108. America’s Turning Point: Trump’s Biggest Power Grab Yet

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Speaker 3 Welcome to The Rest is Politics U.S. with me, Catty Kaye.

Speaker 4 And me, Anthony Scaramucci. Caddy, we're going to be diving into Trump's latest power grab today,

Speaker 8 from deploying American troops in our cities to bending the courts.

Speaker 13 And obviously, he's still intimidating all of our great institutions, including most of our elite universities, Caddy.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 15 another big week in Trump land.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and trying to fire a Federal Reserve Board governor. So we'll see how that goes down.
Trump says he's not a dictator.

Speaker 3 We're going to ask whether his actions are starting to tell a different story. And then in the second half, we're going to look at whether the Democrats can fight back effectively.

Speaker 3 We're seeing some movement from Democratic governors that's been kind of interesting the last week or so. And is their new strategy working?

Speaker 18 Before we start, though, I want to have a little strategy here.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 19 I'm convening our first cabinet meeting.

Speaker 22 I just want to say you have a lovely sweater on, and I like your hair color, and I think you're a phenomenal podcaster, and you've made podcasting safe.

Speaker 3 It's not enough, really. More.
More, please.

Speaker 6 You've made podcasting safe in America.

Speaker 4 You've closed the podcasting borders.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's okay, Anthony, but step it up.

Speaker 27 The fact that every cabinet meeting goes to a higher level of ass kissing is, I mean, I mean, there's nobody in there.

Speaker 28 This is like a timeout.

Speaker 11 Could you just imagine? It's like almost like a Saturday night school.

Speaker 29 It's already, okay, timeout.

Speaker 27 The ass kissing is out of control.

Speaker 11 Could somebody dial it back in?

Speaker 21 Trump, you look like shit. You're walking like shit.

Speaker 30 I mean, what are you doing?

Speaker 3 You know what it is? They'd look to the Europeans come in and they'd learned from their European colleagues. I mean, maybe they called up the Europeans and said, that was good.
How did you guys do it?

Speaker 3 How did you coordinate your flattery in a way that it sounded authentic? And then they went and studied it a bit. And then they came in.

Speaker 3 They had three and a half hours of this cabinet meeting with the cameras in there. The poor camera guy's arms must have been falling off holding up that boom mic.

Speaker 3 And one bit, did you notice this my best bit? The camera, of course, is on Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 Next to him is Pete Hegseth and on the other side of him is Marco Rubio, who just won't look up, who's doing doodles on his notepad. You can see him.
Watch the video, guys.

Speaker 3 There's Marco Rubio just like saying, please, God, get me out of here. Please, God, get me out of here alive.
Please, God, how do I not make sure that my face betrays what I'm actually thinking?

Speaker 3 This is just vomit making. And all the while he's doing little doodles.

Speaker 31 You're not alive. You didn't get out of there alive.

Speaker 10 Let me give Marco Rubio a news flash.

Speaker 31 You did not get out of there alive. You got out of there.

Speaker 3 Was taken from you.

Speaker 31 Yes, you got out of there as an obsequious zombie.

Speaker 17 But I mean, Witkoff is the best one, right?

Speaker 18 Because I know Witkoff. You know, I've hung out at Rayo's with Wickoff.

Speaker 10 I've gone to dinner with him.

Speaker 22 I've been on the panels with Witcoff.

Speaker 30 I mean, Wipkoff, you couldn't even see his ankles.

Speaker 17 You know what I mean?

Speaker 29 They were so far up the intestines of Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 His little little ankles are like hanging out.

Speaker 10 Could somebody pull Wyncoff out of there, please?

Speaker 6 I mean, come on, Caddy Kay.

Speaker 13 It's just, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 3 And the very fact that Donald Trump held the whole of the cabinet in the cabinet room for half a working day in front of television cameras shows you that we are basically in the Trump reality TV presidency.

Speaker 3 This was the cabinet episode and he wants to check the ratings. And did they flatter him enough?

Speaker 32 Let me just quote Trump as we get started here i am not a dictator caddy k but you know what i am i'm gonna dictate to you what you're going to say to me and by the way since you want to watch marco rubio with the videos of doodling watch trump's face during the ass kissing sessions he likes it but he doesn't like it yes it's weird that he does he yeah he's torn he's torn you're so right he's sitting there kind of knows how disingenuous

Speaker 3 he's not grinning because he knows that would be too much right he can't grin because that would show that this was not really true and that he was in on the joke but so he's looking kind of serious and looking down a little bit anyway it's worth watching guys not all three and a half hours of it you don't have to watch we will spare you that but it's been a busy week okay so this is a great risk of podultery, which I think we're not allowed to do on this podcast.

Speaker 3 But anyway, what the hell? I've done it. I've done it.

Speaker 3 I would recommend people to have a little listen to The Top of Ezra Klein this week because he talks about how what is happening in America is a bit like an optical illusion.

Speaker 3 And you know things are happening and you can see changes to the country taking place, but we don't really know what it means. And I have had this feeling this week.
I've been talking to several.

Speaker 3 friends in DC, in the kind of DC world, trying to make sense of what feels like a very momentous end of August in the Trump presidency. And is this what people voted for, as Ezra spells it out?

Speaker 3 This is democracy in process. People voted for mass deportations.
Mass deportations are ugly. We have ICE officers on the streets of Washington, D.C.

Speaker 3 in masks, picking people up and throwing them into the backs of vans and then just disappearing them. And, well, that's what people voted for.
That's democracy.

Speaker 3 Or is this something far more sinister where the president is getting American cities used to armed members of the National Guard and armed troops.

Speaker 3 And at some point there will be a protest and there will be a pushback or a mistake will be made and some member of the National Guard will end up shooting a member of the public and we'll have a state of emergency declared and we're on the kind of helter-skelter route to the end of democracy and free elections in America, which is exactly what General Milley, the former Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned me about and warned you about, that this is what Donald Trump wants to happen.

Speaker 3 He wants to put troops on the streets and they will end up shooting American citizens. And then you have kind of untold consequences, but they're probably not good that develop from that.

Speaker 3 And I feel like that in this moment. I'm really trying to, you know, me, normally miss glass half full, miss sanguine, pretty sunny over here.

