Trump Loyalists Get Cabinet Prizes

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Trump Loyalists Get Cabinet Prizes"
What a Day
Host: Jane Koston
Guest: Zach Beacham, Senior Correspondent for Vox
Release Date: November 12, 2024

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Introduction

In the November 12, 2024 episode of What a Day, host Jane Koston delves into the burgeoning Trump administration and its potential impact on American politics and society. The episode, titled "Trump Loyalists Get Cabinet Prizes," offers an in-depth analysis of President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet nominations and features an enlightening conversation with Zach Beacham of Vox, who provides a comparative perspective on Trump's strategies vis-à-vis Viktor Orban's authoritarian playbook in Hungary.

Trump Administration Appointments

As preparations for Trump's second term unfold, his administration begins to assemble a lineup that deeply concerns Democrats and advocates for democratic norms. Jane Koston outlines several key appointments and their implications:

• Stephen Miller as Deputy Chief of Staff

  • Background: A right-wing nativist with white nationalist views, Miller was instrumental in Trump's first term, notably shaping the 2018 family separation policy at the border.
  • Confirmation: While Trump hasn’t officially announced Miller’s appointment, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance confirmed it on Twitter on Monday.
  • Quote: "[Miller] will be in charge of, quote, all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin." [01:17]

• Tom Homan as Border Czar

  • Role: Former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, tasked with overseeing deportations.
  • Statement: In an interview on Fox and Friends, Homan emphasized continuing aggressive deportation policies.
  • Quote: "It's going to be the same way during the first administration, which is a..." [01:53]

• Lee Zeldin as Head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

  • Background: A former New York Congressman who opposed the certification of the 2020 election results.
  • U.S. Focus: Zeldin plans to prioritize business-friendly environmental policies.
  • Quote: "Through the EPA, we have the ability to pursue energy dominance..." [02:20]

• Elise Stefanik as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

  • Background: A staunch Trump impeachment defender and opponent of the 2020 election certification.
  • Confirmation: Expected to receive Senate approval swiftly due to Republican majorities.
  • Implications: Stefanik and Zeldin’s appointments reflect Trump's commitment to placing loyalists in pivotal government roles, potentially undermining Democratic norms.
  • Quote: "It's bleak, but it's also pretty in line with what Trump promised..." [02:35]

Conversation with Zach Beacham: Democracy Under Threat

Jane Koston welcomes Zach Beacham to discuss the implications of Trump's cabinet choices and broader strategies that may erode democratic institutions in the United States.

Trump’s Enhanced Organizational Prowess

Beacham argues that Trump’s second term poses a more significant threat than his first due to his heightened organizational capabilities and clear vision to dismantle liberal institutions.

• Quote: "I just think it's going to be a lot worse than it was last time." [03:46]
• Schedule F: A pivotal executive order previously attempted by Trump to reclassify a segment of the civil service, allowing easier dismissal of federal employees. Beacham anticipates its reimplementation to consolidate control.
  • Quote: "He's going to reimplement Schedule F... to go through the entirety of the American political system to try to bend the thing to his will." [04:03]

Comparative Analysis: Trump and Viktor Orban

The discussion transitions to Viktor Orban’s transformation of Hungary into an autocracy, drawing parallels to potential strategies in the U.S.

• Orban’s Tactics: Upon gaining power in 2010, Orban leveraged a significant parliamentary majority to rewrite the constitution, secure key government positions for loyalists, and suppress opposition through subtle yet repressive measures.

  • Quote: "He has broken his domestic political opposition... seized control of universities, the media says what he wants it to say." [05:07]

• American Context: While the U.S. federal system differs from Hungary’s, Trump’s appointment strategies mirror Orban’s methods by placing loyalists in critical roles, potentially undermining checks and balances.

  • Quote: "There's a whole smorgasbord of policies here... How far is Trump and the people he appoints willing to go if they really want to sort of follow the Orbanist playbook?" [10:00]

Resistance and Optimism

Despite the grim outlook, Beacham offers a note of optimism, emphasizing that awareness and organized resistance can mitigate authoritarian tendencies.

• Hope Factors: Lessons from Poland and Brazil demonstrate that democratic institutions can withstand and counteract authoritarian attempts.
  • Quote: "There's lessons to learn from now and there's a deeper understanding of what the nature of the threat is..." [12:00]

Climate Policy and COP 29

The episode transitions to international climate policy, highlighting the tension between the incoming Trump administration and global climate initiatives.

