S2 Ep1002: Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov: The Cheap Whore at the White House

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Speaker 17 Hello and welcome to the Bullwood Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Speaker 17 Could not be more delighted to be here today with the co-hosts of the Raging Moderates podcast, Scott Galloway is professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, also host of the Prof G-Pod and co-host of Pivot with Kara Swisher.

Speaker 17 It's the only man the pods more than I do out in the world. And you know, Jessica Tarlov from the clips on Twitter.
She's the co-host of the five on Fox News.

Speaker 17 And I discovered when I was on y'all's show that you're actually Jesse. So we're friends now, so I can call you Jesse.

Speaker 17 They didn't want their prime Jesse to be dunked on by a girl, Jesse. So they made you

Speaker 17 kind of gave you some like gender confirming name care over at Fox, I guess. Oh my God.

Speaker 20 That's a good argument to make to be like, you guys are against this. And yet, look what you have done to me, one of your liberal prize possessions.

Speaker 20 No, boy, Jesse and girl Jesse is just too confusing. Though someone, another host on Fox called him Jessica Waters one day.

Speaker 17 And he flipped out like on air. It was very funny.
I like that. I'm going to keep that one in my back pocket.
I want to start with, you guys,

Speaker 17 I'm very jealous of your brand of the podcast, The Raging Moderates. And

Speaker 17 I want to know who gets the credit for it. Scott.

Speaker 18 Oh, Jess. I don't like to take credit for things.
I appreciate that.

Speaker 17 Oh, go on.

Speaker 18 No, no, no, really. I'm not comfortable talking about me.
Yes, Tim, it was entirely my idea. There were forces against the idea.
That was an easy one.

Speaker 18 And what's interesting is now every person from CNN has an idea for something called the Normies or something. So anyways, it's all about the brand.

Speaker 18 Although, people say we're more raging than we are moderate. That's hi.

Speaker 17 Maybe, yeah, that's fair. But regardless, it's a good brand, actually.

Speaker 17 And, you know, if you guys ever collapse or if you have a fight between the two of you and you need to kind of sell off some of your pod,

Speaker 17 you know, pod assets on the market, I might steal it from you.

Speaker 18 It's unlikely. Jess is way too easygoing.
It would happen. At Pivot, that could happen.
It almost happens every 48 hours. Jess is too easygoing and too mature.

Speaker 17 Okay. Well, I'm jealous and

Speaker 17 we'll figure something something out. But I figured because I'm so jealous of the brand that maybe a good way to start, because we're almost two months in now.
I know it feels like isn't that crazy?

Speaker 20 I feel like the midterm should be tomorrow. The same.

Speaker 17 I can watch myself age on YouTube now. It's really distressing that I get to see a daily, hourly wrinkle depth grow.

Speaker 17 But I thought maybe I would just, you know, give you guys a chance to talk about what has made you rage the most in the first two months of Trump 2.0. Jesse, why don't you go first?

Speaker 20 So I appreciate the question, especially because it highlights our fantastic brand.

Speaker 17 So anytime the word rages, I'm here for brand awareness, branding.

Speaker 17 That's all we're doing here. Totally.

Speaker 20 We're A-B testing this.

Speaker 20 So

Speaker 20 I kind of have two answers. The first answer is that

Speaker 20 The Trump administration is implementing Project 2025, and

Speaker 17 we

Speaker 20 were told that that was what was going to happen. And then they did everything that they could to say it wasn't going to happen.

Speaker 20 And then it's so clearly happening that the guy who actually created Project 2025, who was pushed to the side when the press got so bad about it before the election, is now back saying this is beyond his wildest imagination.

Speaker 20 Like they are doing such a good job subverting Congress, destroying our institutions, firing people, expanding executive power. You know, the Department of Education,

Speaker 20 it has to to be technically an act of Congress to get rid of it, but like, who knows at this point, right?

Speaker 20 If you have judges' orders that you're openly flouting and then saying, and we're going to continue to do it, sky's the limit, essentially, in this.

Speaker 20 And so I'm most mad about, or most ragey, about what's actually gone on in the practical.

Speaker 17 Are you rageous about what's happened, not at the fact that they got away with the fact that they pretended like they weren't going to do projects? Well, that's 2025.

Speaker 17 Because that's where listening to you, that's where my rage goes.

Speaker 20 That's the second part of this. And that's a,

Speaker 20 I don't want to just call it a messaging problem because I feel like that reduces it to something as simple as if we had just, you know, like held Project 2025 up in better light and said, like, oh, look at this thing.

Speaker 20 It's actually going to happen. That it all would have been fine and people would have realized the stakes on November 5th.
And, you know, it would be President Kamala.

Speaker 20 But I'm really ragey about how much capital has been blown by the left, myself included in this, kind of harping on the wrong things and then losing people when the stuff that really mattered, that you really needed to get across, like that this was going to happen.

Speaker 20 And this is what these people think of public service and of government. And they're not there to help you.
They are actually there to hurt you. And that's my biggest source of frustration.

Speaker 20 And it's a very democratic thing. in terms of the part the political party, not democracy, or a large thing to do, that we're always self-flagellating, which Republicans never do.

Speaker 20 They're just like, well, I'm moving on to the next thing. But I live in this world of just focusing on what we could have done better or what I could have done better.

Speaker 20 And that's my big frustration that it didn't do better.

Speaker 17 It's an unbelievable amount of self-flagellation

Speaker 17 that I've learned as an immigrant to the Democratic side, ostensibly. Yeah,

Speaker 17 it's unbelievable. Yeah.
You're like, get on with it. And we're Donald Trump was just like, I won.
I didn't lose, actually. And I'm going to keep doing all the same shit I did.

Speaker 17 And nobody was like, have you, have you thought? Have you reflected on what the voters told you? Have you listened more to the suburban moms going to Pilates and going to yoga class?

Speaker 17 Maybe you should have listened to them more. There was none of that on Fox in 2021.

Speaker 20 No, he's like, and I will protect you. And I mean that in the most violent way.
And it's like, oh, well, actually, no, I'm going to vote for you this time. So, yeah.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 17 That has my blood boiling. That's at a six and a half for me, but that's pretty good.
Yeah, six and a half.

Speaker 17 There's a lot of angry shit out there. Scott, what's making you rage?

Speaker 18 I'm raging about wealthy progressives who clutch their pearls and at dinner parties talk about how outrageous the activities of the administration, usurping or blowing by every branch of government, whether it's we were hoping Congress would get in the way or at least be able to slow things down.

Speaker 18 That's why we have checks and balances. The administration has just usurped congressional power.
And then we thought, well, at least we have the courts.

Speaker 18 And it appears as of a few days ago, they they are now blatantly ignoring court orders. But that's not what has me raging.

Speaker 18 What has me raging is that I believe there's a conspiracy between the most powerful among us, who are the richest among us, who pretend to give a flying fuck about the violation of the Constitution and the slow burn erosion of our democracy, but don't really speak out.

Speaker 18 don't really contact our representatives, don't really risk their own reputations, don't

Speaker 18 protest, don't call their senator. Don't use their platforms to really aggressively punch back because here's the bottom line.
We're getting richer. And that's the conspiracy.

Speaker 18 The conspiracy is the following that rights are portable and rich people have figured that out. Everyone in my life will have access to mesophestron.

Speaker 18 If anybody decides to weaponize the DOJ, I can lawyer up like no tomorrow.

