S2 Ep1059: Sam Stein: The Divorce

Speaker 1 This week, on a very special episode of Health Discovered, we take a closer look at MS.

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Speaker 1 What do you think makes the perfect snack?

Speaker 2 Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.

Speaker 6 Could you be more specific?

Speaker 2 When it's cravenient. Okay.
Like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right now in the street at AM P.M., or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at AM PM.

Speaker 2 I'm seeing a pattern here. Well, yeah, we're talking about what I crave.

Speaker 6 Which is anything from AM P.M.

Speaker 2 What more could you want?

Speaker 7 Stop by AMPM, where the snacks and drinks are perfectly cravable and convenient. That's cravenience.
AMPM, too much good stuff.

Speaker 2 Hello, and welcome to the Bullard Concast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We are coming at you live from D.C.

Speaker 2 because we have our fundraiser tonight, Free Andree, which is now sold out at the Lincoln Theater, but we have a rally beforehand over at the Supreme Court at five o'clock.

Speaker 2 So hope hope to see some of y'all there. I am delighted to be here with my buddy, Sam Stein, managing editor of the bulwark.
And what a great day for us to meet together for this.

Speaker 2 Lots of stuff happening.

Speaker 2 You know, the only thing that sucks is like the worst time for news to happen for me for this podcast is like the early afternoon because we tape it late morning and it goes out in the afternoon.

Speaker 2 I finish taping and then the messiest divorce in history happens. I know.
So that was almost sad. But guess what? We get to go through it minute by minute together.

Speaker 2 But before we do, obviously we've got to start with the the big news of the day. And so I just, I want to go to a quick clip, and we'll get to the lead story before we get to Musk and Trump.

Speaker 8 But we begin tonight with a flurry of activity today at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And yes, let not your heart be troubled.
I will address the battle between President Trump and Elon Musk.

Speaker 8 I know it's of such great international importance. But first, there is fresh scrutiny surrounding Joe Biden and a hardworking Autopen.

Speaker 2 Take a look.

Speaker 2 There's your A-Block the Hannity Show, the Autopen. Do you think there was like a debate before the show? Sean, we think we really need to do Elon.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The autopen.

Speaker 2 Does that have anything on the Hunter laptop? How far back can we go? What Biden scandal can we get? Not a good sign. Not a good day over at Fox.
All right.

Speaker 2 So, so much shit happened, and we did a bunch of videos, you guys have already seen, but for the pod crew, I just want to start. Thanks to our friends of the Independent for doing this.

Speaker 2 We're going to do a minute-by-minute chronology of the feud and maybe just chime in with little thoughts as they come to you. All right, so it begins at 144.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Quote, Musk posts a slew of tweets to X,

Speaker 2 including one asking, where is this guy today? Tweeting old Trump balanced budget statements. I missed this one.
He then tweeted, the big ugly bill will increase the deficit

Speaker 2 by $2.5 trillion. So he starts, kind of dips the tone.
Probably should have workshop that. Yeah, with the big, I've been doing the big fugly slut.
That's even better.

Speaker 2 better than the big

Speaker 2 nobody seems to get that though Mattel Glacius didn't even laugh yesterday when I said big fugly slut I know it's tough not all my material lands all right then he goes on he goes is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle this is when in the office I'm just gonna give you the office reactions because you were here we were like how quickly is Nancy Jacobson and no label's gonna call him up

Speaker 2 I'm like oh wait rich white man wishes that there was a big party that represented him in the middle

Speaker 2 One time I did a panel at the Aspen Institute, and I had seven straight questions from rich whites that were like, why aren't there any parties that represent fiscal responsibility and social moderation?

Speaker 2 I'm like, you know. So that wasn't Elon's best, but it escalates.

Speaker 2 Laura Loomer, 215, goes after Musk. Musk says, you might be making a mistake.
I'm going to be around longer than Trump. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Then 237, Trump attacks from Truth Social, says Musk was wearing thin, and then so he doesn't know what happened, but he just went crazy. Yeah.
Same thing he said about Putin. Oh, remember that? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Trump says a bad read on people, I guess. Didn't he put, and he put wearing thin in quotations,

Speaker 2 which I was kind of curious.

Speaker 2 Whose quote is that? I don't know.

Speaker 2 He also mentioned that he took away his EV mandate, and that's what he might be mad about. This is when it was getting a little bit juicy, and in the office, we were like, oh my.

Speaker 2 But we weren't freaking yet. Nobody was sitting up yet.
Nobody had leaned forward yet. But I was refreshing

Speaker 2 a lot. 2:48.
We talked about this the other day, like the Musk rapid response element to this. Like, if this was a Trump feud versus Jon Thune.
You and I talked about this. Right, I knew it was.

Speaker 2 I was comparing this to Jad. It was like, it would take four hours for Jon Thune to reply to anything.
You know, you have to get your press by leaving.

Speaker 2 And Musk is just fired. 11 minutes after Trump attacks him, Musk hits back.
Such an obvious lie, so sad.

Speaker 2 Then things went quiet for 22 minutes. It was all silent.
People are like, oh, that's an interesting little dispute.

Speaker 2 At this point in the office, we were like, okay, wow. But there we go.
That's it. We're cool.
3.10 p.m.

Speaker 2 The box.

Speaker 2 Musk alleges Trump appears in the Epstein files. Okay, this one in the office, people were screaming, like legit screaming.
It was like a, oh my God.

Speaker 2 Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out, Elon says.

Speaker 2 That was a reply to his tweet.

Speaker 2 Files linked to the investigation of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has emerged as a point of fixation. Oh, wait, hold on.
Yeah, for Trump and his allies. Anyway, time to drop the really big bomb.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right. So that was 3.10.

Speaker 2 4.10 after Twitter is insane.

Speaker 2 Almost an hour passes, and Donald Trump bleats out,

Speaker 2 the easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon's government subsidies and contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it.

Speaker 2 That's a good hit. At this point, I went to the fridge and I got a soda and a little snack.
Because I knew I was in the song now. I was like, this is going to be a long day, and I need to hydrate.

Speaker 2 I think the Trump hit in a vacuum pretty good, like threatening to take the money away. Good hit.
Coming right after your petto? I don't know, Donald, maybe he's lost his fastball a little bit.

Speaker 2 What would you have done? I don't know. You're a pedo, too.

Speaker 2 Ketamine adult, fat fuck. Take away your ketamine.

Speaker 2 You can't even get hard. You have to inseminate your twin wives.

Speaker 2 Trump would have gone right for the dick.

Speaker 2 Okay, that is okay. Elon then replies, in light of the president's statement about cancellation of my government contracts, SpaceX will begin decommissioning its dragon spacecraft immediately.

Speaker 2 At this point, I got a little worried, honestly. I was like, are we going to have a government?

Speaker 2 I don't know. Okay.
So

Speaker 2 decent hit there.

Speaker 2 Then Trump

Speaker 2 goes on and defends the bill, the substance of the the bill.

Speaker 2 Yeah, really boring. 4-11.

Speaker 2 Boy, the Musk leans in again. The Independent says he seems to agree.
I would say he clearly agrees that Donald Trump should be replaced by Vice President J.D. Vance.
I think the word was yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, here it is. Ian Miles Chong, a Malaysian shit poster,

Speaker 2 posted, president versus Elon, who wins. My money's on Elon.
Trump should be impeached, and J.D. Vance should replace him.
I want to note here, Elon was not tagged in this tweet. So

Speaker 2 Elon is just like, it's like that smoking meme of Matthew McConaughey is just on X, just taking it all in. He sees this tweet where he's not tagged, quote tweets it, yes.

Speaker 2 Trump should be impeached. I want to get back to that in a little bit.

