Raging Moderates: Newsom's Centrist Approach and Kamala’s Political Future

Transcript

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Speaker 15 Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 16 And I'm Jessica Darlove. Jess, how are you? I'm great.
How are you?

Speaker 15 I'm good. I'm in the great state of Texas at South by Southwest.

Speaker 16 I've been seeing on social. You're all over.
Really? Well, your own social. Your team's doing a great job.

Speaker 15 I'm all over. I just love me.
I did a big, when I went on stage yesterday for Pivot, I danced around with my belly hanging out, screaming. That was a big hit.
Yeah. That was a big hit.

Speaker 15 Yeah, no, mockery is always. The algorithms love mockery.

Speaker 16 That's true. The algorithms are pretty mean.
And they were mean, actually, even before Elon Musk, but meaner now.

Speaker 15 And what have you been up to? How's your, or how was your weekend, I should say?

Speaker 16 Oh, it was great. It was my birthday yesterday.
I was in Jamaica, Sam's children.

Speaker 16 So we finally got away. And it was fabulous.
I had, my husband loves Jamaica, always has. I've never, had never been.

Speaker 15 And he loves Jamaica.

Speaker 16 He's obsessed with Jamaica, him and his friends.

Speaker 16 Yeah, it's a pretty amazing place, but we went to GoldenEye, Ian Fleming's old house. And now Chris Blackwell, who started Island Records, owns it.
I've heard it's great. Oh, it's fantastic.

Speaker 16 And it feels completely empty. Like we were wondering the whole time if there were other people around.
And there was a happy hour, which saw like 20 people at, and that was the max the whole time.

Speaker 16 So it was very cool and secluded. And my best friend has the same birthday as me.
We met in preschool and she came with her husband. They live in Florida now.
So it was cool.

Speaker 15 And you're 37, 38?

Speaker 16 No, the big four ones. So seven years until my midlife crisis, according to you, right? Where I started traveling only with my girlfriends and dancing with my belly out.

Speaker 15 But the good news is, is that for men, 50 is the new 30, and for women, 40 is the new age.

Speaker 16 I hadn't heard that one before. Dancing.
It's not really. It's upsetting.
But thank you.

Speaker 15 That's good. Yeah.
That's, that's, there's a term for that. New York.
All right, enough of that. Let's get into it.
President Trump sent financial markets into a tailspin last week.

Speaker 15 Today, we're going to talk about Trump backtracking on tariffs, Representative Al Green getting censored for protesting Trump's trying to address, what Governor Newsom really thinks about trends rights, and James Carvelle's surprising advice to Democrats, do nothing.

Speaker 15 So, markets kind of very volatile this week or last week with this ever-changing trade policy. On Thursday, he delayed tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, giving industries a brief bit of relief.

Speaker 15 But on Friday, he was back on offense, threatening new tariffs on Canadian lumber and dairy, claiming Canada has been ripping us off for years.

Speaker 15 The back and forth has left businesses scrambling and critics warning of economic fallout. Jess, how do these sudden shifts in trade policy impact businesses and global markets?

Speaker 16 Really badly. And the strangest part to me has been

Speaker 16 how little he seems to care because he was totally like live by the market, die by the market. And he's taking a very laissez-faire attitude towards it.

Speaker 16 He was interviewed by Maria Bartiromo and she was asking him about this because, you know, business anchors, no matter their partisan affiliations, have been freaking out over the last week with the Canada and Mexico 25%

Speaker 16 threat. And he went with the like, there could be a little bit of pain or, you know, maybe we'll see a recession and kind of shrugged it off.

Speaker 16 And Howard Luttnick is out there, you know, doing his best dancing around it. Like, we're all going to be fine.
And Scott Besson, we're all going to be fine.

Speaker 16 And Trump seems oddly comfortable to me with whatever the fate of the market or the American economy is going to be as a result of these policies that he hasn't done a particularly good job in defending.

Speaker 16 And I've been thinking a lot about the difference between the first Trump term and the second Trump term and how the chaos of this term is actually what we thought would happen the first time, but it was remarkably calm on a comparative basis and how central to that calmness Steve Mnuchin actually was.

Speaker 16 And I thought, like, oh, is this something that people are thinking about? So I started keyword searching for Mnuchin.

Speaker 16 And I see that there are a lot of people who are talking about what a good treasury secretary he actually was, and that he managed to stay under the frame.

Speaker 16 I mean, he had a few incredible photo ops and things like that with his wife holding all the money, et cetera.

Speaker 16 But that he was really an even hand.

Speaker 16 And there was someone who pointed out how Trump 1.0 put two of the best financial bureaucrats in power, Jerome Powell and Steve Mnuchin, and then Trump 2.0 hired knuckle-dragging cultists.

Speaker 16 And I thought that summed it up pretty well.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's really, it's almost getting a little bit comical. I think a key to these negotiations,

Speaker 15 it's really difficult to even understand what he wants. When I think about it, he says, okay, Canada's been ripping us off.
It's hard to exactly discern what he means.

Speaker 15 And then he'll go to, well, they need to stop shipping fentanyl across the border. And that might be true of Canada, or excuse me.

Speaker 15 It might be true, excuse me, of Mexico and China, or you could at least make a philosophical argument.

Speaker 15 But the amount of fentanyl that's coming across the Canadian border, I think, could fit in a backpack. It's less than 1% of the fentanyl that comes into the nation.
And in addition,

Speaker 15 we're now at a point where I don't even know if their tariffs are on or off based on what hour it is, where people are going to start clearing the shelves or developing alternative supply chains and alternative alliances, regardless of whether he takes the tariffs off again, because we just have no credibility.

Speaker 15 And the Atlanta Fed tracker, or they basically have a mechanism for predicting GDP growth, has gone from positive 4% to negative 2.8. Consumer sentiment has had its largest fall since COVID.

Speaker 15 The economy is contracting at its fastest rate since the lockdowns. It's just really difficult to understand

Speaker 15 what the end game here is. If he's putting this out to try and accomplish some big, beautiful deal that he can take credit for.

Speaker 15 Any thoughts on what's motivating motivating the administration right now?

Speaker 16 Well, he has always loved tariffs. Like the McKinley obsession is legit.
And he can, at certain moments, wax quasi-lyrical about the beauty of tariffs and McKinley.

Speaker 16 And, you know, we have Mount McKinley now in Alaska as well. So I think there is a fundamental affection that he has.
And that's not to say that all tariffs are bad.

Speaker 16 And I saw actually your markets co-host, Ed, pointed this out. There was an op-ed in the New York Times by a Rust Belt Democrat, Chris DeLuzio.

Speaker 16 He replaced Connor Lamb, who also ran in the Senate primary against John Fetterman. And he wrote a piece defending tariffs and saying that anti-tariff absolutism is not good policy.

Speaker 16 And there's a very strong argument to make that we need some protectionist tariffs, even when it comes to Canada and Mexico, to make sure that we are producing things at home, that people can earn a good wage, which I know is fundamental to what you're doing with that project 2028, which I think is so cool.

