← Pod Save America
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
01:46:50
Donald Trump's drastic new tariffs wreak havoc across the global economy, sending markets tumbling and powerful countries reconsidering their alliances—and it turns out they're based on fake math. Tommy and guest host Emma Vigeland, co-host of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, discuss how Democrats can turn Trump's disastrous "Liberation Day" into a win, Judge Susan Crawford's big victory in Wisconsin, and what Cory Booker's marathon filibuster can tell us about where the Democratic party needs to go. Then, Tommy breaks down Trump's tariffs with economics journalist James Surowiecki, who was the first to suggest that Trump's math didn't add up. Later, Tommy talks with former national security advisor and UN Ambassador Susan Rice about Signalgate, Trump appeasing Russia, RFK's assault on our public health, and more.
Loading summary
Transcript163 lines
- [00:00]
Tommy Vitor
Positive America is brought to you by Bilt. If you're a renter, you should be taking advantage of bilt. We can rack up points on groceries, travel, and nearly everything else. So why not on one of your biggest monthly expenses? With Bilt, paying rent finally pays off. There's no cost to join, and just by paying rent, you unlock flexible points that can be transferred to your favorite hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and more. When you pay rent through Bilt, you unlock two powerful benefits. First, you earn one of the industry's most valuable points on rent every month. No matter where you live or who your landlord is, your rent now works for you. Second, gain access to exclusive neighborhood benefits in your city. Built neighborhood benefits are things like extra points on dining out, complimentary post workout shakes, free mats or towels at your favorite fitness studios, and unique experiences that only Built members can access. And when you're ready to travel, built points can be converted to your favorite miles and hotel points around the world, meaning your rent can literally take you places. So if you're not earning points on rent, my question is, what are you waiting for? Start paying rent through Bilt and take advantage of your neighborhood benefits by going to joinbilt.com crooked that's J-O-I-N B I L T.com crooked make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you joinbuilt.com crooked to sign up for Bilt today.
- [01:18]
Emma Vigland
Ever wondered exactly how the US will fund trillions of dollars in debt? Or how China is building so nuclear power? Or what's behind the US Egg crisis? I'm Tracey Alloway. And I'm Jill Weisenthal. And we are the host of Bloomberg's Oddhots podcast. Every Monday, Thursday and Friday, we pull back the curtain on the financial forces.
- [01:37]
Tracey Alloway
Shaping our world, hosting the most interesting.
- [01:39]
Emma Vigland
Conversations in finance, markets and the economy.
- [01:42]
Tommy Vitor
Check out odd lots from Bloomberg on.
- [01:44]
Tracey Alloway
Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your pod.
- [02:08]
Tommy Vitor
Welcome to pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. Both John and Dan are away this week. Happy Liberation Day to them. So we thought we'd take the opportunity to mix things up a little bit. And what has turned into a wild news week thanks to President Trump's announcement about tariffs and subsequent stock market crash. So joining me today is my co host is the excellent Emma Vigland. She's the co host of the Majority Report with Sam Ceder and one of the smartest political analysts out there. Emma, great to see you. Welcome to the show.
- [02:38]
Emma Vigland
Oh thank You, Tommy, for the kind words. I really appreciate you having me on today.
- [02:42]
Tommy Vitor
I'm very excited to have you on. We are going to talk about the politics of Trump's tariffs, the Democratic Party's big win in Wisconsin, some, some signs of hope about how Democrats are fighting back and how to fix some of these lingering divisions between the moderate and more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Do you think we can heal the wounds from 2016 today? Can we finally do it?
- [03:03]
Emma Vigland
I mean, never say never, but we're gonna, I think, move the, move that.
- [03:08]
Tommy Vitor
Ball along, gonna move the needle. I mean, jokes aside, I am really like excited to talk to you about this because I know you come from more of like the dsa, you know, Bernie wing of the party, but you are also pragmatic and constructive and smart and thoughtful. So I just appreciate that about you. And I think it's a good balance in the of the show and a good conversation to have and a timely one. So you guys are also going to hear my conversation with a longtime economics writer named James Surwiecki about the details of Trump's tariffs and why the White House's tariff math just made no sense. Then you're gonna hear my interview with Susan Rice. We recorded that on Wednesday. She's the former National Security Advisor, Ambassador to the UN White House Domestic Policy Council Chair. We talk about Signalgate, trump appeasing, Russia, RFK's assault on our public health, and a lot more. And then finally, at the end of the show, you're going to hear just a brief interview of a conversation I had with my friend Ashley Parker. She's a staff writer at the Atlantic. And Ashley wrote this beautiful, funny tearjerker of an essay about miscarriage and pregnancy loss, which longtime listeners of the show might know is something that unfortunately my wife Hannah and I have also experienced. So that full conversation is available on the pod, Save America, YouTube. I hope you'll give it a listen, but you can hear an excerpt of it at the end of this episode. So like I said, packed show, but a great one. So let's start with the tariffs. On Wednesday, President Trump made an appearance in the Rose Garden. He announced his long awaited tariffs on basically every country he says treats America poorly on trade. The specifics here were a big mystery until the moment he announced them with his big stupid charts. And they were far worse than expected. Trump announced a baseline 10% tariff on all US imports. Far steeper tariffs on countries Trump declared were the worst offenders, including some of our closest allies, like the European Union, Japan, South Korea and others. China got hit with a 54% tariff. They're vowing retaliation. And to make matters worse and more confusing, Trump's 25% tariffs on foreign made cars also went into effect on Thursday. So in total, about 90 countries will be affected, including a number of uninhabited islands. So we're gonna stick it to those fucking penguins. So we're recording this on Thursday afternoon. Pacific time markets have closed for the day. The S and p dropped nearly 5%. Trump got asked about the stock market dip at the White House today next to the roaring helicopter engines, as always, and responded with some new spin. Let's listen.
- [05:36]
James Surowiecki
I think it's going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it's a big. I said this would exactly be the way it is. We have six or seven trillion dollars coming into our country and we've never seen anything like it.
- [05:55]
Tommy Vitor
What pristine audio. Emma. Trump has clearly made inroads with blue collar voters in the last couple of elections, especially in communities that were hit hard by NAFTA or other free trade agreements. He believes that tariffs are how he can convince those communities that he cares about them and that he's fighting for them. How do you think Democrats should respond to that?
- [06:18]
Emma Vigland
I think that he's making it extremely easy. Even though the facts are that people are going to be really harmed if these actually go into effect. You can just basically talk about tariffs as a tax on the poorest Americans. When you look at a sales tax, right, the sales tax is essentially a flat tax on all goods and it is called a regressive tax because the less money you have, the more you're disproportionately impacted by a sales tax. If you're a millionaire, a sales tax on a banana or on some groceries isn't going to affect you as much as somebody in the middle income bracket or in the lower income bracket. And tariffs essentially function as a compounding sales tax because they raise the cost of basic goods. And really like, let's just zoom out for a second and say, okay, Donald Trump wanted to onshore manufacturing and he wanted to further build up our domestic manufacturing capacity here in the United States. We would need a, I don't know, billions and billions of dollars of investment. We would need it to happen over a multi year period to even create the factories and systems and supply lines that would be needed so that we could onshore this manufacturing and produce the goods here that are now going to be hit by these tariffs. But he's doing it in reverse. And I don't even think that would work. He's now imposing the tariffs when we don't have the capacity to produce a lot of these goods that are going to be hit with the tariffs and these price increases. And so Americans have no choice but to pay more and more and have their wallets hit here. And it's not entirely clear what he thinks he's going to gain from this, except I think he genuinely has a complete misunderstanding of trade policy. He thinks he can shake down other countries this way. And frankly, it seems like ever since January6, he's been holed up in Mar a Lago with very little connection to the outside world and to even the threadbare pieces of liberal society that he was connected to via Ivanka or whatever in 2016. He's in Oannville and doesn't know left from right. And so my guess is somebody got into his ear, maybe somebody who read that Karl Rove book about William McKinley, who he's now obsessed with, and said that this is going to be the thing that makes it allows us to raise revenue without having to go through the cumbersome process of developing tax policy via the legislature. It allows Trump to act as a king. And I do think the other side of this is that for the industries that are affected by these tariffs now, Trump feels like they're going to have to come to me and they're going to have to give me goodies like he got from various news organizations with his frivolous lawsuits. It's open corruption and also an open war. Frankly, if these go into effect and are more permanent and there still is potential to back off of it, hopefully it's really going to harm the lowest income people in our society.
- [09:26]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean, I just got McKinley so hot right now. I mean, I wish he wasn't, but there's just a lot of McKinley emulation happening in the Republican Party.
- [09:34]
Tracey Alloway
You're right, though.
- [09:34]
Tommy Vitor
I was just watching a speech by Rand Paul who was like, hey, this is a massive tax increase and you're trying to do it through this bizarre tariff authority that has never been used before. And you're going around Congress like none of this is acceptable or by the book or how it's supposed to go. And to your point about the timeline of revving up American manufacturing, you're hearing some people say, well, there's auto plants in the Midwest that are operating at 60% capacity and those could go up to 80 or 90 or 100. You're hearing that even from Sean Fain, from the UAW. But I was talking to an expert on Monday who was like, I'm not so sure that that capacity is going to be filled by human beings as opposed to robots. And also retooling and revving back up these, these factories, even if they exist already can take a really long time. So I'm with you. It feels like just, it's pie in the sky to me.
- [10:29]
Emma Vigland
I mean, if we wanted to reindustrialize again, tariffs can be used in a targeted way. Say if it were just purely for the auto industry and we were trying to develop that capacity, I could even understand that. Right. But that's not what he's doing. These are broad based tariffs that he's calling reciprocal, but are not. And the other thing that is just so terrifying is, is that all of this talk about short term pain in the stock market. What happens when the Republicans gut Medicaid as they're promising to do with their budget in the fall? 72 million people are on Medicaid that rely on it for their health care. Half of the folks on Medicaid are well below the poverty line. These are the people that would be hurt the hardest with this compounding sales tax, with this regressive tariff that would function as a tax. And so they would be immiserated if the Republicans get their way. And we're seeing, I know Ted Cruz as of right now is coming out a little bit against the tariffs. And as you mentioned, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, they dipped their toe into criticizing Donald Trump because by the way, Kentucky bourbon, Kentucky I think produces over 90% of the world's bourbon. And these tariffs on Canada, those guys are saying, hey, screw you, we're not going to buy bourbon from you anymore. If you're talking about making us the 51st state. So this affects folks in Republican states And like the 2008 financial crash, the people that are closest to Retirement, whose 401ks do not have the time to replenish, don't have the ability to wait out this short term pain. Their entire retirement could be cut in half right now because Donald Trump and his buddies are playing with the stock market. Basically, yeah.
