Raging Moderates: Trump Has Completed Half of Project 2025

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Speaker 12 Welcome, Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 13 And I'm Jessica Tarlow.

Speaker 12 How are you, Jess?

Speaker 13 I love that you paused a little. You're like, what does one say now in the banter section? How are you? I am good.
How are you?

Speaker 12 I'm good. Yeah.
I'm alone in my place in London. It feels strange.

Speaker 12 It's kind of weird here.

Speaker 13 I mean, you don't become single when your partner is away, but do you have like Sexist City called it secret single behavior?

Speaker 13 Like how you live when you're on your own versus how you live when your partner and family is at home.

Speaker 13 If it's illegal in any way, don't tell me.

Speaker 12 I mean, my life is pretty much a constant exercise and arrested adolescence, so I'm not sure it's any different when the kids are gone, but it's actually a little bit depressing.

Speaker 12 I mean, of course, the weather turned very gray and very cold and being here alone.

Speaker 12 I have the dogs, which is nice, but I'm trying to get out every night such that I'm just not, you know, pondering around a house.

Speaker 12 But I can't stand my family when they're here, and then I miss them the moment they leave. I'm just sort of generally pissed off at all times.

Speaker 12 But yeah, this feels especially lonely to be kind of clanging around the house, especially with the boys not here.

Speaker 13 I was expecting like, yeah, you know, I don't pick up my clothes and I go to the bathroom with the door open, but that's sad that you're unhappy all the time.

Speaker 12 Yeah, generally a little bit, a little bit down. But anyways, enough of that.
How are you?

Speaker 13 I'm fine. I'm, yeah, good.
Good. We had a trip planned to London, actually, because I lived over there for a long time.
And so lots of friends there. And my goddaughter was getting baptized.

Speaker 13 And she ended up getting this horrible staph infection. Have you heard of scalded skin staph?

Speaker 12 I have not.

Speaker 13 It looks as bad as it sounds. Basically, like it's terrible.
The whole baby, she's just like her whole body blistered. And she was in the hospital for six days.
So the trip.

Speaker 13 got canceled, which is not a big deal. And the good news is that she's fine, but we have talked about pediatric ERs as being the most depressing and also

Speaker 13 the most uplifting place because you see these nurses and doctors and physicians assistants who are, they just do God's work. And so we are indebted to them for always.

Speaker 13 And that's kind of been what my week was like. So.

Speaker 12 God, we're just a bag of sunshine.

Speaker 13 Sorry, I know.

Speaker 12 Get us out of here. Get us out.
Get us out. I didn't mean to do that.

Speaker 13 Everything else was.

Speaker 12 Talk about the ceasefire and the government shutdown.

Speaker 12 All right.

Speaker 12 In today's episode of Reaching Moderates, we're discussing two weeks in, the shutdown starts hurting everyday Americans, how Trump has completed about half of the Project 2025 agenda, and what to expect from the No Kings protests

Speaker 12 2.0, if you will. All right, let's get into it.
The government shutdown is really starting to sting. Museums are closed.

Speaker 12 Federal workers are missing paychecks, and small businesses that rely on government activity are feeling the crunch.

Speaker 12 Trump, meanwhile, is trying to blunt some of the backlash by using leftover Pentagon funds to keep paying the troops, a move that takes one major pressure point off the table, but leaves hundreds of thousands of other workers stuck in limbo.

Speaker 12 Democrats and Republicans are still blaming each other for the standoff with no deal in sight.

Speaker 12 Jess, what are your thoughts on the shutdown, where it is now, and any thoughts on where it goes from here?

Speaker 13 So I thought at the beginning that it would be kind of short-lived, honestly. I mean, Donald Trump had the longest shutdown in his first administration and went 35 days.

Speaker 13 And I thought, like, we're definitely not getting anywhere close to that. I frankly didn't give Democrats, I guess, enough credit for backbone.

Speaker 13 And I thought that they would find some way to yes relatively quickly because Republican pressure and pressure at home as well, because, you know, there are people who vote for Democrats certainly in their districts who might be saying, like, hey, I need my paycheck or I need.

Speaker 13 the country to work. Like we had a vacation plan to this national park, the museums, et cetera.
But it feels to me like this is going to go for a long time at this point.

Speaker 13 And you see both sides really kind of hunkering down, big change in dynamics.

Speaker 13 I think this shift away from are the Democrats going to cave and hat tip to Chuck Schumer, who I think has kept the Senate caucus in line.

Speaker 13 And Angus King, who was one of the three Democrats that had voted to keep the government open, now has changed his mind. And now he is siding with the majority of Democrats.

Speaker 13 And there's real pressure pressure on Mike Johnson. We know the public opinion is against the Republicans on this between 10 and 15 points.
They blame the Republicans more.

Speaker 13 But you're also seeing individual Republican representatives even do things like go on TV and talk about how poor Johnson's leadership has been, especially that he has the caucus at home on recess.

Speaker 13 And they're like, we should be working.

Speaker 13 Like Kevin Kiley in California, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been making the rounds to complain about Mike Johnson and the healthcare system in general, which we should talk about because it's not as if, you know, just extending the subsidies solves the problem.

Speaker 13 We still have the most expensive health care in the world and it's burdensome no matter what.

Speaker 13 There was a private Republican lawmaker call and apparently three more Republicans on that call raised concerns about the House being out of session.

Speaker 13 Stephanie Beiss of Oklahoma, Jay Obernulte of California, and Julie Federchick of North Dakota.