Speaker 16 And I was pretty taken with his argument. And he mentioned how we're all okay with the China tariffs, right?

Speaker 16 So Trump had the 10% tariff on China, and Biden actually tripled it when it comes to steel and aluminum.

Speaker 16 And we get basically all of our construction supplies from Canada, including a lot of steel and aluminum, plus a ton of cement and lumber. So

Speaker 16 why? I'm not saying a 25% tariff, but using the same logic that we do against China, which is obviously an adversary versus a friend, but there's some good economic policy to it, right?

Speaker 16 We're not just punishing China because it's run by an authoritarian and they're terrible on human rights. There's a reason we're trying to protect the American worker there.

Speaker 16 So why wouldn't we think about maybe like a 5%, right, or a 10%?

Speaker 15 Yeah. So my understanding of tariffs is that they do make sense when they're used as a weapon to try and restore asymmetry and imbalance in trade.
If the U.S.

Speaker 15 doesn't have access to the Chinese auto market, then fine, you want to bring your cars over here. We're going to tariff them.
You might want to protect certain key strategic industries.

Speaker 15 The steel-making industry, you can make an argument for we need to at least have a few mills kind of always fired up such that if we need to make tanks or you know, our primary source of steel goes dark, like what happened with Putin and oil and Germany, we're not caught sort of flat-footed.

Speaker 15 But just a sweeping tariff at these levels is nothing but an increase in costs. I read that the average car, should these tariffs hold, is going to go up in price somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000.

Speaker 15 The way cars are manufactured is you actually have certain parts that leave

Speaker 15 Lansing, Michigan, go to Canada, have work done to them, then go all the way down to Mexico, have more work or assembly, and then come back to Lansing, Michigan for assembly at a Ford plant.

Speaker 15 Some of the parts used to assemble a car go back and forth a half a dozen times across borders. So $8,000 to $12,000 increase per car.

Speaker 15 They're talking about an average increase per household of $1,200. I mean,

Speaker 15 this is really weird. And even more so than the actual tariffs is the sclerotic reputation we're establishing.
Because even if you decide, okay, we're going to do a deal.

Speaker 15 And we're going to come to some sort of accommodation that works for both, you know, who can trust that we're actually going to do what we said we're going to do?

Speaker 15 We're now talking about, supposedly, Trump wants Iran to think about another, another deal. We're, we're shutting off intelligence to Ukraine, and then they bomb a hotel where Americans are.

Speaker 15 We talk about putting it back on and putting sanctions back on on Russia.

Speaker 15 I mean, it's just the world economic policy is being run on this guy's blood sugar level at that moment, which means that if you're going to base billions or if you're the EU or trillions of dollars in trade and alliances and supply chain on one man's blood sugar, you decide, no, I'm going to just have workarounds, even if they're more expensive.

Speaker 15 It's just the automobile industry right now, I'm at South by Southwest and a key theme here when I talk to advertisers is that their advertising business is down.

Speaker 15 I mean, this has so many ripple effects across the economy.

Speaker 15 Their advertising business is down because some of the biggest advertisers are automobile companies and they literally are just, we don't know what to do.

Speaker 15 We've paused all marketing and spending because as far as we know, we're not going to have cars on a lot and we're just not sure what's going to happen. So they can't even plan.

Speaker 15 If the tariffs were absolutely going in, they would say, okay, we need to plan our business model.

Speaker 15 We're going to raise prices, find alternative routes or supply chain, but they would have a business plan. Right now.

Speaker 15 This is the worst of all worlds. I think that's what Eisenhower said.
The wrong decision is bad, but no decision is worse.

Speaker 15 And there are entire companies who have to make essentially no decision because they don't know what environment they're going to be operating in.

Speaker 16 Yeah, well, Trump backed off of this round of tariffs because the CEOs of the major car companies reached out to him, right? And called and said, you can't do this.

Speaker 16 I mean, it's $8,000 to $12,000 extra for a regular car. It's $20,000 for a truck.
So anyone who's actually using their car for work is facing an extra $20K, which is obviously unaffordable.

Speaker 16 I agree with what you're saying. I don't think that it means that tariffs aren't going to end up being a tax on the consumer.

Speaker 16 A majority of Americans know that I think it could go up to $1,800 actually per annum per family, the cost of these if they're implemented in the way that they're being posed or pitched.

Speaker 16 But the result that I'm seeing most clearly from

Speaker 16 the wobbly or frenetic nature of this administration is that our allies are getting stronger on their own. So you look at Claudia Scheinbaum, who I think has been great in handling President Trump.

Speaker 16 She has an 85% approval rating. Do you know of any world leader with an 85% approval rating who isn't like Vladimir Putin has fake polling?

Speaker 15 Oh, the queen. I don't know.
You're right.

Speaker 16 That's that's insane. Remarkable.
And also for a female head of state, right, on top of it, which I wouldn't expect.

Speaker 15 Jewish climate scientists.

Speaker 16 Right. A Jewish climate scientist lady has an 85% approval rating in Mexico during a time when dealing with one of the more xenophobic American presidents in history.
Which is crazy. It is crazy.

Speaker 16 Or like Mark Carney, who's going to be the new prime minister of Canada, won the race to be the head of the Liberal Party over the weekend, has no technical political experience, but he was a central banker, which is why people picked him.

Speaker 16 And he went after Trudeau consistently about how poorly he had handled the economy. And the major thing that he said was, you need someone who can steer Canada through this war with America.

Speaker 16 When would you ever think that that would be a platform that a Canadian premier would have to run on, right?

Speaker 16 This idea that we are going to be at war with our neighbor, that we are on incredibly friendly terms, or historically speaking, have been on incredibly friendly terms with. So that's happening there.

Speaker 16 You look at the European countries that are building up their own defense. They're thinking about, you know, what nuclear arsenal can they get to to help with sharing there.

Speaker 16 We're cutting off the intelligence sharing with Ukraine at this moment. They're being embraced by Europe.
We're on the wrong side of everything with that vis-a-vis cozying up to Putin.

Speaker 16 And I see everybody else getting a lot stronger while we're getting weaker at home and abroad.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it really is. It's very difficult to understand the trade.
And the trade right now at a very macro level is the following.

Speaker 15 We're basically trashing and fraying and making much more brittle and fragile these 80-year alliances with the world's largest economies that through free trade, coordination, general goodwill, cooperation towards each other, lower costs for Americans and increase the sales of our products abroad.

Speaker 15 And now these nations are just going to figure out different alliances. And even if we go back and say, hey, just kidding, we didn't mean it.
Love you. Come down to Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 15 They're going to say, sorry, boss, you're just not a reliable partner. I don't know who, I don't know who I'm waking up next to.
And for me, everything comes back to high school.

Speaker 15 And that is, I saw this fantastic study that attempted to figure out and get to the bottom of why popular kids were popular. So they looked at the most popular kids in high school.

Speaker 15 Were they the best looking? No. Were they the best athletes? No.
Were they the smartest? Again, no. The thing they had in common was they liked the most other people.

Speaker 15 They were that kid that when going down the hallway would yell, hey, you know, Lisa, Jim, good to see you. What'd you do this weekend?

