatever deals he may get with some of these countries. So I like, I don't know how he gets out of this one.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's no path out other than getting rid of all the tariffs and lowering costs. Like, what people are going to pay attention to is not the fucking press conference with, to announce the deal with Madagascar to lower the price of vanilla, right? What they're going to notice is when they go to the store and everything that was cheaper a month ago was more expensive now. That is why Donald Trump is president. His prices went up. And so it is just truly insane. I can't just overstate this enough that a president who was elected to strengthen the economy and lower prices has decided to crash the economy to increase prices. It is the exact opposite of what he was elected to do. I joked about this in my newsletter, that I said it'd be like if George w. Bush, after 9, 11, his first response was to give Bin Laden the Medal of Freedom. Like, what are we doing?

[Jon Favreau]

Even the stated rationale for this trade policy, this trade war, which does not betrays a lack of understanding even of the basics of economics or how trade works. Right, Even the stated rationale. And again, they're in conflict. One is like, oh, we're going to bring in a whole bunch of revenue from all these tariffs, but if trade is rebalanced, the revenue goes down. And then the other is, oh, we're going to bring back manufacturing, we're going to bring back jobs to America. We're going to be boomtown. Right? If even if that worked, it wouldn't be for years and years and years. So is the Trump administration's bet that the American people really have a stomach for economic calamity and sacrifice because they know that years from now manufacturing will come back here? You think that's what they think.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But also you have Howard Lutnick out there talking about how robots are going to replace all the workers.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. No.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So, yes, maybe you are on shoring our supply chain, I guess, but it's not like there's going to be this renaissance of blue collar jobs in a world of automation. But also some of the things are not built in factories, like I saw Chris Hayes posted this. But it's like, we're gonna build a banana factory here, like the tree factory, because we're the lumber. Like, it makes no fucking sense. And there are things that we just don't grow or make in America. Like, are we gonna, like, we don't make shoes in America. We make very few shoes in America. We're all of a sudden gonna, we're gonna build an entire shoe industry here.

[Jon Favreau]

Coffee, how long's that gonna. Bananas, avocados, lots of other fruit and vegetables. Tons. Like, it's, it's idiocy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's pure idiocy.

[Jon Favreau]

The other argument they're trying to make is, oh, well, you know, Trump said do not retaliate and we won't retaliate. And because none of these countries except China retaliated, that's why we took off the retaliatory tariffs and now we have isolated China and the rest of the world will join us in putting pressure on China to cave. And it's like, why is the rest of the world gonna join us? What makes you think that after you've threatened to, you know, take over Greenland, invade Canada, make the Gaza Strip into some kind of a resort, you pissed off all of our NATO allies, you're beating up on Europe every chance you can get. And by the way, they're already now talking to China about maybe, like, maybe doing a deal with them.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But. Yeah. Do you know why we even. We still haven't.

[Jon Favreau]

China seems like more of, like, the more stable superpower right now.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, we put a 10% tariff on all of their products. You know who did put a 10% tariff on all of them? China. So it's like we are pushing people into the arms of China. It's the exact opposite. The rationale are all conflicting, and they don't make a lot of sense. You can't say we want to bring. This is all about a manufacturing renaissance. We're also going to gut the CHIPS act, which is entirely designed to build a manufacturing industry here in America. But then every part of it does the opposite of what they say it's going to do is like, it is truly one of the stupidest things that any person, let alone president, has ever done. Like, it's so disconnected from what they think it's supposed to do.

[Jon Favreau]

The only way I see they get out of this is, like you said, they do a couple deals, and then when people are forgetting about what they've promised in keeping some of these tariffs on permanently, they just get rid of all the tariffs. Yeah. I mean, they claim victory. We did a big deal with Europe. We did. We finally, you know, President Xi was like, thank you, Mr. Trump. Thank you. This was a great deal. You know, you got. You're such a master negotiator. I could learn from you. That's what he told me. And he wrote me all these letters and he loves me now. So they do this whole thing, and then he's like, and so I'm getting rid of all the tariffs because it's a new American century and everyone loves it, you know, whatever. And it's not. None of it's true, but at least he gets rid of the tariffs. That's the only thing. Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, Kevin. Who gives a shit what Kevin Hassett said? Like, do you think Trump's like, well, we can't undermine Kevin Hassett's credibility. That would be wrong. We need this guy. So, yeah, they can say they're going to keep them on and then just take them off at some point. But Trump's reality here is tied to prices, and as long as he is jacking up everyone's prices, he's going to pay a price. The medium term consequences of this are baked in. Even if he takes them all off tomorrow, he has already done real damage to the medium term economic growth in this country, to job creation, to investment, to gdp, all of that. I don't think you're going to get a lot of that back. Will the stock market bounce back? Maybe slowly over time? Sure. But all these people who are supposed to build all these factories here and all that, that's not going to happen now. No one's going to do that.

[Jon Favreau]

No. Could we narrowly avoid a recession? Yeah, maybe, but I don't know. Chances of a recession only dropped a couple percentage points, at least with JP Morgan's calculations based on the pause. So not out of the woods there at all. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Let's talk numbers. Traditional in person therapy can cost anywhere from $100 to $250 per session, which adds up fast. But with BetterHelp online therapy, you can save on average up to 50% per session. With BetterHelp, you pay a flat fee for weekly sessions, saving you big on cost and on time. Therapy should feel accessible, not like a luxury. With online therapy, you get quality care at a price that makes sense and can help you with anything from anxiety to everyday stress. Your mental health is worth it, and now it's within reach. You might not think you need therapy. I never thought I needed therapy. But if you try it, you soon realize, as I did, it's just really nice to sit down and chat with someone. And even if you're not having mental health challenges, therapy is really helpful to maintain your mental health. It feels good. It's great to talk to someone. So give it a whirl. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. It's convenient, too. You can join a session with the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Plus, you can switch therapists at any time. Your wellbeing is worth it. Visit betterhelp.com PSA to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com PSA what's poppin, listeners?

[Laci Moseley]

I'm Laci Moseley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each Week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Wanna know about the fake errors? We got em? What about a career con man? We've got them too. Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented. Cause representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole byer, Ira Madison III, O'Brien and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jon Favreau]

I feel like the the simplest and most effective message for Democrats here is that Donald Trump is single handedly tanking the economy because he's a lunatic surrounded by sycophants. Am I missing anything any more complicated than that?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No, you got it exactly right.

[Jon Favreau]

Cause looking around, it seems like it might be a little more complicated.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, I would say the reality is very easy for everyone to see. Like the best messages are the true and obvious ones and this one could not be more true and obvious. And this is a thing that has broken the tariffs, the insanity of the tariffs. The market crash has broken through to people in a way that nothing else has broken through thus far in the Trump administration.

[Jon Favreau]

In Trump 2.0, you're watching your 401k disappear will do that, you know.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I mean it's, you know, more than 60% of the country is invested in the market in some way, shape or form, almost are entirely in retirement accounts, but it's north of 60% and so people are tracking it. Crashes in the stock market are similar to gas prices in the sense that they're the stock ticker's on the tv, it blares across everywhere. Almost any news site you go to, it's on the front page. Particularly when there's a market crash, you see go up and down. So it's like even if you're not in the market, you're getting a lot of sirens going off about the economy being in trouble.

[Jon Favreau]

And this is before the price increases. Really?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, even if the market was doing great, the price increases are the much bigger political problem for him. I think the macro political problem for Trump and the way that why this is important for Democrats to hammer this is the entire reason that Trump is acceptable to a certain segment of voters is this belief. It's a false belief, but it's born of the fact that he's a wealthy businessman, that he played a fake businessman on a reality TV show for a decade and then oversaw an economy that people have very fond memories of. Now he really did nothing to make that economy good. He just managed to not mess up Barack Obama's economy, but because of that, people believe that he and even some Democrats believe he is a competent manager of the economy. Is he corrupt? Yes. Is he a clown? In a lot of ways, yes. Did he spark a violent insurrection? Is he a convicted criminal? All those things, yes. But on the issue I care about most, he has this shit together. He knows what he's doing. And there is nothing that has happened over the last few weeks here that suggests he has any idea what he's doing. And I think he really has eroded the fundamental core of his political identity to voters. The reason why they support him despite everything else. Not the MAGA hat base, but just the rest of the country. That last 14, 15% of people who don't love Trump but voted for him. Those people are waking up to the idea that he is not what they thought he is. And that is tremendously. And that's why we've seen his approval rating sink precipitously over the last month here.

