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

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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Could not be more delighted to be here today with the co-host of the Raging Moderates podcast. Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business.
Also host of the Prof G Pod and co-host of Pivot with Kara Swisher. It's the only man that 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.
And I discovered when I was on y'all's show that you're actually Jessie. So we're friends now.
So I can call you Jessie. Yeah, we're in.
They didn't want their prime Jessie to be dunked on by a girl Jessie. I'm definitely backup Jessie.
Yeah, so they kind of gave you some gender-confirming name care over at Fox, I guess. Oh, my God.
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.

No, boy Jesse and girl Jesse is just too confusing,

though someone, another host on Fox,

called him Jessica Waters one day,

and he flipped out 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. I'm very jealous of your brand of the podcast, The Raging Moderates.
And I want to know who gets the credit for it. Scott.
Oh, Jess, I don't like to take credit for things. I appreciate that.
Oh, go on. 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.
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.
Although people say we're more raging than we are moderate. That's fine.
Maybe, yeah, that's fair. But regardless, it's a good brand, actually.
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 assets on the market, I might steal it from you. It's unlikely.
Jess is way too easygoing. It would happen.
A pivot that could happen. It almost happens every 48 hours.
Jess is too easygoing and too mature. Okay.
Well, I'm jealous and we'll figure 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 it's been... Isn't that crazy? I feel like the midterm should be tomorrow.
Same. I can watch myself age on YouTube now.
It's really distressing that I get to see a daily, hourly wrinkle depth grow. But I thought maybe I would just give you guys a chance to talk about what has made you rage the most in the first two months of Trump 2.0.
Jessie, why don't you go first? So I appreciate the question, especially because it highlights our fantastic brand. So anytime the word...
I'm here for brand awareness, brand lift. I'm here for branding.
That's all we're doing here. Totally.
We're A-B testing this. So I kind of have two answers.
The first answer is that the Trump administration is implementing Project 2025. And we 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. 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.
They are doing such a good job subverting Congress, destroying our institutions, firing people, expanding executive power. You know, the Department of Education, it has to be technically an act of Congress to get rid of it.
But like, who knows at this point, right? 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. And so I'm most mad about, or most ragey, about what's actually gone on in the practical terms.
So your rage is about what's happened, not the fact that they got away with the fact that they pretended like they weren't going to do Project 2025. Because listening to you, that's where my rage goes.
That's the second part of this. and that's a, I don't want to just project 2025 because that's listening to you that's where my rage goes that's the second part of this and that's a 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 it's actually going to happen that it all would have been fine and people would have have realized the stakes on November 5th and, you know, it would be president Kamala, 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.
And this is what these people think of public service and of government. And they're not there to help you.
They're actually there to hurt you. And that's my biggest source of frustration.
And it's a very democratic thing in terms of the political party, not democracy, right? Large thing to do that we're always self-flagellating, which Republicans never do. They're just like, well, 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. And that's my big frustration that it didn't do better.
There's an unbelievable amount of self-flagellation. Isn't it crazy? That I've learned as an immigrant to the Democratic side, ostensensibly.
Yeah, it's unbelievable. Yeah, you know, like get on with it.
And Donald Trump was just like, I won. I didn't lose, actually.
And we're gonna I'm gonna keep doing all the same shit I did. 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 go, you know, going to yoga class? Maybe you should have listened to them more.
There was none of that on Fox in 2021. 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. Okay.
That has my blood boil. That's like at a six and a half for me.
But that's pretty good. Yeah, six and a half.
All right, Scott, blow him away. There's a lot of angry shit out there.
Scott, what's making you rage? 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. That's why we have checks and balances.
The administration is just usurp congressional power. And then we thought, well, at least we have the courts.
And it appears as of a few days ago, they are now blatantly ignoring court orders. But that's not what has me raging.
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. don't really contact our representatives don't really risk their own reputations don't