Speaker 15 And was confident enough to like like other people that those were the most popular kids. And I read this data showing that about three quarters of Americans feel pretty good about Canada.

Speaker 15 They're like, yeah, Canadians, go on. But now two thirds of Canadians don't think of us as an ally.

Speaker 15 They have really been, I don't want to use the word traumatized, but really feel, quite frankly, just poorly treated. And it's not like they're going to get over that in six or even 12 months.

Speaker 15 We are basically saying to the world, we're going to be the least popular kid.

Speaker 15 And as a result, have fewer alliances, fewer treaties, less cooperation, because we're acting as if, you know, we think you're a fucking idiot.

Speaker 15 We keep and where we keep yelling expletives or hurling insults at the other kids

Speaker 15 rolling by us. And the next day, we don't, the kid doesn't even know what we're going to say about that kid.

Speaker 15 We're just so unpredictable and big and flexing our power and flexing our muscles and just being somewhat somewhat abusive. This is going to have, unfortunately,

Speaker 15 it's really going after what is a key attribute in any brand. And be clear, the brand is incredibly important.
It's what precedes you.

Speaker 15 It's what puts you in the room before you're there in terms of negotiations and expectations. But one of the key things about our brand that people don't appreciate until now is the U.S.

Speaker 15 is actually fairly, is this fair? I think it is. It's fairly fairly consistent.
There are certain standards around free trade, rule of law, consistency. Quite frankly, we're slow to change things.

Speaker 15 We have a checks and balances government that any large treaty,

Speaker 15 you could believe that we just weren't overnight going to do away with NAFTA, that there was, you could invest around it, Mexico. and Canada, because it would probably stay in place for a long time.

Speaker 15 And the only way it would be changed is if all three houses of government agreed on it, not that, you know, someone who had given the campaign $285 billion showed up with just a bunch of kids.

Speaker 15 By the way, I went to dinner with one of the, I was at a dinner with one of the Doge kids.

Speaker 16 Oh, really?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I didn't speak to him. He was, I think, about 19, and it felt everyone.

Speaker 16 Did you like slip him a drink and say, don't worry?

Speaker 16 You're not going to tell anyone you're underage and that you're in my social security payments? I'm just getting, you're too young for social security.

Speaker 15 Yeah, no, pretty soon I'm going to be getting mail from the AARP. But yeah, it was sort of interesting.
And

Speaker 15 I was initially going going to go over and talk to him and I thought, that's just going to depress me. Anyways, I'm now going to parties with Doge children.

Speaker 15 But this is, it's hard to see how we don't come out of this pretty structurally damaged. It just doesn't make any sense to me.
All right. Let's take a quick break.
Stay with us.

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Speaker 15 Welcome back. Last week, Texas Representative Al Green was formally censured after interrupting President Trump's address to Congress, shouting, no mandate to cut Medicaid, as he waved his cane.

Speaker 15 The moment led to his removal from the chamber and a 224 to 198 vote to rebuke him, with 10 10 Democrats joining Republicans in the censure.

Speaker 15 This split underscores ongoing divisions within the party over how to push back against Trump.

Speaker 15 Greene, who has a history of direct action, including being arrested alongside the late Representative John Lewis, seems unbothered by the consequences, saying you have to be willing to suffer the consequences.

Speaker 15 Jess, what do you think this says about the Democratic Party that 10 of their own members voted to censure Greene? Is this about decorum or is it a sign of deeper fractures?

Speaker 16 Well, I think that there is an unfair expectation that Democrats are supposed to have it perfectly together at this moment.

Speaker 16 Like after Romney lost in 2012, they spent years trying to figure out what to do. And they had a plan, and they ended up with Donald Trump as the nominee in 2016 anyway.

Speaker 16 And that definitely wasn't their plan.

Speaker 16 So I'm trying to take a step back and look at this like everybody is out to win their race or to at least win their day in terms of coverage, what they're putting out there.

Speaker 16 And those 10 members who voted to censure Al Green are from swing districts. They're representing Trump voters.

Speaker 16 It may just be how they feel also personally, but you look at the character of these people. We had Tom Swazi on the podcast before, like a Chrissy Houlihan, Jared Moskowitz, Ami Berra.

Speaker 16 Like these are.

Speaker 16 These are really great, dependable Democrats that believe strongly in the mission of the party. They're great representatives.

Speaker 16 And I think they're just running their own races, that it wasn't personal about Al Green. I don't think it was about, you know, taking a stand as a unified Democratic Party.

Speaker 16 I think that they felt like the way that it looked to have

Speaker 16 Al Green not only doing that and disrupting to that level, and it should be noted that Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert and Joe Wilson from years ago when Obama was president have been hugely disruptive.

Speaker 16 And Republicans didn't care and they didn't censure them. And everyone just kind of moved on because that's their character and that's who they are.

Speaker 16 But Democrats always hold ourselves to higher standards and it can be tough electorally, but I do like that about us, that we have some sort of moral compass.

Speaker 16 But the big problem with what happened during Trump's speech is that there were these incredible guests that he brought, including this 13-year-old who has had brain cancer.

Speaker 16 I think he's had 13 operations. And he was essentially like a make-a-wish kid, right? Who got to become a a secret service agent.

Speaker 16 And a bunch of Democrats didn't even bother to look up from their phones while he was being honored.

Speaker 16 And I think that that's really what turned a lot of those Democrats who voted to censure Al Green and even some who had, who didn't vote to do that, like a Ro Khanna, but spoke out against how awful that looked, that

Speaker 16 we just didn't seem up to the challenge in that particular moment. Like there is a way to not normalize some of the things that Trump is saying.

Speaker 16 And there were tons of lies and his speech was an hour and 44 minutes. So the fact checking, fact checkers couldn't even keep up with what was going on.

Speaker 16 But when you have have guests like Lake and Riley's family was there, hostage families, this kid with brain cancer, you got to stand up and you got to applaud. And they didn't do that.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I thought it was really, really telling in the sense that, one, it was just, I think we came out of that. And when I say we Democrats, big losers, we looked.
reckless, overly emotional.

Speaker 15 I think our behavior just turns off moderates and emboldens

Speaker 15 Republicans. Because, look, at the joint address or gatherings of Congress, the president wins.
It's a bully pulpit. There's a lot of majesty.
And

Speaker 15 what you do in that situation, quite frankly, is you sit quietly, you say nothing. And in instances where they bring in a hero or a kid who's endured a lot of surgery, you stand up and you applaud.

Speaker 15 You show you're still a human, right?

Speaker 15 Instead, all of the disruption and the woman following

Speaker 15 around with the sign saying this is not normal. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert look like idiots, and we didn't like it when they did it.
And

Speaker 15 we shouldn't copy that kind of behavior.

Speaker 15 It really made us look weak. I actually thought, you know, the best moment for the Republicans was when they removed him.
I thought Speaker Johnson came across as authoritative.

Speaker 15 And we're starting to look like...