[Jon Favreau]

The only thing I would add about Democratic message is to make sure that we are bringing the rest of the Republican Party into this. Republicans in Congress and elected Republicans everywhere. Because, you know, we just on Congress this week, they want to insert a provision into the budget resolution bill that we're going to talk about soon that basically ties Congress's hands so that they can't take back the power to levy tariffs from the President United States, because Republicans, they don't want it. They want to make sure that Trump has all the power to do everything he wants. So they are all in. They are all in on the trade war. They are tying themselves to Donald Trump. I think people have to know that Republicans aren't just like letting this happen. They are actively making it so that only Trump can levy tariffs and continue to tank the economy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think this is a very important point, is that Democrats should be congressional Democrats, elected Democrats, just people on the streets should be pressuring Republicans to take back the tariff power from Trump. And I know that that is not going to happen. Like we, you know, Jake Sherman of Punchbowl has tweeted a thousand times now that there's no way that the House is going to do that. And even if you could get together 60 senators, you're not going to get to a veto proof majority. That doesn't matter. We need people to know that this is a choice Republicans are making, that they are on board with these price increases and they're so feckless and so lame that they are going to go along with it and we should make. And these members are going to be under real political pressure in their states as these prices go up. Right. It's the farmer, it's the farm states who are going to be suffering mightily from not being able to export to China. It's going to be every person who is trying to buy electronics from China, just across the people trying to buy new cars, all of that. And we want to make sure that you're exactly right. Donald Trump is not on the ballot in 2026, but all these Republicans are and they should pay a price for this.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And all the Republicans who might run in 2028 if he lets other Republicans run, if he lets us have a presidential election.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's a topic for another day. Yes, right.

[Jon Favreau]

It's a topic for another day. But like, you know, your JD Vances, your marker, Rubio's like reporters, if they talk to them, everyone should get on the record about how much they love Trump's tariffs. Cuz they're gonna say it. And we want the video of them talking about how much they love this for when they try to run in 2028 and be like, what the tariff as the economy has cratered then. And be like, what were you talking about? I don't know if I liked that at the time. I don't, I wasn't, I wasn't saying that was great. I was quietly upset about it and trying to convince him to stop it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, it really, it's just like as we think about the politics going forward, it really is as if it's the equivalent of George W. Bush walking into Lehman Brothers and just collapsing the whole thing himself. Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And then bragging about it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And then bragging about it. Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I did it. Like standing on the rubble of Lehman Brothers with his megaphone too soon.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I don't know. I don't like, I don't even know like who's be offended by that. I don't even know.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. So we've also heard some Democrats criticize Trump's tariffs, but also offer qualified support for some tariffs. This has sort of been a running theme here that people are getting mad about online. Gretchen Whitmer most notably gave a big speech in D.C. this week where she, you know, she disagreed with Trump's tariffs. She was very clear about the damage that they're doing to Michigan right now. But she also said she understands the, quote, motivation behind them. And then she said Quote, I'm not against tariffs outright, but it is a blunt tool. You can't just pull out the tariff hammer to swing at every problem without a clear defined end goal. What did you make of that and this message in general? Why do you think some Democrats like Whitmer feel like they need to offer some qualified support for the idea of tariffs? What's going on here?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I mean, I think it, we should be very clear that globalization and trade has hurt lots of people in this country. Right. And that is particularly true in Gresham Whitmer, state of Michigan. Right. Which we've seen as manufacturing base in the auto industry suffer greatly from trade deals. And so she is responding to this idea that not everyone benefits from trade. Right. And tariffs have been in the past a useful way to push back. I think the problem here is we're overcomplicating the simple. And when you talk about it in this way where you say, as you said, she criticized, she took Trump to task on, it's not a suggestion that Gretchen Whitmer was mealy mouthed about this at all. She was not. But I think when you the way a lot of Democrats have done it to say like Trump's doing it wrong, but tariffs are a useful tool. He's just using the tool wrong suggests that there is some sort of it like almost buys the premise of Trump's argument. And I think it's just the better argument here is that he is a chaotic clown stumbling about the world stage, hurting American families by raising prices for no reason. And the better I think the way to do it is, you know, like let's take the tariff power away from the president. Right. And so we, I think we can be, we're going to negotiate, you know, tough and fair trade deals. We're going to push back against countries who try to do it, but this is not the way to do it. Right. And I think just, I just feel like you're wedded to this old way of thinking. I think, and it just, it dilutes the message. And I think Gretchen Whitmer, who may be president of the United States one day, can still use tariffs if she sees fit in the appropriate way a few years from now when she's president without having, even if she doesn't mention them now, you know what I mean?

[Jon Favreau]

I have a policy problem with this and then a political problem. I'll start with the policy problem.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Let's hear your policy problem because that's why people tune into this podcast.

[Jon Favreau]

The policy problem is that there's Not a lot of good economic data, and I'm being generous there, that suggests that tariffs work in terms of bringing back lost manufacturing. Right. If you have a nascent industry that you're just trying to grow, that's brand new, maybe, you know, tariffs can help grow that industry in the United States if there are national insecurity implications. And you want to be able to make sure that we have the capacity in the United States to produce something here and not rely on another country that may be an adversary. There's an argument for tariffs. Trump tried a bunch of tariffs in his. Not as many. Not as many tariffs as now, but some in his first term.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, Biden kept him on, too.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And you know what? I remember headlines in 2020 and 2021 talking about how Trump's tariffs cost Michigan auto jobs. Right. And so I do think that, like, some elements of labor and some folks in the Midwest who are right, that globalization has hollowed out manufacturing in the heartland of this country. I get that. But the remedy, tariffs as a remedy, has not proven to work very well. And look, I mean, we'll see what happens with the Biden's industrial policy was some tariffs, but also some, like the chips act. Right. Like actually investing in manufacturing in this country, giving incentives and grants and credits to companies who are going to create manufacturing jobs here and all that. Right. So I'd like as. As part of a larger industrial policy grade. Now, let's talk about the politics of all this, which is I get that right after Trump won, Democrats were like, well, he's more popular than he's ever been. And, you know, it was a definitive loss and all this. We are now at the point with Donald Trump where if you look down the road to 2026 and then 2028, and you think that Donald Trump is going to somehow regain the popularity he had right after this last election, then I can understand trying to tread carefully and saying like, well, here's where I agree with Donald Trump, but here's where I disagree. But if you're looking at everything that's happened over the last month and you're looking at what he's done, his economic policy now, which, as you just said, he was elected to be the president to bring down prices. Now we're witnessing him becoming very unpopular on the issue that he's supposed to be, like, had the highest approval on the economy, and that's just going to keep going down. And so if you look ahead, like, you have to imagine a world where if the economy craters or things keep Going south. Don't you want to be a Democrat who now was saying, this fucking guy is tanking the economy and I want no part of this and I want no part of the policy. And it's absolutely crazy. And just like go at him knowing that even if, you know, he's still sitting at 46, 45, 44% now, like, it could get worse. And if it does, you want to be one of the Democrats who was saying, now this is fucked up like, and it's very different, but it's almost like Barack Obama coming out against the Iraq war when the rest of the party was for it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I, that mean, that's going to be more, that's a more problematic analogy than your rubble of Lehman Brothers, I'll tell you that. True, true. But so I'd say a couple of things to that. One is, I don't think what the Democrats who are mentioning that tariffs could be useful or I don't think what they're trying to do is make some sort of common cause with Trump voters or understand. Like, I don't think that's what's happening. I think what's happening is that there remains large constituency of the Democratic Party who believe that tariffs are a useful tool and that that includes, among others, organized labor.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And that there may be times, for instance, on like steel and aluminum and other things where you can push more, where you can raise the price of imports to the point that it will push people to using domestic steel. Right. Like, but my issue here is not about the policy utility of tariffs. It's just like, let's have a simpler, clear message and it's the message that you have there. I just don't, I think people online are a little too, you know, Joshua has a very long, very smart op ed in the New York Times today about this point. Exactly. He takes it to a policy direction, which is this is a reason the Democrats could have. We can use the fact that Trump is acting this way and has shown the failure of protectionism to become, you know, more like develop a message that is more forward looking on trade. I think the fear, I think the fear that some people have is that we're going to make the classic mistake of Donald Trump is, is now tough on trade. So we're going to become the biggest defenders of globalism and free trade possible. Right. Oh, you attack the New York Times. I will subscribe the New York Times fucking twice. Right. Oh, you're going to attack institutions. I am going to read the Declaration of Independence of my Children. Online every day. Right. And so you can see this world where like there is a nuanced position between every single thing that Donald Trump has said about trade is wrong and he is a. And everything and that global trade is great. And I think there are people trying to find, maybe in artfully trying to find the right place in the middle there.