Speaker 18 If things get really scary and they start rounding up people as they did 80 years ago, I can put a USB with Bitcoin, shove it up my ass, and peace out to Dubai.

Speaker 17 Dubai is where you're going? I don't know. Madrid?

Speaker 18 That's a little different. Milan, you name it.

Speaker 18 But the bottom line is, rights and democracy have become purely a function of how wealthy you are in America. The wealthiest 1%

Speaker 18 are protected by the law, but they're not bound by it. And the bottom 99 are bound by the law, but not protected by it.
And that in itself is incredibly upsetting.

Speaker 18 But the most powerful in the United States, which is disproportionately populated with progressives or people who claim to be progressives, are kind of stop-stop at hurt so good because they've uploaded their W-2s into ChatGPT.

Speaker 18 And if the Trump tax cuts go through, they're going to get richer. And so there's this unhealthy conspiracy where the wealthiest among us realize our rights are entirely portable.

Speaker 18 Our rights are not under threat. I could be in deepest, darkest red Mississippi.
And if someone I care about gets pregnant, no problem figuring it out. None whatsoever.

Speaker 18 Rights in America are now a function of money. And the whole point of the Constitution, the whole point of a democracy is that it's primarily there to protect the lower 50.

Speaker 18 Because the top one have always figured out a way to have rights, and it's never been more true. So what am I raging about?

Speaker 18 A bunch of very wealthy progressives who all claim that they're really upset about what's going on and aren't doing a fucking thing.

Speaker 18 but bitching and moaning to their friends under their breath because they're getting richer and they know they are not truly under threat.

Speaker 17 Everybody you rage the most at the people that are like the nearest to you, right? The family feud is going to be the most potent, right?

Speaker 17 And so you're nearer to mine because mine are the Wall Street Journal Republican wealthy who are actually, you know, more complicit than the folks you're talking about, maybe less hypocritical, but more complicit.

Speaker 17 Every rich person I talk to, I ask this question, Scott. So I'm going to pose it to you.

Speaker 17 I'm hoping that someone will say something that will break the lock in my brain that is preventing me from understanding this. But like,

Speaker 17 thinking particularly about the CEO class, Trump has been such a dumb bet. bet.
So I'm not talking here about the wealthy progressives that voted against Kamlo, but haven't objected enough.

Speaker 17 I'm also mad at them. I'm talking about the people that actually either went for Trump or just sat it out,

Speaker 17 didn't really use their power and influence one way or the other. And

Speaker 17 this was such an obvious risk.

Speaker 17 Like the downside risk of him, I get the text cuts, but the downside risk of him, like who the fuck knows what's going to happen with these trade wars?

Speaker 17 Who knows what's going to happen in global affairs with somebody as erratic as him? Who knows what's going to happen when he's 82 years old and might want to hold on to power?

Speaker 17 Like, don't rich people want stability? Didn't they all make money under Joe Biden? I understand why somebody who is pissed about their grocery prices might have flipped.

Speaker 17 I don't understand why a rich person whose investment fund like doubled during the Biden era was willing to take a flyer on Trump. So can you explain that one to me?

Speaker 18 I think the math that's happening subconsciously is the following. If you're part of the fastest growing demographic class in America, it's not Latinos, it's not seniors, it's billionaires.

Speaker 18 We've gone from 500 to 2,500 in the last 10 years. You're probably in your 60s.
Yeah, climate change is a problem, but it's a problem for your grandkids.

Speaker 18 Yeah, having a move towards kleptocracy that creates a less competitive economy where nations do workarounds in terms of supply chain, yeah, that impacts probably the next CEO or the next CEO.

Speaker 18 If you're in your 60s and you're rich, you think you've tapped into just the easiest way to get richer, and that is this guy is pay-for-play.

Speaker 18 If I know someone who knows someone and

Speaker 18 I can donate a million bucks to campaign and get a lunch at Mar-a-Lago, that day he announces, this happened, that Ripple will be one of the cryptocurrencies included in the new strategic Bitcoin treasury program.

Speaker 18 And Ripple

Speaker 18 surges in value. So, oh, I'm the head of a tech company.
Give him a million bucks, be paraded around like some fucking whore for his benefit.

Speaker 18 This is the cheapest, easiest way to get rich over the next five or 10, maybe even 20 years. And the long-term damage to our democracy, just as climate change, probably will not affect us.

Speaker 18 It may, but it probably won't. Who's really going to get screwed is our kids.
And my generation has proven that we're just not long-term thinkers.

Speaker 18 That when you see everyone else getting really rich really fast, the downward spiral is fuck it. I'm going to get really rich really fast.
I'm going to play the game. The game is cheap.

Speaker 18 The most disappointing thing about our elected representatives, including the president, is not that they're whores. We've known that for a long time.
It's that they're such cheap whores.

Speaker 18 And the wealthy incorporations have figured out for a small amount of money, they can weaponize government to their benefit.

Speaker 18 So I just think it's a lot of short-term thinking, as evidenced by my generation, which continues to vote themselves more money, continue to ignore the long-term effects of climate change, continue to see this oncoming train wreck of deficits, because, baby, I'm in the club doing rails of cocaine with champagne.

Speaker 18 And young people, you can give me your credit card, but sorry, boss, I'm the one in the club. You're outside.
You'll have to pay my bill when I die.

Speaker 18 But until then, the credit card keeps getting approved and going through.

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Speaker 17 The economy thing, I want to push back just because, like, even in short-term thinking, like, their argument is kind of failing already.

Speaker 17 I mean, the amount of wealth that has been lost by those rich guys that were sitting in front of the cabinet at the inauguration in the first two months, just in the stock market, is pretty astonishing.

Speaker 17 Like, what is your sense for kind of the short-term, you know, economic situation we're looking at right now?

Speaker 18 Well, first off, I think most of those guys voted for Harris.

Speaker 18 I don't think they were excited about showing up

Speaker 18 at the inauguration, but they decided under the auspices of they should never use the term stakeholder value again because they clearly don't care about the long-term health of America or the Constitution or some of the people in their organization that aren't rich.

Speaker 18 They've decided, and they can make the argument, that for shareholder value, it's worth it for them to show up in a tie, say he's handsome, give a million dollars to the inauguration committee, let him put out a fake press release that is totally fabricated saying we're spending an additional $400 billion on cloud-based infrastructure in Texas, which they were always planning to spend somewhere else, but at least repackage it and pretend

Speaker 18 it's his doing. They've done the math that for short-term shareholder value, this is the way to go.
And the reality, in terms of the marketplace, we would like to think the market's crashing.

Speaker 18 It's not. It's back to pre-Trump levels.
We've done away with the Trump bump, but inflation, while sticky, does not seem to be skyrocketing. The markets are still at historic highs.

Speaker 18 Yeah, they're not at their all-time highs, but it's not like they've crashed. I wouldn't even say they've corrected.

Speaker 18 They've just come down a bit so right now all the all the catastrophizing around the economy i think it could happen i think it may happen but so far it would be unfair to say that the economy is crashing and there's evidence that these policies i mean economic history shows these policies don't work But the loss in capital here, we've lost $5 trillion in market cap, but we're just back to where we were six months ago, and we're still up year on year.

Speaker 18 So things are bad, but they've been a lot worse before. before.

Speaker 17 Jesse, that takes me kind of to the political question on this, because I agree with Scott's assessment, right? So it's not like this is an economic calamity right now.

