Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)

Thumbtack presents.

Uncertainty strikes.

I was surrounded.

The aisle and the options were closing in.

There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes, and natural bristles.

There were too many choices.

What if I never got my living room painted?

What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use?

What if

I just used Thumbtack?

I can hire a top-rated pro in the Bay Area that knows everything about interior paint, easily compare prices, and read reviews.

Thumbtack knows homes.

Download the app today.

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start?

Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.

Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is?

With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro.

You just have to hire one.

You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.

Download today.

Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Scott Galloway.

And I'm Jessica Tarlef.

How are you, Jess?

I'm good, Scott.

How are you?

Yeah.

Where do I find you?

Because that is not home.

I'm in Hamburg, Germany, for this big conference called Online Marketing Rockstars.

There's a lot of old money here and the juxtaposition of like this industrial town with big cranes and waterborne factories or water-based factories with all these brand new steel condominiums, steel and glass condominiums.

It feels like Carl Lagerfeld exploded into a city.

It is such a cool, interesting

city.

And I absolutely love Germany.

Work hard, play hard, very progressive.

I just, if I spoke German, I would live here.

Have you been to Germany, Jessica?

I have.

Just to Berlin, though.

And I had an incredible time on every cultural level, like the museums and walking around and kind of ingesting the history of it.

And then also the partying and the scene and just absolutely adored it.

Yeah.

I was, one of my favorite tourist things in the world is the fat bike or fat tire bike tours, especially the one in Berlin that goes everywhere and they look at the guard towers and

Hitler's bunker.

And anyways, I'm officially like 100 years old.

I'm fascinated by anything to do with World War II.

All right.

Banter done.

In today's episode of Raging Moderates, we're discussing the economy is one quarter away from a possible recession.

Mike Waltz gets pushed out.

Trump says he doesn't know if he has to uphold due process.

And we have one of our favorites, Senator Chris Murphy, joining us to talk about the GOP budget bill and what Democrats are doing to message the possible harms to Americans.

All right, let's get into it.

We've got our first major shake-up in the West Wing.

Trump has ousted National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, best known for launching the world's most famous group chat, and nominated him as UN Ambassador.

Okay, so you're fired, but you get a free toaster.

Yeah, you got a demotion.

Yeah, that's it.

Stepping in, at least for now, is

Jack of all trades and master of none, Secretary of State Marco Rubrio, who will now be juggling four top-level roles in the administration.

Meanwhile, the White House is touting strong April job numbers, but the economy shrunk in the first quarter, and Trump's tariffs have really haven't really fully kicked in yet.

One of them, 100% tariff on foreign-made movies, which he claims is a national security issue.

Huh, okay.

He's also warning of higher prices and toy shortages this holiday season and says he's okay with that.

All right, got banging porn stars that has a tacky 757 laced in four caricoled gauls every other day.

He should lecture us about consumption.

Trump's new budget proposes $163 billion in cuts to education, health, and the environment while boosting law enforcement and border security.

He also floated reopening Alcatraz as a symbol of law, order, and justice and said he's unsure whether due process rights must be honored during these mass deportations, though he'll follow the Supreme Court's lead.

He hasn't so far.

All this comes as Trump and GOP leaders ramp up for the midterms, warning that a Democratic majority could bring a third impeachment, something they're hoping will rally the MAGA base.

Jess, let's start with Waltz and the shake-up.

Why do you think he was pushed out, and how realistic is it for Rubio to wear all those hats?

So, someone had to go,

and

he is Trump invested so much in getting Pete Hegset through the confirmation process that it was

increasingly looking like it had to be Waltz.

And he didn't want to do anything within the first hundred days because even though it's kind of a made-up marker, I think he wanted to say, you know, no problems for the first hundred days besides the fact that everyone thinks that you're bringing us into a recession.

So that seems like a pretty good problem, big problem.

But that's how it kind of ended up being Waltz.

And I keep thinking about the management of SignalGate after it first happened.

And, you know, how Trump came out pretty quickly and he said, Mike's learned his lesson.

And I should, I think I've mentioned this before on the program that I'm part of a foreign policy group with Waltz and he's a very nice man.

Smell you.

No, I just, I don't know if there's like conflict.

I'm a member of Samargo, the new hot members club downtown.

That's pretty cool.

Taylor Swift went there.

That's cooler than knowing Mike Waltz.

Maybe.

Me and Taylor.

okay well

you'll have to take me is basically what has to happen now 100%

is that anyways going exciting now she's not have you seen the weird dancing videos she's not that good I'm convinced she was replaced with someone on the way back I don't know

some alien that's there's something going on there something bad is happening but Waltz so he got Trump's sign of approval where he said, you know, Waltz is safe.

And then he went on television and he went on with Laura Ingram and he had a pretty testy interview.

She was pushing him pretty hard about it, mostly about how was Jeffrey Goldberg in your phone in the first place.

And we know that the mixup was that he thought he was putting in the trade representative, Jamison Greer, with the same initials as Jeffrey Goldberg.

But we also know in Trump world that there is nothing more offensive than being someone that talks to the mainstream press, let alone Jeffrey Goldberg, who was responsible for the suckers and losers story that keeps Trump up at night still.

He's so mad about that and how it kind of turned public opinion as to how he feels about those who have served, even though we know what he said about John McCain from the start.

So it was pretty obvious what he thought.

But it was interesting looking at Waltz being pushed out.

And he was given some options, some ambassadorships.

He could have been the ambassador to Saudi Arabia, for instance, or the UN job, which was supposed to be at least Stefanik's.

But because Mike Johnson has no margins, he had to keep Stefanik in her district, her New York district, so that they would at least have another vote because he thought it was feasible that they could lose that seat.

But I was like, oh my God, does this all really come down to a cable news hit?

And I think that it does.

And that Waltz choosing to go on TV, even though he had already appeased his audience of one

and to essentially look like he was out there for himself was something that might have just been sitting in Trump's craw

for the last month or six weeks, however long it's been.

And that when push comes to shove and he needed to get someone out and Hegseth has had more scandals since then, more signal problems, has had to fire some of his deputies who he says are all liars and leakers, though he threatened a polygraph and never gave any one of them a polygraph, that

would things have been different if maybe Waltz hadn't done that interview or seemed like he was more concerned with his own fate than the fate of the administration, potentially.

That's what I was thinking about.

What's your take?

It's so hard to try and decide who was most ripe to be fired.

I mean, Waltz did invite, it's just so hilarious that they're not, you know, that the real sin here wasn't a breach of national security that put our servicemen and service women at risk.

And, you know, when you, as I've always, or I've referenced before, if you get pulled over for a DUI, it means you've likely driven drunk an average of 80 times.

I mean, what else has gone on here?

Right.

I think it should have been Hegseth, but

he likes the way Hegseth looks.

He's been more combative on TV.

I agree with you.

And then the real crime was having the phone number, the contact information of who's seen as a progressive journalist.

That was the real sin.

So they needed a blood offering.

I actually got to say, I don't think it's gotten much attention.

You know, I think they kind of accomplished what they wanted.

I think it's poor leadership to say, oh, here, you go do this now.

I just thought that was and you and ambassador i mean talk about

talk about that's like what they did with carrie lake now she's in charge of what radio free europe as they cut funding for it it reminds me of um do you ever see the movie broadcast news with william hurt and holly hunter just a wonderful film and julia i forget her name she played a bond girl she played holly goodhead in one of the bond films and she was in the movie broadcast news and she's a competitive threat for william hurts affections to holly hunters And Holly, who's the assigning producer, basically sends her to do stories in Alaska.

So she still has a job, but she's in Alaska.