[Jon Favreau]

And I'm just saying we should have an alternative vision, even if the easier political argument is just Donald Trump's tank the economy. But I think that trying to get, trying to message the nuance of tariffs as a tool. I agree with that. And actually Whitmere had a couple lines like this in her speech which I thought was good. She's like, where I agree is we need to create more jobs in America. We need to make more stuff in America. We need to have manufacturing in America. And then I think Democrats need to talk about the vision for making sure we are building things and creating jobs and creating manufacturing and new industries of the future Right. In America. And we can, and you know, a couple ways to do that are making sure that we're investing in education, which Donald Trump is gutting, make sure we're investing in innovation and science and medicine and technology, which Donald Trump is gutting. And you can talk about like, what is going to attract new businesses and jobs to this country instead of just, you know, leaning on, you know, discussion about tariffs and policy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I do think I'm very much in agreement that we need like a, a positive, forward looking vision about how to create jobs in this country and like lift people up and making sure that you're not poor when you work, but, like, just pretending that we can unwind globalization.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I don't know, just, I understand the impulse to avoid Democrats responding to the terrorists by putting on I was for NAFTA T shirts.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And like, like, we're gonna, like, put up, like, we're gonna put up trade barriers and just like pretend that like, you know, globalization was just a policy choice and not the fucking march of technology.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm sorry, people just chanting tpp.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm getting, getting a little Obama now. But that's just my, that's just my annoyance. All right, so even as we're all trying to figure out Trump's next move, there are some pretty serious questions about what happened on Wednesday before he made his strategic retreat. A few hours before Trump announced the pause on reciprocal tariffs, he went on Truth Social with a simple message. This is a great time to buy. Signing it djt and in fact if you did buy on that tip, you would have made a lot of money. Obviously, posting a buy now message on social media is not in itself insider trading because it's very outsider, it's very public. But some folks think that that may have been a cover your ass move and are wondering if any Trump officials, family members or other Trump allies in Congress or elsewhere were tipped off about the pause before it happened. Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego sent a letter to the White House asking what happened. Elizabeth Warren went to the floor to call for an investigation as well. It doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to believe there might be something to this, but of course, we don't know. Here's Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon with two billionaire friends, Charles Schwab. Yes, that Charles Schwab. And car racing magnate Roger Penske.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is Charles Schwab. It's not just a company, it's actually an individual. He made two and a half billion.

[Jon Favreau]

Today, and he made 900 million. He's in financial.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Being with someone named Charles Schwab is so funny. Like, was the Monopoly man not available?

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, on the day you pause the tariffs, the markets rallies and a bunch of rich people got rich, I mean, it's just like unfucking believable thoughts on this. Like, is this a, you know, are we heading into conspiracy theory ville? Is it real? What do you think?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think it's a subject worthy of inquiry by law enforcement officials, including potentially the Attorney General of New York.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I'm sure Pam Bondi's on it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, the Attorney General of New York has some jurisdiction here because the markets are based in New York. And there is a. I think it's called the Martin act, which is a specific New York State law where Letitia James would have some jurisdiction here. So it's worth looking into. It's very believable that these people would do such things. And we should look into it. Would also note that there was something called the Stock act that passed when we were in the White House. And so these government officials would theoretically have to disclose trades made. Now, I don't think it would tell you the timing, but it'd be interesting to know who sold stocks on or bought stocks on this day.

[Jon Favreau]

Certainly would be very interesting. Love to see that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm not sure who's enforcing the Stock act in this administration, but law, who's.

[Jon Favreau]

It for these days? I don't know. Trump and the Republicans are not simply content imposing the biggest sales tax in history and crashing the economy. They're also hard at work trying to pass a massive tax cut for the rich, some of which will be funded by massive cuts to health care and food assistance, and some of which won't be paid for at all. On Thursday, the House barely passed the Senate's budget resolution by a vote of 216 to 214. This was after Mike Johnson had to delay the vote because the usual kooks in the caucus didn't think the cuts were deep enough. What ultimately got them on board, according to Chip Roy, was a verbal commitment from Republican leadership in the Senate on three big things. At least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits, and a dollar for dollar match between new tax cuts and spending cuts. This may be a bit challenging for Senate Republicans to achieve because they have people like Susan Collins in their caucus who already voted no the first time around in the first budget resolution because of the Medicaid cuts that now haven't gone anywhere. And apparently at least four Republican senators have now come out and said that they would vote against the bill if it gets rid of the clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction act, probably because those tax credits are already being put to use creating jobs and businesses in their states. What do you think happens here? How do they make all this math work?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

If you take people at their word. I know that's a ridiculous thing to say, but if you take these people at their word, the people who say that they cannot vote for cuts to Medicaid of this size, and the people who say they cannot vote for a bill without cuts to Medicaid of this size, with those people, you can't pass it. Like, if those people all stick by what they believe it cannot pass, the math does not work. I mean, the politics of cutting Medicaid are. Let me put. Let's look at this way. The politics of cutting taxes for rich people, even if you just you paid for it with nothing or you paid for it with only things people didn't mind, Right. If you paid for it all with foreign aid to whatever. Right. That is still quite unpopular. Just the mere idea of giving rich people and corporations tax cuts, very unpopular, cutting Medicaid on its own, incredibly unpopular, opposed by like 80% of people in some polls, including like 60, more than 60% of Republicans to pay for tax cuts for the rich with cuts to Medicaid is like an A plus answer in a Political Science 101 class about how to commit political suicide. Like, that is like it is. You couldn't, you couldn't find something more unpopular than that. And so will these people do that? Are they willing to do it? Are you got a bunch of Republicans who are in probable districts, Are they really going to vote for that? And they need all those votes. You can't pass it without that. The Senate, a lot of these people are in states where Medicaid is. Protecting Medicaid is part of the state's constitution. Their states have Medicaid expansion to pay for health care. They have cutting the clean energy tax credits as jobs from their state. So it seems very hard that they are. It seems hard to imagine that they will pass something that will adhere to this budget resolution. Even if you listen to what John Thune, the Senate leader, said, he really basically put a giant loophole and said, we'll try to do the best we can. He did not really commit. He did not view the commitment as firm as Chip Roy did, if you will.