Speaker 3 But this last week or two feels like a bit of a turning point

Speaker 3 in

Speaker 3 America.

Speaker 3 And I think it's the culmination of the troops on the streets, the threat of the troops to other cities, and then this week week the news that the president has fired or is trying to fire a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, which looks like a kind of, as he said in that very long cabinet meeting, we will soon have a majority of the Federal Reserve Board and that will allow us to dictate monetary policy in America.

Speaker 3 And I think it's worth talking about Lisa Cook a little bit in the context of why this feels so.

Speaker 3 So it feels like a shift is happening to me. And I don't know what that means.
I don't know where it leads to because we're at the beginning of this play. We're not at the end of the play.

Speaker 3 We're in Act One, not Act IV.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 talk a little bit. What do you think is the significance of the move against Lisa Cook?

Speaker 6 Well, the market's telling you obviously doesn't like it.

Speaker 37 I mean, this is the first time

Speaker 39 that gold reserves for other countries are higher than U.S.

Speaker 9 treasuries around the world.

Speaker 14 So thank you, Mr.

Speaker 40 Trump, Donald Trump, President Trump, for doing that.

Speaker 6 Secondarily, you want to wreck the independence of the Fed.

Speaker 39 It's going to cost you in terms of the value of the dollar.

Speaker 22 It's going to cost you in terms of the economy.

Speaker 42 And you'll start to see institutional capital allocators move away from the United States.

Speaker 6 And lots of research reports out saying that the European stock market is going to have incrementally more capital allocated next year vis-a-vis the Americans because of this.

Speaker 11 So there's a couple of of things going on, though.

Speaker 42 I want to break them up in categories.

Speaker 6 So again, there's good and bad Trump. So let's talk about good and bad Trump.

Speaker 19 Reducing crime.

Speaker 44 Caddy, everybody's for that.

Speaker 13 Everybody should be for that.

Speaker 43 If you're a left-leaning leader in the United States, you're not for that.

Speaker 7 Wake up.

Speaker 43 Even Bill de Blasio, the retired hard-left mayor, is saying that the Democrats have done a bad job on crime.

Speaker 4 So Trump wanting to reduce crime in D.C.,

Speaker 20 I want to give him some credit for that.

Speaker 3 As, by the way, Muriel Bowser, our mayor, has done this. Exactly.
She's played that right.

Speaker 18 So I give her credit.

Speaker 5 Muriel Bowser has said, hey, crime is down.

Speaker 17 The president's trying to reduce crime.

Speaker 5 But, Caddy, remember, we always have to balance reducing crime and living in fear.

Speaker 25 And the bad news about America right now, if you are black or brown, you live in more fear than you do if you're white.

Speaker 40 And that's a terrible thing to say, but that's why we have a podcast and we're not tied to some mainstream media organization.

Speaker 39 It's the truth.

Speaker 40 I have people that come over to me and tell me that they live in fear.

Speaker 49 They live in fear of ice.

Speaker 50 Well,

Speaker 39 you have a passport. I don't care.

Speaker 13 I'm from Honduras. I live in fear of ice.

Speaker 9 My family lives in fear of ice.

Speaker 12 This is not the type of society that America wants.

Speaker 23 Trust me, this has a very negative reverberation effect through the society.

Speaker 35 Remember, your freedom from fear.

Speaker 39 What did Franklin Roosevelt say, right?

Speaker 19 The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and your freedom from fear unleashes the creativity, unleashes the animal spirits, unleashes the innovation.

Speaker 6 You can have this large a percentage of the American population living in fear.

Speaker 40 It has cataclysmic consequences.

Speaker 6 And by the way, when children see their parents living in fear, guess what happens, Caddy?

Speaker 25 They themselves get fearful.

Speaker 23 And it's very inhibiting.

Speaker 20 and this is a very dangerous thing that Trump is doing. So good for reducing crime, very bad for fear reduction.

Speaker 3 Do you want to know the irony of this?

Speaker 3 Lisa Cook, who is the Federal Reserve Board Governor, who has been fired but may not be allowed to be fired, who we were just talking about, her field of economic expertise is how when populations live in fear, innovation in the economy goes down.

Speaker 3 She studied African Americans after Reconstruction and she found, guess what? When you're being lynched, actually, you're not filing as many patents as you might be filing.

Speaker 3 You're not innovating as much. And she is exactly the person who has studied the kind of fear that you are talking about and its impact on the U.S.
economy.

Speaker 2 Let's give more irony here because Trump talks about lawfare, and Trump talks about him getting picked on in certain minuscule ways in the law where they make big deals out of nothing, prosecute them, 34 counts, felony, you're guilty.

Speaker 4 And now he's doing the same thing to Lisa Cook.

Speaker 20 He's trying to find something in her past that can unravel her future.

Speaker 39 And so it's the highest levels of hypocrisy.

Speaker 6 But remember, in a personality cult, you can be very arbitrary and very capricious about the way you do things.

Speaker 43 And so I can say it's bad for me, but it's not bad for you.

Speaker 6 And so we're going to go after you, Lisa Cook, and we're going to see if we can knock you out of that position.

Speaker 20 So the one thing, Katie, and I've done a little bit of homework on this and talked to a few lawyers about this.

Speaker 25 The for cause

Speaker 32 is saying she's being fired for cause.

Speaker 3 We should just give people a little bit of the background very quickly.

Speaker 3 So the Federal Reserve was founded in 1913, and the statute of the Federal Reserve This is a quoting from it that says that governors shall hold office for a term of 14 years unless sooner removed for cause by the president.

Speaker 3 Now, the statute doesn't specify what cause is. It doesn't say that whether it's about work performance, there are no criteria presented.

Speaker 3 It's what some lawyers have described to me as naked cause, i.e. it's not kind of fettered by any other qualifications.

Speaker 3 This gives the president quite a lot of discretion legally.

Speaker 3 It's not as much discretion as saying that the president can fire a Federal Reserve Board governor at will, which would be just like, I don't like you, don't like your dress, don't like whatever it is about you, I'm going to fire you.

Speaker 3 But it's not as restrictive as what is usually

Speaker 3 referred to as INM language, inefficiency, neglect, malfeasance. So the reason that there is now a debate here in the U.S.