I feel like Carrie Lake and now Mike Waltz are in Alaska, if you will.

So Laura Loomer, who self-describes as an investigative journalist, but is really just a crackpot.

And Trump loves her, and they've had to get her away from him, essentially, because she fills his head with even more craziness, apparently played a key role in Waltz's ouster.

And her big thing is that Trump, in order to effectuate his agenda, needs to be surrounded by true believers.

And Waltz is not a true believer.

He's a convert.

And Marco Rubio is a convert as well, though it seems like he's

making the cut in very serious ways now that he has like four jobs or something like that.

But Laura Loomer, you know, she posted on X after Waltz was kicked out and just wrote loomered.

So, you know, take your victory lap.

But she said something that I thought was right and that we should keep in mind as we're evaluating the administration as it unfolds.

If there's anything that's going to torpedo Donald Trump and his agenda after he survived indictments and mugshots and multiple assassination attempts, it's going to be the vetting crisis and unforced errors of his administration.

Contrary to what's been said, he doesn't hire the best people.

That's why it's so important that there's people to help support the president because nobody is perfect.

And that feels like a really good Trumpian organizing principle for whatever we are about to see over the next three and a half years.

Yeah, but this guy hasn't learned this guy.

The president hasn't learned the basis of greatness and success.

And that is greatness is in the agency of others.

And you essentially, when you're on a board, your job is to basically decide if and when to sell the company.

But more than anything, you're really your only job is to ensure you have the right guy or gal.

And the right guy or gal needs to be good at what they do, set strategy, be an external spokesperson.

But the best CEOs, the best leaders recognize that greatness is in the agency of others and they surround themselves with just incredibly competent people.

Your ability to build a great company, a great staff, a great cabinet is your ability to attract the most talented people, hold them accountable, and get them to work together and not be threatened by and show the ability to retain people that are more talented than yourself.

And when you have the White House and the flag behind you, you can call on almost any individual.

And the fact that he's brought together this peewee, bad news bears, village idiot, Keystone cops group of people, he's even doing himself a disservice because an incompetent who's really loyal to you isn't going to serve you well because they're just going to make you look stupid all the time.

It's not, loyalty will be absolutely, and I believe this has already taken place.

He has huge loyalty.

Peter Navarro thinks the guy's a god.

And Peter Navarro is probably going to be the Nigel Farage

of this age.

And that is, he will be the architect.

He will go down in history is the person we wish this guy, the president, had not listened to.

And he doesn't understand that if he wanted to, if he had gone about this stuff with less volume and not made as many really stupid decisions, case in point, the one he just passed or is threatening to pass, 100% tariff on any movies coming into the U.S.

He would probably be one of the more popular presidents of the first 100 days because to his credit, he's doing what he said he would do on things that are largely, at least thematically, popular in the U.S., right?

Deport immigrants, go after government waste and inefficiency, restore trade balance, which Americans incorrectly have determined has been asymmetric to our disadvantage.

But he just doesn't get it.

He's surrounding himself with idiots.

It will absolutely undermine any benefit he gets from loyalty.

Let's take a quick break.

Stay with us.

This month on Explain It To Me, we're talking about all things wellness.

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well: collagen smoothies, and cold plunges, Pilates classes, and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It To Me, presented by Pureleaf.

Let's be honest.

Are you happy with your job?

Like, really happy?

The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that.

Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown, or one we never wanted in the first place.

But still, we stick it out, and we give reasons like, what if the next move is even worse?

I've already put years into this place.

And maybe the most common one, isn't everyone kind of miserable at work?

But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving.

It's time to get unstuck.

It's time for Strawberry.me.

They match you with a certified career coach who helps you go from where you are to where you actually want to be.

Your coach helps you get clear on your goals, create a plan, build your confidence, and keeps you accountable along the way.

So don't leave your career to chance.

Take action and and own your future with a professional coach in your corner.

Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.

That's strawberry.me slash unstuck.

Support for this show comes from DraftKings.

The WNBA playoffs are here and the heat is on.

Bet on your favorite teams and stars with DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the WNBA.

And for a limited time, all new DraftKings customers bet $5 and get $200 in bonus bets instantly.

Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use code BIRD.

That's code BIRD for new customers to get $200 in bonus bets instantly when you bet just $5.

In partnership with DraftKings, the crown is yours.

Gambling problem?

Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

In New York, call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPENY-467-369.

In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling.

Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org.

Please play responsibly.

On behalf of Boot Hill Casino in Resort, Kansas.

21-plus agent eligibility varies by jurisdiction.

Fees may apply in Illinois, void in Ontario.

Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance.

For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.co/slash audio.

Moving on here, the economy shrunk in the first quarter, and we haven't seen the full impact of Trump's tariffs yet.

Any sense for, have you heard anything about, quote unquote, this line out the door of people looking to do deals with them?

I have heard it said a lot.

I have not seen much evidence that that's really what's going on.

And when the other countries release statements, I feel as though the Japanese have been pretty transparent about how concerned they are about what's going on because obviously they want to maintain a good trading relationship with us.

But they basically said

the U.S.

team is a bunch of Yahoos and they sit down at the table and they don't even know what they want.

You know, when you go on a, on a first date and you realize maybe you're not up to it, you know, and you're not feeling it or whatever, or you're just not in the mood.

So you can't even make conversation.

And within 10 minutes, you're just kind of staring at each other.

I feel like that's what a lot of these trades are.

I just want you to know, I have sat across from that a lot.

Just a lot.

I've experienced that a lot from the other.

The women aren't just.

I see a lot of women.

Just staring at you.

Yeah, I got to tell the story.

I moved to New York in my first date.

I met a woman who was a hostess at a restaurant up town, asked her out.

She said, yeah, I got her number.

We went to a hotel downtown.

I walked in.

We ordered drinks.

I said, I got to go to the bathroom.

I came back and I got a text saying, my friend's in the emergency room.

I had to leave.

Really?

And I'm like, yeah, which was, in my opinion, total bullshit.

I mean, that was my first date in New York.

As soon as she got on the cab ride to the restaurant, she decided her friend was going to get hit by a car and she had to leave immediately.

Anyways, those are like the old school escape plans where you tell a friend, call me 15 minutes into the date, right?

And say, oh my God, you're having an emergency?

Yeah, no, not even, didn't even go through that.

Why'd she say yes then?

She'd met you.

This wasn't like a weird online, you know, maybe he doesn't look like his pictures.

No, I think there's something about that Galloway charm that really just really started to

scare the out of everybody he's probably full of regret now oh can you imagine i mean i host a successful podcast now uh look

speaking of the tariffs what do you make of this hundred percent or proposed hundred percent tariff on foreign movies coming into the us it's totally batch it i mean we have a 15.3 billion trade surplus on hollywood that's the thing like when the Australians said, excuse me, you have a trade surplus.

And I think it was Senator Warner was asking Jameson Greer, the trade representative, about that in particular.

And he said, well, how does this make any sense if we have a surplus?

If his idea is that we have to be even Stevens about everything.

And the trade representative had no answer because there is no answer beyond Peter Navarro was the only one who satisfied this tariff itch.

that Trump had.

And I don't know if you saw in the Wall Street Journal, so we're recording this on Monday morning, Scott Besson has an op-ed out.

So now he's trying to do damage control.

And he's defending the strategy.

He says Trump has this coherent three-pronged strategy that will benefit Main Street because their obsession is saying that this is for the little guy, tariffs, tax cuts, and deregulation.

And to the average Republican, that does sound good, as long as the tariffs aren't the way that we're doing it.

They love tax cuts and deregulation.

But it's all anchored in a complete misread of what the tariffs are doing to our economy and also what these 2017 tax cuts were.