• Trump’s Stance: President-elect Trump has reiterated his skepticism of climate change, dismissing it as a "hoax" and threatening to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement once more.

• John Podesta’s Response: As Biden's lead advisor for international climate policy, Podesta addressed delegates at COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, emphasizing the inevitability of continuing climate action despite Trump's stance.

  • Quote: "Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable. This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet. Facts are still facts." [17:14]

• Implications for COP 29: The conference faces challenges as delegates grapple with diminished U.S. commitment and the pressing need to move away from fossil fuels.

Veterans Day and Honoring Harriet Tubman

In observance of Veterans Day, significant announcements and honors were made:

• Presidential Remarks: President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attended ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery, with Biden delivering an emotional tribute to veterans and announcing expansions in the Department of Veterans Affairs to cover cancers linked to toxic exposures.

• Harriet Tubman’s Posthumous Honor: Tubman was named a one-star Brigadier General in the Maryland National Guard, recognizing her historical contributions as a scout, spy, and leader during the Civil War.

  • Quote by General Jeanine L. Burkhead: "She was able to go behind enemy lines, get information to free hundreds of people during raids at Coma. All of those things were seminal in our nation's history to lead us where we are today." [20:20]

Critique of "Drain the Swamp"

Jane Koston critically examines Trump's long-promised "drain the swamp" initiative, highlighting the irony and hypocrisy in his administration's actions.

• Irony of the Swamp: Contrary to Trump's claims of eliminating Washington's corruption, his administration appointed numerous lobbyists and continued to bolster big business interests.

  • Examples Provided:
    • Susie Wiles, former campaign manager, previously lobbied for the tobacco industry.
    • Kellyanne Conway and others advocated for platforms like TikTok, aligning with corporate interests.

• Billionaires’ Gains: The episode details how billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have significantly increased their wealth post-election, undermining Trump's narrative of supporting working-class Americans.

  • Quote: "What Trump is doing is making rich people richer. That's it." [25:32]

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a sobering reflection on the incoming Trump administration’s potential to reshape American governance and societal norms. Through strategic appointments and policy initiatives reminiscent of authoritarian playbooks, there is a clear threat to democratic institutions. However, the conversation with Zach Beacham underscores that vigilance and organized resistance can preserve democratic values.

What a Day continues to provide its audience with critical insights and thorough analyses, ensuring listeners are well-informed about the pressing issues shaping today's world.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jane Koston [01:17]: "Homan will be in charge of, quote, all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin."
• Zach Beacham [03:46]: "I just think it's going to be a lot worse than it was last time."
• Zach Beacham [09:27]: "Like, that's how he did it. He crushed the left by crushing them more subtly than sending troops into their houses."
• Zach Beacham [12:00]: "There's lessons to learn from now and there's a deeper understanding of what the nature of the threat is..."
• Jane Koston [17:14]: "Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable. This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet."
• Zach Beacham [25:32]: "What Trump is doing is making rich people richer. That's it."
• General Jeanine L. Burkhead [20:20]: "She was able to go behind enemy lines, get information to free hundreds of people during raids at Coma..."

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Note: Advertisements and non-content segments have been excluded from this summary to maintain focus on the substantive discussions and insights presented in the episode.

Transcript

[Jane Koston]

It's Tuesday, November 12th. I'm Jane Koston and this is what a Day, the show where we're watching the new Mission Impossible trailer on a loop just to feel something. You know, if Tom Cruise just jumps off of an even taller building, I think that'll fix everything. On today's show, world leaders brace themselves for climate policy under Trump, and Harriet Tubman gets a special recognition. Just not the $20 bill we're still waiting for. Let's get into it. The incoming Trump administration 2.0 is starting to take shape, and as expected, it's a Democrat's worst nightmare. President Elect Trump is expected to name Stephen Miller, a right wing nativist with white nationalist views, to be his deputy chief of staff. Trump hasn't officially made the announcement, but Vice President elect J.D. vance seemed to confirm it on Twitter Monday. Miller was a senior advisor during Trump's first term and was one of the architects of the 2018 policy to separate parents from their children at the border. He's still the same immigration hardliner as evidenced by his speech at that infamous Madison Square Garden rally before the election. Who's going to stand up and say.