Speaker 3 amongst lawyers about whether Trump can indeed fire Lisa Cook and why Lisa Cook's own lawyers have said she doesn't accept this. She says she's not fired.
This is not legal.

Speaker 3 The question is, what does four cause mean?

Speaker 3 And the president is saying there are mortgage documents that one of his kind of henchmen found in the Office of Mortgages that show that she bought two properties in two weeks of each other and said both were her primary residence.

Speaker 3 And it's not possible that both can be a primary residence under law. That's not legal.
So it was before before she took office as a Federal Reserve Board governor.

Speaker 3 And so now you have lawyers in the Supreme Court, I'm sure, and constitutional lawyers defending her and constitutional lawyers for the government trawling through arcane case law to find out what this two words means for cause.

Speaker 6 So, Caddy, as we're speaking, Lisa Cook has announced a lawsuit against the president.

Speaker 43 And so this will get taken up into the courts.

Speaker 7 We'll have to see how this gets resolved. And we're going to learn a lot about what the definition is as a result of this case.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there is actually the University of Virginia, weirdly, there is a constitutional lawyer who specializes on presidential removal power, which is a super arcane thing to specialize in.

Speaker 3 But anyway, he says that he thinks this is going to be very tight. Lisa Cook is represented by Abby Lowell.
He's a very famous Washington, D.C. lawyer for power players.

Speaker 3 He's very good and very effective. But my understanding talking to a couple of lawyers over the last day is that it's not clear whether or not she wins this one.

Speaker 3 Sorry, I wanted to give people a bit of background because that is how we got to this position of Lisa Cook.

Speaker 50 No, listen, look,

Speaker 26 I think it's important because we want to explain the hypocrisy.

Speaker 49 So let me ask you this question, Caddy.

Speaker 8 If this was a Trump appointee,

Speaker 12 Donald Trump appointed this person, would they be doing this to this person related to that paperwork?

Speaker 3 No, because Lisa Cook was not caught up in a broad trawl of people going through millions of mortgages and saying, okay, we are going to have in America an assessment of whether people have lied on their mortgage forms or done something wrong or made a mistake on their mortgage forms and we're going to try and correct that.

Speaker 3 She was specifically targeted. And Donald Trump almost admitted as much in that cabinet office meeting where he made it clear that he wants a majority.

Speaker 3 The Reserve Board of Governors is seven people strong.

Speaker 3 He wants a majority to have four of them who are Trump appointees so they will vote the way he wants them to vote on interest rates.

Speaker 3 She was appointed by Joe Biden. She did not vote to cut interest rates, and that's what this is really about.
It's a power grab on the federal board of governors. Right?

Speaker 3 I mean, I think that's what this is about.

Speaker 23 Well, let me ask another question.

Speaker 57 So the federal judges said, we've got to shut down TikTok.

Speaker 6 It's weapons grade technology.

Speaker 3 Funny that.

Speaker 22 Did that happen?

Speaker 3 No, that didn't happen. And it was passed by Congress and signed off by the Supreme Court in my memory.
Should have been shut down, right?

Speaker 21 So it didn't happen.

Speaker 48 So we're going to ignore the law when it doesn't suit our interests.

Speaker 10 And then we're going to overly bite and overly enforce the law.

Speaker 51 when it suits our interests.

Speaker 6 And so when Trump says he's quote unquote not a dictator, but many people want a dictator, I'm not using the F word here, the F word that ends with a T, but we're going to say authoritarianism here a little bit because come on.

Speaker 25 If you're in a nation where everybody's subservient to the laws, we do our best to abide by the laws.

Speaker 12 I'm not saying it's perfect, Caddy, but it's not this arbitrary and it's not this capricious of an administration of the law.

Speaker 39 And so what happens?

Speaker 22 Because it's all tied to the economy again.

Speaker 9 We've got an antenna up, Caddy, and we're sending a signal: beep, beep, beep, beep, to the rest of the world.

Speaker 14 Beep, beep, don't trust us anymore.

Speaker 3 Don't trust our numbers.

Speaker 43 Yeah, we got a lunatic.

Speaker 21 We got a lunatic in Washington. He's going to fire the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Speaker 20 He's going to corrupt the Federal Reserve.

Speaker 21 He's going to arbitrarily and capriciously administer the laws.

Speaker 27 Beep, beep, beep, move your capital elsewhere.

Speaker 10 And to your earlier point and Lisa Cook's point about innovation,

Speaker 8 you're frozen now because we want you living in fear while our henchmen are walking around covering their faces, Caddy, as they try to intimidate you in the street.

Speaker 14 So I don't know.

Speaker 28 It's not the America that I grew up in.

Speaker 9 It's not, frankly, the America that you've lived in the last 25 years.

Speaker 51 And there's very few Democrats, very few Democrats are speaking out about it.

Speaker 10 Obviously, there will be no Republicans speaking out about it.

Speaker 20 We lost them 10 years ago.

Speaker 43 But what would you do, Caddy?

Speaker 10 What would you do?

Speaker 57 Be the strategist.

Speaker 32 What would you do to rein this back in?

Speaker 20 Is it like the Emperor has no clothes where the bubble will eventually pop?

Speaker 6 Is it Joe McCarthyism where he's eventually shamed?

Speaker 12 Do you have no dignity, sir?

Speaker 21 And you're eventually shamed into losing your power?

Speaker 23 Or is this fear-based power that's going to continue to exist, Caddy?

Speaker 3 I I mean, I think the fear-based power we're seeing, we're seeing it in the firing of the head of the Centers for Disease Control that just happened last night.

Speaker 3 The woman who said

Speaker 3 that the health system in America is being weaponized to suit Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s own agenda, anti-vaccine agenda, and three other members, senior members, left with her because they said, we can't do our jobs.

Speaker 3 Everything that we want to do is now meant to be in service of proving that vaccines, even very low-risk vaccines, are harmful to people. So you've had a kind of culling at the top of the CDC.

Speaker 3 Again, it was messy. The White House had to step in and say that she was fired.
She didn't want to go voluntarily. But that leaves organizations and institutions looking weak.

Speaker 3 It also undermines people's trust in the veracity of those organizations is a bit like your your signal that's going up. Is this the right signal that we're getting about the health of Americans?