And Republicans, I get this all the time at work where they say the 2017 tax cuts benefited everybody, but they don't talk about the level of benefit that it had.

So 81%

of the tax benefits from the 2017 cuts went to the top 10% and 24% to the top 1%.

So just because the average person got another $800 in their bank account as a result of this doesn't mean that it still wasn't this massive giveaway to the ultra wealthy.

And I was watching Bloomberg TV, which I don't do very often, but I thought, oh, they're probably going to have people on that are making a lot of sense and understand this a lot better than me.

And they had this guy, Gene Soroka, on, who's the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.

I learned more

in three minutes from this guy about what's going on.

He had the numbers, right?

We have a 35% drop in volume.

We are going to go under a hiring pause.

The truckers are going to be decimated because of it.

The dock workers, we don't know what's going to happen there.

Five to seven weeks, the retailers are saying that you're going to have shelving problems.

And then, if it takes more than a month to get these deals done, which with China, I don't even know if there's ever going to be a deal.

They seem upped for whatever this battle is, that spring and summer fashion and then back to school are going to be the big events that really jolt the American economy when you realize that you can't get the stuff that you need.

And I don't want to put myself out of a job because I love being on the five and I really enjoy it, but I want more Gene Soroka on TV talking about this than Jesse Tarloves.

I hope my bosses aren't listening because you get more information about the on-the-ground effects of these tariffs from somebody who's actually living it day to day and knows the people directly affected than you do by all of these talking heads.

Yeah, so just to return to the 100% tariff on movies, I've established a nice friendship with a guy who used to run Warner Brothers Europe.

And basically, his job was to take the IP of Warner Brothers, whether it's Big Bang Theory

or

Batman or Harry Potter, and then travel around the 27 or 29 member nations of the EU and collect money from them.

Oh, you're in Poland and you're the streaming network and you want to run

Warner Brothers films.

This is how much you're going to pay us.

Oh, you want to run the Harry Potter play on, you know,

in the London theater district?

This is how much money you're going to pay us.

I mean, we collect there.

America actually does a relatively small number of things really, really well.

Tech and software, education, we make the best weapons in the world.

And hands down, we have the best media in the world.

And we're running a 24 by 7 essentially commercial on American culture, whether it's Baywatch.

or whether it's friends and neighbors talking about the wealth problems of people in Connecticut, which I'm watching and I think is great.

John Hamm, incredible presence.

I know.

Well, incredible presence.

Is that your way of saying he's so hot?

It's nauseating.

It's ridiculously hot.

It's crazy.

And he's like aging in the best possible way.

He's still Don Draper, but he's also like a great dad.

He's a bad dad, technically, and your friends and neighbors, but you know what I mean.

Oh, no.

He's like, he's like the victim.

It's such a

everything.

Yeah.

Anyways, yeah, he's, he's very, he's very attractive.

Anyway, let's just cut to what's going to happen.

Other nations will say, okay,

we're going to put a 100% tariff on any of your media coming in here,

which means we're going to consume a lot less media.

One of the things we negotiated away with Canada, at one time, Canada, and maybe it's still in place, but I don't think so, said that 25% of media on Canadian cable has to be produced in Canada.

And such they basically had a lot of shitty Canadian TV shows.

I'm sure that, you know, the Boys in the Hall or something came out of it.

But effectively, this would be a boon to the local in the the short term.

It'd be terrible for consumers in Poland, but they would get a short-term sugar high from domestically produced content.

I don't even know how you would calculate the tariff, but over the long term, all it does is the following.

Media becomes much more expensive in those nations.

The media industry in America, which employs millions of high-paid jobs, gets crushed, right?

Because this truly is a frictionless export.

You don't need ships.

You don't need docks.

You don't need retail distribution channels or trucks.

Media can be transmitted over cables with zeros and ones.

And we make unbelievable margins.

And to think that these nations aren't going to impose reciprocal tariffs, which will dramatically decrease the demand of our content overseas, which we haven't, as you pointed out, an incredible trade surplus.

And this is what will happen.

He will threaten it.

Ted Sarandos from Netflix will call and say, you realize that this is going to take Netflix stock down dramatically as we do.

51% of our content production is overseas now.

We don't even know how to calculate what the tariff would be.

It'll take our stock way down.

We're going to get very pissed off, as will the 315 million people who are on Netflix.

And he will do exactly what he's done across every single step in this process.

He will blink.

Netflix will be the new apple.

And that is, people say, well, what would happen to the price of Netflix in all these nations?

And in our nation, if all of a sudden content produced overseas, of which 51% of Netflix content is now, whether it's the Umbrella Academy or Money Heist,

and Netflix says, oh, we might have to raise prices from $12.99 to $17.99.

Americans started a revolution

that basically resulted in the formation of our nation based on the action of people trying to raise taxes on tea, the whiskey rebellion.

So this is, again, nothing but chaos and paralysis, where the most talented people in the world and media, which happen to reside in America, essentially have to spend all this time figuring out what the fuck does this mean?

How do we even respond to it?

Just in case let's stop production overseas, let's reroute our supply chain.

We got to spend all of our time on earnings calls talking about how we respond to this instead of how we're actually trying to acquire consumers or produce more media that's more effective on a lower budget in our business models.

And at the end of the day, he's going to do the same thing he did with Apple.

He'll do the same thing with Netflix, and that is he will blink.

But if, in fact, the tariff does go through in some form, it's the small independent producers, the smaller media companies that will be shit out of luck, that don't have lobbyists and don't have a cult following, similar to Apple and Netflix.

This, again, is nothing but a self-inflicted injury that is all downside and just shows this guy just does, even in the industries we are dominating, we are dominating globally.

The last thing we want to do is give any nation the excuse to raise tariffs on our content and this is one of the things we have negotiated tooth and nail our trade representatives is that we have ensured that if we produce great ip which we produce the best in the world when we produce you know fast and furious 12 that czechoslovakia can't decide to start tariffing it we have fought for so long to let our content flow free overseas because it is better content and we reap the majority of those benefits.

And now he's decided to wind back the clock and give all of these nations an opportunity to tax our media.

Anyways, it also opens the door for

people to be concerned about his mental health state because there is a not insane thesis that perhaps last night he was watching a movie about Alcatraz and then decided to start posting that we need to reopen Alcatraz.

And we know he likes prisons and show a force that way with the gitmo stuff.

But he says, okay, we'll reopen Alcatraz and also we want to use terrorists in the movie industry.

Or maybe he was talking to John Voigt, who works for the administration somehow.

He's like the Hollywood ambassador or something like that.

And Politico even had John Voigt mentioned in their article talking about this.

And that makes you think who is in charge here.

And to be even more deeply concerned, that in the GOP bill, they have taken

the right from Congress to administer tariffs, which is constitutionally protected, and that that's the game here, that it's all consolidation of executive power.

Mike Johnson is fine with it as long as he gets his tax cuts through and the cuts that he likes.

And that we have a one-man show, and that one-man show can be swayed by a visit by Laura Loomer or perhaps a movie that he was watching.

That's a little concerning.

And just to give you a sense, we think, well, it's not that big a deal if it's just going to create some uncertainty and then ultimately we end up back where we think it is.

And that looks more like it did before than not.

Uncertainty is the death knell of markets.

The markets hate uncertainty.

And so far this year, the SB 500 is down 6%,

wiping out $6.5 trillion in value of public companies.

The value of the U.S.

dollar has plunged nearly 10%.

And ETFs that track companies outside of the U.S.

is up over 7%.

