Trump’s 100 Days of Power Grabs

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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.

Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Scott Galloway.

And I'm Jessica Tarla.

Jessica, it is literally sweltering here.

It's 73 degrees.

Sweltering by London standards.

Yeah, but it's everybody's out.

It feels strange.

I just had this odd sensation I've never, I've had maybe three or four times in London, and that is I'm sweating.

But that feels really good.

Like you're back in America.

Back in America.

What's going on with you?

What did did you do this weekend?

I was alone with my daughters.

My husband went to the West Coast for a concert.

So I was...

Hashtag single mom.

Oh, what concert did he go to?

He went to see fish at the Hollywood Bowl.

Oh, he's one of those cool guys.

No, I mean, he's listening.

So, honey, yes, I do think you're cool.

He's a deadhead who will go to fish concerts, but he's not a big fish person.

And I think they rated fish three out of 10, but 10 out of 10 for the venue.

They're venue chasers, him and his friends from growing up.

I'm the same way.

I go to hotels, not cities.

Yeah, I think that's a great way to live if you can do it.

And restaurants, it's always nice, too.

Yeah, I would go to, I would pretty much see anybody play at the sphere.

I've only saw you two there, but I would go see, I don't know.

The Grateful Dead show at the Sphere is unbelievable.

Anyways.

In today's episode of Raging Moderates, we're discussing Trump's second term, marking 100 days as he continues a global trade war, starts arresting judges, and continues Ukraine-Russia peace talks.

Then we'll talk about the state of the press after the White House correspondence dinner.

I've avoided all information about the White House correspondence dinner.

I was asked to go, and I didn't.

I would love to go sometime.

Anyways, I seem like Kara Swisher right now.

I was asked to go, of course, but I didn't.

I would have gone.

All right, let's jump right in.

On Wednesday, Trump will hit 100 days into a second term, where his first one was really about disruption.

This one is more about domination.

From mass deportations and sweeping trade wars, unprecedented power grabs and government purges, Trump has set a breakneck pace that's left allies rattled, critics reeling, and the rule of law under pressure.

With markets jittery and public confidence sinking, the big question isn't just where the presidency is headed, but what kind of country it will leave behind.

Just let's start with the big picture.

A lot of Trump early support came from voters who wanted to kind of shake things up.

But polling shows his approval rating is slipping.

His approval at this point is lower than any president in seven decades.

I know you're really into polls.

What is your sort of general meta view of his first 100 days?

The meta view is that it's a massive failure by certainly by historical standards.

And looking at the key demographic groups, that he was able to swing in his direction as well.

He's lost 30 points with young voters.

So that was quick.

So it's now back to the Biden levels when Biden won in 2020.

He has an approval rating of 27% with Latino voters.

And, you know, things are pretty bleak.

There were four major news outlet polls that came out over the weekend, and the headlines were all basically the same.

Trump approval sinks as Americans criticize his major policies, lower than any president in seven decades.

Americans vent disappointment with Trump.

Trump's first hundred days seen as bringing big changes, but still too much focus on tariffs.

And I'm not sure if everything would be honky-dory if you weren't doing the tariff business, but you can certainly look at that as the major sinking force in terms of his approval and the overall feelings about this administration and what it's been able to do.

You know, they're failing on cost of living, inflation, tariffs, the economy writ large.

Consistently, though,

still positive views on border security.

The crossings are down to basically nobody.

I mean, we have reporters, Fox reporters who are at the border and they barely see anyone versus at peak, you know, we had the 250,000 people that were streaming across the border on a monthly basis.

So our drones are lonely.

They're looking for something and can't find it.

But for the first time, this happened last week.

He's now underwater in terms of immigration in general.

And that's where.

Democrats really see the opportunity.

So positive view on deportations.

People still want to get these folks out of the country.

But I think the personal stories, like the Abrego Garcias of the world, the big one from the weekend was three American citizen children aged two, four and seven were deported with their mothers.

The four-year-old has a rare form of cancer and was deported without treatment.

And

the mother was given the option to leave them or to take them.

So this is two different families.

I should say I'm talking about the kid with cancer.

but also wasn't allowed to speak with their lawyer.

And

Tom Homan had to do a morning press conference.

I don't know if you saw this.

He's out there with Caroline Levitt, the press secretary, saying this is parenting 101.

You know, you would have accused us of family separation if we had kept the kid and sent the mom home, even though the father wanted them to stay here.

And you know that they're sweating it.

They've lined the White House lawn with posters with pictures of undocumented people who have committed crimes here with a big stamp, right, that says deported, deported, deported, arrested, deported.

And they're in massive fix-it PR mode because it's sinking into people that while they may be in favor of deporting people who have convicted crimes here, that that's not what they're actually getting.

And if you look at the numbers, they are deporting people, less people on a monthly basis than they were at the end of the Biden administration.

And I think they're completely frantic about that.

Yeah.

So my friend Doug Seidman was actually a fraternity brother of mine, and we reconnected after, you know, not really staying in touch for 20 or 30 years.

And he wrote, they were basically the two smartest guys in my fraternity, Jess.

Let's talk about me in college, were Lauren Mason, who is this philosophy major.

They're both philosophy majors, Lauren Mason and Dove Seideman.

And Lauren, and they were both, I think they were both Broads or Fulbright scholars.

And Lauren was the first guy I ever met who did a shit.

ton of shrooms.

He was just very much about psychedelics and talking about the universe and metaphysics and just the kindest, gentlest guy.

And then Dove was a guy who used to come home and do 100 pull-ups and wouldn't, of course, smell alcohol.

And he would lecture us all on how the, you know, the membrane and the brain would be contaminated by alcohol.

He was just constantly optimizing for health and perfection.

He looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger and incredibly bright.

Anyways,

yeah, ahead of his time.

And I caught up with him recently and he wrote a book called How and his big thing.

And, you know, most books are sort of like there's one insight and then there's 12 chapters coming up with analogies and metaphors to drill home, you know, this insight.

I always found like Malcolm Gladwell, read the first chapter and you get the joke and you can go to the next book.

So his whole thing is, it's not what you do, it's how you do it.

And if you look at his policies on immigration, on tariffs, on doge, there's actually pretty broad public support.

