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Good morning, everybody. Are we up? I think we are.
I'm not exactly sure in terms of what the holding screen says here, so I'm just going to talk as if we are actually live. It is the first day of the Donald Trump administration, I guess, first full day here after Donald Trump's inauguration yesterday as the forty seventh president of the United States. Later in the day, Crystal, he took to both Capital wann Arena and the Oval Off to sign hundreds of executive orders. We are expecting more executive orders later today as well as a press
conference around four pm. They say that they're doing a big infrastructure project. So for those of you who've been in politics for a while, you may remember something called Infrastructure Week under Donald Trump back in two thousand and seventeen, and I guess the Infrastructure Week is back. It became a joke, but maybe it's not a joke anymore, you know,
maybe it's a maybe it's officially real. But what we're going to do here is that we're doing a live stream because things are moving very quickly and our ability to be able to prepare a show would be dated.
By the time that we were even able to put out.
So we're going to react to some of the news from yesterday and then just generally be live with all of you. Kind of a fun new format here to just go through everything with everyone about what's coming in and obviously react to the big stories, the big actions. We do not have a White House Press secretary scheduled for today, but Trump will apparently not only be doing a Trump will not only be doing a press conference on this infrastruction thing you said, it, will be taking
questions as well. So we'll hope to see if he took a lot of questions yesterday. So what do we have today?
A lot of stuff And by the way, there's something weird, a little weird going on with like our monitor.
Yeah, I'm not sure what's happening to look confused.
Yeah, that's why we may seem a little like where are we and what are we doing?
But in any case, there are a bunch.
Of executive orders to go through, a lot of drill, baby drill, a lot of immigration. So we'll break some of the highlights or low lights, depending on your perspective of those down for you. Shelby Talcott is going to
join us Fantastic reporters. She's going to be taking a look at the January sixth pardons, which was quite you know, across the board, not just non violent January six offenders, but you know, people who were beating cops as well, and then there were a few that were a sentence commutations. So she's going to break that down for us. She's also going to break down for us the news about the VIK is officially out. At Doge was the first cut.
Many people have made the stoke at this point, but he was the first one, yes.
Because he's been banished to the hinterlands, to the provinces from the Imperial capital.
Yeah, so, I mean it's interesting.
There's a Politico article that suggests Elon Religious was kind of like annoyed with him even before the like saved by the Bell Boy meets World.
Yes, screed, so that was the excuse to push him aside.
But in case, we'll get Shelby's thoughts and what she knows about all of that. Update on the what appears increasingly to be a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. Trump weighed in on this himself and said he has little confidence that that ceasefire will be able to hold.
So we'll take a look at that.
We're also taking a look at the whole TikTok situation, which is interesting. We touched on it a little bit yesterday, but wanted to dive into that more because it is I mean, it says so much about Trump and Republicans and Democrats and who had a wield power in this era, et cetera. So we'll take a look at that. We're also going to take a look at these Trump and Millennia shitcoin. Some pastor who was involved in the inauguration decided to also get in on the action and drop his own meme coin.
So wild thing's happening there and.
A little Elon awkward gesture controversy that has the Internet and the media and all the people are talking about this.
So and I will take a look.
Yeah, I guess we can debate it because I'm pretty sure I know what you're gonna say.
But okay, all right, I'm pretty sure I know what let's go say. Yeah, that's right.
I don't think there's anything that original to say about it, but yeah, so be it. I guess that's what the people want about Elon and Nazism, et cetera. So everyone get ready for a Roman salute history lesson. If that's what people want. If we're going to do it, let's do it. Let's start off with Donald Jump.
Donald Trump, I apologie everybody. I just want everybody to know this. I got like four hours of sleep last night.
I was out very very late, and as people know here, I'm a baby about my bedtime. Okay, I need my eight hours. And so I've got two cups of coffee and die coke here. Bear with me with the slips and everything.
Just for live streaming, we can.
Call Donald dump all you want.
Yeah, yes, that's right. I'm going to start signding like Kyle, you know.
But anyways, let's go with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Producers, can we please queue up the clip? Just come in my ear and tell me whenever it's ready. Trump was in the Oval Office for a long time yesterday, actually much later than he was originally scheduled to signing multiple executive orders, some of them are posturing, some of them will take effect immediately. For one of the more high profile ones as opposed to January sixth, was this.
Order on birthright citizenship.
So let's take a listen if we can to what happened in the Oval Office whenever he was signing that.
This next order relates to the definition of birthright citizenship under the fourteenth Amendment of the United States.