Speaker 2 426,

Speaker 2 Musk attacks the tariffs. Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of the year.
I'm like, how much ketamine is this man on?

Speaker 2 Musk is going to have the biggest endorphin crash in history. I was looking at my phone.
Musk endorphins are fired. I was like, can you imagine being Elon? He's got four phones out.

Speaker 2 He's got a lot of money. Ain't no way this guy's sleeping tonight.

Speaker 2 How many times has he peed because of the ketamine at this point? Like five? Yeah. 7.50.
So a couple hours go by. Musk says, kill the bill.
Call your senator. Call your congressman.

Speaker 2 Bankrupt America is not okay.

Speaker 2 And then Musk's last post for the day is a repost that says, this is why Republicans will likely lose the House in 26, and Democrats will spend two years investigating and impeaching president trump well that was not his last post for the day his last posted of the feud he then tried to kind of dial it back and he it was a very funny moment where there was like speaking of being weirdly following weird accounts on twitter he replied to like someone with like 180 followers who's like let's tone it down a little bit he's like you're right i'm not going to decommission the dragon like where did you find this account like it wasn't even responding to you like where did that come from i'm telling you elon is just like elon is in the mainframe of x Like, he is, like, it's like he is trying to become the singularity.

Speaker 2 Maybe he is. He's receiving constants.
He's got the neural link in his brand.

Speaker 2 He's just getting exposed fed to him. Imagine,

Speaker 2 I think about this every now and then, but imagine you're a Tesla board member and you're watching this and you're like, okay,

Speaker 2 is this man running our company? Like, what's he doing?

Speaker 2 I would be like,

Speaker 2 you need to, like, focus

Speaker 2 on us. Yeah, well, it's kind of a side point, but the Tesla stock was going down most of the day pretty significantly.
Weirdly, it went up when Musk accused Trump of being a bad help.

Speaker 2 I don't know if the market saw that and was like, ooh, Musk might have more power here than we thought in this fight.

Speaker 2 I'm not a professional stock purchaser.

Speaker 2 This is not financial advice.

Speaker 2 But I found that interesting because being...

Speaker 2 Being in the White House has not really been very good for Tesla. So why did, I don't know why the market reacted so negatively.
Do you have thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 Well, I I think the prospect that Musk could be nuked

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 like literally nuked.

Speaker 2 You know, although I guess in theory, kind of if you're an investor, at this point,

Speaker 2 you kind of want the guy to get gone. Yeah, right.
It's like focus on building cars a little bit.

Speaker 2 No, I don't try to make sense of this. This is nonsensical.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe it's, and JVL wrote an emergency triad last night that everybody should read. And one of the things that he pointed out is like Trump does,

Speaker 2 I mean, there's a worst case scenario for Elon that's pretty bad

Speaker 2 on his financially. And maybe that is the thinking here where

Speaker 2 he ends up in the sour spot where nobody's buying, like the Libs aren't buying the Teslas,

Speaker 2 the MAGAs aren't buying his ugly-ass truck. Trump is apparently going to sell the one he bought.
The red one? Yeah, that was nice. I was going to fix this in the morning.
So, yeah. So, that's it.

Speaker 2 There's a little SpaceX stuff I want to get into, but I don't think that's my top takeaway. We'll get to that in a second.

Speaker 2 Did you get a good night's sleep last night? Did you take a melatonin?

Speaker 2 Not really. I mean, it wasn't like scrolling through it or anything, but I had been hopped up on it all day.

Speaker 2 Not to the extent that Elon had, but it was definitely pouring through my veins, and I was excited about it.

Speaker 2 So now with the Jay to breathe,

Speaker 2 you know, I think that there's some people that are more excited. Bill Crystal's a downer this morning.
He's feeling more like that, that Trump will come out of this ahead.

Speaker 2 Like, what are your, what's your

Speaker 2 Bill convinced me? I got to be honest. Bill definitely convinced me.
So Bill's take is that,

Speaker 2 well,

Speaker 2 Trump has, I think this is Bill's word, Trump has Elon's balls or something like an advice. Bill Crystal's.
He said, Trump, yeah, you can read it in Morning Shiny. Did you not edit? I just decided to.

Speaker 2 I edited live. No, I edited it.
What I edited is I add, and he has big balls, but Bill took that.

Speaker 2 Big ball is the person. Yeah, big ball is the person.
Fuck Bill. No, but Bill's convincing because I think

Speaker 2 here, I mean, it's basic, like Trump could at any moment just say, you know what, we are going to nationalize Space Force.

Speaker 2 And by the way, you know, we need to launch an investigation into this because, you know, we don't want someone so unstable,

Speaker 2 running these companies who's a government contractor. And there's plenty of government levers.

Speaker 2 And if you're sitting there being like, well, that would be really abusive of the government for Trump to do something like that. I beg you to look at what Trump's done.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I think Elon, well, I don't know if Elon's rational to recognize that he's kind of screwed here. And Elon's cards, I think he basically played yesterday.

Speaker 2 You are a pedophile and you are in the FC. He threw like, I don't know.
Does he have a bigger haymaker than that? We don't know. We don't know.

Speaker 2 We don't know.

Speaker 2 He's got some picks. I mean, we don't know.
What was the black guy? Maybe Trump punched him.

Speaker 2 You know, who knows? I think there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes. We don't know exactly what he could have.
And he's been sleeping at Mar-a-Lago in the White House. That's true.
So, I don't know.

Speaker 2 He might have insight on Trump's private behavior that other people don't have. So I think he could have more cards.
It's a compelling case that I think Trump certainly.

Speaker 2 is going to win the Elon fight in the sense of like who ends up with more political power, like et cetera. So Trump has a base of support.

Speaker 2 Like just as we were joking earlier, the idea that some rich Silicon Valley guy is going to start a party of moderates. It's like, we tried that, buddy.
It's called the Innovation Party.

Speaker 2 It's going to be Zuckerberg and Jim Vandi. Okay, we've been down that road.
Andrew Yang. Andrew Yang tried it like that.
So I don't think that's going to work.

Speaker 2 I think that the political base wants the magnitude war stuff. I think that the threats to Trump here are also pretty real.
And

Speaker 2 I know that you might want to diminish it. And this is maybe my critique of your old pals in the mainstream media.

Speaker 2 It's like, it's hard to contextualize this stuff appropriately because it's so crazy, and you're just like, how do I cover this? What do I do?

Speaker 2 But it's like, Donald Trump's top advisor and top donor, the key man that helped him get elected, thinks that he should be impeached and removed from the presidency. Like, that is a massive story.

Speaker 2 And I think it's.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying it's not.

Speaker 2 I know you don't think it is, but it's like, because of, like, they benefit from the clownishness of this, right? You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 If this is, like, let's just imagine a different, a different world. We're like six months into the Biden presidency, who would be the Elon equivalent?

Speaker 2 Yeah, or I was thinking to somebody closer advisor, Anita or Mike Donnellin or something. Yeah, sure, whoever.

Speaker 2 Some Biden advisor writes an op-ed that's like, I think that the president should be impeached and removed. He doesn't have his faculties.
He's been lying to you about his health.

Speaker 2 And he's on a pedophiles. And he's on a pedophiles plight list.
Like, I do think that the front page story of the Post the next day would be, Biden's top advisor calls for impeachment and removal.

Speaker 2 Yes. And that didn't happen today.
Was it not on the front page? I mean, there was plenty of stories about it. There's plenty of stories about that.
But you're right.

Speaker 2 It's kind of in a sick and campfight kind of way, right? And so, anyway, I think that that alone.

Speaker 2 The problem is we're so conditioned to the circus with Trump that it's like, ah, well, it's another chapter.

