March 10, 2025 - Lisa Graves | Jacob Silverman | David Halperin

Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available twenty four seven at backgroundbriefing.org. I'm Ian Masters and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news. We'll begin with an update on the extent that Trump is bumping up against the law as he and Musk run roughshod over the legislative branch. while the Democrats appear powerless, leaving the judicial branch, which is largely captured by Republicans, the only remaining barrier to MAGA fascism.

Joining us is Lisa Graves, the executive director of the new corporate watchdog group True North Research and Court Accountability. She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government, as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department. as Chief Counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as a Deputy Chief of the Article III Judges Division for the U.S. Court.

Then we'll examine Trump's executive order setting up a strategic Bitcoin reserve overseen by his AI and crypto czar David Sachs, who along with Musk and Teal, have brought South African apartheid politics. To the White House. Joining us is Jacob Silverman, a contributing writer for The New Republic and a contributing editor for The Baffler covering tech and national security.

He's the author of Terms of Service, Social Media and the Price for Constant Connection, Easy Money, Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism and the Golden Age of Fraud. which was a New York Times bestseller, and his most recent book is Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. We will discuss his article at Zateo, Trump's Crypto Reserve is such brazen corruption.

Then finally we will look into Trump's war on education as he moves to shut down the Department of Education while slashing the National Science Foundation by two thirds, crippling the NIH, and taking four hundred million away from Columbia University. Joining us is David Halpern, a senior fellow at Republican Report.

He was previously a senior policy advisor for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, founding executive director of the American Constitution Society, White House speechwriter and special assistant for national security affairs to President Clinton and counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee. His latest article at Republican Report is for profit college barons back Trump, but now may be scared.

And before we begin in this new year of twenty twenty five, with half of the country hoping for the best as the other half expects the worst. I'm constantly asked how do we survive four more ruinous years of a corrupt sociopath deliberately endangering our children and grandchildren and the future of the planet by denying and delaying the urgent need to stop global warming? As a democratic world is hollowed out from the inside with Trump threatening our allies and cozy up to our enemies.

The world's dictators and kleptocrats led by Xi, Putin, and Trump, plan to carve up the world like mafia bosses with masters. who is already supporting the pro Putin neo Nazi Party in Germany to break up NATO, makes deals with them all. Only people power can overcome money power, and to save our democracy we must stop being divided at home and become united abroad to save our planet.

First we have to reestablish what is real, and being educated doesn't make you an elitist, and knowledge and opportunity should be shared with those left behind who are our brothers and sisters, not our enemies. So background briefing's mission of building a reality based community in post truth America is now more urgent than ever.

And as one of Trump's enemies of the people, join me in the struggle between the despots and plutocrats who are above the law and don't believe in democracy, and the people who have to defend both or see them die. Please make a tax deductible donation at background briefing dot org slash donate. or at our foundation public truthmedia.org and thank you as we fight for a livable planet and work to make a more perfect union in our United States.

And joining us now is Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the new corporate watchdog group True North Research. and court accountability. She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government, as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, as Chief Counsel for nominations on the Senate Judicial Committee, and as a deputy chief of the Article III judges division for the US courts. Welcome to background briefing, Lisa Gray.

Thank you so much, Ian. You gave me a promotion. I'm uh I'm the uh managing director of Court Accountability, but yes. I'm happy to be here with you. Okay. Well, you've had you you've got a pretty impressive resume there. Uh so I want that's why I'm calling you to get an update on the extent to which Trump is bumping up against the law as he and Musk.

as he and Musk run roughshod over the legislative branch, while the Democrats appear powerless, leaving the judicial branch, which is largely captured by Republicans, the only remaining barrier to MAGA fascism. So where do we stand?

Well, I would say that the you know, first of all, as you point out, what's happening is this extraordinary unprecedented set of actions and dictates and directives by Trump and Musk that really transgress longstanding laws, statutes. Uh collective bargaining agreements, rules regarding civil service for our public employees. the funding that's already been committed to agencies uh and institutions that serve we the people. Um and those uh actions are being litigated in court.

At the lower court level, there's a a wide variety of judges who've been appointed over the past, you know, twenty or thirty years, including uh appointees of Biden and Obama, as well as Bush uh and Trump. But at the lower court level,

So far, many of those cases have not been favorable to uh Trump and Musk's edicts, their directives. But Um, those cases, for the most part, with only a few exceptions, have not made it up to the US Supreme Court, which has been captured by uh Donald Trump, by Leonard Leo, by the right wing, into this six-three faction dominating the court.

Um, although there are some, you know, potential breaches there. Um, but in most recently, in one of the cases involving the USAID funding, the court, the Supreme Court. uh in a decision where uh John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett sided with the Democratic appointees. to send the case back to the lower court um to um to examine the funding restrictions that uh that Trump and and Musk issued.

That's a temporary win, but we don't know if it will hold because of the behavior of John Roberts in paving the way for Trump to come to power and other decisions that the Roberts Court has issued. So Um where we stand is in a p a place of significant uncertainty and massive destruction.