And he had an opportunity, he had a big mandate coming into the office.

He had a big opportunity to have an exceptional 100 days, even if it was something that set the media and progressives' hair on fire.

But the way he's handled it has just freaked everybody out.

You know, it's one thing to deport people.

It's another thing to send them to a Hellscape prison and then have evidence that you're not willing to correct your mistakes and to basically lie and say, oh, we can't get them back or round up people with the wrong tattoo.

It's one thing to impose tariffs.

I think a lot of the American public, incorrectly, I would argue, our GDP has grown faster than than anybody, if not more, consistently.

And yet somehow people want to believe that we have taken advantage of other countries.

And that GDP growth, a lot of times, has been on the backs of global trade.

So it would appear to me that the economics of the data show we've taken advantage of the other countries, not the other way around.

But anyways, there was support for tariffs, and people believed that we were being taken advantage of.

So some kind of mild, targeted, thoughtful tariffs would have been, I think, appreciated, even if they were sort of harsh or punitive against China.

These are just stupid, right?

We've seen shipping volume from China is down 45%.

And if all of a sudden the stuff we get from China is down 45%, folks, you're going to find that restaurants don't have tablecloths or that you're not going to be able to find a garage door opener or that the costs are going to skyrocket and thousands of small businesses are going to go out of business.

And with respect to things like immigration or deporting people, sending out errant letters that are mistaken to PhD students saying you need to self-deport, the bullshit around the attacks on universities.

It's just he had a mandate, and I would argue that it's not what he's doing, it's how he's doing it.

And if he just scaled back somewhat and just been, if they just said, oh, this is, you know, we pretend to, you know, a third of our hardcore megabase uses Jesus, every other word.

And if Jesus came back and saw what we were doing, you'd find us and puke all over us, that of course we're not going to deport in any way.

Of course, we're going to come to the aid of a mother and a child who is suffering from cancer.

Of course, we're going to make special accommodations, and we did.

To not have someone go down and pose in front of, you know, shirtless prisoners in El Salvador prison like it's some sort of fucked up snuff porn from Cinemax.

I mean, this stuff is just, it's kind of success.

They always say, or I've said, success isn't the last 10%.

And that is the way you establish yourself at work if you're a young person is if the all-hands meeting is at 8 a.m., show up at 7.50.

Always be 10 minutes early.

Always stay 10 minutes too long or be, you know, stay 10 minutes longer than everybody else.

When you're almost done with a project and you're tired and you just want to turn it in, the next 10% of going through and proofing it, adding a couple more charts, being known as the person who's a perfectionist, and even when everyone else is really tired, saying, okay, I've got a new idea, let's just get this in and it's really going to be awesome.

Success is in the last 10%.

In this case, failure has been in the last 10%.

And that is, while I disagree with a lot of his policies, generally speaking, his core policies and the way or the direction he's moved about, America agrees with.

He's just gone way too far and been now being seen as cruel and reckless.

So this has been, I would argue, a lesson in how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

And that is, America largely believes, or his constituents, that he had a mandate and that directionally he's correct, but that he's been so reckless, so aggressive, so unnecessarily cruel and or stupid that people just don't trust him any longer.

Your thoughts?

Yeah, I have in my notes, the stupidity and the cruelty are the dominant descriptors that people are talking about with this administration.

They can't make sense of the economic policy.

And it genuinely feels like he's always wanted tariffs or liked tariffs.

And he went out and found the only economist to get behind it.

So Peter Navarro.

And now you have that person elevated to a dangerous position, so much so that all of these smart CEOs, economists, consultants, all of them are just trying to get on TV to talk about the damage that this is doing because they know that that's the only way to actually connect with him.

Like if Trump didn't see a clip of it, it's like it didn't happen.

And so that's why you have Gary Cohn on the Sunday morning show circuit, Jamie Dimon giving these interviews.

I'm sure you saw Ken Griffin from the end of the week talking about how the U.S.

is 20% poorer because of Trump and that the American brand is in crisis.

Trump thinks about anything.

He thinks about brands, and he thinks of himself as a brand.

You are right, though, about how significant the direction that we're moving in is to voters and to Trump.

And that is still what's going on on immigration.

And part of that is Democrats' fault.

Like, we broke it to such an extreme degree that people are willing to tolerate a level of stupidity and cruelty and chaos to get us back on the right track.

And I was struck by one particular finding out of, I think it was the ABC Washington Post poll.

So all of this terrible stuff for Trump, you know, approval rating and high 30s, low 40s, but still he's seen as more in touch with people's concerns than the Democrats.

69% say the Democrats are out of touch.

Only 60% say that about Trump.

We know that independent voters, even though he has strong disapproval, are not regretting their votes.

So they're pissed off.

They're saying on the generic ballot that they're going to vote for Democrats in 2026.

So great.

Maybe we'll have a great midterms.

I'm hopeful about that.

But we've got a long way to go until we get to that point.

And there was an interesting juxtaposition I saw between Chuck Schumer, who gave this interview to Dana Bash.

And I basically wanted to kill myself watching him because she says they're talking about academic freedom and Harvard.

And she said, you know, what's your response?

And he said, we sent him a very strong letter just the other day asking eight very strong questions.

Strongly worded letter.

What in God's name is that?

That'll show him.

As if Trump opens his mail.

He

was probably so overjoyed seeing that.

He wasn't at church, so he was probably watching the Sunday shows.

And to see Chuck Schumer have that kind of response, he just probably said, we got them.

They're completely limp.

This is so pathetic.

And he's right.

And then in contrast, and I'm curious for our plan to have someone just start running, maybe it's you, but if it's not you, what do you think about J.B.

Pritzker?

Because he was in New Hampshire over the weekend and he's got that real cool billionaire bravado, right?

He feels very secure about professional success,

his partner and his family.

He feels very secure about what he has done.

for Illinois.

And I loved having him on the podcast.

I thought that he was great.

But he said, Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.

Their portraits will one day be put in museums reserved for tyrants and traitors.

He also said that Democrats are guilty of listening to do-nothing political types who would tell us the house is not on fire, even as the flames are licking their faces.

And he also went after Democrats who wanted to blame our losses on black people or talking about trans issues or immigrants too much instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.

