Trump’s Cabinet Chaos Continues

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.

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.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Scott Galloway.

And I'm Jessica Charlov.

Jess, where are you today?

At the same place I always am.

I'm at home in New York.

Yeah.

Well, actually at the Vox studio.

So I'm in the financial district.

Oh, you are.

Everybody else here.

I go there now.

Yeah, you're a newbie.

You're excited and ambitious to actually do the right things to haul down to what is arguably the most uninspiring part of Manhattan.

to where my guess is they're paying Vox to occupy their office space, but they are very nice studios and it's a lot of young people running around.

Yeah, I'm like middle-aged here, like 55 on a comparative basis.

You say that like it's really old.

You realize your podcast is.

You said middle-aged.

And we're all going to, well, I don't, middle-aged isn't really middle, right?

Because you're not going to make it.

I'll be 55

in five years.

All right.

So what are we going to talk about today?

Today, we're talking about Matt Getz withdraws from AG consideration, Gates Getz.

I'm happy he's like going into hopefully political oblivion just for that.

I mean

something terrible is brewing, but yes.

That's right.

More Trump cabinet pics.

Great.

Season episode two of Dancing with the Stars, whether modern family or family guy, and the transgender bathroom ban in Capitol Hill.

Can't believe we're talking about this.

I can't.

Anyways, here we are.

I love legislation that is focused on one person.

Yes.

It's really fair.

Yeah, it's nice.

a doesn't give the game away.

It's a good look.

But first, we want to remind you, that's right, it's that time in the show to please follow our Raging Moderates podcast on your preferred platform.

Please follow us.

If you're listening on Apple, we know that about a quarter of you aren't subscribed.

So don't be that person.

Hit the follow button so you never miss an episode.

We don't, quite frankly, we don't register in the rankings.

We don't register in Google search.

And most importantly, we do not get paid if we don't have people actually subscribed to our feed.

So if you're enjoying the show,

please follow our Raging Moderates podcast on your preferred platform.

All right, enough of that.

Thank you for enduring that.

What are we talking about?

Last week, Matt Goetz lobbied hard on Capitol Hill for his confirmation, but by Thursday morning, Trump apparently called to let him know he didn't have the votes in the Senate.

By the afternoon, Goetz announced on social media that his confirmation had become a distraction, you know, for him having sex with minors.

A few hours later, Trump announced his new pick, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Is it Bondi?

Bondi?

Bondi?

Bondi.

Bondi?

She's a Bondi girl.

She's like a Bond girl.

A Trump loyalist who has ties to Susie Wiles and Boris Efferstein.

These people got to get similar fucking names.

Boris is no bueno.

Yeah.

No, no, Bueno.

Okay, Jess,

you know, as always, you're going to have to carry this show.

What does this signal that there's some

is there a limit?

Is there an actual limit in the Trump administration that gets actually crossed the line here?

I guess that that's a peachy read of all of this.

Though, I mean, we were, when we were talking about it last week, the expectation was that this one wasn't going to get through, especially once there started being like the jockeying back and forth about whether they're going to release the ethics report.

And then Trump apparently, the transition team doesn't want anyone to undergo normal FBI checks, which is the usual procedure.

They're like, we can do it with an outside firm.

So I can hire, you know, Barron Barron to look at them and then we'll, we'll see what's going on.

But I never think it's as straightforward as it seems.

I feel like the fact that Matt Gates said, I am not taking my seat.

So he won reelection and he could still, even though he resigned from Congress, he resigned from this Congress, not the next one.

So the expectation was, well, maybe he's just going to go back to Congress, which would also help Mike Johnson.

out that he doesn't have to have a few months um down one further in his majority because they can only lose you know one to three votes per issue as it is.

But then he says, I'm not going back to Congress.

And that makes me think: like, what terrible thing are you going to do?

You know, he said, there are already people that I know have a hardened position.

No, to me, Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and then John Curtis, who will be the new senator from Utah, replacing Mitt Romney.

And it made me think: are the other controversial picks not getting that kind of of feedback?

Or

is Matt Gates the only one who doesn't want to go through this public airing of anything?

Because I imagine that there are a few that are telling Pete Hegseth, I'm not into you, or RFK Jr.

So,

what do you think?

I listened to the Daily podcast, and they were talking to Mick Gates, and basically the reporter had done some work where he had found some of the evidence that was going to be included in the ethics report that the Republicans managed to squelch saying that it should not come out now that he's no longer a member of Congress, which makes absolutely no sense to me.

Let's spend a bunch of time looking at a report.

And if Goetz claims or is innocent as he claims, then I would imagine that the report would state that, that he would want the report to come out.

This is the thing that absolutely strikes me.

He wasn't worried about people finding out.

that there was evidence that he was having sex with minors.

He wasn't worried about what people would think about him.

He wasn't worried about his inability to be America's top cop with this type of cloud.

He was just worried he wasn't going to get the votes.

In my view, this really represents a new low that we have a government and we have people who would even entertain this type of nomination.