[Zach Beacham]

The cartels are gone, the criminal migrants are gone, the gangs are gone, America is for Americans and Americans only?

[Jane Koston]

Gross in appointments that Trump did officially announce, he's picked Tom Homan, his former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, to be his new border czar. In a truth social post, Trump said Homan will be in charge of, quote, all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin. Homan said as much during an interview on Fox and Friends on Monday. In this exchange with co host Steve Doocy, I know you don't want to.

[Zach Beacham]

Give away the whole game book, but you do have deportations, mass workplace stuff planned. Any other kind of category of deportations of interest?

[Jane Koston]

Look, as the president said on stage many times, which I agree with 100%, it's going to be the same was during the first administration, which is a.

[Zach Beacham]

Hell of a lot more of them.

[Jane Koston]

Also on Monday, Trump named former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin was one of the members of Congress to refuse to certify the 2020 election results. His his experience with environmental policy is slim, but he told Fox News the emphasis will be more on what's good for business.

[Zach Beacham]

Through the epa, we have the ability to pursue energy dominance, to be able to make the United States the artificial intelligence capital of the world, to bring back American jobs to the auto industry, and so much more.

[Jane Koston]

But hey, Zeldin and Trump insist we'll still have clean water and air. Sure. And for his first cabinet level appointment, Trump has picked New York Representative Elise Stefanik to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She was one of Trump's impeachment defenders in 2019 and also refused to certify the 2020 election. She and Zeldin will need Senate confirmation for their job, though Republicans will have the majority, so there's no reason to suggest they won't get it. So, yeah, it's bleak, but it's also pretty in line with what Trump promised over and over again to appoint loyalists to key positions that will help him bend the government to his whims in a way he couldn't in his first term. Democratic norms be damned. So for what all that means for the country, I spoke with Zach Beacham. He's a senior correspondent for Vox, where he covers challenges to democracy. He's also the author of the book the Reactionary How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World. Zach, welcome to what a day.

[Zach Beacham]

Hey, Jane, it's good to talk to you here.

[Jane Koston]

So I think a lot of people, a lot of liberals, a lot of people on the left are trying to comfort themselves with the idea that we survived four years of Trump before, it will suck and we'll be annoyed all the time, but we can do it again. You're not buying that? Why?

[Zach Beacham]

So, look, I want to be clear. I think we can survive four years of Trump. I just think it's going to be a lot worse than it was last time. And I think the big reason is that Trump is way more organized than he was the last time around. And not just like more organized in the sense of having a better staff and a clearer vision of what's happening. It's that he wants something specific. Right. He's always had these kind of general anti Democratic tendencies, and they started to come out during his administration, obviously, most notably on January 6th. But even before then. Right. He issued an executive order called Schedule F that would have allowed him to fire a large chunk of the professional civil service. He left office before that could be implemented. Now, one of the first things he's going to do when he returns is re implement Schedule F. And he's going to do so because he's promised throughout the campaign to his supporters that I am your retribution, like Batman talking about being vengeance. And now he's in a position to go through the entirety of the American political system to try to bend the thing to his will. And he really wants to. After being indicted four times, you've written.

[Jane Koston]

That Hungary and its authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban, have created a blueprint for transforming a democracy into an autocracy. What did that blueprint look like in Hungary?

[Zach Beacham]

So Hungary is different from the United States in some important ways, but also there's some similarities here that really matter. Right. So in 2010, Orban took power as the result of an economic downturn, poor situation going on, and the incumbent party being generally pretty unpopular. And he did so with a huge mandate. We're talking like two thirds of the seats in Hungary's parliament, which is enough under their system to rewrite the constitution in its entirety. That was very bad for the Hungarian political system because what Orban did, he was really, really angry about having been forced out of power about eight years prior and was doing everything he could to make sure he never lost again. So he rewrote the constitution, started changing laws to make sure that his people were in key positions throughout government, getting authority into politically connected hands who could then use their positions of power to ensure that different forms of resistance to new authoritarian rules could no longer be effective. And that's the thing, to me, that sort of sends alarm bells ringing when you think about the parallels between the United States and Hungary, because Trump's plan to restaff the federal government and get his people in all the right places bears a worrying resemblance to what Orban and people like him have done in other countries.

