Amanda & Jessica Follow the Money: Who’s Getting Rich and Who’s Getting Cheated

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Speaker 3 Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Calm News.

Speaker 3 Jessica Yellen is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby award-winning independent news brand dedicated to helping you manage your information overload.

Speaker 3 What do we need now more than independent news brands and help with our information overload?

Speaker 3 She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy, Peabody, and Gracie Award-winning political correspondent. You can follow her on Instagram at Jessica Yellen.

Speaker 3 And also to get her real-time, clear, and brilliant reporting, please do this. Go to substack.com and search for her page, NewsNotNoise, and subscribe to it there.
It's so good.

Speaker 3 You will not regret it. So this is a very exciting day because usually Jessica is in LA and I am in DC and we are staring at each other over a Zoom when we record this.

Speaker 3 But today I am staring directly into Jessica's beautiful eyes and we are in the belly of the beast right now. Jessica, where are we and why are we here?

Speaker 3 We are in and I mean literally, not like, not like, you know, existentially, which I'm also wondering where we are and why we're here, but let's just talk about literally, right?

Speaker 4 We're on Capitol Hill. I came into town to attend the joint session of Congress speech Trump gave on Tuesday night.

Speaker 4 And I interviewed a bunch of members, all of whom were Democrats, and just got a sense of what it feels like to be up there now in this time. So it's great to see you in person.
It's a nice salve.

Speaker 4 from everything that's going on.

Speaker 2 You look great.

Speaker 3 I agree. And I think we both look great under the circumstances.

Speaker 3 Okay, so we're recording this on Wednesday. So you were there last night at this point.
What was it like? What the hell?

Speaker 4 You know, there's two different dynamics to it. One is just how partisan the speech itself was.

Speaker 4 And, you know, we can talk about the president said a lot of untruths, as usual, and was partisan, explicitly divisive in ways I've never seen in office before, where he taunted Democrats who won't applaud for this or that while then turning around and lying about things.

Speaker 4 And then on the other hand, so that's the president among the Democrats, there was a real sense of, I don't want to say disarray, it was just lack of clarity. You know,

Speaker 4 some Democrats, they said that they won't walk in. It's a tradition to walk the president in with Democrats and Republicans walking together.

Speaker 4 So you have a bipartisan support of whoever your president is is American tradition. Democrats said we won't do that this year.

Speaker 3 But on the other hand, and you saw them hold up little signs like at an auction that said, you know, stop stealing our Medicaid or whatever it was, don't take our Medicaid or this is my favorite one that they held up was, I forget which member of Congress did this, but when he started talking about like lowering taxes for people, which he means for billionaires.

Speaker 3 Who was it that held up a sign that says, you can start by paying your taxes?

Speaker 2 Oh, I didn't see that. That's hysteria.
I love that one.

Speaker 4 So there were those.

Speaker 4 And then there were people wearing pink because that was the original member pussy hat protests in pink but there is this real divide where some democrats have argued that if you're saying this is an authoritarian attack on democracy there's no logic in sitting peacefully and calmly in the chamber and we want to show make a larger demonstration and the democrats are divided on that and you could see that last night Some believe that the Democrats have to stay together and there are a lot of Democrats in swing districts that voted for Trump.

Speaker 4 And so they don't want to compromise those people. On the other hand, I interviewed Jasmine Crockett and a girl.

Speaker 3 God love her and keep her national treasure.

Speaker 4 She really was on fire. And then this Representative Green of Texas.

Speaker 4 So what happened was toward the beginning of the president's speech, Representative Green of Texas, who's in his 70s, has been in public service his whole life, has seen what protest does in America, right?

Speaker 4 And has lived through it. Trump started, you know, in on Medicaid and all that.
And he stood up and wouldn't sit down, booed the president.

Speaker 4 I've never seen that in that way all the time I've covered Capitol Hill. And Speaker Johnson had him escorted out.

Speaker 4 And he later said, you know, I am happy to take whatever punishment is necessary because I'm speaking for those who can't speak. The poor are going to suffer in this country.

Speaker 4 And a whole slew of Democrats walked out because they're like, if we think this is authoritarianism, we're not going to just sit there and take it. Right.

Speaker 3 Right. That is business as usual, where

Speaker 3 you would sit there out of respect for the office. But when you have a president that does not respect the office

Speaker 3 and it isn't business as usual and isn't playing by the rules, then you deciding to play by the rules when the executive branch is not is somehow complicit in suggesting that this isn't a dramatic change

Speaker 3 of everything we've always done, which this presidency is so far.