So there's so many cases here and I don't really have the time to go through them all. Uh, I guess one of the more prominent ones is the National Labour Relations Board about uh trying to uh where the judge has already ruled, Judge Harold's already ruled that the Trump administration cannot fire

the NRLB board member, uh, Gwyn Wilcox and what's at stake there is I I guess all of the government departments in their future in that case. Then you got Then you've got the USAID staffers, you've got the firing of Hampton Dellinger, you've got the New York City FEMA funds, you've got the CIA employees, you've got the Associated Press. You got the case uh uh uh uh Tanya Chutkin's case on Elon Musk's authority, Doge's access to labor data, federal work at buyout, federal employees emails.

some federal workers firings, National Institute for Health Fundings, Birthright Citizenship, Probationary Workers Firing, Refugee Admissions, Doge access to student loan data, Doge access to Treasury data, DEI, transgender rights. Uh, health websites, foreign aid. I think I should probably g stop now because there's another pages and pages of these cases. So is this then their strategy to flood the zone?

Well that's right. That's the strategy that Steve Bannon set forth. That's the strategy that we saw mapped out. in the Project 2025 agenda that Heritage Foundation wrote for Trump, with people like Russell Vodd and others having the pin uh for a a number of extreme measures. Um this is just a an assault, a a daily hourly assault on the rule of law, on our institutions, and a deeply destructive one. One that has seen the firing of of employees.

on a arbit you know arbitrarily and capriciously, not based on merit. It's seeing the hiring of people who have no actual relevant experience to the jobs that they're being given to poke into our some of our most important and necessary government databases like social security.

um and other databases that are, you know, include an enormous amount of information about us that no one should have access to unless they have the training to handle that data with all the controls to protect that data from being stolen or misused, along with Um, you know, even having basic uh national security clearances that are fully uh completed. And so instead what we have are these doge employees who are being paid enormous sums reportedly.

And who have no experience in those in those agencies or even with the systems, the types of systems that we have. And um it is just utter

utter recklessness. And then there's just the destruction of people's lives. Uh, you know, the all the employees that have been fired, some of whom have been brought back under court orders, um, these threats uh about like the fork in the road or report to me your t your five Successes of the past week from thousands and thousands and thousands of employees supposedly reporting to Musk. It is utter chaos.

And it's chaos being uh produced by, you know, by Trump at Trump's at Trump's whims, but also at Elon Musk's whims. And one of the things Musk said the other day was he doesn't bat a thousand. Well, even the best batters in the major league baseball, you know, are only batting point, you know, point three, uh, you know, three three one or something would be a huge, massive batting. Let at that you're hitting a hit every three every three times you

you swing. But here is uh Elon Musk basically swinging a buzzsaw. at our institutions and wrecking people's lives, these employees' lives and the pro the programs that they serve, including thousands of veterans who work for Veterans Affairs. uh national security experts uh here and abroad. Um it is an absolute disaster to have this person. Playing this role in our government, who is unsuited to that role, who disrespects government, who has literally given an interview interview saying,

Empathy is the downfall of Western civilization. Lack of empathy is the cause of fascism, authoritarianism, and a dictatorship. This is the wrong man at the wrong time, in the wrong place. in the wrong country, quite frankly, uh given the destruction that that that Trump is wreaking through Elon Musk.

Fortunately the courts are standing up in some of these instances. But it remains to be it remains to be seen whether the supine John Roberts court that gave Trump unprecedented immunity from criminal prosecution retrospectively and prospectively will actually stand up to Trump and Mike.

So Lisa, then given that I suggested in in in the beginning of the question was that the Democrats the Democrats appear powerless. Is there anything that can be done to stop this juggernaut? Well, it's certainly the case that in terms of the executive branch and the legislative branch, the Republicans dominate that branch. And at the Supreme Court, Republican appointees dominate that branch, but that does not mean that we're powerless.

In fact, what we've seen over the past couple of weeks is a tremendous exertion of will and will and outrage by the American people at these Republican town halls, speaking up, defending our families, our communities against these outrageous. uh s this outrageous slash and burn tactic by uh Trump and Musk. And those town halls um have been so robust that the Republican leadership has told those Republicans.

To not do any more town halls. Don't do any more meetings in your community where people are gonna are gonna speak up. about the destruction that is underway through Musk, but also through these other cabinet uh leaders that that Trump has chosen. People uh like Linda McMahon uh who is aiming to destroy the US Department of Education, someone whose whose expertise is in a wrestling entertainment

uh a corporation who has now been basically named as the empty suit to destroy public education in America. These are some of the d dumbest ideas. I've ever seen, uh, including the trade policy, which is absolutely ridiculous, counterproductive, and reckless and destructive of our our interests as the American people. Um, I I'm astonished. So, you know, Congress.

Uh the Democrats do not have power in Congress. There's more they could do, there's more they could do in organizing and uh in opposing, more they can do at the hearings that are going to be taking place. But it's also the American people who are speaking up and standing up, and that resistance is forming and growing. in response to the destruction and economic destruction we're seeing unleashed by Donald Trump.

And you're there in Wisconsin, you're not far from Canada, right? Where th the Trump is decl you know, trying to annex Canada. Why is he beating up on America's best friend and closest neighbor, uh, and sucking up to uh Putin, which you'll be doing in the next few days in Rihad. Imagine having making Mohammed bin Salman, you're the host of a deal with another kleptocrat.

I mean, i the whole thing stinks and you have to recognize that what do you think it's worth to Vladimir Putin to be brought in from the cold back in the G eight? to have the sanctions lifted. It has to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And guess who's gonna get a commission on that sell out disgusting deal? The Trump family. And guess who broke it the original breaking of the ice with with Putin in a back channel? None other than Jared Kushner.