[Jon Favreau]

And I can't tell. I mean, usually it's the moderates who blink, but that's always the case in the House. And I do think when you get to like your Susan Collins is and your Lisa Murkowski is, like, they give less of a shit about getting pressured from Donald Trump because they have been here before and stood up to him before, most notably on him trying to appeal the Affordable Care Act. So I don't know how they get this done. I mean, you can see a lot of Republicans in Congress already saying, well, we're never gonna touch the benefits for Medicaid. We're just gonna get rid of waste, fraud and abuse. And at the levels they're talking about with the cuts that they need, I don't think that's possible. Susan Collins herself said this today or yesterday. She was saying like $880 billion. I don't know how you. There's not enough waste, fraud and abuse to get it to $880 billion. They could probably find some. You could probably do a bunch of Medicaid reforms and maybe even a work requirement which Democrats wouldn't support, but we don't support. But you could then maybe get, I don't know, a couple hundred billion of savings. There's no way you're getting up to 880 billion. And so then if you're trying to get the cuts out elsewhere, like, you've got Medicare, you've got Social Security, you got the defense budget, like, you just don't have a lot of other options. So then maybe you're left with a Bill that doesn't make those cuts does make sure it does the tax cuts. But then, you know, what do your Chip Roys do and your Freedom Caucus members do they just get threatened by Trump and pass the bill maybe.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, ultimately at the end of the year if Congress says nothing, taxes are gonna go up on almost every American. And so which will really be a double whammy for Donald Trump that he raised prices and raise taxes.

[Jon Favreau]

I was thinking about that, I think about that this week.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And their Republicans are not going to let taxes go up on every American. Like they, they may go right up to the deadline, but like one possibility of how this could end is they could say that, you know, given all the economic turmoil that is happening, we are going to just extend them for two years unpaid for or they'll come up with some small number of cuts. They'll cobble something together. Right. Maybe they'll get some part of the inflation Reduction Act. Maybe they will. You can find some Medicaid stuff, like a smaller number that is bad but doesn't get to like the core benefits.

[Jon Favreau]

And so, or like a Medicare or like a Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security Commission that comes up with the cuts and the next two years. And, and if they don't set it all up for, you know, 2026 or 2028 when you know, yeah, like every.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Part of this process from the, from the start has been to just kick, just punt the ball down the field and then worry about the problems later. And there is like at the end of the day, the last move. The way to do that is a short term extension. This is what happened to the Bush tax cuts.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They were extended in 2010. Now, different situation because we had a Democrat in the White House and Republicans were about to take over Congress. But what the ultimate decision was just we can't figure this out right now. And so we're just going to. And an argument of like economic uncertainty coming out of the recession. We're not going to raise taxes at this point, so let's just deal with this later. And Obama got a big tax cut for payroll tax cut in exchange for that to put some juice in the economy. But you can see, I just think that, I find it hard to imagine that they're going to solve this problem. Maybe Trump can make all these people vote for it, largely unpaid for. Maybe he can do that. He's gotten them to vote for a lot of other stuff. But these people are all some of the biggest liars in the history of America. If they will actually do that.

[Jon Favreau]

Where do you think they're going to find the money for universal basic income for every person who lives in Greenland? Because I don't know if you saw, but there's a New York Times story Thursday about how they are moving forward on trying to pressure Greenland to join the United States. And one idea being floated by the Trump administration is to give every Greenlander $10,000 per year, per person.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

How many people live in Greenland?

[Jon Favreau]

57,000.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's actually pretty cheap. And they get, I think they get 600 million a year from Denmark. So we're going to try to. I guess we're. Can you imagine though? Can you imagine the politics of that? We're going to give the people who live in Greenland $10,000 a year, every single person. While Europe costs are going up, while your taxes are going up, while you're cutting your health care, your taxes are going up. Throw that one in a fucking poll.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Your cost of living is going to go up $4,600 this year. And we're going to give $10,000 to people of Greenland.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, paid for by you. You're going to pay for it. I want this to happen so badly. I would do it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because you want Greenland.

[Jon Favreau]

Because I want Greenland. Because I'm going to move there. Pod Save America is brought to you by Bombas. What if I told you the most important part of your spring cleaning routine is your sock drawer? Yep, you heard that right. It's time to ditch any mismatched tired pairs and refresh your collection with some fresh bombus.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[Jon Favreau]

I might need to do that too because I have a lot of holes in my socks I love.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[Laci Moseley]

What's poppin, listeners? I'm Laci Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess. The show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Wanna know about the fake errors? We got em. What about a career con man? We've got them too. Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole byer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jon Favreau]

Okay, we gotta talk about two more executive orders that Trump signed on Wednesday. In the midst of all of this, he did it in front of the cameras, the press, White House staff, and for some reason, Gretchen Whitmer. The orders target two members of Trump's first administration, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor. Trump not only stripped them of their security clearances, he also directed the Department of Justice to investigate them. Miles Taylor, you might remember as the Department of Homeland Security official who wrote the briefly famous and briefly anonymous op ed in the New York Times in 2018 titled I Am part of the resistance inside the Trump Administration. He has since come out and he's been a vocal critic of Donald Trump in the press. Krebs was. Chris Krebs was head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and said in 2020 that there had been no fraud in the election, which Trump fired him for via tweet. Notably, Krebs later testified in front of the January 6th committee where to even begin here. That was wild. Watching it live was fucking wild.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is possibly the most authoritarian, scariest thing that Trump has done. Right. Not to just reiterate what you said, but he signed two executive orders targeting individual Americans by name and directed the government to investigate them for the crime of criticizing the regiment.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And said that. Oh, I think treason. It was treason, like, just was saying.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Throwing that around, you know, a crime punishable by death.

[Jon Favreau]

Right, right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And that has like. And I'm not sure why this is not a bigger deal. Obviously, there's been a lot happening this week, so I understand that there's limited bandwidth, but this is like. And maybe people like, well, you know, I think even probably if you're talking to, like, reporters about this, maybe other Democrats are not talking about it, they would say, well, no one's investigated them yet. They still may. It seems. You know, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of. There isn't a lot in this version of Trump. There's not a lot of, let him talk and then we'll just let it fade away. It's like he talks and people do what he says. But even if they never charge him with crimes, the entire goal here is to make it to scare the living daylights out of anyone who wants to criticize the administration, to essentially to penalize you for free speech. Which is fucking ironic given the free speech warriors who surround this president and what he talked about in the campaign. But, like individual Americans by name, he signed a piece of paper directing the Department of Justice to investigate an American for the crime of criticizing the president.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's it. For. And. And for. And for telling the truth about the 2020 election.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And like, it was. And everyone's just like, okay, cool, we're just going to let that happen now. And like, you know, if they do get investigated, hopefully they can find law firms that will take their case, because I just saw in the New York Times, too, he's on the cusp of making a deal with more law firms. In fact, he also announced that he's going to be forcing. And I don't know if he'll Is able to do this or they will accept it, but he's gonna force some of the law firms that he already made deals with to take on coal companies to help defend coal companies.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They're probably doing that anyway, honestly. But, I mean, think about this. You're Miles Taylor and you're trying to get a lawyer. Like. Like a firm is going to have to have a meeting to decide if they can take on Miles Taylor or Chris Krebs as clients. Because if they're not already on Trump's hit list, they will be on Trump's hit list for that. And all of a sudden they're not allowed in federal buildings anymore and they have to cut some terrible deal or become part of this lawsuit. I mean, it is. And it's really bad shit.