- [12:09]
Tommy Vitor
I was just watching Fox News and there was a host named Will Kane who was doing a segment who was like, look, the today the markets are down, the S and P is down, the nasdaq, the Dow, but what do we mean by down? And then he threw up a zoomed out chart of the market that went back like one year or five years. And boy, you know, the cope is strong. When these guys are doing a five year chart of the S&P 500 and be like, we're doing like a what's the definition of is Kind of conversation. Allah, Bill Clinton in the 90s, it didn't feel like they're on their, their strongest footing, but on the Democratic Party piece of this, do you think it's enough to make the argument that you're making, which I find very compelling by the way, because it's true against tariffs, that there are regressive backdoor way to raise taxes on people, or does that need to be married up with some sort of positive agenda even if we have no power at the federal level for four years?
- [12:56]
Emma Vigland
I think you've hit on and it absolutely does need to be paired with, you know, a positive agenda. And talking about the oligarchy has proved to be immensely fruitful for the Democrats because you also have a mascot for yourself right there in Elon Musk, who nobody likes. The more they see of him, the more repulsive he is. And frankly, I mean it's quite clear why he's just not somebody that has natural charisma and is obviously saying things like Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. When we know that Social Security is one of the most successful programs in the history of our country, if not the most successful program. It keeps two thirds of our seniors out of poverty. It is self funding. You fund it and Medicare via the payroll tax and it's set aside in the budget so people don't have to worry about it. It's not a Ponzi scheme, is a retirement fund that all Americans pay into. So I think talking about Social Security, talking about our social programs and of course a positive vision of we do need Medicare for all single payer. We need some sort of health care plan that is not just improving the Affordable Care act. And I think Tim Waltz has been really good about this. But, but tapping into the pain that Americans are feeling where, you know, traditional economic indicators don't necessarily pick up on what folks had been experiencing in the run up to the 2004, 2024 election, I should say, because obviously I was hoping Kamala Harris was going to win, but the, the way that the campaign was run and saying that the economy is good, we just have to improve on it, it didn't prove to be the most salient argument in this time because there are things that traditional economic metrics aren't picking up on, like the fact that rent has never been higher, like the fact that corporations took advantage of inflation and artificially kept their prices higher in the wake of COVID and took home record returns. And even though Lina Khan was doing her best, it's quite difficult to get these corporations in line when they have somebody who's running on the presidential ticket who says, hey, if you elect me, she'll go away. Don't even worry about it. We'll make sure that you get to keep doing what you want to do in terms of extracting profits from the rest of Americans. And frankly, it's almost as if Donald Trump learned from corporations during COVID where basically you can take advantage of naturally occurring inflation or persistent inflation in order to cement those prices. And then he doesn't have to address it via Congress, but he can essentially elevate tariffs, impose them on goods, and say, what can you do? This is naturally what has to happen. And then he thinks he can bend the American people to his will.
- [15:47]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, it's worth noting. I mean, on Thursday, Senator Chuck Grassley, who's a senior Republican, and Maria Cantwell, who's a very senior Democrat, introduced a bill that would require approval from Congress for all tariffs within 60 days. Congress also passed a more limited measure regarding tariffs on Canada. Now, pretty big open question of whether the House of Representatives would ever call up a bill like this, even if it passed the Senate. I consider me skeptical. But the other piece of this that I just wanted to hit on quickly is what's so kind of bizarre about this tariff announcement is Trump ran on the threat from China, but instead of focusing on China with his tariffs, we are taking this broad based approach. We're tariffing all of our closest allies. And then earlier this week, we're reading reports that countries like Japan, South Korea were meeting with China trilaterally for the first time in five years to discussed how to coordinate their response to U.S. tariffs. That was according to Chinese state media. So if that, if the rise of China is like the big agreed upon bipartisan risk to the United States over the next century, this seems like the dumbest possible way to tackle it.
- [16:56]
Emma Vigland
Absolutely. I mean, we're now getting reporting about how much further along both China is on AI. We heard that a few months ago with deep seek and how much cheaper it is, but also their electric vehicles. There is some early reporting that shows that byd, the EV kind of behemoth in China, has developed a battery that can charge in the same amount of time that it takes to fill up a petrol tank or your gas tank at the gas pump. Or at the very least, they're Close. And so when you think about these tariffs, why wouldn't Canada look to China and say, hey, if the United States is going to treat us this way, we should start buying from China, we should start buying Chinese vehicles, Mexico, the same thing. And even. And it's even more common sense for our allies across the Atlantic and elsewhere, or former allies, I should say. So it's nonsensical. It really is. And like inflation, I was kind of alluding to this earlier. These tariffs don't prevent domestic manufacturers from raising prices. Like, don't encourage it. Yeah, right. It encourages it. Because frankly, they can just blame the tariffs like corporations did with inflation, really, in 2022, 2023. And in part, I think, because they were pissed that the Biden administration was doing some more enforcement with Lina Khan and with Jonathan Kanter and that part of the administration domestically that I was very much a fan of. And so, yeah, I really do think he's opening the door for more price gouging. And instead of inflation, this time, US Companies can just blame tariffs and say, what else can we do?
- [18:40]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, if the tariffs are successful, prices will go up. No matter what. Prices are going to go up. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then you're going to hear my conversation with James Surowiecki about the substance of Trump's tariffs announcement and why basically every economist seems to think that the way these tariffs were calculated was just complete nonsense. We'll also talk a bit about the stock market reaction. James has written about economics for outlets like Fast Company, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and is the author of the book the Wisdom of Crowds. So stick around for that. And then after the interview with James, Em and I are going to talk about how a fringe right wing conspiracy theorist is making personnel changes on Trump's national security team. And then the Democrats big win in Wisconsin. The state of the party and progressive media.
- [19:31]
Tracey Alloway
Pod Save America is brought to you by Haya. Typical children's vitamins are basically candy in disguise, filled with two teaspoons of sugar, unhealthy chemicals, and other gummy additives growing kids should never eat. That's why Haya created a super powered chewable vitamin. Haia fills in the most common gaps in modern children's diets to provide the full body nourishment our kids need with a yummy taste they love. Formulated with the help of pediatricians and nutritional experts, Hay is pressed with a blend of 12 organic fruits and veggies, then supercharged with 15 essential vitamins and minerals to help support immune system energy, brain function, mood, concentration, teeth, bones and more. It's non gmo, vegan, dairy free, allergy free, gelatin free, nut free and everything else you can imagine. Hay is designed for kids two and up and sent straight to your door so parents have one less thing to worry about. We love Haya. Charlie's been taking Haya vitamins for a while now, which is great because he doesn't eat enough fruit and vegetables like many kids. And also he thinks they taste great even though they don't have a bunch of sugar like other vitamins. So we like them a lot. And are you tired of battling with your kids to eat their greens like I am? Haiya now has Kids Daily Greens and Superfoods. Chocolate flavored greens powder designed specifically for kids, packed with 55 plus whole food ingredients to support brain power development and digestion. Just scoop, shake and sip with milk or any non dairy beverage for a delicious and nutritious boost your kids will actually enjoy. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best selling children's vitamin receive 50% off your first order. To claim this deal you must go to hyahealth.com crooked. This deal is not available on their regular website. Go to H I Y A H E a l t h.com crooked and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.
- [21:08]
Tommy Vitor
Auto insurance can all seem the same until it comes time to use it. So don't get stuck paying more for less coverage. Switch to USA auto insurance and you could start saving money money in no time. Get a quote today. Restrictions apply. James Surowiecki welcome to POD Save America.
- [21:28]
James Surowiecki
Thanks for having me on.
- [21:30]
Tommy Vitor
So let's just start with the basics. What did President Trump announce yesterday?
- [21:35]
James Surowiecki
So what he announced was that the United States will be imposing tariffs on, I would say almost every country in the world. It's a little unclear. There's some countries that weren't on the list and we know that Canada and Mexico were exempted because they already have these other tariffs that they put on. So what Trump said was that these were what he called reciprocal tariffs. In other words, that he was imposing tariffs that were pegged to the tariff rates that these countries impose on us. And as he described it, basically they were half of the tariff rates that these countries are imposing on us. So I don't if you saw it, he had this kind of prop because goofy charts.
- [22:14]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah.
- [22:14]
James Surowiecki
Doing something like visual or whatever, TV ish. He had this big prop with the country's names on them. And it had one column that was the supposed tariff rates that these countries are charging and then the tariff rate that we will be imposing in response, basically. So. So that was essentially the message he was sending. But as it turns out, the tariff rates that these countries are supposedly charging, the way the Trump administration calculated those was kind of odd.
- [22:44]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. Can you explain that? I mean, I think the math was basically the US Trade deficit with each country divided by the imports from that country. And they declared that the resulting percentage was, quote, tariff charged to the usa, including currency manipulation and trade barriers. This was described by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers on Twitter as quote, this is to economics. What creationism is to biology, Astrology is to astronomy or RFK thought is to vaccine science. As I mentioned to you before we started recording, I basically failed the last econ class I took. So could you just explain this to a dumb person?
- [23:22]
James Surowiecki
Yeah, so it. Let's just start from the beginning. So when Trump introduced these, you know, he went through, and he went through different countries, he would talk about China and you know, what good negotiators Vietnam is and everything. But the way he described it was the way it read on the chart, which it said tariff rate and then underneath it it said tariffs. So the actual tariffs that people in countries impose on U.S. exports, plus what they're calling non tariff trade barriers. So that would be things like, I don't know, there might be special regulations that make it hard for American companies to sell in this country or the Trump administration likes to call value added taxes a non tariff trade barrier. I think it's nonsense, but they tend to do it. So when, when it first came out, I think we assumed that that number was somehow assembled out of those things, even though the numbers, when you looked at them, didn't really make sense. They were like way too high for some countries, they were too low for others. It was totally unclear where they were coming from. So. But Trump said, this is what we are being charged by other countries. But what the reality is is exactly what you said. What they did was they just took our deficit with these countries. And one thing that's important is just the deficit in goods. So services were not included. This is just like manufactured goods or agricultural goods and the like. Right. So they took our trade deficit, that's just the amount we sell to a country minus how much we buy from it, and then they divided it by the total number of imports we get from that country. And so I don't know, like Indonesia, our trade deficit with Indonesia is like 18 billion and total imports are 28. You divide 18 is 64% of 28. And so Trump said on the chart it says Indonesia's tariff rate is 64%. Needless to say, that's not the actual tariff rate Indonesia is charging. It has nothing to do with the actual tariff rate Indonesia is charging. The real point, I think the reason this is important, because I think what it shows is that for Trump, it's something we knew, but it's worth being reminded of. For Trump, basically any trade deficit is bad. Any trade deficit is evidence that we're being ripped off. And so they basically came up with this method that made countries tariff rates look a lot higher in a lot of cases than they, than they actually are.
- [25:47]
Tommy Vitor
Just a quick question on trade deficits. First of all, what is the like 30 second explanation of what a trade deficit is and why do you think Trump thinks it's bad? And what is the reality of the kind of the nature of a trade deficit?