So and he already got two billion from MBS. So so you can see what's going on here. This is kleptocracy. Unbridled. Well, that's right. I mean I and I I I do live in the state that shares a water border with Canada. And I am astonished, astonished. to see the outrageous attacks on uh Canada, a longtime trade partner, longtime national security partner of the United States, along with along with Mexico and and part of the NAFTA agreements.

Um this idea of annexing Canada is deeply offensive to the sovereignty of Canada. Same with Greenland, same with Panama. These are utterly reduc uh destructive and ridiculous ideas. It's as if you it's as if Donald Trump, you know, has some sort of version of Jean Paul Sartre, I think therefore I am.

His version is I think therefore I can or I think therefore I'm right, when these again are deeply destructive of the integrity of the United States, of the reputation of the United States, and they are right along with uh Vladimir Putin's agenda for America, which is the destruction of the United States, the decimation, the internal um, you know, chaos in the United States, the destruction of our role in the world, including through destroying

Um our USAID outreach that help people across that helps people across the world, helps prevent the spread of disease, helps uh advance the reputation of America. Since the nineteen sixties, since that program was initiated under uh John F. Kennedy. These are these are policies, if you look at them oh like one after the other, they're basically what does Putin want? They served Vladimir Putin's interests, not the interests of the American people.

Um, and it is it is, I feel like we are living in sort of a Vichy America with Trump serving Putin at every turn.

So if we have a criminal and a traitor in the White House And if that was former intelligence uh officers plan or others in the FSB, the S VR and the former KGB, then you gotta admit that's one of the most extraordinary his uh intelligence operations in history, if that is the case, which is be becoming increasingly apparent. So just in the last couple of minutes then

Is there any way for the people to recognize what I think is the case, which is that this guy is is owned by Putin? On the other hand, the nicest thing you can say about him is that he shares this vision Uh since he's a wannabe uh mafia boss of a world carved up. by Mafia bosses where they carve up territory and she gets to have Asia, Putin gets to have uh Russia and parts of y Eastern Europe, and uh Trump gets to have uh the Western Hemisphere.

Um, that's the kindest thing you can say about him short of him being an outright traitor. Well it is really astonishing. I never thought I'd see this day in America and also to see these guys of the American Legion and veterans of foreign wars who fallen into lockstep with Trump despite, you know, spending their their careers in the military protecting against the Soviet threat aga against the threat that Russia poses to the United States.

Um, you've had so many people on the right, uh, even Marco Rubio and others, uh uh like uh Tom Tillis of uh North Carolina, senator from North Carolina, who you know previously you know have spoken out about uh these issues in terms of the the global uh dynamics with russia with with putin and the need uh to protect our allies in ukraine and nato Uh, one of the most successful um international agreements in world history has been NATO in terms of securing peace.

in Europe and alliances uh with our long st a long time ally since World War Two. in Western Europe and the UK. And instead you have someone in the White House who is acting in a maximally destructive way toward those relationships with our closest allies. Um and I I do hope the American people continue to wake up, that more and more people wake up. to the destructive foreign policy and domestic policy that Donald Trump is imposing. And how that is.

So align with the dictator Vladimir Putin, who who does not want America to succeed, does not want America to be a place of prosperity and equality and fairness, but instead has has embraced This, you know, really destructive person in Donald Trump. And Donald Trump has been, in my view, serving him now for years.

So just in closing though. What about uh when Roberts is gonna wake up to the facts that you've just outlined? When is uh um Annie Coney Barrett she's gonna wake up? Forget about uh Thomas Alito, uh Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. They're they're just Absolutely f too far gone t into the far right uh uh universe. But is there any hope that th that these people will recognize what you've just been talking about? It seems increasingly obvious. They have to know who Trump is.

Yeah, I mean it it seems obvious to me. It's like seeing that uh that image of the old woman and the young woman. Once you see it, you can't, you know, you can't not see it. Um, there are some signs that perhaps Amy Coney Barrett has really grappled with the destruction that Trump seeks to impose on our constitution. Basically that the constitution that John Roberts swore him in under is meaningless because he now has been given this

This carte blanche that he cannot be held criminally accountable for any so-called official acts. John Roberts is the author of this destruction. I hope he wakes up and and apologizes at some point for the destruction he has unleashed on America through this unprecedented granting of immunity to Trump. Um, that hasn't that hasn't happened yet. His his uh rejection of his role in doing so or any recognition of that has not happened yet.

Um, but I hope the Supreme Court ultimately will say no to Trump and Musk and will help. restore um you know, restore our constitution and our our governance, but it's gonna take we the people from a movement standpoint to really secure our rights because we cannot trust that this court will protect us. Well, Lisa Graves, I thank you very much for joining us here today. Thank you so much, Ian.

And again I've been speaking with Lisa Graves, the executive director of the new corporate watchdog group True North Research and Court Accountability. She's also served as the senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government. as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, as Chief Counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a Deputy Chief of the Article III Judges Division for the U.S. Court.