And when I was listening to him, A, thinking, oh, maybe you're running for president because you're in New Hampshire doing this.

And that's not necessarily, you know, right around the corner from your penthouse in Chicago, or he's probably in Springfield most of the time.

But I thought this is the vibe that people

want to see.

And they want to see Democrats also calling out other Democrats.

Not that we should have a civil war, but they want that fire.

The imagery of the flames licking their faces really.

I don't know, it sat with me.

I think Governor Pritzker is fantastic and he's sort of

like similar to donald trump he inherited his money i think it'd be better if we had a self-made billionaire we're working on it i mean you take what you can get there you go perfect is not on the menu he comes across as thoughtful strong not easily rattled he's a great voice he has that kind of and i think that sort of a a bomb or a neosporin of like

serious dad energy would be very well received.

And also, Pete Buttigej has done a great job on these podcasts.

He's just so articulate and forceful.

I watched all three hours of him on the Flagrant podcast.

Yeah, and he's just very good.

And I don't know if he'd get through the Democratic primary, but I think, well, that's neither here nor there.

I love, did you see Al Gore, his kind of fiery speech?

I thought Vice President Gore was fantastic.

I thought Bill Maher was not expecting such an amped up al.

over there.

Yeah, such a hopped up, hopped up al.

So look, I personally, they're all running for president.

It's just that they've decided that it's premature to announce.

And they might be right, but my view is at this moment, the Democratic Party is just so void of leadership from a centrist candidate or someone who could be president.

I'm really inspired by Bernie and AOC's tour.

I just don't think there's any fucking way they would, that would be the worst thing that could happen to us is we fall under the illusion that they become the Democratic nominees.

That would be we lose by 15 points.

They're just not where America is.

And I think they're fantastic surrogates, fantastic kind of bulwarks for, you know, by the way, I just think your buddy Tim Miller at the Bulwark has been outstanding.

But I believe any reasonably competent person who announces they're running for president right now gets on every show and can start to coagulate or gestate a powerful message and be seen as the person to push back.

Because right now,

Whenever they want to call or get someone to talk about something, they're reaching out to just anybody in this grab bag.

And there's no cohesive vision.

There's no real, what I call cogent pushback.

Senator Schumer says stupid shit that makes us just weak.

It's just, it's just awful.

It's sort of, okay, maybe I was right to vote for Trump.

Leader Jeffries is good, but he doesn't have the kind of fleet of foot forcefulness that we need in a leader.

There needs to be...

Literally, you can't name who the Democratic leader is right now.

And so any credible person that announces they're running for president right now immediately becomes that spokesperson and can start hitting back.

And every time one of these stupid things comes out, that person can put out media.

And they don't need to go on these shows.

They can establish their own media now, which is exciting about you basically build your own mic.

And we need that.

We need somebody.

So look, Mayor Pete, you're running.

Just, we all know you're running.

Just announce and make things easier for you and everybody else.

You know, even I'm starting to see Betto pop up.

He's back, right?

He's.

There is no more Beto.

You don't think so?

Well, it's like, how much money can we light on fire for Betto O'Rourke and Stacey Abrams?

And Democrats in Georgia are just praying that she doesn't run again because she can win the primary, but she can't win the general.

And we're trying to win general elections.

I think we've spent like $400 million in Texas trying to get...

you know, far-left progressives to win Senate seats there.

And people hate Ted Cruz and still keep voting for him.

Like that's a signal to you of where you are.

Like, please pick winnable races and pick candidates that can appeal to people who may have voted for Trump this time in 2024, but could buy what you're selling.

And you look at how John Osoff is running his campaign for reelection, which is going to be one of the most intense races in the country.

And I'm like, do that.

Stop with all of this like far left stuff, but also the normalcy argument.

And I guess you saw Mark because you saw Al Gore, but Brett Stevens was making this case for Mana, make America normal again.

And that infuriated me because people don't think that the Biden years were good.

They don't think that having a president, they're unclear whether they can do the job is normal.

They don't think our college campuses were normal.

They don't think Russia invading Ukraine was normal.

They don't think October 7th was normal.

They don't think that inflation was normal.

They don't think the cost of living through the roof was normal.

So a candidate going out there and saying, Mana, you know, let's let's go back to a time where we were respected on the world stage, not going to work.

They're still kind of okay with Trump because he's a chaos agent.

And they think that we were so messed up that that's what we need.

It has to be change.

And I don't know how a centrist candidate can pull that off because they're going to need to be a rebel and also a calming force.

But we got to find that person or that group.

I'm still in the Avengers Assemble mode where it can be a bunch of people, but you have to have moderate policies policies with fire.

And Chris Murphy feeling that right now, but I don't know if he can be president.

We can ask him.

He's going to become a friend of the pod, which I'm excited about.

He's going to come on with us.

But I'm upset, Scott.

To your point, this is what won't work.

This notion running against Trump and just saying, we're not Trump and we need to go back to where we were.

That's not going to work.

It's got to be, I think, a series of bold policies that people get excited about, whether it's lowering, okay, we spend $13,000 a year on health care, we're more obese and we die earlier.

How do we take it down to 6,500 like every other G7 country?

We're going to lower the age, the qualification for Medicare by two years for 30 years till we have nationalized medicine.

It's time, folks.

Our healthcare system isn't working and it's time to take a different approach.

We need mandatory national service.

We need to bring our young people together from different sexual orientations, different income groups, different genders, and get them to realize that when you serve in the agency of something bigger and greater than yourself, specifically your country, it's good for you and it's good for us.

And you need to see what wonderful people are out there that may not look, smell, and feel like you.

We need a tax holiday for everyone under the age of 40.

We need a progressive tax policy that funds universal child care.

We need nationalized health care such that 40% of America doesn't have medical debt.

We need $7,000 given to every baby, only $40 billion a year, such that in 65 years we can do away with this transfer of $1.3 trillion from young people to old people, which will take our interest rates down, which will take the third largest expenditure, interest on our debt down.

There's just a series of big, bold programs that Democrats should be putting out there.

We should have an adult conversation around reducing our spend and increasing our tax base, an alternative minimum tax for corporations that are paying the lowest tax since 1929, an alternative minimum tax of 50, maybe 60% above anyone making more than 10 million, because guess what?