I just,

I don't think I've ever seen anything like this.

And I'm not a historian.

I'm trying to think of the last time there was a nomination that was this brazenly inappropriate, stupid, and insulting

to America and this general notion that when we elect people and they have the power of putting people in power, that there is some fidelity to decency, to the Constitution, to the actual, the actual goddamn job description.

We just seem to be

setting new lows every damn day.

Anyways, that's my ranch ass.

I think the problem is, is that the top of the ticket is what,

or I should say, who shattered a lot of these norms to begin with.

So why wouldn't the cabinet follow suit on that front?

And there were all of these stories coming out about, you know, past nominees that hadn't been able to get through, like under Bill Clinton, because they had an undocumented nanny.

Like those were the days, right?

When you just had someone.

who was, yes, here illegally, but was good enough to be taking care of your child, which is probably the most important job that we have, globally speaking.

There's nothing more precious than your child and who you entrust them to be with for 10 hours a day or whatever you're doing.

And that was ending nominations.

And now we're having conversations about like how many minors is too many, or how many allegations of sexual assault is too many.

How many brainworms?

How many affairs and sex journals that ended up leading to suicides is too many?

And I don't know.

It makes me think a lot about what the Democrats are going to have to do.

And this is one of the cases that people have been making, not because he behaves like this, but because he has this kind of swagger for a Gavin Newsom.

You know, there's this whole part of social media that talks about him as the psychopath we need, right?

Like the guy who will just show up and is relentlessly on message, is fast on his feet, is so good looking, is so sharp.

And I think there are going to be a lot of people that feel that way, that are going to feel scared away from a kind of more, you know, normy pick, right?

Like a guy who's just standing up there with his nice wife and his two kids

and doesn't have that kind of energy because it's clear the Republican Party is feeding off of depravity at this point.

Let's talk about Pam, new AG, probably.

She comes across as fucking third good Marshall right now.

My sense is she's going to sell right through.

What are your thoughts?

I think she will as well.

If there was some game of 3D chess going on to put Gates up to get someone else in and a big sense of relief, this could have been it.

I think Pam Bondi is not going to have any issues.

She was a prosecutor for a long time.

First female AG in Florida, very, very competent.

She's been in a lobbying firm called Ballard.

for the last several years.

And Susie Wiles is a partner there.

So she's a very good relationship with Susie Wiles, which is obviously a big part of this.

She has ingratiated herself to Trump over the last 10 plus years.

So in 2016, she actually endorsed Trump over Marco Rubio, which was a big deal that the Florida AG went for Trump versus the hometown hero, although I guess Mar-a-Lago has been in Florida.

The only, well, two things that I think are relevant.

So she's very into this

kind of same line of argumentation that Gates was making, which is, I'm going to, I'm going to weed, I'm going to investigate the investigators.

I'm going to weed out all of the bad guys, get rid of Jack Smith, his whole team.

She's been talking like that.

She actually went for Trump's claims of voter fraud in 2020.

She even went to Philadelphia and gave a press conference about how messed up everything was going, the false claims of widespread voter fraud.

The one kind of

scandal, I guess,

revolves around a 2013 political donation.

So that's when that huge lawsuit investigating Trump University was going on and all the state AGs had to sign on.

And there were a lot of victims from Trump University in Florida.

And Pam Bondi ended up not signing on and also got a $25,000 contribution from Trump's charity.

So that will, I think, be the kind of fireworks in terms of the scandals, I guess, in her hearings.

And the more normy Republicans, I think, will want to hear you're not just going to come in and do everything that he wants, especially considering the Supreme Court ruling about immunity for kind of everything.

But in general, this looks like it's going to be absolutely fine.

And just with going back to Getz, let's be clear, Democrats have had their own struggles with scandal and especially around, it used to be that Republicans stole and

Democrats had affairs.

Now just everybody's doing everything, it feels like.

You know, infidelity, you know, weirdness, scandal, that is not sequestered to to the Republican Party.

But I do think it's important that we discern between scandal and

real, real criminal activity, such as having sex with minors.

And I got to believe that that report, I can't believe it hasn't been leaked, was pretty damning, but it'll get, it'll be out.

You think so?

I'm sure.

Yeah.

Susan Wilde, the Democrat, the ranking Democrat on the committee, has said as much.

She was really upset that Republicans were leaking inside information from what was going on in the room.

I think that they're going to get it out.

And I think that's probably why Gates thought, I got to get out of here because I'm not going to be insulated from this.

One thing we haven't talked about, which is so central to all of this, and then I do want to get to other nominees, but you know,

he's picking everyone who's good on TV.

And Pam Bondi has spent a lot of time on our airwaves, on Fox.

But

when you think about it, it's actually really smart.

If you can get qualified people who are also good on TV, that they can defend themselves and that they can defend you and not look like a deer in headlights every time they give an interview.

So a lot of people are dismissive of it, but I think it's actually a very good strategy.

Says one of the co-hosts of the five.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, I'm not getting picked for anything, but I'm just saying.