I feel like we're having the biggest lawn sale in the world of $27 trillion in our economy that other people are thinking, okay, especially China and some EU nations are saying, okay,

how do we take advantage of the fact that the U.S.

seems to be getting into a trade war with China?

I know, let's get a bunch of stuff on sale as the fixed cost in Chinese factories.

They want to keep those factories humming so they have excess supply.

And the EU nations are going to be able to strike incredible deals on that additional capacity.

In addition, all sorts of trade deals being done outside of the U.S.

This is essentially, well, okay, well, this is a yard sale at the wealthiest home in the world.

This is, you know, I don't know what the Louvre, if it was a private residence.

Oh, everything's for sale right now in terms of this economy.

Everything is up for grabs because this person has gone crazy.

They're not dead soon, but

they've gone absolutely crazy.

And the notion that consumers aren't going to freak out, when consumers show up to a store and the shelves are empty, at least American consumers, their first instinct is to go buy something else, specifically a gun.

Consumers freak out.

I mean, this is a country that started hoarding

toilet paper and hand cleanser.

I did that.

You did that.

I had a whole

office full of toilet paper.

Yeah, I did.

What would you do if you couldn't wipe?

Let's be real about this.

My dad was also obsessed with it.

He told me, he's like, go to every drugstore.

i lived in union square at the time he's like you got a lot of drugstores there please go get as much toilet paper as possible and then bring it down to me and try back

yeah i was more focused on getting the vaccine but i did that too

yeah but just for the sad final note on this all the things you say is true his approval rating is down stock market all of it and yet CNN asked, who would be doing a better job right now, Trump or Kamala Harris?

And Trump Trump still edges

Kamala.

I mean, within the margin of error, it's just two points.

But my guess would be actually that he would still get reelected if we had the election, if we did a do-over.

What people

I've watched, I don't know if you saw anything from the Berkshire Hathaway Agora, where they all got together and basically it was kind of a farewell to a great American,

Warren Buffett.

And he said, he was really appreciative in his comments.

He said that you want the world to be prosperous, that when other nations nations do well, we do really well because we make fantastic products.

And when they have more money, they buy more of our products, and it's an upward spiral.

And one of the problems with this administration, in terms of mentality, that is just not

prosperous or foots to the age, is that they approach everything as a zero-sum game.

That if another nation is prospering, it must be bad for us.

And China's ascent into the global economy as a kind of a tier one nation has been great for us.

And you might say, well, it's not great for us.

Only 3% of clothes in America are manufactured domestically.

How can that be a good thing?

Okay, in the last 40 years, on an inflation-adjusted basis, the price of clothing has been cut in half, which means Americans can focus on manufacturing things with much higher margin.

I don't know, chips, media.

And with that additional gross margin, by focusing on high-margin products and additional profitability, we get to buy more shit.

And at the end of the day, America is about rights.

It's about defending our nation and giving people the opportunity to buy more shit.

People don't come here.

I mean, a lot of people do come here escaping totalitarian regimes or they want asylum, but the majority of people who come here come here because they want more shit.

And what I mean by that is

lifestyle.

They want to be able to afford nice things for the kids.

They want to take nice vacations.

They want to have a nicer car.

They want to buy better beer.

They want to wear cooler clothes.

They want to wear Nikes.

They want to watch better media.

And the notion that somehow

we have not benefited since World War II, we have 8X'd our GDP.

Our average household income is about 80 grand.

Granted, it is not, it is absolutely not fairly distributed, but that's our choosing.

That has nothing to do with trade policy right now.

But the notion that we haven't won, we've won, folks.

We've won.

And a big part of that is because of our incredible trade policy where we've usually been both parties win, but we win even more.

And he was very eloquent and said, by the way,

when other nations are more prosperous and their children are more prosperous, your children are safer.

And that is when nations don't do well, you know, they're just more inclined to declare war on their neighbors or be really angry at those gluttonous Americans who appear to be doing well and pulling ahead without us.

I thought his comments were really solid, but just a quick rundown of some of the products from China that are imported into the U.S.: 99% of shoes are imported, 90% of microwaves are imported from China, 82% of pots and pans, 70% of utensils, 40% of coffee makers, 93% of children's books, 86% of gaming consoles, 98% of umbrellas, 82% of blankets, 96%

of fireworks.

The Republican Party really is genius at figuring out a way to get people to vote against their own

interests.

And as a result, J.P.

Morgan is now predicting a 60% chance of recession, Goldman Sachs, 35% chance of recession.

Barclays, B of A, Deutsche Bank all warn of higher recession risks.

What they're not talking about, which I think they soon will be talking about, is what's even worse than a recession.

And you're too young to even remember this, but I remember this from my graduate student instructor days, stagflation.

And that is traditionally when the economy slows, interest rates come down because not as many people are feeling confident and want to borrow money.

So banks lower the cost to borrow money.

People get more aggressive.

It's sort of of a self-healing mechanism.

And then when consumers are trying to buy too much stuff and there's too many dollars facing too few products, banks take advantage of that and say, if you want to borrow money as confident as you are, you're going to have to pay us more.

And then the higher interest rates temper or dampen the economy and bring inflation down.

The worst thing in the world is where we're headed.

And it's the following.

And that is productivity goes down because demand for our products from reciprocal tariffs decreases.

So the economy shrinks.

But at the same time, we're seen as a less sure bet, and capital leaves the U.S., driving up interest rates.

So what do you have?

You have interest rates going up, which further chases down, slowing productivity, and you have something called stagflation.

And we haven't registered that in so many decades, people don't even really understand the concept.

But here's what it is.

Stagflation is a bridge to depression.

Recession is a fucking Easter party compared to stagflation.

That's the worst of both worlds.

And it strikes me that essentially these tariffs and so far the economic policy are effectively said, how can we bring back stagflation?

How can we bring back measles and rubella and stagflation?

I've got an idea.

Massive tariffs.

All right, moving on for a second.

What do you make of Trump's comments about due process?

Concerning.

But when have I not been concerned?

You know, Kristen Welker asking him, do you agree that everyone who is here deserves due process, citizens and non-citizens?

And spoiler alert, the Constitution guarantees it, even for people who are here undocumented.

And Scalia, amongst others, has said as much.

And he goes, I don't know.

I'm not a lawyer.

And Trump has spent his entire life hiding behind, I don't know, ask somebody else.

And that somebody else is usually Stephen Miller, which spells disaster for all of us.

And I should have mentioned when we were talking about the national security advisor stuff, that I wouldn't be surprised if it was really Stephen Miller doing it and not so much Marco Rubio.

But the administration is out with an idea for a new proposal that I would love to get your take on because it, at first blush, sounds pretty smart to me, that they're going to pay people who are here undocumented $1,000 to self-deport.

And I believe that they're also considering paying for their flights home.

And it is deportations and border security, not immigration overall, but those two criteria or those two aspects are the only areas where he is still above water.

And I think that if there are people here who are willing to go for $1,000, that that is a very good use of our taxpayer dollars.

Well, it's an interesting idea.

And just on a cost level, it's a hell of a lot more efficient than renting planes for, you know, a quarter of a million dollars and putting them in handcuffs and shipping them to a place where they have no family or support.

But it's how we're doing this.

People don't want to acknowledge that, okay, the secret sauce of America, a lot of people admit, has been immigration, right?

But the most profitable part of that.

secret sauce has been illegal immigration because undocumented workers, as I've said before, pay taxes, but don't don't stress

local services.

They don't stick around long enough to usually collect Social Security.

There are some examples of crime.

There are some examples of them taxing social services beyond the value they're adding.

But

that is the exception, not the rule.