There's research on you, you get no incremental happiness from more than 10 million.

There's a variety, minimum wage of 25 bucks an hour, universal kind of unity of everything or unifying theory of everything.

We're going to have a series of policies that I'll reverse engineer to anyone under the age of 40 can live in dignity, have access to health care, can find someone to mate with, more third places, tax credits for sports leagues, religious institutions, bars,

whatever gets people together and starts mating again, a child tax credit.

But we need a series of big, bold ideas, but just running on, well, we're not him and he sucks, and we need to go back to the Biden years, that's a loss.

This is an opportunity to be really bold, really visionary, get people excited about a series of new ideas that's grounded in pragmatism, but also is visionary.

And just call things out.

The industrial medical complex needs to be disrupted.

We need to have progressive tax policies, enough already.

We need to have a strong military, but there's probably real waste in there.

There's, again, we're not going back.

This is an opportunity to say, all right, let's come up with a series of really big, bold, kind of new ideas such that we get people excited and say, okay, this is a new Democratic party.

And I've said, I've been giving money out, well, like a drunken sailor to anyone who's under the age of 40 who's running for office.

We need more youth.

We need more young people.

We need more vigor and more ideas.

But all along with a way of saying I agree with you, the campaign mantra can't be, we're not Trump.

That's not a winning idea and that we're going back.

to the policies of the 80s.

People don't even want to dig up Obama.

They like him, but they don't want those policies back.

That's the thing.

Yeah.

Well, our icon feels outdated now to a lot of people.

Like young people now don't know what it's like to grow up in the Obama years and how exciting hope and change and yes, we can was.

And part of that is they especially don't know what Iraq and Afghanistan in 9-11 felt like.

And so how important it was to have a unifying figure like Obama.

And we are without political cultural icons at this point.

You know, we're getting into the territory.

We're going to have to explain to younger people about Hillary Clinton.

And that even happened at the DNC.

It was sweet, but also concerning to me how many young Gen Z women I heard around the arena after Hillary spoke.

And I thought she gave one of the best speeches of her career on the first night of the DNC.

And they were like, oh my God, she's amazing.

Did you know that?

And, you know, inside my elder millennial feminist is dying, right?

And I'm like, how do you not know how amazing Hillary Clinton is?

But our icons are outdated for what's going on here.

And we have to lift up the next generation of that.

And I think, you know, whether she wins the election for Michigan Senate or not, like a Mallory McMorrow is going to have to fill that void.

And you can have the centrist versions too.

I think Alyssa Slotkin will be very exciting for people who want to succeed in politics.

We'll see if Lauren Underwood, you know, what she does in the Illinois Senate race.

Hopefully she gets in there.

But we have to do real solid branding work with the folks that we have and the policies that we have.

Cause you just rattled off a platform that I think a good 60% of Americans would get behind.

And I'm sure this is the moment in the YouTube comments where it's Scott for President, Scott, 2028, let's go.

But why can't people just organize their thoughts?

Why can't you create a proposal plan or just some basic charts that say education, healthcare, economy, climate, sex, you know.

Remating, vocational programme, 7 million homes in 10 years, manufactured housing, which costs 30 to 50% less than on-site housing, create little hip communities for young people such that we bring down the cost of housing.

I mean.

And the case study, you say Austin.

This is what they did.

This is how we will replicate it where you live.

Exactly.

Yimby, national YIMBY program.

Right.

Totally.

Like you could even just just pull sections out of abundance, frankly, and post them.

We want to bring prices down.

We're going to break up.

These four companies, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, we're turning into 11 companies.

And the rents on third-party marketers trying to sell their products on Amazon for advertisers.

These are the biggest toll boosts, the biggest tariffs or taxes in history is the concentration of big tech.

And the moment we break these guys up, the economic rents and the rents, the extraordinary rents that parents are paying to Meta because they have no other choice as a platform and their kids feel ostracized if they're not on these platforms, such that they start self-harming.

It's like everyone, people have been calling me about Tesla.

Can Tesla come back?

I'm like, yeah, how do they come back?

Easy, great fucking products.

The Democrats can come back if they come up with a series of visionary programs and they outline them.

This is how much it would cost.

This is how we would get the tax revenue.

This would be the economic growth that it would inspire.

If young people can afford to find somebody, mate and have children and have a home, they won't be as anxious and depressed and likely less obese, which will create less of a tax on on our health care system.

They'll be more prosperous.

We won't have 3 million able-bodied men exiting the workforce.

We just need a fucking argument other than we're not Trump and every American should have the right to the American dream.

Well, okay, so what, boss?

We're done with the flowery language.

There are so many interesting programs that different people have promoted and are available to us from around the country, a hotbed.

The great thing about having 50 individual states has been a hothouse of innovation.

And all of these guys, everyone just wants to talk about what we might or might do with a strongly worded letter.

There needs to be, and I'm hoping that it's Governor Newsom or Mayor Pete

or senator soon to be governor, Michael Bennett, who I'm a big fan of because I like Wonks, who's probably never going to be president because he's not good on TikTok.

Christ, even if AOC announced, I would be grateful because I think she is very forceful and people would constantly go to her for pushback and she's really good at pushback.

But the notion, great brands in a digital age are about products and products in this instance are programs that will affect people every day and we need to start pushing out more products.

Okay let's take one quick break.

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Welcome back.

Another story caught our eye.

Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested Friday and charged with helping an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest, a major escalation in Trump's crackdown on immigration enforcement and local officials.

Jess, what's your take on this?

Can you give us some color here?

Yeah.

So the overarching take is this is part of the plan to

chill opposition and neuter the other branches of government.

So we know they have no respect for Congress and they now have no respect for the judiciary, whether you're ignoring a Supreme Court ruling, the Fourth Circuit, or arresting a county judge.

And

this judge is

accused of helping an undocumented man who has been accused of beating someone, hitting them 30 times.

And

he sounds like a pretty violent guy, frankly.

This doesn't, I have not seen any defense of this, that this guy is actually innocent of it.

But what the administration says that she did was allow him to exit the side entrance of her courtroom and then escape.

And they ended up catching him on foot.

So it was a brief foot chase, but he's been arrested.