Speaker 13 So that's a pretty wide range of representatives from all over the country and places that you would expect to be pretty die-hard in support of the Republicans and like what Trump wants.

Speaker 13 And they're saying, you can't just tell us to sit at home while this is going on.

Speaker 13 Like this is a legitimate state of emergency and this is why people elect us, right, to make sure that the government is running. So those are kind of my top line thoughts.

Speaker 12 Well,

Speaker 12 you're the pollster here. And what I've seen or what's in the data here is that 41% of Americans hold the GOP accountable versus 30% for Democrats.
So it feels as if Democrats,

Speaker 12 you know, they all lose, but Republicans lose more. So I don't see the incentive for Democrats to give an inch.
And it feels like they've been very pointed and strategic on focusing on health care.

Speaker 12 And yesterday I was on.

Speaker 12 a radio show here in the UK and they asked me who was the leader of the Democratic Party. And I said it's Marjorie Taylor Greene right now.
That essentially she's the most articulate.

Speaker 12 She's personalized the issue, saying my kids' premiums are going to double. I think we need to come together.
I don't think,

Speaker 12 I mean, she's quite frankly just been, A, everyone loves what they perceive as a turn code. If you want to get the cameras going, just recite the talking points of the other side, right?

Speaker 12 I think she kind of, I mean, who would have thought that the sanest person of the Republican Party would be Marjorie Taylor Green? I think everyone is totally flummoxed here.

Speaker 12 But it feels to me that in Calci, the

Speaker 12 betting market or the speculation market is forecasting that it'll be shut 37 days.

Speaker 12 I think that what's happened in the Middle East has probably taken their eye off the ball or taken some of their sense of urgency away. And

Speaker 12 I think the Democrats are going to get most or all of what they want here because my sense is every again, every day this goes on, it cedes advantage from the Republicans to the Democrats.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 this feels like at some point, Mike Johnson gets Democrats in a room and says, all right, how do I declare victory and get this done by giving you some or not all of what you want?

Speaker 12 But I would imagine that Leader Jeffries and Senator Schumer, for the first time in a while, actually feel some mojo and some juju here.

Speaker 12 Like, oh my gosh, we're actually winning for once and we're actually seen as leaders.

Speaker 13 What is this strange feeling that I have?

Speaker 12 What is this feeling? I don't recognize this sensation. So I think it really comes down to to what extent is Speaker Johnson willing to rally some Republicans to give on these

Speaker 12 extensions of subsidies for Obamacare. So I know my sense is the Democrats are winning here.
Your thoughts?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I think a little bit. I mean, listen, winning a political battle when the government is shut down and that's affecting everyday Americans isn't the same kind of win.
Fair enough.

Speaker 12 Good point.

Speaker 13 There are people who are out there losing that they're trying to protect.

Speaker 13 But yes, I think that they have been able to clearly and articulately advocate for their position, which is this is about protecting Americans' health care.

Speaker 13 And I think that if a deal is done, it will be about the ACA subsidies. I don't think that they're going to get a rollback of the Medicaid cuts from the Big Beautiful bill, which is also...

Speaker 13 part of what they want. I think that that is kind of the prized possession of the administration and no one's going to be touching that.

Speaker 13 You saw Trump come out and say, well, we'll find a way to pay our troops and law enforcement. an OMB spokesperson said,

Speaker 13 OMB is making every preparation to batten down the hatches and ride out the Democrats in transigence, pay the troops, pay law enforcement, continue the reductions in force and wait.

Speaker 13 So that's the key part of this for Russ Vote. He is having a field day with the amount of layoffs that they can do.
And they had another one of those.

Speaker 13 Did you see they fired like a thousand CDC scientists on Friday night and then, of course, had to rehire most of them back because, whoops, we got rid of the wrong guys again.

Speaker 13 Makes me think of the early days when they were getting rid of all the weather people and then they're like, oh my God, what are we supposed to do here? You know, we don't have air traffic control.

Speaker 13 Nashville airport has to shut down for five hours a couple of days ago. I mean,

Speaker 13 it's having a very real impact, but it's exactly what. Rust vote wants out of it.

Speaker 13 And I think that Trump, in his constant quest to be able to declare victory about something, if they find a way to move the pay for troops and law enforcement and maybe some nutritional assistance for women and children, which has also been a conversation point and get that kind of carved out, then he can say, everything else that's bad that's happening to you is the Democrats' fault.

Speaker 13 And I'm out here protecting our troops and our police officers should say that Leader Jeffries wants a standalone bill to make sure that the troops get paid.

Speaker 13 Maybe they make a compromise or maybe Trump just wants to take it as kind of an executive action. He loves to take from his tariff pot of money, which he says is, what, $17 trillion?

Speaker 13 And there's no accounting of that actually having happened at that level. But at least that's what he's kind of posing could happen.
I want to double tap. Is that the phrase?

Speaker 13 Double tap

Speaker 13 on the Democrats winning part, at least in

Speaker 13 this microcosm of the fight, because it's been interesting for me to see how you know, Democrats can be up on the generic ballot.

Speaker 13 They're winning, you know, on who's to blame for And they're most favored on who's best to handle health care.

Speaker 13 But the other main issues that matter to voters, like the economy, like immigration, they still prefer the Republican Party. Like Trump is underwater on it.

Speaker 13 But I've been thinking about, you know, if the election were held today, kind of examples. And

Speaker 13 I still don't think that it would be a slam dunk that Democrats would come away with anything close to a big majority. And that's kind kind of, it's not kind of concerning to me.
That is concerning.

