Are Protestors Playing Into Trump’s Hands?

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Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Scott Galloway.

And I'm Jessica Darlove.

Jess,

it's banter time.

I've been waiting for banter time because I need you to tell me about the rumble in Detroit.

Oh, yeah.

So I've had a great week.

I went to the French Open, which I found lovely, which was lovely.

Yeah.

And then I got on a plane from Miami, did a speaking gig down there.

Unfortunately, it was raining.

Miami loses 110% of its charm when it's raining.

110% is generous.

I think it's more like 200%.

Yeah.

There you go.

And then got on a plane from New York, couple days in New York.

Daddy hit the members' clubs, went deep in the paint, little alcohol,

little mushroom chocolates.

That's my next thing, mushroom chocolates.

It's like the tequila of psychedelics.

It takes you up.

I had never done those before and enjoyed them more than I thought.

And then I went to Detroit for Summit, which is this big gathering.

They call it Learning Man.

It talks during the day.

And then everyone does much more serious hallucinogenics and listens to DJs and talks about vertical farming.

And as far as I can tell, it's a bunch of rich kids whose parents are putting them through focusing on their sleep.

This is, didn't they fly you and some friends somewhere before because they didn't have money to pay you?

So you were like, let's just all go on vacation.

Yeah, my South America or something.

First of all, I'm being cynical.

I love the community.

I think they do a great job.

I think it's interesting people.

And my speaking fee is fairly crazy.

I've noticed.

I mean, not that I'm trying to pay you, but.

But instead of charging them a speaking fee, I say, let me bring my team and friends.

Because I think it costs like five or 10 grand to go listen to DJs and hear me talk about income inequality.

And so I went to that and my friend Pablo Doritas, who runs culture and programming at the Faina, my favorite hotel in Miami, he does this thing called the Rumble, where they have two people.

The metaphor is a boxing match.

You come out in a ring.

The best part is the entrance.

My opponent was Shermichael Singleton.

Super impressive young man.

All downside for me, 34-year-old black Republican.

Like I lost before I got in the ring.

No, I saw your abs and I'm not trying to get an HR violation, but you are looking fabulous.

I appreciate that.

And you're welcome to harass me at any time, any point.

I see it as a feature, not a bug of the workplace, if as long as it's coming this way.

Anyways, I'm going to hear from people on that.

So Shermichael did a drum line, which was fantastic, but I won-upped them.

I came out with five drag queens.

And I mean, these ladies were outstanding.

They were fabulous.

And then the audience asks a question.

You answer, your opponent answers.

And at the end of like eight rounds, they decide who wins and you get a big belt if you win.

It was really cool.

I really enjoyed it.

So yeah, that's my...

My midlife crisis tour.

And I knew I was going to have to take my shirt off.

I decided to take my shirt off.

So additional doses of testosterone and I've been doing free weights and loading up on the creatine just to put it in the window a little bit.

So yeah, that was, that was my, that was my week.

What did you do?

What have you done the last week?

Nothing like that.

I definitely haven't been testosterone dosing and creatine.

You sound though like when women are getting ready for their weddings, right?

Like that you have this push at the end to make sure that you look great in the dress or in your case in the in the boxing shorts.

That's right.

It was pretty normal family stuff, but I'm in the middle of a staycation at home.

Our girls are at Brian's mother's.

So we're at home without them.

And it's so great because you realize that you actually love your home, which you don't usually feel because you're just like stepping on toys and everyone is screaming and has a dirty diaper.

Not talking about.

my husband, talking about little people.

So that's been fun.

And going out to dinner, which I miss doing without thinking about like, oh, I have to get back for the babysitter.

So these are all very kind of average, I'm sure, experiences for young parents.

But I am enjoying my kid-free week.

So you have great in-laws.

Yeah.

You have in-laws you can dump the kids at.

Well, also the nanny goes as well.

So the in-laws get to feel like they are taking care of kids, but they're not actually taking care of them.

I take it back.

They're average to better than average in-laws.

No, they're fantastic, but you know.

Can I give you sort of some insider, a little insider info, some like hacks on getting along with your in-laws?

Yeah.

It's very easy.

Is this like buy them a Mercedes?

100%.

Don't communicate with them.

Don't communicate.

It's not a thing, Scott.

You can't do that.

And women can't do that.

That's like

totally a dude thing.

That's when your relationship with your in-laws comes off the tracks, when you start communicating, and your father-in-law decides he needs to let you know why he likes Trump.

And two, buy dad a Mercedes every three years.

And when your mother-in-law gives your father-in-law just an unreasonable amount of shit and grief, just look at her in the eye and nod.

Just to just

show that empathy for a little bit of crazy.

That's what I do.

I just buy him a car every three years.

And when she's out of control, I look at her and I'm like, I get it.

I 100% get it.

I'll work on it.

You're welcome, Jess.

Thank you.

Today, we're talking about the L.A.

protests sparked by ICE raids.

That's biased.

That Helena is biased saying it's sparked by by ICE raids.

That's a little bit of our progressive bias here.

Kilmar Obrego-Garcia's return and the fallout for Musk and Trump's breakup and what it means for the future of the GOP.

Okay, let's bust right into it.

It's been a volatile few days in Los Angeles.

Over the weekend, President Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to the city without a request from the state, prompting swift backlash from Governor Newsom, who called the move purposefully inflammatory.

Now California is suing.

The state filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration asking a federal judge to declare the troop deployment unconstitutional and block future call-ups tied to street protests.

Meanwhile, tensions on the ground remain high.

Over the last five days, law enforcement fired rubber bullets and threw flashbangs at protesters in downtown L.A.

after projectiles were reportedly thrown at officers.

Over the weekend, police used similar tactics to disperse crowds.

Protesters set self-driving cars on fire, and parts of downtown were declared an unlawful assembly zone.

One county official called Sunday probably one of the most volatile nights in L.A.'s recent memory.

The federal response is only escalating.

On Monday, U.S.

Northern Command activated 700 Marines to help protect federal property in the area.

The Pentagon also confirmed Trump had ordered another 2,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles on top of the original deployment.