And the reason why we have turned a blind eye to illegal immigration for so long is it's been this magnificently flexible, inexpensive workforce that comes in when there's jobs and leaves when there isn't.

And the thought, you know, to me, if you were really going to be quote unquote smart about this, you would say to certain individuals, I mean, you need to massively increase immigration, but have it be thoughtful and have it be measured and have some, you know, some sort of logic to it, right?

If the price of pistachios quadruples because we can't come find anyone to come, to come harvest these crops, well, let's think about how we have some sort of temporary visa similar to what Trump does at his hotels.

But in terms of deporting, offering them incentives, but we still don't want to talk about the solution that actually probably most effectively decreases or encourages people to self-deport.

And that is going after these nice people who are business owners.

And that is in some states or some regions, they estimate somewhere between a quarter and a third of fast food workers are undocumented workers.

You could make a pretty decent estimate with a pretty tight confidence interval of what percentage of your workforce is undocumented workers.

And then you go to the employer.

and you say, we're going to start fining you $100,000 a day unless you get this down.

If the jobs go away, they will self-deport on their own without a $1,000 bounty or a $1,000 incentive.

Because the real solution here is something we just don't want to talk about.

We don't want to acknowledge that, okay, drugs coming across the border.

Well, let's punish them for letting fentanyl.

You can't keep drugs out of a prison.

As long as there's demand for drugs in the United States as a function of people, either addiction or, you know,

a man who doesn't get married or in a relationship by the time he's 30 has got a one in three chance of becoming an abuser.

The fact that we over prescribe opiates, as long as there is demand for drugs, they're going to get into the U.S.

As long as there is a demand and jobs, right, for illegal immigrants, they're going to figure out a way to get here.

Now, to their credit, it does seem like immigration has dramatically just cauterized or stopped.

I think that's a good talking point for them.

Are they going way too far?

Are we probably going to see a massive hike in inflation?

I absolutely think that's coming.

But let me put it this way.

I think that's the least bad idea they've had in a while.

What do you think?

Yeah, that's how I feel about, and listen, I perhaps got too excited that it was something that didn't sound insane to me.

And so I said, I think this is a good use of our taxpayer dollars.

I don't know.

I need to see what the plan is fleshed out, but they are doing well with,

frankly, putting the fear of God into people.

And folks are self-deporting.

Border crossings are basically nil at this point.

You don't see any action on the southern border.

And this was a key promise that we would get people out of the country who are here illegally now.

I want the asylum system to continue to work.

Everybody deserves their due process.

There are innocent people in a foreign prison, essentially serving now a life sentence that the El Salvadorian president isn't even comfortable with.

That's how depraved what the American administration has done, that Bukele is uncomfortable with it.

That said, $1,000.

When you look at the costs and how overburdened our immigration system is, we don't have enough judges.

We don't have enough lawyers for these people.

I think maybe if it can help the process along about whether they should stay or go, this is something to explore.

It's just so funny.

In some nations, they pay people to actually come there because they need labor.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's going to be,

but it's, it's, it feels as if the administration has somewhat snatched a feet from the jaws of victory because had they not had this El Salvadoran

stupidity.

Most Americans agree with a pretty hardline approach.

And the results, I don't think you can argue with that.

The results have been dramatic, right?

And it's like, okay, it's one thing to break a few eggs.

It's another thing to like burn the village to save it, right?

To totally go after due process.

And some of these stories really are heart-wrenching.

Okay,

let's take a quick break when we come back.

Our conversation with Senator Murphy.

Stay with us.

Support for this show comes from Saks 5th Avenue.

Saks 5th Avenue makes it easy to shop for your personal style.

It's fall and it's time to invest in new arrivals you'll want to wear again and again, like a relaxed Prada blazer and Gucci loafers that are great for work or a weekend rendezvous.

Saks makes shopping feel totally customized to you, whether that's in person with their in-store stylists or online at Saks.com where they show you only what you like to shop.

They'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in or when an item you've been eyeing is back in stock.

For a personalized, easy shopping experience, head to Saks Fifth Avenue for the best fall arrivals and style inspiration.

Support for the show comes from Mercury.

What if banking did more?

Because to you, it's more than an invoice.

It's your hard work becoming revenue.

It's more than a wire.

It's payroll for your team.

It's more than a deposit.

It's landing your fundraise.

The truth is, banking can do more.

Mercury brings all the ways you use money into a single product that feels extraordinary to use.

Visit mercury.com to join over 200,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to do more for their business.

Mercury, banking that does more.

We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair.

Yikes.

Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato.

Ouch.

Could have done better.

Same goes for where you invest.

Level up and invest smarter with Schwab.

Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it.

Learn more at schwab.com.

Welcome back.

Joining us today is Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.

Welcome to the show, Senator.

Hey, Scott, thanks for having me back.

So there's a viewpoint that despite all the tumult, anxiety, general recognition that a lot of these actions from the administration are damaging to the economy and essentially kind of waving a middle finger at the Constitution, that while his popularity is down and he's had the worst first 100 days, the Trump administration or Trump is still more popular than the Democratic Party.

And the thesis is that the Democratic Party is seen as weak and that the American public would rather have an autocrat than a party that's weak.

And you gave a very fury speech called the 100 Days of Corruption.

But in addition to these sort of fury speeches and

generally highlighting how corrupt this administration is, it doesn't feel like that's enough.

It doesn't feel as if the Democratic Party has shown any real tensile strength in terms of their ability to push back on the administration.

Other than speeches,

what could possibly be done here?

Yeah, I mean, Scott, I think there's a couple of things to talk about here.

It is true that the approval ratings for the Democratic Party are in the toilet.

They're bad, but not much worse than the approval ratings for the Republican Party.

People are just down on organized political parties right now.

And a lot of the reason why the Democratic number is very low is because Democrats are upset with the Democratic Party.

And that's because Donald Trump has punched this entire country in the nose.

And a lot of Democrats are taking out their frustration with Trump on the leaders of their own party, who they don't believe have stood up an an effective resistance.

Some of that is, I think, justified, some of that is not.

But it is also true that the Democratic Party is not seen as a strong enough alternative.

One of the things I worry about is that, well, it is true that this is the most corrupt White House in the history of the country.

Any one of these scandals from the meme coin to Starlink would have potentially taken down a previous president in a previous time.

The Democrats aren't really seen as a credible anti-corruption messenger for a couple of reasons.

One, because we weren't really serious about taking out corrupt members of our own party, but also we don't really talk with enough volume about the ways in which we would clean up government if we were put in charge.

When I started out in politics 20, 25 years ago, you know, campaign finance reform, getting big money, corporate money, lobbyist money out of politics, that was a top two or three issue for Democrats.

Somewhere along the line, we stopped explaining, and maybe we stopped caring as much about unrigging the democracy.

Our sort of democracy talk became voting rights talk, which is really important, but that's actually not the thing that sort of scratches the itch that most Americans have today, which is the influence of billionaires and corporations.

inside politics.

So I think, you know, some of the low approval ratings for Democrats are just a function of sort of the first six months of the Trump administration and people taking out their anger against anybody, including Democrats.

But some of that is because we just don't talk enough about what we would do to unrig the democracy if we were put in charge.

And people aren't going to really listen to our message of Trump's corruption unless they really believe that we're serious about changing the rules so that there's less corruption.

So in addition to being taken seriously about being effective change agents, in terms of just our ability to to kind of arrest or cauterize what a lot of people think is sort of an undoing of the post-World War II order that will take years, maybe even decades to repair, I thought we hit a low point last weekend when Schumer said that we had sent a strongly worded letter to the president.

I'll put forward a thesis.