And so they decided that they wanted to make a big show of this because everything with this administration is for the cameras, like all of the raids that we've seen and Christy Noam wearing her ice Barbie vest and what she was doing down at Seacot, you know, thumbs up in front of everyone in prison there.

And so they wanted to make it a television spectacle.

And a lot of people have commented on that aspect of it.

There's a very famous Milwaukee defense attorney who weighed in saying, you know, not only do I think that Judge Duggan to be a great judge, but why are you treating her like a common criminal?

There is no way that she wouldn't have come downtown to answer your questions, turned herself in, et cetera.

And she's going to be back in court, I think, May 15th to have further discussion about the charges against her.

But you have Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, on TV saying, We will come after you and we will prosecute you.

We will find you.

You have Cash Patel, the head of the FBI, who had an enemies list, which was published in his book that came out a few years ago.

And this was something he had to work really hard against in his confirmation hearings, say, I'm not that guy.

You know, what I wrote doesn't reflect who I am.

It's exactly who he is.

And you can see that plain and simple.

So while I think that this seems like this guy was a bad guy, and I'd encourage everyone if you can to read about, it seems really boring, but there are actual accounts of how the courtroom is built and how the doors work and how many officials there actually were there from ICE, from the FBI, DEA agents, et cetera.

And there are people who are defending Judge Dugan, just saying actually the door that he went out, there were agents standing on the other side of it.

She didn't like cover him in a blanket and hide him in her purse and then walk out a door and release him out into the open.

That if the agents had been paying attention, they would have picked him up right outside the door.

And you know, that's neither here nor there.

But I know that it is a very bad sign when the government is arresting members of the judiciary.

They want no opposition.

They want to steamroll absolutely everyone here.

And it feels like that moment is even starker than it was last week when we talked about it, where we need everybody to band together in a peaceful civic uprising against this, whether you're part of big academic universities, big law corporations,

advocates, lawyers,

people who work for the government.

even

just to say this is not how we do business in America.

And part of that is cooperating with ICE where it makes sense.

And I always bring that up and I hate to be the Debbie Downer about it, but there are a bunch of Blue City mayors who are saying, no matter what, I'm not cooperating with you.

You have to turn over criminals so they can be deported.

That's how you have a nation of laws and that you have law and order here.

But it does not seem like this show of arresting this judge fits into that.

that category.

Yeah, again, it goes back to it's not what you do, it's how you do it.

There is something chilling about arresting a judge.

And I don't know the specifics of the case, and it sounds like we still don't know.

It sounds like he was a bad ombre,

to be clear.

It sounds to me, yeah, no doubt.

The question is, did she break the law and should she be arrested?

And it feels to me, again, it's how you go about something and saying, look, what you did here, if you were facilitating the escape of a criminal,

you should be defrocked or whatever it is they do to judges.

Well, that's what they do to priests right when they take a bunch of little kids on camping trips anyways the whatever that is they do but it feels as if all right trying to send a chill across the judiciary do you really want to do that i don't it it feels as if again it's sort of government overreach

and this more of this sort of I don't know, a lack of respect for our judges, generally speaking, are really well respected.

And it's important that we uphold that prestige.

There's a reason they sit higher up, you know, and they wear a robe because they've gone through a lot of vetting.

These are people, generally speaking, who make good livings, but not great livings and could make a lot more money in the private practice and do hard work, sometimes very boring work.

And to just, again, it feels as if we're sort of digressing into one of those countries that

we have a difficult time finding people to come be PhD students, go to law school.

We're having a difficult time getting good people to run for office.

And is this going to help people decide to volunteer or to decide to be judges and give up private practice?

But she should be, if she's, and you're right about ICE, whether we like it or not, ICE is a federal agency.

And when they're commanded to uphold the law, you know, vote for a new president.

And,

but you have to comply with ICE.

At the same time, I also think history is filled with a certain level of civil disobedience.

And civil disobedience has played a key role in progress in America.

Now, having said that, if the judge decided to engage in civil disobedience and history might judge her well, she will pay the price.

And quite frankly, that's part of the heroism of civil disobedience is I'm going to protest and I'm going to refuse to leave or whatever it is.

I'm going to join hands in front of,

you know, I'm going to refuse to, whatever it is, not comply with the government's order or to leave my seat that's for whites only.

A certain amount of civil disobedience, I think,

as long as it's non-violent, I think people

can engage in that.

I don't know if this even qualifies as civil disobedience because I'm not entirely sure she thought she was doing anything that was illegal, but there is something chilling.

And again, it goes back to how they're going about this.

So speaking of defrocking, or someone and by the way, I keep getting emails from friends of mine who just love this guy.

The Pope?

Yeah, just love him.

He's pretty inspirational.

I'm seeing all these wonderful quotes from him.

So, overseas, just moments before Pope Francis' funeral, the Vatican, Trump and Zelensky had their first face-to-face since that disastrous White House meeting back in February.

Afterward, Trump questioned whether Putin actually wants a peace deal.

Zelensky called it a good meeting on social media.

We talked about this a bit last week, but where do you think things are now?

And do you think this meeting changed anything?

I think that Trump is such a classic love the one you're with

person that it's a good thing that he was with Zelensky, especially because the last time they were together, it went so poorly.

Most of that because of the other people in the room and the cameras and

the stress of that for Trump.

And J.D.

Vance was obviously poking the bear with the lecture that he was giving him.

But I was genuinely relieved to see the still shot of Trump and Zelensky sitting in those chairs talking to each other.

And it feels like good progress from last week where Rubio and JD Vance had a positive comment as well, but Rubio is meeting with Ukrainian officials and our European allies versus meeting with Russian officials and Mideast partners who are not nearly as invested in a free Ukraine and ending this war without us having.

to tell the Ukrainians, oh, sorry, no big deal.

Did you need 30% of your country, 40% of your country, whatever it is that Putin's asking for it?

So I think it's a positive development.

Trump was positive afterwards as well.

And Zelensky said the same on social media.

I'm sure the rare earth minerals deal is still one of the most important linchpins in all of this.

But every time Trump has the opportunity to be adulated and to be welcomed into the global community in a positive way, he likes that.

And so I think that we really need to massage this into the coziest environment possible for Trump so that he stays on the side of the Ukrainians and really gives the middle finger to Putin, who has made no compromise, has violated every ceasefire, but has made no compromises whatsoever from his original points about what he wanted as an outcome of this war.