Speaker 15 I mean, it kind of made me sad just for America. It feels like we're two steps away from being worried in South Korea where occasionally the Congress just breaks out into fisticuffs.

Speaker 15 It's like we're about to become that nation.

Speaker 15 And the other thing I think it reflects poorly on Democrats is clearly our leadership has no control over these people because this just didn't make sense for the Democratic Party.

Speaker 15 Your point is an interesting one, and that is I've never understood where the Democratic Party eats our own.

Speaker 15 I'm still pissed off at Senator Gillibrand for getting all high and mighty and chasing Senator Franken out of office. So I think what it would be.

Speaker 16 And did you see she didn't have the same kind of words for Andrew Cuomo getting back in the mayoral race?

Speaker 15 She got her seat. She was essentially an unknown.
And in my view, she kind of brightens up her room by leaving it. And the Clintons appointed her, right, to the Senate seat that was vacated.

Speaker 15 My understanding is by Secretary Clinton. And the Clintons don't speak to her anymore because I think that she's not

Speaker 15 a very consistent person.

Speaker 15 But for her to basically eat one of for us to allow her to ruin the career of one of our most articulate and quite frankly humorous voices counter to Trump, such that she could have an 11-second run for presidency.

Speaker 15 That was the ticket no one was asking for. Remember that? The former mayor of New York and Kristen Gillibrand were both running for president.

Speaker 15 And my favorite was she said she wanted to represent other young mothers. I'm like, you're a young mother? Anyway, is that rough?

Speaker 16 Is that rough? 40s the new age. I'm a 40s new old woman.

Speaker 15 40s. No, but she was, she's much older than you.

Speaker 16 I know, but just don't do it. Just, you were good before that.

Speaker 15 I was good. Good.
I'm just, you know, snatching defeat, Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I am who I am.

Speaker 15 But yeah, I agree with you. I was, at first, I thought it's good they censored him.
And then I thought,

Speaker 15 why are we always deciding to eat our own and hold our, like you said, we shoot ourselves in the foot. And I'm not sure we should be disarming unilaterally.

Speaker 15 But I thought it was a terrible look for Democrats.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I wanted to.

Speaker 16 add to that with the eating your own. Al Green, by the way, is in a Democrat plus 53 seat.
He doesn't have to think about what his constituents are going to say, right, if he causes a ruckus.

Speaker 16 I mean, and inevitably, I'm sure they like it. He's been their representative a long time.

Speaker 16 But what really pissed me off was seeing progressives criticizing Elisa Slotkin, who gave the Democratic response. So Bernie did his own thing, as usual, and he did great.

Speaker 16 He had millions of social media impressions. He is a viral machine in the best possible way.
But Elisa Slotkin gave the Democratic response. She did an amazing job.

Speaker 16 There were conservatives all over social media saying she did a great job. She talked about being called to service, you know, in New York on 9-11, went and joined the CIA, did three tours.

Speaker 16 She just won a swing state that Donald Trump won. She managed to pull that off.
She talked about growing up in a household with a mom who voted for Democrats, a dad who voted Republican.

Speaker 16 She talked about how happy she was that we had Reagan during the Cold War and not Trump because he would have ceded the world to the USSR.

Speaker 16 And progressives are dumping on her because she said that George Bush was a patriot and that she said anything nice about Reagan.

Speaker 16 And I saw a lot of comments like, oh, well, why isn't she talking about FDR? FDR is not a touch point for many people. who are alive right now.
I understand on a historical basis why that makes sense.

Speaker 16 But if you think that talking about Reagan and Bush being of good character isn't smart, if you are trying to get swing voters, moderate voters, left-leaning independents, even some right-leaning independents to vote for you, or even just that she's telling us how she won her election.

Speaker 16 I mean, we should just be having tutorials all the time from Democrats that pulled these miracles off in this environment.

Speaker 16 It really upset me. I was like, this is.
If you think she's too conservative, you don't like that she voted for the Lake and Riley Act.

Speaker 16 You're concerned about, you know, how she's going to be on trans issues, et cetera. That's fine.
There's a time and place for that.

Speaker 16 But when you see someone that gets up after Trump's speech, which had a very high approval rating in terms of the audience, which was skewed Republican, of course, but still, like, he did well in terms of his delivery.

Speaker 16 She gets up there, she gives a succinct response to it that talks about what really should matter to the party, like the economy, our national security, making sure that the day-to-day lives of Americans is improved and better.

Speaker 16 And you want to shit on her? Like, I have no time for that at all.

Speaker 15 Yeah, what the Republicans have, that the Democrats lack is a certain level of synchronicity and coordination.

Speaker 15 And that is, if you look at the relationship between these kind of conservative think tanks, conservative media, and Republican talking points and discipline, they're coordinated and the sum of its parts or the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Speaker 15 Whereas the Democrats look sclerotic, like, oh, we don't like the person giving the response because they were too moderate.

Speaker 15 Oh, we're, you know, we're going to have these random interruptions and yell out. We just look all over the place and disorganize.
And like, quite frankly, like, we just don't have our shit together.

Speaker 15 And something that people vote for is they would rather vote for someone who seems resolute and youthful and vigorous and competent than someone who just seems to be kind of like flailing and don't know.

Speaker 15 You know, you don't get a sense for where they stand. And the same reason why I think our...
you know, our trading partners are going to not trust the U.S. around different alliances.

Speaker 15 I think that the American public right now looks at the Democratic Party and it's like, Jesus Christ, pick a theme. Like,

Speaker 15 who are you guys? What are you? And

Speaker 15 the response to this has been,

Speaker 15 you know, ranges from ineffective to kind of overly, overly emotional.

Speaker 15 It's just not a good look for us. All right.
Let's take one more quick break. Stay with us.

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Speaker 15 Welcome back. Before we go, California Governor Gavin Newsom is under fire from LGBTQ Plus activists after saying it's deeply unfair for transgender girls to compete in high school girls sports.

Speaker 15 He made the comments on the debut episode of his new podcast while chatting with right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 15 Newsom, once a trailblazer for LGBTQ rights, also agreed that a Trump campaign ad attacking Kamala Harris over gender-affirming care was politically devastating.

Speaker 15 Speaking of Harris, she's reportedly considering a run for California governor in 2026, and she's told allies she'll decide by the end of the summer.

Speaker 15 One could cement her leadership in the Democratic Party, but take her out of the running for president in 2028. Meanwhile, Democratic strategist James Carville has a message for the party.
Do.

Speaker 15 nothing. He argues that Republicans are so bad at governing, their own chaos will sink them.
Jess, does Newsom's stance on trans athletes hurt his 2028 chances, especially with progressives?

Speaker 16 I mean, they're not going to like it. It's part of him tacking to the center.

Speaker 16 And I think a little bit of a fulfillment of him coming out and probably what he naturally thinks versus how he's been campaigning or governing over the course of his career.

Speaker 16 But I saw there was a New York Times Ipsos poll out on the issue of transgender women in women's sports. So it's an 80-20 issue, like across the general public against it.

Speaker 16 But it's also 67 to 31% of self-identified Democrats do not think that transgender women should be playing in women's sports. So this is the common sense position, right?