Speaker 13 I think that we would win the House, but maybe buy a couple seats and you want it to be a really definitive win so that you can actually manage to get things done because you're going to lose a few people in every vote.

Speaker 13 So what do you make of that situation with Republicans still being favored on who's best to handle the economy, et cetera?

Speaker 12 Aaron Ross Powell, I think the unfortunate reality is that America would rather have an Autocrat who's perceived as strong than Democrats who are perceived as weak.

Speaker 12 And I think the basic axiom of American politics can best be described by what David Trump said, and that is, if liberals won't enforce borders, fascists will.

Speaker 12 And America wants that. America would rather see an overreaction, coarseness, and cruelty to weakness.

Speaker 12 And by the way, I'm not advocating for that. I'm not sure it's the

Speaker 12 right thing to do. But America is voting.
America seems more outraged by Jimmy Kimmel being taken off the air than they are about a mass secret police force

Speaker 12 terrorizing neighborhoods. So the Democratic Party right now is pretty much leaderless.

Speaker 12 There are some governors who are getting some interesting attention, you know, Governors Newsom, Pritzker, Moore. And I find everyone's talking about Bashir because nobody knows who he is.

Speaker 12 So everyone's looking for an empty vessel that'll be the great, kind of the great hope here.

Speaker 12 But yeah, I think Democrats are, as everyone says, is lacking an or star here.

Speaker 12 And it feels like there's an incredible vacuum or void, if you will.

Speaker 12 So, yeah, it feels like politically

Speaker 12 we have a choice between coarseness and cruelty and weakness. That's kind of what's on the menu.
Anyways, with that, with that note.

Speaker 13 Wait, before we go, I want to talk to you about your interview with Dan Senor, who was exactly the person I wanted to hear from.

Speaker 12 So first off, I think the world of Dan Senor, he was actually my sister's roommate when they were in D.C. right out of college.
And I met him, and he was this young, nice kid.

Speaker 12 And I didn't like him because he was Republican, and that's the kind of judgmental person I am. And then 30 years later, we reconnected over Israel and or over the topic.

Speaker 12 I went on his podcast, and I've become,

Speaker 12 you know, real friends with him, which isn't easy at my age, Jess. It's not easy.
But anyways, we've been going back and forth on each other's pods.

Speaker 12 I thought one of the more interesting things he said, he kind of broke down why now? Why did all of a sudden everything come together for the peace plan?

Speaker 12 And he kind of outlined five different things, which really struck me, and three of them I never even considered before. Anyways, let's listen to a brief clip of our discussion with Dan Senor.

Speaker 12 So what exists of Hamas now is basically a political organization in Gaza that has a sort of ragtag militia, which is different from what it had before October 7th, which was a political organization in Gaza and a very sophisticated military.

Speaker 12 Now, that political organization will still try to stay in power and still try to terrorize.

Speaker 12 Let's take a quick break. Stay with us.

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Speaker 12 Welcome back. Jess, remember Project 2025, the far-right governing blueprint Trump claimed to know nothing about during his 2024 campaign? Yeah.
I remember that. Remember that? Well,

Speaker 12 he and his budget director, one of the plan's main architects, have already put nearly half of it into action.

Speaker 12 The roadmap is dismantling checks and balances and handing sweeping power to the presidency. Project 2025 did move voters in 2024, so how should Democrats talk about it heading into 2026 and 2028?

Speaker 12 What do you make of Project 2025

Speaker 12 in terms of how to position it?

Speaker 13 It's bad. It was bad when we found out about it.
It was bad when you could print all 900 pages out.

Speaker 13 And it's bad seeing it come to fruition. I try not to dwell on the mistakes of the past so much.
Like I want to learn from them, but I've been sad already for a long time.

Speaker 13 So I don't want to go back to, you know, the highs of Brad's summer to the lows of election night or the lows of many points actually between August and election night where I thought, oh, we're going to lose.

Speaker 13 But one thing in particular always sticks out to me, and that is the fact that Project 2025 was being used as a talking point by Kamala Harris and top surrogates all over the country.

Speaker 13 And it was being hugely effective. So much so that Tony Fabrizio, who's Donald Trump's pollster, talked about how salient it was and that it was concerning even Republican voters.

Speaker 13 And they're going, well, what's this thing? And they weren't necessarily believing Trump, which they shouldn't when he says, I know nothing about this.

Speaker 13 Well, of course, my administration is stocked with people that wrote the thing. And they're my advisors.
And they came from, you know, my first term.

Speaker 13 And basically my whole inner circle has their name on this thing, but I know nothing about it. And then we inexplicably stop talking about it.

Speaker 13 And I know that there's always this push and pull between, should you be talking about democracy issues or should you be talking about bread and butter issues?

Speaker 13 But the beauty of Project 2025 is encapsulated in its evilness, actually, in that it's all of it at once. So it is a democracy issue, but it is also a bunch of economic issues tied together.

Speaker 13 And we are seeing that playing out right now.

Speaker 13 I mean, the dismantling of our system of checks and balances has been so swift that you see, you know, judges even with cases of whiplash at this point, right?

Speaker 13 Like that they can't get into courtrooms fast enough to stop some of what they are doing, you know, consolidating all the power in the presidency, you know, check, check, check, check, check.

Speaker 13 That's what we're seeing. And you have a neutered Congress and Mike Johnson has taken that willingly.

Speaker 13 There was a big piece about that this weekend, you know, that Mike Johnson basically, you know, signed me up to be emasculated in every way possible, that you need these willing foot soldiers to be able able to execute something like this.