The president's border czar, Tom Homan, said the Marines were necessary to quell protests, though he declined to explain what criteria the administration is using to justify the moves.

This all comes as outrage over Trump's immigration crackdown spreads from the streets to the courts, especially in the case of Kimar Obrego-Garcia, a man who was mistakenly deported despite a judge's order, eventually returned to the U.S.

only to face federal charges he says are politically motivated.

And while public opinion on immigration remains split, Trump's tactics aren't winning him support.

A new CBS News YouGov poll finds most Americans do support deporting undocumented immigrants in theory, but a majority disapprove of how Trump is doing it.

Over 60% say no one should be deported without a court hearing.

And many question whether these crackdowns make the country safer or just do more harm than good.

Jess,

what is your take on all of this?

It's distressing to see what's going on, but I overwhelmingly feel like Trump is just having the best time ever.

Like he's in absolute heaven.

So it's less than six months into his term, and he has Rust vote as the head of OMB and now of Doge.

So if you thought Elon was bad in terms of of what he was trying to Doge, put the king of Project 2025 in charge.

He has yes, men, and yes, women at DOD and DHS.

Mike Johnson has been more useful to him than I think he could have ever expected.

Remember at the beginning, he wasn't even that enchanted with Mike Johnson, didn't know if he was going to have the backbone for this.

Mike Johnson, by far and away, earning his keep at the Mar-a-Lago Buffet.

And Scott Besson has forgotten that he hates tariffs.

There are scenes of troops, Marines, National Guard across Los Angeles.

And even though it was only a couple of people, there is an image of a shirtless protester on top of a flaming Waymo car waving a Mexican flag.

He is in absolute heaven.

with what's going on here.

And I know people point to the courts and I am one of those people and say the courts are holding the line and they absolutely are.

But

he's getting everything

that he wanted, everything that he dreamed of.

All of the people from the first administration that were saying things like, eh, we can't really invoke the Insurrection Act.

You know, maybe we should double think this.

You know, the John Kelly's of the world are gone.

The Mark Espers of the world are gone.

And he and Stephen Miller are sitting side by side, gleefully smiling at one another that they just can't believe their luck.

That's writ large how I feel about what's going on now.

In terms of the specifics of Los Angeles, I think that we are in a new frontier of the immigration wars.

This has been bubbling because the administration has been frustrated that they weren't getting enough deportations, that they were getting less on a daily basis by far and away than the Biden administration.

So they said a fake quota, 3,000 people need to be out per day.

And the Washington Examiner, which is a conservative paper, had some great reporting about a private meeting with Stephen Miller and ICE agents where he's berating them, saying, enough with going after the criminals.

You go to Home Depot and you go to 7-Eleven.

And that's where we are now.

People are being picked up off their job sites.

They are invading nail salons, elementary schools.

There was a story about a pickup from a birthday party.

And most importantly, I think, is that they're showing up at immigration courts.

to take people away.

So the signal is clear that there actually is no right way to do this.

If you are here illegally, you can be sent home.

And you are most likely not going to get the due process that you deserve as a protection from the Constitution.

But we are going to have millions of people going inside and hiding and living in abject terror of what's to come.

And I feel like we're pretty powerless to fight it.

Public opinion is swaying against this.

There's new YouGov polling out about disapproving of sending in the National Guard and sending in the Marines.

And people don't like how he's executing this, but I don't know if any of that matters.

You know, see my first comment about how well he thinks everything is going.

Like, you're not going to get them out of office.

You know, even if there's a blue wave for the 2026 midterms, he's not doing anything through a normal legislative route anyway.

So what's the difference?

Yeah, it's, I think your comments are spot on.

I always draw parallels and people people say I'm being hysterical or catastrophist.

I always draw parallels with 1930s Germany.

And you don't have to be Hitler to take a page out of his playbook.

And we didn't just wake up with Auschwitz.

It was a slow burn.

You know, a few of those incremental steps were recasting authoritarianism as patriotism and claiming that the enemy was within.

You know, on the whole, Americans for the most part, on the whole, day-to-day, pretty much get along.

On the whole, our economy with all our problems around income inequality, 159 sovereign nations in the world, the majority would kill to have our problems.

What you do, or kind of the best practice around a move from a democracy which is based on trust to an autocracy which is based on fear, is you claim that the enemy is within.

And in the 30s, it was socialists and Jews.

And they talk about law and order as being that I will restore order.

And then they weaponize and deputize the military.

When you have tanks on the street, when you have the military being brought in above and beyond state and local law enforcement, it essentially says, in my opinion, your society is failing.

The last time it happened for me was in 1992.

I came home from graduate school and after the Rodney King riots, there was, I lived in a very sleepy suburb of Westwood.

There were what looked like two high school kids and fatigues and M15s just posted on every corner.

I remember thinking, wow, this is America now.

We're that country.

But this is how an authoritarian gets, they try and motivate or incite a response so they can justify having an overreaction against their political enemies.

Now, the really sad part about it is that I won't say we, I'll say the protesters are playing into their hands.

When you see people throwing rocks and stones at law enforcement officials and you see them wearing masks and you see them waving Palestinian flags and even Mexican flags, I think they should be waving American flags.

I think they're just absolutely playing into his autocracy playbook.

And this is, you know, incredibly disappointing.

I feel like these individuals who are angry, and

there's warranted anger and concern, but they're absolutely making things worse and giving them an excuse to call up the military.

I think Miller and Trump are praying for a law enforcement official to be shot such that they can warrant an overreaction here and move to sort of a police state and attempt to defenestrate who is one of kind of the Democratic strongholds, California, and what is perceived as a potential Democratic presidential candidate, and that's Governor Newsom.

This is just so disappointing, both in terms of people on the ground, protesters not recognizing they're doing themselves a disservice with the way they acquit themselves.

But

this is using a flamethrower to fix a smoke alarm.

This is just unnecessary inflammation.

Typically, when the National Guard is called in, it's at the request of the governor.

It's at the request of the local police authorities.

The LAPD issued a statement a couple of days ago commending the protesters for what had been to that point very civil protests.