Speaker 16 This is the stuff that we've been talking about. since the Charlemagne the God ad came out, but really for several years, right? Like what Bill Maher has been going on and on and on about.

Speaker 16 Just say the normal thing, which this is biologically unfair. We are not trying to tamp down on someone's civil rights.

Speaker 16 It's hard to make an argument that it is the civil rights issue of our time that transgender women get to compete on a collegiate level against women.

Speaker 16 We're not talking about having equal access to all the amenities of society, being treated equally under the law. We're talking about a very specific test case of this.

Speaker 16 And Tim Ryan was talking about it a few weeks ago, actually, when he was on MAR. And MARA was quickfire asking him, you know, is this the hill to die on?

Speaker 16 About several issues and brought up this issue. And Tim Ryan said, no, it's not the hill to die on.

Speaker 16 There's a way to say that you want to make sure that rights are protected without saying that Leah Thomas should be swimming against biological women. And

Speaker 16 I get it. Gavin Newsom wants to run.
He's doing what he can to make sure that he is more palatable to a larger, more moderate electorate when that time comes around.

Speaker 16 But I do think that there's going to be a lot of mayoculping over the course of the next few years.

Speaker 16 People are going to have to talk about why it is that they said that Biden was completely fine and that they didn't think that there were any legitimate concerns about him serving for the next four years.

Speaker 16 And certainly a policy like this is going to be one of them. They're going to have to talk about the border as well.

Speaker 16 Why did you not say anything for a lot of them for the first three years of the Biden administration when there were hundreds of thousands of people crossing the border on a monthly basis?

Speaker 16 Did you see the new CBP numbers? It's down to, I think, 8,100

Speaker 16 crossings in February. It was 250,000 peak on a monthly basis under Biden.
And this started under Biden for sure coming down, but it's quite clear there have been no new laws passed.

Speaker 16 The rules on the books, if they are enforced, can do a lot in stemming illegal immigration.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's,

Speaker 15 I think in general,

Speaker 15 people look at the Democratic Party and are drawn to some of the ideals and some of the people and then go, oh, wait, but they're fucking insane.

Speaker 15 And this is one of those issues. I said this two, two and a half years ago on Pivot and got a lot of pushback.

Speaker 15 But when there was a bicycle race or a bike race in North Carolina, not a big race, but a race that had, you know, was big enough that it had cash prizes.

Speaker 15 And a transgender woman came across the finish line five minutes before the rest of the crowd.

Speaker 15 And then you saw the footage of basically a six-foot-four swimmer swimmer with just enormous wingspan shows up and takes the NC2A finals and like shatters every record.

Speaker 15 And I think America looks at that and goes, they've gone fucking insane. And they're defending this because they decided this was some sort of woke

Speaker 15 to establish a woke bonifitis. You immediately had to go, okay, I'm going to ignore all common sense.
And it was just, it's done enormous damage that we don't have basic common sense.

Speaker 15 And I think I believe our view on this should be, look, if a local school board, we believe, let's embrace the Republican ideology that on decisions around nuance, individual schools and parents should make up their own mind.

Speaker 15 If there's a school where they say, look, a 14-year-old transgender woman would really benefit from participating in junior high school or high school sports, where quite frankly, the stakes aren't that high,

Speaker 15 then fine, they can decide to let her participate. But anything involving scholarships, money, accolades, admissions to colleges, whatever it might be, or contact sports, quite frankly.

Speaker 15 No,

Speaker 15 and I don't see the crime against humanity here. I will never play basketball.
I don't have those skills. I wasn't born with those skills.

Speaker 15 And I believe if you're born with testicles and a penis and the advantage of testosterone and that bone structure, unfortunately, you don't get to play.

Speaker 15 women's sports because it to me the math was just so simple and that is if we're going to permit this and have no regulation around it, then essentially what you're saying is all the accoutrements of athletics, all the money, the fame, the prestige, the relevance, the self-esteem is going to slowly but surely be sequestered to people born with a penis.

Speaker 15 I was just shocked feminists didn't say, no,

Speaker 15 we can't have this. And we just allowed this just strategically on an issue that really doesn't impact that many people.
And I'm sure we'll get emails on that.

Speaker 15 That was where we were going to say, okay, this is a big issue for us. And we just come across it's just insane.

Speaker 15 And the one commercial that moved the needle more than anything during the presidential campaign was that commercial basically saying, you know, I think it was accusing the Democrats.

Speaker 15 And of course, I believe it was somewhat of an exaggeration or taken out of context that we were paying for the transgender surgery of inmates.

Speaker 16 Undocumented inmates.

Speaker 15 This, to me, I think this is Governor Newsom, who we know is running, you know, triangulating to the middle.

Speaker 15 And quite frankly, pissing off the left is a feature, not a bug in terms of your electability.

Speaker 15 Somebody is going to have to, you know, someone was saying to me, who's the leading candidate for Democratic nomination in 2028?

Speaker 15 And I said, it's probably governor you really haven't heard of right now. Someone will rise to the moment.

Speaker 15 And I'm not even sure we know this person right now.

Speaker 15 I've always thought Governor Newsom would make a really strong candidate because I'm convinced we're a very Luxus nation and he just looks presidential. Also, I think he's a fantastic debater.

Speaker 15 I think he's one of maybe a handful of Democrats that goes behind enemy lines, as evidenced by the fact he went on with very conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 15 But this, this needs to be an issue that the Democrats need to pivot very aggressively.

Speaker 15 People should have rights. If a local school wants to let a transgender girl play sports, more power to you.
But with respect to anything regarding advantage, no, this just doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 15 They need to pivot hard on this because otherwise they are just handing a gift, the gift that keeps on giving to Republicans.

Speaker 16 Yeah, they also need to talk about it in the framework of fairness because that has been where Bernie Sanders has been so successful, right?

Speaker 16 In talking about the oligarchy that's out there and how unfair things are for the average American, the American worker, et cetera.

Speaker 16 And so that's how Governor Newsome and Charlie Kirk were talking about the issue on his podcast, where he said, you know, I was a college athlete. So was my wife.
I have two daughters.

Speaker 16 I know that it is not fair. And

Speaker 16 My

Speaker 16 conservative co-hosts on the five have obviously been relentlessly talking about this, but they picked up on exactly what you said, which is where are the feminists in all of this?

Speaker 16 And you've seen very few, you know, champion female athletes, excluding from Martina Navartalova, who is incredible on this issue, speaking out about it.

Speaker 16 You can't get an answer from like a Billie Jean King, for instance, on this issue.

Speaker 16 You have a Megan Rapino, Sue Bird, et cetera, defending trans women's rights to be in seriously competitive women's sports.

Speaker 16 And I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that people are just denying what biological advantages are afforded to men.

Speaker 16 And that has been something that we just haven't been able to have, you know, serious, clear-headed conversations about.

Speaker 16 And some of that gets into the language police stuff that we have, you know, weird terms for things, and we're talking about inseminated people and struggling to define men and women.

