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- [00:00]
T-Mobile Advertiser
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- [00:30]
Mike Pesca
GIST is looking for a Social Media Manager. Do you want to get into the fast paced world of deciding if I look good on horizontal or vertical video? Well then this is the job for you. It's actually an excellent opportunity. It's a good staff to work with if you listen to the show. If you know someone who's good at social media, if you understand how YouTube can be leveraged to reach the youths, please get in touch with us. We are at the gist@mike pesca.com if you have any interest or know of someone with interest in this part time job Social Media Manager the Gistikepesca.com It's Thursday, September 4, 2025 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca and it's a Not Even Mad day. Oftentimes on Not Even Mad, we'll have two people who are ideological opposites and usually they get along. In fact, if I had self critique, there have been times when people who on the page have never agreed studio get along like Gangbusters. Whereas special note, actual gangbusters, the FBI, the CIA, they're always getting into it over territorial fights. You ever watch a movie? Nah. That body was found three feet outside of your jurisdiction. I'm riding hurt on this. All right, Gangbusters Interregnum over. Our guests are two guys who are really, really brilliant. Josh Barrow. His background is mostly economics, but he's one of these brilliant thinkers and speakers who could hold forth on just about anything. And then there is Galen Drook, who is a polling specialist. But you might think to yourself, okay, that means he knows how to interpret what the public says. And he does. But he also has a very good grounding in terms of political science. And you'll see he won't lead with throwing haymakers of his own opinion, but he delivers the insight. Now, I do want to say we have a Special, not even Mad Channel. What is the benefit of going there instead of here? Well, here I like to streamline it. I also give you this intro, but there you get into it right away. And on this week's show, there'll be a portion that I cut out of this main interview. And what it was is the show that I like to listen to and so do many others, according to the ratings, according to the fact that they sold out the O2 arena in London. So it's from very. Usually a very good show called the Rest Is Politics, hosted by Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart. They've been guests on the gist and they' experts in British politics. And of course they're going to talk about American politics. But I was struck by the headline Question Time. Trump's plot to cancel the midterms. Cancel the midterms. He apparently has a plot. Well, you'll hear me play that portion on the show if you listen to the Not Even Mad feed. I didn't play it here because I thought it got into a little cul de sac of linguistics. It's very hard not to listen to the verb to cancel the midterms. And a lot of the debate or discussion was about that, but I thought it stood for the general premise that we're going to talk about, which is the usefulness of talking about Trump and the administration as a burgeoning autocracy. And even if Trump can't cancel the midterms and he can't, and Alistair and Rory do not say this, and I think should have, even if he can't cancel the midterms. I wanted to get Josh and Galen's reaction to the idea. Full segment is presented there. As always, we edit the segments for the most expedient distillation of wisdom, which you are now invited to enjoy. Galen Druke, Josh Barrow are not even mad falls in full swing. I'm feeling the chill. Maybe you are feeling the chill of an old wardrobe that leaves you cold. It's the perfect time to refresh your wardrobe with pieces that feel as good as they look. Quince makes it easy to look polished, to stay warm, to save big. Oh, you're saying you have to stint on quality? No, no stinting. You know what they have essentials for fall? 100% Mongolian cashmere from $50 washable silk tops. You know me and the tops and the skirts. All right. This is my wife. She went online, she found these perfectly tailored denim pieces. There are these wool coats. They look designer level. Somehow they cost a fraction of the price. It depends on cutting out the middle person. You get luxury quality goods at half the price of similar brands. I've talked a lot about the linen shorts, but we're getting the wool. The wool is coming. I'll tell you how my wife likes the wool. The wool coat. I think she's going to like it. I think that it's cut and its comfort will be second to none and oh so cheap. Keep it classy and classic and cozy this fall with long lasting staples from quince go to quince.com the gist for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C E dot com the gist to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com the gist let's map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.
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Galen Druk
Honestly Will, I didn't plan any trips, but I did switch to T Mobile with their new Family Freedom offer.
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Mike Pesca
That's not the itinerary we're following.
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Galen Druk
Well, I'm departing from AT&T and embarking.
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Josh Barrow
On a new journey with T Mobile.
- [06:27]
Galen Druk
They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four.
- [06:33]
Mike Pesca
New phones on the house. Bon voyage.
- [06:36]
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- [07:06]
Mike Pesca
Hello and welcome back to Not Even Mad, the show that represents a coming together like Taylor and Travis, not a coming apart like Kraft and Hein. Today we speak of burgeoning autocracy everywhere, Donald Trump's perception of his own advantages and maybe a little bit of what's the best thing for the Democrats to do? Be a dick like Gavin Newsom. Be happy like Zo Rod Mumdomi. We do so as we uphold our reputation for refutation and we vow to be not even mad. I often use this pronoun, we, but who are we? We this week are Josh Barrow, he of the Very Serious Substack and the host of the Serious Trouble podcast. Josh, are you in a little bit of a cul de sac that everything has to be branded serious now, well.
- [08:07]
Josh Barrow
Stay tuned on that. Actually, we have something less serious coming in the coming weeks.
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Mike Pesca
Really very fripperous.
- [08:12]
Josh Barrow
Yeah, yeah, something like that.