And yet they invent, I mean, this happened over and over in 30s Germany.

Invent the enemy within, preach about law and order, have an overreaction to things to try and seize control to avoid or obviate the total erosion of habeas corpus

and say that

the enemy is academics and immigrants and Democrats, that the enemy is within.

Yeah, I agree with what you're saying.

And I'm thinking back to some of the rhetoric from the campaign that they're poisoning the blood of America and referring to them as vermin.

So that was straight 1930s playbook stuff.

I tend to not be an alarmist in that sense.

I don't like any comparisons to Hitler.

Hitler was one of a kind in the absolute worst way.

But you are definitely seeing the important components of democracy being stripped away or an attempt to strip them away.

And that's deeply concerning to me.

I think that Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass have done an incredible job in managing what's going on.

And central to that has been that they have led every statement that they have made with there is no tolerance for violence on behalf of the protesters.

That's a clear signal that we've learned our lesson from the Black Lives Matter summer, where things got wildly out of control and there wasn't enough Democratic leadership out there.

Some exceptions like Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was the mayor of Atlanta, who got up there and basically said, what the fuck are you doing?

There is a way to do this properly and there is a way to do this wrong.

And you are doing it the wrong way.

So I like that there has been a call for peaceful protest at every single opportunity.

The lawsuit that Governor Newsom has filed against the administration, I don't really know where that goes, but I do think it's important that we seem like there's fighting back on every level.

I should note as well that all of this is going on while there's a threat from the administration to defund California.

So this is an incredibly precarious time time that Newsom has to be operating in.

And I think that he has seemed downright presidential at these moments and also saying, you know, go ahead, come and arrest me.

That's what Trump is threatening now.

And even Tom Holman's trying to walk it back.

And then of course, Trump, who has no limits or care for what is possible actually, or even legal, just, you know, keeps harping on it.

And that just makes Newsom seem stronger.

But January 6th always exists in the back of my mind, right?

That our country is being run by people who don't have a respect for the rule of law or for our vote, right?

That they tried to overturn a free and fair election, and then we send them back to the most important seat in the world.

And

my mind is going to this scary place where you think this might just be step one or step two, heading towards a place where we don't have elections.

Because if you want to militarize the country, which is what he wants to do, and the decree that he sent down actually means it's not just about sending troops into California, they can be sent anywhere.

And it's very few limitations on what justifies sending the troops out.

It's what you decide is a rebellion.

It doesn't even have to be violent protests, et cetera.

David Fromm wrote in The Atlantic, you know, for Trump, this is a dress rehearsal.

And

you can see a world in which an administration that already says everything is an emergency.

So they've exercised emergency powers more than any of their predecessors.

And you know, everything from immigration to the economy, tariffs, energy emergency, et cetera.

So if we live in a constant state of emergency, if you can deploy troops at the drop of a hat, We're recording this on Tuesday morning, another 2,000 National Guard is being sent.

And we should note, refuse to send them for January 6th, which is really what an insurrection looks like.

You could see a world where it comes time to vote and we're living in a military state and somehow that isn't possible.

You know, seizing control of local operations of government, maybe that is a step.

I don't know what number step in this process, but it's something that's hanging over my head and it's really distressing me.

What do you think about that?

Have you catastrophized to that level?

Yeah,

I'm a glass half empty kind of guy.

So it's easy for me to go there.

That's what I love about you.

There you go.

Bring me down even further.

I'm already like on ground level.

Take me subterranean.

I'm just so sick of everyone saying they're an optimist.

You know, yeah, you need an optimist to invent a plane.

You need pessimists to have seatbelts.

But anyways,

there are three firewalls here.

And so let's go through each of them.

The first is the courts.

And I think the courts are doing their jobs.

Essentially, anytime this gets in front of a judge, even if it's a Trump-appointed judge, they go, no, you can't raise tariffs and claim you're doing this because it's wartime.

No, you can't cut all research for medical funding to a university because you've decided it's anti-Semitic.

We're talking about research for diabetes.

So the courts seem to be doing their job.

The second is the media.

I'm mixed on the media.

I think there's a lot of good on-the-ground reporting,

but the media isn't interested in giving a real, they're not going to cover the peaceful protests.

That doesn't, they might say this is bullshit and talk about this is peaceful protests as a means of diminishing or puncturing the validity of this over-response, but they don't really give the rest of the world a sense for the real vibe in L.A.

And when I talk to people in LA, they say, Yeah, there's flashpoints.

I've seen them on the news, but everything's fine.

We're at brunch.

Yeah, we're all going to Gelson's and, you know, headed to the movies or whatever is people.

Getting like a $90 smoothie.

Yeah, we're not, we're fine.

We're, you know, we're still going to Nobu tomorrow night.

It's just, you know, it's not like the riots.

That was different, or it's not nothing like COVID or anything like that.

But on the whole, I would say the media is doing its level best.

And there's a lot of kind of citizen journalism I've seen that I think has been pretty good.

And then civil protest is sort of the third leg of the stool.

And I would argue that started strong.

I just think that the absolute worst thing for us is when you see someone waving a Palestinian flag with a mask on, you know, on top of a burning car.

That's literally like, okay, the Democrats are fucking out of control.

They may not endorse this, but they tolerate it.

Things are out of control and people's emotions start to, they just get angry and they want an over-correction.

And so I would say that there's some elements of the protest that are just absolutely feeding into this.

The scenario here where things get really bad is that It's much more dramatic to think about a nation as great as America goes out with a boom, that it's a huge civil war where we have, you know, the Air Force pitted against the Navy and the Coast Guard has to pick a side and people with all their guns take to the streets and there's this civil war and then

whatever side wins, they take over the state capitals of blue states or if the blue states win, they end up assaulting the White House.

I don't think America ends like that.

I think it's much less cinematic.

And this is one of those steps to what would be, I would argue, a fairly non-dramatic, non-cinematic end of America as we know it.

And it plays out something like this.

Trump tries to foment an overreaction and a militarization or an occupation of our biggest blue states.

And then Governor Newsom says, hey, boss, I send $70, $80 billion more than I get from you.

I'm out.

I'm not.

sending you $80 billion.