[Jon Favreau]

Really bad. Let's play out the investigation. They are sort of investigated, but the people, either people are like, I can't really do this, there's nothing here. This is ridiculous. Or a judge is gonna throw it out, whatever. You know, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, they both have jobs, they have livings. Like, are they going to, are people going to do business with them? Are they going to have clients again? Are clients going to be scared off of that? Like, they, they now lost their security clearances, which I know a lot of people have. But there's just, there's a, there's a whole host of second, third, fourth order effects here. Are they going to be threatened, intimidated by fucking MAGA crazies online or at their home? Like, it's just, it is out fucking rageous and it's pretty wild that it just hasn't made that much noise and that there aren't more people out there defending Miles and Chris and saying, no, this is like, this is too far.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like, we have two problems here. One, three problems. Yes. One problem is that this happened in the middle of a global financial crisis spurred on by the idiocy of his, of a president. So that is going to suck up a lot of oxygen. So I understand that. The second thing is that a lot of people are not going to want to get involved here because they don't want to have their name on an executive order or their law fir firm banned from federal government buildings or their university, have their funds impounded until they can agree to some sort of deal. And so people are afraid to speak out, which is the whole fucking point to begin with. The other thing is that Democrats have not, not enough Democrats feel emboldened enough to speak out about this stuff. And I think part of that is not that they're afraid of speaking out about Trump. They're not. Like, I don't think that at all, but I think that they, like, there is a real belief that the best way to beat Trump is to talk about the economy. And therefore that's what you should do. And that's what they're doing this week. I ultimately think that that is a Mistake. I have a lot to say about that, maybe in a different forum, but I think this is a, that is part of the problem is that no one has an incentive to speak up here. And when no one speaks up, more bad things happen, Right?

[Jon Favreau]

And it's also, it's Trump's strategy and every authoritarian strategy to divide people and pick them off one by one. And, you know, I'll target a few law firms and then a few will make deals with me, and so then they'll be weaker because the other ones don't and the other ones will be scared. And I'll pick a few, I'll pick off a few colleges and I'll pick off a few politicians and a few former administration officials to get investigated. And I only, and, and everyone else is too scared. And it's like a collective action problem. And this is why, like, people need to, this is why, like, the hands off rallies were great. This is why it was good that Obama went out and said something. This is why it's good that Cory Booker did the filibuster speech. This is why it's good that more and more people are speaking out. Like, there is, we have to, there has to be some solidarity here. Because if his job is to pick people off and divide us against each other, then the antidote to that is for people to, like, speak out with one voice and stand up for each other. Even if, like, you're worried about yourself or you're worried that it might happen to you or it's someone that, you know, you don't think it could happen to you. Like, people have to start coming together and not be afraid because this is how he went. This is how we sort of like, continue our descent into authoritarianism. You think Gretchen Whitmer was looking around for a fire alarm to pull while this was going on? I mean, she was right in the Oval Office and you know, her office, which I completely believe, her office came out with a statement afterwards. It was like she had no idea that these EOs were going to be signed. She had no idea there was going to be a press avail in the Oval Office. She had met with Trump, she had criticized, she, she criticized him directly or she told him that the tariffs were shitty idea before he did the pause. Not that she, like, you know, was the one.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Maybe she was someone get those TikTok stories, right?

[Jon Favreau]

You never know. But so she gets, so she ends up in the Oval Office. You can imagine Trump doing this, right? Like, he's, he's, he's nice to her. In person. Then he brings her in, and then she has to see this. And then he calls her out because he wants everyone to know that she's there.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And allowing this to happen. And then, like, what do you do if you're Gretchen Whitmer?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. I mean, I feel like, obviously never going to the OS with Trump. That's just a general rule. But you can just see how you're in the White House with the President. I'm doing this event. Come on in here. She obviously didn't. I will go to my grave believing she obviously would not have gone if she'd known what it was about. I don't think. They probably didn't even know there was a press event. He just brought her over. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

But I do think I thought about this one for a while. There is a. There's a sliding doors moment here for her where, like, you know, she's taking some criticism now for the speech and everything and whatever. It's like, people will forget about it in a while. But there's also a version of this where he signs the eos, he says something to her, and she speaks out about it, like, right there in the Oval while the cameras are on, like Janet Mills did, and suddenly she's a fucking hero.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And now, look, the risk is she was trying to get stuff done for Michigan. They talked about some invasive species of fish, and the president was gonna help her with.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Is it the Asian carp?

[Jon Favreau]

It's the Asian carp, Dan. It's the Asian carp. We've been there. We all know. Yeah. We've dealt with it ourselves. It's the Asian carp. And I think I was dealing with this in the fucking Senate office.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You were? Yeah. It's a big deal in Illinois.

[Jon Favreau]

It's an Illinois thing, too. There was a military base she was trying to help keep open or whatever. And you can make the argument if you're her. I'm. My job is to represent the people of Michigan, and I wanted to help the people of Michigan. And so having a constructive relationship with the president is the best way to do that. Gavin Newsom did this around the fires. Right. Like you, you can see the rationale behind it. But I think Democratic politicians, particularly Democratic politicians who may want to be president or just run for high office, have to start thinking, if this is not normal politics anymore, if this is not even the first Trump term anymore, but this is something much scarier and much more serious than do I need. Like, is the best way to represent my constituents. Just like bringing home the bacon and talking about the economy? Or do I have to use my position and the platform that I have to speak out and to fight this guy and to show that I'm not afraid to fight this guy so that other people won't be afraid to fight this guy? Because that's what, like, a real leader will do. And I realize that that takes like, it's, it's a, it's a different thought process. It's not going to come to you from your consultants or polls or anything else. There's some risk to it. But I do feel like we're at a moment where Democrats who take that risk will be rewarded, certainly by the voters, at least by Democratic voters.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You see that in the crowds, right? The crowds who are showing up for Bernie and aoc, for instance.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like, you've seen that in the crowds that showed up for Chris Murphy and Maxwell Frost when they did their town, their town halls recently, like, or the event you guys did with Ro Khanna.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There is a value in speaking, like, I don't know enough of the circumstances to know, like, what was actually possible for Gretchen Whitmer. But your point about a tendency to respond to an extraordinary moment with ordinary politics, which is my main criticism of Schumer and what he did on the budget bill, stands for the party, for much of the party right now.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, I agree. Stipulating that most everything is awful right now. As we've made clear throughout the show and most shows, there are a few rays of hope out there that we want to mention from this week. One example, after a huge public outcry, the Social Security Administration has decided not to move forward with Elon Musk and Doge's plan to cut its phone hotline service. This is a quote from the Washington Post story about this. Beneficiaries began lining up at field offices across the country, clutching driver's licenses and asking if they must prove who they were in person. Phone wait times ballooned and the agency's website started crashing almost daily. Under a crush of panicked callers and visitors besieged by angry constituents, lawmakers demanded that the acting commissioner end the chaos. Now. After nearly a month of chaos and backlash, the Doge plans are dead. How about that?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's exciting.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. What do you think was this? Do you think this was a result of real pressure or was just a catastrophically bad idea destined to fall under the weight of its own stupidity?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, there have been a lot of catastrophically bad ideas that have not yet fallen under the weight of their own stupidity in this administration.

[Jon Favreau]

Good point.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I Think. Look, people showed up. They made their voices heard. That is the only tool in our toolbox right now to push back. Right. The Congress is not going to do it. Republicans in Congress certainly aren't going to do it. Democrats don't have the power to do it. The courts, and we'll get to this in a minute, can do it, but there are limits to what they will do here. The business community is not going to step up. The tech companies are not going to step up. Universities are cutting deals with Trump. Law firms are cutting deals with Trump. The only way to actually push back on what Trump is doing, to stop him from doing the worst things is for people to take to the streets and make their voices heard in ways big and small. And that's what happened last weekend, and we have to keep doing that. Is that the exact reason why these changes were made? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know. But the fact that people. This is a thing that Trump did that everyone yelled about, and they yelled about it and they called and they showed up and they had to back down is proof that we can actually, with public political pressure, make a difference here.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I totally agree. On immigration, we got two good rulings from federal judges in New York and Texas, pausing Trump's Alien Enemies act, deportations in their jurisdictions, or at least requiring hearings for detainees before they can be removed. Those rulings were directly the result of Monday's Supreme Court ruling where the court overturned Judge Boasberg's pause on deportations to El Salvador, but more importantly, ruled that all deportations without due process are illegal. All nine justices agreed that every person has the right to ample notice and ample opportunity to challenge their removal. So not the huge win that Trump claimed. And literally, as we were recording, we just got the news that the Supreme Court has decided unanimously that the government must facilitate the return of. Of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. This is the Maryland father that they, with basically no evidence, decided was Ms. 13. And then the government admitted that they sent him to El Salvador in error where, because he had legal protections not to be deported to El Salvador that a judge specifically gave him. And I haven't read the opinion yet, but, yeah, they, they're. They've told the government to facilitate his return. Uh, this is the case that J.D. vance tweeted at me and said that I obviously hadn't read the court document about this because he was Ms. 13. Well, J.D. vance, I guess you didn't fucking read the court document because all nine Supreme Court justices, including Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, think that this guy should be returned. Fuck you two. To Stephen Miller, who also asked me if I wanted to live in neighborhoods with foreign terrorists. Well, the Supreme Court does not believe this is a foreign terrorist because they are telling the government to facilitate his return. So that is some pretty good news from the Supreme Court.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's very good news, and I hope the government fits all this. Good news.