Are you kidding?

You look like you look like Hillary Clinton at this point.

You would be the least, you would be the most qualified pick in the cabinet right now.

You would, I mean,

yeah, I don't.

You would look like Lloyd Benson with better hair.

Anyway, on that note, let's take a quick break.

Stay with us.

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

Okay, Jeff, a few more cabinet cabinet announcements worth discussing.

Howard Lutnick was tapped as Commerce Secretary, and Scott Passant was picked as Treasury Secretary, which the markets like.

Lynn McMahon, a longtime ally and donor, was named to lead the Department of Education.

McMahon's background is light on education policy,

okay, as if that matters.

And she also co-founded the World Wrestling Entertainment Federation with her husband.

Is it World Wrestling Entertainment?

I think, anyways.

And the most surprising pick, Dr.

Oz as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

What are your thoughts on these picks?

Up and down, I guess.

Linda McMahon, that's a tough one.

She was in the first administration.

She was definitely going to be somewhere here.

She lied about having an education degree, which I feel like is a big lie if you're going to go be

the head of the Department of Education, essentially, or education secretary.

We should also note there have been a number of lawsuits over the years, but there's even an open civil suit against the WWE that

these abuse scandals involving boys as young as 12 years old, that the McMahons hired people,

one guy in particular, who they knew allegedly was an abuser and didn't do anything to stop it.

They call it the quote-unquote ring boy scandal.

But, you know, abolishing the Department of Education is their talking point.

And one other thing I'll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education, work, and needs back to the states.

We want them to run the education of our children because they'll do a much better job of it.

You can't do worse.

We spend more money per pupil by three times than any other nation, and yet we're absolutely at the bottom.

We're one of the worst.

I'm not sure that that happens.

You need 60-plus votes to be able to do it.

But what I think that they are going to try to do, and it sends a really important signal across the country and also to teachers unions, is to talk more about school choice and vouchers.

And there are a lot of people, even on the Democratic side, who are so disappointed in the quality of our public education and for good reasons.

We just keep falling further and further behind.

Public schools really let American students, especially American students who are poorer down during COVID, by not letting them back in the classroom, even though we knew that kids were not transferring, generally speaking, COVID to one another, and that it would have been safe because teachers didn't want to come in.

And you see Democrats like Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, has supported vouchers.

I think that that is the way of the future and that Democrats are going to really need to reckon with this.

And Linda McMahon will be the face of pushing that forward.

I don't think there's any getting around it.

They need a reformer, but this whole doja, you know,

over-reductive thinking of let's just get rid of the Department of Education, just burn it, you know, burn the village to save it.

There are few investments, maybe outside of R ⁇ D or some science programs, that show that are technically investments.

Social Security is a cost.

We've decided to tax young people, to transfer money to older people, to eliminate or attempt to eliminate senior poverty and it has largely worked I would argue it's become too expensive and now seniors are the wealthiest generation in the history of the planet there should be means testing it should be pushed back you know it used to be when social security was first invented 80 percent of the people would never get it because they would die now now more than 80 percent get it and it used to be 12 to one you know people your age sporting people my age now it's three to one

Anyways, that is a cost.

Department of Education is an investment.

And you might argue that the investment is not getting the ROI it deserves because it is poorly allocated.

And I agree with you around school choice.

Competition works.

There are some teachers as someone who went through public schools all the way through graduate school.

I remember certain components of my education, you know, Emerson Junior High School, they were just warehousing us.

There was 35 kids per class.

I was there the first year they integrated the school.

So all of a sudden, out of a school of 1,500 kids, 600 black kids from Compton showed up after being on a bus for an hour.

They were pissed off.

And we all, and it wasn't a Hallmark movie.

We all hated each other.

Get this chess.

We used to have black against white softball games, and the faculty allowed that.

Seriously?

Oh, yeah, we hated each other.

Absolutely.

It was everything integration was not supposed to be.

That's the bad news.

The good news was that by high school, something wonderful happened and we were all getting along.

My two best friends were one was a Mormon kid who ended up going to Stanford and the other was a black kid who got a football scholarship to Linfield, I think, at the University of Oregon, who lived in Baldwin Hills and his father was a minister.

I mean, these two kids couldn't have been more different, except they were both really good kids.

They were actually great role models for me.

But anyways, my point is,

it was absolutely awful.

And I remember the teachers were so overwhelmed just trying to keep a lid, 35 kids, sometimes 38 kids per class.

And

all my friends, my nice white friends, quote unquote, air quotes, their parents pulled them out of school immediately when integration started and stuck them in this hippie-dippy private school called Winward.

And that was, I remember, was one of the first moments where I thought, oh, things are different for me and my mom.

Cause I went home and said, oh, I need to go to Winward.

And she's like, sit down.

We don't go to private schools.

We need to talk.

Yeah.

And, but.

The Department of Education, in addition to Title, I think it's Title I, where they ensure that schools in rural, poor areas get the funding they need to deliver an adequate education, they also are responsible responsible for a Head Start.