Start proposing laws.

that say if you're operating black sites in your country or engaging in crypto scans with this current administration, if and when we get control of the House, we'll propose laws that economically impair your nation or remind some of the people in the administration and the Republican Party that the statute of limitations on fraud, corruption, or a variety of other crimes, the statute of limitations is longer than three years and nine months.

I mean, just to put it bluntly, doesn't the Democratic Party need to start acting like sort of the party of not fucking around, quite frankly?

I mean, what we're doing just does not appear to be working.

Yes,

that's right to an extent.

I mean, listen, his approval ratings are sinking, and that that is really important.

When a president gets down into the 30s, his enablers do start to get cold feet.

I mean, it will be harder for him to pass this

massive cut in Medicaid funding in order to finance a billionaire tax cut if his approval ratings are at 35%.

So I don't necessarily know that the message is, in whole, not working, if in part, what your goal is when you're the majority party is to make the majority party really, really unpopular so that their legislative agenda gets jammed up.

But yes, we have to be more willing to engage in risk-tolerant behavior, and we have not.

I mean, part of the reason that I argued that we should be willing to vote against that Republican continuing resolution was to show that we are not going to be complicit with Republicans on a budget that they wrote without any Democratic input.

The reason why I thought we all should have skipped the State of the Union speech is because that would have shown a level of seriousness about not wanting to legitimize his corruption and theft.

And you're also probably right that we're going to have to be clearer about the legal consequences, you know, should somebody who's on the level eventually get into the DOJ for the people who are blatantly violating the law.

I think sometimes people expect a little bit too much of the opposition party, but I think if we were engaging in tactics that were a little tougher and had, frankly, a little bit more potential downside for Democrats, that would cause people out in the public to be more willing to engage in riskier behavior themselves or institutions to engage in more riskier behavior as they're trying to stand up a response to Trump's extortion campaign.

I wanted to pick up on what you were saying about this risky behavior, because there are a few people within the party and you're one of them that have been looked to as the ones that are willing to push the envelope.

So Bernie and AOC out on their tour, you had a huge fundraising quarter, $8 million, right?

And you're not up for reelection for a very long time.

So people are obviously appreciative of what you're doing and the energy that you're bringing to this fight.

But we know that elections are decided on issues.

And the big issue for the midterms is going to be the GOP reconciliation bill, the big, beautiful bill.

So we have $880 billion cut to Medicaid, also huge tax breaks for the wealthy.

How do you think that Democrats can effectively message what it is that this administration is doing?

If wealth inequality is a huge issue for them, this is it, you know, signed, sealed, and delivered, wrap it up in a bow.

There is no clearer indication that Main Street is irrelevant to them than what this bill has in it.

So what's the plan?

Well, the plan has to be to not be distracted and that's tough.

But, you know, we are being gift-wrapped a piece of legislation that tells tells the entire story about the Trump administration's priorities.

And as you mentioned, it's a pretty simple story.

You're talking about throwing millions of people off of their health care, potentially tens of millions of people off their health care.

Medicaid insures 24%

of Americans in order to finance a massive tax cut for the richest Americans.

It's about a trillion dollars in cuts to child nutrition programs and Medicaid and a trillion dollars of tax cuts for the richest 1%.

And so that's a story we need to tell over and over and over again.

And the best result here is, frankly, to stop it from ever becoming law.

And I think we have a really good chance of doing that.

Nobody thought that we were going to be able to stop the repeal of the Affordable Care Act in 2017, but we did.

But they still paid a price for it.

They got walloped in the midterms because people didn't really care that it didn't pass.

They just saw loud and clear what their values were, which was to, at the time, throw 20 million people off their health care.

So we needed to dual track this, try to kill this bill, but also message it in a way that even if it disappears, they have to own the space.

And I think it's okay to still talk about the assault on democracy, because I would argue it's all the same story.

That this president's agenda is so historically unpopular, so wildly unpopular, that the only way that the Republican Party survives this is for them to destroy democracy, destroy the rule of law, destroy the traditional means of accountability, like a free press, a free university system, lawyers who can defend our rights.

So it's all the same story.

They've got this deeply unpopular agenda, which is about destroying the middle class to empower the billionaires, and they have to destroy democracy in order to get away with it.

I think that's an elevator pitch.

Like that doesn't take more than a minute, a minute and a half to explain to people.

And just don't let his constant distraction campaign about talking about a third term or invading Canada stop you from being able to repeat that story five times a day.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Do you think that talking about Kilmar Obrego-Garcia is one of those distractions?

No, because I think that is sort of central to this case of his attempt to destroy the rule of law because it's the only way that he gets away with this thievery.

I mean, what he is essentially doing with a lot of these disappearances,

standing on top of the legitimization of political violence through the pardoning of all the January 6th protesters is to try to put a chill when it comes to people who are going to stand up to him politically so that you don't see the kind of crowds that you've seen in the past several weeks and months out there protesting his deeply unpopular agenda.

And I think, you know, that there is deep crossover potential in a way that maybe is unexpected on issues like like Obrego Garcia that dovetail pretty nicely with the crossover message on stopping the cuts to Medicaid.

It turns out there are actually a lot of pretty conservative folks out there who don't want any of this.

I've said to folks,

a lot of the people who voted for him thought that he was serious about lowering costs, and he wasn't serious when he talked about being a dictator.

They're finding out that the opposite is true.

He's not serious about lowering costs.

He's going to increase healthcare costs by kicking people off of Medicaid.

And he is serious about being a dictator.

And that's a message that sort of gives a permission structure for a lot of his vote and his base to think about crossing over.

Yeah, Steve Bannon could be used in a whole lot of ads.

He understood this perfectly.

Scott?

So governors Bashir, Newsome, Whitmer, Moore, Secretary Boudig,

Senators Bennett, Klobuchar, Murphy, we have an outstanding match.

A lot of very strong moderates who I believe you're going to have to have a moderate to triangulate and have a shot at getting through or winning in the general.

I won't talk about the primary.

Why, just as a tactic, and I'm not asking you to indicate your plans or what you're planning or not planning to do.

It feels like right now we're leaderless.

That if the leaders of the Democratic Party are Senator Schumer or Leaders Jeffries, I think most people think they're not up to the job of pushing back on this onslaught of corruption and autocracy.

What do you think of the idea of one of you or more of you announcing now that you're running for president, such that we at least have effective pushback and someone that the media and the public can turn to on a daily basis for arguments and evidence around how wrong this is?

I mean, it seems to me that part of the problem is we just don't have visible vocal leadership right now.

What do you think of the idea of one or more of you announcing sooner rather than later that you're running for president?

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I hear this critique a lot, and there have been different suggestions about how to tackle this perceived problem.

That's the first time I've heard the suggestion about starting the presidential campaign,

you know, two years earlier than normal.

There's also this idea about creating a shadow cabinet, you know, for instance.

I guess I don't perceive that problem to be as acute or as real as you do, Scott.

I actually think that this party is pretty entrepreneurial.

Even though Bernie Sanders and AOC have no official role, they are still drawing tens of thousands of people.

I'm a rank-and-file member.

Max Frost is a rank-and-file member, but we'll have a couple thousand people in Florida.

We had a couple thousand people in Missouri and North Carolina last weekend.

I don't know.

I think it might be just a little unrealistic to expect that you are going to have

three years prior to a presidential campaign, there be some consensus in the political class and the media class about who the one sole leader of the Democratic Party is.

Posit for a second that one of those high-profile names did jump out and declare their presidential aspirations really early.

Well, that might mean that the others do the same.

And then all that you have now is demon-dem violence.

You just have a presidential campaign starting way earlier than it should, instead of all of our energy being trained on explaining the corruption and the thievery in the White House.