[Jane Koston]

We've talked about this before. Something that's been so interesting is that there's a host of people on the American right, among them Tucker Carlson, who have long admired Orban, despite the fact that Hungary, as you've mentioned, has a very different societal context. And a lot of Hungary's efforts to, say, raise the birth rate or do a host of things that traditional right wing people in America want America to do, haven't worked.

[Zach Beacham]

Yeah.

[Jane Koston]

And so what do you think that tells us about not just this era, but also kind of the American right right now, that the person that they most admire is a leader of a country that is, like, very different from ours.

[Zach Beacham]

And, I mean, in a weaker position in a lot of ways. Right. Like, the Hungarian economy is not. It's not doing well under Orban. It has negligible military and international political power. Right. It's just not as a society. It's not like on most objective metrics. It's not doing that great. But what Orban has done, and I think what makes him the envy of a lot of conservatives, not just in the United States, but across Europe, too, is that he has broken his domestic political opposition. Right. Conservatives here are motivated in large part by their antipathy to liberalism. Many of these different conservatives have different ideas about what it means to be a conservative or what it means to be on the right. But what stitches the Trump coalition together, at least when we're talking internal factional politics, is that they really, really, really, really resent that liberals have positions of power and that liberalism has, in some ways, been the dominant ideology in the United States. And they want to destroy that, and they really want to destroy the liberal elites who they think are smug and insufferable. And what Orban has done, if nothing else is crushed Hungary's liberal elites. He seized control of universities. The media says what he wants it to say. Major corporations are primarily either owned by he and his friends or forced to toe the government line in a variety of different ways and certainly never do anything close to issuing press releases that would criticize the government. Conservative values define nationalist. Religious values define, increasingly, the curricula in schools. So he's won the culture war. Right. And winning the culture war is so important to people on the right that they see Orban as this shining model despite not only his policy failures, but his rank authoritarian governing style. And the fact that those authoritarian means were integral to winning the culture war victories. Right. Like, that's how he did it. He crushed the left by crushing them more subtly than sending troops into their houses.

[Jane Koston]

Yeah. He didn't win a debate on YouTube with them.

[Zach Beacham]

Yeah, yeah. It's not like 10 times Viktor Orban owned the left. That's not what was happening here. It was the exercise of political power in often very subtle, but still repressive ways to get people in line.

[Jane Koston]

So how could we see that here in a second Trump term? And what would it look like here if it were possible?

[Zach Beacham]

So there obviously are major institutional differences. Right. Hungary is not a federal system. So everything is government wise is done by the national government or localities, which makes it a lot easier for you to seize control over all different things, like election administration at the federal level. But there's still levers in the American system that you can pull if you're president. So, you know, recently I spent a lot of time reporting on a part of the Justice Department, the Civil Rights division, that's designed to secure the rights, particularly of socially marginalized groups. With just a little bit of clever lawyering, it can be used to push those groups further to the margins. For example, Trump's deputy aide, Stephen Miller, has promised to go after anti white discrimination. And anti white discrimination is of course, code for any kind of program designed to redress long term structural discrimination inside the United States. And you know, that's, that is a way of using law to go after your cultural opponents coercively. And there's persecution of lower level election administrators at the state level. That's in Project 2025 in its section on the Justice Department. And another example is trying to use various different education level litigation powers and regulatory powers to try to force universities, let's say, like Orban did, getting rid of gender studies departments. So, I mean, really, there's a whole smorgasbord of policies here. Right. Lots and lots of different ones. The question is, how far is Trump and the people he appoints to key positions willing to go if they really want to sort of follow the Orbanist playbook?

[Jane Koston]

You also write, though, that no country at America's level of political economic development has ever collapsed into authoritarianism. Hungary is again the closest example, but as you've mentioned, it's not a perfect analog. And I've been thinking about this a lot, this unusual situation in which his coalition contains a bunch of entities that hate one another.

[Zach Beacham]

Yep.

[Jane Koston]

And Trump will have slim majorities in the House and Senate. Is there some reason for some optimism, or at least not just abject despair?