And they also,

you know, I'm here with you now because of the Department of Education or specifically Pell Grants.

And that is Pell Grants, basically, if you're in the lower third of income earning homes, you get free, you know, you get money, not even loans, which also student loans the Department of Education overseas, which I believe needs drastically reforming, and I'll come back to that.

But I could not have gone to UCLA without Pell Grants.

And this makes my point by also giving me the chance to do my favorite thing, and that is boast.

boast.

I pay a lot of taxes.

So these

Pell Grants are an investment that pay off.

I think there are a few things that you could look at and think a dollar invested in education, well delivered, I'm not saying there isn't reform that's required, not only gets you additional incremental income because you can occasionally produce people who do really interesting things, go into teaching themselves, start businesses, create tax revenue, but you avoid a lot of costs because without an educational system,

you're going to end up paying for these folks one way or another, whether it's through incarceration, mental health, homelessness, welfare, food stamps, unemployment.

So the Department of Education is arguably the place where you're going to get the greatest return on your investment if it's handled well.

And it's just, it's sort of...

It sort of is depressing.

Although, I guess you could argue her background.

She was, I believe, head of the Small Business Administration.

So maybe, I mean, she strikes me as a competent woman.

She's the least of one of the least bad picks.

But I wish they would stop this bullshit notion that we're just going to get rid of the Department of Education.

And what's interesting, or I find interesting, I interviewed a guy named Roy Stewart, who's the co-host of The Russ is Politics, which is, he was a former member of parliament, really bright guy.

was actually the tutor, the private tutor for Princes Harry and William.

And he said, when they look at America, when Brits look look at America, they can't quite figure out the following.

And that is, we absolutely underprioritize and don't talk about K-12 education.

And we have some of the worst K-12 education in the world of the G7.

But at the same time, we have amazing graduate schools.

And at the same time, we keep figuring out a way to grow the economy.

And he acknowledged that maybe that's the way the economy, the natural order of an economy, is you have shitty schools and it's like a hunger games, and then they get to go to the best universities.

And that struck me as a very upsetting,

you know, rubric or lens through which to look at education.

But maybe that's because we just, there's no doubt about it.

K through 12, we're awful, and yet our economy continues to grow like crazy.

But anyways, your thoughts on the Department of Education.

I think it's important.

And I hate, you know, whether Doge is effective or not,

the sweeping talking points about doing away with things that need help or need tender, loving care is silly and reflects poorly upon you and is not how people run their businesses either.

You know, I understand Elon came in and ran Twitter a bit like that, but they've been losing a lot of money, even though now it's a bastion for free speech slash the worst place I've already ever hung out in my life.

And

it reflects a lack of seriousness about this and a lack of care and concern.

for your core constituency because guess what?

A lot of people who don't make a ton of money voted for Donald Trump and guess what?

They use the public school system.

They don't have other options to go to a private school.

The lottery system, if you're getting into charters, you know, might not get lucky and get to do that.

And so I think that they would be a lot more convincing as serious folks if they took a different line of argumentation about what they're going to do.

with the Department of Education, including making sure that people do have access to vouchers in more circumstances.

I think that that is important and you you should be able to give people those options, certainly with religious schools.

Because, you know, Catholic schools stayed open through the entire pandemic.

That was something that they had going for them.

And I understand why people want that.

There's an aspect also to what McMahon will be overseeing.

And Trump's been, he talked about this throughout the campaign.

And I do think it is important.

So, you know, they could essentially transfer responsibility for accrediting universities to college for colleges to the states.

And Trump has been talking about things like, if your university isn't letting Jewish kids go to class or get into the dining hall or get to the hillel or the chabad on campus, we're coming after you.

And I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing to be tinkering around with that or to at least be using it as a threat.

They've also said as a cudgel, if you have DEI policies or if you're using affirmative action, and the universities are smart enough that they can get to whatever form of affirmative affirmative action they think they need to without it sending up flags in that way.

But what do you think about the approach of threatening these universities more if they are not treating each student as equal?

Like if they're not treating kids from one group like they would if they were black, for instance, or if they were LGBTQ plus?

Well, look, I said this early on.

If I went

to Royce Hall or the Quad near Royce Hall at UCLA, or I went down to my universities

in front of my building at NYU,

and I started, I held up a Confederate flag and I passed out bans to white kids and the kids without bans couldn't enter the university.

They would have called in the fucking National Guard.

But when, I mean, what was clear coming out of this zombie apocalypse of useful idiots on campus, free speech is never freer when it's hate speech against Jews.

And this was a really low moment for universities.

And I advise the regents of the University of California.

And we did a couple calls over the summer and they said, okay, they were very worried about fall.

What happens if this flares up again?

And I thought the solution was pretty easy.

If there are students who are protesting or putting up anything resembling an encampment and it turns to hate speech or they try and build, I mean, basically, they tried to build a mini,

you know, a mini city, if you will.

They were trespassing.

You ask them to clear the area.

You give give them 15 minutes, you warn them they will be punished.