- [26:01]
James Surowiecki
Well, trade deficit is pretty simple. I mean, it involves, if you're running a trade deficit, you are buying more in dollar terms, you're buying more from a country than you are selling to it. And again, it's not countries that are selling to each other, it's companies within those countries. But you know what I mean. One thing that is important to note about the trade deficits that Trump used to calculate these quote, unquote, you know, imaginary tariff rates is that he only looked at goods. So the United States runs a huge surplus in services with, with the rest of the world and with a lot of countries. And he just excluded all those because, I don't know, I guess because he's only interested in manufacturing or whatever. But so, so, so trade deficit is you buy more than you, than you sell. So sometimes that is because countries are making it hard for you to sell in their country. So they either have high tariffs which raise your prices, or maybe they have these sort of non tariff trade barriers. In the old days there would actually be literal quotas, right? You could only sell so much, or maybe you couldn't sell cars at all or whatever it is, there are many, many fewer of those now. They tend to be hidden a lot better. So for Trump, as I said, like if there are trade, if there's a trade deficit, it's a sign that there are these trade barriers that are keeping us out. But the reality is that sometimes it reflects what used to be called comparative advantage. Like countries just specialize in something and are having to get very good at it. And we want to buy stuff from them, and we want to buy more of that from them than they want to buy of whatever it is we're selling. Sometimes that's just going to happen. Sometimes it's a product of just climate. Right? So we buy coffee from Indonesia, we buy bananas from Honduras or whatever. And. And those are not necessarily rich countries. They aren't necessarily countries that, you know, have a huge amount of appetite for American goods. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But it's not surprising that in some situations like that, you're going to have a trade deficit. Or like an example a lot of people have cited in the last couple of days is this little African country called Lesotho. So Lesotho had the highest tariff rate listed on Trump's chart. It was 99%, which was the maximum you could get. And the reason for that was that we imported like, 240 million from them and sold, like, 2.8 million. But the reason is that Lesotho has tariffs, but that's not why. The reason is that Lesotho sells diamonds and we buy diamonds from them, and they're a poor country that. A relatively poor country, that American companies are not necessarily going to spend a lot of time investing, trying to get into that market. And so the idea that the answer to all these trade deficits is just, like, get them to lower their trade barriers and everything will be solved, which Trump's tech Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, keeps saying over and over again. I think it's just, like, incredibly simplistic, but it's simplistic in a way that totally fits the way Trump sees trade. So it kind of makes sense.
- [29:01]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. There was a suggestion that they may have done this math using ChatGPT. Have you seen this?
- [29:08]
James Surowiecki
I did see this. People suggested that. Yeah. Because if you ask a variety of AI things, a question about, like, what's a easy way to devise a tariff policy that will theoretically balance trade? And I think that's what AI answers, basically. So it may be that there's some. There may be that. It's also true, though, that this is like an incredibly simple formula. I mean, it's just not a complicated formula. And it really embodies this idea that, you know, not just that trade deficits are bad, but that if you have a trade deficit, it's the result of some nefarious actions on the part of the countries you're trading with.
- [29:48]
Tommy Vitor
Basically, JP Morgan wrote that Trump's announcement would raise just under $400 billion in revenue, or 1.3% of GDP, which would be the largest tax increase since the revenue act of 1968, which was used to pay for the Vietnam War. A bunch of Great Society programs like a lot of spending. Who is going to bear that cost? And is there a credible argument in your view that this could bring back manufacturing jobs?
- [30:13]
James Surowiecki
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, tariffs like this do have some impact on overall manufacturing. I mean, my general take on the manufacturing question is that factories today are just not that labor intensive and because factories are much more automated and that the desire to somehow or the imagination that we're going to be able to bring back, you know, 5, 10% of our workforce to factories, I think is really ill conceived. And the other truth is a lot of factory jobs are just not that well paid today. They're not exceptionally well paid and I don't think they would become. So I think the bigger question about is who's going to pay for it. And the answer there is I think mostly working in middle class people and also American companies that import a lot of goods, either resell them or actually to use them to in turn make whatever it is they're making. I mean we do have global supply chains. And, and so, you know, just today, I guess Stellantis announced they were laying off like 900 workers at an auto plant because of some of these tariff issues, I think with Canada or Mexico, I can't remember which, and, and I think that the foreign producers will probably eat some of the tariff costs. In other words, they'll reduce their profit margins. Some American importers who are the ones that actually pay the tariffs, literally, they will probably eat some of the costs, but some of it is just going to get passed on. And that's especially true for one of the things that's amazing about this is, I mean, this is so obvious, but it's worth stating again, he's imposing tariffs on basically everything we import.
- [31:55]
Tommy Vitor
Right.
- [31:56]
James Surowiecki
And that includes things that we have no hope of making. He's importing tariffs on coffee. You know, we grow a minuscule amount of coffee in Hawaii. It's pretty much the only place we can do it. So there's all this agricultural stuff. And then, you know, if you think about manufacturing, it takes a long time to open factories.
- [32:12]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah.
- [32:12]
James Surowiecki
And.
- [32:12]
Tommy Vitor
Or even retool them.
- [32:13]
James Surowiecki
Or retool them. Yeah. And you know, there is a reality that like companies that have been doing this for a long time have expertise and the idea that we're just going to be able to Replace them, I think is really foolish. And then the last thing I'll say, sorry, I'm going on here, but is the other big problem with the manufacturing thing is Trump is injecting so much uncertainty into the economy that I just think it's very hard for any CEO to convince himself, okay, you know what the thing to do is we're going to invest billions in, in the US and we're sure that everything is going to turn out fine.
- [32:48]
Tommy Vitor
I think that is the key point, which is that all these companies just want to know what the rules of the road are going to be. 1 years, 2 years, 5 years down the road so they can make massive capex investments. We're recording this. It's now 11:26am Pacific on Thursday. The S&P 500 is down holy 4.28%. That suggests. Wow. That suggests that Wall street analysts were very, very wrong in their predictions about what Trump was going to announce because, you know, they were trading flat for a while it seemed like they thought Trump would delay the tariffs or announce something more minimal or have a bunch of carve outs like you did last time for big companies or sectors. Did that whiff by Wall street surprise you?
- [33:28]
James Surowiecki
A little bit. But I do think that I cut them a little bit of slack because the obvious problem with Trump is you literally never really know what he's going to do. Like he could very, he could have woken up yesterday and been like, ah, you know what, ah, forget it, we'll just, just make it 10 flat or you know, 10 plus 20 for some of our bigger ones, you know, which is, or he could have, they could have actually really done reciprocal tariffs. Like they could have actually, which is what he had originally suggested they were going to do back in February when he talked about this back in February. So I cut them a little slack on that. I, I do think this is something I've been talking about for a long time. I do think people consistently underestimate how much Trump just loves tariffs.
- [34:12]
Tommy Vitor
I agree.
- [34:12]
James Surowiecki
He really loves them and he really does think and always has. I mean, you know, Trump doesn't care. From my perspective. I don't think Trump cares about almost anything. Certainly in politics, like, I think almost no issues matter to him, but trade is one that has always mattered to him since, since the 80s. I mean, he's really always been obsessed with it and has always had the same position. But the second thing is that the goal is to get rid of every trade deficit with every country. It's not just even to like balance the trade deficit globally, which would be hard enough. He want, he ideally I think wants to get rid of every single trade deficit with every, even like little tiny countries he wants us to not have a trade deficit with. And I think it's, I think Wall street just thought he would be more rational and less in love with tariffs than he actually is.
- [35:02]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, he just fundamentally doesn't seem to believe in the fact that there can be win win transactions where I give you money for a thing and I'm happy that I have the thing and not sad that you took my money.
- [35:13]
James Surowiecki
Yes. No, no. I mean I think that is it. I mean I think his entire view of the world is zero sum. Like that's his entire view of the world and there's either a winner or a loser. And if you're buying, especially if you're buying without like driving a hard bargain to begin with and trying to, you know, get the other person to, to drop down, then, then you're losing and, and, and more. It's worse than losing. You're getting ripped off. And he hates that more than anything.
- [35:43]
Tommy Vitor
James Surwiecki, thank you so much for doing the show. I really appreciate it.
- [35:46]
James Surowiecki
Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.
- [35:56]
Tracey Alloway
Pod Save America is brought to you by Renewal by Andersen. Old windows and doors can cause a lot of problems. They may rot, rust, chip, crack, warp or develop fog between the glass pans. They can also be difficult to open and close. And they may be drafty and inefficient leading to higher energy bills. Renewal by Andersen offers high quality workmanship and convenient service, including a free consultation. They can help you save money on your energy bills and improve the comfort of your home. They have more five star reviews than other leading full service window replacement companies and over 500,000 homeowners. Recommended renewal by Andersen Renewal by Andersen is both the manufacturer and installer of their windows and doors. They do it all for you, the homeowner, meaning a no hassle and headache free process. And the windows and doors are custom built in the usa. And Renewal by Andersen offers limited fully transferable warranty coverage because they stand behind the quality of their work for years to come. And they've got new ensemble entry doors made exclusively by Renewal by Andersen. This new entry door gives you endless options and is a great addition to your window replacement project for a new look to your entire home. Right now, Renewal by Andersen is offering the special offer during their spring savings event. Buy one window or door and get one 40% off plus an additional $45 off each window or door with a minimum purchase of four text CROOKED to 400400 to get a free in home consultation on quality affordable windows and doors for no down, no monthly payments and no interest for one year. That's crooked to 400400 for this great deal on replacement windows and doors. Hurry. These savings won't last long so be sure to check it out by Texting. Crooked to 400400 that's crooked C R O O K E D to 400400 texting Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions posted at Textplan US texting Enrolls for recurring automated text marketing messages. Message and data rates may apply. Reply Stop to opt out Start a.
- [37:49]
Emma Vigland
Business that sells and designs decorative plates. Find out. You have to keep up with invoices and paying vendors. Realize that you're better at selling plates than keeping them spinning. With Intuit QuickBooks you can make quick work of unpaid invoices and auto track expenses all in one easy to use place. So you can keep spinning selling those plates. Manage and grow your business all in one place. Place Intuit QuickBooks your way to Money Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc. Licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
- [38:21]
Tommy Vitor
Okay, we are back. Still have Emma Vinland, co host of the Majority Report with Sam Cedar, here with me. Okay, Emma, so apparently Trump found some time on Liberation Day to meet with a far right conspiracy theorist named Laura Loomer. Now, if listeners have never heard of Laura Loomer, consider yourself lucky. In the past she has said that the 911 attacks were an inside job, that the White House would, quote, smell like curry if Kamala Harris were elected. And she once handcuffed herself to the front door of Twitter's office building while wearing a yellow Star of David like the ones that European Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust because Twitter had banned her from the platform. Despite all of that, Trump met with Loomer for 30 minutes on Wednesday to hear her case for why he should fire members of his national security team and then, according to the New York Times, fired six NSC officials, including the Senior Director for Intelligence, International Organizations and Legislative Affairs. Emma, how does this person get into the White House in the first place, let alone make personnel decisions? Like, what do you think this tells us about decision making in there?