Speaker 16 Not that we don't know that there are, you know, 30 intersex combinations that can happen and that the law needs to make sure that it protects as many people as possible.

Speaker 16 But when you can't have a straight, normal, common sense conversation with someone where you can talk about men and women and talk about where it is appropriate to have transgender athletes competing and where it is inappropriate to do so,

Speaker 16 we become

Speaker 16 like aliens to regular people. Even seeing that 30% of Democrats versus 18% of the general electorate are in favor of transgender women in women's sports.
That's a pretty big difference.

Speaker 16 Obviously,

Speaker 16 you have a bunch of Republicans in the general sample that are going to be pulling it to the other side.

Speaker 16 But when you have a conversation with somebody, if you just went out to lunch with them and said, what do you think about this? I think odds are that they would think the same way that we do about it.

Speaker 15 And there's definitely, I felt it a couple of years ago when we were speaking about this issue. There's definitely a narrative you're supposed to sign up to.

Speaker 15 It's almost like the narrative around being a MAGA. You have to be MAGA or you could be alienated or voted off the island or Trump will go after you and and primary you.

Speaker 15 On the left, it's more nuanced in the sense that if you don't sign up to the narrative and this kind of certain ideology, you're treated like an apostate.

Speaker 15 And the blowback on this, if you didn't sign up for the narrative, and there was just no critical thinking, this

Speaker 15 kind of seemed like an easy one.

Speaker 15 But I think we lost a lot of credibility. Anyways, what do you think of the idea of a governor Harris?

Speaker 16 I don't think we're going to have a president Harris. So I think that it is a much more reasonable idea for her to run for governor if she wants to continue to serve the country.

Speaker 16 This, I know that she's technically the front runner in the early polls for 2028, which is what happens. The last nominee is always the person that's furthest ahead.

Speaker 16 And she did save us from certain electoral disaster, because I think if Biden had stayed on top of the ticket, Trump would have won over 400 electoral votes.

Speaker 16 And those swing state senators like the Alyssa Slotkins of the world would not have been able to win their competitive races.

Speaker 16 But,

Speaker 16 you know, I assume that people would line up for her in California and that there are a lot of people who are considering running who would kind of bow down to the idea of Kamala getting in.

Speaker 16 And perhaps that's the right route for her.

Speaker 16 But I just, I feel strongly that the national stage is not going to be where she ends up again.

Speaker 15 I'm really split on this because she's a competent person, right? And I think she was a good attorney general, good, good senator, and she'd probably be, I'd like to think, a competent governor.

Speaker 15 The problem is, I think when you run for president and you lose lose against Donald Trump, quite frankly, just I think you go away for a while.

Speaker 15 I don't think, I think she'll be a talking point for Republicans and their races if she maintains her national profile.

Speaker 15 I think when you lose for president, quite frankly, I think the best thing for the party would be if she just went dark until we have a Democratic president and she's appointed to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 15 I think she'd be an outstanding justice. Really? Yeah, I think she'd be an outstanding justice.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 I hadn't thought about that, actually. I mean, I know that people say things like Obama,

Speaker 16 but I hadn't thought about it for Kamala.

Speaker 15 Anyways, but my sense is she's going to be a continued talking point. I don't think, I think she'll continue to be a flashpoint for Republicans.
And I wouldn't be surprised.

Speaker 15 I mean, I'll be curious, but given, I think she's setting herself up for real challenge and embarrassment here because

Speaker 15 about every couple decades, a quote-unquote lifestyle mayor governor wins in California cities and in the state because the quality of life in some of our bigger cities in California, I'm from California,

Speaker 15 is eroded so much that I think the moons are lining up for what I call like a no-nonsense kind of Pete Wilson-ish kind of

Speaker 15 governor. And I would just say, I would hate to see her run and lose.
I think it would basically send a signal to the entire nation that democratic ideals are kind of just totally done and gone.

Speaker 15 So torn on this, because I think she's a competent person and would probably be a decent governor.

Speaker 15 But I think she, her brand and the possibility of a loss and her as a constant talking point for Republicans, reminding them of why, you know, Americans didn't vote for her in the first place, will be a real, another cudgel or a weapon that will

Speaker 15 benefit Republicans.

Speaker 16 Well, she has a lot of those. loony positions that we're talking about with Newsom that she's taken.
We only ended up with the Charlemagne the God ad because Kamala signed yes on like an ACLU

Speaker 16 questionnaire when she was running for president in 2020, saying that she would be supportive of transgender operations for people who are currently incarcerated.

Speaker 16 And the New York Times has an analysis, by the way, there are plenty of transgender people who got their gender-affirming care while Trump was president.

Speaker 16 So he was lying about that and saying that this was just something that happened under the Biden administration.

Speaker 16 But this comes, that whole conversation was rooted in the fact that Kamala had taken a far-left position.

Speaker 16 One of the most important propositions or proposition ballot measures was Prop 36 for California this year, which was undoing a 2014,

Speaker 16 what was it, Prop 47 from 2014, which allowed people to shoplift up to $950 without being arrested. That's right.
Right. And it passed with 70% of the vote, 68, 70% of the vote.
And Newsom opposed it.

Speaker 16 And Kamala wavered on it. She was asked the weekend before the election on like Saturday or Sunday before we all went to vote on Tuesday.
And she demured. She didn't say where she would stand on it.

Speaker 16 You can't be like that anymore. You can't certainly can't run for governor of a state with 70% approval rating for something

Speaker 16 and

Speaker 16 not take a stance at all, let alone

Speaker 16 pick the thing that the majority of people are in favor of and not have a good defense for why that is.

Speaker 16 And Governor Newsom had a whole thing about, you know, the issue with privatizing prisons and that it was going to cut out money for drug rehabilitation programs, et cetera.

Speaker 16 But as an elected official or someone who wants to be an elected official, being on the wrong side of a 70-30 issue does not bode well for you.

Speaker 15 Yeah. So, speaking, speaking being on the

Speaker 15 kind of political strategy, what do you think of Carvelle's notion that Democrats should step back and let Republicans implode? Do you think this is a dangerous gamble, this notion of just do nothing?

Speaker 16 I think it's a little more nuanced than do nothing because it's important that you continue to amplify what is going on. So,

Speaker 16 the best message-tested line of argumentation right now is around the cuts to Medicaid and that Trump isn't focusing on the economy. So, over 80% want him to focus on the economy.

Speaker 16 Only 36% think that he actually is. Nobody, Republican, Democrat, Independent, wants these Medicaid cuts.

Speaker 16 And I'm sure you've seen the coverage of the town halls that are occurring all over the country. And the Republicans

Speaker 16 are saying that they're astroturfs. It's all Democratic plans.
And George Soros is setting everyone up for it.

Speaker 16 But the Republicans now don't want swing district congresspeople to have these town halls because it's gotten so brutal.

Speaker 16 And they have veterans showing up who are saying, like, you're slashing our benefits. You're firing me.
You know, we don't like what Doge is doing. Hands off our Medicaid, et cetera.

Speaker 16 And so I think, quote unquote, do nothing if that means.