I mean, you expel the first six or 12 students that violate this.

And when word gets out that shit's just got real and you may have to call your folks and say, hey, mom, dad, you're spending $50,000 a year for me to get expelled for hate speech,

this will stop right away.

And then the thing that didn't get much press that I have no tolerance for is I think you cut a 19-year-old a pretty wide berth.

You're supposed to be stupid when you're 19.

And sometimes that stupidity moves society forward.

Whether it was the protests on campus against Vietnam or Iraq, you know, sometimes kids are meant to push the boundaries and sometimes they're thinking more forward and more correctly than, you know, their parents.

You cut them a wide berth.

who I think should have absolutely been summarily fired with a faculty that showed any empathy for this genocidal death cult.

And there are still faculty at the University of California who put out exceptionally vile tweets, said they were were inspired by the activities of October 7th, who are still showing up at the faculty cafeteria.

And most of them, it ends up, can't teach their way out of a paper bag and do irrelevant research, but are in this ridiculous guild that is nothing but student debt called tenure.

So there not only needs to be reform up and down, you know, in K through 12, there needs to be reform in schools.

And specifically, the first place I would start is that all universities should be on the hook for a quarter or a third of bat student loan debt.

Because what's really mendacious about my industry is a really good kid shows up and he meets with a woman who's in a nice pantsuit, who has a big college logo behind her, and she says some bullshit like this.

Education is an investment in yourself.

Here, sign this paperwork for $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 in student loans.

And then the kid, like many kids, finds out that he or she is not cut out for college, leaves without a college certification of college, but gets to keep that debt.

And it haunts this person the rest of their life.

The most dischargeable form of debt in history should be student loans.

And instead, because my colleagues wake up every morning and ask themselves, how do I reduce my accountability?

Well, I increase my compensation, I'll access cheap credit.

And if I don't deliver on my promise, and the kid gets nothing for the money that's been lent to them, I'm not on the hook for it.

So if you put colleges on the hook for 10, 20, 30% of bad student debt, they'd stop loaning someone someone getting a fucking philosophy degree from Joey Bagadonitz University to go be a barista.

So my industry needs radical reform, but the notion that you're going to get rid of the Department of Education is again another key theme in what appears to be both parties are guilty of it.

Let's optimize America for the top 10% at the cost of the bottom 90.

The top 10%, they're right, doesn't need the Department of Education.

My kids don't need the Department of Education.

They won't benefit from it.

It's the other 90.

And just looking at it purely economically, it's an investment that saves money.

I just wanted to really quickly, can we just talk about Dr.

Oz and Dr.

Jeanette Neshwat for one second?

Go ahead.

So Dr.

Oz, as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, it's laughable in the TV doctor sense and all the fad diets and all the quackery.

I thought it was hilarious.

There was a peer-reviewed piece in a British medical journal that picked 40 random episodes of his show and found that his health recommendations were based based on evidence just 46% of the time, which is pretty shitty for a doctor.

But what he does plan to do that is really dangerous is to work towards privatizing Medicare to move us towards Medicare Advantage, which is what mostly people who are 80 plus are on.

And the costs are enormous when you use Medicare Advantage.

And he has talked about bringing that to younger Medicare users.

66 million people on Medicare, including my mother and my dad.

It saw him through cancer.

Most unbelievable unbelievable coverage.

Do you have any Dr.

Oz feelings?

Yeah, so I have a bias.

I've been friends with

Mehmet and Lisa Oz for 25 years.

And I find Mehmet to be...

We got some bias.

Yeah, it is.

It's a huge bias.

I'm going to disclose it.

In that time, though, and I know him well, and I knew him before.

I mean, I know him in just a variety of,

he was literally taking hearts out of cadavers and putting them into other people.

He's a cardiothoracic transplant surgeon, and he's a real dude.

And what I would say about

Mehmet, we don't share political views, but I've decided to separate the person from the politics.

And this person is a really good man.

And when he was contemplating positions like this, when he was running for Senate, he's really thoughtful.

And he knows we have different politics.

And so he would call me and ask me for my view on things.

And I say that.

because it makes me feel important, but also it reflects well on him.

Mehmet is a high character person, and I know he got a lot of grief for being,

you know, for not respecting the science around some of these supplements and how blueberries can save your life.

He got blowback that he deserved for that.

But this is a good man.

And you want to talk about some of the bullshit around Gets and Infidelity.

He's been married for, I think, close to 40 years, wonderful father.

And the first thing he did when he got this, I congratulated him.

He called me and said, Give me your views on Social Security.

He really wants to get to go deep here and really try and and be thoughtful and helpful.

So I'm a huge fan of Dr.

Oz as a man.

He's a good man.

Okay.

I'm good with that.

And then someone who you may not know, but I know personally, because we have nine Fox personalities that are going to go into the administration thus far is Dr.

Jeanette Neshwat.

And I wanted to mention this.

She's for surgeon general.