Speaker 2 But if you object, and I think I said this online the other day

Speaker 2 when this was all transpiring, which is like, I'm deeply, genuinely like entertained by all this. I'm also like really, really frightened by it.
That's concerning.

Speaker 2 It's incredibly concerning that these two men who are incredibly, the most powerful two men in the world probably, among them. Really?

Speaker 2 Are so emotionally unstable, have so much potential blackmail over each other, are so distracted.

Speaker 2 Like, again, I like Friedrich Mertz was in the Lincoln bedroom while all this was happening, just as a quick aside, the Chancellor of Germany. Did you? And we could.
Like, imagine being this guy.

Speaker 2 And he's

Speaker 2 trying to have some tea. Yeah, he's like, yo, I'm trying to save Ukraine.
And someone's like, hold on. I'm going to threaten the government contracts of space.

Speaker 2 And then it's, and then, like, we didn't even, but again, the circus things, like, we're not even going to talk about it.

Speaker 2 But yesterday with Mertz, he was like, you must have been really upset when the Nazis lost. And I was like, holy shit.

Speaker 2 But, like, that doesn't register. Yeah.
Anyways, my point is, there's something real underneath all the show is some really like obvious

Speaker 2 sirens about where we are as a society. Yeah, no, the society is in a bad place, and so is the White House.
So, I guess my point is: so, that's just in a vacuum.

Speaker 2 In any other world, the idea that your top advisor would say you should be impeached and removed in a pedophile is very bad for you politically. Maybe that won't, maybe that won't help for Trump.

Speaker 2 Trump's controlled.

Speaker 2 You know, it's never really happened. Karl Rove, I don't believe, ever accused George W.
of

Speaker 2 being a pedo. So, you know, anyway,

Speaker 2 I think that also

Speaker 2 the political power,

Speaker 2 you know, this political fight between the techno-fascists and the mega is real. There's like a power struggle.

Speaker 2 Trump obviously has more political power in the sense of there are more voters who care about him.

Speaker 2 If there was a primary between Trump and Musk, he would win 85 to 15 or 90 to 10.

Speaker 2 But power in the different sense, like not the direct voter sense, like you know, obviously there's a lot of influence in Silicon Valley. It benefited Trump a lot.

Speaker 2 I know that it gave the Democrats this opportunity to be like oligarchs or whatever, but also like really helped Trump that the owners of all the biggest communications platforms were sucking up to him.

Speaker 2 Right. And that these huge donors, VCs were sucking up to him, and the crypto guys.
So it was a different type of oligarch, too. It was like these guys represent the future.

Speaker 2 They're innovation oligarchs, right? Not old banker oligarchs. So it felt like a little different politically.
Yeah. And so I think it gave him a lot of some benefits,

Speaker 2 just direct benefits and like how their platforms treated him, et cetera, et cetera. But also future political opportunity for MAGA, right?

Speaker 2 This idea that you could coalesce, you know, the Cletuses and the Evangelical Christians and like the traditional Republicans and also add in these kind of non like ideological, really, like tech bro like kind of crowd.

Speaker 2 Like that was an important add to the Trump coalition this time for 2016. And that definitely feels in threat right now.
So it's funny now that you're just articulating it.

Speaker 2 out loud, but it's bringing me back a little bit to what Democratic politics actually used to be, which is this, you have this pretty wide tent yeah and usually the main players either have to sort of align themselves with the moneyed interest or the populists and that was not always the case necessarily with republicans but this is the result of an expanding coalition

Speaker 2 and so you know trump's trump's real talent has been he's managed to bridge the two and i don't know that might be the ultimate thing here is that it might not be bridgeable anymore because really it's like you know when you have steve bannon basically telling trump that he does in fact need to nationalize space force and oh by the way maybe deport Elon Musk like at this point

Speaker 2 Yeah, and we're gonna get into that so but that that is true and it and it's forcing it may force these the Republican lawmakers to kind of take a side in this fight in a way that they haven't really had to choose this type of stuff before

Speaker 2 a couple other I think top implications of like where Musk has a little bit more some power So number one is I guess his politico your old pals are reporting that they're there's gonna be a call today they're gonna try to do a truce.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but that's been kind of debunked. Has it? Yeah, so Trump Trump made a couple.
First of all, this is fun because Trump's like calling every reporter in D.C. whose cell phone number he's had.

Speaker 2 Who has he called today? So far, just that we know, he's called Bob Costa, Dana Bash, Dasha Burns, and Jonathan Carl. So at least four people they've talked to Trump about.

Speaker 2 Is your phone on Do Not Disturb? You might want to leave it on just in case.

Speaker 2 Missed it. No.
And in each call, he's telling every single reporter, I'm not even thinking about Elon, which is like self-refuting.

Speaker 2 Don't worry, I'm not thinking about it. I'm just telling you, I'm not thinking about it.
It's like the guy in the banana. So it's like, we're looking for the guy.
Don't know who did it.

Speaker 2 But he's also dismissed the idea that he's going to have a phone call with Elon. So I don't think there's going to be that today.

Speaker 2 And I also just, so generally, I guess my point was, even if they did get to a truce, which I think is possible, who knows,

Speaker 2 that they would try to, it's not really sustainable. And this, I think, goes to the Elon psychology.
There have been kind of two schools of thought on Elon from the start.

Speaker 2 There was one that this was a huge corruption scheme and that he wanted from his AI, whatever, to gather as much information as possible from the government.

Speaker 2 He wanted to expand Starlink and he was using this to enrich himself.

Speaker 2 And there's maybe some overlap between these theories, but like that was his core intention. Then there's another theory, which is that his brain has been broken by his own app.

Speaker 2 And like the fact that his

Speaker 2 daughter was trans, and then he gets on X, and that he's doing all these drugs, and that his brain is broken, and he is just a rabid poster and he ended up getting radicalized and MAGA and that's why he's doing this and he doesn't actually give a fuck about his companies or the money.

Speaker 2 And I was always more in camp too.

Speaker 2 He just, to me, reads like somebody who's completely unstable and has lost his mind.

Speaker 2 And I know some of these people, I have some of them in my life, people who have gone taken the MAGA pill, rather than somebody who is like really

Speaker 2 strategically trying to manipulate the government. And if that is right, if the theory that his brain is broken is right, he can't truce because Elon's online all day.

Speaker 2 And so something's going to happen that like they can have a short-term truce, but then something will happen that Elon.

Speaker 2 You were joking about this when you said something about posters. Posters are going to post.
Elon's a poster. Elon's going to post.
And so that's this big up.

Speaker 2 I think that's what I've got to performed posters that you know. Nira.

Speaker 2 Nira's the only one I can think of off the top of my head. Nira tandem.
But she's kind of getting back. She's getting back in the game a little bit.
She for you don't know.

Speaker 2 She was Center for American Progress was an epic kind of Hillary poster, Neolib Hillary poster, like really, really strong game, and then went to work for Biden and Schultz.

Speaker 2 I don't believe that Nero was doing like a ketamine meth snowball.

Speaker 2 And so it makes, I don't, I think it's, it was easier for her to reform maybe than Elon. You don't really know Nera then.

Speaker 2 And so I don't see it. And this bill, and so this takes me to my second point, which is that this bill is going to continue going through.
Right. It's created real political problems for the bill.

Speaker 2 Like, does it mean that it won't pass? I don't know. But like, it's made it much more fraught.

Speaker 2 And you don't, you really think that Elon, who's like on Twitter 20 hours a day, is going to not shit post this bill as it continues to go through the process?

Speaker 2 Obviously, he's going to keep shit posting it. No, and there's certain Rubicons he's crossed that you can't uncross.

Speaker 2 Shame on you if you support this bill. Yeah, call your lawmaker.

Speaker 2 But I was thinking more like, once you say this man's on the Epstein list, like, I don't think you can put that genie back in a bottle. I also think that...