Speaker 17 It is true, though, that the Republicans successfully ran on kind of annoying inflation, you know, staying high, that the economy

Speaker 17 wasn't running on dull cylinders under sleepy Joe Biden or whatever.

Speaker 17 Like they successfully made the economic argument, and all the indicators have gotten worse in the next two months, despite all of the horrors of the Project 2025 and all the stuff that gets us really upset about democracy.

Speaker 17 I mean, like, is this the play, I guess, for Democrats to focus on economic matters?

Speaker 17 How do you think they should take that on?

Speaker 20 I think so. I mean, the most important color in the election was the color green, right?

Speaker 20 That was the lesson in all of this when you look at how many black and Latino voters switched the way that they vote, not. in the billionaire class, but regular 40-somethings, right?

Speaker 20 30 and 40-somethings.

Speaker 20 Gen Z's coming into this thinking that if you have, you know, a big, bad businessman, he's going to make my life financially better, even if I find him to be repellent, which has always been the play with Trump, right?

Speaker 20 That people say, I don't like who he is. Don't listen to what he's saying.
I don't think about women this way. I don't think about minorities this way.

Speaker 20 But he obviously knows what he's doing because he's run this big business that's had like 40,000 bankruptcies or whatever. But yes, this is, to my mind, basically the only play.

Speaker 20 I think there will be some folks who get animated about what happens on the immigration front.

Speaker 17 And that would have been my rage rant if you if you yelled at me. But that I agree with you.
It's probably not the most politically salient. It's just it's just most personally enraging.

Speaker 20 Yes, that one for me. I mean, I had a due process fight yesterday on the five that made my head spin.

Speaker 17 Was there a lot of respect for due process around the table yesterday? I didn't catch the five yesterday. I apologize.

Speaker 20 Damn, how could you not at least watch the day before we come on your podcast?

Speaker 17 I'm sorry.

Speaker 20 No, not a lot of respect for it if it's for certain kind of people. And that's always been the standard, right? You know, if it's me, it's a huge problem.

Speaker 20 If it's you and you have tattoos and are, you know, seeking asylum, then I don't really care. And

Speaker 20 that's obviously frustrating. And I think that that will animate some people when they go and vote again.

Speaker 20 They say, oh, you told me that you were just getting out convicted criminals who had crossed the border illegally. No, actually, you're happy to get rid of anyone who's here undocumented.

Speaker 20 And I think that might be a fine position for for hardcore MAGA folks. And they should just own it.
Tom Homan should just say, you know what, on the campaign trail, we lied to you.

Speaker 20 And we said that this was about getting the most dangerous out. And it's actually about getting everybody out who's not here legally.
And I'm going to go about my business doing that.

Speaker 20 I would respect that a lot more and also have to do less research for every show, which I'm looking for in life. But

Speaker 20 on the economy front, it seems like, and I've looked at a ton of message testing for this, and I know you guys do as well.

Speaker 20 And Sarah is constantly in focus groups and looking at the data, the messaging that works is they're going for tax cuts while they take away your Medicaid.

Speaker 20 That's it. It's pretty plain and simple.
Like they're in this for themselves.

Speaker 20 They promised you that they weren't going to touch their entitlements, but actually $880 billion is going to come out of these programs. And that's kind of it.

Speaker 20 And you put a neat and tidy bow around it. You have posters with it constantly.
Hakeem Jeffries has already started doing this. And I think that's the only way that you get through it.

Speaker 20 You talk about how tariffs are a tax, though there are people on the Democratic side that are pushing back on this. There are protectionist Democrats.

Speaker 20 I thought actually, I don't know if anyone else listened to Steve Vannon on Gavin Newsom's podcast,

Speaker 20 but he makes a pretty strong argument for it.

Speaker 20 And he's talking about Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders and Roe Khanna, you know, people who are hardcore blue Dems, right, that think that there have to be some protectionist tariffs to keep American American industry alive and to raise wages, which we're all for in this.

Speaker 20 So, yeah, I think the economy is the only way that you're going to be able to go. But Scott and I were talking about this yesterday on Raging Moderates.

Speaker 20 Like, it feels so shitty to have to think that you need to root against the country, right? That you want the stock market to go lower.

Speaker 20 You want people to have higher grocery prices so that they realize that the people in charge are just out for themselves.

Speaker 20 And I, as perhaps too emotional as a person, person, I have high doses of estrogen and maybe some post-party.

Speaker 17 I don't think it's about your femininity. I think it's the fact that you

Speaker 17 come from the progressive. Yeah, it's a progressive background.
As a former Republican, this is a lot of people. You're like, whatever.

Speaker 17 Yeah. It seems like a problem for your therapist.

Speaker 20 Your eggs should be a million dollars.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 7 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny, infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive motive to destroy them.

Speaker 10 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 13 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 2 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 9 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 14 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 5 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

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Speaker 17 This is a totally aside, but you started talking about the message testing. I have the two of you, so I might as well get your expertise on this.

Speaker 17 My most unpopular opinion in campaign consulting circles is I think campaign message testing is mostly bullshit.

Speaker 17 And I'm curious your take on this.

Speaker 17 I just think that I've sat through enough of these things where I think there's value in obviously looking at data, focus grouping, but like there, you have this thing where we play an ad, you play five ads for people who are sitting there playing video games, and then they like press up or down on the, on the thing about whether they like it or not or whether it moved them or not.

Speaker 17 And then it's like, A, do these people even know what they want?

Speaker 17 I don't think consumers even actually know what they are, what convinces them and what doesn't. And two, you know, one was plus 8.2 and one was plus 7.4.
And it's like, we got to go with the plus 8.

Speaker 17 Where do you fall on that?

Speaker 20 I think.

Speaker 20 And I worked in this world, so I'm a little bit defensive, I guess, that I'm probably still having meals on the money that I made in it.

Speaker 20 But I think what message testing can do that is important is it can get you away from third rails.

Speaker 20 Like if anyone had done message testing or paid attention to like, hey, don't talk about like trans rights constantly, right?

Speaker 20 Where you're on the campaign trail, it can help you with that or to know people are feeling economically uncertain. Now go out there.
and say something meaningful in that space.

Speaker 20 But I do think that you're right. Like the commonsensical, which it's so weird to me that that's a real word.
Anytime anyone says it, I think that they're saying it wrong, but yet it's real.

Speaker 20 Anyway, if you're talking like a common sense person, which is frankly why people are into AOC right now, they're still not into her politics, but she just talks like someone who gives a fuck, right?

Speaker 20 And believes in

Speaker 20 people

Speaker 20 and wanting them to do better and knows what the government is doing, etc. So yeah, you just need to go out there and kind of sound like a human being.

Speaker 20 But the message testing does help you know where you should not be going.

Speaker 20 And frankly, we would have done a lot better in the election, I think, if we had paid attention to like the big flashing red lights that did come out of these focus groups because they were all saying, stop being preachy.

Speaker 20 You look down on me. You know, I want to be treated as an equal.

Speaker 17 Do I sound like the old guy, like Charles Barkley, going against analytics in sports when I say this? Or is there something here?

Speaker 18 The two of you are going to forget more about this than I'm going to know.

Speaker 17 But you do corporate. It's interesting.
Is there something that could be learned from the corporate side?