Speaker 3 Are we actually being told the truth?

Speaker 3 Bobby Kennedy in that long cabinet meeting said next month he's going to announce what the real causes of autism are and he's been looking at tying them to vaccines.

Speaker 3 There's been lots of debunking of the relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism, but he's going to make an announcement again.

Speaker 3 Can we trust that what the government is telling us is true or is this actually just for political game? It's a very similar story.

Speaker 3 You've got the health story, you've got the economic story, but the underlying erosion of people's ability to trust the United States and to trust its data on health or on economics at the moment is rising.

Speaker 3 Your signal is kind of getting louder and louder on that one. And then you have the creation of some kind of militarized force on the streets of American cities.

Speaker 3 Again, a projection of force, a projection of fear, people with masks on their faces,

Speaker 3 the kinds of troops that, you know, you see in more autocratic countries. And I think a lot of people are wondering, you know, how long does it last? How deep do these changes go?

Speaker 3 And I think that how long does it last is going to come down to

Speaker 3 something as banal as does America have a huge spike in inflation?

Speaker 3 I mean, I honestly now think the only check on what the president is doing to amass a huge amount of power in his own hands in the Oval Office. I don't see any check in the Republican Party.

Speaker 3 Congress seems to be taking not just a summer holiday, but a year-long holiday. Democrats are finding it hard to cut through and fight back.
So it's going to be up to something like inflation.

Speaker 3 Do American voters start feeling the impacts of tariffs in such a dramatic way that no matter how much the Republican Party gerrymanders the districts that we spoke about a couple of weeks ago,

Speaker 3 in the midterms, the Republicans lose, or inflation gets so hot that the markets respond. I don't see another way that Donald Trump is going to be checked.

Speaker 3 I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't see, I think it's going to come down to affordability in people's pocketbooks.

Speaker 26 It looks like they botched the gerrymandering in Texas.

Speaker 18 They've left themselves a little bit more vulnerable than they thought.

Speaker 26 It's going to be gerrymandering now in Illinois and gerrymandering in California.

Speaker 9 So it could increase the probability that the president loses the House in the midterms.

Speaker 9 That'll finish his term, by the way.

Speaker 31 So let's just let everybody know that.

Speaker 57 He loses the House.

Speaker 6 They're going to unleash massive investigations against him and his family members and a whole host of other people.

Speaker 7 And it will slow them down, and he'll be a lame duck, and it'll be a really bad two years for the Republicans, even if they don't lose the Senate, which I predict they won't.

Speaker 42 I think the Republicans will hold the Senate.

Speaker 20 Your point on inflation,

Speaker 7 here's the great irony.

Speaker 6 This is one of the greatest things about our societies.

Speaker 9 People should always remember this.

Speaker 53 We innovate.

Speaker 6 You think things are going to go linearly.

Speaker 12 They don't.

Speaker 56 They go exponentially.

Speaker 12 And so you have an opportunity here where inflation may be lower than we think, Gaddy, because of automation and robotics and better software technology.

Speaker 9 All this stuff coming online over the next three or four years may in fact reduce prices despite the fact that we're weakening the dollar and monetizing our debt.

Speaker 3 And putting a sales tax on people through tariffs.

Speaker 53 Exactly.

Speaker 43 One of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors came to our event last week in Wyoming and basically said, we've got to be on watch for the innovation because, yes, everything you just said is inflationary.

Speaker 13 The counterdote to that, and the great irony, is that the globe's entrepreneurs, the globe's innovators are outrunning the negligence of the politicians in terms of the way the politicians are handling policy.

Speaker 38 So I'm for the rate cuts.

Speaker 6 I'm not just saying that as a Wall Streeter.

Speaker 12 I'm saying that because I see the weakening in the labor statistics.

Speaker 57 And if I was sitting on the board of governors of the Fed, I would be voting for the rate cuts.

Speaker 35 You know, it's the thing about Donald Trump, you can dislike him, and you can think he is dictatorial, you think he's a very dangerous person, but he does have good instincts on certain things.

Speaker 43 And I do think he's right about that.

Speaker 3 And by the way, the two people who Donald Trump appointed, who we met at your conference, they were great: great,

Speaker 3 Chris Waller and Mickey Bowman, right? Yep. They're not stooges of Donald Trump's.
I actually think because he did try to put in two people

Speaker 3 last time around who would be much more politically in his pocket, both of the,

Speaker 3 they did not get confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
And I think there is some check here. There are some protections around the validity of the decisions that the Fed makes going forwards, which is that

Speaker 3 whoever replaces Lisa Cook would have to go through Senate confirmation. And two of Donald Trump's picks didn't go through last time around.
And the two who did go through are respected economists.

Speaker 3 They make their decisions on the basis of economics, not policy. But there is still this kind of hovering question about whether the Fed has the credibility that it had.

Speaker 3 I mean, I think whether you think that this is the right moment to cut interest rates or not, it has to be based on economics and not political fear.

Speaker 3 And the moment there is a kind of question, your little signal that goes up, the signal's already gone up.

Speaker 3 People have already raised the question, which already undermines potentially the validity of the decision. And that in the long term is not good for America.

Speaker 26 You gave me a great visual.

Speaker 7 I want to see Chris Wallace with a t-shirt that says, I'm not a stooge, as quoted by Caddy Kay on the Resistance Politics U.S.

Speaker 3 Chris Wallace?

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Basically, you just told him he's not a Stooge.

Speaker 40 I mean, it's sort of a compliment.

Speaker 2 There we go. There you go.

Speaker 3 Talking of people who are not Stooges, by the way, and the SALT conference,

Speaker 3 I had a very nice image that you sent me of your very big hug with Mr. Trump Jr.

Speaker 17 Yeah, well, the problem is

Speaker 35 he's so tall.

Speaker 17 I was hugging him at the waist. It was actually a little...

Speaker 3 I know, you looked like you were slightly kind of

Speaker 3 inhaling his belly button.

Speaker 39 Yes.

Speaker 28 Next time, Caddy, I need lifts, okay?

Speaker 6 You know, just help me find the right something.

Speaker 3 But you had a nice little reconciliation moment with Mr. Trump's son.