[Jon Favreau]

I was gonna say it's good news for now. The. The truly dark and horrible news will be when the administration tells all nine members of the Supreme Court to fuck off. If that happens, then we're in really, really bad territory.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Or they tell what's his face, Salvador to be.

[Jon Favreau]

Which they. Which they could. Which they could. But it is. It is. I do think it is good to know that even this Supreme Court, and especially all nine members, do not believe, as the Trump administration seems to believe, that they can round up people in this country and send them to a fucking gulag in El Salvador with no due process just because the Trump administration tells us, based on whatever evidence they feel like they don't even want to share and won't share, that these people are alleged gang members and that even if.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And the more. Even more alarming thing, that even if they know they sent the wrong person, they don't have to bring that person back.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, no shit. And one more good immigration story the other day we talked about how in a small town in upstate New York called Sackets Harbor, ICE raided a dairy farm, and they had a warrant for one undocumented immigrant. But then once they got him, they decided to just search the whole neighborhood, and they seized a mother and her three kids, an 11th grader, a 10th grader, and a third grader, put them in handcuffs, sent them to a detention center in Texas. One of the kids teachers called the principal, and together they got the whole town activated to protest and demand the kids return. Teachers played a huge role, made calls to state officials between classes. So did the county Democratic Committee. This is all according to the Washington Post. They held a rally. Like, a thousand people in the town showed up. They got the governor involved. They finally got the family released, and the kids are now back in class. And the best part of this story is that this is serious Trump country. Trump won. Jefferson county, where Sackets harbor is by 24 points. And this is Borders are Tom Homan's hometown. He owns a house in Sackets harbor, and he grew up there. And one of the marchers at the rally had a sign that said, humans up home and down. Which great work Absolutely. Love. And I don't know, I just think it's. Look, it shouldn't have happened. And it's horrifying that these kids had to. Had to go to a detention center in Texas and apparently, like, one of the kids was just fucking uncontrollably crying the entire time because he was, you know, he was a third grader, of course. Third grader. Imagine a third grader going to Texas and then the other third graders in his class and his teacher being like. But the whole town, even though they voted for Trump, the whole town came together and rallied and protested. And I think if the people in that town can do it, then people all over this country should do it, too.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I have two thoughts on this one. What happened there should embolden so many people in this country to speak up on behalf of the people who are being treated this way. And it also just makes me so furious at the refusal of Democrats, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and their campaigns to talk about Trump's mass deportation plans. Because if you can talk about what it like, not just recent arrivals or criminals or all of that, but understand that there are people who are embedded in this community, children who know no country other than this one being put in handcuffs and being sent somewhere and deported, that you can rally the country around that. And we wave the white flag on that. And it was a huge mistake.

[Jon Favreau]

Huge mistake. And again, it is a false choice to think that we, we can't have a message on immigration that and a policy on immigration that emphasizes that, you know, we have laws in this country and we want people to come here legally and some people are going to be deported. And that's how there's no false choice between that and speaking out against this policy, which is rounding up people who are legal residents and green card holders and sending them to this fucking prison for the rest of their lives based on no due process like it is. It is unconscionable. And if you as a Democrat can't draw the distinction between a normal immigration policy and this, then I don't know what you're doing in politics. All right. Speaking of immigration this week, Tommy sat down with Lindsey Tuslowski, the co founder of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. She's the lawyer for Andre Hernandez Romero, the Venezuelan makeup artist who's been disappeared to El Salvador for having tattoos that ICE mistook for gang symbols. The full conversation is on our YouTube page, but we wanted to play an excerpt for you all here.

[F]

Let's just start with the basics, like.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Andrey and All of these men have been thrown in this prison in El Salvador.

[F]

We can't speak to them, we can't hear from them.

[Jon Favreau]

We know nothing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You know, they can't speak for themselves.

[F]

What can you tell us about him?

[Atul Gawande]

Well, I can tell you a lot about what we learned before he went. But like you said, I can't say anything about what has happened over the last more than three weeks now because he's been completely incommunicado. And that means no journalists, no lawyers, no family members. And even, you know, organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross and others who would normally be able to speak with people in detention have not been able to speak with him or any other detainees that we're aware of. Andrey came to the US in August of 2024. He was seeking asylum. He's a gay man. He's a professional makeup artist. He worked at a state run TV station in Venezuela. He was persecuted there because they wanted him to put up pro Maduro social media posts. He didn't want to do it. He was actually physically beaten as a result. He was also harassed and physically assaulted because of his sexual orientation. So he fled like so many other Venezuelans and came to the US to seek asylum. He initially tried to come in one time and was told that he needed to make a CBP1 appointment, which is this app that during the Biden administration they were asking people to use in order to get asylum or in order to apply. And he went to Tijuana, he made that appointment. He waited over a month for that appointment and then he entered the US Once he was in the US he was in ICE detention the entire time. So he's never even been in the United States for one moment as a free person. From the moment he crossed at the border until the moment they forced him and disappeared him on a plane to El Salvador, he was in custody.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So he was unequivocally not a threat to anyone in the United States at any time.

[Atul Gawande]

Absolutely not. And just, you know, we've now in researching for his asylum case and doing his declaration and collecting evidence in speaking with his family. You know, I've been asked many times, is it possible that he is, you know, a gay makeup artist masquerading as that when he's really a Trend Aragua gang member. The truth is the same could be said about you or about me. It's outside the realm of what seems to be possible. And specifically, as a lawyer, I would say they've never presented any evidence that would indicate that that is True. All that they submitted were pictures of the crown tattoos on his wrists, which have his mom and dad's name and the crown tattoo, along with an article from Newsweek that says that this imagery, along with many other very common types of tattoos could mean that someone's Trende Aragua. What we know and what we would have presented had we had our day in court, had he been given any due process, is that experts have said there are actually no tattoos that indicate someone is a member of this gang. There's no, you know, singular tattoo that you could point to.

[F]

Yeah, I mean, there's a ven.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's a Venezuelan journalist who was talking.

[Jon Favreau]

To the New Yorker who said, quote.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Trende Aragua does not use any tattoos.

[F]

As a form of gang identification. No Venezuelan gang does.

[Jon Favreau]

So to hear the full conversation, head to our YouTube page, YouTube.com symbol podsaveamerica. And by the way, subscribe to our YouTube channel, Pod Save America because we are now doing a lot of YouTube only content when news breaks. We're just like running into the studio when we don't have a pod and we're just gonna do some YouTube and it's really important because right wing media is kicking our ass on YouTube and the more subscribers we have, the more subscribers that progressive media outlets on YouTube have. When people start searching for things, the algorithm will is more likely to bring up the good content instead of just send them down the rabbit hole of crazy right wing content. So really important to go on. And please subscribe to Pod Save America and we'll have all kinds of great content for you there. Okay, when we come back from the break, you'll hear Dan's conversation with Atul Gawande about all of the deeply concerning things happening in our healthcare system. But two announcements before we do that. We got a new episode of Polar Coaster out. Dan, tell us about it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Carol and I talked about how the tariffs and the reaction to the tariffs is just utterly devastating Trump's numbers and could presage the collapse of his presidency. The episode was so compelling that within two hours of its release, Trump paused the tariffs.