- [39:26]
Emma Vigland
I think Donald Trump's circle is as small as it could possibly be. I mean, Laura Loomer was laughed out of the room and should be in any room. I mean, she's an absolute nut job, but she ran for Congress down in Florida and was so crazy that even the Republicans down in there didn't vote her out of the primary. And then all of a sudden she's hanging out with Donald Trump and appearing on his plane. As bad as Trump won was, you gotta think about who are the people that we're rooting for in terms of voices of reason here in Trump 2.0 in the first administration, okay, you have Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil executive, not a good person, but somebody who's at least a functional human being. Reince Priebus. I think he might have resigned within the first hundred days because of how bad it was. But there was an effort to get like establishment Republicans who are at least adults and not little babies and toddlers in the room. Basically over the past few months who has been advocating for brakes on the car. It's been people from the outside like, I mean honestly, Steve Bannon, who was a white nationalist trying to say maybe you shouldn't install Elon Musk illegally in the treasury and let his Neo Nazi Groiper 19 year olds steal the data that of every American, their Social Security number, their bank information, their like all of that. Maybe you shouldn't do that. And Bannon justifies it on of course xenophobic and nationalistic grounds. But that's all we have right now. And then you have Laura Loomer, one of the craziest people I could think of off the top of my head. If you were gunned in my head, I would say like in politics she's in the top five potentially. Yeah, she's the voice of reason right now saying, hey, maybe some heads have to roll. After there was this massive embarrassing display where Mike Waltz added the editor of the Atlantic to a signal group chat, basically displaying that it seems like the Trump administration is illicitly enacting their communications and probably across a variety of different agencies on a commercially available encrypting app, seemingly to avoid the scrutiny of the Presidential Records act, which Trump was so angry about because some of that was used in the Mueller probe when his transition team went through the official channels after he won in 2016. So there's so much illegality here and because Trump also has scared so many of the other Republicans and frankly did vetted his administration to make sure that there were was nobody who isn't in the cult and people aren't leaking, we don't know how bad it is in the same way that we knew in 2016 because some of those adults in the room were talking to the Washington Post or the New York Times or whatever.
- [42:15]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, they all were hanging out with Maggie Haberman on After Hours. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, like, Laura Loomer is genuinely crazy, but she also called bullshit when Pam Bondi invited a bunch of influencers to the White House and then handed them literal, like, binders that you would take to second grade that said Epstein files that had seemingly nothing in them. She was like, what are we doing here? This is a joke. You're kind of making light of a horrific case of abusing young women.
- [42:40]
Emma Vigland
That's true.
- [42:40]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, right.
- [42:41]
James Surowiecki
You're right.
- [42:42]
Tommy Vitor
I mean, in this case, I mean, you know, it. There's someone. There was a report in Politico that Mike Waltz had set up like, 20 signal channels about various issues that should never be discussed on signal. Like, the entire NSC process has apparently been made up on signal. So that's nuts. But, yeah, I mean, having Laura Loomer in the White House, it did make me think about all the stories we were reading just a few weeks ago about how Susie Wiles, the new chief of staff, was running a tighter ship and, like, keeping all the fringy people at bay. It doesn't seem like that's the case anymore. And just like to nerd out for one second, I mean, some of these jobs we're talking about, like the senior Director for Intelligence means you're the person on the national security staff that is overseeing all the most sensitive covert action programs, compartmented intelligence collection, the intelligence budget, like the. How we collect stuff, the sources and methods stuff, the most sensitive shit that the intelligence community does. And like, when I was in the Obama administration, it is unimaginable to me that anyone outside of the NSC staff would know who had that job, let alone have an opinion about who should work there, let alone allow in some crazy lady to the Oval Office to lobby. And so, I don't know, like, just reading this made my head spin with the absurdity of it all. Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised because, like, Laura loomer, who said 911 was an inside job, was on the Trump plane when he went to the 911 memorial a few months ago.
- [44:12]
Emma Vigland
And yet the Trump administration is now deporting student activists protesting against the genocide in Gaza under the guise of saying that it is combating anti Semitism. This is the guy that said that there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville. I still remember that Elon Musk is the guy that was endorsing the Great Replacement Theory via tweet until The ADL had to tell him maybe you shouldn't say that and was Sig heiling at the inauguration and was endorsing the far right German party. That said we had to move past remembering what we did here in Germany. I mean, it is unbelievable the level of gaslighting that this administration engages in because they really don't care about what facts they're presenting. Steve Bannon again, to bring him up back in the day, said we just have to flood the zone. And I do feel like the administration here has almost perfected that to a degree because there is so much insanity that it's difficult to sink your teeth into anything or get a hook. And that's why I think Signal Gate freaked them out. It's because it was the first time they were on their heels for quite a while. And so I think hitting them on that their incompetence, as they say it's actually DEI or whatever, and that we're hiring based on merit. That's why we hired the Fox and Friends host, you know, from the weekend, the weekend host who has no real experience to be our secretary of defense, hitting them on their incompetence just as a political matter. And the oligarchy stuff, having these billionaires, not just Musk Besant, Howard Lutnick, who has whose firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, he handed over to his two sons who are in their 20s. They have major holdings in cryptocurrency and in commercial space. That's why he's on board with this Musk agenda. They're all getting rich. I do think that that's a really easy way to attack them. And it's not dissimilar from how they were attacked the first time around. But I do think it's more salient in the public's mind. And if the Democrats are smarter and I think they're starting to kind of understand the virtue in what a lot of us who are supportive of Bernie Sanders and myself, I also was a fan of Elizabeth Warren's politics, saw in them. Is hitting this kind of underpinning of economic pain that a lot of Americans are facing. There's no reason that the Democrats should be losing working class votes to Donald Trump, given exactly what we're seeing with tariffs and the compounding tax on the poor that he's going to implement if he's allowed to.
- [46:49]
Tommy Vitor
No, that's a really good point. I mean, let's talk about America's least favorite oligarchy. So that takes us to Wisconsin. So some good news for everybody. I mean, folks probably know by now that in Wisconsin, judges and Crawford beat Brad Schimmel in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race by about 10 points. It was a shellacking, dealing a very satisfying and I think, critical slap down to Elon Musk, who spent, I read, like 26 million on this race. Maybe it was more. And for all intents and purposes, put himself on the ballot when he flew there, stood on stage, put that stupid fucking cheesehead hat on his stupid head, and just made the whole thing about him. And so, you know, Emma, I wonder, you know, you sort of alluded to this. Do you think that this victory is a reflection of the fact that Democrats now do better in off years and in special elections, or do you think there's something else happening here with kind of like the Elon oligarchy piece?
- [47:41]
Emma Vigland
I do think it can be both. Right. Democrats always overperform in special elections. The voter base has evolved over. Over the. The time that I've honestly been paying attention to politics where Democrats have kind of cornered the market in many ways on high propensity voters. A lot of folks that vote for Donald Trump. It's why Democrats overperformed in 2022. And why I was wrong in assessing that Kamala Harris would win this last election cycle is because I thought that abortion would be enough to carry the day. I forgot this country really hates women. Andrew Tate's back in the country for some reason. And, you know, we're appointing people who've been credibly accused of sexual assault to the highest positions in Trump's government, Trump himself, et cetera. But I digress. You know, they do overperform in special elections, but it's how you overperform. I think that that matters. And with this focus on billionaires and the hoarding of the money and the ransacking of our federal government for their own ends, and the fact that Musk buying this race was so at the forefront. I mean, this is the most expensive judiciary race in history because Elon Musk.
- [48:46]
Tommy Vitor
$71 million crazy insanity.
- [48:49]
Emma Vigland
And also he said that this was gonna be the determining factor in whether or not Western civilization survives.
- [48:56]
Tommy Vitor
Existential wow.
- [48:58]
Emma Vigland
I mean, gotta say, I don't know, Tommy, but I feel like I'm looking around and I'm still in the West.
- [49:04]
Tommy Vitor
We're still here.
- [49:05]
Emma Vigland
Not my. I'm in a high rise or a taller building now in downtown Brooklyn. Nothing's fallen yet. But I think people are sick of the fact that billionaires have this outsized influence in our politics, and we should be harnessing that energy in the way that Wisconsin did it. Also, you have to give credit to Ben Wickler, who has been really phenomenal up there in terms of organizing the Democratic Party and taking back what looks like a horrible situation, as you know, in the early Obama years.
- [49:34]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, yeah, it was a really, really bad, bad situation. Ben's done an incredible job. But I agree with you. It is a both. There's a lot of reporting out there that Wisconsin Republicans basically hit their turnout goals. They wanted to hit. They wanted something like 230,000 more votes than they got in Dan Kelly's race, who was the supreme court candidate in 2023. But Democrats just turned out even more people. It turned out an additional 265,000 votes. And so there was something, there was some special energy there. But all of it, I think, does help explain why Republicans pulled Elise Stefanik's nomination to be the US Ambassador to the UN because they are absolutely right to be worried that they would lose a special election right now to replace her or really any special election.
- [50:16]
Emma Vigland
Oh, you know, she bought a new wardrobe. She got all excited. She was going to be in fancy New York City. And turns out she's got to go back and be a representative Congress.
- [50:27]
Tommy Vitor
So good. It makes me so happy.
- [50:30]
Emma Vigland
I'm sorry, but we got to, we've got to enjoy that schadenfreude. It's the only thing that we have going on.
- [50:35]
Tommy Vitor
That's all we got. That's all we got. Well, so let's talk about the Democratic Party, because ever since November, the Democratic Party, we've been engaged in some recriminations, some infighting. Yes. But also I think a pretty good faith bit of soul searching about who we are and how to run going forward. And more recently, the debate has been less about policy or ideological lines and more about how hard to fight. So I assume, Emma, you're on. You're on Team Fight. Team Fight very hard. Of course, if so, like, what are you seeing out there that that feels smart tactically or, I don't know, is just genuinely inspiring you?