[Zach Beacham]

Yes, you know, I really think so. Like, I don't mean this conversation and these warnings to be like, everything is going to be terrible, you should move out of the country. It's all going down. No, it's not. It's not like that. Rather, it's that there is a clear and established playbook you need to be watching for. But the fact that you can watch for it and organize around it is proof that things are actually still at a pretty decent level in the United States, where, like, one thing that happened in Hungary is people didn't understand at the time where things were going. The opposition wasn't prepared to rally and try to stop what Orban was doing. And the people wasn't cognizant that this was a thing that could happen in a country like theirs, which had actually recently transitioned from a communist regime and looked like a very vibrant success story for all the world, like a fully established, consolidated democracy. But the United States has seen this happen in Hungary, and we've seen similar playbooks tried out in countries like Israel and India and Poland and Brazil. And we know that it can be stopped, as it was recently in Poland and Brazil. So there's lessons to learn from now and there's a deeper understanding of what the nature of the threat is, which Hungarians didn't have back in 2010.

[Jane Koston]

Zach, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for joining me.

[Zach Beacham]

Thank you, Jane. It's good to see you again.

[Jane Koston]

That was my conversation with Zach Beacham, senior correspondent for Vox and author of the book the Reactionary Spirit. We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts and share with your friends. We'll be back after some ads what a Day is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and state for over 75 years, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has tirelessly defended your right to live as yourself and believe as you choose. From protecting LGBTQIA rights and marriage equality to safeguarding reproductive freedom in our public schools, church, state separation is at the heart of our most vital freedoms. Americans United fights for every individual's freedom to believe as they choose, so long as they don't harm others. Join the fight [e-mail] Crooked what a day is brought to you by the Zero Emission Transportation Association Education Fund. The Zeta Education Fund wants Americans to know about the positive economic impact the EV and battery supply chain is having on our communities. Like how it's already created 240,000 jobs and attracted $177 billion of investment. More than a million EVs were sold in the US last year and there are currently over 200,000 public charging locations in the United States. Join forces with the Zeta Education Fund and help spread the facts about what a transition to EVs means for the future of America. Get on board@zeta zeta.org join what a day is brought to you by Sling. Seems like things change every 20 minutes. It's hard to keep up. That's why you should watch Sling. They provide the best value for your essential news channels. With Sling, you get all of your favorite news channels at the best price. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Hannity, Anderson Cooper, 360, the Rachel Maddow show, and more for just $40 a month. So yeah, with the election coverage and everything else happening, you can get news that will raise your blood pressure at prices that won't get the best price on news about what's going on in the world. Then say that's what's going on in the world. And it's not just news. Check this out. Sling has the live sports, news and entertainment channels you love and less of the ones you don't, so you save hundreds of dollars. Sling lets you choose and customize your channel lineup so you can choose the channels you actually like. Sling's cloud DVR lets you record your shows to watch in your schedule. There's no complex technology, no long term contracts, and no hidden rigmarole. I need to be able to watch football and I need to be able to watch football on my schedule. That's why I love Sling. Get rewarded for watching your favorite news channels. Sling lets you do that. Visit sling.com now to learn more and get started. That's sling.com now. Sling.com now and now the news headlines.

[Zach Beacham]

In January, we're going to inaugurate a president whose relationship to climate change is.

[Jane Koston]

Captured by the words hoax and fossil fuels. John Podesta, President Biden's lead advisor for international climate policy, addressed world leaders gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP 29 on Monday with strong words about the president elect in the wake of his victory. The annual United nations conference is dedicated to addressing the climate crisis, and this year new concerns have emerged as the president elect has said he will pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement again, as he did in 2017. Podesta and his fellow US delegates are reluctant to make any financial commitment to the proposed climate solutions at COP 29, knowing this could be the last time the US sends a delegation to the conference at all. But Podesta made clear to the attendees that the climate crisis is bigger than Trump and that the work must continue.

[Zach Beacham]

Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable. This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet. Facts are still facts.

[Jane Koston]

Science is still science. Trump's election is a big overshadowing force at COP 29, but delegates must also confront their failure to honor the pledge they made at last year's conference to finally ditch fossil fuels. COP 29 will conclude at the end of next week. Israel's foreign minister Gideon Saar said on Monday that there's been, quote, unquote, certain progress towards a ceasefire with Hezbollah. But leaders of the Lebanese militant group say they have not received any proposal for a truce. It's been a little over a month since Israel formally launched its offensive against Hezbollah. An Israeli airstrike killed 54 people and wounded more than 56 others in northern Lebanon on Sunday, and Israel's Defense Forces issued immediate evacuation orders to villages in southern Lebanon on Monday, signaling plans of further escalation, according to Lebanon's health Ministry. This brings the death toll in the country to over 3200 since the start of Israel's war on neighboring Gaza last year. More than 14,000 others have been wounded in that time. A representative from the UN will arrive in Lebanon today to continue talks for a ceasefire over the next few days. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made their first joint appearance since the election on Monday to observe Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery. The two laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier before the president gave remarks to an audience of veterans and their families. Biden was emotional as he spoke about the experience of veterans from World War II to the messy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. This is the last time I will stand here at Arlington as commander in Chief. It's been the greatest honor of my.