Speaker 4 It's such a weird

Speaker 4 other reality we're in right now. It's hard to understand

Speaker 4 where the energy needs to flow.

Speaker 4 And I almost, I was struck that I interviewed all these Democrats who would say to me, these are members of Congress, and I'd say, you know, respectfully, I hear from a lot of Democrats who are asking, why aren't you doing more?

Speaker 4 And what more could you do? Do you think you're doing enough? And over and over, people would say to me, we're winning in the courts.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, yeah, that's not, there's this separation of powers thing, and that's another branch, right?

Speaker 3 I went to the third grade, I know that there are three branches, and the courts are one, and you're a whole nother one.

Speaker 4 Then there is the whole, you know, we need some people saying to me, we need the American public to get loud and pressure government to do something, and that's what's going to put pressure on Congress to act.

Speaker 4 And then you're like, but they elected you to do that.

Speaker 4 Democrats are limited in their ability to change directions through Congress right now. And increasingly, I think what we're facing is not a left-right challenge, right?

Speaker 4 Fighting for democracy isn't a Democrat-Republican challenge. It's an all-Americans challenge.
And maybe the thing is, it's not about party politics. It's about Americans.
rising up as Americans.

Speaker 4 I don't care what party you used to be affiliated with.

Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I think there's a real opportunity here to really unite in a coalition about things that matter.
Because what is striking to me is

Speaker 3 the whole idea of, you know, he started his speech, America is back,

Speaker 3 which is actually anesthetical to what he's doing. And I think that like Russia is back is more, I would have more accurate statement of where we are.

Speaker 3 Truly, that all domestically, internationally, like you see it and you can see it by following the money.

Speaker 3 And so much of what he said in that speech was probably the Venn diagram of his campaign speeches and what he did. I mean, what was it? 80%

Speaker 3 all talk lines from his campaign speech. I mean, the man just continues to campaign against instead of saying what he's for.
And that's because he doesn't want us to know what he's for.

Speaker 3 But if you follow the money, you know what he's for. So I think what I would love to talk about for this whole conversation is, Jessica, follow the money for us.

Speaker 3 What is happening with money Just this week, if we take a snapshot, Trump is all about the money, always has been. What is he doing with the money? Because no matter what he says on a stage,

Speaker 3 what he cares about is reflected in the money and the impact to Americans is reflected in the money. So can you tell us some of those things?

Speaker 4 Yes. So in the middle of the speech or toward the beginning, he pointed to the gallery and there is Elon Musk standing there, smiling,

Speaker 4 you know, as if he's this savior who's helping to downsize government.

Speaker 3 Did he have a chainsaw or no chainsaw?

Speaker 4 No chainsaw this time. That's weird.
Not even a gold chain on his neck. I don't know.
It's a different look.

Speaker 4 So, a couple of things. One is

Speaker 4 you have Doge continuing to do its work. I want to make this very clear.

Speaker 4 My reporting is that what they're doing inside the agencies and including agencies that are precious and crucial to Americans' survival and well-being, Medicaid, Social Security, is taking steps to disassemble the institution.

Speaker 4 Okay. So people who are in a position to know tell me that they are firing people who are vital to solving problems.

Speaker 4 If your grandma and the number on her Medicaid and her social security don't match and she can't get her benefits, somebody has to problem solve that and marry them, right?

Speaker 4 The people who help with that being fired, right?

Speaker 4 The basic fundamentals of how it works are they're getting rid of it. They're even getting rid of, they've listed for sale the buildings that are sort of headquarters for Medicaid among them.

Speaker 4 So why are they doing this? They are also inside the social security system and lying about what they're finding.

Speaker 4 The president in his speech went on and on and on about how people who are over 130 are collecting benefits. And since that's not possible, it's obvious fraud.

Speaker 4 Well, people inside tell me, no, this is the Dunning-Kruger effect showing up, which is a syndrome in which you say you know so so much because you are so uninformed, you don't understand what you're talking about.

Speaker 4 And they just don't understand how data is recorded at Social Security. In the beginning, that made sense.
Now it's a lie. So Trump's lying about Social Security.
The question is, why?