Speaker 13 And Mike Johnson is the star pupil, to say the least.

Speaker 13 And so I think that in talking about Project 2025, I know that the title itself does mean something to people, but I think that we should be talking about it piece by piece and how it is affecting individual Americans' lives.

Speaker 13 Like this is what Project 2025 looks like for you. So it looks like the firing of thousands of, you know, CDC scientists who are there to to keep you safe.

Speaker 13 It's raising tariffs unilaterally that are breaking the bank for you.

Speaker 13 It is a president indicting his political enemies, striking boats in international waters that you say are carrying narco-traffickers. Did you see this?

Speaker 13 That Colombia is now saying it wasn't a Venezuelan boat. It was a Colombian boat and there were Colombians on it.

Speaker 13 It's also, and this story, it doesn't surprise me, but scary, scary stuff that now the Pentagon wants to essentially bar free press access.

Speaker 13 They're threatening retaliation against reporters that seek out information that hasn't been pre-approved for release. So they're basically saying it's not just about you roaming the halls.

Speaker 13 You can't even be collecting information, which is the whole point of being a reporter.

Speaker 13 And to the credit of almost every single outlet except One American News, like even Newsmax said, we're not signing on. to this.
Like this is unacceptable.

Speaker 13 It completely flies in the face of a free press.

Speaker 13 But that's how Project 2025 lives. And I think that we need to be talking about it, what we're going to talk about, militarizing our streets.
Like that's Project 2025 as well.

Speaker 12 So let's unpack it specifically. So Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation, which is a very prominent right-wing think tank.

Speaker 12 And many of Project 2025's authors, despite Trump supposedly not knowing anything about it, have been nominated to work in the Trump administration, including Russell Vought, who leads the Office of Budget Management, CIA Director John Radcliffe, Brendan Carr, Chairman of the Federal Communications Communications Commission, Tom Homan, The Borders Are,

Speaker 12 Paul Atkins, Chairman of the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, Peter Navarro, Counselor to the President of the United States.

Speaker 12 And the document, essentially, Project 2025 could be broken down into sort of four basic policy aims.

Speaker 12 One, restore the family as the centerpiece of American life. What would be interesting there is for them to define family.

Speaker 13 I think you know how they define family.

Speaker 12 Effectively, Ozzie and Harriet.

Speaker 12 Dismantle the administrative state. I think that means get rid of governments.
Well, anyways, I don't know what they mean. Defend the nation's sovereignty.
Fire everybody. Pretty much.

Speaker 12 Defend the nation's sovereignty and borders. Okay.

Speaker 12 Secure God-given individual rights to live freely. Again, big questions around what God are we talking about and what individual rights.

Speaker 12 I don't think those individual rights include things like bodily autonomy. But anyway, if you dig deeper, there are some more alarming stances in the document.

Speaker 12 It labels the FBI as a bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization. I think a lot of us would argue that the FBI is the primary agency upholding the law.

Speaker 12 Suggests that the health and human services should, open, quote, maintain a biblically based social science reinforced definition of marriage and family.

Speaker 12 I find that very troubling. Proposes slashing federal money for research and investment in renewable energy.

Speaker 12 Suggests banning pornography and shutting out out tech and telco companies that allow access to adult material.

Speaker 12 Okay,

Speaker 12 so

Speaker 12 this is,

Speaker 12 it sounds to me like this is pretty much a slow creep and it's happening or that it's a kind of a creeping takeover.

Speaker 12 And if I'd read these things nine months ago, I would have thought, oh, the American public will never put up with this. And it feels like.

Speaker 12 Bannon called it flood the zone. I would argue that what's taking place here, a better term for it, would be blitzkrieg.
And that is there's just so much going on and

Speaker 12 progressive kind of liberal democratic values are being attacked on so many fronts that they're a bit flummoxed and flat-footed as to where to respond.

Speaker 12 And if you look at Project 2025, it feels as if they've made real progress against many of these objectives. Your thoughts?

Speaker 13 Yeah, they're feeling really good. And I've spoken to people who work in the administration.
Obviously, I work with a lot of conservatives that are close to the administration.

Speaker 13 They're riding pretty high on this, even if Trump's approval ratings in key areas are down from where he started and substantially, even down minus 15 on the economy.

Speaker 13 Republicans still leading on who the American public would rather manage the economy, but you know, that's a big fall. Minus 16 on trade, minus 27 on inflation.

Speaker 13 You know, those are all really bad things. Um, but I feel like there has to be a real focus on the tangible issues that Americans can see and feel in order to explain what's going on.

Speaker 13 And I do think that immigration is a linchpin of that.

Speaker 13 You know, the terrorists and what's going on with the economy as well.

Speaker 13 But the visuals of the troops going through our cities, peaceful protests in the face of, you know, being pepper sprayed by a CPB officer who has certainly no business being in Chicago, which is very, very, very far from the border, as Governor Pritzker pointed out to us last week when he joined, I think is meaningful.

Speaker 13 And also these stories of Americans that are getting detained are coming fast and furiously. Tim Miller, our pal over at the Bulwark, did a great interview with a U.S.

Speaker 13 citizen, George Redis, who's a veteran and was held for three days in detention. He said, they put me on suicide watch and they put me in a cell.

Speaker 13 I'm naked in like a hospital dress with just a concrete bed, a mattress, a thin mattress, and they leave the light on 24-7. There's a glass door and officers just always standing.

Speaker 13 Psychiatric nurse comes and checks on me once a day. And so from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon, when I'm released, I'm literally in that cell, naked, just in that room with the light on.