Speaker 18 Well, I'm technically a professor of brand strategy, and

Speaker 18 I don't understand the nuance of political messaging. What I would say is that first you have to understand the calm strategy of the other side.

Speaker 18 You have to empathize with the enemy such that you can respond. The enemy right now has developed a calm strategy that is straight out of the GRU, which is flooding the zone.

Speaker 18 And that is throw so many things at them. Some are true, some are not.
Some are, they know, ridiculous and will invoke an emotional reaction.

Speaker 18 to misdirect you away from the key points we should be focused on.

Speaker 18 And so the key is, all right, right, if you know they're deploying this flood the zone strategy and trying to create so much noise and such an emotional, sclerotic, hysterical reaction, which is how I would describe the democratic reaction right now, then the question is, all right, let's slow down and figure out how do you combat the flood the zone strategy or calm strategy.

Speaker 18 And the way you combat it is the following. You realize you don't need to respond to everything.
You don't need to cry or scream into Twitter or TikTok on every issue.

Speaker 18 You don't need to have a viewpoint on the gulf of cheaper eggs. You pick one or two key key issues that resonate with Americans.
You're disciplined. You're calm.
You're measured. You bring in experts.

Speaker 18 You bring in data. The two issues I'm focused on are one, surrendering

Speaker 18 to Putin over Ukraine for what is not a lot of money, $60 billion, 8% of our budget, the majority of which serves as stimulus back home, the majority of which goes to Red States.

Speaker 18 We are, one, taking out a third of Russia's kinetic power. Two, giving China pause before it invades Taiwan, knowing that a motivated army armed with Western technology is a formidable foe.

Speaker 18 Europe is a union again. NATO is out of a brain coma.
This is the best return on investment Americans have made in a generation, and we should continue to do it. That's an issue for me.

Speaker 18 And then that we are, in fact, about to ramp up the deficits by $800 billion a year to give the wealthy a tax cut. Those are the two issues that I'm focused on.

Speaker 18 I'm not interested in talking about whether a helicopter crash was a function of DEI, whether passports should have a third box or male and female. That is all a giant weapon of mass distraction.

Speaker 18 We should focus on the one or two things that are really important to Americans, be calm, be the adults in the room, and also just in general, move from being the party of indignance to the party of ideas.

Speaker 18 Start proposing big ideas, put them up for a vote. Even if they go down, say, all right, why wouldn't we raise minimum wage to $25 an hour?

Speaker 18 Why wouldn't we lower Medicare eligibility by two years a year for 30 years and have nationalized health care?

Speaker 18 Why wouldn't we have mandatory national service instead of just getting indignant and waiting, being outraged for other people, being outraged at the lack of outrage?

Speaker 18 We need to have a more focused, disciplined response. We need to be the party of ideas instead of the party of indignance and clutching our pearls all the goddamn time.

Speaker 17 That's a personal attack on me. The 800, um, uh, the 800 million.

Speaker 18 I just billion.

Speaker 17 I've made 800 billion. Sorry, thank you.
That's like the heritage number even.

Speaker 17 It's probably going to be way worse. The deficit increase that is going to, to, I think, yeah, that's, that's annual.

Speaker 18 Yeah. That's annual.
There's, I, the number I've seen, what have you seen, Tim? I've seen $5 trillion before additional deficit.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Four and a half to five over the course of the, but it's interesting that these tax cuts versus Trump tax cuts from the first term actually do not spread the wealth in the same way because that was a major talking point that they could hang on to, that there was at least something for the little guy, like a very tiny amount.

Speaker 17 Well, that's what I might add on the no tax on tips and all that stuff, which takes the number up even higher.

Speaker 20 This is

Speaker 20 one of my massive frustrations. And I get that it's a function of where I work, that I have to be so detail-oriented about every single thing that quote unquote sounds good.

Speaker 20 But the fact that no one talks about tax on tips the way Trump is doing it versus the way the Democrats do it kills me.

Speaker 20 Like, Trump has no limit to how much you can earn to still get no tax on tips, which means that you can be a hedge fund manager or a corporate lawyer and do your overtime as quote-unquote tips because there's no limit.

Speaker 20 I don't remember what Kamala's was-like $85,000 or something like that. So that's actually for people who are waiters or waitresses or have these jobs that are really dependent bartenders on tips.

Speaker 20 And they're talking about it like it's going to be some give back

Speaker 20 for the working class. And again, it's just for the cronies.
It's so frustrating to me.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 7 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 10 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 13 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 2 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 9 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 14 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 5 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 21 On eBay, every find has a story. Like if you're looking for a vintage band tea, not just a T,

Speaker 21 the band tee.

Speaker 17 You wore it everywhere.

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Speaker 17 We're going to do an ad test right now, just among the three of us, because

Speaker 17 this is the first real midterm ad I've seen so far. It's out this morning.

Speaker 17 Our friends at Vote Vets, we have an article about it in on the bulwark today, and I just want to play a clip for it for the two of you and have you react.

Speaker 18 I served in the military for over 33 years, just accepted a new position in the VA, come into the office, fire at my computer, and I come back and there's an email sitting there for me.

Speaker 20 I knew then. I knew what was coming.

Speaker 18 I have not had a single negative performance review in my 10 years.

Speaker 20 That feels like veterans are being personally attacked by Elon Musk.

Speaker 18 I did not put my life on the line for some tech bro billionaire from South Africa to come in here and try to destroy our country.

Speaker 17 Kind of goes on from there, but I'm wondering your thoughts.

Speaker 18 I think anytime you roll out veterans, it's a pretty powerful strategy. The only thing I would argue is that

Speaker 18 I think people have empathy, but I've thought the whole these good people are being fired argument is not our best argument because I think the majority of people in the private sector have experienced something similar.

Speaker 18 And the capitalism, quite frankly,

Speaker 18 I think a lot of moderates in the back of the head are like, welcome to the work week, boss. I received one of those emails when I was working at a car dealership for 20 years.

Speaker 18 And then somebody, a private equity firm came in and rolled up the car dealership, and I got one of those emails.

Speaker 18 One of the cruel truths of capitalism is on a regular basis, there's a lot of injustice in the labor force. This is kind of feel bad for me, I got fired.
It's not the foot I would lead with.

Speaker 18 It's that we're doing this in an incompetent way. I go after the wall of receipts.

Speaker 18 I would say that we're doing stupid things that will end up costing us more in the future, that they're not spending your money well, that the way they're going about this is incompetent.

Speaker 18 But going after the injustice and the emotional argument, I worry it falls flat because I think there's maybe incorrectly a perception that government employees have had it too soft for too long and that they're facing some of the harsh reality that the private sector faces every day.

Speaker 17 What about you, Jess?

Speaker 20 I'm not mad at Scott's analysis. I think I haven't been out in the real world as much as a lot of people, which is one of the criticisms.

Speaker 17 You're in the real world, girl. You're walking around the news corp

Speaker 17 hallways. I do work for a big corporation, but I was in school.
Judge Box of Wine in there and people with all kinds of different backgrounds. Yes.

Speaker 20 We do have a diverse set of backgrounds there. And a lot of veterans that work here who love Donald Trump.
and would never think that he would do anything to hurt veterans.

Speaker 20 And that's still how they feel about it.

Speaker 20 And I think Scott's probably right that the idea of just getting fired willy-nilly or whatever, it's not going to resonate because people have gotten fired, but it's the approach to it that's going to be something that can maybe

Speaker 20 get people on board with the idea that Elon Musk is up to no good.