I'm sick of funding your attempt to militarize my state and funding the red states who seem to have endorsed your militarization of our state.

I'm no longer sending you this $80 billion.

Or Texas, if say Governor Newsom or Representative Torres is elected president, they say we're not certifying the election.

We don't recognize this president.

And then slowly but surely, you have California, a tech-based economy that does business with Asia.

You have Texas, lead an oil and energy-based economy that does business with the Gulf.

You have the Midwest, an industrial economy, manufacturing economy that does a lot of business with Canada, the East Coast, a financial services and media economy that does a lot of business with Europe.

They each develop their own currencies.

They come to a détente.

They don't want to go to war against each other.

They don't want to escalate that far.

But slowly but surely, you end up with a series of nation states that look very similar to the EU.

where you have big ones like Germany, and that'd be California, smaller ones like Florida, which would look more like France or what have you.

And America kind of ends with a whimper, not a bang.

I think there's a non-zero probability we're sort of at letter C or D in that devolution or digression to a breaking up of America.

And I don't think it's, I think people think, well, it's not going to happen because I can't imagine, you know, grabbing my gun and going somewhere and potentially killing my cousins who live in Atlanta.

I don't think that's going to happen.

You think it could be peacefully done where we just

go into a federalist system and we say this is what the Northeast Northeast looks like.

I'm no longer sending money to the federal government.

I'm capturing my own property and income taxes.

I come up with my own shit coin, the Texas coin that is used as currency here.

And we essentially have our own economy, our own elected officials.

We ignore federal mandates, federal laws.

We come up with our own constitution.

Maybe blue and red.

It might be blue states that lead this.

Just say, we've had enough.

We're done.

We're California.

We're the fourth largest economy in the world.

We'll go our own way.

We'll be able to house the homeless if we don't have to send $80 billion to D.C.

to fund a military occupation of our state.

I mean, that to me seems like a fairly cogent argument.

And by the way, I don't believe we should do that.

I think it's a terrible idea.

But I can see blue and red states.

creating a narrative where they justify kind of a slow sequestering from the federal government.

Well, I think people will tire of if they haven't already the ricochet effect of what a new administration means every four or eight years, right?

That you have to totally recast how you see America or how America operates, depending on who holds the oval office.

And America is not supposed to be that way.

There are supposed to be fundamental principles and ideas and sets of laws that govern.

And that is supposed to bring some consistency.

And then the difference in the political parties that are in charge are are supposed to make changes more or less around the edges.

Right.

And then we have a, you know, a slightly different tax policy.

Our immigration policy changes this way.

Oh, you know, we're going to do more nuclear power.

We're cutting down on EV credits, et cetera.

Like that's, I think, how people had understood what's going on.

But we are in a moment where people want to burn it all down.

And I don't know if you read David Brooks's column from the end of last week in the Times, but he was talking about how one of the ways at least that he sees that the Democrats don't get it or are not prepared for this moment is that we're thinking way too small in terms of what can be achieved and that the problems that we face as a country and as a political party are not going to be solved by having a good midterms, right?

Or even having Governor Shapiro turn into President Shapiro in 2028, but that the Republicans have much better understood the moment and how much people hate the system, you know, system TM, right?

But see that this deck is stacked so enormously against the average person that unless you are willing to actually burn it down, that you can't capture real support from the American body politic.

And I think that there's a lot of merit to that.

You know, how do we make it clear to people that we understand how important this moment is, how scared everyone is, and that also business as usual is not something that they are interested in returning to.

So we have to, we have to at once be the adults in the room that can quell everything and bring us back to a status quo, but we also have to destroy the status quo at the same time.

And the Republicans never had to do that.

They just went, I'll burn it down, and they were able to get reelected.

But Democrats have to be both parent and child.

And that's a very complex role to have to fill.

Okay, let's take a quick break.

Stay with us.

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Welcome back.

So

I'm renovating a house and building a house.

And what I found, much to my surprise, is that it actually takes less time to build a house than to renovate one.

Because there's, you know, historic society, you run into a pipe.

Once you have your architectural plans on a piece of land and you have zoning, you can just go, wham, you just go.

And I do think the advantage that the Democrats should lean into right now is basically, I think our party is almost at zero right now.

We had leader Jeffries, we interviewed him.

I think he's a wonderful congressman, a wonderful representative.

I don't think he is up to the job of leading the Democratic Party through this.

And I think Senator Schumer is case study number one for why we need age limits and how weak we've become.

I think there's very strong bench, but I don't know if it's party orthodoxy or format or systemic rules that keep these voices more quiet, whatever it is.

But we are literally starting from zero.

And I think that's an opportunity.

It's like what Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, You must forget what you know.

So forget everything about identity politics.

Forget everything about Democrats trying to show their affection for special interest groups by just cutting them a check.

If you had a blank slate, which I think the Democratic Party kind of does right now, if you were to propose a tax bill, what would be your core themes?

Would it be around encouraging housing?

Would it be around capital formation?

Would it be around lowering tax rates and moving to a flat tax?

But it's non-negotiable.

These tax rates are non-negotiable for everybody.

Everybody, if everybody paid about 24% in tax, corporations and individuals, you're kind of done.

No deficits.

That's it.

24%.

I think most people would sign up for that.

They go, okay, I'm down with that.

If that's going to give my kids a better life and it's simple and I don't have to deal with accountants and taxation and, you know, just a postcard, as Ross Perot said, 0.24 times my top line income, boom, we're done.

And maybe it's zero.

Anyone makes less than $80,000 at zero, two taxes.

You make less than $80,000 at zero.

Above 80, it's 24.

Above 10 million, it's 64.

I'm already making it more complex than it needs to be.

But we'd have to have someone from the Democratic side or a group of Democratic representatives say, this is our contract with America.

These are the three things we're focused on.

And try and get away from the identity politics and the hand-wringing over the trans community or, you know, pronouns or

just, okay, we are totally focused on the material and psychological well-being of Americans.

They're very focused on their economics.

I mean, flat tax, more housing, and socialization of medicine.