Speaker 13 Like this is a nightmare. This is an American who served our country.
We have a 39-year-old DACA recipient who was detained. and died in ICE custody.

Speaker 13 And then you have the judges all over the country, a lot of them Republican appointees that are calling bullshit on the administration's claims. Cities like Portland and Chicago are lawless messes.

Speaker 13 A portrayal of Portland from the administration is, quote, untethered to the facts.

Speaker 13 The judge that ruled against the deployment of troops to Chicago said that the Department of Homeland Security's version of events was simply unreliable and suffered from a lack of credibility, and also noted that the deployment itself could fuel the civil unrest, which is the point, right?

Speaker 13 They're like, if there isn't a problem, I'm going to go and make one.

Speaker 13 And you're seeing, you know, the visuals of Christy Noam standing on the roof of the ICE facility with all of the animals, the dress-up that they're playing in Portland.

Speaker 13 And then the naked bike ride.

Speaker 13 They're calling it nude to fa, I think maybe. Nudie to fa or something like that.
Portland, just keep being Portland, obviously.

Speaker 13 But, you know, we were skeptical of the idea that focusing on the Kilmar Obrego-Garcia case was going to move the needle. And Senator Van Holland basically just said, F it.

Speaker 13 Like, I'm going to Seacot and I'm going to check on my constituent. And it ended up being the first time that there was a real dent in Donald Trump's approval rating on immigration.

Speaker 13 And I'm not saying it's a... turned into a free fall moment, but it certainly was a bit of a dam breaking.

Speaker 13 And right now, a Maryland judge is actually on the verge of telling the government that they can't detain Obrego Garcia any longer because they haven't shown a compelling reason for him to continue to be.

Speaker 13 And also three African nations have told the the Trump administration, we're not taking him. Like this idea that you can just send people wherever you want or pay them off for it isn't going to fly.

Speaker 13 And I think the fact that that case is still percolating and it was such a symbol for the overreach and the cruelty of this administration, and it remains salient is an indication that we really need to be leaning into

Speaker 13 what kind of lawless behavior they're engaging in, but also what kind of cruel behavior. An An American citizen who served the country spending three days in detention.

Speaker 12 I'm glad you brought it up. I think, look, the most influential person in America right now is the president, and globally, I would argue.
I think tied for second is Jeffrey Epstein and Jensen Huang.

Speaker 12 I think that essentially an attempt to keep Jeffrey Epstein's name out of the news has resulted in the Trump administration lobbying every 48 or 72 hours a series of actions and stories that just push.

Speaker 12 I mean, we saw it again with these ridiculous China tariffs, which he had no, there was massive market manipulation, a dramatic uptick in options activity.

Speaker 12 Just a few minutes before he announced these tariffs, a few people cashed out with multi-million dollars, sometimes over $100 million gains, and then he walks it back.

Speaker 12 I think that, again, my thesis is there's a group of people armed with AI that know every 71 to 74 hours, as soon as Epstein starts to creep back into the news cycle, come up with a series of ridiculous actions that will take the media's gaze off of Epstein.

Speaker 12 And then, number two, Jensen Wong,

Speaker 12 essentially, America is a giant bet on AI right now.

Speaker 12 And I continue to believe that the most dangerous metric ever invented was the NASDAQ and the Dow and the S ⁇ P index because the S ⁇ P being up 14%, I believe, has provided cloud cover for Trump's actions.

Speaker 12 And that is, America has become so much about stuff,

Speaker 12 specifically your ability to acquire stuff versus character versus family versus patriotism, that as long as the markets continue to go up and people are under the impression that they're going to have more money and access to cheap calories and access to Netflix, that if the market is up 14%, that must mean the president on the whole is doing something right.

Speaker 12 And essentially, the reason the market is up 14% is 75% plus of the market's gains come from 10 companies led by NVIDIA.

Speaker 12 And if Jensen Huang wasn't, and now Jensen is implementing a series of circular, kind of incestuous deals that feel very like late stage 99 to me, that if the market had been down 14%,

Speaker 12 I believe that Trump wouldn't have had the cloud cover to go into Portland. Some people would argue, well, we would have been more likely to do it to create a distraction.

Speaker 12 But the most powerful men outside of Trump right now are Epstein, trying to keep anything, trying to keep him out of the news cyclist dictating, whether it's Mike Johnson dismissing Congress early or not swearing in an elected congressperson because he's worried about the number of votes to release the Epstein file, this guy is having a ton of power from the grave.

Speaker 12 And also, America is essentially a bet on AI right now.

Speaker 12 And if AI doesn't continue to garner and register the type of outrageous valuations it's garnered to date, you're just going to see the cloud cover disappear for Trump's activities here.

Speaker 12 So it's strange. I think that a dead man is influencing America and Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Sachin Adela, and the continued march of the Magnificent 10 is the cloud cover for this administration.

Speaker 12 Any thoughts?

Speaker 13 Well, I had Adelita Grijalva, the congresswoman that you mentioned who's not getting sworn in.

Speaker 13 I interviewed her yesterday for the YouTube channel, and I said, well, why do you think you're not getting sworn in? And she said, well, I'm the 218th vote. Yeah.

Speaker 18 I mean, the difference between myself and the three other members of Congress that have been sworn in since the special, they were all sworn in within 24 hours.

Speaker 18 And aside from them being three Caucasian men and I am a Chicana from Arizona, the only other issue is I am the 218th signer to the discharge petitions to release the Epstein files.

Speaker 13 And they have shown a willingness to do absolutely anything in their power and sometimes things not in their power to avoid doing that. And I'd recommend everyone check it out.