We're gonna take a ref station breaker back examining Trump's executive order, setting up a strategic Bitcoin reserve overseen by his AI and crypto czar David Sachs, who along with Musk and Teal, have brought South African apartheid politics. Welcome back. I'm Ian Masters and this is Background Briefing, available twenty-four-seven at backgroundbriefing.org. And joining us now Jacob Silverman, a contributing writer for the New Republic and a contributing editor of the

At the Baffler, covering tech and national security. He's the author of Terms of Service, Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection, Easy Money, Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, The Golden Age of Fraud. Which was the New York Times bestseller co authored with Ben McKenzie. And his most recent book is Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. And he has an article at Zateo titled

Trump's crypto reserve is such brazen corruption. Welcome to Background Briefing, Jacob Silverman. Thanks for having me.

Well thanks for joining us. And uh on January the twenty third, uh uh Trump signed uh this uh this executive order creating this crypto reserve with David Sachs, the the cryptos are there. in the Oval Office with him, and almost a month later, on February the 21st, The biggest crypto heist happened where w the North Koreans through using government hackers stole one point five billion in cryptocurrencies from Bybit.

So that's just a one example, I guess, of the unbelievable idiocy of having the taxpayers spend their real money to buy fake money to bail out a bunch of Silicon Valley gamblers like David Sachs. That's right. And i it's a pretty brazen example of this sort of thing. Uh there will Mm they might produce all kinds of arguments about why this stuff is useful or why the country supposedly needs a strategic reserve of crypto. But uh I don't think the the arguments really

pass muster with people. On the other hand, one of the features of this administration seems to be that they do what they want. So they'll they'll tell you it's good for for the public and just do it anyway. But my understanding is that crypto is a disaster for global warming because i of the enormous amount of electricity that it requires to run these massive servers. these server farms that th that they create in order to protect crypto.

with all kinds of firewalls. But if the North Koreans can hack through these firewalls and steal one point five billion, uh it all seems f somewhat futile. Well it's true that the crypto industry is enormously resource intensive. I mean, it's now being put to shame in some sense by AI. uh the AI industry, but it you know, similar technologies are being employed and similar level of just spectacular resource consumption. Uh but at the same time as you as you indicated

we're not getting a lot for it, you know, this stuff isn't very useful. It it's not it's certainly not secure. Uh and th the people who the countr the only country whose economy has been dramatically changed by crypto is frankly North Korea. uh which uh uh uh uh is able to help fund its missile program and and other sort of underworld activities through crypto hacks and sending people to go work for crypto companies abroad and things like that.

Um so the use cases still aren't there uh unless you happen to work for a rogue regime. But isn't at the end of the day the business model for crypto is what they call the greater fool theory in economics, right? That there's a greater fool that's gonna buy after you buy and therefore you will make a profit and the greater fool will make a lot.

That's right. And and in crypto in general, there's nothing to sort of determine or shape what the price of a token should be beyond kind of hype and and delusion. I mean, there's no cash flow attached to these companies. There's not really any utility to the tokens. So um that's why you need to convince someone else, that greater fool, that, you know, it's worth more and you can sell your bag to them.

And what we're really doing now is um you know it remains to be seen what exactly the government may buy, but what it what seems to be happening is the US the US government is getting in on that process. You know, they are gonna be basically guaranteeing the price of crypto or or a floor to it and and trying to help drive the price higher because it will then be in the country's best interest to do so.

So just like President Trump is is a a crypto entrepreneur, now basically the the the the Treasury, the federal government, will have a stake in what happens to the price of Bitcoin. Well it's not that the government just that the government's in on it. Uh Trump himself is in it. He's got his dollar Trump Bitcoin and Melania, of course, is in on it too. She's got the dollar Melania token. And in order to carry favour with Trump, all you have to do is buy this garbage, right?

That's right. So, you know, any world leader This isn't even a question of of morality. It's in your self interest to buy Trump token or World Liberty financial tokens. Any of the Trump now has several crypto ventures as you mentioned. Or or I I mean if you're the leader of of Senegal and you're about to have a meeting with with Trump is in some future date.

Wouldn't you buy a whole bunch of uh millions of dollars worth of his tokens and and then tell him that? Um, you know, i the i it's just it's such a clear and almost invitation for bribery and influence. And it doesn't require anything from Trump. Uh you know, he doesn't even have to really say yes.

I could just go out there right now and buy some Trump tokens. Now it doesn't really matter if I buy a few, but if you're again a head of state or, you know the Chinese intelligence service or something like that, and you decide you you want to put five hundred million dollars in Trump's pocket, it's now really easy to do that.

Well, there's an example, isn't there, of this Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, uh who put in seventy five million dollars into World Liberty Financial Trump's front and suddenly his problems with the security and exchange commission went away.

Yeah, I think this is so important and because people some people are aware of this and there's been some decent coverage, but a lot of folks aren't. And people have worried, you know, I just gave you a hypothetical about but w we've already seen it happen, uh, which is that here is a foreigner who Frankly a is one of the

shadiest characters in crypto. He's notorious um for hopping between various jurisdictions around the world. Uh he he probably can't couldn't have entered the US under the Biden administration for fear of arrest.

Um and we saw him in the fall and winter and into this year uh make well he made two big purchases, a total of seventy five million dollars worth of World Liberty financial tokens. He talked about on Twitter Trump's sons welcomed him uh on tw on X, excuse me, and uh Steve Whitkoff, whose sons run uh that's uh Trump's envoy to the Middle East. His sons run World Liberty Financial. They also celebrate on Twitter.