Speaker 2 And the VP did. say Trump might be Hitler.
That's true. It's possible to get the genie back in the bottle as Trump, I think.
That's true, I guess.

Speaker 2 kind of got lost a little bit in this, but probably something that will bother Trump is that he claimed credit for Trump winning. And Trump does not ever want to hear something like that.

Speaker 2 So, you know, I think Trump will be aggrieved about that.

Speaker 2 I think ultimately, like, the effect on the bill is not that it's going to convince lawmakers to vote against it. I think, and you and I talked about this, I think what it does is it creates...

Speaker 2 a bit of space for lawmakers who are already not for it to say, you know what, I kind of agree that we need to do more. And like, maybe we should pump the brakes a little bit.

Speaker 2 And like, let's get more deficit reduction here. And then.
Does Elon going so crazy make that actually harder for some of the Republicans? Yes. There's a

Speaker 2 surely, yeah. If he's like totally agreeing.
If Elon was like narrow focused on the deficit, maybe the, you know, the Freedom Caucus guys might have been like, I'm with Elon.

Speaker 2 But if he's like, Trump is a pedophile, he should be removed from office, makes it a little harder. I think that's right.
I mean, Elon's out there.

Speaker 2 Like, his takes on Trump are now more extreme than any MSNBC primetime host.

Speaker 2 Like, there's nobody on MSNBC Primetime who has said that Trump is a lot more likely to be able to do it on MSNBC Primetime and you said that.

Speaker 2 Trump might go after the network. You'd get a call from Musk.
Yeah, it would be bad.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was.

Speaker 2 It's not something that normal people say. Yeah, so Republicans, it makes it harder for them to be with him.
But he is still rich, and he does still have the capacity to amplify X in your favor.

Speaker 2 So let's say you're just like a random Freedom Caucus member who isn't in love with the bill, and you you can now say, okay, you know what? I agree on the principles that he's talking about.

Speaker 2 And then Musk starts boosting you and he makes you into a hero. He throws a bunch of money behind you.
I'm not saying it's going to happen, but now that is a component of this legislative debate.

Speaker 2 I think it's also, we discussed this a little bit before this all went down with Iglesias yesterday, but he is very focused on how do you raise the salience of this bill?

Speaker 2 Because his point is like, this is unpopular. So if you get to the Democrats thinking on this, like

Speaker 2 cutting taxes for the rich and cutting Medicaid is not popular.

Speaker 2 And so does just Elon talking about how awful it is make people who otherwise wouldn't even be paying attention to this aware of this bill? Maybe that's harmful for the bill?

Speaker 2 So the issue for Democrats, I think, is that what Elon doesn't like about this bill is not what they give a shit. I mean, like, they obviously aren't for taxes.
Sure, but just like

Speaker 2 drawing attention to an unpopular thing is maybe.

Speaker 2 But if Elon was being like, it is just irresponsible for us to cut Medicaid like this. Democrats would be like, hell yeah.
It's fine. But that's not what he's saying.

Speaker 2 And so it becomes a little bit of a bank shot. I think Edgar, Andrew Edgar, in today's morning shots sort of made the case, well, you can make it about like these two

Speaker 2 men who are in a dick measuring contest are just basically trying to figure out how to like. It's a really small ruler for that contest.
I don't know. It's like one of those like preschool kid rulers.

Speaker 2 You can't get a regulation size.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 It's like a mom and pop contest.

Speaker 2 Just make it about them being like chaos agents who

Speaker 2 you're entrusting them to like handle your health care and your taxes and you sort of like tie it to their general unpopularity but um i don't know i mean democrats a democratic should be like look he thinks trump's on the epstein list investigate and i think you know the oversight committee is doing that so we'll see you know what's on everyone's wish list this year oh definitely the bartesian cocktail maker it's like having a bartender who never judges your drink order exactly just pop in a capsule press a button boom old-fashioned margarita espresso martini over 60 bar quality cocktails.

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Speaker 2 Should somebody file the Elon Musk articles of impeachment? Maybe? That feels like a Jared Moskowitz. That would be a Moskowitz.

Speaker 2 He's the one member.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's if you want to troll, go to Moskowitz. Poor Shree.

Speaker 2 What's his name? Shree, the one congressman who tried to, who's ours?

Speaker 2 He was trying to beach me that they were like, please do not.

Speaker 2 It's only Sri and Elon are the only guys out there. Yeah, I don't know.
I guess I'm a little bit.

Speaker 2 I was in your camp yesterday on like, this isn't that helpful for Democrats because he's focusing on the debt and deficit rather than the really unpopular stuff.

Speaker 2 But I don't know, man, part of this now.

Speaker 2 I just think it trickles out into the world in a way that it wouldn't have otherwise. And that like people who do not really care about about it.
How do they view it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that just they start to be like, wait a minute. Okay, so what is this thing that they're fighting about?

Speaker 2 And it like increases the debt a ton and it cuts taxes for rich people and it cuts Medicaid. Like, who's for that?

Speaker 2 Like, Stephen Miller is really like the only person who seems passionately for this bill that I can tell.

Speaker 2 And so I just, I think that if you get that out into the ether more, I don't know. I think maybe it can be an opportunity for.
The opportunity is to just sow

Speaker 2 dissent in the Republican ranks, right? It's like, you know, get them, get the party's base upset with Trump for abandoning fiscal conservatism.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you divide the opposition and that's your benefit. I don't think it's like, oh, we're going to like turn people into like staunch defenders of Medicaid because of what Elon's doing.

Speaker 2 I don't think that's really what

Speaker 2 I think it also puts a little bit of a damper on like Republicans going around talking about how great it is. Yes, 100%.

Speaker 2 So I think it hurts their sales pitch for the bill. So that's the so-division thing.
It's like if you have even like 10%, 20% of the party, it's like, actually, this bill kind of sucks.

Speaker 2 I agree with Elon. Then it becomes more problematic, and then you'll start to see in the polls that the popularity of the bill goes down, and then that creates its own news cycle.

Speaker 2 And then you start seeing a little bit of snowball effect, which is why I think they're trying to rush this thing through. I mean, they cannot spare any time on this.

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Speaker 2 Okay, a couple side journeys. JD Vance, the vice president, who is like the human that most represents the kind of concentric, the overlapping circles between the tech fascists and the MAGA fascists.

Speaker 2 He's right in the middle of the Venn diagram. And so it's a little bit of a sticky wicket for him politically

Speaker 2 because he's got to stay with his patron Trump.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I mean, assuming that there's an open primary in 2028 and he's going to want the tech guys to be with him, you know, to be with him, Peter Thiel is his main patron.

Speaker 2 So how does he play this? He's posted two posts about this. One tweet was a selfie with him and Theo Vaughn.

Speaker 2 I guess he's going to do the Theo Vaughn pod, which as soon as I saw that, my heart sank because I was like, God, this means I have to spend two hours watching J.D. Vance and Theo Vaughn.
Yeah. Crap.

Speaker 2 So that sucks. Cracking some weird jokes and laughing uncomfortably.
The other one was, President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads.

Speaker 2 I'm proud to stand beside him.

Speaker 2 You notice who wasn't mentioned in that? Elon? No. It was kind of limp, I thought.
Kind of. Exceedingly limp.
I mean, Trump's out there being like, Elon's gone mad crazy.

Speaker 2 Like, this guy needs to get off those drugs. And

Speaker 2 JD's just like, I like President Trump. That's pretty limp.
I would expect more from my VTC.

Speaker 2 People should stick with Trump. I guess that's what he's trying to say is like...
Again, what does that mean? That's like a very defensive defense of Trump.