- [08:15]
Mike Pesca
Galen Drook plays both sides of the serious and fun loving side. He is the proprietor of GD Politics, a former 538 stalwart. Hello, Galen, how serious are you feeling today?
- [08:27]
Galen Druk
Like you said, a bit. A bit of both. You know, in my personal life, pretty unserious in my professional life. I'm getting ready to do an interview about like all of the legal cases facing the Trump administration. So we'll see if I can like, you know, spin it to be a little fun as well.
- [08:44]
Mike Pesca
All right, so everyone watch out for that 16 hour Galen drew interview.
- [08:49]
Galen Druk
Indeed.
- [08:50]
Mike Pesca
So, so much of Donald Trump. He's our president. His strategy, and I do think there is one, rests on his pressing his advantages despite liberal or Democratic opposition. In fact, I would say not despite it, because of it, as aided by it as a PR assist. Some examp examples. National Guard in Los Angeles to quell maybe phantom riots. He got a lot of blowback, but in his perception, he thought that the more people thought L A was unsafe, the better it was for him. Cruelty to immigrants. The more guff he gets for his treatment of say, Kilmar Abrego Garcia or Alligator Alcatraz, the more he thinks it benefits him. The National Guard fighting crime in D.C. illinois, Baltimore perhaps, a city near you, same thing. He thinks crime's the issue. I'm doing well. So here's the simple question, though, maybe a hard answer. I'll start with you, Josh. Is he right?
- [09:48]
Josh Barrow
Is he right that these issues bring him political advantage?
- [09:52]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. Is he playing this right?
- [09:55]
Josh Barrow
I think yes, to a significant extent. He does gain political advantage from raising the salience of these issues. Although I would note on the immigration thing, you know, the stuff where, you know, he's trying to look really cruel or fearsome or what have you also has substantive effect, which is to say that his administration has been highly effective at discouraging people from coming to the southern border of the United States and trying to enter interior. Enforcement is proving to be more of a complex logistical challenge for him. But there has been a marked success in discouraging the irregular flows of migrants that were a huge issue in the Biden administration and to some extent even during Trump's first presidency. And I think that that's recognizing something that the Biden administration recognized far too late, which is that would be migrants are not stupid and they respond to incentives. And if it appears that they will be Able to enter the United States and be able to ride out a court process for years and maybe even get a work permit while they're here. They're likely to come if they think they're just gonna get turned around at the border and maybe something awful will happen. Maybe they'll end up in Salvadoran gulag. They're not inclined to show up. So I think there, it's not just a politics thing where he's trying to raise the salience of that stuff. I think it's actually a substantive policy matter as well. As for the crime stuff, there's been this sort of myster, serious national decline in crime over the last few years, to some extent, actually maybe even exceeding the bump that occurred in 2020 with COVID and Defund, the police protests and that sort of thing. I don't think there's been a clear explanation of why the trends are positive, but they're continuing to be positive under him. So it sets up an environment where he can do a thing, where he shows toughness and the numbers are likely to continue to improve and he can then take credit. But ultimately, I think immigration has been a driving political issue of the entire Trump era. Cost of living has been a driving issue the entire Trump era. I'm a little more skeptical of these interventions in cities as major political events that matter a lot in either direction for the upcoming midterms and, you know, the next presidential election that we have. Although, you know, to the extent that attention has taken off the economy, which has become a relatively weak issue for Trump, I think that also favors him.
- [12:04]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. Galen, I agree broadly with Josh that the salience of the three issues I laid out, crime, immigration, and let's call it chaos in the cities, that helps Trump, but I wouldn't want to posit that this means he can't step in it, that just if those issues are being talked about, it's the case that he can't have screwed them up. But what do you think?
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Galen Druk
Yeah, I think in a moment of sort of transition in public opinion, it's easy to get lost in where we were and lose sight of where we're going, which is to say that for much of the Biden administration, all of this stuff would have been popular and actually pulled quite well. Mass deportations was popular with a majority of Americans. Building a wall at the southern border was popular with a majority of Americans. And that was new. Right. When he first ran for president back in the 2000 teens, none of this stuff was actually popular, but he was able to win despite it all, by being sort of this anti institutional, counterpunchy kind of figure who just seemed like he would fight on your behalf. But these policies actually became popular during the Biden era migrant crisis. That's no longer the case. Right. In sort of overstep. And we call this in the public opinion community, thermostatic public opinion, which is that once the public sort of gets what it wants, and oftentimes the executive overinterprets their mandate, there's a backlash from the public. So these mass deportations are no longer popular. You get even into even more specifics, like at courthouses, at schools, at churches, at things like that. Some of these things are massively unpopular. And so whereas for the first part of Trump's second administration, while he was underwater on things like trade, the economy, foreign policy, he was still above water on immigration. Now, today, on September 3rd, he's also unpopular on the issue of immigration. If you look at an average overall, according to, you know, my friend Nate Silver over at Silver Bulletin, he's at net negative 3 on immigration. Now, if we're talking about.
- [14:12]
Mike Pesca
But to interrupt, as recently as a couple months ago, as recently as June, he was positive. And this is against the backdrop of him being unpopular overall and unpopular on everything else. And sometimes when an unpopular president even has that little niche policy, he's gonna get punished on that just because the name Trump is attached to it. That just to set some context.