don't protest don't call their. 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. The conspiracy is the following, that rights are portable, and rich people have figured that out.
Everyone in my life will have access to mesifestron. If anybody to weaponize the doj i can lawyer up like like no tomorrow 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 dubai is where you're going i don't know madrid that's a little milan you name it yeah but the bottom line is rights and democracy have become purely a function of how wealthy you are in America.
The wealthiest 1% 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, 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's so good because they've uploaded their W-2s into ChatGPT. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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, but bitching and moaning to their friends under their breath because they're getting richer and they know they are not truly under threat.
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? And so you're near 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. Every rich person I talk to, I ask this question, Scott, so I'm going to pose it to you.
I'm hoping that someone will say something that will break the lock in my brain that is preventing me from understanding this. But thinking particularly about the CEO class, Trump has been such a dumb bet.
So I'm not talking here about the wealthy progressives that voted against Kamala but haven't objected enough. I'm also mad at them.
I'm talking about people that actually either went for trump or or just sat it out didn't really you know didn't really use their power and influence one way or the other and like this was such an obvious risk like the downside risk of him i get the tax cuts but the downside risk of him like who the fuck knows what's going to happen with these trade wars 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 like don't rich people want stability didn't they all make money under

joe biden i understand why somebody who's pissed about their grocery prices might have might have

flipped 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 So can you explain that one to me? 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.
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. 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.
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. If I know someone who knows someone and I can donate a million bucks to the 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.
And Ripple 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.

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.

It may, but it probably won't.

He's really going to get screwed as our kids? And my generation has proven that we're just not long-term thinkers. 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.
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. And the wealthy and corporations have figured out for a small amount of money, they can weaponize government to their benefit.
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 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.
But until then, the credit card keeps getting approved and going through. I'm sorry, J.D.
Vance and Theo Vaughn said you can't do cocaine anymore because of the fentanyl risk. So they're not doing cocaine anymore.
How is that one? Yeah, ketamine, micro dosing. broker websites.
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Message and data rates apply. the economy thing i want to push back just because like even in short-term thinking

like their argument is kind of failing already. 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.
Like, what is your sense for kind of the short term, you know, economic situation we're looking at right now? Well, first off, I think most of those guys voted for Harris. I don't think they were excited about showing up to 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.
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 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. 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.
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.
They've just come down a bit. So right now, 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. So things are bad, but they've been been a lot worse before 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 it is true though that the republicans successfully ran on kind of annoying inflation you know staying high that the economy wasn't wasn't running on those cylinders under sleepy Joe Biden or whatever.
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, you know, democracy.
I mean, like, is this the play, I guess, for Democrats to focus on economic matters? How do you think they should take that on? I think so. I mean, the most important color in the election was the color green, right? 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? 30 and 40-somethings. Gen Z is coming into this thinking that if you have 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? 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. 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. I think there will be some folks who get animated about what happens on the immigration front.
That would have been my rage rant if you yelled at me. But I agree with you.
It's probably not the most politically salient. It's just most personally enraging.
Yes, that one for me. I mean, I had a due process fight yesterday on The Five that made my head spin.
Was there a lot of respect for due process around the table yesterday? I didn't catch The Five yesterday. I apologize.
Tim, how could you not at least watch the day before we come on your podcast? I'm sorry. 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.

If it's you and you have tattoos and are,

you know,

seeking asylum,

then I don't really care.

And that's obviously frustrating.

And I think that that will animate some people when they go and vote again,

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.

And I think that might be a fine position 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.