Speaker 52 But you see, but here's the thing: okay, the kids, I've never had a problem with the kids. They've never had a problem with me.

Speaker 53 And to quote one of them, I don't want to be fighting with every single person that my dad fights with.

Speaker 6 You know, I had a 20-year relationship with these guys. You know, Eric was teasing me on stage.

Speaker 40 And just for those of you that Caddy's referring to, Eric Trump came to our conference.

Speaker 20 He's a Bitcoiner.

Speaker 40 He asked me if he could come.

Speaker 42 It's a non-partisan, non-political event.

Speaker 5 I said, sure, come.

Speaker 12 I interviewed him on stage.

Speaker 6 It was cordial.

Speaker 42 He did tell me I sucked at politics.

Speaker 9 And, of course, I responded by saying to him, well, we're both two out of three for the last election.

Speaker 38 So you suck as bad as I do.

Speaker 6 And then I pointed out, could you please thank your father for making your and my birthday world infamous, which, of course, is January 6th.

Speaker 17 Eric and I share the same birthday.

Speaker 6 But as a student of Greek tragedy, I don't want to take all the sins of the father and descend it onto people like Eric Trump.

Speaker 39 And I will say this, if Trump was a different person or Trump had a metamorphosis, I'm not a grudge holder.

Speaker 12 I just don't want this type of behavior coming from the executive branch of the United States unchecked.

Speaker 13 What I'm blown away by, and I think if the founders, we dug them out of the grave and we said, hey, Alexander Hamilton, what do you think?

Speaker 30 He said, wow, I didn't think that the Congress,

Speaker 6 I recognized there could be a dishonorable person that could run the country, which is why we had the impeachment provisions.

Speaker 57 I did understand that.

Speaker 6 But I didn't think that person would paralyze an entire legislative branch and possibly corrupt the judicial branch as well.

Speaker 14 So I get along with Eric Trump.

Speaker 40 I like Don Jr.

Speaker 13 I don't have a problem with these guys.

Speaker 10 I don't have to agree with them politically.

Speaker 3 You're not Scorpio, you see. You're not us.
You've taught me a thing or two about star signs.

Speaker 27 No, no, you would be scratched. Yeah, you are a lot like my wife Deirdre.

Speaker 52 She's like, if you said that stuff about my dad, I'd be scratching your eyeballs out.

Speaker 14 I said, you know, Capricorn's a little bit more practical, okay?

Speaker 3 Um, we're gonna take a break there and come back and talk about the Democrats, and then we'll do all your star sign stuff later.

Speaker 3 Another day, send us in your star sign questions because Anthony knows a shitload about star signs.

Speaker 30 Look, I'm very good at this agony ant thing, by the way.

Speaker 18 So you are.

Speaker 2 You're good at the agony ant.

Speaker 12 If you want an astrological reading, just send send me an email i'll help you out

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Speaker 59 Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist, and I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst to a novelist.

Speaker 58 And together, we're the co-hosts of another Goal Hanger show, The Rest is Classified, where we bring you the best stories from the world of spies and secrets.

Speaker 59 We have just released an absolutely cracky new series on the infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, how the U.S. spent decades fighting a war on drugs to bring his cocaine empire to justice.

Speaker 58 By 1989, Escobar was the seventh richest man in the world, wealthier than the entire state of Colombia. He was a husband, a father, and the most feared narco-terrorist in the world.

Speaker 59 But to the poor in his hometown of Medellín, he was kind of a hero.

Speaker 59 He built roads, houses, soccer fields, became almost a Colombian Robin Hood to a nation weary with a very unequal and violent political and legal system.

Speaker 58 Over the next few weeks, we'll take you deep inside the murky world of the hunt for Escobar.

Speaker 58 Using accounts from members of the secret military units deployed to find him, we'll reveal how Colombian and American forces worked together to track down the man who controlled a global cocaine empire.

Speaker 59 If this sounds good, we've left a clip for you at the end of this episode.

Speaker 16 This segment is sponsored by Pivotal Car Subscription.

Speaker 49 When the president or vice president moves, it isn't just transport, it's protocol, politics, and theater on wheels.

Speaker 3 Yeah, today we're going to be discussing how America's power hits the road in the presidential state car, which you know as the beast, and the shift from open-top glamour to armored fortresses.

Speaker 3 So, of course, everybody remembers 1963 and that awful scene of President Kennedy coming into Dallas and a bullet hits him and he's in this open top car, no protection, that horrifying scene of Jackie, his wife, scrambling after he's been hit in the head by an assassin's bullet.

Speaker 3 And of course, after that, Anthony, 1964, they didn't waste any time. They decided no more open top cars for US presidents.
And they rebuilt the car with bullet-resistance glass.

Speaker 3 That one stayed in service, though, only until the late 1970s, right?

Speaker 28 Yeah, it's in a museum today, Caddy.

Speaker 49 But I will say this, I was always fascinated by that.

Speaker 5 I can still remember the blood-stained pictures of the back of the car.

Speaker 49 And I just always wondered out loud, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon rode in that car that Jack Kennedy was assassinated. And I just, I would have gotten the heebie-jeebies.

Speaker 28 I don't know if I would have been able to do that.

Speaker 56 But what about the parade limousines now and the evolution?

Speaker 14 And so this thing now has battle armor.

Speaker 43 This thing now has tires on it, Caddy, that have no air in them.

Speaker 49 So

Speaker 23 if it's hit with something like a projectile or something like that, it can keep running.

Speaker 15 Or if someone tries to shoot out the tires, tires are sort of bullet resistant.

Speaker 12 The modern-day beast, of course, now Donald Trump has Generation 3, this Cadillac that was made for him in 2018.

Speaker 29 I mean, the car is truly extraordinary.

Speaker 3 Quick run-through of the kind of facts on this car, $1.5 million per car. I know you have a very nice Lamborghini, Anthony, but I don't think it costs $1.5 million.

Speaker 12 No, I mean, you're getting into Bugatti territory there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the beast is $1.5 million. It weighs 20,000 pounds.
It can do zero to 60 in 15 seconds.

Speaker 3 And every time the beast is transported abroad, because I'm always fascinated by this, the beast follows the president. When he goes abroad on a state visit, the beast goes first.