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Galen Druk
Well, I was about to say that if we're talking about changing the subject, yes, it's still his best issue. So if we're talking about inflation, he's at net negative 23 percentage points. So if you're changing the conversation from inflation to immigration, yeah, that's a benefit to you as the President of the United States. But I also think we have to be careful of who's going to vote in 2026. Right. It's not a general election electorate. It's going to be people who are highly motivated and angry and not people who are turning out to say, thank you, Trump, thank you for doing all of these things. Midterms are more of a fuck you electorate. People turn out to say fuck you for all of the things you have or haven't done. And so he may try to change the topic to immigration, but he's still going to be motivating a lot of the voters who find this, like, authoritarian light or like he's overstepping his bounds in terms of what he's doing on immigration. I think the most important sort of fact of the matter is that he's an unpopular president, and unpopular presidents lose ground at the midterms.
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Josh Barrow
I have a question for Galen, actually, if you don't mind, which is, you know, one of the challenges with polling issues is that there's a zillion different questions you can ask about an issue and you can frame it in a way that sort of gets results that put the public on either side of an issue. You might get at a part of it that they're not really directly focused on. I mean, one example is, like, with climate, you can get a lot of climate interventions that poll fairly well, but then if you start prodding and you ask people, you know, how much are you willing to. To sacrifice financially for this? Their willingness to pay for carbon reduction is actually extremely low. And so you've had a lot of misleading polling from progressive groups, basically telling Democrats, you know, fighting climate change is popular. It's the key to the youth vote. You have to do it. And basically, people have misled themselves about this. I worry about this on immigration, too, where there's all sorts of different aspects of immigration policy that you can ask about. And, you know, if you ask people about, you know, going and doing raids at courthouses and at schools, I understand that, that polls negatively, but I just wonder about the way that this issue is going to redound for Donald Trump, where on the economy, we focus a lot on what are actual results that are produced, if the result that he's actually producing here is a halt to the irregular migrant flows that people were unhappy about a few years ago, whether he'll be rewarded for that, even by voters who say they're unhappy about raids or something that either because they want to look the poll respondents, they want to look compassionate, or they're not really thinking about the issue holistically, whether he's still going to get rewarded for the result that he's produced, even if people have some quibbles or tell pollsters they have some quibbles about the methods.
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Galen Druk
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this, which is, I think the most important factor here is that if you ask Americans, who do you trust more on the issue of immigration, it's still Republicans. So I don't think that Trump's actions have made Democrats popular on the issue. They're extremely unpopular. And if the election were, you know, if the midterms were, say, do you prefer Democrats policy on immigration or Trump's policy on immigration, Trump would win. Obviously, he's not on the ballot in 2026. And if in 2028. What Dems have on offer is a similar border security scheme to what Biden had. Again, that will be a losing issue for them. The problem is kind of what I said before, which is that people don't really vote in the current environment to say thank you for doing the things I wanted you to do. It's more of a fuck you for messing up the things that I am upset about. And we have seen also that immigration is no longer sort of the third or second most important issue for Americans. As Trump has been successful, the salience has fallen. And so now more people are worried about the cost of living, or, I mean, Gallup asks this every month and has for a long time. And so you'll see 34%. And you're only allowed to list one issue. So this isn't one of those polls where you get to say, I care about literally everything.
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Josh Barrow
Right.
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Galen Druk
You can only name one issue. 34% of Americans say that it's the economy, which covers all kinds of things like inflation, the cost of living, the gap between rich and poor. The second most important issue to Americans at 24% is the government, poor leadership. That's a lot of those people are saying. I basically, my biggest issue in American politics today is I don't like Donald Trump. The next issue is immigration. It's still at 14%, which is not nothing, but is a significant decline from being in the mid-20s during the Biden era. And then you go on down from there. And I just want to back up what you said about climate, which is why I think this kind of polling is important. Yes. If you ask Americans, do you want to do this for the climate? Do you want to do that for the climate? People will say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. When you ask Americans, how important, what are your most important issues and how important is climate? It's not very important at all, even for the youngest Americans. I mean, the Harvard IOP poll that came out last year in the fall, asking young voters about the things that they cared about, if you paid attention only to the media and not polling, you would have thought it was Palestine and the climate, those two things were dead last in terms of priorities for young Americans. It was the cost of living, housing, the cost of health care, those kinds of pocketbook issues. And unfortunately for Trump, things have improved little or not at all on all of those issues.
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Mike Pesca
But wait a minute. All of this seems to assume. And so much of the analysis of how the next election will go is you ask, what are your issues? All of this seems to assume that no credit is ever given. Maybe it's the case that Donald Trump has largely solved the immigration issue. So then the dynamic is always, all right, we'll bump that down, and then we'll get to an issue that he's bad on. Crime and immigration, they've not been solved, but, man, have they improved once the salience of those goes down. Now we're on to some issue like the economy, inflation, or how the government is run that Trump and the Republicans don't do well on. Is this really how elections work? You never get credit for anything?
- [20:25]
Galen Druk
Well, I mean, if we were just going to celebrate how great America is, why wouldn't we just throw a party every day that we're not.
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Mike Pesca
He tried with that. He tried with that.
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Galen Druk
Real economic growth in two decades. Politics is about trying to direct Greece to the squeaky wheel, not celebrating the fact that you have, like, three fully functioning wheels.