- [51:09]
Emma Vigland
Well, as we talk about tariffs, it's a good way to just say Chuck Schumer giving away all of our leverage is a huge reason why we're in this situation with tariffs. Because the continuing resolution, that was not a continuing resolution. It was a dirty CR in the dirtiest sense, basically removed Congress's ability to review these tariffs. And so now you have this bipartisan bill with Grassley and I think Cantwell, that is supposed to say, like, hey, can we reassert our authority over tariffs because Donald Trump just did a really bad thing. Well, look, the Democratic leader in the Senate just gave that leverage away. And I think obviously, in my view, Schumer's time, he's on borrowed time as leader of the Democrats in the Senate. I don't see how the Democrats can continue to have him as leader, especially, you know, after the midterms in 2026. But, but yeah, there are some bright spots. I think that it was encouraging to see the House all stand together on that continuing resolution vote. It is encouraging to see some members of the party speak about billionaires, speak about the oligarchy. It's encouraging to hear I heard Tim Walls on Molly Jong Fast show talk about how next election cycle people are going to be expecting universal health care as a part of these proposals. Going bold again is really important. And I try not to pigeonhole my politics right, because I'm a DSA member and I'm someone who obviously believes strongly in something like Palestinian liberation. But I can also encourage my listeners to vote for Kamala Harris because that's the best option within our set of circumstances. And I can appreciate Bernie Sanders outside politics and how incredible it is to get people involved. But Elizabeth Warren's inside politics and influencing Biden to appoint Lina Khan as I keep singing her praises throughout our conversation. But there is more consistency here, I think, than there was in the wake of 2016 where there was a lot of anger within the party and I think there still is that. But there's also just a universal desire to fight and it crosses ideological lines. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and her ability to honestly meld Bernie Sanders outside movement with the inside game of Elizabeth Warren is one of the most impressive things that I've seen in politics in quite a long time. She's getting centrist Democratic lawmakers to say, I will write a check if you primary Chuck Schumer. And that is incredible given the fact that she came into politics as a Democratic socialist and a rabble rouser who was going into Nancy Pelosi's office and helping the Sunrise movement stage protests. But I think that with this kind of insurgent movement of younger progressives in the House, there is a lot of anger, I think, at some of the folks in the Senate who are institutionalists. But I get the most hope from folks in the House, Democrats in the House and also our governors who, whether it's Pritzker, Whitmer, Walz, what have you, they understand what it's like to respond to Donald Trump as somebody who's in an executive role, not someone who's, who's legislating or negotiating with Republicans or treating our budget as contract law or as if we're doing a merger or something like that. It's somebody who knows how to lead and somebody who knows how to respond to Trump's actions. Not as somebody who's going to, yeah, tweak around the edges, but using the bully pulpit to cut through the noise because I'll shut up in just a second, Tommy, but we are in such a corroded media environment and especially on the right, they're just eating up this slop on the Internet. How do we break through? How do we break through? And having a simple message doesn't mean we're stupid. In fact, it means we're better at politics. And I think Democrats have to stop resting on our laurels and thinking that just because our policies are better than the Republicans, that's true. It doesn't mean it's self evident to voters and it doesn't mean they're dumb because they don't get it. It's also because people want a clear, coherent vision and a way to differentiate yourself from the other side. And it's not about converting those Republicans. There were so many people that stayed home and just didn't show up. Those are the folks we need to be activating. And I think they were depressed because of the foreign policy of the administration and seeing their tax dollars going to this slaughter in Gaza and also just the fact that they didn't feel like they were being offered anything transformational on the economy. So they rather just stay home and not vote for anybody. And those are the people I think we have to target.
- [55:53]
Tommy Vitor
And we had a candidate for a long time who was just self evidently too old. But to your point about resting on his laurels, one person who was not resting on his laurels this week was Senator Cory Brooker from New Jersey. He delivered a marathon 25 hour speech on the Senate floor. Booker broke the record for the longest floor speech in history, which had been held by a horrible racist senator named Strom Thurmond when he was trying to block civil rights legislation. Here's a clip of what Cory Booker had to say during part of this long speech.
- [56:25]
E
I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as as I am physically able. I just found out that the community Violence Intervention money that you allowed me to fight so hard to get into, that bill is being clawed back by Donald Trump. You're revoking somebody's visa. Make a phone call, tell them that you have 30 days to leave, but there should be due process. I've had farmers from New Jersey to Texas coming to my office about this president freezing contracts that we appreciate proved in a bipartisan manner. I am inadequate. You are inadequate. We're senators with all of this power, but in this democracy, the power of the people is greater than the people in power. This is a moral moment.
- [57:11]
Tommy Vitor
So my view on Cory Booker, on Bernie and AOC during doing the town halls, Ro Khanna's town halls, all the, you know, members of Congress and in the Senate who are filming vertical video and clearly not comfortable with it and don't want to be doing anymore. It's, like, good for you. Like, keep putting up shots. I'm proud of you guys. Like, more is more. I think the point you made earlier is the most important one, which is we worry way too much about what we say and not about whether what we say is reaching people. And breaking through is the hardest part. So we just got to keep putting shots on goal. To your point about a simple message, my constructive criticism for Cory Booker would be, again, I'm really glad he did this. But my one note to him would be, like, it was not always clear to me what he was filibustering about. Like, what the core simple message was or purpose of the filibuster. A lot of the messaging I saw was about the fact that he did it, which, of course is cool, and I'm proud of him and I think it's awesome. But it's, you know, I think we need to be like, look, the State of the Union protest was, you don't have a mandate to cut Medicare. Right, Right. Standing up there shaking his. What's. What's his name? God, I'm forgetting his name.
- [58:15]
Emma Vigland
Al Green. Al Green.
- [58:16]
Tommy Vitor
Jesus Christ. Al Green's name. Al Green. Check his hair. You don't have a mandate to cut Medicare.
- [58:20]
Emma Vigland
That was amazing.
- [58:21]
Tommy Vitor
Booker's. Booker's was less clear to your point earlier, too. I mean, I think Democrats do worry a bit about expectations management. I know you heard that a lot early on. Like, we have no power. We don't have the Senate. We don't have the House. Even the Tim Walls comments you mentioned earlier about how, you know, voters are going to be expecting universal Medicare, like, on the part of me, like, the angel on my shoulder, that makes me excited because I would love to see us move to a universal system. The. The anxious political operative on my shoulder thinks back to, you know, the, the 20, 20, 2019 debates where we were all fighting about how fast we were going to implement Medicare for All, right? And like, ultimately the votes were just not there. The political will wasn't necessarily there. So I don't want to, like, raise people's expectations and then let them down and have another generation of people feeling like the fucking Democrats. You know, they promise so much and they don't deliver. But I guess right now in this moment, all I want to see is people fighting and doing things and like, putting their hearts out there and making the case. And I think that's why I thought what Cory Booker did was good.
- [59:23]
Emma Vigland
I agree with you. And I think, you know, to bring it back to your comment a little bit earlier about Biden and his inability to really, he was unable to use the bully pulpit for like two years at all. And we're getting more reporting about his condition. And, you know, I really do think he set Kamala Harris up to fail in many ways. And I think that was a dereliction of his duty to the country. But it also was a problem in which the Democrats didn't perform democracy. So a lot of the messaging in this election was, rightly, as we're seeing, that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, as he demonstrated on January 6th. Okay. But first you have to sell to the American public that democracy, as you're describing it, not just as a virtue, but in practice, is something that needs to be protected. And you may think that's self evident. Back to our point about how the Democrats feel like they should be above communicating these things. You may think that it is self evident, but why is democracy so important to protect? And I think Cory Booker agreed with what you had to say about, like, maybe the lack of specificity or perhaps I would love if it was, you know, focused on those broad based social programs a little bit more. But overall, it's a really good thing because at the very least, you are performing services to your constituents. You are performing the act of standing up to somebody who is an authoritarian and showing folks what it's like to be politically empowered. There's an old phrase, you'd rather be strong and wrong than basically weak and losing. And I really do think the Democrats could be okay with being strong and wrong and swinging for the fences and then maybe not necessarily delivering on everything. Although I think that the conditions now, given what we've talked about with oligarchy, given what we've seen with Donald Trump and how he's so carelessly wielded the executive branch for whatever the hell he wants. Like, I think a lot of Democrats are going, why can't we do that? Why can't we have a president that acts in a manner that addresses the urgency of our both, you know, economic situation, but also when it comes to systemic racism or the Supreme Court or abortion rights, I mean, there's a lot of ways that I think Democrats can show that they are democratically responsive. Because when it comes back to Biden, a primary would have done this, right? You would have heard, you would have heard Democrats speak about and hash this stuff out. You would have heard what these different Democrats stand for, even if Kamala Harris wasn't the nominee in the end. And that would have been a performance of democracy that would have bolstered the underlying message about Trump's threat to democracy, because you would have shown that you took it seriously in practice. And I think that when I speak to people who are not really politically engaged, just kind of your everyday, you know, person, I have some family members, right. They'll say, well, the Democrats are liars too. Biden was so old and what did they do about it? And I think that like, again, when we bring it back to this information age, having a president that couldn't use the bully pulpit and who chose not to perform democracy because he wanted to hang on to power for another term was a really, really bad cocktail to give to the American public with Trump on the ballot.
- [62:51]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean, he was self evidently too old. And there was a suggestion in 2019 in a POLITICO story that he would be a one term president and viewed himself as a bridge to the next generation. I think all of us bought into that and believed it. And I think the 2022 midterms happened. The White House started to believe its own spin and decided that only Joe Biden could win again. And then, you know, you're reading, I don't want to belabor these books, but there's all these Biden books coming out when you're starting to read anecdotes about like top AIDS in the Biden campaign, talking about how disastrous the debate prep was and how terrible, like how Biden had no second term agenda and couldn't articulate what he wanted to do. And then also at the same time saying that it was wrong for him to have dropped out or to have gotten pushed out. I'm just like, how can you possibly believe that? It's like it was not only Joe Biden, I mean, the sin was Joe Biden running for reelection. But Then the month between the fucking debate and him dropping out just absolutely screwed. Kamala Harris foreclosed any chance of doing some sort of mini primary type thing that made her. I think she ultimately would have been the nominee no matter what, but that would have made it look like it came through a legitimate process and not this coronation via a Joe Biden statement. He just sort of screwed us throughout that whole time period.
- [64:07]
Emma Vigland
And I think. And Kamala Harris, she's okay. She's not a victim. And I had some issues with how she ran her campaign. Obviously, I thought the elevating of Liz Cheney was insane, but I feel for her in the sense where I think a lot of women have experienced this in their professional lives. I am not shading Sam Cedar here. I just want to be clear. But older men who often think that they know better and will talk down to you and are dismissive of you broadly because a lot of the reporting is that she was broadly sidelined. And he elevated the fact that. That she. He wanted to appoint a black woman as his VP instead of just doing it. And I think that gave this opening for the Republicans to attack her in this, like, racist and misogynistic way. And the fact that he didn't really groom her as his successor. There should be probably a bit of soul searching on the Biden side as to why they were so dismissive of somebody who has great credentials and who has been a senator, attorney general, went to Howard, smart person. Their politics were similar. Why they didn't choose to give her a leg up and elevate her as Biden's potential successor instead of just throwing her in at the 11th hour when Biden couldn't do it. And then he was calling her and saying, don't break from me at all, even though obviously my approval rating is in the gutter. So there's misogyny and racism on that side, too, in my view, that hopefully Democrats begin to examine about themselves and some of the leaders in the party, frankly.