Speaker 2 It's like, if you really, you should have said Elon's totally wrong. Trump is the man, and this is bullshit.
And I'm sad that Elon's having this breakdown. Like, that would be a normal statement, but.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I don't know.
And it also feels like it could be said about kind of anybody.

Speaker 2 It's not a very.

Speaker 2 So the JD thing, like in the end, what will matter for JD is if this administration is a total disaster or not, and if he can stay in Trump's good graces.

Speaker 2 And like, that's like basically it. Like, those are essentially the two things that matter to him.

Speaker 2 Like I don't think that at the end of the day, if I expect the next three years to be a total fucking shit show and that people will be ready to move on, I could be wrong from that.

Speaker 2 I've been wrong before. We'll see.
But

Speaker 2 let's assume it's just normal crazy. Like there's no big recession, you know,

Speaker 2 bad shit happens, but like within the normal bounds of football, you know, of Trumpy football. Just every now and then the top advisor calls for an impeachment.

Speaker 2 The normal bounds.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, they stormed the Capitol last time and got re-elected, so I'm just trying to sense the Trumpy bounce. And

Speaker 2 I guess, let me rephrase it. People's lives aren't materially hurt.
Like, MAGA people.

Speaker 2 Immigrants' lives are materially hurt.

Speaker 2 But MAGA people's lives aren't materially hurt. And Trump sticks with him.
And Trump steps aside normally and he runs.

Speaker 2 It's going to be very tough to beat. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 And the tech guys will know he's one of them. So I don't know that it's quite as sticky as it seems.
And I think that the play for him is pretty clear. He's got to stick with Daddy Trump.

Speaker 2 And it would have to be pretty ugly, I think, to blow back on that. And I think the general lesson is that everything is ephemeral in Trump years, right?

Speaker 2 It's like everything that we think is massively consequential eventually recedes into

Speaker 2 our memories. Like, you know, three weeks ago, we thought the Qatari airline gift was going to be a huge scandal.
He just accepted the play and we moved on.

Speaker 2 You haven't moved on? You've moved on. Have I? Yeah, spiritually, I think you have.
JD is. I feel really red by that, because honestly, I kind of of have.
I don't give a fuck about the Qatari plan.

Speaker 2 I actually hope I go back to my initial takeaway.

Speaker 2 We were talking about how this one is going to stick. I was not.
That was not me.

Speaker 2 I thought it was. But we were like, oh,

Speaker 2 this one's breaking through. That does not sound like me at all.
That was not me. Fine.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Might have been you. It might have been you on your weekend hit on MSNBC.
I too.

Speaker 2 So JD's just got to. I think JD probably knows this too.
I mean, JD was out there saying Haitians were eating dogs.

Speaker 2 It's a little harder to weather the storm if Elon keeps shit posting. It's a little harder to weather the storm if people are suffering because of your policies, including the MAGA people.

Speaker 2 If coronavirus hits and like there's 20 million unemployed overnight, that's when it's hard to weather the storm. Fingers crossed.
All right. A couple other side plots.

Speaker 2 You had mentioned it earlier, but the bannon of it. We have a there's a strange

Speaker 2 JVL Steve Bannon alliance that is developing.

Speaker 2 It makes me uncomfortable to even mention, but I want to hear Bannon, and then we'll talk about it.

Speaker 2 And for any fanboys that still exist,

Speaker 2 while you're wrapping up in your cape tonight, understand on Doge,

Speaker 2 he didn't find any fraud. There's plenty of fraud out there.

Speaker 2 This was President Trump's first complaint. Was this all BS, right, with

Speaker 2 the Doge?

Speaker 2 The act that President Trump should be taking immediately, I think, when he threatens to take one of the big programs out of SpaceX, President Trump tonight should sign an executive order

Speaker 2 calling for the Defense to Production Act to be caught in SpaceX and seize SpaceX tonight before midnight. Seize SpaceX tonight.

Speaker 2 It didn't happen for the record.

Speaker 2 SpaceX was not seized. That's bold from Bannon.

Speaker 2 JVL has been calling for a while.

Speaker 2 I think even during Biden times, he'll correct me, but he did so again in the triad, which people should go read on thebork.com, to nationalize SpaceX for a little bit maybe

Speaker 2 less cheeky reasons than Bannon does. does, but like very

Speaker 2 legitimate.

Speaker 2 I mean, Elon basically proved JVL's point when he said, oh, I'm going to decommission the dragon.

Speaker 2 It's like, oh, you're going to, one man can just, you know, decide that we're going to leave astronauts abandoned in space. Like, is that really in our national interest to have

Speaker 2 all our space policy kind of at the whims of one ketamine-infused nutjob?

Speaker 2 No good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I would like, maybe we need to bring in a space expert on YouTube to give me some. I would like to see some policy options put in front of me if

Speaker 2 President Tim was out there because the word nationalized gets me a little

Speaker 2 uncomfortable. I don't like it.
I get uncomfortable if I hear the word nationalized. I don't like C's.
I really don't like C's. So when Bannon wants to see something,

Speaker 2 incorporate into the government. Yeah, I like that word, incorporate.
Here's the other thing.

Speaker 2 SpaceX has done better than NASA. Yeah, Barry over here is a big, big proponent.
He thinks he broke through the cartel. It's done better.
That's just a fact. You don't have to like it.

Speaker 2 You don't have to like Elon. So I don't think that we should take our terrible shitty space program and take over Elon's successful one.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 is there a middle ground, I guess, is that I'm looking for? I don't know. I'm not an expert on law.

Speaker 2 If you could ideally put in, the government had the power to put in a different CEO, I hereby declare you not CEO.

Speaker 2 Can we have a guy from the government in the corner office? Just watching.

Speaker 2 Elon, don't touch your pillbox.

Speaker 2 What was in the office where they put Milton down in the basement? Can we just like put a Milton in SpaceX?

Speaker 2 Can we put Milton in SpaceX and just be like, when big decisions happen, you got to bring Milton up.

Speaker 2 Or you just create like a Truman show type system where Elon thinks he's running SpaceX and he's not.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know. But it makes you a little uncomfortable that the War Room and the Bulwark are calling for the same thing.
But JVL's arguments have been very...

Speaker 2 like legit and policy-based for a while.

Speaker 2 He also adds, like, I mean, his point is it's going to have to happen, and it's better that it happens with Donald Trump doing it than Joe Biden or whoever else is going to.

Speaker 2 I don't have the audio of this, but Banner had a couple other suggestions. Banner's never liked Elon.

Speaker 2 If anybody was, I know all the libs thought that yesterday was your best day, it was our best day, the resistance. Nobody was having a better day yesterday than Steve Bannon.

Speaker 2 He was literally a pagan shit. I mean, he was rolling around and doing his own NPR this morning.
He's like, doing the

Speaker 2 rubbing his nipples between the three shirts.

Speaker 2 He's hated Elon for a long time, and so he loves us. And so he was chiming in.
He's going to put on a fourth-collared shirt. That's hot.

Speaker 2 He was chiming in on

Speaker 2 how Elon should maybe be deported.

Speaker 2 Another strange alliance. Congressman Adam Smith of Washington also suggested this.
Democratic congressman. Just maybe a little bit over his skis, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 I feel as similarly to this as I do about the Epstein situation.

Speaker 2 It does seem to me to be true that Elon was an illegal immigrant in the country, and maybe DHS should look into that in the same way that it does seem to be true that Donald Trump was involved in a very deep way with Jeffrey Epstein and maybe has covered up some of his involvement, and that should be looked into.

Speaker 2 I kind of think that those are both legitimate. They're trolls and legitimate.
What do you think? I mean,

Speaker 2 do I have to respond? Yeah, you do have to respond. I think

Speaker 2 I'm not ready to go down these paths.