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. 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 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, and Sarah's 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. That's it.
It's pretty plain and simple. They're in this for themselves.
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.
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.
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. I i don't know if anyone else listened to steve bannon on gavin newsom's podcast unfortunately but he makes a pretty strong argument for it and he's talking about sherrod brown and bernie sanders and roe connor you know people who are hardcore blue dems right that think that there have to be some protectionist tariffs to keep American industry alive and to raise wages, which we're all for in this.
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.
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. You want people to have higher grocery prices so that they realize that the people in charge are just out for themselves.
And I, as perhaps too emotional as a person, I have high doses of estrogen and maybe some postpartum. I don't think it's about your femininity.
I think it's the fact that you come from the progressive, yeah, the progressive background. As a former Republican.
You're like whatever. It seems like a problem for your therapist.
Your eggs should be a million dollars. This is a totally aside but you started talking about the message testing and I have the two of you so I might as well get your expertise on this.
My most unpopular opinion in campaign consulting circles is I think campaign message testing is mostly bullshit. I'm curious your take on this I just think that like I've sat through enough of these things where I think there's value in and 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 moves them or not and then it's like a do these people even know what they want i don't i don't think consumers even actually know what 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 it's like we got to go with the plus where do you fall on that 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.
But I think what message testing can do that is important is it can get you away from third rails. Like if anyone had done message testing or paid attention to like, hey, don't talk about like trans rights constantly, right, 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.
But I do think that you're right. Like the common sensical, 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. 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? And believes in people and wanting them to do better and knows what the government is doing, et cetera.
So yeah, you just need to go out there and kind of sound like a human being. But the message testing does help you know where you should not be going.
And frankly, we would have done a lot better in the election, I think, if we had paid attention to the big flashing red lights that did come out of these focus groups. Because they were all saying, stop being preachy.
You look down on me. I want to be treated as an equal.
Do I sound like the old guy, like Charles Barkley, going against analytics in sports when I say this? Or is there something here? The two of you are going to forget more about this than I'm going to know. Oh, but you do corporate.
It's interesting. Is there something that could be learned from the corporate side? Well, I'm technically a professor of brand strategy.
And I don't understand the nuance of political messaging. What I would say is that first you have to understand the comm strategy of the other side.
You have to empathize with the enemy such that you can respond. The enemy right now has developed a comm strategy that is straight out of the GRU, which is flooding the zone.
And that is there are so many things at them. Some are true.
Some are not. Some are, they know, ridiculous and will invoke an emotional reaction to misdirect you away from the key points we should be focused on.
And so, the key is, all 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. 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.
You don't need to have a viewpoint on the gulf of cheaper eggs. You pick one or two key issues that resonate with Americans.
You're disciplined. You're calm, you're measured, you bring in experts, you bring in data.
The two issues I'm focused on are, one, surrendering 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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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? Why wouldn't we lower Medicare eligibility by two years a year for 30 years and have nationalized healthcare? 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? 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.

That's a personal attack on me.

The 800 million, I just-

I've beat 800 billion, sorry, thank you.

That's like the heritage number even.

I think it's actually gonna be way worse.

The deficit increase of this is gonna-

Yeah, that's annual.

Yeah.

That's annual.

The number I've seen, what have you seen, i've seen five trillion dollar four additional deficit yeah yeah 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 could hang on to that. There was at least something for the little guy, like a very tiny amount.
Well, that's why they might add on the no tax on tips and all that stuff, which takes the number up even higher. This is, this is 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 quote-unquote sounds good. We appreciate that.
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. 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.

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.

And they're talking about it like it's going to be some give back for the working class.

And again, it's just for the cronies. It's so frustrating to me.
We're going to do an ad test right now, just among the three of us. Because this is the first real midterm ad I've seen so far.
It's out this morning. Our friends at Vote Vets.
We have an article about it in the Bulwark today. And I just want to play a clip for it for the two of you and have you react.
I served in the military for over 33 years, just accepted a new position in the VA, come into the office, fire up my computer, and I come back and there's an email sitting there for me. I knew then, I knew what was coming.
I have not had a single negative performance review in my 10 years. It feels like veterans are being personally attacked by Elon Musk.