Speaker 3 Of course, two limos plus support SUVs fly ahead on C-17 aircraft, and they get there before the president, staged, ready to go, so that as soon as the president gets off Air Force One, the whole convoy is ready to roll wherever he goes.

Speaker 49 It's an amazing feat of logistics.

Speaker 38 You know, this car, it's built to survive, which is why they call it the Beast.

Speaker 3 But even the very best planning, Anthony, doesn't mean that occasionally there aren't slip-ups. And it was on a presidential trip to Dublin in 2011.
They bring in the beast.

Speaker 3 They've scouted out the route. They've got the security nailed down.
And what happens? A presidential limo grounded on the U.S. Embassy ramp.
They didn't have enough clearance.

Speaker 3 Which reminds me just a little bit of one time I didn't have enough clearance driving the Lamborghini.

Speaker 42 And you busted the license plate off on my Lamborghini.

Speaker 3 So look, it even happens to the presidential limousine.

Speaker 45 Contrary to the reports out there, Caddy, you are a very good driver.

Speaker 47 And if you were driving the beast on that day in Dublin, I don't think it would have grounded.

Speaker 3 We would have made clearance. We would have made clearance on the U.S.
Embassy Ram.

Speaker 28 I think I believe in you, Caddy Kay.

Speaker 3 So multiple routes, decoy limos, rolling comms hubs. The way American power moves is pure logistics as statecraft.
And when it works, it really does feel pretty invisible.

Speaker 16 So, Caddy, that's the philosophy behind Pivotal Car Subscription. It's a UK-based UK-based monthly vehicle subscription where insurance, road tax, and servicing are included.

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Speaker 3 Now, Anthony, we're going to talk about the Democrats, who I feel like we haven't focused on very much, partly because they haven't been doing very much, but in the last week or two, some of them have been showing quite a bit more fight.

Speaker 3 So I wanted to talk a little bit about the governors and what they're doing. And I'm thinking in particular of Gavin Newsom of California, J.B.

Speaker 3 Pritzker of Illinois, and Wes Moore of Maryland, who have all in one way or another taken their fight with Donald Trump to a new level. And I think there is this split.

Speaker 3 I was speaking to a Democratic strategist just this morning before taping this, who's worked on presidential campaigns.

Speaker 3 And he kind of says, Look, there is this split between Democrats who believe we are in an existential crisis in America and therefore everything must be done to stop it.

Speaker 3 And those who think that what's happening is terrible, but that we will get through it.

Speaker 3 And we have to focus on issues like Medicaid and prices and 2026 in the midterms. And we can't spend our whole time getting caught up in Trump's games on immigration and crime.

Speaker 3 The people that I just mentioned, Newsom, Pritzker, and Wesmore, are probably governors of democratic states.

Speaker 3 They are in that first bucket where they think this is a kind of existential crisis and American democracy has to be protected.

Speaker 3 And then you've got people like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Josh Shapiro,

Speaker 3 who are probably more in the second category and think think that the best thing that they can do right now is run their own states really well and fight Donald Trump when necessary in their states, but not make him the focus of everything that they do.

Speaker 3 And their argument would be, well, look, in 2016 and 2024, Democrats ran on a kind of end of democracy. Donald Trump's a fascist.
The world's about to go to hell in a hangbasket.

Speaker 3 And it's all because of Donald Trump. And look where he got them.

Speaker 3 And they would say, we didn't win in 2016 and we didn't win in 2024 2024 by running solely against donald trump so we've got to show that we can govern i thought that was quite a good way of framing where the democrats are at the moment i think it's an excellent assessment i'm going i'm going to uh say three things and these are the three things i like when it's always three it's always three with you you got to keep it to three because right now somebody's walking they're listening to the rest of politics like three things okay i can listen for all three of these things okay but here are the three things that i learned from donald trump and don't judge me and don't don't throw rocks, and don't shut off the recording.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 25 Number one, personal attacks work.

Speaker 13 Let me repeat: personal attacks work.

Speaker 12 Rosie O'Donnell's living in Ireland.

Speaker 13 He's calling Pritzker fat.

Speaker 52 He spends too much time eating.

Speaker 2 He should go.

Speaker 6 He should go to the gym more, even though Trump is a bloviator.

Speaker 22 It doesn't matter.

Speaker 40 The personal attacks work.

Speaker 13 We remember all the nicknames from 2016.

Speaker 6 We know Joe Biden's nickname.

Speaker 15 We know Hillary Clinton's nickname.

Speaker 40 Number one, personal attacks work.

Speaker 27 Number two, politicians have trained themselves

Speaker 49 to say nothing.

Speaker 9 And just this is right out of Trump's mouth.

Speaker 43 So let me share it with everybody.

Speaker 11 Anthony, you know why I'm killing these politicians?

Speaker 27 Why, Mr.

Speaker 39 Trump?

Speaker 11 Because they walk into a room and they don't want Anthony Scaramucci or Caddy Kay or you.

Speaker 46 They don't want you upset.

Speaker 11 So they say bland things and then they exit the room in an attempt not to to disturb anybody.

Speaker 12 I don't care about any of that.

Speaker 6 I am going to talk with a smashed-mouth language.

Speaker 10 I'm going to be a shock-jock, disc jockey politician, and I will always catch them flat-footed because I'm going to punch harder, say meaner things, and they're not comfortable doing that.

Speaker 6 They've trained themselves for decades not doing that.

Speaker 56 And then the third thing, and this is the most important thing, I will stay in fight, peeing on you longer than you can pee on me.

Speaker 17 Okay, it's a bad metaphor.

Speaker 12 I can see you cringing, but I'm just letting you know most people

Speaker 47 are not up for the repetitive name-calling, the repetitive bullying.

Speaker 56 And this is why the Gavin Newsome strategy I applaud.

Speaker 49 Because if you want to be president or you want to fight Donald Trump, you have to take risk.

Speaker 41 I'm not saying it's going to work out beautifully for Gavin or not, but Gavin is mocking Trump.

Speaker 49 Gavin is putting out tweets that sound like Trump, and people are like, this is absurd.

Speaker 27 Gavin has tongue-tied Fox News hosts where they literally say,

Speaker 18 Caddy, can you believe that Gavin Newsom said this?

Speaker 38 He's the governor of California.