Speaker 20 And I don't want to be ad-testy or campaign message testy about this, but something that I do think resonates with people is that Elon Musk, I think, is getting another $8 million a day in government contracts while other people are losing their jobs or we're not paying 12 cents a day through USAID to keep people who have HIV in Africa alive.

Speaker 20 I found that article in the New York Times over the weekend to be particularly moving.

Speaker 20 And everything has to be contrasts, or at least I feel that way, to be like, this stuff is going on while this is also going on. And one side of the equation is just getting richer.

Speaker 20 And they're getting richer off of you. They're not having to go through the same Doge process, right?

Speaker 20 No one is looking under the hood of Elon Musk's companies at the same time that they're holding you to this standard.

Speaker 20 And one thing, and I don't know if it's just a mistake to be talking about DEI at all, because obviously that blew up in Democrats' faces in the election, but the amount of people who don't think that veterans would be a protected class within DEI is astounding to me.

Speaker 20 And I do think that that's powerful. I've seen conservatives in real time realize that veterans are hired for a specific kind of background, right, because they fill a certain kind of quota.

Speaker 17 And they're like, oh, that's weird.

Speaker 20 That's the same thing that you're talking about, where maybe there are folks who come from X background that would be good for this job. And I do think that that's an important argument to make.

Speaker 20 This kind of like,

Speaker 20 they could come for you. There is no one that is actually safe from this because they're living the next four years in a total YOLO state of mind, right? Trump can't run again.
I mean,

Speaker 20 we will probably get to the point where he says he can't run again. But if we're just treating this as four years, I don't think they care about the future for J.D.

Speaker 20 Vance or whoever is going to be the standard bearer after this. They are going to create as much chaos and as much wealth for themselves as they possibly can in the next four years.

Speaker 20 And you have to try every single approach. to make that clear to the American public that that is what's happening.

Speaker 17 Yeah,

Speaker 17 there's a lot that I agree with. I also want to just point out that you're mentioning that after this assault on DEI, I was pretty offended.

Speaker 17 I don't know about you guys, about the Irish DEI at the White House yesterday.

Speaker 17 Yeah, why do we have to fuck it? Do we turn the pond green? Why are we acknowledging the Irish? Like they're a special category. Like we're getting rid of the pride flags.
We're getting rid of

Speaker 17 Black History Month. I don't get why the Irish deserve a...
you know, deserve a carve out.

Speaker 20 I think you know why.

Speaker 17 DE Irish yesterday at the White House. I was not fucking pleased about that.
That was my issue with the ad is that, like, Elon wants to ruin the country. Do people really buy that? I'm not sure.

Speaker 17 Elon is cashing in, you know. And I think that maybe the empathy thing might work if it kind of combines the incompetence and we're picking a specific person.

Speaker 17 And it's like, this person has a very central job at the VA, right? And like, I worked at the VA and I served veterans who were injured or whatever. I worked at VA hospital, right?

Speaker 17 Like a specific story. And it's like, and I make, you know, whatever, $68,000 a year.
And like, I got canned, and Elon's taking in $8 million a day.

Speaker 17 You know, like, I just think that maybe there's a sharper way to do it. Scott, you've kind of already alluded to this.
So I guess we'll start with you.

Speaker 17 I want to do Dems in the Wilderness stuff and like what they should be doing. You already talked about how you think they should be focusing more focused in their message.

Speaker 17 How do you get attention, though, with a more focused message?

Speaker 17 Like, tactically speaking, we had this big showdown in the hill that fizzled where Schumer decided not to really go to the mat on the government shutdown. So that opportunity's passed.

Speaker 17 How do you get attention? I mean, like, going out there and talking specifically about how tax cuts for the rich are bad is good, but

Speaker 17 how do you get onto the five? Like, how do you break through to people?

Speaker 18 Well, first off, just to your point, you know, there's so many things to be enraged. I was trying to pick which one I wanted to put forward.

Speaker 18 To not go upstream of Musk and what I think is the illegal usurp of constitutional power and shut down the government just shows how fucking stupid we are.

Speaker 18 I just think that is outrageous, that we're letting the government essentially become a vehicle for the transfer of wealth and rights from the poor and the middle class to the rich.

Speaker 18 We just said, this isn't a government. We're shutting it down.
I think it's unforgivable that we didn't just say, look, fine, have at it.

Speaker 18 You've decided the government is no longer really about democracy and constitutions. So we're not going to continue to fund it.
And let the chips fly.

Speaker 18 And I think we should have channeled Mitch McConnell, who has bested and beat the shit out of Charles Schumer every round for 15 million rounds running. I was incredibly disappointed.

Speaker 18 I thought that was an enormous strategic error on our part. So, one, it's discipline around messaging.
What you guys are saying is really powerful. Go to the data.
You want to 6X the Doge savings?

Speaker 18 All right, let's get efficient. $2.6 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal so far.
You want to 6X it? Stop all subsidies immediately to Tesla. Boom, 6X the efficiency of Doge.

Speaker 18 Right, let's get focused. Let's use data.
I think, one, we need more discipline around messaging, more data. And then I also think we need to do a better job of synchronicity.

Speaker 18 If you look at the right, they're much better at coordinating their think tanks, their media, their politicians around a very synchronized message. We are somewhat like...

Speaker 18 someone having a seizure with limbs flailing everywhere. So we need more discipline around messaging.

Speaker 18 No, don't spend your precious human capital and your platform on whether or not the helicopter crashes a DEI. Don't even go there on naming God.
We just fine, have at it.

Speaker 18 The Tate brothers, don't fucking talk about them.

Speaker 18 That's just a distraction meant to enrage and distract people. Talk about these one or these two issues.

Speaker 18 And then what we really need help with is quite frankly putting some of our senior citizens on an ice flow who are not able to reach people where they are right now.

Speaker 18 And that is some of our younger spokespeople need, in my opinion, greater license and rope to meet people where they are, and that is on these new mediums.

Speaker 17 Like who?

Speaker 18 Well, I think Crockett is good. I think AOC is good.
I actually think someone like Michael Bennett

Speaker 18 got it. I think Chris Murphy has been a powerful voice.
I think Wes Moore coming out and saying that he was going to focus his entire administration on the struggles of young men was really powerful.

Speaker 18 I think that

Speaker 18 Richie Torres is driving the far left crazy because they don't know how to criticize his moderate policies with this intersectionality of being a black, Hispanic, a gay man.

Speaker 18 They just don't know how to react to someone like that who actually has moderate, reasonable viewpoints.

Speaker 17 Trevor Burrus: Well, it's hard to be singing from the same hymn book when you have AOC and Richie Torres, though, on your list. That's part of the problem, though.

Speaker 17 I mean, they've got a pretty different perspective on things.

Speaker 18 Well, and to be blunt, that's a lack of leadership where they get the two of them in the room and say, okay, bitches, you both got to sign up and you got to get a ⁇ you're going to have to give here.

Speaker 18 You're going to have to give here. There's huge vent overlap on what you guys believe.

Speaker 18 These are the two messages you're going to go after, and we're going to weaponize your platform and your incredibly strong voices and your ability to meet people where they are.

Speaker 18 And we're going to get more disciplined.

Speaker 18 Look how disciplined the messaging is on the Republican side, even if it's to get everyone to look over here and be outraged about something stupid that we shouldn't be talking about.