Speaker 3 A lot of people are saying that the reason that he focused so much on Social Security in that moment is because he's trying to make the case for

Speaker 3 taking that away. subtly where people are like, oh, I guess that's a fraud.
So we should let go of Social Security. Are people talking about that?

Speaker 4 Yes and no. It's not to take it away.
It's to break it so badly that recipients are desperate, struggling, literally starving without medications, suffering, and then desperate for any help.

Speaker 4 And that will give the government an excuse to say, we have to privatize this. And Elon Musk is going to take this over and put Social Security.
I'm just, this is a hypothetical, let's say on X.

Speaker 4 And X is going to be the financial platform for all government transactions, including your social security. It'll be much more efficient.
We won't need these buildings.

Speaker 4 We won't need these employees, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 And this is not wild thinking.

Speaker 3 I mean, I remember last week we were talking about how Doge went in and was like, these contracts to these particular, I don't know if it was FAA or it was some department, are inefficient.

Speaker 3 Therefore, we're taking them away and giving them to SpaceX, which is Elon's company.

Speaker 3 So there is precedent for this idea that we are not only going to, we can't justify privatizing it right now because it's not broken. Therefore, we have to break it,

Speaker 3 call it broken, to privatize it. And there is precedent for the fact that when we happen to break it, say we have to privatize it, that the people who are deciding.

Speaker 3 to break it are also the people who happen to be able to say, oh, I can help you with the privatizing and make a shit ton of money off of that.

Speaker 4 Yes. So the yes is that is their plan.

Speaker 4 We think, right? We can't know because it's all very, it's the least transparent government takeover we've ever seen. But that's the assumption.

Speaker 4 There are a lot of stages along the way where courts can step in and, you know, the people can make a difference.

Speaker 4 So I don't want people to panic that this is inevitable, but it is evident based on everything we've talked about that they are trying to break these systems.

Speaker 4 And the only strategy Washington has come up with to address it is people have got to suffer enough until they rise up, until every member of Congress is hearing from their constituents, I can't take it.

Speaker 4 Their constituents are freaking out. And then the members go to the White House and are like, sir, you've got to change this.

Speaker 4 And I will say we've seen the White House back off of stuff when Republican members have gone to them and say, sir, we've got to change this.

Speaker 3 Except that didn't the speaker just like that was happening.

Speaker 3 They were rising up in all the when the Republicans were going back to their districts and doing the town halls, which you made the recommendation last week that that is what people should do is find the town halls, show up, use their voices.

Speaker 3 Over the past week, they told them to stop having town halls.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the Republican leadership in the House, Speaker Johnson, has told Republican members to reconsider and maybe don't have town halls over spring recess because they'll get so much heat and noise from the audience if they do.

Speaker 4 Senate, we're expecting maybe they still hold their town halls. So we'll see.
But yeah, that's, it's sort of like if you don't test it, there are no cases.

Speaker 4 If you don't have town halls where people can speak, then no one's upset. It's right.

Speaker 4 I mean, eventually it will out.

Speaker 4 But I think this goes back to our larger conversation we had previously about three strategies for Doge.

Speaker 4 And what we're talking about is that middle strategy where they're dismantling enough so that they could privatize it.

Speaker 4 And so far, it seems like that is the most logical explanation for what they're doing. I will say, you know, you mentioned the FAA contract for SpaceX.

Speaker 4 So far as we know at this moment, SpaceX has taken part of the FAA's contract, but not all.

Speaker 4 So maybe there are still pieces in the system that follow rules.

Speaker 4 I will also say, as we're recording this, the Supreme Court just ruled against the Trump administration on its foreign aid freeze, saying, no, you can't do this massive foreign aid freeze as you've planned.

Speaker 4 You have to accommodate what the courts have demanded, explain to us what you're doing, kind of giving them homework to go back and explain how this aligns with what Congress required.

Speaker 4 We have to see how that shakes out.

Speaker 4 But all of this that we're talking about is, you know, there's a tension in what we're doing, which is we want to explain the context of what these disparate pieces could add up to.

Speaker 4 And that's why we talk about privatization. But I don't want people to rush to the conclusion that that's going to happen.

Speaker 4 And it's good to notice when the system is slowing things down and saying, uh-uh, we're not letting that happen. Right.

Speaker 4 So that's one point on the board for that. Okay.

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Speaker 3 So we have the follow the money of the Supreme Court saying freeze. We have follow the money of the social security.
Why are you messing with Social Security?