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. Kind of goes on from there, but I'm wondering your thoughts.
I think anytime you roll out veterans, it's a pretty powerful strategy. the only thing I would argue is that

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 and the capitalism quite frankly i think a lot of moderates in the back of the head are like welcome to the work boss. I received one of those emails when I was working at a car dealership for 20 years.
And then somebody, a private equity firm came in and rolled up the car dealership. And I got one of those emails.
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 with it's that we're doing this in an incompetent way i'd go after the wall of receipts i would say that we're we're doing stupid things that'll 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 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. What about you, Jess? 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. You're in the real world, girl.
You're walking around the News Corp hallways. I do work for a big corporation.
But I was in school. You got a judge box of wine in there and people with all kinds of different backgrounds.
Yes. 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.
And that's still how they feel about it. 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 get people on board with the idea that Elon Musk is up to no good.
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 he's getting another $8 million a day in government contracts while other people are losing their jobs or were not paying 12 cents a day through USAID to keep people who have HIV in Africa alive. I found that article in the New York Times over the weekend to be particularly moving.
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.
And they're getting richer off of you. They're not having to go through the same doge process, right? No one is looking under the hood of Elon Musk's companies at the same time that they're holding you to this standard.
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.
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 and they're like, oh, that's weird.
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.
This kind of like, 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, we will probably get to the point where he says he can run again. But if we're just treating this as four years, I don't think they care about the future for J.D.
Vance or whoever's 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.
And you have to try every single approach to make that clear to the American public that that is what's happening. Yeah.
There's a lot there I agree with. I also want to just point out that you're mentioning that after this assault on DEI, I was pretty offended i don't know about you guys about the irish dei at the white house yesterday i don't know why we have to fuck it we 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 you know black history month i don't get why the irish deserve a you know deserve a carve i think.
I think you know why. D.E.
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.
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. 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 are injured or whatever.
I worked at VA hospital, right? 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. You know, like, I just think that maybe there's a sharper, sharper way to do it.
Scott, you've kind of already alluded to this. So I guess we'll start with you.
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 on their message.
How do you get attention though, with a more focused message? Like tactically speaking, we had this big showdown on the Hill that fizzled where Schumer decided not to really, you know, go to the mat on the government shutdown. So that opportunity is passed.
How do you get attention? I mean, like going out there and talking specifically about how tax cuts for the rich are bad, like it's good, but like, how do you get, how do you get onto the five? Like, how do you break through to people? Well, first off well first off just to your point you know there's so many things to be enraged i was like trying to pick which one i wanted to put forward 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 i just think that is outrageous that we've 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. We just sort of 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. You've decided the government is no longer really about democracy and constitution, so we're not going to continue to fund it and let the chips fly.
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. 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? 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. Let's get focused.
Let's use data. I think, one, we need more discipline around messaging, more more data and then i also think we need to do a better job of synchronicity 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 someone having a seizure with limbs flailing everywhere.
So we need more discipline around messaging. 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.
The Tate brothers, don't fucking talk about them. That's just a distraction meant to enrage and distract people.
Talk about these one or these two issues. 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.
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. Like who? Well, I think Crockett is good.
I think OSI is good. I actually think someone like Michael Bennett, 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. I think that 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, gay man.
They just don't know how to react to someone like that who actually has moderate, reasonable viewpoints. Well, it's hard to be singing from the same hymn book when you have AFC and Richie Torres, though, on your list.
That's part of the problem, though. I mean, they've got a pretty different perspective on things.
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. You're going to have to give here.
There's huge vent overlap on what you guys believe. 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, and we're going to get more disciplined. 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.
They're just much more coordinated and disciplined, and we literally look like 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. Jessie, what do you make of that? Well, I certainly think with the CR, that that's what happened.
We've known that this was going to happen. The government could shut down March 14th if this doesn't get passed for months.
And it feels like everyone woke up a week before and started freaking out about it. 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? 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. 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.
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. 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? 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.
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.
He got all of these vulnerable senators to go out there, film their little videos saying I'm a no on the CR. And then he said, actually, we don't have the votes for this.
And I think it's going to be worse if the government shuts down because Russ vote will become the president. And maybe he's right about that.
But the way he went about it was terrible. 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. In terms of the message discipline overall, I I don't know if this counts as like a pushback, but I just want to add to it that there is a message discipline that you feel coming from people like Thune or Mike Johnson.
But what the Trump administration has done in 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. 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.
And they don't have to necessarily get the highest level of sign-off on things. So the video that came out a week or two ago of the people who are undocumented getting perp-walked, essentially, that didn't have to go through the highest level of approval to get out there.
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 we don't have that happening because at this particular moment also, politics is not cool in democratic circles.
Everyone who wants to continue getting great ad sales is running away from politics. When is the next time you think you're going to get Alex Cooper to have someone on to talk about politics? 2040? by the time she's not calling her daddy anything

right so call her granddaddy call her grand that'd be a sexy pot yeah 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 ovon you know bus and 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,