Within 10 years, everyone's going to have coverage and no one's ever going to have to come out of pocket more than $1,000 a year.

You're never going to find out that your wife has cancer and that means you're going bankrupt.

Like, whatever it is.

I'm not saying those are even the right things.

Foreign policy.

Our foreign policy is we're going to bring in really fucking smart people to figure out these complex problems, but we're not going to dictate foreign policy right now around what it means to be an American abroad.

Or maybe it's the restoration of alliances.

Our job is to take advantage of the unbelievable prosperity that we've recognized through global trade.

We're going a gigantic apology tour.

We're going to take down, not only we're going to go anti-tariff.

We're going to have bigger, bolder, free trading zones around the world.

Biggest tax cut in history will be if we kiss and make up with China.

There has to be some IP protection.

But just as the cost of clothes have been cut in half because 97% are imported into the U.S., right?

Let's get rid of this old, stupid 1890s thinking.

We're going to have more global trade.

Shit's going to get much cheaper for Americans.

And we're going to try and restore the alliance, the greatest alliance in history, and that is between men and women.

Men have to stop this bullshit of thinking that their struggles have come because of the assent of women.

This is not a zero-sum game.

And women, we need you to stop saying that men men don't have problems.

They are the problem.

We need men and women to get on each other's side again.

I don't know what it is.

Alliances, housing, an embrace of global trade.

I don't know three things.

But the Democrats need to say, okay, this is an Etch a sketch and it's been shaken and it's blank right now.

What new lines do you want to draw?

And for God's sakes, get it out there.

Propose something and get it out there such that we're just not all running around, you know, accusing Trump of being a fascist over and over.

Like, we have to move to the positive part of this.

What are our proposals?

What are our counterproposals?

And the exciting thing is, I don't think we're renovating a house here.

I think the house is burnt down.

I think the Democratic Party, given this move towards authoritarianism, despite that, Trump would be re-elected today.

I think that if he was running against Vice President Harris and the Democratic establishment, I think he'd probably win today.

So, the Democratic Party is done as we know it.

And the ideals and principles and bench are really strong.

We have some outstanding assets.

So what would we do new?

Don't even mention Trump's name.

Don't even mention his name.

Well, hopefully he's an afterthought in whatever goes on for 2028 anyway.

But it is, it seems to me that mentioning Donald Trump is perhaps the quickest way to get people to turn off, but is at least in the top five in terms of who they're looking to support as a politician or as a political party.

Because people have already made up their minds about him years and years and years ago, frankly.

And,

you know, to self-flagellate a bit, we forced people back into his arms or we made it a lot easier to go and do that in 2024.

And I think that if voters could see Democrats at least spitballing the way that you were.

So some of the things that you said, I like, some of the things, you know, I want to double tap on and push back.

I'm not a big flat tax person, but at least you're having a discussion about this.

And no one would penalize a politician for showing up with a postcard that said an economy that works for everyone decent health care that isn't going to bankrupt you an education system that works right and then you build out the rest of it i think focusing on domestic policy is the way to win a domestic election i think that our alliances and partnerships abroad are certainly important, but people are most concerned with what's going on in their house right now.

That's why they call them the kitchen table issues.

Like they're going to get up, they're going to go to work, they're going to think about how much they're being paid to do that work.

Their kids are going to get up and go to school.

They're going to come home and they're going to sit around the dinner table and they're going to think about what it is that they're having for dinner and if it was too expensive or cost the right amount.

That's basically what life looks like for the average person.

And

you are also describing a governor.

You are describing someone who has worked in management.

And you can see the kind of clarity that's delivered in a speech by a J.B.

Pritzker, a Westmore, Josh Shapiro, Governor Whitmer, Jared Polis, et cetera.

It doesn't even actually matter the topic that they're discussing.

You know, Jared Polis talking about anti-Semitism, which is not going to be the lead issue or the lead platform plank for someone running.

for president.

But there is a clarity that comes with having to manage a state that you just don't get from people that give, you know, soaring speeches on the floor of Congress.

Because these people have to get shit done.

They have to rebuild I-95.

They have to repair a bridge.

They have to bring a community back together after some lunatic anti-Semite is throwing flames on Jews peacefully protesting.

So I'm very much in on the governor train right now and somebody declaring.

I have a higher opinion, I think, to some degree of what Hakeem Jeffries is doing than you do because keeping the caucus together is difficult work.

I bet.

Yeah, that's fair.

Especially when you have, you know, super conservative members of the caucus over to the AOCs of the world.

And Democrats have at least been able to have a unified front.

And I think that that matters, and especially in opposing legislation, et cetera.

But point taken on all of those fronts.

What are your thoughts on Kilmar Obrega-Garcia, Jess?

So I was pleased to see that he was returned to face his day in court or to get his due process, but was pretty disturbed by the indictment that they had.

I don't know if you saw Pam Bondi's press conference about it.

So this all came together and I think the grand jury met a couple of weeks ago.

But this indictment, which was filed in Tennessee, is absolutely scathing and alleges that he was engaged in smuggling men, women, and children.

She also went off script and talked about all these things that he allegedly did that aren't even in the indictment, like talking about murder and child pornography.

And you would think if that was true, that it would probably be in the indictment itself.

But now we have kind of like a mini fight within the larger fight because Kilmar Obrego-Garcia's lawyers have filed a contempt lawsuit against the administration.

They're sticking with it because it's quite clear that they could have brought him home months ago.

So it was three months ago that he was mistakenly deported.

And I'm using the terms that they even used.

It was a mistake that he was sent.

Then two months since the Supreme Court said, you need to facilitate his return, and then they finally got around to it.

I think because public opinion was so clear about this.

He may be an MS-13 member.

He may be the gangbanger that they said, and not the Maryland dad, but that people deserve their due process rights.

And it's a lot different to deport someone versus to put them in Seacot, right?

To put them in a foreign gulag where they may never see the light of day again.

And I just wanted to bring up, you know, also about the indictment itself.

And that's where the next phase of this battle will be fought, that a high-ranking prosecutor in Tennessee, this guy Ben Schrader, resigned over this indictment, fearing that Albrego Garcia was being targeted for political reasons.