Speaker 3 And why do you keep talking about it as if you're trying to demonize it? Maybe you're trying to break it so you can privatize it. What other money do we need to follow? Okay.

Speaker 4 One money that I'm obsessed with is Trump says he's going to establish a crypto reserve, which we don't spend a lot of time on it, but I want people to know that we have strategic reserves for things like oil or or medical supplies.

Speaker 4 We have had gold, but it's an asset where if there's a crisis, you have a thing you need. Like we can't get those medical supplies, but we can dip into the closet where we keep them.

Speaker 3 So this is like survival stuff.

Speaker 3 This is like, if there is a crazy thing, this is the kind of stuff you keep in like your basement or your attic where you're like, well, if all the power goes out, we have this stuff.

Speaker 3 This is the idea about reserves.

Speaker 4 Yes, it's like the government's go bag. Okay.

Speaker 4 And he's just said, we want a go bag of crypto.

Speaker 4 oh good because that'll get you through the night crypto is a digital number keeper on the computer it's not a thing you need to dip into in a crisis it's really a transfer of taxpayer dollars into crypto funds into these five cryptos that trump's supporters are invested in and it is a way to sort of formalize the crypto market to make those investors.

Speaker 4 I mean, there's no other way to say it.

Speaker 4 It's a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to some of the wealthiest tech investors in America, which is happening in the backdrop as they're saying we need to cut Medicaid and change social security.

Speaker 4 It's a currency. It's publicly accessible.
Anybody could buy in. And we do, you could say that about American gold currency.
Our dollar doesn't have, you don't eat dollars when you're hungry.

Speaker 4 And they would argue that they need this as a backstop in a time of crisis, right? Crypto is the future, they say, and America should be leading in this new future, tech future.

Speaker 4 And one can have a debate on that, but the idea of just funneling this money into these companies at this time is wild when they're saying we need to downsize everything.

Speaker 4 And it's so bad that one of Peter Thiel's proteges, who helped stand up the Trump pack, who's one of Trump's biggest donors, has said, cut it out, guys. This isn't cool.
Like, not into it.

Speaker 4 And there's another whole thing there, which is the tech elite at odds, like, who's getting rich off everything?

Speaker 3 Yeah, he's like, But wait, you didn't tell me before I invested.

Speaker 3 I thought you were only enriching the AI, bros.

Speaker 4 So, we can come back to that another time.

Speaker 4 We also can't talk about the money piece without acknowledging this week, Trump slapped these massive tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and increased tariffs on China.

Speaker 4 And on queue, as predicted by every legitimate economist, left, right, and center, the stock market tanked.

Speaker 4 We got in a retaliatory trade war, and it's impacted interest and bond markets and everybody in Wall Street's like hand-wringing.

Speaker 4 Volatility is great for wealthy investors because they make bets on all this. But for regular folks, it means prices are already going up.
It means, you know, your 401k is going to go down.

Speaker 4 And it means a huge amount of instability that's going to ripple through the economy.

Speaker 4 At the the same time, that when Trump cancels all these contracts for USAID, for DOD, for HUD, whoever it is, the government overwhelmingly contracts with small businesses in the US and favors veterans.

Speaker 4 So when the government does business, its first priority is to do business with veteran-run small businesses. When you cut government contracts, who are you bankrupting?

Speaker 3 Veteran small businesses.

Speaker 2 Bing, bing, bing, bing.

Speaker 4 You got the answer. I mean, somebody I respect tweeted, tweeted,

Speaker 4 he'll have the biggest, this administration has the distinction of firing more veterans than any presidency in history.

Speaker 4 So tariffs, tanking, you know, social security, downsizing, disabling it. Medicaid seems to be on the chopping block.
At the same time, you have this crypto fund that's out there.

Speaker 4 Trump is also, there's a story that he's selling access to himself for a million dollars a seat at Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 3 for his personal pocket.

Speaker 4 I think it's going into a pack, is my guess. I'd have to look at it.

Speaker 2 Legal defense,

Speaker 4 spending who knows, but it's all fungible, right?

Speaker 3 You know what's so weird, Jessica, is because

Speaker 3 our U.S. stock market plummets this week.
But what is so weird, and I'm sure utterly unrelated,

Speaker 3 is that Russia's market surged this week.

Speaker 2 So America is back, or is Russia back?