Speaker 43 What about your buddy, who's the head of the United States?

Speaker 3 It's like, to me, he's playing Donald Trump's game.

Speaker 23 You got to do it. You got to do it.

Speaker 11 And so Gavin's the the only one doing it.

Speaker 27 And by the way, let's point out to people, he's up.

Speaker 24 The enthusiasm for him is a 2028 run is up from 35% in 2023 to 75% right now.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 21 And it's because, you know what?

Speaker 6 People want to fight her, Caddy.

Speaker 18 But anyway, those are the things I learned from the orange maniac.

Speaker 3 Gavin Newsom had some problems with the base of the Democratic Party, with the liberal base of the Democrats in California. He had shifted to the center on issue like

Speaker 3 on trans issues, for example,

Speaker 3 men fighting in women's sports. He'd kind of shifted, and some of the people in the left of the party didn't like him for that, so he was losing in some of his polling numbers.

Speaker 3 But it seems that polling that you're pointing to, showing that

Speaker 3 he's kind of gone leapt ahead on the likely Democratic nominees for 2028 and his own polling numbers in California have gone up, shows that somehow the fight is what it's about.

Speaker 3 People want the fight and the base has been mollified

Speaker 3 out of their kind of anger at him over policy issues by the way he's taking on Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 So he's kind of neutralized one of the political problems that he had by taking it straight to Donald Trump. And it's not entirely performative.

Speaker 3 which has been some of the criticism of Newsom is that he's all about the show, because actually this redistricting issue is a real issue.

Speaker 3 And if he wins this in the courts and manages to redistrict California to help the Democrats, he's going to come out as a huge big hero.

Speaker 3 Now, if he fails, he may have a problem, but it looks like this is going to go through. And the other thing I'd say about him is that it's the style of his fight back, exactly what you say.

Speaker 3 He's taking on Donald Trump in his own language. He's literally putting all caps, you know, tweets out and all caps, thank you for your attention to this matter.

Speaker 3 And we live in a communications world where you talked about personal attacks working. I did remember the three things, by the way, that was number one.
I saw that.

Speaker 3 I wrote a little list and your number one was personal attacks work. Well, I wrote a little list next to it, number one, memes work.

Speaker 3 And we live in an age where memes work and

Speaker 3 he's got, he's, because of his humor and taking out, he's got, he's become meme fied. And that is gold.

Speaker 3 I mean, I spoke to a political consultant just this morning who said to me, you can't buy that kind of stuff. So it's a totally, you're right.
He's taking a bit of a risk.

Speaker 3 He's doing it a bit differently, but he clearly thinks that it's a political risk worth taking.

Speaker 3 Now, contrast that with Josh Shapiro, I think both of us have agreed in the past, is a very able politician and a very able leader of Pennsylvania. They had a bridge fell down.

Speaker 3 He famously got the bridge fixed in two weeks, got commuters back to work. He's doing a very good job for his state.
Yes, Anthony, I can see what you're holding up. It's the meme of J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance looking fatter and fatter. I think he gets fatter every day in that meme.
We will come to that in just a second, but hold on.

Speaker 2 Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 3 If this comes down to being a fight, go on do it again. That's quite funny.
If this comes down to being a fight about where were you

Speaker 3 in the fight against Donald Trump,

Speaker 3 where was Josh Shapiro? He didn't show up. He didn't show up in the fight.

Speaker 6 Remember, you got to be a politician now, and you got to be an entertainer, and you got to be a shock job.

Speaker 10 But you just said that memes work.

Speaker 54 And so for those of you that are not watching YouTube, I am showing my favorite memes this is JD Vance as a cabbage patch doll with 1970s afro hair and a beard unfortunately and looking unbelievably rotund and I'm telling you this works and let me tell you what they did because this is important there were memes on a Norwegian

Speaker 49 student's phone

Speaker 6 And the guys at the border took the phone and they blocked the kid from coming into the country, which was the worst possible thing for J.D.

Speaker 36 Vance's career.

Speaker 33 Can I tell you why?

Speaker 6 Because now every day on Instagram, we see this little cherub and we see him getting fatter and fatter and weirder and weirder, Caddy K.

Speaker 43 And that guy is not going to be president.

Speaker 23 Okay. You know, like

Speaker 7 in the musical hamlet, never going to be president.

Speaker 11 You know, that's him.

Speaker 14 Never going to be president. Look at him.

Speaker 3 Yeah, however much Donald Trump says that J.B. Pritzker has a weight problem, I think every time he mentions that, there is J.D.
Vance knowing that that photograph is going around.

Speaker 3 Talk to me a little bit about Wes Moore, who is the other governor we mentioned. So you've had J.B.
Pritzker of Illinois also trying to

Speaker 3 fight Donald Trump, saying we don't need your troops in our city, saying that if Donald Trump sends troops to Chicago, then he will take him to the courts.

Speaker 3 He's again, Pritzker's interesting, obviously incredibly wealthy. Forget the attacks about his weight.

Speaker 3 He has this, I think he has a projection of strength, partly that comes out of his wealth and his independence.

Speaker 3 I think in America that goes down pretty well.

Speaker 3 And he has been fighting Donald Trump, but I don't think he's doing it in the way that Newsom is doing it. He doesn't seem to have found his groove.
Wes Moore is an interesting character.

Speaker 3 He's the governor of Maryland. I've known him for quite a long time.

Speaker 3 I've interviewed him many times, spent quite a lot of time with him, has an amazing backstory, served in the military, served in Afghanistan and Iraq, I think in both but certainly served abroad in those wars in the Middle East wars wrote a very compelling book about his you know his poor childhood and

Speaker 3 about prison life in America but he's somehow not quite breaking through for me I don't know what it is I think it's that he's sounding too like a politician it's it's your point tell you what it is he's a phenomenal presidential candidate for 2008.

Speaker 48 Oh, wait a minute.

Speaker 13 We had one of those guys.

Speaker 39 That was Barack Obama.

Speaker 3 You know, Wesmore says this is so unfair because he's always compared to Barack Obama. He's the black governor of Maryland.

Speaker 3 He has a similar kind of equitable, Obama-esque, no-drama appeal.

Speaker 3 And of course, because there's only ever been one black president, the next person to become black president is inevitably always compared to Barack Obama.