Speaker 13 She seems great and has a lot that she wants to accomplish. And she also is is a representative of a border constituency.
She has 700,000 constituents, 60% Latino.

Speaker 13 And the stories that she is telling about what it's like with customs and border patrol officers and ICE there. And she saw someone just get pulled into a car.

Speaker 13 She was just pumping gas with her son, you know, out of an unmarked vehicle. They don't even have the resources.
If they did want.

Speaker 13 to be in properly marked vehicles, they couldn't because they are moving so fast and furiously that they haven't even waited for the right kind of gear, though it does suit their purposes for them to just look like scary men to carry out these kind of pickups.

Speaker 13 And that's really interesting about, you know, we're all just a big bet on AI, because I know Andrew Ross Sorgan was interviewed and asked about, will there be a crash?

Speaker 13 You know, it feels like the stock market is just completely impervious to what's going on on the ground or what people are feeling about their lives.

Speaker 13 And if it is being propped up by these 10 companies, do you think that a crash does come ever or we'll just continue on this kind of, you know, fast food diet or whatever, you know, the fake calories of it all and manage to keep going like this?

Speaker 13 I mean, no, I'm, I'm enjoying it in terms of the returns, but it does feel fake.

Speaker 12 Well, first off, just

Speaker 12 to lighten up the mood a little bit, if you want to enjoy yourself, take an edible and watch a very talented Andrew Ross Sorkin explain to an 83-year-old Leslie Stahl the stock market and ask yourself, oh, it's really surprising that broadcast news or cable news is dying.

Speaker 19 We're always being undone by bubbles. There was the internet bubble in 2000, housing in 2008.
Are we in another bubble, an AI bubble or something like that?

Speaker 20 I think it's hard to say we're not in a bubble of some sort. The question is always: when is the bubble going to pop?

Speaker 19 One symptom of a bubble is when the market goes up and up, but the underlying economy, the real economy, goes soft.

Speaker 19 And that appears to be happening right now.

Speaker 12 All this hullabaloo about CBS and who's going to run it. Folks, regarding CBS, nobody fucking cares.
CBS is irrelevant. Like Margaret Brennan and Face the Nation has some relevance within the Beltway.

Speaker 12 60 Minutes continues to get a lot of clips. They continue to do a great job.

Speaker 12 CBS Sunday Morning is really nice to see two squirrels who come back and ride a bear to go see some old lady in Alaska who feeds them hamburger helper. I like that show.

Speaker 12 But it's just so hilarious that we think CBS has any fucking meaning in this economy, in this society. Anyways,

Speaker 12 the question around AI, there's this notion of fragility or what makes a robust economy. And essentially, it comes back to diversification.
So the fast food industry is a robust industry.

Speaker 12 If McDonald's goes out of business, the biggest player, you're going to have no problem getting a lot of calories for a fairly low price. It is a robust industry.

Speaker 12 The banking industry in the United States is not robust. If J.P.

Speaker 12 Morgan has some rogue trader in Singapore who figures out a way to bypass all compliance in their pursuit for returns, and Jamie Dimon calls Trump and says, oh, gosh, you're not going to believe this.

Speaker 12 Some rogue 28-year-old has put us under and we need a bailout. They're too big to fail at this point.
That means the U.S. banking sector is probably not that robust.

Speaker 12 Some people would argue it is looking at Silicon Valley Bank going out of business and the market was fine. It was pretty resilient.
I would argue that it's probably

Speaker 12 not that robust. And what we have now is an economy that is looking increasingly fragile because you have 10 companies representing 40% of the SP by value.

Speaker 12 The SP represents 50% of total market capitalization. And I'm writing about it this week from my No Mercy, No Malice newsletter.
And I think the kind of how the end begins is the following.

Speaker 12 And that is all of these circular deals, so NVIDIA invests $100 billion in OpenAI with the agreement they're going to take that $100 billion and invest it back in NVIDIA chips.

Speaker 12 $100 billion in incremental business to NVIDIA creates $55 billion in operating margin, they have 55 points of operating margin or $55 billion in earnings times a PE of 50.

Speaker 12 That's like a one and a quarter trillion dollar technical increase in notional valuation off of a $100 billion investment.

Speaker 12 So AOL was pulling this sleight of hand back in the late 90s, investing in e-commerce companies in exchange for them spending all that money on AOL such that they could continue to report growth that justified what was an exceptional artificially inflated valuation.

Speaker 12 This is late stage 99 circular deals. There's an amazing graph pulled together by Bloomberg showing that these deals have now become very, very popular.

Speaker 12 So what happens here, the string or the rope that gets pulled is there's more reports from big companies saying the adoption layer, if you will, is not taking off the way we thought.

Speaker 12 And that is, companies have signed up for AI, made huge investments, but they're not seeing the ROI they had expected. They announced a pullback in spending.
NVIDIA gets cut in half.

Speaker 12 And effectively, if you have the Magnificent 10 get cut in half, the Magnificent X could get cut in half and they still wouldn't look cheap.

Speaker 12 That would be a 20% decline in the value of the SP, a 10% decline in the total market cap of all stocks globally.

Speaker 12 And then it would disproportionately, I don't want to say hurt because they're pretty resilient, but it would disproportionately affect the top 10% who are now responsible for 50% of consumer spending, which again see above

Speaker 12 fragile economy or anti-resilient.

Speaker 12 And the thing about rich people is that when they make money, it's great because they can spend a lot more because they feel wealthy because of the effect of the stock market.