So I don't see this as

big a problem as it is.

I think what you're frankly seeing is a lot of folks rise to the moment and

get amplified voices and bigger stages that might not exist if you had some early contest to decide who the one person was that is the legitimate anti-Trump voice inside the progressive movement.

All fair points.

So one of the strategies that the administration or President Trump has deployed that I think has been very effective straight out of the GRU's handbook of flood the zone.

So many outrageous things every day that you're flat-footed, don't know what to respond to, enter into a state of paralysis, end up running after things that aren't that important.

And it feels as if we do need to focus on a small, finite number of issues in a very forceful yet dignified way.

One, do you agree with that?

And two, if you in fact agree with that, what would be Senator Murphy's one thing, if you could only talk about one issue that you think the Americans should be focused on in terms of how the administration is bad for America, what would be that one issue for you?

Yeah, listen, right now

it's this budget bill that proposes the most massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich in the history of the country.

It tells the entire story about the values of this party.

They are trying to hand over our government to the billionaire class, and they are willing to run over regular people to get there.

It exposes him as a false populist in a way that no other issue does.

But as to kind of the tactical way that you deal with how he floods the zone, you have to flood the zone in return.

You have to create as much content as he does.

And that is a legitimate debate inside the party right now.

There's a feeling that, you know, maybe we should just sort of sit back and, you know, let them destroy themselves,

that we shouldn't be acting every single day with fire alarm urgency because that kind of wears people out.

I actually don't think that's true.

I think we have to, you know, put just as much content out there every day as he does.

I think it's okay for us to sort of have our hair on fire fire on a daily basis because the democracy is under daily assault.

And as long as we stay, you know, pretty laser-like focused on that transfer of wealth, the cut to Medicaid to finance, the tax cut for millionaires, I think we're on pretty, pretty safe ground.

You mentioned being out with Max Frost at town halls in Missouri and in Florida.

And I'd love to hear a little bit about what you saw there on the ground.

Also, by doing it with Max Frost, who's the youngest member of Congress, you implicitly blessed this next gen, which I think is so important in the conversations that we're having right now about people being too old for these roles, not passing the torch soon enough.

And someone like Max Frost understands flooding the zone because that's just how a 20-something operates, right?

I wake up, I get on my phone.

Not me, I'm a 41-year-old, but Max Frost wakes up and he starts posting because that's just what's built into his DNA.

And that feels like a natural way for us to be combating flooding the zone where it doesn't feel like you have a 75-year-old in their car, you know, yelling into the abyss to create a video.

You have someone like a Max Frost or an AOC doing this.

And it's like inherent to who they are.

So can you talk about your town halls and also bringing in the next generation in a substantive way?

You know, it certainly is about volume.

And you are right that this generation doesn't think twice about posting dozens of times a day.

That's just how online communication works and it's important for you know the the older generation to understand that second it's about authenticity it's about removing the filter between you and your constituents and the voters and and maxwell does that i do that um but most sort of high-level politicians governors and senators still have that filter still vet their communication through their communications staff and so you don't you post without approval i don't yeah i mean i don't so my the feed that i control is my, is my, my Twitter feed.

And that, yeah, that is just me.

Nobody sees those tweets before I send them out.

And that provides sort of the foundation for most of my other content.

But voters are savvy today.

They, they now know the difference between authentic communication and non-authentic communication, in part because they've watched Donald Trump show the country what authentic communication full of mistakes looks like.

The town halls are amazing.

You know, any Democrat can show up anywhere right now, and you will have thousands of people coming out.

I I think it's really important to be in Republican districts, in part because if you are trying to build a true national movement, you have got to sort of show that even in the red parts of the country, folks are having second thoughts.

And so if you're just having big turnouts in blue states, that doesn't really ultimately move the needle.

So I don't think it's coincidental that once we started to see red states turning out like what Bernie did in, you know, Idaho,

and I think he was in

somewhere in the mountain west other than Idaho.

You started to seeing Trump's approval ratings move down into the low 40s because Republican or prior Trump voters looked around and they said, oh, I guess others who voted for Trump, others who live in places that look like the place I live in, have now have the same misgivings that I do.

So that's why Max and I have been primarily going only to Republican districts.

And I think we'll continue doing that.

Yeah, you see, it's pretty rough out there, even for like Chuck Grassley.

And I feel like his constituents love him, but they can't help but be upset at what we're seeing.

I'd love a little bit of a background perspective on how your Republican colleagues are feeling.

I know what they say to the cameras, but are they feeling as tense about this as I would imagine they should be?

So I have a little bit of a different perspective than a lot of my colleagues do on Republicans right now.

I really worry that we're giving Republicans too much credit, this idea that they know what the right thing to do is and they aren't doing it because they are scared of Donald Trump or scared of losing an election.

I think way more Republicans than you think have in their heart given up on the project of democracy.

You know, this work to undermine democracy inside the Republican Party that's been

handled and midwifed in part by the pseudo-intellectual infrastructure that surrounds MAGA, you know, it's been ongoing for a decade.

It's deep.

It's serious.

And so especially in the House of Representatives, I think the vast majority of Republicans there are absolutely willing to give up on elections if that guarantees Republicans rule forever.

Many Republicans, most Republicans in Congress have come to the conclusion that progressives writ large are an existential threat to the nation.

And so their number one goal, their mission, is to stop Democrats from ever ruling again.

They'd like to do that without destroying democracy, but if that's what it takes, then they're willing to do it.

I just think you have to understand that instead of living in this world where, you know, they, oh boy, they're all really wringing their hands about what Trump is doing to our democracy and they just, you know, can't say it out loud because they're so afraid of him.

In the Senate, yes, there's, you know, a good group of maybe 15 to 20 who do know what he's doing is wrong.

And those approval ratings sitting in the 30s for a period of months, you know, that may be the key to getting more of those Republicans to speak up or perhaps voting against some of the worst of this agenda, including the Medicaid cuts.

But I don't mean to paint a hopeless picture.

I just think it's really important not to sugarcoat what's happened inside the Republican Party.

And it's a decade-long effort to try to explain why it's time to transition America to a kind of autocracy or quasi-democracy that can keep up with China.

Democracy is just antiquated, it's outdated, it doesn't work in a 2025 global context.

That's what a lot of Republicans think today.

So, Senator, young women going slightly more moderate or progressive, young men significantly more conservative.

And I would argue that it's not that they're moving towards the Republican Party.

It's the Democratic Party has moved away from them.

And when I was at the Democratic National Convention, I saw a parade of special interest groups really robustly representing their constituents.

But the one group that wasn't discussed or referenced is the group that, in my view, has fallen furthest fastest, and that is young men.

And I think it really hurt us at the ballot box.

One, do you agree with that?

And two, if you do agree with that, what specific programs or ideas can the Democrats deploy to try and arrest the decline or at least nod how poorly young men are doing in our country?

I completely agree with that.

I mean, how can't you if you look at a lot of this polling data?

I think that, you know, what's important to understand is that while a lot of the attention has been on young men, there has been a significant pull away by young women from the Democratic Party as well.

This is a phenomenon that exists most acutely with young men, but it exists with young people writ large.

I do think it's worth really examining why the only movement on the left that has drawn large numbers of young people, but especially young men over the last 10 to 20 years is Bernie's movement.

And I think you really have to, there's a lot of people who say, well, you know, Bernie's brand of politics is toxic.

It's, you know, going to be the downfall of the Democratic Party.

But let's be honest, you know, whatever you thought of the Bernie bros,

there were a lot of young men who were attracted to what Bernie was selling.