- [65:46]
Tommy Vitor
And frankly, they kind of kneecapped her publicly in the days following the debate performance by releasing that memo that crapped on a lot of people, including me. Congrats, self important podcasters. But talked about how all the polling showed that Joe Biden was beating all of his rivals, including Kamala Harris was like, guys, you're shitting on your own vice president. What are you doing here? But anyway, so the final question for you, like the flip side of our mostly happy, mostly constructive talk, is there are some corners of the Internet, mostly Twitter, where it feels like 2016 never ended. It's like 2016, Groundhog Day. You see moderates pointing the finger at leftists and blaming them for election losses. You see the kind of more red rose DSA crew angry that liberals are punching left or suggesting that anyone who doesn't hold, you know, the kind of like the maximalist policy position is a sellout or a corporate stooge or whatever. How do you think we get past this? Like, can we heal these divides? Or is it just the reality that intra party fighting always feels and is the worst because it's your friends fighting with your friends?
- [66:53]
Emma Vigland
I think it's a, it's a tough question. I do think we're in a better position, as I said earlier, than after, after 2016. I'm hopeful that folks deploy an intersectional analysis of why the Democrats lost. And it is very much a lack in my view of focus on broad based social programs with a vision that we haven't seen like since the New Deal or really since Medicare or Medicaid. These are the kinds of things that we're due. It's time to propose these kinds of broad social programs for people. That's a huge part of it. But I also think that Covid broke a lot of people's brains. We're in an extremely reactionary time period. There's a MeToo backlash where I don't know if I can remember such a anti feminist moment. I mean, really since like the tabloids and the way that they treated women in the early 2000s. But that seems so small ball compared to the normalization of this kind of thing at the Trump administration level. I think we can heal these divides by having a shared vision of boldness going into 2028. I think a lot of the base is frustrated by the lack of fight in the Democratic Party, which aligns much more with how a lot of us felt back in the day. And you see this bear out in Chuck Schumer's poll numbers. They want Democrats to be fighting and they don't want to constantly be cutting deals. They don't want to have to meet these fascists halfway because it is the bitch slap theory of politics. And that's all Donald Trump knows. Even if you don't win the fight, you've got to show that you can fight them because otherwise they're. Otherwise they're going to walk all over you. And I think that the base is behind that as a broad vision for how the party should move anti oligarchy and also fighting Right. And we didn't have that in the wake of 2016, there was just arguing and there was a lot of Bernie supporters saying, hey, we were right the whole time. These were the kinds of politics that we should pursue. But as I said earlier, you know, I guess I'm somebody that's taken some grief on the Internet from even my side because I was somebody who saw a lot of value in Elizabeth Warren's politics and antitrust and going about making people's lives better within the set of circumstances that are given to us. Right. And so I can say, like, yes, I support decommodifying housing. I support a universal healthcare program. I support free college for all and a foreign policy that is a lot more humane than what we've been seeing. But I can also understand that we have to have the requisite dexterity to respond to the far right fascist elements that we're, that we're with right now. So we can't all be perfect allies. We have to come together. And perhaps through that process of coming together and fighting Donald Trump, we will come out the other end with a more cohesive vision of how to move forward. But I do think that this anti oligarchy stuff can't just be for the benefit of electoral politics. This has to translate into the Democrats taking on campaign finance reform.
- [70:12]
Tommy Vitor
Totally agree.
- [70:12]
Emma Vigland
And also pairing that with broad based social programs that tax the rich. We have to tax the rich. We have to return to higher marginal tax rates. I'm not even saying we need to go to what it was like in the post World War II era where we were at our most industrious and the country was growing. I'll settle for pre Reagan numbers, but really, these billionaires are out of control. And governments, what they do, they redistribute wealth. It's just a question of how we choose to redistribute this wealth. And we are at such catastrophic levels of incoming wealth inequality that frankly, many people in our body politic are not making sane choices about who they're electing for president. So how do we make sure that we cut off some of these reactionary elements, make sure that people's basic needs are met and we are past due for a broad based social program like a Medicare for all or something that helps people in that manner?
- [71:05]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I'm with you. Like a shared vision of boldness. Candidates that look like they're fighting. Barack Obama ran on, you know, not taking PAC money and a whole bunch of efforts to clean up Washington in the wake of the Jack abramoff scandals of 2006, which old heads might remember, I totally agree with you, that economic inequality is completely out of control. And figuring out some just clear, simple formulation for how you're going to get it in line, whether it's a billionaire's tax, whether it's Elizabeth Warren, you know, 2% of assets, whatever it might be. And then I do think, like, for the next four years, we just have to go about coalition building, where we're all mindful of the need to build the biggest possible tent. Like, the coalition to end the war in Gaza in the Trump era has to include, like, the isolationist Rand Paul Republican types. And then the far left, you know, and those of us who care about the people in Gaza can't be, you know, purists. We can't say that you have to say the word genocide to be a part of this coalition. You can't say. You have to believe exactly what I believe, because that's just bad politics. Right.
- [72:12]
Emma Vigland
The lesson, that's hard for me, but, yeah, I'm trying.
- [72:15]
Tommy Vitor
I know.
- [72:16]
Emma Vigland
Look, I mean, you mentioned Obama. I was 14, right. And into 2008, there was. Obama's candidacy is why I cared about politics. It's literally what got me interested. And it was truly his opposition to the Iraq war. And I think that sometimes there's this consensus in Washington that there are people that don't vote on foreign policy. And I don't think that's true anymore, especially when you can see children whose brains are falling out of their head and their fathers wailing over their carcass on your phone. This had an effect of. Of really muddying the waters of the morality of the two political parties that can get elected in this bipartisan system. And I think that the Democrats really are doing a disservice if they don't reckon with how they damage their brand with young people by supporting this.
- [73:06]
Tommy Vitor
Look, no, I'm not arguing that. I've been opposed to this war from the very beginning. I'm talking about the way we talk about issues, the way we decide how who can be part of a coalition or a movement, and just making sure it's as broad as possible, because authoritarian movements everywhere, they do well when the opposition, the left usually is divided. That's how they succeed, because they rarely get 50% of the vote. They're, like, winning with pluralities at, like, 43, 44, you know, sort of Trumpian numbers.
- [73:37]
Emma Vigland
Right.
- [73:37]
Tommy Vitor
And I think it's just a good lesson to learn, but we covered a lot of ground. Emma, thank you so much for doing the show today. It was great talking with you. I really appreciate it and hope to do it again soon.
- [73:46]
Emma Vigland
I would love that. Thanks so much for having me, Tommy. And I really appreciate all the work you're doing, your bright spot in this insane media environment. So thanks so much.
- [73:55]
Tommy Vitor
Thank you. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break before we get to my interview with Susan Rice. But before we do, I just wanted to say that we would be really grateful if you subscribed to the pod save America YouTube channel. You guys are probably seeing all these reports and studies about how Democrats are getting crushed by conservatives on YouTube. That is a real problem because a lot of people, especially young people, use YouTube primarily as a search engine and what they find is right wing garbage. So please subscribe to Pod Save America. Help us grow. Help us get good information pushed into the YouTube algorithm. And also, as long as I have the mic here and Dan and John can't stop me, subscribe to Pod Save the World, my foreign policy show with Ben Rhodes. We talk about the biggest stories in the world every week and how they intersect with policy in Washington. New episodes of Pod Save the World drop every Wednesday. Okay, when we come back, you're going to hear my interview with Susan Rice.
- [74:54]
Tracey Alloway
Pod Save America is brought to you by beam. In today's America, every day feels like a barrage of news that keeps you up at night. Rights under attack, norms shattered, and chaos dominating the headlines. The uncertainty, the stress. It's exhausting. And honestly, the people benefiting from this chaos are counting on you to be too tired to push back. But here's the thing, Tommy.
- [75:14]
Tommy Vitor
Mm?
- [75:15]
Tracey Alloway
Rest is resistance.
- [75:17]
Tommy Vitor
I like that. Rest versus rust. It's turning time.
- [75:19]
Tracey Alloway
You can. You can't stay in the fight for what's right if you're running on empty. That's why we're excited to tell you about something that's truly changed the game for us. Beams Dream Powder can help fight fascism. Dream helps me sleep through the night. No more tossing. No more turning. I wake up feeling refreshed, not groggy. It's become a must in my nightly routine, helping me recharge so I can get up and stay engaged. And what matters most? Tweeting. So what makes dream so effective? It's packed with a powerful blend of all natural ingredients that actually work. Reishi, known for its calming properties. Magnesium, which supports deep restorative sleep. L theanine, an amino acid that helps you relax without feeling drowsy. Apigenin, which supports falling asleep faster. And melatonin, to help regulate your natural sleep cycle.
- [76:02]
Tommy Vitor
You sound like characters in a Mortal Kombat style fighting game.
- [76:05]
Tracey Alloway
Yeah. Honestly, all you need to know is that dream tastes good. It's designed to help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up feeling clear and focused. And the best part, no grogginess. Unlike other sleep aids that leave you feeling sluggish, dream lets you wake up energized, sharp, and ready to take on the day. Beam's Dream Powder has improved over 17.5 million nights of sleep for people across the country. Here's the deal. Beam's given Pod Save America listeners an exclusive 40% off. That's right, 40% off. Their bestselling dream powder, but only for a limited time. All you need to do is go to shopbeam.com crooked and use crooked at checkout. That's shop b e a m.com crooked and use the code crooked for 40% off. Because let's be honest, you can't stay in the fight if you're too tired to show up. Rest well, wake up ready and keep pushing for progress. Rest is resistance.
- [76:52]
F
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 cause 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.
- [77:33]
Tommy Vitor
My guest today served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, National Security Advisor to President Obama, and as Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council. Susan Rice. Great to see you.
- [77:44]
G
It's great to be with you, Tommy.
- [77:46]
Tommy Vitor
All right, Susan, we're talking on Wednesday, April 2, which is Liberation Day according to Donald Trump. Speaking of liberation, though, last night Democrats finally got a win, both electorally and spiritually, thanks to the good people of Wisconsin. Susan Crawford crushed her Republican opponent in the state Supreme Court race there. How are you feeling about how the Democrats are fighting back now that we're a few months into Trump 2.0?
- [78:11]
G
Well, I think we're starting to get our footing and maybe a little bit of rhythm. Susan Crawford's victory was tremendous. It shows that people are very, very unhappy with what Trump is doing and what musk is doing. They made it a referendum on themselves and they got their asses handed to them. So that's encouraging and also great to see somebody like Cory Booker, you know, stand in the well of the Senate for 25 hours. God knows how he managed to do that and beat Strom Thurman's filibuster record.