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Josh Barrow
I think, though, I mean, the global trend, you know, where just incumbents get walloped in over almost every election around the world, that has persisted, you know, for the last five, six years, that's all been in an environment driven by an inflation spike. And the aftermath of that and then, you know, related, you know, actual shortages of goods and services. I mean, a lot of things went really off the rails with the COVID pandemic that are still people, and people still feel that they're not getting the life that they had before. The cost of living has become unreasonable, even if the inflation rate has come down. So I don't know whether that's. Whether we can say that the electorate is just like, permanently dissatisfied about everything, or whether it's that we've been through a particular economic condition in the last few years globally, that is very unsatisfying to people. And changes of government have not really fully brought improvement to that. And that's why you have this persistent. It's actually what is voters number one issue. The cost of living stuff just really hasn't been addressed anywhere.
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Galen Druk
And that.
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Josh Barrow
That's why people are persistently pissy.
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Mike Pesca
And even without inflation, we could say that the perception of economic prosperity no longer increasing at the pace it did is an issue, especially when paired with the reality of economic prosperity no longer increasing. Stipulated. So I just want to end with this question because I think you guys might disagree based on what you said. The public, the people who listen to my show, the people who read the New York Times, are appalled by Alligator Alcatraz and Kilmar Brego Garcia's treatment and deporting Deporting people to Eswatini and the very conspicuous cruelty, courtroom detentions, ice and masks. Donald Trump seems to think, get appalled all you want. These issues play well for me. Do you think he's right? Do you think Trump, if he were rational, would pull back on some of these issues that the polling says the public doesn't like? Josh, you could go first.
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Josh Barrow
Broadly, yes, I think he's right about the politics of it and I think in general something we've seen over the last 10 years is that when you are focusing on the impacts of a policy on people who are not US citizens, you're losing. This goes all the way back to the 2015 campaign and the remarks that Donald Trump made right when he was launching the campaign about they're sending rapists, they're not sending their best, et cetera. I don't think we've seen Trump, you know, the, I mean, I don't know, it's hard to say exactly what penalties are for what. There are a lot of voters that Trump alienated from the Republican Party with that who have left the party permanently. The offsetting thing is that there's way more voters that he's drawn into the party with the way that he has shifted the Republican Party. So the, you know, I think that what we've seen throughout that entire 10 year arc is that he has not paid a net price for that, even if we can identify specific voters who have been driven away by it. And I just, you know, think that, you know, where he sees real political weakness and where Democrats were able to beat him in 2020 was about domestic effects on US citizens, problems with the economy and problems with the COVID response that affected Americans. And so I, you know, I, as a Democrat, I get very nervous whenever I see Democrats talking about how, you know, the President is being mean to somebody who is not an American and that that's how we're gonna win the election.
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Mike Pesca
Galen?
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Galen Druk
Yeah, I think that while if you look at polling, Trump is not popular on a lot of this stuff and it really has Democrats quite upset, it's self evidently not Democrats strongest issue to do battle against Trump on immigration because like I said, even though this stuff may have become unpopular, if you're going to ask Americans to choose between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on immigration, they're going to choose the Republican Party. And to be clear, Donald Trump is never running for president again. And the only sort of future election in which he will be in the White House is the 2026 election. And I think making that Election about immigration would also be silly. I think, you know, the, the smarter thing to do would be to make it about cost of living issues, health care and the like. And so there's another issue here, of course, which is you don't just do things to, like, keep your poll numbers up or to make sure that Americans approve of this one specific policy issue. Like, he's been talking about this for a decade. And this is clearly something that Republicans really, really care about. And so getting into office and then just not enacting it because there might be thermostatic public opinion is also probably, I mean, I don't know if it's good politics, but it's bad governance, Right. To forever do nothing because you're afraid of pissing some voters off. Right. Like, Barack Obama paid dearly for implementing the Affordable Care Act. But I think most Democrats would tell you today that it was worth it, even though, you know, they had a, they had a real rough go of it in the early teens. And so I think that the sort of will these actions become unpopular with the majority of Americans is a little also beside the point.
- [25:52]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, I agree with you. And you know who else agrees with you? The Democrats agree with you. They know they're not going to primarily run on immigration. They might raise, they will raise issues and raise objections, but they're not going to primarily run on immigration.
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Josh Barrow
Well, but I think there is disagreement among Democrats about this because I think, you know, you saw certain members of Congress who were eager to raise the salience of the, of Kilmar Brego Garcia's case traveling. Well.
- [26:17]
Mike Pesca
Van Hollen went there and yes, met with him.
- [26:19]
Galen Druk
Right.
- [26:20]
Josh Barrow
That was a, that was a political choice. And, you know, the, and I think it reflected a sense that, you know, the outrage that they felt and that they were hearing from base Democratic voters about this made this a good political issue for Democrats. And I don't think that that was correct as a political judgment. And I do think there are Democrats who think that.
- [26:36]
Mike Pesca
Okay. Well, one thing that Galen said is Donald Trump will not be president again. I don't know. There's a lot of worry about autocracy. Maybe he will be. We'll discuss that when we come back in a minute with Josh and Galen on Not Even Mad.
- [26:55]
Josh Barrow
Foreign.