And I do think that that's because

young men and young women together, but maybe young men in particular, because of the very quick downfall of the sort of the economic patriarchy,

see the consequences of a system that is totally and completely rigged.

And they are looking for an explanation about who did it to them.

For young men, you know, the conservative movement says, well, women did this to you.

Women did this to you.

Their rise in the workforce, combined with the Me Too movement, has been the source of your unraveling and undoing.

Well, what Bernie says is that, yes, somebody did this to you, but it's not women.

It's the billionaire class.

It's the corporate class who has rigged an economy to make sure that no young person can succeed as quickly as they could 30 or 50 years ago.

And I just don't know that you'll win young men back or you'll win young people back if you don't have a source for them to root their frustration is if you don't have a story to tell about why their life got so difficult and so miserable all of a sudden.

So, you know, you talked earlier about a moderate candidate being the only path forward.

I'm not even sure that kind of center right-left works any longer in describing sort of how the sort of political positioning exists today.

I think you probably win with a candidate who is more big tentis on social and cultural issues, who is less judgmental about people who may not, you know, think the way that most progressives think on climate or guns or gay rights, but is pretty populist on economic issues, is willing to sort of call out the way that corporations have rigged the economy and have some pretty big solutions, especially for young people, about how their life is going to get better much more quickly.

Sherrod Brown was a loss on a whole host of levels, but you're basically describing him in what you just said.

Yeah.

And Sherrod, you know, I mean, Sherrod's bona fides on choice and gay rights, on climate, right, rock solid.

But like Bernie, Sherrod A.

A, just chose to spend 80% of his time talking about an economic message.

And B, I think the perception in Ohio, even though he lost, was that he was less judgmental of people who thought differently than him.

And, you know, we have applied these litmus tests.

We just have as a party.

And, you know, we let the online left engage in a pretty regular shaming of anybody who isn't inside the conventional orthodoxy.

And I think in the past, I've been a part of that.

I think a lot of us have been a part of that, either in taking part in it or looking the other way when it happened.

And when I think about how the Democratic Party recovers, I don't necessarily think it's in sort of becoming more moderate on economic issues.

I think it probably is, you know, confronting the failure of neoliberalism pretty directly, but it probably does mean becoming less judgmental and less preachy on the non-economic issues.

So if we were a household, we're taking in $50,000 a year, we're spending 70, household debt of $370,000 that when we die, our kids will assume that debt.

We're either going to have to, it appears to me, raise taxes or cut spending.

And the answer is probably both.

And I'm now of the mind that probably the only way to substantially decrease spending would probably be to attempt to really go after health care costs, which is the biggest part of our biggest consumer economy, our biggest consumer spending item with terrible outcomes.

One, do you agree with that?

And two,

how

could we, in fact, address a healthcare system where we spend eight times more for Humira or

Ozempic than other nations, and where hospital systems have figured out a way to make pricing totally non-transparent?

What

I mean, it just feels like Washington, quite frankly, has just been weaponized by the healthcare industrial complex.

And as a result, we have worse health outcomes with for, you know, for more money.

How would you address health care costs?

So this is at the heart of the corruption story, and it's a bipartisan corruption story.

This town is owned by the healthcare industry, and that's been true for 30 years.

The reason healthcare costs are so high in this country is because the for-profit healthcare industry has been able to rig the rules so that they are able to collect a large amount of the total dollars spent in healthcare, whether it be on the private pay side or on the Medicare and Medicaid side, and keep it for profit returns to shareholders or massive CEO salaries.

It's just not a coincidence that America is obviously spending twice as much as other nations on a per capita basis, and we don't utilize the power of the federal government to control and regulate prices.

So there's no way ultimately to solve for this problem, the massive, massive amount of money that the the government spends on healthcare without the government getting involved in helping to curb the amount of profit that the drug industry, that the hospital industry, that the hospice industry is making off of healthcare.

And it's frankly a really critical moment right now because you are now seeing the sort of private equity game in healthcare at scale.

And, you know, the for-profit hospital companies and the drug companies, you know, they are thieves, but at least you can kind of see the thievery.

When you get to the point, you know, five, 10 years from now, where half of the, you know, healthcare system is owned by third parties, by private equity or hedge funds, and you can't even see the ownership structure.

It makes it a lot harder to kind of understand how to pull the levers to try to keep costs down.

So, you know, part of the reason that I think Democrats haven't done as well as we should when it comes to healthcare is that our ideas are too small.

You know, we talk about, you know, our prescription drug policy for a long time was, you know, bulk negotiating the price of the top 10 prescription drugs, which is like a good policy, but it leaves people feeling cold.

People want a hard cap on all drug prices, all drug prices.

They want a limit to the amount of profit that drug companies can make.

They want the ads off the air and all of that money plowed back into

prescription drug price reductions.

So I just think the Democrats are going to, whether it's a single payer system or not, the Democrats are going to have to talk about the government getting involved in the healthcare system to limit the amount of profit profit that the private sector makes and taxing along those savings to consumers.

So, speaking of big ideas, we of the G7 spend double what the other G6 spend on health care with worse outcomes, and most of them have nationalized or socialized medicine, whatever you want to call it.

Would you be up for something along the lines of lowering the age eligibility of, say, Medicare by two years for 30 years and eventually having national health care?

I'm certainly game for that.

There's another idea that I prefer, which is

a national Medicare buy-in, right?

To put Medicare as an option for every single individual and every single business.

It's not an easy thing because you'd have to price Medicare into the private sector, but I actually have a piece of legislation to do it.

There's other pieces of legislation out there.

And so Medicare then would exist on every individual insurance exchange.

Every business would have the ability to buy the Medicare plan for its employees.

And it's a way to kind of test the idea.

Okay.

You think private insurance is better insurance, it's cheaper insurance.

Well, let it go toe-to-toe with Medicare.

I think what would happen is very quickly, individuals and businesses would choose to go on Medicare because it just is better healthcare for a lower price.

And you'd have a very natural market-based transition away from what we have now to something that looks like Medicare for all.

And once Medicare had 60, 70% of the business, frankly, the other companies probably couldn't operate.

So that to me is the big idea that gets us to where we probably need to get to, but it does it through consumer and business choice, which is just a whole lot more politically easy than what Bernie is proposing, which is to just have a big legislative fight over requiring that everybody be on Medicare and banning private health care insurance.

That's really interesting.

I hadn't heard that.

Yeah.

That's why we have them on, Jess.

That's why we have them on.

That's why we have you on.

There's a couple of good ideas out there that you guys haven't thought of yet.

That's hard.

Several million.

We need a new title for the podcast because moderates aren't where it's at.

We have to be more lefty.

All right.

Senator Murphy, thank you so much for your time.

Hopefully you'll come back again sometime soon.

Thank you, Senator.

All right.

That's all for this episode.

Thanks for listening to Raging Moderates.

Our producers are David Toledo and Shanene Onike.

Our technical director is Drew Burroughs.

You can now find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday and Friday.

That's right, its own feed.

That means exclusive interviews with sharp political minds you won't hear anywhere else.

This week, I'm talking to Representative Ro Khanna, who's a personal favorite of mine.

Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode.

See you later, Scott.

Thank you to CVS CareMark for supporting this show.

CVS CareMark allows you to get the prescriptions you need, where you need, at the best price for you.

CVS CareMark allows for greater access to medication through broad, flexible network strategies.

They work with more than 64,000 pharmacies nationwide, 44% of which are independent pharmacies.

This coverage means CVS CareMark can give their members the unmatched ability to choose where and how they want to receive their prescriptions.

Go to cmk.co slash stories to learn how we help you provide the affordability, support, and access your members need.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre junk.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.