[Jon Favreau]

Just saying that's what did wasn't the bond market, it was Polar Coaster.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean this Polar Coaster might have affected the bond market too. It's got a lot it really punches above its weight.

[Jon Favreau]

Look, to celebrate this for one month only, this month only, we are offering a free 30 day trial of our Friends of the Pod subscription. With your subscription you'll get Polar Coaster. You'll also enjoy ad free episodes Pod Save America Pod Save the World. And now we've added offline and love it or leave it as well. You'll also join our Discord community where you can process and discuss the news with fellow listeners all around the world. This fantastic community of great people. Sign [e-mail] friends or directly through Apple Podcasts to start your free 30 day trial now. Also, because Trump just made everything more expensive, the Crooked Store is making our best selling T shirts cheaper. How's that nice? It's the perfect time to grab a piece that expresses what you care about, like a Don't Mess with Immigrants T shirt or a Touch grass tee for 25% off. The sale won't last long, so head to Qriket.com store to shop now. Pod Save America is brought to you by Rocket Money. You sign up for something, forget about it after the trial period ends, then you're charged month after month after month. The subscriptions are there, but you're not using them. In fact, 85% of people have at least one paid subscription going unused each month. Thanks to Rocket Money, you can see all your subscriptions in one place and cancel the ones you're not using anymore, saving you more money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money's dashboard gives you a clear view of your expenses across all of your accounts. Easily create a personalized budget with custom categories to help keep your spending on track. The new Goals feature automatically saves money for you so you don't have to think about it. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you. They automatically scan your bills to find opportunities to save. Then you can ask them to negotiate for you. They'll deal with customer service so you don't have to. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com Crooked today. That's RocketMoney.com Crooked RocketMoney.com Crooked what's Poppin listeners?

[Laci Moseley]

I'm Laci Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Wanna know about the fake errors? We got em what about a career con man? We've got them too. Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented. Cause, representation, matter matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole byer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Joining us now to discuss RFK Jr. The cuts to the country's health agencies and the government's response to the measles outbreak is Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon, a best selling author, and the former assistant administrator for Global Health and USAID and the Biden administration. Welcome to POD Save America.

[F]

Delighted to be here.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I want to start with the measles outbreak in Texas, which has taken the lives of at least two children. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Was down in Texas recently to meet with the family of one of the children who passed away. How do you assess the government's response to the outbreak so far? Are they doing the right things or things that someone who was maybe not a vaccine skeptic, as HHS secretary would be doing? What do you think?

[F]

Well, a lot of our attention has been on like what's he saying? Is he calling for the vaccine? And that is such a low bar. Like three months ago, if this happened or really in any other administration, you would have had the National Security Council pulling people together across all of the agencies, including cdc, the leadership at fda, also USAID and others working abroad because measles is a global epidemic. We have cases coming from abroad and we have spread in the United States. They would have had all of their clinical people together. We had what we called the doctors group that would get together on a weekly basis to look at crisis situations. And we don't see any of this happening. Right. You would see the HHS secretary or the head of CDC on calls every week with the states having the outbreaks and other states, public health officials to get on top of this. Instead, we've had spread to where a outbreak in West Texas has gone over the border to Mexico and also is cropping up in 20 states around the country. So this is not the right steps.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So not good is what you're saying.

[F]

Not good. And this is solvable. We eliminated measles in the United States. Our elimination status is at risk and we have one in a thousand kids dies. The fact that there are already three people who've died indicates that the counts that say that there might be around 500 cases are way under what the reality is.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What do you attribute the the response to do they not take it as seriously or is this just a government that is not set up to actually deal with a crisis? They don't have the right people in place.

[F]

I think it starts with the skepticism and then add in the there are multiple layers of destruction going on. Right? There is the attitude towards measles and the vaccine. But then there's the fact that there has been doge cuts across the government, including pulling $11 billion from state public health programs when they rescinded funds that were allocated during COVID for strengthening public health that shut down vaccination clinics in West Texas that were trying to vaccinate against measles. Then you have all of the work that has undone advisory groups, any independent assessments within the government on paths forward and you've purged CDC and FDA of many of their top vaccine people. This is a systematic dismantling in a chaotic and unsystematic way.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

As you mentioned, RFK Jr did say that the MMR vaccine was the most effective way to prevent measles. But in an interview on CBS and other ways he seems he can't help himself from raising some concerns about the safety of vaccines in general. Can you just talk a little bit about what he is getting wrong and what this science actually says about the safety of these vaccines?

[F]

He's got a million charges that he throws at vaccines. Here's the thing to know. We have reduced child deaths in the last 50 years by 75%. 40% of that reduction in child deaths has come from vaccines and 60% of the vaccine death reduction has come from the measles vaccine alone. We're now in a world where There is about 10 million children who are being infected by measles, where over 100,000 child deaths in the world. The United States shouldn't be joining that list. And so it's critical that we are stopping the direction of travel here. I mean we are undoing our global systems and our state and national systems for everything from NIH research on production of vaccines and improving uptake people's willingness to get vaccines where dismantling major parts of the expertise in the FDA around approving vaccines and have actions that have. One of the first actions of the FDA commissioner was to disallow approval of a novavax COVID vaccine even though it was recommended by the technical regulators. And then you have CDC guidance now under political controls. The direction of travel we see here is where technical expertise is being removed. Independence to make scientific judgments and recommendations is being undermined and communications are being put into the offices of the secretary or top officials who are political appointees. And so you're seeing more political controls over critical decisions and less technical expertise.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, along those lines, I think one of the biggest stories of RFK Jr's tenure at HHS thus far has been the ouster of Dr. Peter Marx, who headed vaccine regulation. In his resignation letter, Marx wrote that it became clear that truth and transparency were not desired by the secretary and that all they wanted was confirmation of misinformation and lies. Can you just talk a little bit about what his ouster means and what it could mean? And you mentioned the, the COVID vaccine where approval was delayed, what it can mean for, I assume the FDA has to approve a flu vaccine later this year. I guess assume a Covid booster at some point. What does this mean for just the day to day work that the FDA has to do to get vaccines out into the world?

[F]

Yes, you put your finger on it. Look, moving Peter Marx out and having him go was a sign of what was to come. But changing leadership is not an abnormal thing to do. What went with him was the top regulatory capacity and many of their experts. He oversaw a wide swath of work that ranged from vaccines to getting gene and cell therapies approved for the world. They were the ones who figured out how to look at sickle cell. We have a cure for sickle cell with a gene therapy now. And that was because of figuring out the way that you could actually safely regulate, test and approve such new tools. That entire infrastructure has now been weakened. It's alarmed the community, the biotechnology community. The United States has been the leader in gene therapy, cell therapy and in vaccine development. All of those industries now are seeing their net valuation hammered. They're seeing their confidence that they can move and be innovative by partnering with the fda. Harmed. It's hard for them to get communications the way that they used to. So this is the undermining of an entire industry. And it's a pattern we see in multiple areas. This is only one, to take another example, tobacco. The office of Tobacco control in the FDA and CDC have been eliminated for the large part. They still have reviewers. They can approve vapes. But the people who would issue, do the research, do the guidance, issue regulations, and then enforce the regulations that are out there. Those people are gutted. They're gone. And that's for one of our biggest causes of chronic illness in the country. So the claim is that they're trying to do good work by chronic illness. This is completely the opposite.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, that all goes along with basically this gutting of several of the health agencies. FDA, CDC. About 10,000 people have been laid off, although courts have stepped in. You've had attempts to gut funding for NIH research grants, other things. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what that means broadly for the health of the country. What is being lost by gutting some of these, by losing these staff in particular? I think people really worry about the NIH grants. You see headlines about how we've been on the cusp of breakthroughs and cancer and other therapies and other potential cures that are being delayed by these research grants. I want people to understand what the opportunity cost is to these DOGE cuts at hhs, to see the whole picture.