So I'm going to keep having these conversations because it's what's cool right now and on our side it's so uncool 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 and then they basically nuke us in one tweet just being like is this control alt f or like whatever whatever i'm not good on the computer but you know what i mean like did they just yeah cut and paste all of them i have an idea that maybe there's nobody out there to execute this but i think that somebody should start running for president now it's a really interesting idea i think that people are going to um reject that out of hand because everybody is like i'm so so sick of fucking, you know, I'm sick of politics.

And that's what people say.

This is why,

again,

people,

people,

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.

And like,

there's a huge attention gap because you have two co-presidents on one side,

one who owns a social media platform.

And then you have a bunch of people like some people Scott mentioned,

who I agree are doing a good job.

Chris Murphy,

Jasmine Crockett.

They're just kind of like mid to back bench legislators.

And I think that probably the person that starts running for president now

will not actually become the president,

but you never know.

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 that that's my off the wall that's my off the wall idea i think it's a really powerful idea 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 this is why this outrage i think they get a ton of attention the message to 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 and then all these people would have them on right like the like theo von is not going to have on chris murphy 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 isn't that what ron emmanuel is kind of doing is it 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 someone who is grounded in progressive values and has the execution in the pragmatic world which is all democrats want at, right? 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. 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, Wes Moore.
Why not? 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. I think we're to a point now where the public has said we value authenticity over or what appears to be authenticity of its coarseness and cruelty 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 have the appearance of being more moderate.

Okay, then just come out of the closet

and say you're running for president.

I'm Gavin Newsom.

I lead the fourth largest economy in the world.

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, and this is what is important to me and which should be important to you.
josh shapiro i mean these guys they're running for president for god's sakes be honest about it

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.
I'm focused. Shut the fuck up.
You're running for president. You wouldn't be on Bill Maher.
All of these guys, I'm sure Tim, all of these guys are calling us. This is what they do.
I hear from all of these representatives who see themselves as a vice president or potentially president one day. 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. 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. And every day they went on and hammered their points and their ideas.
You know, Andrew Yang 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. 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 as a following all these guys call us and they ask they ask you two for the same thing and me for a third they say 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 for me they call me and they say they want my they want my view on things which means they want my money. They convince me I have some insight into issues and they want to have a discussion with me.
What they're really saying is give me a chance to agree with you and then write me a check. Yeah.
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. And fortune favors the bold.
I don't know. If you just look back 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 after 2022 that was the start it was it was it's hopeless you have no chance you shouldn't do it 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. Big vacuum right now.
There's a big vacuum right now. Scott, you mentioned how Wes Moore is focused on young men.
You've got a lot of good shtick on this topic. Last time I had you on, we did like 20 minutes on this.
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.
The greatest innovation in history wasn't the iPhone or the semiconductor. It was the American middle class.
And key to that was 7 million men coming home in uniform who demonstrated heroics, were attractive to women. They were fit.
We put money in their pocket through the National Highway Transportation Act, through FHA loans, through the GI Bill. And then they made it with a ton of people.
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? 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. 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. 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. Twice as many women elected to a parliament and democracies over the last 30 years.
More women are seeking tertiary education globally. More single women own homes than single men in urban areas.
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.
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.
There are very few paths to a romantic partnership for a man or to economic viability for a man who is not exceptional. And the result is that women nor our country will continue to flourish if men are flailing.
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. 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. 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, vocational programming to restore some dignity to work, mandatory national service, more third places, encourage young people to drink more alcohol. The risk of their liver is much less than the risk of isolation and anxiety.
There are a ton. We fuck this up for young people, we can unfuck it.
Every person under the age of 40, and I think this is a 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. That is