Speaker 3 Because I would love us to follow the money there. Because

Speaker 3 in the 24 hours

Speaker 3 in the same week that ours plummeted,

Speaker 3 the Moscow Stock Exchange went up 3%.

Speaker 3 It's been up 11.1% since Trump took office.

Speaker 3 Why

Speaker 3 are they going up while we are going down

Speaker 4 make russia great again

Speaker 4 i think we have we can stop now we've done it i mean can i just say it's so weird we're having this conversation it's just it's wild like growing up this was the party the republican party was the party of you know

Speaker 4 the Cold War and

Speaker 3 hawkish Lindsey Graham was out there like

Speaker 3 screaming about Russia and about how we needed to protect ourselves against it, which by the way, we do. I mean, one thing I might overlap with Lindsey Graham on.

Speaker 3 And then he's out this week screaming about how we need to be against Ukraine. Like

Speaker 4 what the hell is going on going on? So since our last episode, Trump had an Oval Office meeting where Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, was there. J.D.
Vance, our vice president was there.

Speaker 4 And they welcomed in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. And it was the craziest performative ambush you can imagine.
I've never, I mean, every foreign policy hand there is was gobsmacked.

Speaker 4 No one's ever seen anything like this happen in American, modern political history.

Speaker 3 It was shameful. As an American, I was ashamed.

Speaker 4 So should we do a quick explanation?

Speaker 3 Yeah, let's just explain what happened.

Speaker 4 First, the week before, the White House announces that they will take over the tradition of deciding who is in the press corps.

Speaker 4 That used to be a press decision of who's in the press pool that's allowed in the Oval Office.

Speaker 3 Is that because of freedom of press or no?

Speaker 2 Opposite.

Speaker 4 It's that he wants, obviously, based on what we're seeing, to stock his events with partisan, I won't even call it media that's, you know, kind of carried water for him.

Speaker 3 And this is why Breitbart is one of the three that are now allowed in the Pentagon, whereas NPR and AP, the Associated Press, is not.

Speaker 4 It's gotten, yeah, it's gotten so bad that I think of Breitbart as like the legacy press of the right wing. Like, at least they have reporters who ask questions that then they share as information.

Speaker 3 Stan, that's a slippery slope. And we're starting to find Breitbart as our best and last option.
Okay.

Speaker 4 So they had in the Oval Office a reporter from some outlet. I can't remember in what name, but it was one of these like rando places.

Speaker 4 And Zelensky shows up wearing fatigues, which he always does all the time to kind of project wherever he goes, my people are at war. I stand with my people.

Speaker 3 This is solidarity with his people who have been at war and under siege for over three years.

Speaker 3 And all of his people who are fighting actively now, he's not going out in a suit and tie because his people are at war. He is with them in solidarity.

Speaker 4 He shows up wearing what he always wears, we've always seen, and he does what's a veil, press availability, they call it in the oval office.

Speaker 4 Whenever the president takes meetings with world leaders, they invite in the press.

Speaker 4 That's why you see those two people sitting in the yellowed gold chairs in front of the fight, and they ask questions, and the press leaves. It's called a pool spray, is what we call it.

Speaker 3 And this is, by the way, always, this always happens, even if we are like serious adversaries with someone.

Speaker 3 They go in the back room and talk all their smack and work out their business and yell at each other.

Speaker 3 But when they sit in the gold chairs as leaders of nations, they are respectful of one another, even if we're adversaries. And that is always,

Speaker 3 always, always true.

Speaker 4 And that used to be my job. I was one of the reporters who would get escorted into the Oval Office and shout the questions and then run out and tell everybody what happened.

Speaker 4 So I've been there many times and it was unthinkable to imagine what they were seeing. So they're in the chairs.

Speaker 4 One of these rando reporters from new outlet on the far right asks Zelensky a rude question about why is he dressed so disrespectfully in the Oval Office.

Speaker 4 Side note, do we not remember that Elon Musk stood behind the president wearing a baseball cap and a Doge t-shirt?

Speaker 4 Like, it's not a problem when he does it, but it is a problem when the leader of a country at war, whatever. Obviously, it's deeply cynical, felt like a setup.

Speaker 3 And just to follow up on that, so Trump took that and actually said to Zelensky, You're in the Oval Office. Why aren't you wearing a suit? Don't you have a suit?