So,

yeah,

that's my view.

I don't know if you saw Secretary Rubio's interview on Meet the Press, but it's just like,

it just drives me crazy.

They highlighted this interview where he said, you can't give in to Putin that he did two or three years ago.

It creates terrible incentives.

We have to push back.

And they're like, what has changed?

He's like, well, we need to stop the killing.

It just doesn't answer the question.

It just

starts blathering away and whatever the most recent talking point is.

And Trump was asked, well, what are the Russians willing to give?

Ukraine

has to give up 20% of their territory to a guarantee that they will not join NATO.

They've even been asked by the Russians or demanded that they disarm such that if they want to take the other 80% at some point, they could with no resistance.

And Trump was asked, well, what are the Russians willing to give or concede?

And he said, well, they're willing to stop the war and stop killing people.

And when you think about just how fucking stupid that is, that's like saying to the entire world and every autocrat, every murderous expansionary autocrat, you gain something when you invade another country.

You get collateral.

You get something to leverage in trade if you go in and start killing people and taking over land.

That, according to Trump, is what Russia is bringing to the table, is they're willing to stop the illegal invasion of a democratically elected or a country with a democratically elected leader.

It's just so strange.

It's such strange times.

And I've said this and I have no evidence in this.

But if we found out that Putin was buying a ton of Trump coin and propping it up such that the president would now be worth another $3 billion,

he's basically $3 billion wealthier since he took office.

And let's look at the timing.

The Friday before the inauguration, when there was just a ton of noise at night, he said, oh, announce the Trump coin.

33 people, likely insiders who know him who got a tip off, made $800 million.

And since then, a ton of people, about 80,000 smaller investors have lost several several billion because it spiked up.

The insider sold, went way down.

He then decided, I know I'm going to neuter and close down the unit of the Department of Justice that is investigating crypto scams.

I'll just get rid of the whole department.

Oh, I know.

The lockup is about to expire, which is when insiders can sell.

Now, a lot of insiders probably go, this is a fucking pyramid scheme.

I'm going to sell.

So he announces this meeting with the biggest owners of Trump coin around that time.

I mean, this is such, we've never seen grift on this level.

And wouldn't Putin be stupid not to buy all these coins and then say, you know, Donald, FYI, I'm going to make you the wealthiest man in the world because I just love the Trump coin and nobody needs to know I bought and you don't need to tell anybody that I bought.

And by the way,

can you help us out with Ukraine?

Wouldn't this all make sense?

Because everything it appears that Trump and Vance are advocating for is literally a talking point of Lavarov.

He's even said, he's even intimated that somehow Ukraine started this war.

So it's not, and when I see them, when I, I think Zelensky has put on a masterclass here and that despite, can you imagine this guy, every day, people are trying to kill him.

Every day, he's getting notes from.

comrades and people he knows about how their sons and daughters are being killed and

under constant threat of death.

His nation is being literally torn apart.

And then the nation that was supposedly going to be, you know, was the biggest backer of democracy and had the back of any freedom-loving nation is all of a sudden turned on him, embarrassed him at the White House.

And he has had the discipline.

not to be insulting, not to be snarky.

He realizes the best thing for his people as he can do is just try to remain calm and establish some sense of a normalcy in the relationship.

Because if Trump just likes the guy, distinct of the political ramifications, maybe he won't cut off aid as fast, or maybe he'll start sharing intelligence again such that, you know, maternity wards aren't shelled by the Russians.

But this is, for me, this is, I mean, the Trump coin's right up there for me.

The deficits are right up there.

But the number one kind of thing we're going to look back on and

think this was really a strategic mistake in terms of creating a post-World War II order that we have torn up and created a series of incentives, it says to autocrats, you know what?

It kind of pays to invade your neighbor if you get the opportunity.

Because then America might show up and just force both sides to negotiate and give you

what you have conquered.

I mean, it's like the worst game theory, the worst strategy in history in terms of forward-leaning incentives.

So I like them being in a room together.

By the way, it looked like something filmed at the set of Naboo from, remember the Star Wars film?

Yeah.

It looked like they were about to break out lightsabers or something.

But I like the fact they're getting together because Trump is a man child

and his decisions are largely based on two things, his blood sugar level and who he spoke to last.

The best thing that could happen to the American economy right now is if someone chained Peter Navarro to his alcohol cabinet at home.

Because every time he guys, he talks to Navarro, he starts thinking, oh, we should feed into Chat GPT.

Yeah, like, okay.

I realize I'm all over the place here right now, but just so you know, just to remind everybody, the tariffs, the amount of tariffs were fed into ChatGPT to normalize or bring equivalence or equanimity to the trade deficit.

People don't understand, and this is part of the problem of having a shitty K through 12 education system in the U.S.

We have a lack of critical thinkers.

I have a trade deficit with my barber.

That's not a bad thing.

You have a surplus of good haircuts.

There you go.

Well, hello.

I mean, come on.

You'll see it on YouTube.

And then to relate tariffs back to Zelensky, this is how fucking insane we become putting in office someone who is now allying himself with our enemies who do not have our best interests at heart.

Tariffs on every nation except for a small number.

And who are those small number of nations who are exempt from tariffs?

Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Iran.

Oh, but guess what?

Ukraine was not exempt from these tariffs.

I mean, that kind of tells you what is the mindset.

What side is our administration on?

And the question is, is America on the same side as the administration?

Well, they're not.

And that's confirmed when people get asked this question over and over again.

And I do think that the Oval Office meeting with Zelensky will be looked back upon as a pivotal moment in this administration.

in the negative direction, not quite as bad as the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

But people really didn't like that.

Even the most hardcore Trump supporters did not feel like it had to go in that direction.

And they thought that Zelensky could have been more solicitous and, you know, tried to de-escalate a bit.

But in general, uncomfortable with that.

But that's the case that you've been discussing.

for months now.

I mean, since we've been doing this podcast, that no one has made the proper appeal to the American public, even if you don't care about the post-World War War II order protecting democracy, just make an economic argument about how this is good for us and that you're making money off of being able to equip Ukrainians with the weapons that they need to possibly be able to finish off this war.