So this isn't just someone claiming that he's turned into a political pawn or a target.

It's somebody who has worked within the federal government for a long time saying that that is the case.

And not to get too nitty-gritty, but this is going back to a 2022 incident where he was pulled over.

He had many passengers in the car.

He was driving them to a construction site in Maryland.

He told authorities at the time that they had originated in Texas.

The current government, Pam Bondi's DOJ, is denying that that was ever stated at the time.

So there's a lot of fuzziness around this, but the big flashing red light to me is this prosecutor resigning over it.

And I don't know if that means that Obrego Garcia ends up going free and it's all totally fine.

But it seems like the Trump administration needed to find a solution or save face after they've been humiliated on so many fronts when it comes to immigration and that they may have and let this play out, but they may have created a scenario that isn't particularly accurate.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of someone who's been more politicized than this young man.

He's now got essentially

the Department of Justice, which has been weaponized against him.

And an entire administration

does not shy away from lying or,

I would imagine, recasting evidence.

They feel as if their whole reputation around this issue is showing that he's evil and finding a way to put him in prison for longer.

So, yeah, politicization is an understatement here.

Do you think it was a mistake to make this case as big of a deal as the Democrats did?

Because that is a discussion that's still going on internally.

Like, if it does does end up that this quote-unquote Maryland dad, you know, is a human smuggler or whatever, and God forbid the child porn stuff is true,

any of it.

Do you think it was a waste of capital?

Because I don't.

And I think that going for due process is what matters the most, no matter who he turns out to be, and that we have a higher chance of getting people like Andre Hernandez, the gay makeup artist who's also in El Salvador, the Venezuelan back, if there's a precedent that they can get people out of Seacot.

But I do understand the flip side argument as well, that if we're talking about him, we're not talking about tariffs.

Yeah, I think it's an interesting point because the way you grab people's emotions is you humanize it with individual stories.

But that's a risk.

I would have stuck to just probably habeas corpus.

And I'm not sure I would have gone down there.

I think they should have just stuck with, look, there's just...

The definition of a concentration camp is lifting people out of their one region, sending them into another one such that they don't have the protections and rights that they had domestically.

We should not have concentration camps, and everyone needs to be brought back for due process.

I just would have stuck with that argument and list people and maybe reference them and individuals, and the most obvious ones are the most blatant ones.

But to pin your hopes on one person.

I mean, if this guy has done half of what they say he's done, it could backfire.

And I wouldn't even engage in the argument.

Yeah, maybe he is guilty of all these things.

We'll find out.

The Constitution is clear.

It says persons, not citizens.

And an underpinning of our judicial system is the following.

We purposely decide to err on the side of occasionally letting someone guilty go free as opposed to incarcerating innocent people.

So that means we go through incredible expense.

and provide some people who are awful with rights at the time that feel like unfair to the victims or to safety, but that is the approach we've taken to national security.

And if we want to have a different approach where,

okay,

innocent people end up in prison, innocent people end up incarcerated without due process, with no access to their family, perhaps even shipped to different black sites or concentration camps.

All right, vote for those people.

But the current constitution does not allow for that.

I'm not sure.

I worry that we've doubled down too much on an individual's background that we don't know that much about, or that the government, using their synchronicity with Fox News and different conservative media outlets and doctoring of photos of tattoos, is going to be able to just say, hey, we should have left them down there.

Look, you guys are wrong.

This is a bad ombre.

That's not the argument.

The argument is we take the worst people and we give them due process and habeas corpus because we want everyone to have access to that.

So, you know, we'll see how it plays out.

But this is, you've always said correctly, I was watching on the five that this is still his most popular issue or the issue he has the most support on.

All right, let's take a quick break.

Stay with us.

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Hello, Daisy speaking.

Hello, Daisy.

This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS.

Oh, bless, that does sound serious.

I wouldn't want to end up in any sort of trouble.

This September on Criminal, we've been thinking a lot about scams.

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Welcome back.

One of the most powerful alliances in American politics just blew up spectacularly.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk, once political partners and mutual hype men, are now trading insults, threats, and even conspiracy theories in a very public, very messy breakup.

It started with Musk blasting Trump's GOP-backed mega bill as a disgusting abomination.

I think he said porkfield disgusting abomination, which, by the way, Jess, is the new hon d'oeuvre TGI Fridays.

Trump hit back, saying he was very disappointed and floated cutting Musk's massive federal contracts.

Musk escalated, claiming Trump is in the Epstein files.

Ah, there we go.

That was the best.

It escalated to pedophile in like four minutes.

That's right.

Yeah.

And even reposted calls for impeachment before deleting them days later.

Meanwhile, Vice President J.D.

Vance tried to play peacemaker, saying Musk's criticisms were understandable, but that his loyalty still lies with Trump.

Jesus, could you sound more mealing mouth?

The online war briefly paused after intermediaries from both camps reportedly got on the phone, but the the damage appears to be done.

This just isn't about ecos, though, Jess.

The fallout threatens major legislation, billions in government contracts, and the balance of power in the GOP, just as Trump pushes for his biggest domestic win yet.

Jess, is this feud really about the mega bill and government contracts, or is it about something else?

What are your thoughts?

I think it's about both.

And everything is tied together when you're dealing with the president and his co-president for a time.

You know, there's the money of this, which matters a huge amount.

You know, Tesla is not Tesla without those EV credits.

And I think Musk did a lot of the Democrats' messaging work to say things like, well, you didn't touch oil and gas.

So why are you coming after clean energy?

You know, in some ways, this happens regularly, but your opponent gives you some good tips on how to message about these things when they have a break and are morally clear out loud every once in a while.

And I was thinking like, write that down.

There's that great SNL skit.

It was a Melissa McCarthy one from years ago.

And it's about Hidden Valley Ranch.

Everyone should go watch it.

It's very funny, but she keeps saying like, write that down, write that down.

And as Musk is talking, I'm just saying, like, write that down, write that down, you know, because Somebody that's on the inside is exposed to things that we haven't been necessarily as the formal opposition.