Speaker 16 amplifying what their spending bill is actually going to do, amplifying what Elon Musk is doing, which he's the weakest link in the administration.

Speaker 16 People like the idea of getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse. They don't like the approach that he's taking to it and don't really see that as what's being executed.
Then I say Carville's right.

Speaker 16 But he's also taken a lot of big swings and missed. Like he said, Kamala was definitely winning.
You know, he's,

Speaker 16 it's part of his charm for sure.

Speaker 15 Right. Yeah.
He's, well, whenever he speaks, you listen because he's just so compelling and so matter of fact.

Speaker 16 And he's a winner and we like winners. That's right.

Speaker 15 But you're, I think your instincts are right on. And that is, it's not not do nothing as much as it is demonstrate more discipline.
Instead of running over here and going, oh my God,

Speaker 15 Gulf of America or male versus female. No, no, no, no.
Be more disciplined.

Speaker 15 Talk about surrender in Ukraine and that they're coming after your Medicare and have experts and data and look like an adult and just hammer them.

Speaker 15 The difficult thing about Democrats is not what to talk about. It's what not to talk about.

Speaker 15 And specifically, they need to stop taking the debate around these ridiculous, stupid issues that don't affect anybody that are clearly being thrown out there as weapons of mass distraction.

Speaker 15 Even Doge, I believe, is a weapon of mass distraction.

Speaker 15 And instead of getting all angry about 19-year-olds, whether they should be in there, I get it, but the majority or a lot of moderates, quite frankly, see some of these firings.

Speaker 15 And under their breath, they're like, well, welcome to the work week.

Speaker 15 This has happened to me and other people. What they should, in my opinion, be focused on is a much more boring but impactful piece of data.

Speaker 15 And that is, this is all a distraction to the notion that one, they're going to increase the deficits about $800 billion a year, which is nothing but a tax increase.

Speaker 15 We're about to experience the greatest tax increase in history on young people in the form of unprecedented deficits. And two, they're coming for your Medicaid.

Speaker 15 There's no way, look at what they're planning here. They've tasked the Energy and Commerce Department with cutting $800 billion.
That means they're coming. They're coming for Medicaid.

Speaker 15 And just, and anything else, again, it goes back to the same notion.

Speaker 15 The Democratic leadership doesn't have the discipline that McConnell imposed or that you know, it appears that Speaker Johnson and Trump are imposing on the Republican Party. We just lack,

Speaker 15 they just lack sort of that. And instead, they just take the bait and they start saying, can you believe he said this? And it's like, well, okay, that, that, yeah.
All right.

Speaker 15 We all know he's reckless and he's weird, but focus on the things that are indefensible on Republicans' part that are popular among

Speaker 15 Americans and hammer away on those one or two issues. So it's, again, it's not doing nothing.

Speaker 15 It's more discipline.

Speaker 15 Just before we wrap up here, what do you think of what happened recently that supposedly Trump has directed, has basically said, all right, Doge is now an advisory or almost like a service to different cabinet members, but they ultimately get to make the decision around layoffs.

Speaker 15 Any thoughts?

Speaker 16 It seems like Elon Musk is ruffling some feathers.

Speaker 16 There was some reporting of what went on in that cabinet meeting and that Secretary Duffy, who oversees transportation, and Secretary Rubio, our Secretary of State, were both forthcoming in their criticisms of Musk and basically said, like, what the fuck do you want us to do?

Speaker 16 Like, Sean Duffy said, we're having plane crashes, right, at an unprecedented level, and you're cutting air traffic controllers.

Speaker 16 And that apparently Trump sided with them over Musk. So I don't know.
You know, I'm not a Musk whisperer.

Speaker 16 I have not deeply studied him as much as you, or certainly as Kara has, but it feels like he's on more tenuous ground than he certainly was at the beginning of this, and that Trump at least has some level of realization that the fate of the administration's success actually depends on these individual bureaucracies working well and not necessarily whatever Elon Musk is doing.

Speaker 16 So he's continually demoted. You know, they say Amy Gleason is actually the administrator.
Now he's an advisory person, et cetera.

Speaker 16 And you look at Tesla basically cratering, right? The international sales are some of the most astounding. What is it down in Germany? Like 75%.

Speaker 16 So he, you know, might want to tend to his home.

Speaker 16 That could be his children or his companies that he had before he did this and pay attention to that versus the day-to-day grind where it seems like

Speaker 16 these folks who got, who got confirmation for these jobs have a different kind of plan on how to execute.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 If this in fact is true, that he's now got to defer and the ultimate decision is made or not made by the cabinet heads, it's effectively, I think, the end operationally of Doge.

Speaker 15 And the notion that we decided that an individual, the world's wealthiest man, who is severely addicted to ketamine, reported by the Wall Street Journal, is concurrently being sued by two women for sole custody of their children because he's not involved in their lives.

Speaker 15 Maybe that's not the individual who gets to bypass any sort of congressional vetting or approval to decide if veterans or children get their medical care and food. And in addition,

Speaker 15 if you look at what so far has happened from Doge, the audit, the only thing it has demonstrated, in my view, is that the U.S. government has a lot less fraud and waste than initially feared.

Speaker 15 If this were a physical, I would argue that the U.S.

Speaker 15 government has gotten a clean bill of health, that this wall of receipts meant to just highlight all the outrageous waste and fraud, there's no there there.

Speaker 15 The first thing they reported on the wall of receipts was an $8 billion savings. It ended up, it was $8 million and it was money that had already been spent.

Speaker 15 And then items two, three, and four, it ended up weren't even true. They are having trouble finding all of this waste and fraud that was supposedly out there.
And this isn't an operation.

Speaker 15 This isn't about operational efficiency. It's about political ideology.
I got an email from a fraternity brother who I hadn't talked to in 30 years, a kid named Greg Townsend, kid.

Speaker 15 He's now, you know, 57.

Speaker 15 And after graduating, you have trouble. All you see when you hear from these kids is a guy you used to do beer bongs with.

Speaker 15 And that's, you assume they're still doing beer bongs and listening to Led Zeppelin.

Speaker 15 And this, this, this guy, this man Greg, had gone on to law school and has been working for a division of the UN pursuing war criminals around the world out of

Speaker 15 Switzerland. I mean, I was just so blown away by his work.

Speaker 15 And he said that their funding had just been shut down, but they're continuing to work because they all are so committed to creating an incentive system globally where people think twice before committing war crimes.

Speaker 15 And essentially, the funding was cut off. So if you look at where they quote unquote have what Doge has really done, it's not an operational or an efficiency mechanism.

Speaker 15 It's a political ideology because they just decided, I know, let's just shut down all U.S. foreign aid.
That's a political decision that has nothing to do with efficiency or fraud.

Speaker 15 And what Trump has been really good at is using people as human shields and kind of soaking them up, having them do his dirty work and then firing them.

Speaker 15 92% of his advisors were fired in the first administration, which was more than the previous three administrations combined.

Speaker 15 And I think he's essentially, I mean, the thing about Trump that's just so obvious that people don't want to talk about, nobody, he is literally Chernobyl after the meltdown.