She's a real deal doctor, and you can see that she's being taken apart online for believing in vaccines, for participating in, you remember those like hand washing trends where doctors were like doing TikToks and stuff of how to make sure that you keep your hands clean.

She has called vaccine safe and effective.

It will keep you off the ventilator, keep you from passing away.

And

not only do I just like her personally, but I hope that this is a signal and Dr.

Marty McCary as well, who's at Johns Hopkins, who's coming in for the FDA, that there will be some hard science people in there.

They're calling her Dr.

Fauci in heels.

I am thrilled.

That's great.

With that.

It's great that you brought that up.

And also just I want to use that as an excuse to recognize who I think has been the most consequential Surgeon General in history, and that is Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who brought up loneliness, who brought up young men.

This was someone who put out thoughtful research, elevating the awareness around some really key issues, brought up how the mental health struggles of people with parents right now, which directly relates to the fact that we keep figuring out a way to vote in more seniors who vote themselves more money, such that I stay rich at the expense of people your age who are trying to get by with kids.

All right, Jess, we have one more quick break.

Stay with us.

Recently, we asked some people about sharing their New York Times accounts.

I would be very interested in having separate logins for a shared subscription.

I'm 35 years old.

I still share my parents' New York Times subscription.

I think think if my teenagers were to have their own logins, we could share articles.

It doesn't let us play the same games as each other.

I do the crossword.

I do the spelling bee.

I do the wordle.

Please help.

Having our own accounts would be amazing.

My mom could save her own recipes.

My friends could save their recipes.

I want to get the weekly newsletter, but they seem to always go to my husband and then he doesn't forward them to me.

We both love cooking.

I'm a 30-minute and under-dinner girly.

My boyfriend is very elaborate.

I think him having his own profile would be great.

We love the New York Times and we would love to love it individually.

We heard you.

Introducing the New York Times family subscription.

One subscription, up to four separate logins for anyone in your life.

Find out more at nytimes.com slash family.

Welcome back.

Over in the House, Congresswoman Nancy Mace introduced a resolution to ban trans women from using women's restrooms and locker rooms on Capitol Grounds.

Thank God for Representative Mace.

Thank God, specifically targeting incoming Congresswoman Sarah McBride.

This is a shift for Mace, who once supported LGBTQ rights.

Speaker Mike Johnson supported Mace, emphasizing single-sex facilities.

McBride responded saying she's focused on lowering costs for Delaware families, not bathroom debates, and she hopes colleagues will see value in her work.

I didn't run.

for the United States House of Representatives to talk about what bathroom I use.

I didn't run to talk about myself.

I ran to deliver for Delaware.

And while Republicans in Congress seem focused on bathrooms and trans people and specifically me, I'm focused on rolling up my sleeves, diving into the details, setting up my office, and beginning the hard work of delivering for Delaware on the issues that I know keep them up at night.

So what do we think of Representative Mays?

Nancy Mays sucks.

She's awful.

And she had so much promise.

When she came into Congress,

she seemed like

she was part of like the normie caucus,

said, like, I'll stand up to Trump when that's the right thing to do.

I'll, you know, I'll always be on the side of South Carolinians.

And now she's just.

high off of getting as many likes and retweets as possible.

These videos that she's posting are embarrassing for her.

And,

you know, and they, I don't know who started saying it during the first Trump administration, but the cruelty is the point.

The cruelty is the point here.

You have been in Congress for a while.

If you were concerned about someone being in your bathroom, you could have brought this up because there are people who come in and out of Congress, right?

This isn't about their, so the members have their own private bathrooms.

And I'm sure that Sarah McBride will be using that or there are gender neutral restrooms.

But Nancy Mae showed no evidence that anyone had was a threat, right?

No one's been attacked, God forbid.

She hasn't been made to be uncomfortable.

And she is herself a rape survivor and she talks about that regularly and the implications of being sexually assaulted.

But I see no correlation to this except that you want to rile people up and take advantage of, frankly, the level of misinformation that's out there about trans people.

And I wanted to mention this to you.

So youGov had new survey workout.

about how Americans overestimate the size of minority groups and underestimate the size of majority groups.

They think there are 21 times more trans people in America than there are, 27 times more Muslims, 15 times more Jews, and two more times

immigrants.

So there's this fallacy out there that, you know, kids are going to school and coming home with different junk, that everyone that you pass on the street is a trans person.

And that's someone like Sarah McBride, who I think has been so magnanimous and taken the high road to a level that I never could,

is the threat in all of this.

It's the same thing, though, and it's the same thing I would argue around Gets, and that is it feels as if I'd like to see two classes that are mandatory or three.

I'd like to be secretary.

I'd be the most qualified secretary of education in, let me think, 18 months.

So

effectively, there needs to be a class on adulting.

My kid can do integers, but he doesn't understand the interest rate on his credit card.

I think there needs to be part of an adulting class to teach young people, especially young men, how to express romantic interest while making the other person feel safe and basic kind of life skills.

I'd like to see a class on communications where it says, all right, storytelling, you have to understand mediums and how to communicate your ideas.