And if it's something that's affecting Elon Musk, it's affecting other Republicans as well, that there are other people within the party or in the GOP infrastructure who are thinking similarly.

So I'm team Ro Khanna on the engaging Elon Musk.

I don't think that we are in a position to write off anybody that might help us defeat this bill or win future elections.

And it does seem like the protests in Los Angeles has kind of brought Trump and Musk together a little bit.

You see Musk posting on Twitter, you know, that it's a good thing that the troops are there.

And oh my God, I can't believe this.

You know, the cars are on fire.

They're waving Mexican flags, et cetera.

So I think it's doing some of the repair work that Musk decided that he wanted, but Trump wasn't necessarily ready to talk, which I think is so funny just in terms of the breakup vibes of it all.

But what really stuck out to me, I guess, is twofold.

So one, that they both think the other is completely depraved, right?

Elon Musk at core thinks that Trump is a pedophile, right?

Someone who's on the Epstein list was happy to be engaging in that kind of behavior.

And Trump, when pushed, thinks that Elon Musk is a drug addict who isn't making good decisions.

But they'll come together for the purposes of accumulating power, no matter the circumstance.

And that is the lesson in all of this.

I know politics makes strange bedfellows, but I like to think that if you believed somebody was doing it with 14-year-old girls, that you probably wouldn't want to be in political bed with them.

And that if you thought that someone else was really losing it and couldn't get through the day without being on ketamine, that you wouldn't want to put them essentially in charge of government or giving them such a big job.

So that was one lesson for him.

And the other lesson of this for me is that.

Donald Trump is really scared of Elon Musk.

So his response was so much more muted than we have seen in the past when someone pisses him off, let alone someone turning against him that has that much access to power and that he felt was that close to him, you know, having him in the oval, having him at Mar-a-Lago, bringing his kids around, et cetera, or kid, I should say, only one of them gets to come out in public.

And so you could see that, that anxiety about what Musk could do from, you know, funding challengers to the Republican Party to, you know, what he could do in space that he could turn off the grid, right?

Like this guy has immense power and he needs the government contracts, which is Trump's card to play.

But he seemed genuinely petrified of what a life with Elon Musk against you looks like.

If this thing were any gayer, it'd be a show on Bravo sponsored by Grinder.

I just can't get over what total bitches these two are.

And I say bitch androgynously as people acting like total children and not like grown-ups.

I think this is so embarrassing that these are the two individuals that

the majority of young people are supposed to look up to, the president and the world's wealthiest man.

It has nothing to do with the bill.

Musk knew about this bill.

If Musk gave a good goddamn about the deficit and this pork, he wouldn't be recommending that we cut 40 to 50 percent of the IRS.

I mean, there's estimates that there's a $600 billion a year tax gap, and that is our inability because of the neutering of the IRS, our inability to actually collect the taxes that are owed.

So the notion somehow that he's just can't handle the deficit and what's happening to our country, that is so fucking ridiculous.

He kind of got what he wanted.

They have neutered and basically fired every inspector general that's going to get in the way of his autonomous driving regulations or any case against him is kind of magically gone away.

So the notion that somehow he's just outraged about the bill, oh, and that he just figured out that Epstein was guilty of sex crimes on an island.

A jury of Trump's peers found that he was guilty of sex crimes on an island called Manhattan.

What, he didn't know that?

He just figured that out, that this guy has a past that is really unsavory.

But he decided to work with him when he'd been convicted of sexual assault.

But now he's just, he's outraged by the pork in this bill and he's upset at Trump's pass.

And then Trump goes immediately to, let's deport him, let's cut his subsidies.

And it's just, you know, when I think of what it means to aggregate power, one of the real opportunities and signals that you've attained power in a thoughtful,

high-integrity way is that you get to be a peacemaker.

Your job is to de-escalate.

If you have real skills on a board of directors, you're asked to mediate between the rest of the board and the CEO.

And the President of the United States, more than any individual in the world, is asked to step in and de-escalate conflicts that could ratchet up to nuclear war.

Naturally, when Pakistan and India get into border skirmishes, it could go a very ugly place, usually you think of bringing in the Secretary of State of the United States under the auspices of the President to try and de-escalate, that this person has the most skills and the most resources and the most respect globally to de-escalate, to turn the heat down.

And we no longer occupy that position when these two get into this ridiculous love quarrel.

That's how I can see it.

Musk wants Trump's relevance and Trump wants Musk's cult or vice versa.

And the fact that they would immediately digress to these types of personal statements and indictments against each other is just evidence that neither commands the position position they occupy.

And it's just such a bad look.

The war between Musk and Trump reminds me of the war between Iran and Iraq.

And that is, I'm rooting for the bullets.

I got to be honest, I'm enjoying it.

And unfortunately, it's a distraction from this tax bill, which is a transfer of wealth from poor to rich, young to old, future to past.

But Trump is scared of the guy because Musk was correct.

He probably got Trump elected.

He probably swung the Congress to the Republicans.

So Musk can rightfully claim credit or is responsible and accountable for what's going on right now because he did weaponize his platform, quarter of a billion dollars.

He probably did have a big impact on the election, which speaks to, God, we need some sort of reform around Citizens United.

I mean, we really can't have one person electing the president.

And then that that person wanted to be president.

I think what really happened here is he wanted more input on his NASA pick.

He wanted to be involved in the pick for the CIA.

Beset said, no, you don't get to pick the new head of the IRS.

He wanted to be in on China briefings.

He basically wants to be an unelected president.

And a lot of his cabinet members threw up on that.

Supposedly, there was actually a physical altercation between him and Beset.

And also

the thing that kind of explains a lot lot of this is that according to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk is a rabid drug addict.

And I don't know if you've ever had a drug addict in your life.

I have.

It is striking.

I mean, it is sort of unbelievable what inconsistencies, irrationality, weirdness, ability to lie through the teeth through the people they love most in the world.

can happen when drugs take over.

I mean, you lose your shit.

And if you look at what this guy is tweeting out and then, in a moment of sobriety, deleting, that's what we're dealing with here.

We're dealing with children.

This is bad for both of them.

They both lose.