And then a a uh as you said um just recently, an SEC investigation that was accusing Sun of a multi billion dollar fraud was put on hold, just as uh pretty much all these crypto investigations are putting on hold. I mean, it does not get clearer than that as a as a pay to play. And it it's already happened and one can only assume that this is gonna happen a lot more.

So I didn't know that, uh Jacob, that Whitcoff, who's the negotiator, this former real estate guy He's not only negotiating over Gaza, he's also negotiating what's supposed to take place within a few days in Saudi Arabia, the so called peace deal between Putin has been given everything and Ukraine which is being hung out to dry by Trump.

His son runs Trump's crypto outfit called uh World Liberty. That's right. It's Zach Whitkoff and I am blanking on the first name of the other Whitkoff's son, but there are two of them. And, you know, Trump has a name. I think it's Chief Chief Crypto Evangelist or Chief Crypto Advisor, uh, Eric and and

Don Jr. and Barron all have titles there, I believe. You know, i it it's pretty amazing now uh the level sort of entanglements that we have where you know the the the the president is not only in the crypto business, he's he's in the business with His advisors, with their kids, with these shady overseas characters. Uh there are really no guardrails up here anymore.

So we're all the greater fools, right? Trump is the is scamming us. And all those people out there that st still buy crypto are the greater fools. But now that he's set up a federal reserve uh for crypto, we, the American taxpayers, are the greater fools.

I think so. I mean to to be clear, w uh that he's given a some mixed messages. Um uh first he said he was gonna buy all these tokens, uh like Solana and others that were um that frankly are connected to i around him like uh David Sachs through various investments has exposure to Solana. Um now they they sort of start a little more conservatively perhaps by just saying we're gonna take the bitcoin that the US government has seized in fet in federal investigations and criminal investigations

and use that to form the stockpile. Uh a lot of people thought that might be how they started because that sort of bypasses the congressional appropriations process. You don't have to ask for money. But it still starts this same process, which means the federal government is basically gonna become a crypto day trader, is gonna be involved in the market. Uh Sachs said that w when Trump signed the executive order, the American people missed out.

on X amount of on billions of dollars worth of price appreciation in Bitcoin because what has happened in the past is the US government, you know, seizes Bitcoin, the FBI or wh whomever from some criminals And then eventually the US Marshals service through Cloin Bay. sells it back into the market at sort of market price at a at a at kind of a slow rate over time to not really upset the the market. But now it's not gonna be that

it now that process is is gonna be profit driven. It's gonna be about having this stockpile that's about boosting the price and and reaping some kind of profit. But really what it's gonna be doing is it's gonna be inflating the bags of David Sachs and everyone else around Trump.

And David Sachs is another one of these uh right wing South Africans uh who grew up under apartheid. Uh he's been made the What is the AI and cryptos are what exactly is his title? And how much influence does he have?

Uh that is his title apparently. AI and Crypto Czar. I think he has a lot of influence. He has sort of replace Peter Thiel as the uh uh uh uh in some ways as the kind of presiding conservative power broker between tech a and D C. I mean, obviously Musk is on another level, but uh Uh Sacks is is kind of more i in in the nitty gritty and frankly Sacks helped bring Musk in. Uh and and Sachs bec ended up becoming uh Sachs was a big DeSantis guy, but it was clear once

the primaries started going towards Trump, that that's where he would land. And he hosted Trump a at a dinner uh i in San Francisco during the campaign when Uh all all of these VCs encourage Trump to choose J D Vance, who who of course is one of them. He's a he's a teal guy, a tech guy. So the role of Sax I think i is very big. And uh you know, he talks a big game on Twitter. He's been tweeting a lot or on X for the last few years about

uh Biden and and Ukraine policy and all sorts of things. He kind of sees himself as a statesman type, I think. And now he has a lot of influence. Well that the dinner that Sachs hosted in San Francisco, I think it uh yielded what, seventy five million for Trump? Not that that w that wasn't overshadowed by the three hundred million that must put into the campaign for both uh Trump and the Republicans.

But he certainly was very important, you know, in br in bundling that money and bringing and kinda rallying the tech conservatives who were you know, who wanted to come out this cycle as Trump voters, some of them. Uh and and you know Sachs is kind of the guy who was whipping the votes. Uh, who who was saying, Hey, let's do this fundraiser, let's start supporting these people. I mean, he also gave held fundraisers for Ramaswamy and RFK Junior. So he he was very much in the mix. Right.

But isn't uh J D Vance their plan B? Because Trump has, you know, overweight, the worst diet. doesn't sleep, spends hours and hours in the middle of the night raging about what late night TV comics say about him. He's not a healthy man and you've got J D Vance waiting and w J D Vance is i is infinitely worse than Trump because he thinks he's really smart. We know Trump is off the wall, doesn't know what he's doing half the time again.

You know, we can see what the reverses he just made on all kinds of things. including, you know, hanging out uh Ukraine to dry. Oh, y uh the Russians took advantage of m me cutting off intelligence and arms to Ukraine? Oh surprise, surprise. I mean frightening what a fool he is. But but J D Vance thinks he's really smart. And he's you know great pro Nazi guy.