I'd also like a course in critical thinking because there are different levels of mendacious fuckery.

You know, infidelity is one thing, all right?

Scandal or abusing, if you will, or taking advantage of a White House intern, that's worse.

That's worse, in my opinion, than

having sex or relationships outside of your marriage.

And then in an entirely different fucking universe is having sex with minors.

These are not the same thing.

And the problem is the populace goes, oh, it's just scandal.

It's just scandal.

No, it's not.

There is a difference.

And when people correctly say, in my view, or I think it's a point worth arguing, that people born, I was born, I didn't have the height nor the body mass to play collegiate level basketball or football i was born with or without certain attributes that disqualified me from playing certain sports i think there is a solid argument that if you are born with a penis it disqualifies you from playing women's sports or girls sports i think that is a a honest thoughtful discussion we should have passing legislation that is meant to do nothing but attempt to weirdly shame or show how anti-trans you are by saying to

an elected member of Congress, you cannot use the same bathroom as me.

It's just, that's a different level of mendacious fuckery.

And my fear is there's so many points of weirdness coming out of DC that they all get grouped into the same level of mendacious.

They're not.

And kids need, and young adults and adults need to understand that your whole point or our advantage of a species is that we see different shades of gray.

And when they go, they turn very dark, or when they're worth a discussion, or they should just, we should just have a gag reflex.

But this is my fear.

And that as we now live in an attention economy, and it doesn't matter how stupid or how mean the content is that created attention for you, it pays off.

And that she is now a Republican, a rising Republican star because she's a leader.

You know, there's some, there's, there's a, there's a, there's parents out there worried about their daughter being run over on the field hockey field by someone born with a penis.

I think that is a

tangible, legitimate concern.

But they're saying, oh,

Representative Mace,

she's our woman.

No, she's not.

She's a mendacious, weird woman who is taking her precious capital and resources to actually do good things for her district to just be blatantly hostile and mean towards an individual.

Your thoughts.

I agree with all of that.

And I think that

it's the beginning of potentially having electoral consequences.

And this is what Democrats want, right?

They want Republicans to take the mask off, essentially, and to expose themselves for being people who live by the cruelty is the point.

And if you remember the North Carolina bathroom bill controversy, this did not go well.

for Republicans.

This is not their concerns.

Biological men in women's sports is their concern.

That's 70% of Americans think that Leah Thomas had no business being in that pool with those girls as a competitive swimmer.

But

they don't care about using the bathroom.

Now, there are some people who do.

I get that.

I see them in my Twitter feed.

Hello, I see you.

But in general, no one is concerned about Sarah McBride.

And you notice it's only Marjorie Taylor Green that's been running around screaming this alongside Nancy Mace.

And if that's your wing woman for something like this, you know that you're probably doing something wrong.

And, you know, people who worked in Nancy Mace's office are destroying her online over this and saying there is more to come about how terrible this woman is.

But I think it's just so ugly.

And I don't know, good on Sarah McBride for being such a big person to be able to rise above.

I do think the Democrats invited some of this bullshit by being so insane on some of these issues.

I go back to the

cycling race, the women's cycling race in North Carolina, where a transgender woman, Austin Killips, who was 27, basically finished five minutes before anyone else on a 137-mile-long race.

And the woman who had been born a woman, who had been training her whole life, came in second.

She should have won it.

And then immediately the far left started talking about, you know, all these very

basically was, was scared to come out and say, this is ridiculous.

This is insane.

What I didn't get is where feminists were.

Let me get this.

Where does this all go?

If we allow this, it means that every dollar, medal, and scholarship ends up only going to people born with penises.

So where were the feminists?

I just didn't get this.

Well, that's what Martina Navartalova has been screaming about this for a long time.

Like, and I mean, this is

there have been, and I know Kara has spoken about this before as well.

I mean, there have been evolutions within the LGBTQ plus movement that have shoehorned out certain groups, like OG groups, like gay men and lesbians, and, you know, moved.

to a different place than perhaps they didn't think they were going.

And I think that not saying things that are common sense, not reverting to the mean of, does this make sense is part of the problem.

And maybe there is some truth to, you know, I have colleagues who will say, well, this is because you don't think about competition the same way that we do because you get participation trophies for everything at your, you know, your little liberal schools or whatever.

And I think that if Kamala had come out, and again, I think it was a fundamentals election, couldn't win against the inflation and people's feelings about the economy.

But if she had come out after that, the Charlemagne ad was cut, which was a trans ad, but also an economic ad, right?

Like our money, your tax dollars are going to something that is niche and that you don't approve of.

She's just come out and say, that is not the position of the Democratic Party.

Maybe some of those late deciders would have felt differently about us, that we weren't out of our minds, whether that's, you know, because some of our loudest voices, like John Oliver did a whole monologue about it last weekend or two weeks ago, and he's gotten a lot of blowback.

Jen Saki has spoken about it and said, oh, well, what's the big deal?

The big deal is it ruins competition and it's not fair.

Like it can't be both things, that a man can't be inherently scary if you run into him in a dark alley.