Speaker 12 But the downside is that wealthy people can take their spending down 20, 30, 40%. Middle-class homes can't take their spending down that much because they're spending money on essentials.

Speaker 12 But if the wealthy all of a sudden feel less wealthy because the stock market, they wake up and the market is down 20% and some of the tech they're in is down 40%,

Speaker 12 they can take their spending down 30, 40%,

Speaker 12 which would immediately take us into a recession or a global recession.

Speaker 12 So I think that we have what is becoming an increasingly concentrated economy, an increasingly fragile or anti-resilient economy.

Speaker 12 And again, I come back to the statement: America has become a gigantic bet on AI.

Speaker 12 And it is fueling everything. It's fueling the markets.
It's fueling cloud cover for Trump.

Speaker 12 But I do believe, and I want to be clear, when guys like me are saying that we're on the precipice of the bubble popping, that usually means the market's going to go up another 20 or 30 percent in the next two years.

Speaker 12 But I am, and I, this is not financial advice because it's a political show, but what I am actually doing with my own personal finances is I'm rotating out of U.S.

Speaker 12 and tech stocks into European and Latin American stocks. You always want to be in the market, you want to be in low-cost funds.

Speaker 12 But America, the largest economy in the world right now, I think it's accurate to say it's a bet on AI and the sustained, crazy, frothy market valuations.

Speaker 12 I definitely think we could see a significant drawdown here that would have global implications. Anyways, with that, let's take one more quick break.

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Speaker 12 Okay, welcome back. Before we go, the No Kings protests are back and the GOP is already sounding the alarm.
Speaker Mike Johnson described the upcoming rallies as hate America and pro-Hamas.

Speaker 12 Though organizers just dismissed this as fear-mongering, Backed by labor unions and progressive groups, the movement says it's a peaceful protest against authoritarianism and a government shutdown.

Speaker 12 Jess, are you going to participate in the No Kings movement? What do you think of these protests?

Speaker 13 I think it's a very good thing, and I am thinking about going.

Speaker 13 On Saturday, I was talking to one of the organizers about whether he thought that it would be peaceful, first of all, and then also good for kids.

Speaker 13 You know, you do always see the cutest posters, right, with a little kid holding up, you know, a sign that's either funny or saying, like, what about my rights? Right.

Speaker 13 Like, I'm going to be here for a long time.

Speaker 13 You guys are aging out of the process, but we are the ones that are left behind with the messes that are created.

Speaker 13 So I would put it above 50% odds that I will be there on Saturday in the main one in Manhattan. So scheduled already over 2,000 of these protests.

Speaker 13 Something that is very different, though, from the first time this happened during the summer is that there will be a DC protest.

Speaker 13 And remember how it was like the counter programming to Trump's military parade. So they didn't have a DC version.
That won't be the case.

Speaker 13 And we do know how aggravated Trump gets when something is going on in his backyard. So I'm sure that that will make an impact on him.

Speaker 13 It seems like the administration is very scared about this, listening to Mike Johnson and Secretary Duffy was also talking about it, you know, already telling you like these are paid protesters or they're Antifa or, you know, whatever excuse they can come up with.

Speaker 13 It's been long enough that we know that the people who show up at these town halls are not partisan plants.

Speaker 13 And we know that people that are going to come out for no kings protests are real Americans that are concerned about the direction of the country and this authoritarian overreach.

Speaker 13 I don't know how many millions. It was estimated between four and six million participated over the summer.
We'll where that kind of comes out.

Speaker 13 I would imagine that it would be more and hopefully much more.

Speaker 13 And I think to our ongoing conversation about not seeing as much outrage as you would expect, especially considering how mad people were about Jimmy Kimmel versus right, like an American Army Ranger that's held in a cell for three days, that if we don't see a really massive turnout, that it portends something very bad for what's going to go on over the course of the next three years.

Speaker 13 I'm not talking about violence. I would never condone any sort of violence.

Speaker 13 But if the American populace isn't moved to participate in their First Amendment right to peacefully protest and to make their voices heard, I think that we have an even bigger uphill battle than we thought.

Speaker 13 And it will further embolden the administration to carry down. the path that they're on.
As I've been talking, I psyched myself up. I'm going.
I'll be at the No Kings protest on Saturday.

Speaker 13 I don't know if I'll have any children with me or if I'll have a good sign.

Speaker 12 Yeah,

Speaker 12 it's just so hypocritical, oxymoronic, stupid to somehow justify

Speaker 12 sending troops into American cities, but somehow finding a way to disparage peaceful protests. And these protests are just...

Speaker 12 I mean, I can tell you there's going to be a lot of music, a lot of people handing out food. I think these protests are going to be some of the safest places in America.

Speaker 12 You're around a group of people who are, generally speaking, politically engaged, care about America, out with their kids, out with their loved ones.

Speaker 12 They're just not in a mood to like, you know, commit violence. It just don't.
Any violence here will be a confrontation that is inspired by, quite frankly, the administration. I just don't.

Speaker 12 And also, this is a semi-serious question. I understand what the Heritage Foundation is.
We mentioned them. I understand what Hamas is.
I understand what the IDF is.

Speaker 12 I literally have no fucking idea what Antifa is. Like, who is it? Is there an office? Is there a leadership? Is it, it feels like a poltergeist or like a total snuffleuffagus meant to scare people? Or

Speaker 12 does Antifa even really exist as an organization?

Speaker 13 So this is difficult. This has been going on for years.
And he just had a... I was like, I've got a talk somewhere.