Speaker 3 He says to the man, like the most disrespectful, patronizing asshole you've ever met,

Speaker 3 to the man who's at war, don't you own a suit? Why aren't you wearing it? With his lips.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 3 Okay, so it wasn't just the reporter. It was Trump.
He's like, good call.

Speaker 4 And keep in mind, there are photographs of stuff happening in the Oval Office we haven't seen before under Trump. It's like, what? What?

Speaker 4 So the meeting goes on. We're going to like skip through everything except this.
As they're having their conversation, it is awkward. I will admit it was weird and strained, but fine.

Speaker 4 Trump was meant to get Zelensky to sign a minerals deal. They're agreeing to ship us their precious assets because that's what we use for AI and electric vehicles or money from it.

Speaker 3 And we're holding them hostage in order to get peace. We're saying we will only help you get peace if you give us a huge percentage of your nation's invaluable natural resources.

Speaker 3 Just like that's what he Zelensky is there to agree to, which is already abhorrent to everyone who's like, just as a leader of democracy trying to prevent invasions of sovereign nations across the world, America should be supporting them.

Speaker 3 So just as a precedent, just as a level set, he's there to say, okay, I'll agree to give you my nation's resources to help us stop being killed. Yes.
And that's not enough.

Speaker 4 Okay. So then as it's proceeding, JD Vance

Speaker 4 steps in, interjects, and says to Zelensky a few things, including, I'm paraphrasing this. It's not exact.
Your behavior here is disrespectful. He uses the word disrespectful.

Speaker 4 Why haven't you thanked President Trump? Why haven't you thanked us?

Speaker 4 Now, Zelensky travels the world, has gone to Congress, has gone all across America saying, or to many places in America saying thank you. Gratitude is not a thing he's lacked, but what is that?

Speaker 4 Disrespect Trump is trigger words, right? For Trump. And it was almost as if it was a plan to ambush.
I don't even know if Trump was in on it. I can't tell.

Speaker 4 But Trump hears those things and all of a sudden goes from mild awkward to enraged, right? And they start ganging up on Zelensky, asking him why he's not thanking them. Why aren't you more respectful?

Speaker 4 And it turns into this shame down, like I'd say a showdown, but it was shaming him. It was an ambush.
It was

Speaker 4 like the deal fell apart. Right there in the Oval Office, the deal fell apart.

Speaker 4 The reporting is they went to separate rooms and then Zelensky was meant to have a lunch, was meant to sign the minerals deal, have a lunch and a press conference with the president.

Speaker 3 And Zelensky still wanted the reporting I've seen is Zelensky still wanted to make it work.

Speaker 3 He's so desperate for his people's survival that notwithstanding being an attempt to utterly humiliate him, which I would argue was actually the humiliation of America.

Speaker 3 He was trying to make it work and that Trump's people walked in and said, it's over.

Speaker 4 Well, he go home. They said, Go home.
Yeah, they got him out.

Speaker 3 And all of this is happening in the White House with the ego and the Trump saying you don't have the cards and trying to cut a deal.

Speaker 3 And what is wild to me is that I have not seen as much reporting as I wish existed that contextualizes that meeting in the White House from, you know, let's rewind years ago when

Speaker 3 Trump is on the phone with Zelensky

Speaker 3 saying

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 3 basis of what becomes the reason he is impeached, which is he tells Zelensky that if he doesn't start an investigation of Hunter Biden's dealings in Ukraine, Trump is going to withhold aid to Ukraine.

Speaker 3 Okay, this is the background dynamic of the situation where we're watching them in the White House where Trump is

Speaker 3 overtly threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine again, and it's at war this time. I mean, it is wild.

Speaker 3 And that is the history of that relationship: the, you do something personally beneficial to me, or else you don't get what you need to survive.

Speaker 3 And Trump brought it up himself in the Oval Office when he's talking to Zelensky and he loses his shit after JD says the thing about respect. And he says,

Speaker 3 this all happened. I went through this with Putin.
This was all about Hunter Biden. Putin stood strong with me.

Speaker 3 Literally to Zelensky talking about Trump's own effort to shake down Zelensky for a partisan made-up inquiry into Hunter Biden

Speaker 3 that Zelensky refused to do,

Speaker 3 that Trump decided to withhold aid on, that then our Congress, when it had a modicum of a backbone, impeached him for.