And also that it's fine in competition against biological women.

Like those two things contradict each other.

It's almost as outrageous as the last thing we're going to start or finish with.

And that is, I got to be honest, I find this really fun.

What do you think of this idea?

Elon Musk buying MSNBC.

Oh, why does that make me happy, Jess?

That makes me happy.

What do you think?

Really?

Yeah, I think it'd be fucking hilarious to have Stephanie Ruhl and Rachel Maddow, like every night, meet each other to smoke cigarettes and eat ice cream and talk about Elon Musk being their new boss.

I find that.

But would they still be there?

Like, what are the implications of something like that?

Seven-year-old white women got to find another show to listen to.

I think MSNBC is quickly becoming a lot of people.

I think they're doing that already, which is the problem.

I mean, what is this spin-off?

And I realize you've been discussing it

on your other shows, but what is the spin-off of this?

I mean, they're calling it now a well-funded startup.

What is the future of MSNBC?

All of these things are going to be rolled up into a bad bank structure.

Comcast has started it.

These can be really good businesses.

They're shrinking businesses, but they spin off a ton of cash flow.

What you need is a different approach where you cut costs faster than revenue growth.

They can still be really good businesses, but

this is the pivotal moment, in my opinion, or as it relates to the intersection between politics and media, media, is that you're going to see, I mean, a really good show gets a million viewers on MSNBC, average age 70, mostly white women.

Those folks know what they buy, know what they don't buy, and they know who they're voting for and who they're not voting for.

So advertisers and political campaigns are going to take all of that money and put it into yours truly, into podcasts where the average age is 34.

It's mostly male.

Those people are up.

Those people are up for grads because they're more about the economy and economics are a much more dynamic situation.

It kind of pings back Democrat-Republican on who they think will be better for them economically.

But these companies are now distressed assets.

They are melting ice cubes.

I know a lot of people at MSNBC, the anchors are like pilots in the 70s.

They're hugely prestigious.

People like them.

They're banging stewardesses, but they're...

They're pilots for Pan Am.

They know their numbers are limited.

They know that in about 10 years, they're going to be flying Amarillo to Dallas for Spirit Airlines at 68K a year.

These are really declining assets.

They can still make a lot of money.

They still get incredibly talented people.

But, anyways, back to this.

I just think it's fucking hilarious the idea that Elon Musk would buy MSNBC, everyone would leave, or everyone of any talent would leave, and you were trying to make it into something else.

I don't know.

I got to be honest.

I think it would be fucking hilarious.

Your thoughts?

I mean,

I don't know.

I feel bad because I like a lot of the people at MSNBC, and I feel like having Elon Musk as your boss is the worst.

And I think it's important.

I mean, listen,

Fox is up.

Like our viewership is through the roof since the election and the lead up to the election.

And I hope that that continues because I want to be able to pay for my kids to go to the Big Apple Circus as many times as possible.

But that's called, that's called Raging Moderates.

It's called Podcast.

Is that what it is?

Yeah.

Great.

You have

to subscribe.

You are the economic bellwether here.

Right now,

34-year-old Jess Tarlov has more options than almost any person in media right now.

And you chose a podcast with the dog.

That's right.

That says it all.

You could have literally been prime time, and don't lie to me.

You could have been prime time MSNBC and you decided to do this Joy Bag of Donuts podcast.

Because here's the thing.

We're going like this.

This is me making a hand signal up.

And MSNBC.

We're watching the YouTube version.

We're going up.

MSNBC.

And even, even, even your good friends at Fox, I mean, they're the, I used to say the tallest midget, and then I found out that all Democrats think that's hateful.

You're the fastest tortoise.

That's the more politically correct way to say it.

Yeah.

You're the fastest tortoise.

But anyways,

I don't mind that.

But what

happens?

I mean, a lot of people will leave, obviously, but I do think that there's a real problem

with

the psyche of the average MSNBC viewer that they're like losing their minds that Joe and Mika would even have a conversation with president-elect Donald Trump.

I didn't think it was that bad.

It's insane to me.

Like, don't you want any access also to the most

powerful man in the world?

They did the right thing.

Like, just be craven about it.

And yeah, if they don't want to get audited, yeah, same.

I don't want to get audited.

And they have probably more interesting stuff going on in their tax returns than I do.

Like, you should go and kiss the ring.

And that is the thing about having an entertainer as the president.

He appreciates it.

If you show up and you say, oh, Donald, you're a beautiful color today.

How do you keep your hair intact?

Whatever.

He's going to like you and probably leave you alone.

What shade of orange

is that?

That's it for this episode.

Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates.

Our producers are Caroline Shagren and David Toledo.

Our technical director is Drew Burroughs.

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

That's right.

Raging Moderates on its own feed.

Please go there and subscribe.

Please follow us wherever you get your podcast.

Just have a great

rest of the week.

New tale.

Trip Planner by Expedia.

You were made to outdo your holiday,

your hammocking,

and your pooling.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia made to travel.