[F]

You have to understand that these are hitting every part of the health and science infrastructure that have made the US the leader in this space for a century. It starts with core research, basic research at the NIH, the purge of 10,000 people now. But it had been 10,000 people just a couple weeks before that as well. So you're seeing a quarter of HHS hammered at nih. That has meant all issuance of new research grants have been stopped. Research in areas around vaccine uptake and research in critical areas around disparities in maternal survival. These are being hammered for ideological reasons and that are extending to hundreds of millions and threaten to be billions of dollars of terminations of grants for universities, which are our core base of developing our future scientists across the country. If you have a child who wants to be a scientist right now out there or are a young scientist, your opportunities have been shut down in the space of weeks because graduate student programs have been frozen or rescinded, actually acceptances for programs. So that's the NIH side. They've also shifted decision making over grants from individual institutes like the Cancer Institute or the Infectious Disease Institute into the Director's office, which is where you have less expertise but more access to political controls. And that's the pattern you see now. Usually they go from NIH research becomes FDA proposed solutions coming from companies that, that take the work that NIH does and turn it into products. 99% of FDA drugs came from, started with contributions from the National Institutes of Health, the fda. We talked about the ways that it's been gutted or crippled in significant ways across the agency. There are many of their top experts and you know, nutritionists, drug experts, lawyers who know how to manage the regulatory processes, the communicators and coordinators. Those people are purged. Then you have guidance from the CDC also hindered. And then our effort to move it out into the world. Medicaid, we're looking at massive cuts, potentially Medicare, unclear what is intended there. And then at USAID where I led Global Health, you see it being entirely dismantled. 100% of the staff now terminated. And programs from global HIV control to domestic elimination of HIV are significantly hindered or dismantled.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

During the cabinet meeting with the president today and then an interview with Fox News, RFK Jr. Announced that by September he would have an announcement for the cause of what he said to be a massive increase in the number of autism diagnoses in this country. Let's take a quick listen to what he said on Fox News so you can respond to it.

[Jon Favreau]

So this is an epidemic like nothing we've ever seen before.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It dwarfs the COVID epidemic caused to our country.

[Jon Favreau]

These are children.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Covid was killing elderly people at the.

[Jon Favreau]

End of their lives.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is disabling children of their entire lives.

[Jon Favreau]

None of the vaccines that are given.

[F]

To children during the first six months.

[Jon Favreau]

Of life were ever studied.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We're going to look at vaccines, but we're going to look at everything.

[Jon Favreau]

Everything is on the table.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Our food system, our water, our air.

[Jon Favreau]

Different ways of parenting, all the kind.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Of changes that may have triggered this epidemic. In the cabinet meeting and earlier in this interview, RFK Jr says when he was a child, 1 in 10,000 kids were diagnosed with autism. Now he claims it's something like 1 in 31 or something like that. People hear those numbers. That's obviously very alarming and concerning. But this also, given what he said here and just the long running conspiracy theory about a connection between autism and childhood vaccines, just what's your response to what he's doing here and, and what's the full story? He's not telling us about the science.

[F]

Yeah. So let's unpack a couple of things. Number one is the rise in the rate of autism. We have become much more liberal about diagnosing people on the spectrum and we have much more respect for neuro atypical personalities and people and recognize also that there are different kinds of supports that enable people across that spectrum. There is not an indication that the most severe forms of autism have changed in their frequency. We don't completely know. So I can't rule out that there has been hidden within that some increase in autism. Second, this claim that we have not studied vaccines in children under 6 months or children under a year, which gets repeated. We have thousands of randomized patients in trials at those ages. For example, when the Rotavirus vaccine was approved. And so, you know, we have years of evidence that not only are vaccines safe, but as I noted before, it's the driver of 40% of the last half century's reduction in child mortality. We are in, you know, in my work at usaid, I've been working in places where they are swamped with measles and have hundreds to thousands of deaths. And that is not the world we need to return to. But we're seeing, because of poor approaches on public health, return of measles. We're seeing return of tuberculosis with highest rates of tuberculosis we've seen in a significant outbreak in Kansas. We're seeing now loss of control in HIV and abandonment of prevention programs where we were within years, within five to ten years of being able to stop HIV in its entirety. So what we see him doing is the classic playbook of pseudoscience. You cherry pick the data, you fall back on conspiracy claims that people aren't speaking the truth. And you have people who don't have a track record of expertise such as RFK Jr speaking to science and making claims that you take the mainstream scientists who actually have done the work in this area, developed vaccines, pediatricians who have overseen work in this space. And you have consistent evidence that vaccines are safe. They're remarkably effective. They've been a driver of our doubling of human life expectancy in the last century.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's another part of maybe this is pseudoscience as well, but we're talking about the vaccines. The anti vaccine part is probably the least popular or the least, although too many people support it. But least popular of the larger Make America Healthy Again or MAHA agenda. Another piece of this is fluoride in water. State of Utah just banned fluoride in water at the urging of RFK Jr. He was in Utah. To celebrate that, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator said he's going to look at this. What can you tell us about fluoride in water and what it's say, why these people are concerned and whether it's safe?

[F]

Well, there are some studies that at very high rates of fluoride you can have some damage from, from fluoride overdose, so to speak. We have very low rates of fluoride in the water. It's contributed to extremely low rates of cavities, which mean that, you know, people have their teeth in the United States, you know, as they reach 60, 70, 80 years of age in a way that, that we didn't used to anymore. Now there's lots of evidence that our, our oral hygiene has improved a great deal and questions about how effective fluoride really is at this point. But the fear mongering that is behind the notion that it needs to be, that it should be banned in states and not have not allowed in this country is not look, it's worth weighing out is it worth the expense and money at this point. And I think there's a legitimate discussion to be had on fluoride. But it is hardly a danger or a cause of major harm in the country.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It wouldn't be on the top of your list of things to address as opposed to the other things on the Maha agenda like clean air, clean water, those sorts of things which it seems like Lee Zeldin is less concerned about than fluoride, I guess.

[F]

Yeah. I mean, there are things on the, you know, they make America healthy again agenda that you named that are super important, like keeping clean air and clean water, which we are, you know, there's what they do, there's what they say and then what they do and what they're doing is stripping out work that is vital for addressing chronic illness, whether it's diabetes research, whether it's clean air, and now trying to open the way to repollute our cities in a way that we have not had in a long time. Get rid of our regulatory oversight of tobacco, which is still the biggest killer in the world when it comes to cardiovascular disease. And then we have had chronic issues in the United States with lead poisoning in poorer populations and minority populations. And that's a much bigger problem than fluoride when it comes to toxic metals and is a major driver of chronic illness and disease around the world. So, you know, is there work we need to do on nutrition? Is there work we need to do around addressing our diabetes and obesity? Is there work to do on pollution and clean air and clean water? Yes, they are not doing that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That seems like a perfect place to end it. Dr. Wandy, thank you so much for joining us.

[F]

Glad to be here. Thanks.

[Jon Favreau]

That's our show for today. Tommy Lovett and I will be back with a new show on Tuesday.

[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 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 Producer is Farah Safari. Reid Churlin is our Executive editor and Adrienne 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 Hethcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Keith Kirill Pelaviev and David Toles. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America east.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Hi.

[Roman Mars]

I'm Roman Mars, host of the podcast 99% invisible design is everywhere in our lives, but it's easy to not notice or take it for granted. 99% invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design in architecture. It's stories of who we are through the lens of the things we build. Like have you ever wondered why we use the 1kHz bleep sound to cover up inappropriate words on radio and TV? Or what aspects of infrastructure allow 5 year olds in Japan to run errands by themselves while kids in the US are completely dependent on their parents or their parents cars? Or why the historic flag of South Vietnam shows up at right wing protests all the time? Or why people are obsessed with houseplants? And when did we start bringing plants from halfway around the world into our homes to begin with? 99% invisible. We'll explore all of that and more every Tuesday. Follow and listen to 99% invisible wherever you get your podcasts.

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