And you're totally right about the blood sugar and, you know, the latest, the last person that he was with or the person who gives him the most compliments.

But an important aspect of it as well is how obsessed this administration is with being able to say that they have finished something.

Even if it's done completely terribly, if they can just say, we solved this.

Like you see it even with the trade deals.

Scott Bessant was on with Martha Raditz and she says, well, what's the status of, you know, Trump says we have 200 trade deals that are going to be done.

He goes, well, I think they're talking about, he's talking about sub-deals, which is basically nothing, right?

That he's, you know, been walking around and saying, wouldn't it be nice if we had a deal with India?

And then poof, they're like, oh, we're on the precipice of a deal with India.

Did you see also, by the way, that Apple has said that they could just start making the phones in India?

So it's not like as if this is actually going to come back to America.

They're just going to find somewhere else cheap to be able to do it.

But because the administration is obsessed with the finish line and being able to say mission accomplished, which obviously didn't work out that well for George Bush, that they just will get to an end no matter the quality of it.

And I think that's what Putin understands and that he could be the main beneficiary of this.

Because if they're wanting to put an end date on this, then that's going to work in his favor.

Ukraine is happy to play the long game with this.

Russia can't.

They don't have the manpower for it.

They can't take the economic destruction that's happening for that long, even if they are exempt from these tariffs.

And so the faster it goes, the better it works for Putin.

And that's in Trump's interest because he wants to say sign, sealed, and delivered.

Here's the pretty bow.

You know, we, we solved the Ukrainian-Russian conflict.

Again, timing, understanding the space-time continuum is a real advantage, if you can think critically.

And that is every day that this war continues, it costs Putin $500 million to a billion.

In addition, if you look at how Russia interfaces with our economy, its two primary services of attack for interfacing with our economy are cyber attacks, which wreak havoc in our economy, and stealing our IP.

Now, when they are losing half a billion billion to a billion dollars a day fighting this war and sending their young men into a meat grinder, it's logical to think they do not have the resources or at a minimum are distracted from the havoc they try to wreak every day in our economy.

So the longer this war goes, and this is a terrible macabre thing to say because it is a meat grinder, the better it is for the United States.

In addition, long term, if we don't want China to invade Taiwan, if we want fewer and fewer border skirmishes that could erupt into a regional conflict and then ultimately erupt into something much, much worse, we want to create an incentive system where when you invade your neighbor, you regret doing it.

So,

all of the game theory adds up to the notion that the best investment we could make is to figure out a way to continue to let the Ukrainian army, the brave men and women who have pushed back with incredible technology, including drones, and then adopt some of that technology for the West, use it as a stimulus program for the United States weapons manufacturers, which mostly go to red states for about 8% of our military budget.

The president is a capital allocator, similar to a CEO, and his job is to allocate capital to its greatest return.

There are few ways you could get a greater return on capital than giving Ukraine $60 to $80 billion a year to continue to diminish the viscosity and the tensile strength.

of an adversary.

Now let's talk about the great quote-unquote deal maker, the art of the deal.

The deal maker, right, has managed managed to lose his dad's money.

If he'd invested his dad's inheritance in ETFs or index funds, he'd be wealthier.

If his dealmaking skills have left a trail of 11 bankruptcies and a ton of unpaid subcontractors, he's an amazing reality TV show host.

I think he made hundreds of millions, maybe even a billion from The Apprentice.

He's amazing.

He's not.

a deal maker.

So the notion that he's going to come to some sort of like great, amazing deals with these people and all of this nonsense that 160 countries have lined up to do deals with.

I interviewed the Prime Minister of Canada.

That's our biggest trading partner.

There's no discussions there.

She is our third largest trading partner after Canada and Mexico.

She has stated publicly, we're not talking to this batshit, crazy weirdo.

We're not talking.

And he's quote unquote the great deal maker.

Nonsense.

Nonsense.

He's a terrible business person.

And strategist because our closest allies now are just going to go make their own deals with China.

I'm sure you saw that, that Japan is like, all right, well, we're going to have to go it alone here, basically,

at this point.

Yeah.

And I mean, the Chinese trolling Trump is entertaining, but knowing what we know about him and what Peter Navarro has done for this administration.

I kind of believe them when they said, no, there's not some secret backdoor deal and we're going to, you you know, pop up next week and say everything is fine and you'll still be able to get your, you know, your towels for a dollar off Xien.

Like this isn't happening.

And we're going to figure out an alternative route to making sure that we continue to make money.

And you guys have got to sort it out and just look at that, you know, that light up image of where all the shipping containers are and how they're not getting here.

So second half of May, prepare for your empty shelves.

And then the world's worst Christmas coming.

Yeah.

And just a quick shout out to all the incredible leadership from our Fortune 500 CEOs.

Everyone ranging from nobody to absolutely fucking nobody has spoken up against this madness.

And you know all these guys wake up and look in the mirror and say, hello, Mr.

President.

Most of them think they should be in the cabinet or president themselves.

And leadership is the primary characteristic of who needs to be or who should be president.

And leadership is doing the right thing when it's really hard.

And none of them are doing anything.

They're all doing these back channel, these conversations because they're so worried about shareholder value.

None of them have stood up.

This is the biggest commercial opportunity in decades would be for someone to stand up and say, this is wrong.

You know, our immigrants are an incredibly important part of our world.

Declaring war on our trade allies is just stupid.

The way we're going about this is not in line with our American values.

And we at Nike or Walmart or Apple stand by American values.

We're an American company and what's going on here is wrong.

And you would see a flood,

a flood of business into that brand.

Because here's the bottom line: the people who are hardcore MAGA don't have a lot of disposable income.

When Nike supported Colin Kaepernick, it was genius because two-thirds of their business comes from outside of the U.S.

who don't care about race relations.

And two-thirds of their revenues within the U.S.

come from people under the age of 30 who are very progressive.

And this is the same opportunity.

The first company that comes out against these reckless, cruel actions is going to get a flood of capital.

Because the bottom line is the people who are against these policies and this overreach are one thing.

They're consumers, meaning they have extra money to spend.

And he has declared war on so many people all at once.

He might get angry and threaten to sue Tim Cook or get mad.

At the Sea of Nike.

He's running out of ammunition to fire in a million different directions.