Speaker 4 Right. I mean, it is an important note that he was impeached for his interactions with Zelensky in the past and for his general,

Speaker 4 I guess the word would be fuckery with Ukraine. Can I say that?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 There's a long and troubled history there.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 And it's worth always remembering that he seems to take the side of Russia.

Speaker 2 Yes. Yes.
Okay.

Speaker 3 Just thought that might be relevant to the context.

Speaker 4 Now, is there a way in which this worked for Zelensky in that, you know, this minerals deal is thuggery and this really highlighted the extent to which America is thugging him around? Sure.

Speaker 4 But he's already coming back and saying, what can we do to make this deal work? To fast forward, this

Speaker 4 set off alarms across Europe. Europe has now held an emergency summit.
European leaders met with Zelensky, got his back big time.

Speaker 4 You know, Lekwalesa from Poland put out a statement saying it was shameful of America, that the hero here is Zelensky and not Putin. The basic takeaway is the U.S.

Speaker 4 has now aligned its foreign policy with Russia against Europe and Ukraine.

Speaker 4 So much so that one of the most senior officials in the Kremlin said that the US and Russia are now aligned on foreign policy.

Speaker 4 And I've been asking people in my interviews and reporting, if Russia attacked a country in Europe, whose side do you think the U.S. would take now?

Speaker 4 A few weeks ago, we talked about this on the show and I said we'd side with Europe. And now I, I'm not so sure.

Speaker 3 But we don't even have to ask that theoretically. What would we do if Russia attacked a country in,

Speaker 3 and whose side would we have? Like, we have Russia's side right now. We have a president who has said, It was Zelensky's fault.
Russia did not invade, which is just counterfactual.

Speaker 3 There's no interpretation of that. We do have Russia's side in this.

Speaker 3 And in fact, so much so that, like, didn't the Department of Defense this week drop their cyber operations, which have been going on forever against Russia because Russia is constantly having cyber operations against us?

Speaker 3 We unilaterally said we're going to stop

Speaker 3 cyber operations. against them.

Speaker 4 Yes. And so that people don't completely panic.
It doesn't mean that we don't have cyber defenses that are active here, but there is a constant invisible war between the U.S.

Speaker 4 and our adversaries in the digital space, where they're doing ops against us, we're doing counter-ops against them, and we're also in their stuff looking around to understand what they're planning and what they're capable of doing against us.

Speaker 4 Now,

Speaker 4 reportedly, Secretary Hegseth has said we're going to drop the start part where we're rooting around in their system. Now, is it possible?

Speaker 4 Like, I talked to some DOD folks who are like, maybe we will, maybe we won't. So, who knows what's really going on, but they definitely want the message out.
And the U.S.

Speaker 4 also leaked today that we're stopping our intelligence sharing with Ukraine, which is.

Speaker 3 Holy shit, that's huge.

Speaker 4 So part of what the U.S. has given Ukraine in addition to military support is eyes.
and ears. So we have this elaborate intelligence network and we can tell them, we see Russian movements here.

Speaker 4 We see this active thing here. Why don't you? And we assist.
So they're on the ground doing, but we could be in sort of symbolically in their ears helping to inform.

Speaker 4 And the administration says no longer.

Speaker 3 And we also froze as of the Monday. So that meeting was on a what, a Friday with Zelensky.

Speaker 3 On Monday, he said, I'm freezing all aid to Ukraine, basically like holding hostage until he comes back and makes and makes me feel better about my ego.

Speaker 3 We are no longer giving aid to Ukraine, which just to be totally clear, there is no world in which Ukraine survives a war of attrition with Russia. They just don't have the resources.

Speaker 3 The only way that they get out of it is

Speaker 3 through

Speaker 3 funds. And so we took that off.
And the day that they announced that that is when Moscow's stock exchange went up 3%.

Speaker 4 That part's wild. It's just wild.

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Speaker 4 So I'll add two things. One is the U.K.

Speaker 4 has stepped in, and an important realignment, if you want to zoom out and look at big picture changes, is Europe, ever since World War II, has said we're allied with the U.S., the U.S.

Speaker 4 spends all this money on defense. We're going to, as a

Speaker 4 alliance, rely on the U.S. to help defend us against Russia and China,

Speaker 4 more so Russia. Now they're saying we can't rely on the U.S.
So we all need to collectively invest in our own shared defense.