Speaker 18 They're just much more coordinated and disciplined. And we just look, we literally look like

Speaker 18 a giraffe having a seizure. You don't know which way its limbs are going to fly.
It strikes me as a lack of leadership and coordination and discipline around messaging.

Speaker 17 Jesse, what do you make of that?

Speaker 20 Well, I certainly think with the CR that that's what happened. You know, we've known that this was going to happen.
The government could shut down March 14th if this doesn't get passed for months.

Speaker 20 And it feels like everyone woke up a week before and started freaking out about it.

Speaker 20 But this is the tune that we've been singing since Trump, not even since he got inaugurated, because he de facto became president like four to six weeks before that, right?

Speaker 20 Everyone was still flying to Mar-a-Lago trying to figure out what's up. Even foreign leaders were coming and doing it.
So we were totally flat-footed. We didn't have a catchy name for the CR bill.

Speaker 20 Like we didn't talk about it as like Doge 2.0. So people didn't know what it was.
And most people actually thought it was a clean CR.

Speaker 20 They thought it was the same spending bill that you would have gotten from Biden Harris. That's on us, right? That we didn't get it out there.
And then we didn't have an alternate proposal.

Speaker 20 I couldn't believe it. You know, everyone's saying like, oh, we want to try for our own amendments.
Why didn't you have your own bill that you could hold up? And you say, you know what?

Speaker 20 Republicans could come over and they could look at our bill and let's take half from each of ours and mash it together and get something to keep the government open.

Speaker 20 That feels like a leadership problem on that front. And I mean, Chuck Schumer, he basically lied to his caucus, right? He said they don't have the votes.

Speaker 20 He got all of these vulnerable senators to go out there, film their little videos saying, I'm a a no on the CR. And then he said, Actually, we don't have the votes for this.

Speaker 20 And I think it's going to be worse if the government shuts down because Russ Vogt will become the president. And maybe he's right about that.
But the way he went about it was terrible.

Speaker 20 And Hakeem Jeffries was able to keep his caucus in line. Jared Golden voted for it, but who cares? One person who has a very specific kind of district did it.
Like, no big deal.

Speaker 20 In terms of the message discipline overall,

Speaker 20 I don't know if this counts as like a pushback, but I just want to add to it that there is

Speaker 20 a message discipline that you feel coming from people like Thune or Mike Johnson.

Speaker 20 But what the Trump administration has done, and the Washington Post had a big piece about this, is they have invited in content creators and basically taken away levels of approval that you would usually have to go through for the type of stuff that they're putting in.

Speaker 20 So they're giving them access. to the inner workings of the White House in a way that you wouldn't expect content creators were able to have.

Speaker 20 And they don't have to necessarily get the highest level of sign-off on things.

Speaker 20 So, the video that came out like a week or two ago of the people who are undocumented getting like perp walked, essentially, that didn't have to go through the highest level of approval to get out there.

Speaker 20 They were like, let's just throw shit at the wall. Let's put this out there and see what happens.
And it ended up creating hundreds of millions of impressions. And

Speaker 20 we don't have that happening because at this particular moment, also, politics is not cool cool in democratic circles.

Speaker 20 Everyone who wants to continue getting great ad sales is running away from politics. Like, when is the next time you think you're going to get Alex Cooper to have someone on to talk about politics?

Speaker 20 2040? By the time she's not calling her daddy anything, right?

Speaker 17 Granddaddy. So call her granddaddy.

Speaker 20 Call her granddaddy. That'd be a sexy public.

Speaker 20 Yeah, I hope we can go rage on that. But like, it's diametrically opposed what's happening right now.
Like, Joe Rogan is constantly going to have political people on. Andrew Schultz, The Yovon,

Speaker 20 you know, Bustin' Boys, all of them are going to keep having these conversations because it's what's cool right now. And on our side, it's so uncool.

Speaker 20 And we're trying to replicate trends from two, three years ago. These videos are so cringy.
Or all the senators saying the same thing.

Speaker 20 And then they basically nuke us in one tweet, just being like, is this control?

Speaker 17 Alt F or like whatever, whatever.

Speaker 20 I'm not good on the computer, but you know what I mean? Like, did they just cut and paste all of them?

Speaker 17 I have an idea that maybe there's nobody out there to execute this,

Speaker 17 but I think that somebody should start running for president now. It's a real answer.

Speaker 17 And I think that people are going to reject that out of hand because everybody is like, I'm so sick of fucking, you know, I'm sick of politics. And that's what people say.
This is why, again,

Speaker 17 what people say does not match their actions a lot of times, which is why I'm skeptical of ad testing. But there's no leadership because there's no leader.

Speaker 17 And like,

Speaker 17 there's a huge attention gap because you have two co-presidents on one side, one who owns a social media platform.

Speaker 17 And then you have a bunch of people, like some of the people Scott mentioned, who I agree are doing a good job, Chris Murphy, Jasmine Crockett.

Speaker 17 They're just kind of like mid-to-backbench legislators. And I think that probably the person that starts running for president now will not actually become the president, but you never know.

Speaker 17 And I think it might be a good way to start getting it, to actually start getting attention and to becoming a heat shield for some of the other Democrats. I don't know.

Speaker 17 That's my off-the-wall, that's my off-the-wall idea.

Speaker 18 I think it's a really powerful idea.

Speaker 18 I think if a Richie Torres or a Mark Cuban started every day putting out two and three minute TikToks or videos with responses to this stuff, this is what we need to be doing.

Speaker 18 This is why this outrageous. I think they'd get a ton of attention.

Speaker 18 The message would get out there. And not only that, I think that the Republicans would take the bait and start responding.
Right now, they're just rolling over us. Yeah.

Speaker 17 And then all these people would have them on, right? Like Theo Vaughn is not going to have on Chris Murphy.

Speaker 17 But if Mark Cuban, said he's running for president or whatever, like, sure, like, he'd be able to go on all these fucking things.

Speaker 20 Isn't that what Rahm Emmanuel is kind of doing?

Speaker 17 Is it?

Speaker 20 Maybe. Yeah, I assume so, right? I mean, Politico is reporting that that is what he wants to do, but he is out there portraying himself as an option for us, right?

Speaker 20 Someone who is grounded in progressive values and has the execution in the pragmatic world, which is all Democrats want at this point, right?

Speaker 20 Like someone who believes the same things as them, but has an actionable plan to affect policy and to also stop Republicans from what they're doing.

Speaker 20 So, I mean, the problem is, is like a lot of the folks that are going to be up on that 2028 stage are governors right now and can't say that they're leaving that job, like Josh Shapiro Westmore.

Speaker 17 Why not?

Speaker 20 I think it kind of neuters you in terms of your current job if you're doing it this far in advance, three and a half years out.

Speaker 18 I think we're to a point now where the public has said we value authenticity over, or what appears to be authenticity if in its coarseness and cruelty over

Speaker 18 over decorum. I think it's pretty obvious.
Gavin Newsom brings on Charlie Kirk and Stephen Bannon because he's running for president and he wants to become more,

Speaker 18 have the appearance of being more moderate. Okay, then just come out of the closet and say you're running for president.
Just, I'm Gavin Newsom. I lead the fourth largest economy in the world.

Speaker 18 Our economy is growing. Our budget is balanced.
We have our issues. I know how to deal with these.
What's going on is terrible here. I am running for president.