[Zach Beacham]

Life to lead you, to serve you.

[Jane Koston]

To care for you, to defend you, just as you defended us, generation after generation after generation. The President also announced an expansion to cancers covered by the Department of Veterans affairs to include those caused by breathing toxic smoke from burning trash pits on military bases, a phenomenon which he believes is responsible for the death of his son Beau in 2015. And in other Veterans Day news, the abolitionist and actual American hero Harriet Tubman was posthumously awarded the rank of one star Brigadier General in the Maryland National Guard on Thursday. The honor was accepted by Tubman's great, great, great grandniece. Tubman is best known for escaping slavery, helping to establish the Underground Railroad and becoming a major figure in the movement to abolish slavery. But she was also the first woman to oversee American military action during a time of war. Fun and interesting fact. She served as a scout, spy and nurse for the Union army during the Civil war and led 150 black soldiers on a raid in coma. He South Carolina Major General Jeanine L. Burkhead presented the award. Birkhead is a two star general herself and grew up hearing stories about Tubman as a general. She spoke to reporters from a local CBS affiliate on Monday about the historical significance of Tubman's military service.

[Zach Beacham]

She was able to go behind enemy lines, get information to free hundreds of people during raids at Coma. He all of those things were seminal I think in our nation's history to lead us where we are today.

[Jane Koston]

And that's the news. One more thing, do you remember draining the swamp? Sure you do. Back in 2017, Donald Trump and more importantly, the people who loudly supported him argued that only he could get lobbyists and big business out of Washington and restore the power to the good working people of America provided that they were Republicans. Well, the swamp is now in charge and very excited about it. Let's start with the lobbyists. You know, the people who get paid to go to D.C. and cajole official Washington into doing things that make the companies paying them happy. Susie Wiles, Trump's campaign manager and now chief of staff, worked as a lobbyist on behalf of the tobacco industry. And multiple people within Trump's inner circle, like former aide Kellyanne Conway, were lobbyists on behalf of TikTok, which could have something to do with his sudden embrace of the platform after repeatedly threatening to ban it. And then there are the billionaires, first and foremost, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, who became about $26 billion richer the day after the election as the share price of Tesla rose. And then there's Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who got $7 billion richer last Wednesday. I know the election feels like it ended 10 years ago and not last week, but Trump talked way less about draining the swamp this election. The Washington Post found that he barely even used the phrase on Truth Social. Instead, he chose to fundraise with lobbyists directly and promised big oil executives that if they just gave him a billion dollars, he would do pretty much whatever they wanted him to do on environmental policy. There's a story about Trump's rise and his electoral success that seems to be pretty popular with some people. One in which he's standing up for working families and standing against the evil elite stealing all our money and spending it all on themselves. But it's just so clear that that was never true. What Trump is doing is making rich people richer. That's it. That's why his biggest supporters are always like the guy who owns your town's Toyota dealership. The people who own multiple boats and go to Destin twice a year and send their kids to the University of Dayton or the University of Colorado. Sure, they didn't go to college, so they brag about how they're just working class blue collar workers rooted in the common truth of American life. But the rich, they're really, really rich. And now they're just gonna get richer. Before we go over on Crooked's legal podcast, Strict Scrutiny, hosts and constitutional law professors Leah, Kate, and Melissa are breaking down what last week's election means for the future of the supreme and state courts. Look, I didn't go to law school, but I did watch like 20 years of law and Order, and it turns out that that's not the same. That's why I love this show, because it helps me make sense of how the legal system works and I don't have to learn about torts. It's smart, funny, and focuses on how the issues we all care about could be impacted by the courts in 2025 without feeling like homework. Subscribe to Strict Scrutiny wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, dust off all your favorite ways to call Stephen Miller a sniveling rat faced asshole and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just about all the terrible billionaires who are somehow already getting even richer under Trump like me, what a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and [e-mail] subscribe I'm Jane Costen and good lord, there are a lot of trash people in this incoming administration. What A Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michelle Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.

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