And that's a good one. Birthright, that's a big one.
What about that one? That one life could.
Be So you think we have good grounds, but you could be right. I mean, you'll.
Find out.
Ridiculous with the only country in the world that does this with birthright, as you know, and it's just absolutely ridiculous. But you know, we'll see. We think we have very good grasp.
All right, So what we have there from Trump was one of these birthright citizenship orders.
It was part of a slate of executive actions.
Guys, can we go ahead and put the Trump executive orders in New York Times tear sheet please up on the screen so I can just read through a bunch of these. So, for example, one of the more important ones on the federal workforce was freezing a federal hiring. This is a resumption of a policy that was held under the first Trump administration. One of them was to
grant top security clearances to the White House staff. There was also some like I said, some symbolic stuff, stripping John Bolton and a few others of their own security clearances.
Yeah, all the people who signed on to that, like Hunter Biden infamous right. Oh, it has the whole marks of Russian disinformation, stripped of their security clearance.
I didn't even know that those people got to keep their security clearance, which is ridiculous. Probably should terminate on your end of government service whatever. On immigration, we are going to quote bar asylum for people or newly arriving at the border, move to end birthright citizenship. That's the one that we just shows you that is going to face constitutional challenge within the hour and will quickly make its way to the United States Supreme Court.
It is actually an interesting question.
Because the way that the executive order is phrased is specifically trying to target people who are in the country illegally. So it gets to this question of temporary visa status and the citizenship of the people who are born in the United States from those parents.
I don't know.
I've talked to a bunch of different lawyers. The odds generally seem to be against Trump. It would probably have to change a constitutions like the census, you know, the census. The way we do the census is ridiculous, but it literally says in the Constitution that you have to do the census that way.
Nobody seems like they want to change it. So there's that one.
There is the declaring migrantcrossing along the US Mexico border to be a quote national emergency. The National emergency declaration unlocks federal funding kind of in the way that you'll do it for a hurricane or something like That could also face some constitutional challenge, but because it went through last time around, there worked its way through the courts. There's some legal precedents considering oh and then designating the
cartels as foreign terrorist organization, same thing. It opens up a lot of sanctions power. And also, as he pointed out yesterday, Crystal opens up the AUMF order if they.
Want to pursue that.
On DEI, it was terminating DEI programs across the federal government recognizing two sex as male and female. I love the way to put this, remove protections for transgender people in federal prison tariffs. This is actually arguably the most important one here for everybody. So this is basically a confirmation of what Jeff Stein had previously reported. There is no quote day one tariff going into effect. The way they are doing this is moving it.
Through the federal process for a study.
So what he's effectively said is we're going to carry out a full view of the US.
Industrial and manufacturing base.
The reason that you have to do that is that legally, to be able to impose tariffs, you need a justification. So there's some one hundred and eighty day period where the government goes out, assesses, does a review, and based on that review, you're allowed to then declare a tariff based on a national security basis. The reason why you need to do the study is to survive legal scrutiny. So this is the beginning of the legal process to get us to tariffs, but it will not come through
one hundred percent. Similarly, like this begin an investigation into trade practices and trade deficis. This is all legalistic language, but is very important for actually getting this stuff done. And then finally there were a bunch of executive orders withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Accords, declaring a national emergency which could expedite the permitting like to get around permitting reform problems for drilling, and yeah.
I think.
Oh, and then the last one is TikTok, but we will get to that, so there you go.
Yeah, and he also, like I said, blanket pardons, excuse me for the J six people. So we'll talk to Shelby about that as well. A couple other things. He rescinded a bunch of Biden executive orders. A couple of those that are interesting. One of them was aimed at reducing prescription drug prices for people are on Medicare and Medicaid.
That was reversed by Trump.
Another one that is significant that We can also talk about a little bit in the context of the latest with regards to the ceasefire is you'll remember Biden put into place in executive order allowing them to sanction extreme violent Israeli settlers. That has been applied to some roughly thirty three people.
He rolled that back as well.
And this is consequential right now, in particular because settlers are rampaging and rioting like crazy in the West Bank. Of course, oftentimes with the backing of the Israeli government, that has been rolled back. Two additional things just to note here and can get your take onto Sager. So Jeff Stein is reporting about the latest indications with regards to Trump and the terraff regime.
So he says, takeaways from Trump's press.
Or related to the things I cover, and maybe you care about twenty five percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada could start in ten days. Obviously Trump has been you know, I guess, aggressively talking to both the Canadians and the Mexican government about what that could look like. You know, if that's it across the board tariff, that is insanely consequential.