Speaker 18 And this is what is important to me and what should be important to you. Josh Shapiro, I mean, these guys, they're running for president, for God's sakes.
Be honest about it.

Speaker 18 I plan to run for president, and this is why I'm qualified. And these are the issues I would focus on.
And this is what really bothers me right now. Instead, they're like, well, I've got a job to do.

Speaker 18 I'm focused.

Speaker 17 Shut the fuck up. You're running for president.

Speaker 18 You wouldn't be on Bill Maher.

Speaker 18 All of these guys, and I'm sure, Tim, all of these guys are calling us. This is what they do.

Speaker 18 I hear from all of these representatives who see themselves as a vice president or potentially president one day.

Speaker 18 I'm fairly certain 90% of our representatives and our senators wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, hello, Mr. President.

Speaker 18 And I think if they just said, I want to be president, I think this is an incredible opportunity. I'm really distressed about what's happening in America.

Speaker 18 And every day they went on and hammered their points and their ideas. You know, Andrew Yang

Speaker 18 made UBI or the notion we'd be more empathetic towards just redistributing capital from the rich to the poor. He made it more palatable.
He normalized it.

Speaker 18 He became a really important part of the dialogue. So there is an advantage to someone coming out right now and just saying, where I was headed is the following.

Speaker 18 All these guys call us and they ask you two for the same thing and me for a third.

Speaker 18 They say, I'm really interested in your ideas. I'd like to come on your podcast, which is Latin for, I'm running for president.
I want to start getting awareness, right?

Speaker 18 For me, they call me and they say they want my view on things, which means they want my money, right? They convince me I have some insight into issues and they want to have a discussion with me.

Speaker 18 What they're really saying is, give me a chance to agree with you and then write me a check.

Speaker 18 You hear from these people, Tim. You know, all of these people are running for president.
There's like a half a dozen of them. Come out of the closet and start occupying the space you want to command.

Speaker 17 And fortune favors the bold. I don't know.

Speaker 17 If you just look back in the past, like everybody, all the smart people, all the cautious smart people would have been like, it's ridiculous for Gavin Newsom or one of these people to primary Joe Biden, right?

Speaker 17 After 2022, that was the smart, it was, it was, it's hopeless. You have no chance.
You shouldn't do it.

Speaker 17 Yeah. I don't know.
I bet there are at least a handful of them that look back on that now and think, boy, maybe I should have done it. Maybe it would have ended up being me, not Kamala.

Speaker 18 Big vacuum right now. There's a big vacuum right now.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 7 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 10 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 13 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 2 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 9 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 14 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 5 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

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Speaker 17 Scott, you mentioned how Wes Moore is focused on young men. You've got a lot of, you've got a lot of good shtick on this topic.
Last time I had you on, we did like 20 words on this.

Speaker 17 So I want the updated shtick. I want your latest assessment for what is happening with young men and what Democrats should be doing about it.

Speaker 18 The greatest innovation in history wasn't the iPhone or the semiconductor. It was the American middle class.

Speaker 18 And key to that was 7 million men coming home in uniform who demonstrated heroics, were attractive to women. They were fit.

Speaker 18 We put money in their pocket through the National Highway Transportation Act, through FHA loans, through the GI Bill. And then they mated with a ton of people.

Speaker 18 They had a ton of kids and they had such wonderful lives. They said, why wouldn't we extend these rights and these liberties and this prosperity to women? Why wouldn't we extend it to non-whites?

Speaker 18 And we built the greatest society in history. And the thing that is missing from the middle class right now are economically and emotionally viable young men.

Speaker 18 They're 12 times as likely to be incarcerated, four times as likely to be addicted, four times as likely to kill themselves. Our young men are struggling.

Speaker 18 There's no group in the world that has ascended faster than women, and we should do nothing to get in the way of that.

Speaker 18 Twice as many women elected to a parliament in democracies over the last 30 years, more women are seeking tertiary education globally. More single women own homes than single men in urban areas.

Speaker 18 Women under the age of 30 are making more money. You're going to have probably two to one female to male college grads in the next five years.

Speaker 18 And we have essentially gutted every on-ramp for non-college bound males, which is the majority of them. We've taken wood, metal, and auto shop away.

Speaker 18 There are very few paths to a romantic partnership for a man or to economic viability for a man who is not exceptional.

Speaker 18 And the result is that women nor our country will continue to flourish if men are flailing.

Speaker 18 And there's a series of economic policies that have transferred so much money and opportunity for young people that it has disproportionately impacted young men.

Speaker 18 We have the most obese, anxious, and depressed generation in history. For the first time in our nation's history, a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30.

Speaker 18 So what to do about it? You don't have identity politics where you just level up young men. You go minimum wage, 25 bucks an hour, universal child care.

Speaker 18 vocational programming to restore some dignity to work, mandatory national services, more third places, encourage young people to drink more alcohol.

Speaker 18 The risk to their liver is much less than the risk of isolation and anxiety. There are a ton.

Speaker 18 We fuck this up for young people. We can unfuck it.

Speaker 18 Every person under the age of 40, and I think this is the unifying theory of everything, should have the opportunity to fall in love, should have the opportunity to have children and the opportunity to have a house and a decent living wage.

Speaker 18 That is absolutely doable in the most, the wealthiest nation in the world. Minimum wage, 25 bucks an hour, universal child tax credit, tax holiday.
Anyone under the age of 40, no federal income tax.

Speaker 18 It wouldn't be that much money because they don't make that much money. Level up young people.
And if you decide not to have kids and spend it on brunch in St. Bart's, more power to you.

Speaker 18 But table steaks are the most prosperous nation in the world.

Speaker 18 St.

Speaker 17 Bart's is fucking too expensive. Okay.

Speaker 17 We got to be real wealthy for St. Bart's.
St. Bart's is ridiculous.
Go ahead and Tulum or something. You can afford it.

Speaker 18 I'm not telling people that they have to have kids to be happy.

Speaker 18 I'm saying America should be able to afford the opportunity for every person under the age of 40, the opportunity to meet someone, fall in love, have kids, and live a life that they can have as a family.

Speaker 18 And right now, we've gone from 60% of 30-year-olds used to have a kid to 27%.

Speaker 18 Every economic policy, I think, should be reverse engineered back from one thing.

Speaker 18 How do we give young people the opportunity to have dignity, to have a reasonable standard of living, and the option should they choose to have children?

Speaker 17 Jesse, is that focus on young men still

Speaker 17 non-grata in democratic circles or are people starting to get it?

Speaker 20 No, they're starting to get that they need it.

Speaker 20 I don't know how genuine it is because it felt like people were actually thriving off of a moment where they could only talk about women and protected classes and almost relished the ability to kind of push aside specifically white men who they felt had been holding us back and tearing us down for so long but they definitely got the memo and you can see it in people having these proposals and how we talk about the issues but i just wanted to highlight from wesmores program a couple things that are really important.

Speaker 20 This is the enhanced male paternity leave, which is part of what Scott was talking about. But he calls out specifically for increasing our male teacher share and our male health care provider share.

Speaker 20 And I think the visibility part of this is actually what's most important. And it kind of answers every question.
that we've been talking about for the last hour. What is the answer?

Speaker 20 It's to show up no matter what.

Speaker 20 And you see the Congress people that are doing well like the pat ryans of the world he goes and he bartends he shows up at like a local pub in his district and he's the bartender that's the same thing as you walk into you know you're waiting in a doctor's office and a male nurse walks in and you see that you see someone who's part of your health care journey someone who's taking care of you someone who has the kind of qualifications to be doing that.