- [26:58]
Mike Pesca
We're back with Josh Barrow and Galen Druk. They are the guests. We are not even mad. And I want to talk about something that's making a lot of people mad. The idea that we might be living in an autocracy headline from the Financial Times. US sliding towards 1930s style autocracy, warns Ray Dalio, the legendary investor. He was specifically talking about the intel quasi takeover. Here's another headline from the New York Times a couple of days ago in blitz on science experts warn of autocratic tilt. Or maybe in a story in the Guardian about autocracy. Here was an example highlighted up top, Stephen Miller on Fox News, in effect criminalizing the opposition to Trump and calling Chicago a killing field despite contravening facts. I don't know if everything means we're an autocracy. Do they cancel each other out or is it just evidence upon evidence? And then I have the question of is it the best and most apt description to light a fire under the electorate or is it a label, an abstract label for a set of facts that alone should be what drives the electorate to become upset. So this is a branding question. It's a political science labeling question. It's a media question. Galen, I turn to you.
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Galen Druk
Yeah, it's funny because in preparing for the interview that I'm about to do on all of the president's legal cases. Right, 34 hour interview. So yeah, exactly. Some of the exact headlines that you just cited. And part of my framing and question and all of that is like, yes, if you open the news today, you get the sense that representative democracy is on the fritz. And to be clear, it's not just like for people who are mainlining msnbc, it's also like articles in the Wall Street Journal, articles in the Financial Times and the like. And I think, you know, for me the most, as you can tell, I like data and I like details and I try to come to conclusions not just based on my sense or what makes me uncomfortable personally or what might make one base or another uncomfortable. It just sort of like what are the definitions here? And for me the most important question is has Trump done something that is outside the bounds of his constitutional authority? If he has, has the, the courts that are tasked with reviewing his actions, have they said as much and once they do say as much, does he comply with the rules rulings? I think there was some anxiety around whether the White House was complying with court rulings as pertained to Abrego Garcia case. Ultimately, they did. Abrego Garcia came back to the United States and the White House complied. I and so I think it's really important that we differentiate between these are things that liberals don't like and these are things that constitute autocracy because there's been a lot of mixing of the two over the past decade. And so far, from what I can tell, the review process for a lot of Trump's activities that may be illegal is underway, and everyone's complying. Now, that's not to say that it will continue to be the case. If it's not the case, then we may end up in an autocratic government or whatever. There may be a constitutional crisis, and the executive may trump the judiciary. But at the moment, I think being like we're in an autocratic America is not super productive.
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Mike Pesca
Right. So these are warnings of autocracy, which is a little different from where they're already. But doesn't that all presume that if the Constitution, as ultimately decided by the current composition of the Supreme Court, if the Constitution allows it, it can't be an autocracy? And I don't think that's true.
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Josh Barrow
Well, I mean, the other issue is that there's a number of actions that the administration is taking where the Supreme Court is moving in a direction where the answer might be that, you know, well, they're not allowed to do this, but there's no remedy in the courts. Right. We're seeing you talk about this all.
- [31:12]
Mike Pesca
The time, and I couldn't, I can't recommend very serious more highly.
- [31:16]
Josh Barrow
Thank you.
- [31:17]
Mike Pesca
This is. Yes, this is. And this is what you do. Two thirds of your show is essentially a federal court or a lower court. Stop this Trump program. It got up to the Supreme Court, and then usually without comment, they allowed it to occur, at least temporarily.
- [31:34]
Josh Barrow
Right. And so I would note some of that has to do with questions about, you know, what should happen while a case is pending, which are sort of separate matters. I mean, you know, the tariffs, some of the country specific tariffs that the president has imposed, there's legal controversy over them. The Supreme Court might rule that they're illegal, at which point the tariffs would have to be refunded, and they're allowed to collect them along the way. And I think that's. Whether that should be allowed is a separate question from whether the tariffs are ultimately found to be legal. But in any case, we see some stuff that comes up, for example, with, you know, the president has, in the last few days, done what he's calling a pocket recession, where it's basically, there's some funds that Congress appropriated that he doesn't want to spend. And so they're sending a notice to Congress.
- [32:15]
Mike Pesca
It's a foreign aid fund. Right, right.
- [32:17]
Josh Barrow
And so they're sending a notice to Congress saying, we're not gonna spend this. And there's a law where Congress is supposed to be able to, you know, the Congress has to approve the recession because the power of the purse lies with Congress. But because the fiscal year is about to end, basically they can send it and there's not enough time for Congress to act on it, and then the money will go unspent. This is probably illegal, but one outcome that may come from this is that it's illegal, but the only body that has the authority to sue over it is the Congress. And Congress, under Republican control, won't try to enforce that. Right. And so you can have a rule that says the executive branch isn't allowed to do something, but if there's no way for the courts to act on it, it either in general or under this specific alignment of government, then basically you have a situation where the Constitution is not enforceable. So I do think some problems like that are arising here. On the other hand, I would note that sometimes the things that the President is doing to bring more power to himself are making our system more democratic rather than less. Which isn't to say that they're good. I think people sort of assume that more democratic is always good when that's not the right.
- [33:20]
Mike Pesca
That's why the Constitution exists, because we can't just default to what's the most democratic there have to be. Yeah, right.