Speaker 2 You don't think that DHS Secretary Christine Home should look into Elon's immigration history?

Speaker 2 I mean, if Susie from Missouri or whatever.

Speaker 2 Do I think I would enjoy watching it all transpire? Yes, I would go and get another seltzer and some popcorn. I'd sit back and hit refresh on X.

Speaker 2 I think when we have the government

Speaker 2 targeting critics and deporting them, that's a problem. But maybe I'm like a

Speaker 2 government targeting critics and deporting them.

Speaker 2 Again, I will say though, that

Speaker 2 they've set a policy in this administration.

Speaker 2 It's good for the goose, right? Yeah, their policy is basically like no exceptions on immigration rules.

Speaker 2 Does it apply to people who came here lately but have since become citizens? I don't know.

Speaker 2 I mean, they've been, you know, they've been taking random, like ladies that have been working at diners, working in this country.

Speaker 2 I got a picture of Elon with MS-13 transposed Tennis Knuckles.

Speaker 2 Look, we didn't see it when he was at Doge, but it was right there. They've been taking, you know, they took the high school kids who are on the honor roll.
Oh, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying they're clean. I'm just saying.

Speaker 2 I'm just going through everybody's files. Sure, sure.
I mean, yeah. Let's see if we can.
What do you think about the White Afrikaners?

Speaker 2 Do they have anything to worry about right now? Yeah, is he would he come back in to the White African or refugee program? It was a great day on the X platform.

Speaker 2 I know that makes some people uncomfortable, but it was.

Speaker 2 Let's actually do this. Yesterday, obviously, was a great day on X.
Yeah. And I might guess that it was the best day in a long time.
What was your best? The best day ever was when Trump got COVID.

Speaker 2 That was a crazy.

Speaker 2 Trump getting COVID was the best day on access, or Twitter was Twitter then, and it was the best day by far. Okay, it's hard to even think of a close second, honestly.

Speaker 2 That one was so much better than everything else, but I'll have to. I'm sure.

Speaker 2 When he was flown to Walter Reed, and we were like, I have a few text chains that are going to be disappointed with me, so please nominate for me some other.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 we should come back and circle back on the best days. Okay, well, my two favorite posts yesterday: one was this is like the Kendrick versus Drake beef with two Drake's.

Speaker 2 I really enjoyed that. And the other one was Trump's new policy towards white Afrikaners, and it was that guy jumping around going, kill the bar.

Speaker 2 There were a lot of good members.

Speaker 2 Those were both good. Meme of Trump on the test, though.
I got this before Elon went crazy. Yeah, that was very good.
That was good. So do you think the white Afrikaners should feel a little nervous?

Speaker 2 Maybe.

Speaker 2 Yeah, probably.

Speaker 2 Their champion is no longer there.

Speaker 2 All those ghost people, are they going to be taunted? Speaking of white Africaners, is David Sachs? Do we know whose side David Sachs

Speaker 2 is on? Is he posted? Okay, we're going to look to see if David Paul Sachs. There are a lot of people who are going to be caught in the middle here.

Speaker 12 You know what's on everyone's wish list this year?

Speaker 14 Oh, definitely the Bartesian cocktail maker.

Speaker 15 It's like having a bartender who never judges your drink order.

Speaker 16 Exactly.

Speaker 17 Just pop in a capsule, press a button, boom.

Speaker 9 Old-fashioned, margarita, espresso martini.

Speaker 19 Over 60 bar quality cocktails.

Speaker 20 Zero effort.

Speaker 15 And right now, you can save up to $150 on Bartesian Cocktail Makers.

Speaker 21 Wait, 150?

Speaker 15 Yep, up to $150 off.

Speaker 16 It's the best deal of the season.

Speaker 22 Okay, but seriously, how did we ever host before Bartesian?

Speaker 9 Last time, your kitchen looked like a crime scene. Sticky counters, fruit wedges everywhere.

Speaker 18 Yeah, this year, no measuring tools, no mess, just perfect cocktails.

Speaker 15 This year, I'm gifting one to my brother.

Speaker 23 And myself for research purposes.

Speaker 24 Make the holidays easier and happier with Bartesian.

Speaker 25 Mix over 60 premium cocktails at the touch of a button. Save up to $150 on Bartesian Cocktail Makers.

Speaker 24 But hurry, this Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer ends December 2nd.

Speaker 25 Get yours now at Bartesian.com slash drinks.

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Speaker 2 All right, we have an important final segment on the Commerce Secretary that's going to be pretty good, but I have a couple other side plots.

Speaker 2 There's been some discussion: is there an Elon Lib redemption arc possible? Where Elon decides to go whole hog? Never Trump. He's on this podcast by Labor Day.
You know, he says Trump's been wrong.

Speaker 2 He has always cared about the environment. He also has always cared about the debt and deficits.
And he still has some concerns about the trans thing.

Speaker 2 But other than that, like he pretty much has seen the error of his ways and him and Bill Gates are going to go to Africa together. Is that possible? That's fantasy, right?

Speaker 2 Well, your podcast guest yesterday, Metaglesius, proposed maybe,

Speaker 2 you know, some sort of detente there. An armistice.
Yeah. Again,

Speaker 2 I'm a moving target here because I initially was like, of course you let him back in. You know, the enemy, the enemy, right?

Speaker 2 But then I kind of thought about it, and he is so crazy, and he's so unpopular.

Speaker 2 And he also did so much damage.

Speaker 2 You know, just even the USAID stuff alone, it's like, you can't let someone like that back in. Like,

Speaker 2 what would it say about your moral values?

Speaker 2 It doesn't mean you can't use them strategically. And I'm assuming they will, right? Like they should.

Speaker 2 But like, you know, maybe if you want to take some of his cash quietly, probably you should do that. But boy, I wouldn't be like, Elon's not one of us.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I don't think it's possible because it goes back to my earlier point. What is his popularity rating among Democrats? It's got to be zero.
It's like close, right? It's too close to zero.

Speaker 2 How do you let someone like?

Speaker 2 Actually, we like this guy. It's like, no, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, I don't think so. And the other thing is it goes back to my

Speaker 2 you have to have a theory of the case of what happened to Elon. And if your theory is mine, which is his brain has been broken by the internet, he's not capable.
Like, he's deep in poster brain. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's still like retweeting, again, Ian, like, like random white nationalists.

Speaker 2 He's too far lost, I feel like, at this point. It would be pretty funny, though, if he does the opposite and starts retweeting, like, lib posters, like the Krassensteins.

Speaker 2 Like, all of a sudden, Elon's.

Speaker 2 He would be kind of retweeting the Krassensteins. He just adjusts his own algorithm.
Like, oh, my God, he and Rokan are hanging out.

Speaker 2 Did we miss?

Speaker 2 I'm I'm going through to see if there are any other side plots and I pulled up Drudge this is this is a great day for Drudge yeah I'm just gonna read a couple of the headlines if you want to weigh in on any of them sure Musk says Republicans should side with him because Trump will die first

Speaker 2 we've got here Russia offers Musk asylum did they really apparently

Speaker 2 haven't seen that one

Speaker 2 let's see Trump's hints to Musk drug use banning to Port Elon we covered that oh the Sergio Gore. There's a picture of Sergio Gore.

Speaker 2 People don't know him, he's this super dork dweeb that used to work for Rand Paul. And his picture is on

Speaker 2 Drudge right now, doing the raised fist, because apparently...

Speaker 2 He started.

Speaker 2 Apparently, Sergio Gore started this. So the backstory.

Speaker 2 He was like a guy that when I would go to parties in D.C.

Speaker 2 like 13 years ago, he would be like in the corner, like being very weird, like hoping girls could talk to him while he's looked at his Blackberry.