Speaker 4 So you're going to see Europe start to strengthen its own military spending, strengthen its own forces as a alliance separate from the U.S.

Speaker 4 And London announced that they're going to give Ukraine like a two and a half billion dollar loan to help backfill what the U.S. won't do.

Speaker 4 And they're going to use like Russian-seized assets to help do that. So Ukraine is getting support from Europe, but this distance is growing with the US.
And the question is, why are we doing this?

Speaker 4 Are we doing this? The charitable explanation is this is a negotiating posture and it's meant to force Zelensky to accept territorial concessions and other concessions to end the war.

Speaker 4 Obviously, the less charitable version is we are breaking our democratic ties. We are breaking down our democratic institutions.
We're realigning with Russia and our global relationships are changing.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And if we're breaking down our democratic ties, we are breaking down our commitment to democracy

Speaker 3 in the world.

Speaker 3 And it appears to me we are breaking down our commitment to democracy in our nation.

Speaker 4 It's so hard to understand. Yes.
And

Speaker 4 is this where we're going? I don't know. Like, I don't know if the Republicans up on Capitol Hill will accept and tolerate that as it becomes more and more clear what we're doing.

Speaker 4 I don't know if people won't march in the streets and try to do what they can to stop this. Like, I don't know.
I don't know what's inevitable. I don't think anything's inevitable.

Speaker 4 I've interviewed people who cover authoritarianism all over the world in history. It's not inevitable, but they're just breaking shit.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. They're breaking.
They're breaking it in a big way and they are not, they are not trying to hide the ball.

Speaker 3 And so what's amazing to me is that it seems to me very clear that the Republicans in Congress

Speaker 3 have

Speaker 3 absolutely no stomach or agenda to counter the president in any way.

Speaker 4 I'd add this, that one way I think of this administration is Trump is out front as the performer. keeping us entertained, distracted, angry, engaged.

Speaker 4 And behind the scenes, Doge in the form of Elon Musk and a bunch of hackers and tech elite who are looking to privatize and get rich and control things have partnered up with these Project 2025 technocrats.

Speaker 3 Heritage Foundation.

Speaker 4 Heritage Foundation. They're the, you know, really want to conservative values, Gilead, all that.
My sense is Doge and Project 2025 folks are on this mission.

Speaker 4 to change and break as much as possible as fast as possible. They are ahead of where the Republican Party Party even wants to be.

Speaker 4 And at some point, there is going to be a coming to terms where the members of Congress are like, you can't take us off this cliff.

Speaker 4 And the question is, how soon will that happen and how far off the cliff will we get before that happens? And so I think that's a helpful way to think about it. Trump's out front tap dancing.

Speaker 4 Who knows how much he understands about what's really happening? These tech elite and far-right technocrats have made this pact and are trying to break quickly.

Speaker 4 And the question is, how much energy can get behind members of Congress, Republican and Democrat, to rise up and use their voices to stop and slow the unholy alliance of 2025 and Musk?

Speaker 3 Yes,

Speaker 3 get

Speaker 3 your people to be accountable, whether they're Republican or Democrat. Call them and tell them to do their job.
It's not a done deal.

Speaker 3 And something that we can do, we've been talking about the money the whole time, that in many cases here

Speaker 3 in everything we've discussed is that money is revealing of values, that the values that this administration is bringing is evident in the way that you can track the money through this whole system.

Speaker 3 And the way that we can present our values is by supporting, if it's $5 a month, $10 a month. whatever you can do

Speaker 3 to support the organizations that are organized, that are strategic, that are getting these court cases through the system to slow the wheels of this administration.

Speaker 3 And one of those is Democracy Forward. I'm just going to ask you to look up Democracy Forward, check them out.

Speaker 3 They are one of the places that I am giving to every month in addition to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU. Just look at Democracy Forward.

Speaker 3 They're doing the work while we all try to figure out the other avenues to do the work. So I think that's something that people can do today.
Okay,

Speaker 3 good people. Should we breathe? Let's breathe.
Let's breathe. Let's breathe.
Let's do it.

Speaker 2 Hold.

Speaker 4 Exhale slowly.

Speaker 3 We can do this, y'all. Nothing is inevitable.

Speaker 3 What we do matters.

Speaker 3 We could do hard things.

Speaker 3 Thank you for being here.

Speaker 3 We will see you next time.

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Speaker 2 We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey.

Speaker 2 Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, and Bill Schultz.