- [78:48]
Tommy Vitor
How do you not pee for 25 hours? How do you not pee for 25 hours? I don't mean to focus on the stupid, but come on.
- [78:54]
G
No, I know that's the right question we're all asking ourselves, Right? I have to believe that depends may have had something to do with it, but maybe not.
- [79:05]
Tommy Vitor
You know, credit to him. Like, I, like, I love seeing people trying, like, fight in your own way.
- [79:10]
G
Exactly. And, you know, and Booker is eloquent and thoughtful, and, you know, that's fighting, that's guts, and that's vigor, and it's literally physical vigor, which is, you know, kind of what we all need. We need a shot in the arm. We need people to be out there calling bs, standing up and insisting that we're not going to roll over and play dead while Trump tries to steal our democracy and ruin our standing in the world.
- [79:40]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. Speaking of physical vigor, what territory do you think will annex in Trump's third term? Will it be like Mexico? To make it easy logistically, are we going to go for a nice island like New Zealand or Tasmania? How are you thinking about this?
- [79:53]
G
You know, nobody elected Trump to rebuild or build an American empire that we never had. I think this is extreme hubris and will not work well for Trump, much less for the United States.
- [80:09]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, it always starts as trolling. Then he starts to believe his own trolling. And so I take it seriously, but mostly it just pisses me off, like, hey, buddy, I don't think your approval rating is going to be at a place where you're going to be able to win a third term. But that's just me and I.
- [80:23]
G
You know, Tommy, all these things are crazy, but, you know, imagine how Canadians are feeling. You know, Canadians who have been our closest friend, ally, partner, longest peaceful border in the world, intimately connected to our economy. Our peoples are intimately connected. And Canadians are pissed. And they're like, you know, to hell with you. We're not coming on vacation. We're not buying your product. You know, how do you turn on a dime and stab us in the back? And the anger up there and Trump's efforts to try to cow them into becoming the 51st state, not only are going to backfire but it's gonna be really, really, really hard to repair that damage.
- [81:09]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean, it really is remarkable. I mean, Mark Carney, the new Prime Minister of Canada, gave a speech last week where he basically was like, the old cooperation, the old relationship with the United States is now dead. I think a lot of the reaction you're seeing, which I'm hearing from people too, Canadians are genuinely, really pissed and angry. And a lot of that is the 51st state, quote, unquote, jokes. But there is the economic piece. I mean, we're recording this before we learn what Liberation Day actually means in practice, in terms of the tariffs. But Donald Trump is talking about crushing their economy. And we should just be clear that if we crush the Canadian economy, that will irreparably harm our economy too.
- [81:48]
G
Absolutely. I mean, Donald Trump is banking on the fact that people are stupid, but people are not stupid. And people understand when it hits them in the pocketbook, you know, the estimates range from 2000 to $4000, that these tariffs are going to cost the average American family. And it's going to hit the people at the lower end of the income scale the hardest. Whether it's buying a car, buying your beer, you know, you name it, your vegetables, your fruit, it's going to be brutal. And Trump ran on a platform of lowering costs, which he seems to have forgotten in his, you know, his imperial rage. And, you know, people are not going to let him forget that that is what they thought they voted for. And instead they're seeing their prices go up because of these stupid tariffs that have no clear cut strategic objective, that, you know, they're just getting screwed. As he dismantles the federal government and the programs that people rely on, whether they're in red states, blue states, rural areas, urban areas, people of all different backgrounds, this is not going to end well for the American people, first and foremost, quite sadly, but it's not going to end well politically, I predict, because people really did not think this is what they were signing up for.
- [83:20]
Tommy Vitor
No, no, we were not signing up for a fight with Canada. It's just crazy. So, as I said at the top, you were President Obama's national security advisor for several years. In the last week or two, we learned that Mike Waltz, who's Donald Trump's national security advisor, he's been holding principal committee meetings about bombing Yemen on Signal, which is a commercially available communications app. The Washington Post reported that Walt and his staff have also been using Gmail for government work, including sharing, quote, highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government Agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict. End quote. And we learned that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been bringing his spouse to meetings with his foreign counterparts. Susan, what the fuck? What, what are the national security implications of this? Just like reckless behavior.
- [84:10]
G
Yeah. Wtf? Is exactly the right question. This could not be more reckless, negligent and dangerous behavior. The work of managing the national security of the United States is serious business and there is nothing serious about the way they are approaching it in the Trump administration. First of all, to conduct highly classified both deliberations and conveying of operational, sensitive operational information in advance of military activity, conveying the, you know, the effects of the strikes on a commercial app is extremely dangerous. All of that is inherently classified.
- [84:58]
Tommy Vitor
Right.
- [84:59]
G
And if you know the first damn thing about national security and secure communications, you know, there is a reason why every senior government official that was on that chat, perhaps except Witkoff, but probably him too, have access to 24,7 secure communications so that the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians and the North Koreans can't hack into it. They can all hack into your cell phone, get on your signal and understand the contents of a conversation. We know that. And by the way, Tommy, just to remind people who we are talking about, we're talking about Marco Rubio, who headed the Senate Intelligence Committee, right. We're talking about John Ratcliffe, who had been the Director of National Intelligence. He knows better. We're talking about Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Mike Walz, all of whom were military officers and no better. So this is deliberate recklessness. And then you dig into how they are deliberating. It was the most unserious, superficial, half assed approach to considering a serious topic. And it's, you know, which is bombing Yemen and the Houthis and the, the regional security, global security, economic, diplomatic implications of that. They barely scratched the surface of the kind of deliberations that should be done. And then they have the audacity to send out the NSC spokesperson to tout how great their deliberations are and how thoughtful and deep. It's a joke, but it's not funny because it really is putting our national security security at risk.
- [86:39]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean, I can't think of any prospective military action I've ever seen that wasn't classified. It's just like that kind of information is inherently secret and going to be protected by the US military and the United States government. But I totally agree with you. I think this question about the deliberations has gotten a bit lost. You're absolutely right. Like, I don't like J.D. vance. I didn't agree with him blaming Europe for some reason in his sort of thinking about bombing the Houthi rebels. But at least he offered an opinion. Everyone else is just were like, well, we're going to blame Biden for this. We'll say, you know, well, Biden was weak. And, you know, Stephen Miller comes in and says, well, you know, the decision was already made. So basically it's a discussion of when are we going to bomb, not whether this is going to be an effective solution, whether it'll actually deter the Houthis. They didn't seem to take a look at the last year of the Biden administration bombing the Houthi rebels with that which failed to deter them. It was just, it was pro forma.
- [87:34]
G
And by the way, it hasn't deterred them yet and they've been going at it for over two weeks. But Tommy, it's an interesting point here because if you really read that signal text chain carefully, and I have, you'll see that it was actually the Vice President's intervention that turned that chat into a classified discussion. Mike Walz was careless, put Jeff Goldberg on there, but basically he was using it initially for, you know, pretty superficial purpose. Tell me your points of contact.
- [88:05]
Tommy Vitor
Exactly.
- [88:05]
G
You know, Vance jumps in with his two cents, which makes you wonder, what did he miss the first meeting on this, the one with the President? Was he not invited or was he too chicken shit in that meeting to raise his concerns? I don't know which. It was, good question. But then he raises them on the text chat chain and gets into, you know, some questions that really should have been carefully considered in advance of any decision making. You know, what are the economic implications? What will it do to the price of oil? You know, have we protected our facilities in the, in the region and that aren't our allies and partners? You know, what about the Europeans? All these are things that should have been discussed and considered. He throws them in at the last minute. Mike Waltz then should have thrown a red flag and said, stop, this is a classified conversation. And let's take it to the Situation Room and let's discuss this again. Vice President can reopen a conversation, make his point of view heard. That's when the principal should regather in person and have that conversation. And if that changes their recommendation to the President, then the President ought to hear that and then he makes a decision. Decision, yeah.
- [89:18]
Tommy Vitor
Or to bare minimum, just jump on your high side. Email which is sitting on your desk at the computer next to the one you're currently typing on. Guys, it's not that hard, but they're.
- [89:25]
G
Typing on their phones, I think. Yeah, I think they're probably even worse, their personal phones.
- [89:30]
Tommy Vitor
And Wyckoff was in Russia maybe, so. You know, stew on that for a minute. Okay, separate question for you. So the Trump administration, in the last few months, they've gutted global public health infrastructure by destroying USAID. And then domestically, we have Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Leading the Department of Health and Human Services, where last week he pushed out a guy named Peter Marks, who is the Food and Drug Administration's top vaccine regulator. In his letter of resignation, Marks wrote, it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies. Pretty brutal letter there. Also, thanks to Elon Musk and Dogecoin, we've seen massive cuts to the center for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health, and other major FDA and the fda. And so when you add all of this up, I mean, what do you think the impact is on public health and safety in the United States?
- [90:24]
G
I mean, it's going to be devastating. And you listed all the reasons why. First of all, the work that USAID and the CDC do overseas or used to do overseas, to detect emergent diseases, test them, sequence the DNA, understand what they are so we can prepare to defend Americans against them, that's gone. US Officials aren't even able to talk to the World Health Organization anymore. It's insane. So we're living in a world where we already have, right this minute, diseases emerging in Africa, hemorrhagic diseases that we don't know the nature or the origins of in the family of Ebola, we have in the United States an emergent bird flu that could become a pandemic. Meanwhile, the administration just fired the senior veterinarian in the Health and Human Services Department who was working on the bird flu in cows and in chickens. It's insane. Then domestically, we're saying we're not going to have the personnel to test our medicines, our devices, our tobacco, all of the things that we rely on and believe to be safe because they have been carefully vetted and approved by the fda. We're wiping that out. We're wiping out cancer research at the National Institutes of Health. You know, God help you if you have a brain tumor, you know, of the sort that John McCain had. We've wiped out, you know, research on that. I mean, the List goes on and on. And, you know, they're doing this under the false guise of, you know, making America healthy again. We're going to kill millions of Americans. I should say, not we. They will be killing millions of Americans, not to mention the lives that they're sacrificing overseas for no good reason. I mean, a cost savings of a couple billion dollars, which, by the way, is not going to materialize. But even if it did, Americans health, The health of 300 million Americans is not worth a couple billion dollars.
- [92:45]
Tommy Vitor
It's a point of government.
- [92:46]
G
What are they doing?
- [92:47]
Tommy Vitor
I know. It's insane. I mean, like, I think a lot about the work you guys did at the end of the Obama administration to manage a very scary Ebola outbreak overseas to prevent it from coming back here. And now that capacity seems to just be gone.
- [93:02]
G
Right. It's extraordinary. I mean, and across the board, you know, FDA approvals, research at nih, the Centers for Disease Control, you know, which. Which, you know, is no longer able to work on infectious diseases. What are they doing?