- [33:28]
Josh Barrow
The main example I'd give here is with the Federal Reserve. The President wants more direct political control over monetary policy. Currently, the Fed is set up to be independent, and the ways that that works are Fed members are nominated to extremely long terms of like, more than a decade, and then actually represented on the committee that makes monetary policy, sets interest rates for the United States, are regional Federal Reserve banks that are quasi private and that represent the interests of businesses within their area. Nobody elects the president of the Federal Reserve bank of Bost, but he, from year to year, gets to sit on this committee that decides what our monetary policy is going to be. Now, I think the system that we have there is a good system that we've set up for good reasons and Fed independence, that both you have these legal structures and then this basically customary structure where you have career staff at the Fed and an economics profession that has a consensus or close to a consensus around how monetary policy should work. And those people with continuity between Republican and Democratic administrations in practice have a lot of the power that sets monetary policy for the U.S. trump is saying, no, this is a function of government. It should be under the political control of elected officials. And I think that's likely to lead in a bad direction of monetary Policy, but it is more democratic. It is putting the power over an important policy area within the hands of someone who's actually chosen by the American people to set policy. So I think in some cases, you have to be careful what you wish for in terms of democracy. But often the people who are complaining about this, and we saw this in a New York Times article about the President asserting political control over science, where the President is making political decisions about how funds should be spent that subsidize scientific research in the United States. The preference of many scientists is that instead that these powers in practice sit in the hands of unelected bureaucrats who represent a certain consensus that may not represent a consensus of the public as a whole. And so the system as it existed has merits and demerits, but it's not really a democratic system. And the one that the President is seeking to replace it with is more democratic again.
- [35:29]
Mike Pesca
Right. The Fed, an independent body independent of elected officials, sets interest rates. The FBI, with an independent director who is appointed every 10 years specifically to thwart the idea that it can be captured by one administration, is not democratic. And this past week, two weeks, we saw a raid on John Bolton. We saw the ouster of Lisa Cook for some quasi mortgage chicanery four years ago. The word autocratic might not be the best word, but it's troubling. And the direction in which it's troubling is something akin to, we have a certain constellation of words around it. Maybe fascism was too far, and this was the word that was bandied about by Harris and Biden. But autocratic seems to be, to me, a decent enough concern to describe what's going on. And I'm like you, Galen. I'm more of a Mr. Spock and try to be more empirical than emotional. But I think that there's something there. I can't avoid that.
- [36:37]
Galen Druk
Well, obviously there's something there. I mean, we all experience Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. And so clearly his priority is not, you know, a constitutional republic, representative governance, like that's not his most important issue. I do want to just sort of take one issue with the way that the Fed was described. The independence of the Fed is in some ways guaranteed by laws written by Congress. Right. In that governors can't be fired except for cause that's spelled out by Congress. And so. So because of laws enacted by democratically elected lawmakers, he cannot fire Lisa Cook legally. And so I should say this is not just sort of like, I don't know, the Supreme Court, which is really meant to be outside of democratic review in some sense, these are laws that were written by people who were democratically elected.
- [37:34]
Josh Barrow
Well, I mean, the view of a lot of people on the Supreme Court is that to the extent laws delegate executive branch power to independent agencies, those laws are unconstitutional. And then they've. They've said this weird stuff where it's like, except maybe that carve out. Yeah, right. And it's clearly what that is. There is that there's a sense among especially a lot of conservative thinkers that Fed independence is important, but it's like the only executive branch agency where it's actually good to have power carved off independently from the President. And partly that reflects, you know, ideological differences about monetary policy versus other issues. But the other thing it reflects is that the bureaucrats at the Fed have performed relatively well compared to certain other bureaucracies in terms of doing their job as they were supposed to and not overstepping into other policy areas where they weren't really supposed to be empowered. So I think partly there's been reaping and sowing here where there's been a choice among scientists, frankly, to politicize their profession. I mean, nature has endorsed in the last two presidential elections, which I don't think did anything to move any votes, but it also, of course, mean the.
- [38:36]
Mike Pesca
Journal Nature, not trees and rocks.
- [38:38]
Josh Barrow
Exactly. Yes. And so, you know, I think that, you know, the part, I mean, the. Who knows where the Court is ultimately going to land to the extent that the president, you know, the president contends that he's within his statutory authority to fire Lisa Cook, that, you know, he's firing her for cause, and the Supreme Court could end up deciding that they agree with that, and they wouldn't have to reach the question of whether the President can fire a Federal Reserve official for any reason. But another thing they can say that they might well end up saying is, and this is what the administration has been arguing, is that it's not reviewable by the courts what constitutes cause. So the law, in theory imposes some restriction that he can only fire the officials for cause, but then the President himself is the arbiter of what cause is. And then that means that the law establishing the Fed as interpreted by the courts would mean that the President has plenty plenary authority to fire members of the Federal Reserve Board if he wants. So again, that sets up another situation where you have a theoretical restriction, but in practice, there is no restriction on the President's behavior.
- [39:34]
Mike Pesca
So what do you think the best way for Democrats, those Very concerned with it. So let's include Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney and the staff of the Dispatch. What's the best way for them to talk about it? Because we've seen that the answer is not to use the word fascism. I don't think Americans respond to an abstract term or the ones that do are already on board. I would further say that if you polled most Americans, hey, should someone who lied about her primary residence residence be this unbelievably important person who has an impact on the economy and oh, by the way, she's going to do something that probably hurts you, you might not know it in terms of interest rates, I think popularly and this, this, this jives of what you were saying, this wouldn't be. The public would at least have concerns about what Lisa Cook did. So what's the best way to talk about it? Not to use the overarching structure of what he is or to pick and choose certain examples like maybe with the science or maybe the idea, which was a little bit overblown of firing weather officials. Is there a good way to critique Donald Trump that isn't about, that doesn't rely on a multi syllabic word.