I think Musk, to a certain extent, is doing what a lot of CEOs would like to do, and that is just hit back.

But Elon Musk doesn't need the money.

He's got control of his board.

It doesn't matter that he lost $150 billion in Tesla market cap in one day because he controls the board.

He doesn't need more money.

He's not scared of his board.

Every other CEO would probably get fired if they did this.

They'd be like, Look, good for you.

I hope that was fun, but our stock's off 14% today because you can't hold your tongue.

So this is, it's, it's theater, but you come out of the theater just thinking, oh, wow.

God, do I feel nauseous?

What a waste of two and a half hours.

Yeah, what a waste.

What a waste of drama here.

I do think that part of what we are seeing on Musk, not to give him too much emotional credibility, is his disappointment for the way government works and the realities of what's happening within the government itself.

So he

was angry, rightfully so, that they were only going to codify $9 billion in the quote-unquote savings that he found.

And I think it is important that a Doge employee who has been Doge himself said, quote, I personally was pretty surprised actually at how efficient the government was.

Fraud was minimal and abuse was, quote, relatively non-existent.

So I think that, you know, Musk came in with this vision of what it was going to be like and that he and Trump were partners and that everyone really believed in Doge and they were going to do their best to make sure that these cuts were codified.

And he faced resistance internally in some cases from the other cabinet secretaries, the courts, certainly, but then also the fact that the government is much more efficient than anyone expected.

And that is a very difficult needle to thread for the Democrats because nobody wants to hear actually that this enormous behemoth of a federal government is

doing as good as possible or as well as possible, I should say.

My English should be better.

But I think that that is an important component to the breakdown that he had, frankly, that he walked into a pretty well-humming machine and then was minimized by the man that promised him the world and that he paid $294 million or whatever it was to get elected.

You know, I love that.

I think it's a Buddhist saying that the man with good health has thousands of problems and the man with bad health has one problem.

Actually, is that appropriate here?

Basically, I'm trying to get to, there are so many injustices just flying under the radar right now because of the weirdness and economic threat and usurp of congressional power that we're missing a lot of stuff that is, in my opinion, just so outrageous.

And I was especially incensed by something that happened last week, the first week of Pride Month.

I don't know if you're familiar with Harvey Milk.

Yeah.

Harvey Milk served in the Korean War.

He went on to be an elected U.S.

supervisor, one of the first openly gay elected officials in America.

He served his country.

And his reviews and his military record, he actually worked on a submarine.

He was promoted.

His reviews say he he was outstanding.

He was promoted to officer.

And then in 1954, he was outed as gay and was given a decision by his superiors to either resign from the military with less than honorable discharge or some weird thing that basically is not an honorable discharge or face court-martial.

And so he decided to resign from the military, forego all of his military benefits, and then went on to be an activist and was the first openly gay elected official or one of the first in San Francisco, to the Board of Supervisors, which provides huge comfort to, I think,

a lot of gay people who thought that they were never going to have real robust representations.

He was, as I like to say, he was gay before it was cool.

He was out when it was a real risk to your reputation and your personal safety.

And he was murdered along with Mayor Bill Moscone by actually a fellow supervisor.

And the U.S.

Navy, they put in a request.

There's a process for putting in a request to name a ship.

So they put in a request in 2017 that Harvey Milk, and some small nod to his service in his memory, that they name a ship after him.

So they named the USNS Harvey Milk.

It was christened in 2021.

And just a nod to the inclusivity that the armed services are known for.

And Secretary Hagseth decides the first week of Pride Month

to rename that ship, which is just such a giant unnecessary fuck you to the gay community.

It's not only cruel and unnecessary, it's really fucking stupid because we are in an environment right now where 70% of the men who show up to a service's recruiting office do not qualify.

to be a private in the Army because they are either obese or can't pass a basic mental wellness test.

And we want to say to America, of which most surveys show somewhere between 5% and 8% of America identifies as gay, that you can come here, serve proudly, and if by chance you get something named after you, if by chance you get a medal, the moment we let far-right weirdos whose heart is full of hate, they might embarrass your...

your descendants and pull your name off as shit.

It's not only stupid, it makes us less safe.

And as somebody who interacts with our service personnel all the time,

and, you know,

I don't know how to say this without sounding stupid.

Some of my best friends are gay.

I'm pretty sure gay people are just as good at defending our borders and killing people as straight people.

I have seen no difference in their ability or their skills to serve on the ground, to be paratroopers, or to be fixing planes.

I have never seen, I don't, by the way, I don't think they're any better at it, but I'm pretty sure they're not any worse at it.

And so when you say to a population, a huge population in America, you really aren't welcome to serve, it degrades our ability to defend our shores and kill bad guys.

It's just so stupid.

And I don't want to move away from the Democratic Playbook of Moral Indignation here, but unnecessarily,

unrequested pulling someone's name off an unimportant ship under the auspices of trying to restore, he says, this notion of a warrior mentality.

What?

What the...

Yeah, it flies in the face of the argument that they're making, which is we don't care who you are as long as you're good at your job.

Well, guess what?

Harvey Milk was good at his job and he happened to be gay.

Yeah.

So, I mean, and they did point out that the timing was intentional.

You know, they're not embarrassed.

of doing these kinds of things.

And I'm glad to see that recruitment is up.

I think it's important, et cetera.

And this was a trend that started before Trump came into office, but it has accelerated.

And the cruelty is the point.

It's always the point.

This is cruel and it's dumb.

And it shines a very negative light on the way that our armed services are being run.

Cruel and dumb.

Let's leave it there.

All right.

That's all for this episode, Jess.

Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates.

Our producers are David Toledo.

and Eric Jennicus.

Our technical director is Drew Burroughs.

Starting this week, you'll find Raging Moderates every Wednesday and Friday.

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Subscribe to Raging Moderates on its own feed to hear exclusive interviews with sharp political minds that you won't hear anywhere else.

Just to give you a sense for how heated it is and how early this race is, you will not believe the people that are calling Jess to get interviewed by her right now.

This week, we're speaking with Representative Richie Torres, who both Jess and I are huge fans of.

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Jess, have a great rest of the week.

You too.