Uh he's an ideological thinker, you know. Trump Trump is is obviously horrible and will and will do and say and believe some terrible things, but he's pretty pretty malleable, uh most mostly for the worst. But But you know, Vance a as you're getting at I think has, you know, specific ideas of kind of the world he wants to see and it is the right wing Telian uh new right Christian society. Uh and and so uh and and the the tech leadership i is very h would be ex very happy to see him.

uh finally take Trump's place. And and that's why they they've set him up there. Right, but he's a he's a Christian who uh g ghost about for far right neo Nazi parties in Germany and in Europe uh that support Putin and he supports Putin. It's very hard to understand that kind of Christianity. Yeah, certainly. I mean it we we we see it in our politics but it doesn't mean it it resembles the the the Christianity w w we recognize.

So what is then the pushback to this outrageous crypto reserve that Trump has created, which is 'Cause I think the the biggest problem, uh Jacob, is that the US's most powerful tool is the US dollar as a global reserve currency. And we know that the Chinese have been chafing under it. The Russians have, the BRICS countries have, and they'd like to have an alternative. And here is Trump and Sachs and J D Vance and Teal and Musk coming along with this ridiculous

uh crypto scam that's gonna weaken the dollar. So isn't aren't these guys doing a huge favor to people like Putin and she In weak weakening the power of the dollar as as a global reserve currency? I would say so. I mean I think one of the features of of Musk and Sachs and these oligarchs is that they claim to be very uh jinguistic, pro American, nationalist. But they are kind of globalist in in their actions and they're also uh you know, with this specific project

Yeah, undermi uh choosing something that undermines the dominance of the dollar. I mean this is being the printer of the world's reserve currency and the w the currency that the world does business in is an incredible economic advantage. as people from all over the the political spectrum economists will tell you.

Uh and one of the few smart things that Trump has perhaps ever said was w during his first administration, when he was initially against Bitcoin, he said, I don't like it, it seems like a scam, it competes with the dollar. Um, but the line now from the crypto industry is that through stable coins like like tether and the and other crypto tokens, they are gonna try to extend dollar dominance.

That's what they say. Um, I don't think it really plays out that way, but I think you're exactly right. Like this this is the kind of system or program or economic effort that undermines the US dollar, that makes capital markets less safe for investment, that is gonna harm the economy. And we know how this how this potentially ends. Uh but here we go.

So just in the last couple of minutes then, Jacob, what could be done to undermine this massive fraud where now that the taxpayer's on the hook for this scam? In other words, can somebody, maybe like the Democratic Party start warning the American citizens not to buy Bitcoin that it's a scam. Well, I think...

It it would be nice to see Democrats finally unite uh with a coherent crypto policy. You still have a lot saying, Oh, we have to play nice with this industry or maybe there's something there, something useful. I mean these people just spent two hundred billion dollars to beat you in the last election. They uh uh they or two hundred million, excuse me. They are not uh they are not your friends. But um

Uh and I think one thing they can say is that, you know, this is a scammy industry, of course, and look what's happened since Trump made these announcements. There were a couple brief surges in crypto prices, and then they plummeted. People have already lost money based off of these announcements. And so that kind of talk I think is helpful.

uh a commitment to not appropriate any money in Congress to to vote for a stockpile to get the government in the business of day trading crypto or buying Solana or Ethereum. That the government should not be buying any more crypto or using taxpayer dollars. And then perhaps a promise from uh twenty twenty eight candidates who with the proviso that we have an election in twenty twenty eight.

that they'll uh liquidate any uh government crypto stockpile and return the money to to the Amer to the American people. Um, because this is, you know, a dangerous business for the government to be in and it's not one that the government needs to be in. There's no emergency use case for crypto. There's no break glass in case of emergency, so we shouldn't be doing this. So uh yeah, uh just in closing, um one of the best senators, at least in my judgment, Sherrod Brown was knocked off

By the Republicans using crypto. So That's right. Forty million dollars worth of crypto money sent to Bernie Marino's campaign. And uh he's not the only one, uh, that uh got elected as a result of uh crypto. So it's pretty amazing that the democrat any democrat would support crypto. So thank you for joining us here today, Jacob. I appreciate it. Thank you. And again I've been speaking with Jacob Silverman, who's a contributing writer for The New Republic and a contributing editor.

for The Baffler covering tech and national security. He's the author of Terms of Service, Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection, Easy Money, Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, The Golden Age of Fraud, which was the New York Times bestseller co authored with Ben Mackenzie. And his most recent book is Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. And he has an article just out at Zateo titled Trump's Crypto Reserve Is Such Brazen Corruption.

We can take a brief station break and back looking into Trump's war on education as he moves to shut down the Department of Education while slashing the National Science Foundation by two thirds. crippling the NIH and taking four hundred million dollars away from Columbia University. Three keys. Welcome back. I'm Ian Masters and this is Background Briefing, available twenty-four-seven at backgroundbriefing.org. And joining us now is David Halpen, a senior fellow at Republic Report.

He was previously senior policy advisor for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, founding executive director of the American Constitution Society, White House speechwriter and special assistant for national security affairs to President Clinton, and counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee. His latest article at Republican Report is for profit college barons back Trump, but now may be scared. Welcome to Background Briefing, David Halper.

Thanks, Ian. Thanks for joining us, and I take it the reason the for profit c college barons are scared is that Trump is planning to abolish the Department of Education, which has been funneling them billions and billions, uh uh in order to perpetuate this despicable scam on students and young veterans, etcetera, aspiring to get an education and ending up with a lifetime of debt and a worthless diploma.