- [40:50]
Josh Barrow
I think you need to talk about how the, how his actions directly affect people. It's not about institutional structures, it's about outcomes. I think with the Fed, you say that the President is trying to take control of the Federal Reserve so we can force it to print money to finance his tax cuts for billionaires and this is going to cause inflation and make everything you buy more expensive. I don't think you talk about Lisa Cook at all. I mean, all we know is what the administration and Bill Pulte, who runs the Federal Housing Finance Administration has said about her mortgage documents. I don't think there's a reason to venture review about whether she filled out those forms correctly or what causes there. I think you talk about monetary policy. I think you talk about the Fed and of course you don't say monetary policy, you say inflation. You say he's going to, you say.
- [41:29]
Mike Pesca
That on your show, but not when you're talking on regular people's shows. Yes.
- [41:33]
Josh Barrow
And so with science stuff, I mean, for example, I think that what RFK Jr. Has done with the Committee on Vaccine vaccine Approvals within hhs. I think you talk about how, you know right now if you want a Covid booster, you can't get it at Walgreens in 18 states because of the action that RFK Jr. Has done that limits the availability of these. And if they take further actions that make it difficult for people to get vaccines that they want or they want their children to have. And you know, most people are still in favor of vaccination even though there's a very, you know, loud vocal minority here. I think you point that out, but I think, you know, in each of these cases you need to focus on the direct effects and why voters should care why this is affecting their lives in a negative way. That's what you need to talk about instead of, you know, airy stuff about, you know, the institutions and, you know, who should make what decisions.
- [42:19]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And by the way, that the vaccine issue is a really interesting one because it cross cuts. And we know this when it comes to the maha moms who are liberal progressive people who are pro jfk. So we know that there is that odd pairing, but it also works the other way. Plenty of Republican, Republican leaning, pro business, anti DEI and not like craz wild people. Just the sort of person who might have voted for Mitt Romney definitely want their vaccines and definitely want people who they love to have their vaccine. So I like that. I think that is a good issue. Galen, I'll let you have the last word if you want to help the branding efforts of Ken Martin and the Democrats.
- [43:00]
Galen Druk
Well, that's not my objective. But I was going to say, I actually agree plenty with what Josh said about the Fed, is that the lack of an independent Fed makes Americans poor. I mean, I was, I was living in Turkey in 2010, 2011 when Erdogan consolidated power. And it's not a nice experience to have your currency fluctuate wildly and be able to afford something one day and not really be able to afford it the next, or not be able to, you know, this is not a populist issue, but leave your country or travel abroad or whatever, but buy foreign goods as well. And so the idea that autocracy makes you poor, I think is a good one, is a solid one. But I think there's another thing going on here. And I think the subtext to all of this is that talking about democracy is not a winner, that people won't vote for you just because you say representative government matters. And that's true to some extent. There's been, we can't really do rigorous real life research on this, but when you ask people in a lab like, would you change your vote from one party to the other because your preferred candidate on policy violates Democratic norms, it's like 3% of Americans who are willing to change their vote. And that goes from Both Democrats and Republicans. And I think that's in part because the median voter is an anti institutionalist, at least today. Right. Doesn't really trust a lot of the sort of pillars of American government and institutions that the left sort of holds up and says are really important to maintain. And so I think you talk about democracy in something of an anti institutionalist way, which is Donald Trump is now the establishment, he is now power, he is now sort of like the oligarch or however you want to frame him. And to allow him to do whatever he wants unchecked infringes on your freedom. Right. And so maybe talk about the things that somebody unchecked could do, not necessarily things that he's tried to do. But I don't think that like Americans all of a sudden don't care about freedom. Right, Americans still care about freedom. You have to just frame it in more anti institutionalist terms. And then lastly, I'll say freaking people out about democracy doesn't accomplish nothing. Like at the end of the day, the Democratic Party is super unpopular, but there are a lot of base Democratic voters who are worried about this stuff. And in a midterm election, how engaged they are, how enraged they are really does matter. Like the reason Democrats are winning all of these red districts in special elections by like double digits is because of the MSNBC mainliners who are like freaking the fuck out right now.
- [45:37]
Mike Pesca
Let's go on to our goat grinders. These are our, I don't know, little annoyances. These are our peccadillo's. These are the things that grind our gears, that get our goats. Now you're two gentlemen of such affable disposition. I find it hard to believe that there's anything out there that annoys you. But I'm going to find out if I was wrong. Galen, do you have a goat grinder?