Speaker 12 Like, if I wanted to write a letter to,

Speaker 12 if we wanted to invite someone to the king of Antifa. If I wanted to invite someone to interview them about Antifa, who would we even reach out to?

Speaker 13 I don't know about their organizing office. There are definitely people who are members or kind of associated with it, but it's such a broad thing.
You know, Antifa is just anti-fascist.

Speaker 13 And we know that there are a lot of reasons. That's the Marines.

Speaker 12 That's the United States Marines. That's Antifa.

Speaker 13 It's a bit of where the wind blows. Right.
But Republicans have been hot and bothered about Antifa for years.

Speaker 12 And is this like the basement in that pizza place? It just doesn't exist.

Speaker 13 Yeah, where Hillary is slinging pizzas and holding children hostage. Yeah, she has been looking fabulous.

Speaker 12 She does. Someone's on the GLP one.
Someone's no. Someone's single and ready to marry.
Don't do that. Oh my God.
She's so GLP-1ing, and I'm here for it. She looks great.

Speaker 13 I didn't really think that. She looks great.
They just had their 50th wedding anniversary. I know.

Speaker 12 I saw this family.

Speaker 13 Single and ready to marry. I know.

Speaker 13 There is actually a very funny, I don't even know if it counts as a meme, but there's a side-by-side of her when she's young and Sidney Sweeney. And they look a lot alike.

Speaker 13 And it's driving the right crazy.

Speaker 12 I am not going to even comment on that.

Speaker 13 Okay. You don't want to comment on that? You comment on everything else.

Speaker 12 It's dangerous territory even for me. Okay.

Speaker 13 Step up with that.

Speaker 12 Let's put Secretary Clinton in an American Eagle commercial and see what happens to the stock.

Speaker 13 She has good genes.

Speaker 12 She does. Smart, impressive woman.

Speaker 13 So you're not weird for.

Speaker 13 not knowing what Antifa is. And I'm someone who even has to follow this and really struggles to talk about it definitively.

Speaker 13 But Donald Trump did just host a roundtable with journalists that cover Antifa and have had confrontations with them. And it basically comes down to like anyone that they don't like at the moment.

Speaker 13 And you see how it's thrown around, you know, Mike Johnson, it'll be Antifa, Secretary Duffy, it'll be Antifa, you know, Tyler Robinson, the guy who allegedly killed Charlie Kirk, Antifa.

Speaker 13 So it's broad and unspecific and is used to scare people, which is the administration's absolute favorite thing.

Speaker 13 And it takes the heat off the fact that there are actually very organized groups with ideologies that you can point to that are committing terrible acts of violence.

Speaker 13 And we don't want to talk about those kinds of things. We want to talk about rando leftists that don't like Elon Musk and Molotov cocktailed some Teslas

Speaker 13 or are trying to, you know, get the ICE facility in Portland closed down.

Speaker 12 So ask me what my favorite horror film is.

Speaker 13 What's your favorite horror film?

Speaker 12 Well, I'm glad you asked, Jess. It's actually a toss-up.
Aliens, which is probably my favorite sci-fi and the best sequel ever made.

Speaker 12 James Cameron took the reins elegantly and deftly from Ridley Scott of the original Alien.

Speaker 12 But my favorite horror film ever is The Sixth Sense. And

Speaker 12 calls on all these emotions being raised by a single mother. I just think the thing is genius.
And it was supposed to, it supposedly crowned the new Steven Spielberg, a guy named M. Night Shimalian.

Speaker 12 I see dead people. And he went on to make a series of really mediocre films.
Signs was a good film, but he made a film called The Village.

Speaker 12 And The Village is a story of these group of people who decide they want to sequester from society and live a more traditional family values life, and they swear off all medicine and modern technology.

Speaker 12 And the way they keep anyone from wanting to leave, especially the young people, this little village or this area, is they create these monsters and they have, essentially they find out that the monsters are just, you know, know villagers dressed up to scare the shit out of everyone and keep them in line and I feel like Antifa is the monsters in the village and that is it's a total fake illusory thing propped up I think the administration is literally hoping that Antifa shows up somewhere and does something mean or you know non-patriotic or violent because they need something to scare people to keep them to keep them thinking backward and to keep them in sort of a primitive society or to say you need me yeah that's what they're hoping like what happened with DC, frankly.

Speaker 13 That's again. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Socialism is this notion of equality, liberalism, this notion that everyone should have the right to pursue liberty.

Speaker 12 And the juice of fascism is trying to convince people that the enemy is within, that, oh, it's your neighbor who's a secret member of Antifa and like Senator Warren, you know, that that's the threat.

Speaker 13 Which is what he told the generals, right? Get ready. You've got to help us out with the enemy within.

Speaker 12 There you go, which makes.

Speaker 13 i texted you the picture of hillary clinton and sydney sweeney can you look at it oh really yeah i just have a lot of mixed emotions here i'm gonna have a lot i'm pulling it up i don't i don't want to make you uncomfortable and you are still on camera but

Speaker 12 i see it yeah look look uh secretary clinton looked look looks great beautiful yeah she does

Speaker 12 love the natural

Speaker 12 um

Speaker 12 all right i'm not sure how to respond to this we got to go anyway there you go all right that's all for this episode Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. This is a production of Prop G Media.

Speaker 12 Our producer is David Toledo, our associate producer is Eric Jennicus. Our technical director is Drew Burroughs.
Our engineer is William Flynn, and our executive producer is Katherine Dillon.

Speaker 12 Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss an episode. Jess, have a great rest of the week.

Speaker 13 You too.

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