Yes, some of these for profit college barons gave um hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Donald Trump and now some of them are panicking because they're getting ninety percent of their revenue, some of these schools. From the federal government. And if the Department of Education goes out of business, they're not sure they're going to get their checks. I think in the end they probably will get their checks.

with less accountability than they've ever had for protecting students. But until and they find that out, they're going to be scared.

So the former Secretary of Labour Robert Reich recently wrote an interesting article I thought where he said Trump is following Putin, She's and Orban's playbook. First take over the military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones for the

Personally loyal to you. Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with. Intimidate legislations by warning them that if they don't bend to your wishes you'll run loyalists against them. Then focus on independent sources of information, the media and the universities, sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews, then go after the universities.

Well, that's what he's just done, right? Taking four hundred million away from Colombia? You can take out the word then. They're doing it all at once. So they told Columbia University all their contracts that are about things like safer vaccines. Safer food, uh, better health care, um, all of those four hundred million dollars in grants they're saying they're taking away because Colombia is uh not protecting Jewish students from anti Semitism. That's what they're saying.

Do you think he's doing it because Marion Adelson told him to? I don't know. I think that there are people that have been aligned with the Trump administration and the conservative movement, the ones who filed the civil rights lawsuits getting rid of affirmative action. A lot of those folks seem to believe that the only discrimination in America is against Jews. I anti Semitism is real and indeed it's real among some of Trump's supporters. But it's not the only kind of discrimination.

And by they're being animated to say w everything we do is about fighting anti Semitism, at the same time they're getting rid of all of the uh federal initiatives and threatening people who engage in protecting equal opportunity for others. Um, is is just craziness. They they're in a world where the only civil rights seem to belong at this point to uh people who claim they're victims of anti Semitism and everybody else, it's just too bad.

But the damage that Trump and Musk are doing is devastating in the long term, surely, for America, because You know, what about American ingenuity, innovation? If you don't have these educated minds and the ability to think for ourselves. You're destroying America's Most vital asset. Well, there it's a wrecking ball to everything and it's driven by a few things. One is On the one side, the folks who are telling Trump that everybody is engaged in anti Semitism. In the case of Elon Musk,

It's a combination of revenge against the agencies that were investigating his own companies and just this general idea that austerity um will work. But he's going into these agencies. They what they claim they're doing is just a lie. They say they're going after waste, fraud, and abuse. There's no evidence that that's what they're targeting.

Um, they're going after instead things they don't like, like programs to alleviate poverty in Africa. They just don't think that's worth anybody's time or alleviate disease in Africa. Um or anything relating to civil rights and equal opportunity. um for Americans to make sure that everybody has a chance.

Those are the things they're going after. If they were really concerned about waste, fraud, and abuse, they wouldn't have fired all the inspectors general of all these agencies and all the other ethics officials and replaced them with uh Trump loyalists or with nobody. This is not about accountability. It's not about ways, fraud and abuse. It's purely about either greed and self dealing by Musk and Trump and the donors to Trump and Musk.

or some ideological crusade. And anyone who believes this has anything to do with government efficiency and saving money for taxpayers is just not paying attention. But what Trump and Musk are doing is weakening America at every turn. All of the pillars of the post war arrangements are are gone. The rule of law, democracy. He's they're opposed to

uh the rule of law and democracy. They're opposed to free trade. And uh they're opposed to the alliance system and they're they're basically dismantling uh NATO. All of this all this does is m is a gift to Putin and to Xi. So why are they doing that? Well I think Trump thinks The way to the way for him to aggrandize himself and and his his view of what a great leader is is an authoritarian leader that takes what he wants.

And he thinks yeah, I think at some level he thinks it will be a safer world if the United States, Russia, and China divide up the world into spheres of influence and pe pesky people like Ukraine that wanted self-determination.

be damned. And there is an argument that it would be safer if those three powers just said, you know, we're gonna sacrifice anyone fighting for freedom and we'll take things and we'll take tr America will take Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada, and Putin will take Ukraine, Poland and and maybe Paris ultimately. But um although Trump thinks Paris is a beautiful place. Um and so I think he's got this sort of great powers view of the world, but he's also I think

got a kind of nihilistic and short-term version of this and and tr and Musk too. How much money can they make out of this Trump administration and can they give to their rich friends who help Trump get elected? And how much fun can they have? I mean, look at climate.

The whole world knows that we're on a collision course with climate. Real effects are already happening to Americans across the country. People's homes have been destroyed. They've been burned down. They've been lost in in in storms. And yet Trump has absolutely pulled us out of anything that has to do with making it less likely that we the planet will heat up. That's insane. So it's just one more example of how they're living for today. They're living for themselves and they don't give a damn.

about the people who voted for them or the people in other countries who are suffering. It's just it is the most brazen, most cynical uh approach to government. that I've ever seen. And I you know, people voted for cheaper eggs, not for authoritarianism, although they seem somewhat indifferent to authoritarianism, because frankly Trump told them that he was going to do all these things. It was all in Project 2025 and in Trump's own remarks

We knew he loved Putin. We knew this was happening. The American people did this. The bare majority that voted for Trump have put us in this position. Given that Trump is destroying expertise and he's slashing the National Science Foundation by two thirds and he's crippling the National Institute of Health and and right across the board. uh they're destroying uh education.