- [93:17]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I don't know. Well, the other stories that are just horrifying me are these stories about the Trump administration deporting Venezuelan men who have no gang affiliation or criminal record. They're sending them to El Salvador to this transnational gulag, seemingly just because they have tattoos. At the same time, you have ICE rounding up students in the United States who are here legally because they protested the war in Gaza at some point. What are you watching for as we see this early shredding of constitutional rights, due process, what does it portend in terms of immigration policy or, I don't know, freedom of speech generally? Interview.
- [93:52]
G
Well, we're in a very dark period, Tommy. You know, Trump, if he has his way, is going to eliminate the rule of law in this country, and it'll be the rule of one him. And we can't let that happen. But, you know, we've got universities and law firms and media companies and other private sector entities, you know, bending over and bending the knee and not recognizing that this is going to affect all of them and all of us. And take the immigration issue that you just raised. Some people might say, well, you know, these are brown people. They allegedly came here illegally. They committed crimes. That's not our problem. It is our problem, Tommy, because people don't understand that. We don't know whether any of that is true except that we know they're brown. We don't know where they're from. We don't know how they got here, if they're here without legal status. We don't know if they've committed a crime. None of that, because none of them have been able to have their constitutional right to due process. They still have a right to due process. And if they can pick up anybody they like on the street because they don't like their tattoo, or maybe they don't like the color of their shirt or they don't like their haircut or they don't like their dreadlocks or they don't like. Whatever. Or maybe they don't like you in your, you know, look. Like you, Tommy. It doesn't matter. The point is, if there's no due process, they can claim that you, Tommy Veder, you know, are not here legally, that you've committed crimes and, you know, disappear you to El Salvador. And you will never have the opportunity, despite being a US Citizen, to prove otherwise. You know, they admitted they sent one guy down there, you know, in error, but. Oh, sorry. Even though, you know, El Salvador is our butt boy, we can't get this guy back.
- [95:56]
Tommy Vitor
That is so maddening. We can make one phone call to Naya Bukele from Marco Rubio, from Trump, from Vance, from anybody, and get these people back who are innocent tomorrow. They just don't want to.
- [96:08]
G
Exactly. And. But that could be you. It could be me. It could be any, you know, passport carrying US Citizen.
- [96:17]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. It is terrifying people, and I think, understandably so, I'm jumping around a bunch. But I just want to ask, I mean, you have met with, observed, dealt with Vladimir Putin for a long part of your career. Too long.
- [96:30]
G
Thankfully, not recently.
- [96:32]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, thankfully not recently. What is your sense so far about. Of how Putin is approaching Trump's push for a peace deal in Ukraine? How do you think he's playing this?
- [96:44]
G
Putin's playing Trump like a fiddle and playing him for a fool. And it may be that Trump is finally getting a whiff of that and starting to get a little bit unhappy about it. Look, Putin has no interest in ending the war in Ukraine. He thinks he has the upper hand militarily. He thinks the United States under Trump is not going to sustain military and economic support to Ukraine. He thinks time is on his side and he wants to take more and more and more of Ukrainian territory, grind them down. Trump is giving him the time and space to do that with these, you know, sham negotiations in which he is demanding everything of the Ukrainians and nothing of the Russians. And so, you know, Trump is playing, is being played by Putin. The question is, will he recognize that and realize that he's being, you know, humiliated both domestically and internationally and push back on Putin. But I don't think Trump has a desire to do that. He's got a bizarre affection for Putin and Russia, and he is, you know, undermining not just Ukraine, but, but our whole global alliance network in Europe and in Asia in service of interests that are not American, but are Russian and by extension Chinese, Iranian and North Korean.
- [98:17]
Tommy Vitor
And let me just. Anyone who's listening, thinking to themselves, well, how do you guys know what Putin's intentions are? How do you know he doesn't want to cut a peace deal? Today, Putin announced that he is calling up 160,000 men aged 18 to 30. It's the largest number of conscriptions in Russia since 2011. He is, more broadly speaking, trying to expand the size of its military to over 2.39 million people over the coming three years. Does that sound like a man who's preparing for peace? No, this is a guy dramatically escalating and growing his military and preparing for conflict.
- [98:52]
G
Absolutely. I mean, there's no question that that's what's happening, happening. And everybody seems to get it except Trump and his closest advisors.
- [99:02]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. Who just don't seem to care. Last question for you. The Trump administration just pulled Elise Stefanik's nomination to be US Ambassador to the UN there's some reporting today in Politico and other places that the Trump administration has reached out to a bunch of people about taking the job, and they've sort of said, thanks, but no thanks. It seems like, given the names have been floated, that this role will primarily be focused on running interference for Israel and kind of browbeating countries Trump doesn't like. But you were the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. can you just make the case for why this role is important, why it's still important under the Trump administration? How bizarre it is that they can't seem to fill the. The billet?
- [99:44]
G
Well, it's important in the normal scheme because you are, as UN Ambassador, negotiating and leading on behalf of US Interests globally. You're interacting with literally every country in the world and shaping decisions in the Security Council and the General assembly and other UN Bodies that can yield beneficial outcomes for the United States, our allies, and our interests. Now in this administration, you know, frankly, it's worse than, you know, prior Republican administrations where they may disparage the U.N. you know, think John Bolton.
- [100:28]
Tommy Vitor
Right.
- [100:28]
G
John Bolton. And, you know, criticize it as a hostile anti Israel institution. Okay, well. And good. But under Trump, you know, they seem to have absolutely no interest in, you know, anything, frankly, that gets done in the United Nations. And to the extent that they have engaged at all in the United nations, they engaged to come in Russia's defense in the General assembly and align us with North Korea and other, you know, adversaries against our allies. So, you know, it probably will be a crappy job in this administration, to be honest, Tommy, because you'll have no influence, you'll have no real role to play. And, you know, they just seem to have nothing but disdain for any kind of useful interactions with foreign countries.
- [101:28]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, you're probably going to get sent up there to destroy the organization from within to the extent that you can. Maybe you'll get invited to the signal chat, though. That could be cool. Susan, great to see you. Thank you so much for coming on the show and really appreciate this tour of the world. We just did.
- [101:43]
G
Great to be with you, Tommy, as always, take good care.
- [101:51]
Tommy Vitor
And finally, here's a quick excerpt of my conversation with Ashley Parker about pregnancy loss. You can listen to the rest of this conversation on the pod save America YouTube channel and read her essay at the Atlantic. So one thing I also wanted to talk about in the piece that is really important is you talk about how, you know, after miscarriage, one thing that often happens involves a procedure called the dnc. A lot of people probably don't know what a DNC is, but I won't get into all the detail. You can if you want, but it's essentially indistinguishable from an abortion. And that knowing that having sat through multiple DNCs with Hannah was part of what made like, the recent abortion political debate so infuriating to me because very often, you know, women who desperately want to have kids can't. And they have to have an abortion. They have to have a DNC to protect their own health, to preserve their ability to have children in the future. But some of the more draconian laws that were passed in states essentially require women to be literally near death before doctors are allowed to treat them. And Ashley, I couldn't help but imagine, like, if Hannah and I went through the pain of the pregnancy loss and then we went to a doctor and the doctor was like, hey, man, sorry, I can't help you until her organs are failing. Like, I would have been in jail for homicide, you know, that that was kind of my reaction.
- [103:13]
H
Yeah. And I mean, I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I sort of. And I, in my slight defense, I had my pregnancy loss in my DNC before Roe was overturned. So the ignorance is like, slightly more acceptable. But I write about this, but I show up for my DNC and I'm signing forms in all sort of the typical medical forms. And one of the forms says, I understand that I'm having an abortion, and I accept all the risks associated with an abortion. So I literally, I literally called the nurse over and I was like, she's gonna be so embarrassed. I'm like, ma'am, you gave me the wrong form. This is the abortion form, but I'm here for the miscarriage. And like, she got this very, like, kind, sad look on her face. And she was like, you experience pregnancy loss, but what you're technically having is an abortion. And I was just. I mean, again, it sounds dumb, but I was just floored. And then afterwards, I remember my mom, when I was traveling for work when I was pregnant again, she was asking me, she was worried if I was gonna go, like, if I was gonna have to travel to red states. I was like, I cover Trump, so he does a lot of rallies in, you know, these, these states with his base. And I thought it was. She was worried about, like, masking and Covid, because obviously getting Covid is bad if you're pregnant. But she was worried that, like, because I had had pregnancy loss and because I was pregnant, like, what if, God forbid, I had some sort of complication? She didn't want me to be in a state where I might not be able to get the medical care I needed. Which, again, is just a crazy thing to think about when, when you're doing your job or for any women, when you're going through life, right? Like, can I get. Can I get the life saving help I may need?
- [105:04]
Tommy Vitor
I had not even thought about it that way. Like, if you are pregnant, should you travel to Texas? I mean, that is. Jesus Christ, what's happening in this country. Yeah, I mean, just in your defense, I mean, I don't.
- [105:16]
H
Thank you defending.
- [105:18]
Tommy Vitor
I didn't know what a DNC was until I learned about it after we needed one. I didn't know that there was. I think people think miscarriage. Like they think the movies, right? Like blood in a toilet. Like, it's right. That's not what it is. It's a really painful and at times it could be a scarring procedure that can prevent you from having kids in the future.
- [105:40]
H
Right. And again, one of the reasons I wrote this essay is because. And there's nothing wrong with this, but like, especially social media is often. It's like performative life and there's nothing wrong with that. I love seeing when people have healthy babies and I love seeing when people have beautiful weddings and I love seeing nice vacations or tragedy moons. But you know, it's one thing to post beautiful pictures from Hawaii or of your new baby. And very few people are like, I know it's gonna be an Instagram, a great Instagram post my6dnc. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna do like a selfie from the table with the ID and it's just not out there. So it creates this sense. Like you see all these gender reveals and baby bumps and baby moons and happy families and I'm so glad for that. But you just don't see the other side as much and I thought it was important.
- [106:38]
Tommy Vitor
That's our show for today. Thanks again to Emma for coming in. Thanks to Susan Rice for coming by. Thank you Ashley Parker for talking with me for YouTube. Love it. Will be back in the feed on Sunday with a special interview with Michael Lewis, the culture changing author of Moneyball, the Big Short and countless other great books about his new book on the people that make the government work and why he thinks Elon Musk has no idea what he's doing. You don't want to miss it.
- [107:03]
Tracey Alloway
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 community@cricket.com friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more. And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Reid Churlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Madeline Herring 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, Haley Jones, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kiril Pelaviev and David Toles. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
- [108:15]
F
What's Poppin listeners? I'm Laci Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to Frau 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. Listen to Scam Goddess. Wherever you get your podcasts, the last.
- [108:54]
Tommy Vitor
Thing you want to hear when you need your auto insurance most is a robot with countless irrelevant menu options. Which is why with USAA Auto Insurance, you'll get great service that is easy and reliable, all at the touch of a button. Get a quote Today, restrictions apply.