Speaker 2 Now he's like like an incredible power broker in Trump's White House.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so he basically, the backstory is that he killed the NASA administrator job, and that was an Elon guy, and he did it because he showed Donald Trump that the guy had donated to Democrats, and Trump didn't like that.

Speaker 2 And then Elon flipped out over that, and that's what precipitated all this. So Sergio Gore started all this, apparently.
That is wild.

Speaker 2 All right, two other Trump-related stories before we get to the Commerce Secretary closing segment.

Speaker 2 Reagan National Airport will close. Okay, this is fucking...
I'm mad about this one. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 It will close during the president's birthday bash slash the military parade. We're closing down Reagan National Airport.
I'm supposed to fly out of Reagan that day. No.
Yes. I'm supposed to go.

Speaker 2 I thought you were pissed out about it on principle. You're pissed out of it personally.

Speaker 2 Personal inconvenience. You got to go to Dulles now.
That's your final straw with Trump.

Speaker 2 How dare you send me to Dulles? No, I'm supposed to go to Fenway with my little kid for a baseball game, and it's going to get fucked by Trump, motherfucker.

Speaker 2 It's just ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 Any other president who would do this shit, I mean, it would be like a scandal of epic proportions. Closing the airport, $40 million on a parade that's going to tear up D.C.
streets. It's nutty.

Speaker 2 It's totally insane. He's not a fucking king.
That's why they're having no kings rallies that day. People should go June 14th to a hundred years ago.

Speaker 2 We got to discuss how we're going to cover it as a site.

Speaker 2 I'm going to be in New Orleans with the protesters. Okay.

Speaker 2 Maybe go live. Yeah, sure.
Nobody's invited me to speak yet, but we'll see.

Speaker 2 I might just take a ball hard.

Speaker 2 My other aside thing, I mentioned this before we came, and you're less excited about this than me, so maybe I'll just do it.

Speaker 2 But Trump did a bleat this morning about how Jerome Powell should cut rates again. But a very direct call for him to cut rates.
Europe's already cut. We should cut.
We need to. It'll be a big boom.

Speaker 2 And this is going to a bad place. And I think that my reasoning here is that,

Speaker 2 yeah, Trump does this stuff a lot.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of bluster and all this, but he's in a pickle where with this bill and all the trillions that are going to debt, like interest rates are going to be high his whole presidency.

Speaker 2 Like, that's just true.

Speaker 2 And so I do think that eventually this is going to come to a head. And like these guys could cut rates a little bit, and it probably wouldn't matter that much, actually.

Speaker 2 And that gets into kind of econ dork stuff. Oh, yeah.
And that's the reason to not cut rates is you want an arrow in the quiver, right? Right. When you're going to need it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so I just think that like the whole, and when you listen to like my buddy Joe Weisenthal and the oddbots, but like all these econ dorks, like the worst case scenario essentially is like Trump getting rid of Powell just

Speaker 2 because of how that would roil the markets and what the downstream effects would be. And I just like that feels to me like a little more likely today than yesterday, I guess that's all I'm saying.

Speaker 2 Yes, maybe. I mean, he's always been deeply frustrated with Powell when he makes it publicly known.

Speaker 2 There was a recent Supreme Court case that seemed to suggest that they would stand up the independence of the Fed, but you don't know until you don't know, right?

Speaker 2 And like, who knows what Trump's capable of if he gets mad or if the economy goes south. I think that's what, you know, this is,

Speaker 2 we don't appreciate this part enough. And this is what I think, you know, even with all the must-drum, it's like, this is the shit that's happening when things are relatively stable.
Right.

Speaker 2 That's the scary part for me. It's like, things are not bad.
I mean, if they are bad, it's because Trump made them bad himself.

Speaker 2 So it's not like, but when things do get bad, and they get bad in every presidential.

Speaker 2 There's no really external force, like new thing, you know, and like the Russia invasion, like some of the stuff happening in the middle of the day. All that stuff was already happening.

Speaker 2 All the Liberation Day stuff was of his own making, and then he backed off of it, right?

Speaker 2 But when things do get bad, and they will because that's just how it works, like, then we don't really know what Trump is going to do and what he's capable of.

Speaker 2 And so while it seems incredibly dramatic and off the rails right now, and it is, I'm like a little bit anxious, a little bit, really anxious for what happens when it, when the external stuff is

Speaker 2 more rickety. Like, obviously, COVID and all that was really bad.
But like, when COVID hit, and like, that was, you know, the big crisis of his first term,

Speaker 2 things are pretty good. I mean like the Trump part, the drama, the craziness, his behavior.
Imagine getting impeached before COVID. Yeah, but I just mean like geopolitically and economically.

Speaker 2 It's really what I mean. Like, like there, like, there were not like, you know, huge disruptions overseas.
There hadn't been a terrorist attack. Economically, we were pretty stable hit, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like, things are much more rickety now than then, I guess is my point. Just like the U.S.
economy is way more rickety than it was in 2019.

Speaker 2 The global environment, like there are a lot more hot spots, a lot more bullshit happening than there was back then. So anyway, I'm with you.

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Speaker 2 All right, I'm looking directly into the camera for the YouTube viewers. The final segment.
The Commerce Secretary

Speaker 2 was over on the Hill this week, and I want to play a couple clips from it. You know that he's my favorite member of the cabinet.
Is he?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 in some ways, we'll talk about that. And before I name him, I want to go to Senator Jerry Moran from Canada.
You forget Senator Jerry Moran exists, by the way.

Speaker 2 There's way more forgetting than that. There are these whole category of Republican senators from the before times who just don't want you to remember that they exist.

Speaker 2 Name both senators from Idaho. Reese and Crapo.
Oh, damn, dude, you're good.

Speaker 2 Of course. I'm a fucking professional political podcast host.
Okay.

Speaker 2 All right. The senator from Kansas addressing the Commerce Secretary.
Barry, please play that.

Speaker 27 Secretary Nutnick, thank you for your testimony today. I look forward to working closely with you and throughout the appropriations process.

Speaker 2 Barry, play that one more time.

Speaker 27 Secretary Nutnick, thank you for your testimony today. I look forward to working closely with you and throughout the appropriations process.

Speaker 2 He does it twice. Nutlick.

Speaker 2 Senator Nutlick, I got to tell you, Commerce, Secretary Nutlick, I got to tell you, Sam, it has been extremely challenging for me to not say Nutlick on MSNBC.

Speaker 2 And I have to like sit there when I'm on Deadline White House.

Speaker 2 No, I haven't yet.

Speaker 2 But like when I think it was earlier this week that Nicole started playing some clips and I'm sitting in the chair and I'm just in my head, I'm going, Lutnick, Lutnick, don't do Nutlick.

Speaker 2 Lutnick, Lutnick, Lutnick. I have to talk to myself in my brain to make sure I don't call him Howard Nutlick on MSNBC.
I think Jerry Moran's giving me some cover, though, now, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 So it might be happening.

Speaker 2 I think it might be happening.

Speaker 2 All right, I want to play a couple of the other clips of Nutlick on the Hill.

Speaker 2 It was an exchange between him and my senator from Louisiana, John Kennedy, and another exchange with Madeline Dean, a congresswoman from Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 If Vietnam, for example, came to you tomorrow and said, okay, Mr. Secretary, you win.

Speaker 2 We're going to remove all tariffs

Speaker 2 and all trade barriers.

Speaker 2 Would the United States please do the same? Would you accept that deal?

Speaker 11 Absolutely not.

Speaker 2 Absolutely not.

Speaker 28 That would be the silliest thing we could do.

Speaker 29 What's the tariff on bananas? Americans, by the way, love bananas.

Speaker 2 We buy billions of them a year.

Speaker 29 I love bananas. What's the tariff on bananas?