Speaker 20 And I noticed, and obviously it was made for very good jokes, but if I don't know if you guys watched Andrew Schultz's newest Netflix special about his IVF journey or him and his wife's IVF journey.

Speaker 17 That dude's everywhere right now. His PR tour is great.
I can't get away from him.

Speaker 20 He has a very funny bit about the male nurse that is on this journey for him is like a hulking Italian guy who knows him from his comedy and is basically cracking jokes about him.

Speaker 20 not being able to get his wife knocked up.

Speaker 20 And I was thinking, because everything kind of goes back to politics for me, besides enjoying it and finding it very funny, the whole special, like how important it is to normalize those kinds of relationships, right?

Speaker 20 And that someone like Andrew Schultz, who has a ton of bravado, has some jokes.

Speaker 20 I mean, it's always very cheeky, but that certainly people think are sexists or misogynists is portraying this male character in his journey to bring him the most beautiful thing and the most valued thing in his life, his baby, right?

Speaker 20 And to take care of his wife, who's another treasured part of his existence. And I love that that's a big part of what Westmore is proposing in this because it's not about the messaging of it.

Speaker 20 It's literally how can we get more men to show up in important places in people's lives, also for them to have jobs that, to Scott's point, like keep them afloat, get them a house, get them a vacation every year, not St.

Speaker 20 Bart's, maybe Disney World. New Orleans.
But I come visit me. Not for Mardi Gras, though.
It's too insane.

Speaker 17 Last thing is for Scott. We're out of time, but I'm obsessed with the crypto scam Trump is running.

Speaker 17 So if you could just give me a rapid fire on what you think is the scale of the scam that is being run in this White House, where we're letting off Chinese

Speaker 17 crypto magnets under investigation by the SEC, and then they're in turn giving tens of millions of dollars to Trump. So if you could just give me a couple sentences on that.

Speaker 17 And then I had a listener request. They wanted investment advice for you if the economy is going to go to shit.

Speaker 17 So those are my two final questions for you, as brief as possible or as long as possible. It's your time, not mine.
I can know where to be.

Speaker 18 This is pure speculation, but I think every piece of evidence shows that this may not be speculation. This may be reality.

Speaker 18 Imagine if President Trump was able to open a Swiss bank account and anyone could deposit money in it, and nobody knew but him that the money went in, and he didn't have to file with anybody when he took that money or sold it.

Speaker 18 And imagine Putin said, I'll give you $10 billion. It's untraceable.
But by the way, isn't Europe's funding of Ukraine really a problem? Isn't your funding really extending this war?

Speaker 18 Well, he's done that. The Trump coin is effectively a Swiss bank account that anyone could put money into and then call the president and say, I just put $10 billion in here.

Speaker 18 How would you like to be the wealthiest man in the world? And in unrelated news, are you going to continue to fund this war?

Speaker 18 That is what could be happening right now. And the notion that they put it out the Friday night before the inauguration, this is a level of grift that we haven't seen.

Speaker 18 Republicans would argue we're just more brazen and more less opaque about it. You've been doing it through lobbyists.
And Speaker Emerta, Pelosi,

Speaker 18 is probably the most blatant, brazen insider traitor in history. I mean, you got to admire, if you're going to be corrupt, don't play small ball like Pelosi for millions.

Speaker 18 Do it for billions like Trump. So I think that the Trump coin is nothing but pure, unadulterated grift.
It's the perfect scam.

Speaker 18 We used to think it was Donald Trump media where this stock that does three million a year, this company that does three million a year in business and loses $300 million is worth $5 billion.

Speaker 18 But here's the thing. He's going to have to file with the SEC when he sells shares.
He doesn't have to do that with the Trump coin. As far as we know, it's billions of dollars in pay-for-play.

Speaker 18 That's what he's set up. So I think that's happening.
In terms of the economy, the reality is guys like me have predicted nine of the last three recessions.

Speaker 17 Nobody knows.

Speaker 18 I can paint a scenario either way. These tariffs are to the economy what leeches were to medicine.

Speaker 18 Like none of us who know anything about economics can believe they actually think this shit's going to work again. Consumer confidence is crashing.

Speaker 18 The entire world and every large company and economy is trying to figure out workarounds to reconfigure their supply chain to not include American companies or the American government because they can't trust what is actually going to happen here.

Speaker 18 That should take a real toll on the economy. The American stock market is still overvalued.
If you were to summarize the world's value into $100 right now, including debt, the U.S.

Speaker 18 costs $70 and the rest of the world costs $30. So let me ask you, Tim, if you could buy the U.S.
for $70

Speaker 18 or the rest of the world for $30, what do you think is a better value?

Speaker 17 I think I'd probably start investing in Germany and India and Brazil. That's exactly right.

Speaker 18 And that's what's happening. The capital flows are reversing, and we're seeing people start to look at other markets, Sans the U.S., because the U.S.
is just very expensive.

Speaker 18 Apple's trading at 34 times earnings, even after this drawdown on a company that isn't growing. And it traditionally trades at 18, and it's been as low as nine in the last 20 years.

Speaker 18 Having said that, what do you do? I think you just diversify. And that is, nobody can time the markets.
Don't have an emotional reaction.

Speaker 18 What you may want to consider is not only diversifying through low-cost index funds, but perhaps think about diversifying geographically and look at low-cost index funds in Latin America, Asia, and Europe.

Speaker 18 In some, your Kevlar here is diversification. But don't listen to people like me because the reality is we just don't know.

Speaker 17 It's a wonderful place to leave it. And

Speaker 17 I always like to admit that I don't fucking know shit. And so, you know, we're just trying to do the best we can to figure it out here on this podcast.
I appreciate folks listening.

Speaker 17 It's the Raging Moderates. I appreciate you guys a lot.
Let's keep doing this from time to time. And when you want to rage about something, door's always open.
All right.

Speaker 18 Tim, you're a fear. I wanted to say you're one of the few fearless voices out there.
I love you. Go on TikTok and say, basically, I know I can summarize almost every one of your TikToks, your videos.

Speaker 18 It's eloquent. It's basically what the actual fuck.

Speaker 18 And then you go on and you provide data and a great argument. I think you're one of those key voices.
So keep on keeping on, brother.

Speaker 17 I'm doing my best. I appreciate that very much, guys.
Everybody else, we'll be back here. Keep on keeping on tomorrow for another edition of the podcast.
We'll see you all then. Peace.

Speaker 20 Thanks for having us. Thanks, Tim.

Speaker 20 Boys, they're diameting.

Speaker 17 Boys, they ain't doing nothing

Speaker 17 for me any longer.

Speaker 17 Not be getting stronger.

Speaker 17 Boys, a lot of women of you.

Speaker 17 Boys will just make me mad.

Speaker 17 All the little things that you do

Speaker 17 ain't gonna make me sad.

Speaker 17 Then I saw one looking

Speaker 17 at me from afar.

Speaker 17 Then I

Speaker 17 knew there was you almost known.

Speaker 17 I

Speaker 17 knew it was you,

Speaker 17 almost gone.

Speaker 17 Suddenly, I knew there was love.

Speaker 17 That I

Speaker 17 knew it was you

Speaker 17 almost.

Speaker 17 The Board Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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