So h so people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, they became billionaires and m and these m massive uh broligarks that r running the country along with the other South African uh apartheid character of David Sachs. Yet their fortunes came from very bright educated people, engineers and scientists So it doesn't make any sense to weaken America's brain power.

Well, there's a theory that the I guess that they would recruit an elite group of smart people to come over to their side of things, only focus on the things that make them rich or are consistent with their values, and that you could you could have that kind of core of amoral people that would buy it. I mean, look at Jeff Bezos, all the money in the world.

He could have stood up to Trump and said, Let's, you know, let's let's um do let's be rational here. Instead, he's all in for Trump. They gave Melania Trump forty million dollars for a documentary uh that I'm sure everyone will just love. on Amazon about her life. So if you can bring people, capable people, engineers, scientists, over to the dark side, Hitler did it.

um then maybe you think that you can sustain some vision of of the kind of world that you want. It's evil, it's it's it's exclusive, it's harsh. But it maybe it's the one that they they think will is actually a better world. But it's it's a dystopia, it's a cruel place, and again with climate effects.

And and and indifference to suffering, it's ultimately and disease, where they've got Kennedy in there, you know, against vaccines, it's going to lead to the destruction of the world, but maybe not uh in Donald Trump's lifetime. Maybe he'll can he'll die a happy man. A king. Peter Teal has his bunker in New Zealand, right? He can retreat to. Or maybe Bezos will end up on the on Mars with the musk. Yeah, out in space, yeah. Right.

So nevertheless, it's it's all happening at warp speed. Obviously they're d moving as fast as they can and I think the political calculation surely David is that they're going to sacrifice the house in twenty sixteen because you they're forcing house members to basically go against their own constituents. in order to give massive tax breaks to billionaires uh and and plutocrats and uh that's happening before us and they can't even

the co Republican congressmen can't even have town hall meetings anymore. Uh so you can see that happening, but you're there in Washington. What do you think the calculus is? Do you think that they're gonna try and because this is a fascist takeover really, or a mega fascism takeover. And are they gonna tr try and basically rig the votes so that in twenty twenty six it won't matter or do you think

that the Democrats can well, they should be able to take the House, right? Because these Republican House members are so unpopular and the damage they're doing uh by rolling over Trump is j only just beginning.

So what's your calculus there of whether or not they'll the twenty six twenty twenty six will be the beginning of the end of this thing and that's why they're moving so fast, because they only they've only got two years in which to remake the world according to Trump and Musk and Teal and Vance. They're moving fast, they're flooding the zone, they're trying to get people to give up.

feel hopeless, feel scared. And it's important for Americans not to feel scared to stand together. We don't have to be cowards like Jeff Bezos. There's all kinds of ways we can fight back. I'm worried about the election. There's only a small number of contested congressional districts left. And they can flood the zone again with lies.

Putin, Trump and and all their allies can get together and try to use disinformation and potentially, yes, I don't think they cheated in the last election. I don't see the evidence, but potentially try to cheat in this election and manipulate the ballot. um actually genuinely manipulate the ballots so that they win. That certainly would be part of an authoritarian playbook to make the elections unfair. And we've seen every other aspect of

So I think we need to fight back. We need message. We need movement. We need a real s social movement protesting against this. We need international monitors to look at our election. Uh we need the whole world to be watching. And we have a chance to stop this. But the damage is going to be done that's going to be hard to undo. If four after four years of Trump, maybe the country will go back. to the other party, but they are going to be have done such incredible damage

to the federal government and the globe that it's going to t take a long time to dig out of it. But again, I'm an optimist. I'm gonna keep fighting. I think other people should, and I think the facts are on against Trump and Musk. And I think the world ultimately will be against them and I think that justice will start to bend back our way if we don't get scared, if we don't do what they want, which is to just give up. So just in the last couple of minutes then, David.

what do you think will happen with their efforts to k kill the Department of Education? Because apparently there are some Republican senators who basically are against destroying or dismissing or you know, having the Department of Education simply go away. I think you're right. They are the biggest uh the you know, education is the biggest employer in a lot of states, including red states.

And that there's going to be a movement to say you need to keep the money flowing um to the schools and also to students so they can go to school. The money may keep flowing. They could get rid of the Department of Education and move some of that stuff, the federal aid. over to the Treasury Department, but you still need some kind of way to protect quality in order to protect students, not just to give money to anyone who says that they're a school.

So I I don't know exactly how that struggle will play out, but I do think there's too much political power in higher education generally to make the whole system go away. But again, I think the the punitive stuff they're doing, going after schools on the, you know, grounds that they're anti Semitic. uh attacking uh free speech on campus if it's not in favor of MAGA.

or in favor of Israel, I do think that th those are going to be struggles that are going to have to play out and will uh make it harder for money to fairly go to our colleges and universities uh in the next four years. Well, David Halpin, I thank you very much for joining us here today. Thanks for having me.

And again I've been speaking with David Halpin, who's a senior fellow at Republic Report. He was previously senior policy advisor for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, founding executive director of the American Constitutional Society. White House speechwriter and special assistant for national security affairs. to President Clinton and counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee. And his latest article at Republic Report is for profit college barons back Trump, but now may be scared.

And this has been background briefing. I'm Ian Masters and I'd like to thank producer Graham Fitzgibbon and assistant producer Asher Price. If you missed any of today's program or would like to explore our vast archives, you can find us at backgroundbriefing.org where we include extensive interviews searchable by topic.

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