Speaker 28 The tariff on bananas would be representative of the countries that produce them.

Speaker 29 And what's that tariff?

Speaker 28 Generally, 10 percent.

Speaker 29 Correct, 10

Speaker 29 Walmart has already increased the cost of bananas by 8%.

Speaker 28 There is no uncertainty if you build in America and you produce your product in America, it will be no tariff.

Speaker 26 We can't go

Speaker 28 building in America and paying no tariffs.

Speaker 7 Very, very clearly

Speaker 13 built bananas in America.

Speaker 2 This man ran Kendra Fitzgerald, Howard Nutlick. What is happening?

Speaker 2 He wants us to build banana groves? Where? I don't think he knows what he's talking about, but I think he does.

Speaker 2 His belief is that if he can do it with enough like infectious enthusiasm, this bullshit his way through it. It's really amazing.
The banana thing is too funny.

Speaker 2 And yes, I know you love bananas, but... Banana daiquiris really are my favorite.

Speaker 2 My dad is, I don't think anyone loves bananas more than my dad. Really? I'll tell you something.
My dad has had a banana every morning with his cereal for every day for like some of that.

Speaker 2 No, we calculated once. Does he cut it up and put it in the cereal? Cut it up, slice it in the cereal.

Speaker 2 And this is no joke. We calculated this once.
We discovered that if you do the math, he's had something like 17,000 bananas over the course of his life. What's your dad's first name? Stephen.

Speaker 2 Stephen Stein? Yeah. Just every morning gets out his little knife because cuts them out.
Does he like them green or brown? Oh, that's a good question.

Speaker 2 Whenever he comes to see me in D.C., he's always calling me up. He's like, get me the bananas.
Buy me them where they're still green, but they're starting to turn yellow. Okay.

Speaker 2 He likes them a very specific. Me and Steve, same.
That's how I like my bananas as well. I like mine overripe a little bit.
Oh, no. I like closer to green.
Oh, not too much.

Speaker 2 I want totally ripe for the daiquiri because you want it nice and sweet. Yeah,

Speaker 2 you want sugary ripeness, yeah. Yeah, if I'm going to eat a banana whole, I want it green and shit.
17,000 bananas is a lot of bananas. I think that's just too bad.

Speaker 2 Think about how much you would have lost in your inheritance if he was paying 8% more on a banana every day for $17,000. Why do we got to grow bananas in America?

Speaker 2 The one other thing I want to talk about about that Nutlick exchange was John Kennedy, who's a fucking moron. Yeah, but he got him there.
Yeah, he got him. Okay, so

Speaker 2 this is my point. There are two kinds of stupid in this world There's Howard Luttnick stupid

Speaker 2 but then there's Kennedy who like thinks he's smart and it thinks he's making this point that it's like hey, what why don't you guys try to get it down to zero? I'm a free trader.

Speaker 2 We're the free trade party. Remember, he's trying to nudge

Speaker 2 but I think that he's trying I in by his own words later, he says I'm trying to nudge them towards my policy goals. And it's like, bro, you signed up for this.

Speaker 2 They want the tariffs. Making a pure free trade argument against Nutlick is not going to convince anybody.

Speaker 2 Trump is not going to be convinced by that.

Speaker 2 And he has still bought these guys, the free market, the Wall Street Journal Republican types, have convinced themselves that Trump is one of them and that there's a deal coming on the back end that's going to be good for the economy.

Speaker 2 It's like, no, this is the guy that bankrupted the casinos. He loves the the word tariff.
That's what's happening.

Speaker 2 And Kennedy has like fooled himself, I think, into thinking that this is going to work.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe. I think he was just trying to expose the ridiculousness of their arguments, right? And he's like, if you guys really believe in reciprocity, then surely you would believe in reciprocity.

Speaker 2 And Ludlake's like, no, never, no way.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I mean, they're both a little bit delusional in their own separate ways. And I guess to your point, you know, now that Musk is gone, I mean, he doesn't like the tariffs too.

Speaker 2 You now basically have, you know, Peter Navarro,

Speaker 2 Luttnick, who is just going to do whatever the hell Trump tells him to do, and Trump and Vance basically making policy.

Speaker 2 And it's just like, this is the guardrails for the free trade crowd are not there anymore. I think Elon was a guardrail? Well, to a degree, yeah.

Speaker 2 Whew. All right.
That's a good podcast. Did you have any smokes yesterday?

Speaker 2 Jordan, you got grinding so high that you felt like... Kind of needed one at the end of it.
All right. Any final thoughts for the people taking them into the weekend? I don't know.
Good luck.

Speaker 2 It's rough out there. I'm excited to see what drama comes today, but like then I step back and I'm like, we're living through something really dark.
Let's close with that because

Speaker 2 there's this little

Speaker 2 person inside me, my little Jiminy cricket. He still exists.
Oh, dude, he's going to

Speaker 2 be louder and louder every year. So I get older.
I'm getting soft.

Speaker 2 And yesterday, Jiminy was cricketing it in my ear, you know?

Speaker 2 And he's like, you shouldn't enjoy this this much. Like, things are still really bad.
Trump's still going to be president for three and a half years. Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 And I just, I kept, I kept like muzzling Jiminy. Shut up.
Being like, shut the fuck up. Let me have a little joy.
Actually,

Speaker 2 let us have a little joy. And so I would like to tell the listeners to do that.
Have a little enjoy. I know.
And we do that a lot. You and I, especially.

Speaker 2 We laugh at it, and it's good to laugh. I think it's important to laugh.
And it's important to say, what the fuck? This is ridiculous. And that's fine.
I'm not saying you should feel bad doing that.

Speaker 2 And then I sit back and I'm like, these guys are running shit. Yeah.
It's also important to protest. And that's why we'll be doing that today.
Hey, good luck today. Thank you.
I'm excited for that.

Speaker 2 It's going to be rowdy. I'm nervous.
Yeah, you should be. Me and John love it with Longwell.
I think that we'll be posting that either on the Love It or Leave It feed or right here.

Speaker 2 People can check it out. Maybe bits on both.
It might be NC17, I guess, is all I'm going to say. It might be NC17.

Speaker 2 There'll be some very serious parts, and then there'll be some parts that are a little yucky for people. So enjoy.
Everybody else, we'll see you back here Monday. We're working on the sched.

Speaker 2 We might have a little change of sked. It might not be Bill Crystal Monday.
It might be. So, you know, I want to leave you on your toes this weekend.
Enjoy the feud. We'll see you back here Monday.

Speaker 13 Peace.

Speaker 30 So, what's up with these bony ass niggas trying to see Compton? They hinder streak and hate me. Fuck them, all in the mama.
How many ops you really got?

Speaker 30 I mean, it's too many options I'm finna pass on this body I'm John Stockton

Speaker 30 Beat your ass and hide the Bible with God watching Sometimes you gotta pop out and show niggas Certify boogie man. I'm the one that up to score with him Walk him down whole time.

Speaker 30 I know he got some hoe in him Pole on him extort shit Willie the flow on him say Drake I hear you like I'm young You better not have a go to sell block one To any bitch that talk to him and they in love Just make sure you hide your little sister from him.

Speaker 30 They tell me Chubb's the only one that get your hammy downs And party at the party playing with his nose now. And Baka got a weird case.
Why is he around? Certified lover boys, certified pedophiles.

Speaker 2 That fuck em up.

Speaker 30 I'ma do my stuff. Why you trolling like a bitch? Ain't you tired? Tryna strike a chord and it's probably a minor.

Speaker 30 They not like us. They not like us.
They not like us.

Speaker 30 They not like us.

Speaker 2 The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 30 They not like us.

Speaker 2 They not like us.

Speaker 11 This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culturists with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

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