absolutely doable in 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.
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 and saint bart's more power to you the table stakes for the most prosperous nation in the world is everyone is fucking too expensive okay not for scott st bart's is ridiculous go to tulum or something you can afford i'm not telling people that they have to have kids to be happy. 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.
And right now, we've gone from 60% of 30-year-olds used to have a kid to 27%. Every economic policy, I think, should be reverse engineered back from one thing.
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? Jesse, is that focus on young men still non-grata in democratic circles, or are people starting to get it? No, they're starting to get that they need it. 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 Wes Moore's program a couple things that are really important.

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 healthcare provider share.
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? It's to show up no matter what. 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 healthcare journey, someone who's taking care of you, someone who has the kind of qualifications to be doing that.
And I noticed, and obviously it was made for very good jokes, but 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. That dude's everywhere right now.
His PR tour is great. I can't get away from him.
He has a very funny bit about the male nurse that is on this journey for him. It's like a hulking Italian guy who knows him from his comedy and is basically cracking jokes about him not being able to get his wife knocked up.
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? And that someone like Andrew Schultz, who has a ton of bravado, has some jokes. I mean, it's always very cheeky, but that certainly people think are sexist or misogynist, 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? 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 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 or not St. Bart's maybe Disney World but I come visit me not for Mardi Gras though it too insane.
Last thing is for Scott. We're out of time, but I'm obsessed with the crypto scam Trump is running.
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 crypto magnets who are being under investigation by the SEC, and then they're in turn giving tens of millions of dollars to Trump. So if you just give me a couple sentences on that, and then I had a listener request, they wanted investment advice for you if the economy is going to go to shit.
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.
This is pure speculation, but I think every piece of evidence shows that this may not be speculation. This may be reality.
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.
And imagine Putin said, I'll give you $10 billion. It's untraceable.
But but by the way isn't europe's funding of ukraine really a problem isn't your funding really extending this war 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 dollars in here 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? 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.
Republicans would argue we're just more brazen and less opaque about it. You've been doing it through lobbyists and Speaker Emerta.
Pelosi is probably the most blatant, brazen insider trader in history. I mean, you got to admire, if you're going to be corrupt, don't play small ball like Pelosi for millions.
Do it for billions like Trump. So, I think that the Trump coin is nothing but pure, unadulated grift it's the perfect scam we used to think it was donald trump media where this stock that does three million a year this company that does three million in business and loses 300 million is worth five billion dollars but here's the thing he's gonna have to follow the sec when he sells shares he doesn't have to do that with the.
As far as we know, it's billions of dollars in pay for play.

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.

Nobody knows.

I can paint a scenario either way.

These tariffs are to the economy what leeches were to medicine.

None of us who know anything about economics can believe they actually think this shit's going to work again consumer confidence is crashing 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 that should take a real toll on the economy the american stock is still overvalued. If you were to summarize the world's value into $100 right now, including debt, the US costs 70 and the rest of the world costs 30.
So let me ask you, Tim, if you could buy the US for $70 or the rest of the world for 30, what do you think is a better value? I think I'd probably start investing in Germany and India and Brazil. That's exactly right.
And that's what's happening. The capital flows are reversing and we're seeing people start to look at other markets on the US because the US is just very expensive.
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.
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.
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. In sum, your Kevlar here is diversification.
But don't listen to people like me because the reality is we just don't know. It's a wonderful place to leave it.
And 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. 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, doors always open.

All right?

Tim, 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.

It's a good brand.

It's eloquent.

It's basically, what the actual fuck?

Yeah.

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.

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.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks, Tim. Boys, they're time a dozen.
Boys, they ain't doing nothing for me any longer. Might be getting stronger.
Boys, a lot of women love you. Boys, it just make me mad.
All the little things that you do Ain't gonna make me sad Then I saw one looking At me from afar Then I knew it was you All alone I knew it was you Suddenly I knew there was a reason Then I knew it was you You fit my face Thank you The Board Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.