He's literally declared war on every front.

On islands made up of penguins.

Biggest consumer brand opportunity in a decade will be for a CEO to come out against all this bullshit.

In the positive category, I just want to say, and as evidence of this working, the Marriott CEO who defended DEI got 40,000 emails from associates in support of it.

Well, and the Costco CEO.

I didn't know about Costco.

So there you go.

All right, we'll take one quick break and we'll be back.

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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.

Over the next couple of weeks, we're releasing episodes about a surprising way to stop scammers.

The people you didn't know were on the other end of the line.

And we have a special bonus episode on Criminal Plus with tips to protect yourself.

Listen to Criminal wherever you you get your podcasts and sign up for Criminal Plus at thisiscriminal.com/slash plus.

Welcome back.

Before we go, this year's White House Correspondence Weekend captured the tension between Trump and the press.

The roast was scrapped, the mood was tense, and once again, Trump skipped a dinner, keeping up a tradition from both his terms.

This all unfolded as his administration tightens control over press access while the media tried to frame the night as a celebration of a free press.

But now, with more MAGA-friendly media in the mix, they're walking a tightrope.

Jess, I know you weren't there, but what did this weekend say to you about the state of the press?

In process, it was very clear from a number of the acceptance speeches, most notably Alex Thompson from Axios, who got a big award for his coverage of Biden's decline, that the press is doing some incredible work at home and abroad, but there's a lot more to do.

And this lack lack of trust that we have in the press, in media, is an incredibly enormous challenge that they're facing and that they're well aware of.

And I was glad to hear that because that's something certainly working in conservative media that I hear about all the time, that you're not going to be able to repair this fracture unless people, generally speaking, take it.

take ownership over their coverage through the Biden years.

And a lot on the left are criticizing Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper and people who are writing these kind of expose books about the Biden years saying, you know, you're aiding and abetting an authoritarian regime by doing this and you're just giving the other side fodder to come and attack us.

But I do think that it's important that

people in the media are self-reflective and open about their own biases and mistakes that they have made or could have made in their coverage.

And I think that that is moving in the right direction.

But it was a super somber event.

You know, canceling the comedian, I thought, was the right decision.

But,

you know, you look at that room and it just, it feels like we have a lot of incredible people that are doing groundbreaking work, but also that everything is so bleak.

And that I don't know how we'll be able to get back to a time

where the presidency and the press corps and the consuming public are actually on the same page and have respect for one another.

Yeah, my first inclination was like, the media is so obsessed with itself.

I could kind of care less about this thing.

But what you said is pretty powerful, that it's just a shame that a lot of these people are really talented.

They're really hardworking.

You know, he's taken away like one night of fun.

I mean, it's just kind of, give them their party, right?

Let them poke fun at each other.

And the president shows up and shows good humor.

You're right.

It's sort of, all right, what a fucking killjoy.

We need more parties.

We need more reasons to get together and laugh together.

We have a note here to talk about George Santos.

I could give a fuck about George Santos.

He's a trivia question.

Good luck.

Enjoy prison.

What I'm going to do is take this time to talk about, I read something that Pope Francis wrote when he was in the hospital that I thought was really nice.

He wrote, The walls of hospitals have heard much more honest prayers than churches.

They have witnessed far more sincere kisses than those in airports.

It is in hospitals that you see a homophobe being saved by a gay doctor, a privileged doctor saving the life of a beggar.

In intensive care, you see a Jew taking care of a racist, a police officer and a prisoner in the same room receiving the same care.

A wealthy patient waiting for a liver transplant, ready to receive the organ from a poor donor.

It's in these moments when the hospital touches the wounds of people that different worlds intersect according to a divine design.

And in this communion of destinies, we realize that alone we are nothing.

The absolute truth of people, most of the time, only reveals itself in moments of pain or in the real threat of an irreversible loss.

A hospital is a place where human beings remove their masks and show themselves as they truly are, in their purest essence.

This life will pass quickly, so do not waste it fighting with people.

Do not criticize your body too much.

Do not complain excessively.

Do not lose sleep over bills.

Make sure to hug your loved ones.

Do not worry too much about keeping the house spotless.

Material goods must be earned by each person.

Do not dedicate yourself to accumulating an inheritance.

You are waiting for too much.

Christmas, Friday next year, when you have money, when love arrives, when everything is perfect.

Listen, perfection does not exist.

A human being cannot attain it because we are simply not made to be fulfilled here.

Here, we are given an opportunity to learn.

So make the most of this trial of life and do it now.

Respect yourself.

Respect others.

Walk your own path and let go of the path others have chosen for you.

Respect.

Do not comment.

Do not judge.

Do not interfere.

Love more.

Forgive more.

Embrace more.

live more intensely and leave the rest in the hands of the Creator.

Isn't that wonderful?

Yeah, it was really moving.

It almost makes me

positive on organized religion.

And the Pope, at a number of junctures throughout his tenure, has made me rethink my kind of aversion to organized religion, setting aside all of the terrible things that have gone on within the Catholic Church.

But I'm generally

pretty anti-religion, you know, very standard Reform Jew that does the high high holidays.

And

I think if more religious leaders were like that and spoke like that about humanity and the inherent connections between us, that we would all be a lot better off and people would be part of these communities and it would save them in all sorts of ways, not just in a hospital bed, but in your daily life to have people that you can go and pray with and commune with and share meals with and play pickup basketball with and whatever else they get from those kinds of groups.

And I know that he was not a traditional pope and that he was very forward-thinking.

And I guess because it aligned with my politics, I was always comfortable with it.

And I thought, how can you be criticizing this guy who's just saying be decent to immigrants and treat trans kids like human beings and love one another?

And if you're LGBTQ plus, you know, I'm happy for you to get married the same way as a man and a woman.

But he revolutionized the papacy.

And it'll be really interesting to see who comes next and what kind of tradition they fall into.

I guess we'll know they'll do it in like 10 days, right, 10 to 15 days from now.

We'll see the plume of smoke coming up, right?

And they will have selected the next pope.

But he.

I don't know, he felt like a complete global treasure.

And

I don't know if

this non-religious person felt impacted by him, and that's not easy to do.

Yeah, agreed.

All right, let's leave it there.

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