- [46:03]
Galen Druk
Yes, I do. I've been thinking about this recently because I think I want to write a little bit more about it, but the quantified self. So I, I'm a data person, as I hope I've established here. I also care a little bit about my health and I run most days and I eat relatively healthfully. But I am, I would say I'm like totally opposed to the quantified self. I don't know how far or how fast I run, I don't know how many calories I eat, I don't know how many hours I sleep, how many hours I waste on my phone. And at the same time I think that tracking a lot of these things for the broader society is important. Important. Not like how many calories people eat, but like data about the broader public. Because we know exactly what it's like to be ourselves, but we know nothing. We have pretty limited understanding of what it's like to be other people or society as a whole. And so using data can be, you know, it means that you're curious. It means that there's some sort of generosity. It's important in a democracy, what people want or wish for matters. But when you're thinking about yourself, it can get in the way of being human in a sense. Like, you know, there's been increasing research on orthosomnia. People laying awake, worried about how many hours they are or aren't sleeping based on their aura rings or, you know, even sort of step tracking studies have shown that while it may modestly increase activity, it doesn't ultimately improve health outcomes. And in a. In a scientific study, the people who were using these step counters actually lost less weight. And so I think, like, applying data to like, or tracking every single thing in your life and applying data to all of it just gets in the way of what it feels like to be a human.
- [47:55]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And speaking of quantifying the human experience, I am going to talk about one aspect of fantasy football. Now, I assume both you guys play. How many leagues are you guys in?
- [48:06]
Galen Druk
First, not. Not the first, but the second. Homophobic slur. Since we've been on this podcast, I've.
- [48:13]
Josh Barrow
Had fantasies about football.
- [48:17]
Mike Pesca
I think that it's a great compliment to assume that you do things other than participate in fantasy football. So I am in too many leagues. It is a cliche. It is the most boring part of my personality. I have often said the most boring topic for a conversation is let me tell you about my dreams. And the second one is, let me tell you about my wide receivers. But I also listen to way too many fantasy football podcasts, and I've determined you should not listen to more than four. After four, you are just out of useful information. And you get sentences like this, which is not an exact sentence, but it is a distillation of the kind of sentence that is said on a very good fantasy football podcast. You know, over the last 12 years, quarterbacks with an A dot of at least 6.8. Eighteen of the 23 who qualify were in the top 11 the next season in fantasy points. Now, if you guys don't know what that means, don't worry. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a collection of numbers that can help you Pick a good quarterback. So these fantasy football podcasts, after the fifth time you've listened to an episode, I swear to God, we talk about political podcasts. Is going around and around and talking about nothing. There's a lot of useful information as opposed to who should your backup tight end, Big Josh, take it away.
- [49:40]
Josh Barrow
The news in August is reliably the stupidest of any month of the year. And we've been through a really, really stupid one this year. You know, starting with the Sydney Sweeney jeans jeans controversy and ending with Cracker Barrels rebrand, where you had people who have not set foot inside a cracker barrel in 20 years deciding that they had strong opinions about retaining Cracker Barrel's old branding and how great that is and how important it is politically. Both of these corporate branding issues made into political issues for no good reason other than that people need to find something to argue about in the month of the year that Congress has gone home. I mean, it's been especially funny this year because it's been an eventful August in terms of policy substance. The Trump administration is always doing something new to try to draw more power toward the President, as we've discussed on here. So it's not that there was a lack of topics, but I don't know, I guess it's just the hot weather and the humidity or something draws people to the most trivial arguments they can possibly have. It's usually a little bit better in even numbered years. Cause there's an election coming up and some of those years you get the Olympics. Although sometimes the Olympics itself is the problem. Like you get Ryan Lochte lying about being robbed at a gas station in Brazil. But so Anyway, August of 2025, break dancing.
- [50:58]
Mike Pesca
That was a big one, right?
- [50:59]
Josh Barrow
Wait, which one? I don't remember that one.
- [51:02]
Mike Pesca
The breakdancing controversy with what was her name? Ray Gun. Who? The Australian breakdancer who approximated a kangaroo and caused a Cracker Barrel level of discourse.
- [51:14]
Josh Barrow
God, I think I was at the beach for that one at least.
- [51:17]
Galen Druk
Smart. I think it was like a white woman who was a professor of breakdancing who enter the Olympics as a competitive breakdancer and well, quote, unquote, Cohen was terrible, right?
- [51:28]
Mike Pesca
Yes.
- [51:29]
Galen Druk
Was single handedly responsible for breakdancing, getting immediately ousted from the Olympics.
- [51:33]
Mike Pesca
Yes, yes. That was what happened. Yes, yes.
- [51:37]
Josh Barrow
Anyway, now it's September. Now it's September. We have to be smart again.
- [51:41]
Mike Pesca
I want to thank my guests Galen Druk and Josh Barrow. And until next time, we are not saying we're right. I'm not saying you're right, but we are definitely saying we're not even mad. And that's it for today's show. The Gist is produced by Cory Wara. Astrid Green runs our social media. Kathleen Sykes helps me with the Gist list. Philip Swissgood has been chipping in. And, of course, Ashley Kahn is our production coordinator. Michelle Pesca is here, which she almost never is. I can prove it.
- [52:19]
Josh Barrow
Hi, honey.
- [52:20]
Mike Pesca
You see that? How about that? She didn't know I often mentioned her in the credits. What do you think of that?
- [52:26]
Galen Druk
I deserve it. It.
- [52:27]
Mike Pesca
This is the kind of interview style she has given herself to as the overseer and CEO of Peach Fish Productions. Improve G Peru Duper. If that is indeed the right order. Is that the right order? Yes, you said. Thanks for listening.