Speaker 3 And I don't think he has Barack Obama's communication skills or that kind of

Speaker 3 weird nebulous X factor that makes you a likely presidential candidate. But I do sympathize with him for having to always be compared to the only ever other black president.

Speaker 6 It's unfair, Katie. And so I'm not trying to be flippant about this.

Speaker 25 It's unfair, but life is unfair.

Speaker 6 And so, you know, and these are waves that come into the political landscape as waves.

Speaker 24 Mitt Romney once said to me, if you're writing a political wave and you've got the right surfboard, which is your platform, and you're a skilled surf rider, you'll get to the beach and you'll be president.

Speaker 44 And so there's a lot of things that happen

Speaker 21 that make a president.

Speaker 36 Jeb Bush would have probably been a great presidential candidate in the mid 90s. He wasn't a great presidential candidate for 2016.

Speaker 25 Wesmore,

Speaker 56 I don't think it's his moment.

Speaker 49 It doesn't mean he's not a good politician.

Speaker 6 It doesn't mean he's not an effective governor.

Speaker 56 But this is, as you know, there's a lot that goes into the mixture that makes a presidential success.

Speaker 3 I think you're right about different moments. And we are living in this communications moment that through social media demands this mysterious quality of authenticity, whatever that is.

Speaker 3 And I think a politician who doesn't come across as authentic, who comes across as measured or guarded, just isn't going to cut through in this particular political cycles. communication moment.

Speaker 18 America's wanting.

Speaker 15 Bill Clinton going into the McDonald's and ordering 15 Big Macs and eating french fries and getting a triple bypass surgery in his 60s.

Speaker 44 That's what Americans want.

Speaker 18 Americas want flawed people.

Speaker 43 They want people that are going to entertain them.

Speaker 18 And they've made a decision, rightly or wrongly.

Speaker 57 This is a popularity contest.

Speaker 42 This is not a good governing decision.

Speaker 6 It's not a hiring decision for the American people.

Speaker 38 So you need to find somebody that can capture the minds and the imaginations of the Americans, but also be a policy wonk, be a student of history, history, be somebody that can help renew and rebuild America.

Speaker 7 And, you know, listen, you know, Plato said it better than me, but I'll share it with you and I'll paraphrase it.

Speaker 18 If you don't get involved with the political process, you're going to be run by people inferior to you.

Speaker 6 His point was get involved, push yourself so that you can find the best of the best to run these things.

Speaker 3 And we're talking about the governors because the governors have a platform. They've got states they run.
It seems to be they're the ones that are breaking through.

Speaker 3 It's very hard for anyone in Congress to break through at the moment. Chris Murphy, God bless him, Senator from Connecticut is trying to.
He is on television all the time.

Speaker 3 But really, there is not much power that they have.

Speaker 9 Flat soda.

Speaker 3 Flat soda. The only one we haven't mentioned, I think, is AOC, who I think is, I think she's still worth watching, phenomenal political talent.
She has that X factor.

Speaker 3 The assumption has always been that maybe even if she won the run of the Democratic primary, she could never get the middle of the country. A little bit like Mamdani, the same rap would go for him.

Speaker 3 I assume that still holds, but hey, we live in a time where things are changing very fast and a lot of political rules have been upended, and a lot of young people are absolutely furious about the cost of living and the fact that they cannot rent, let alone buy a house.

Speaker 3 If they turned out to vote and we had a generational change in the electorate, then I think that would probably help somebody like AOC or Mamdani.

Speaker 3 But for the moment, I think the governors have the best shot.

Speaker 22 All right. I got my money on Newsom.

Speaker 37 He's in breakout mode and he's on offense.

Speaker 6 He's on offense about his state.

Speaker 3 He's selling California. He's taking on Trump.
He's doing it with humor. He will have to live if he gets to the primary stage with all of those images of homelessness in California.

Speaker 3 And that will be a problem for him because there is a massive homelessness problem in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and he hasn't fixed those. Anyway, that's where the Democrats are.

Speaker 3 We thought we'd give you a quick update on them. And we will be back on Saturday for members

Speaker 3 looking at tariffs against India. What's going on there? Is this all about Russia? What the hell is this going to do to the Indian economy?

Speaker 3 Anthony's very, very favorite subject in the world.

Speaker 3 What does Vladimir Putin have on Donald Trump? We're going to talk about that too. Anyway, we'll be back on Sunday with all of that for our founding members.

Speaker 3 If you're not a founding member, you can join us at

Speaker 3 restispoliticsus.com

Speaker 3 and become a founding member.

Speaker 11 There's nothing left for me to say. You're so good at this.

Speaker 43 Okay, have a great week, guys.

Speaker 59 Hi again, it's David from the Rest is Classified. Here's that clip we mentioned earlier.

Speaker 61 Victory over drugs is our cause. A just cause.

Speaker 61 And with your help, we are going to win.

Speaker 48 Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin drug cartel.

Speaker 61 The world's 14th richest man.

Speaker 58 He was, in many ways, a terrorist.

Speaker 59 This is an economic power concentrated in a few hands and in criminal minds. What they cannot obtain by blackmail, they get by murder.

Speaker 4 And I don't think he expressed any regret at all.

Speaker 59 He tries to portray himself as a man of the people, this kind of like leftist revolutionary outlaw.

Speaker 61 Nearly everyone in Medellin supports the traffickers. Those who don't are either dead or targets.

Speaker 58 If you declare war, you've got to expect the state to respond.

Speaker 59 This is the moment where he goes too far.

Speaker 59 13 bombs have gone off in Medellin since the weekend. By the end of 87, Bogotá is essentially a war zone.
U.S.

Speaker 59 spending for international anti-drug efforts is going to grow from less than $300 million in 1989 to more than 700 million by 1991.

Speaker 59 It is the certain knowledge that no one is is really safe in Colombia from drug cartel assassins. It's a conflict where the goal wasn't even to stop the flow of cocaine.

Speaker 24 It was to bring down this narco-terrorist.

Speaker 58 Everything is turned against him to this point.

Speaker 25 The whole thing he was building is collapsing.

Speaker 58 To hear the full episode, listen to the rest is classified wherever you get your podcasts.

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