Speaker 15 You get near him, you're going to die a hideous death, at least your reputation. And it's happening to Musk.
I see it here at South by Southwest. People are throwing shit at Tesla's.

Speaker 15 When I talked about Tesla, I'm like, you know, zero to 1939 in three seconds. It's really hard to understand the political calculus or the political calculus here, the economic calculus.

Speaker 15 He really fucked up. And that is the opportunity to remove inspectors from...
the 32 different investigations across 11 agencies against his companies.

Speaker 15 Okay, that's an economic incentive to get involved and be cozy up to the president. But the cost that's being levied on him and his brands right now is enormous.

Speaker 15 People are canceling Starlink contracts. Entire countries are saying, Poland's saying, we can't count on you or your technology.
Provinces of Canada are canceling Starlink.

Speaker 15 And I thought that's the one that is really going to scare the shit out of them. What's unusual about this, and I use Nike as a counterexample, Nike took a political stand, and sometimes it works.

Speaker 15 When they decided to embrace Colin Kaepernick, when he bent a knee, that was a real political risk. But they did the math, and that is two-thirds of Nike sales are outside of the U.S.

Speaker 15 No international individual is that concerned or thinks the U.S. has race relations correct.
And about two-thirds of their revenue came from people under the age of 30 or non-whites.

Speaker 15 Meaning the people that were outraged and did videos of them burning their Nikes, that was probably their first pair on Nikes.

Speaker 15 They did the math and said, this is going to cement and tickle the sensors of the majority of our profits and revenue base. And Musk has done the exact opposite.

Speaker 15 75% of Republicans who he's sort of lighting up or illuminating or activating say they would never buy an EV. So

Speaker 15 he's done the exact wrong math here. And that is the group that he is most going to piss off and alienate is sort of his core

Speaker 15 customer base. And all this bullshit in Europe, it does seem like there's a very healthy gag reflex in Europe around him trying to meddle in their election.

Speaker 15 But I have never, it feels to me, and I've said this before and I've been wrong, this feels like a tipping point. It feels like the worm has turned.

Speaker 15 And I was thinking the Bill Burr rant against him was sort of evidence of that. But Tesla has shed a third of its value in February.

Speaker 15 And I mean, the polling on this guy is absolutely, it's just brutal. Anyways, I don't, I think, and I'm calling it and I've been wrong before, but I think the Musk brand.

Speaker 15 is absolutely peaked and is crashing in the fall right now feels feels unsustainable.

Speaker 16 I mean, you would know better than me. I feel like it is very early in the Trump administration to be writing the obituaries for anyone, let alone the person who got Trump elected.

Speaker 16 And we also need to keep in mind that

Speaker 16 the normal things that should quote unquote take a person down do not apply, certainly to Trump, right?

Speaker 16 And a lot of people in his orbit. And I get this criticism all the time from lefty friends, you know, don't normalize him.
You know, this is normalizing, et cetera.

Speaker 16 There is nothing more normalized than the fact that Donald Trump got reelected and that everyone knew exactly who he was and that they knew as well that Elon Musk was coming in for the ride and all of this.

Speaker 16 He was by his side, almost glued to him for the last two months of campaigning. So

Speaker 16 I'm not sure that I agree completely with you in terms of this being the end of it, but it certainly feels like a trouble in paradise moment and that, again, the American people are smarter than Trump and Co.

Speaker 16 think that they are. And they're trying to convince all of us that public servants are just leeches instead of people who dedicate their lives to helping other people.
And does that mean

Speaker 16 there aren't some bad public servants? Of course there are.

Speaker 16 But by and large, a workforce that's 30% veterans, people that we all agree with, should have the most opportunities when they come home from serving this country, possibly, you know, know, risking their lives for us.

Speaker 16 And they should have these possibilities to go and work for us and continue to make America better.

Speaker 16 That Musk is really off key in terms of how he's talking about those folks.

Speaker 15 Yeah, to your point, Kara was saying that Trump is scared of Musk, that he's the world's wealthiest man, which is his

Speaker 15 metric for credibility, and that the last thing he wants to do is piss him off. I think he's just going to fade away.
I think it's going to be, if in fact...

Speaker 16 It's going to disappear him?

Speaker 15 Well, no, I think Musk will decide to fade away. I think Musk at some point is going to do the math and go, this is just not worth it for me.

Speaker 15 And also, if in fact it's now the cabinet members who get to decide or either do this or not do this, Secretary Rubio is not going to lay off some people in the State Department to save some money at this point.

Speaker 15 He doesn't give a shit about a small increase in the deficit. He's got a difficult job.
He's not going to start laying off what he thinks might be bureaucratic.

Speaker 15 He wants all the firepower he can get. The notion that these guys are going to say, okay, I'm really going to take a chainsaw to my division.

Speaker 15 The incentives are: I need to get shit done. I need to reflect confidence.
I need to have decent morale. I need resources to get things done.
I'm getting,

Speaker 15 you know, shoved back and forth by these decisions. They need people.
The notion that they are going to decide to start cutting costs,

Speaker 15 I think

Speaker 15 effectively or operationally, it might be, if in fact, he's now there on top, so to speak, might be, if you will,

Speaker 15 the end of Doge.

Speaker 16 It's got to be the Pentagon anyway.

Speaker 15 Got to be the Pentagon.

Speaker 16 I mean, that's where all the money is. So they have to go after the Pentagon if they're going to be actually making any savings.
And we've got to go.

Speaker 16 But I'm just saying it's all smoke and mirrors saying we're going to go, we're going to cut here or there. We know where the money is.
It's in the entitlement programs and in the Pentagon.

Speaker 16 And so far, they're not doing that.

Speaker 15 It's interesting. That was one, I think, strategic error on the part of the Republicans.
I think they would have had a lot more credibility.

Speaker 15 They would have obviated or kind of defenestrated any criticism if they had gone after the Pentagon first.

Speaker 15 And that is, I would think it would have been much harder for Democrats to be critical of the process. I thought that was a strategic error on their part.
I would have started with the Pentagon.

Speaker 15 Any thoughts? Yeah.

Speaker 16 I mean, you go where the money is, right? And that was something that Secretary Hegset said that he was open to. He said, you know, we've never passed a clean audit and we absolutely should.

Speaker 16 So, yeah, start with the the audit of the Pentagon.

Speaker 15 All right, Jess, that's it for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates.
Our producers are David Toledo and Chenenye Onike.

Speaker 15 Our technical director is Drew Burroughs. You can now find Raging Moderates on its very own feed every Tuesday.
That's right. You can now find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday.

Speaker 15 40% tariffs are against all of you. That's right.
Its own feed. That means exclusive interviews with sharp political minds.
You won't hear anywhere else.

Speaker 15 It ends up that Jess is very, not only talented, but very well connected.

Speaker 15 This week, we're talking with Democratic Attorney Mark Elias about why the courts could be the biggest line of defense against Trump in a second term.

Speaker 15 Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcast. Jess, have a great rest of the week.

Speaker 16 If you enjoy the rest of South Bye. Thank you.

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