It's very consequential for the auto industry. Those auto parts as part of the manufacturing process cross back and forth over the borders multiple times in the course of putting together a vehicle, so that that would be incredibly consequential in terms of building materials, in terms of oil, especially Midwest. So if there aren't exemptions. But these are all big question marks. If you know, we don't have a lot of clarity on all of this, So put that one
to the side. China could be hit with major tariffs if they don't sell TikTok suggests one hundred percent as a possibility. Could talk more about that in the TikTok section. Universal tariff on all countries still on the table. Trump thinks russia economy is falling apart, but wouldn't comment on if he would keep US sanctions and Elon Musk's doge will get a White House office with twenty people. More
to say about that in a moment as well. To go back to the birthright citizenship piece, the reason why you're saying it'll be, you know, clearly challenged, and if the lawsuit hasn't already been filed, it will be imminently filed. The Fourteenth Amendment says, Section one states all persons born or naturalized in the US and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the US and of the state
wherein they reside. Now, scholars in particular are on the right who want to say, no, no, that doesn't mean that everybody is born in the US is you know, a citizen. They point to that to the subject to the jurisdiction thereof, and make the case that potentially some of these individuals aren't really subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, so they don't count as citizens.
I think it's.
Previously been a relatively fringe legal argument that has been made. However, you now have you know, Supreme Court that is very conservative and so question mark what would happen there?
And then I think the other question is like, you know, how far.
Does Trump want to push things, because let's just say theoretically that this goes through the court system, goes to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court's like, no, it's in the constitution. You can't just end birthright citizenship with an executive order. That's not how this works. There's also a possibility that Trump says, as Andrew Jackson said in the past, like okay, well, how are you going to enforce that? You and what
army are going to enforce that. So since you have this time around, and this is part of what's different. Number One, he has immunity for anything that he does in office, so he doesn't have to worry about any sort of you know, criminal consequences or whatever.
That's off the table.
Number two, And as part of these executive orders, Schedule F was instituted. You know, there's been a highly concerted and organized effort in the four years when he was out of power to make sure that he has loyalists in place who will execute on orders even things that may not be legal, may not be constitutional. So I think you can fully expect the executive branch would go
along with whatever his interpretation is. So, you know, it really does open up, like I said, a question about how far is he willing to go on this if the court to do what I think most people would expect them to do, although there are no guarantees of striking down this particular executive order.
Yeah, that's right, that's a big question actually for a lot of the way the Supreme Court and by the way, apparently just as soda my owner, somebody I knew who was in the rotunda was not looking too healthy. So just people should prepare themselves now that Donald Trump is the president.
Can you believe can you believe she didn't?
Yeah?
I do.
I know I can believe it too. But it's like, after the whole.
RBG, this is a diabetic seventy year old woman who's like borderline OBEs, like do I need to show you what a chart looks like?
And beyond that, why would you want to string.
It out your last years voting in the minority, you know, yeah, and then allegedly being in the servi of some grander ideal.
It's just the most insan Again, I.
Think the same thing about our president now. The oldest to be sworn into office tables.
Okay, hey, listen, JD's.
Age and wait, et cetera.
And he's sitting right there in the wings.
Okay, So it's not not the similar situation where literally, like I mean imagine like that would mean. It'd be like if there's no vice president and you were that old and you could have risked it to bring in a Democrat, that would be an insane.
It would like if the person who was going to take over for Trump if he's like, yes.
Was the speaker, and they're like, oh, I'm just going to chance it, and you know, maybe a Democrat will become the President of the United States. So that's what she's decided to do overall with the executive orders. What I would say broadly is that this is a result really of preparation over the last four years, and made this point in our stream yesterday, but I want to
reiterate it here for people. I think it's really interesting to consider that Trump is actually at the absolute apex of his powers because he was not in the Oval office for the last four years. Both culturally with Joe Biden nuking the Democratic Party, I think they have the lowest approval rating for the Democratic Party in modern history. According to Gallipoling, he wins the popular vote. But more importantly is the last four years were a battle test
of the GOP. Back in twenty twenty, the John McCain's, the Jeff Flakes, the Liz Cheney's and all of those other people. There was not a ton but there was a little bit of consternation ideologically and theoretically about the party.
But Trump being able to get away with all of the things that he has done, still get the nomination and still get elected to the White House on top of a four year what I would almost describe as like a cooling off period for the conservative movement where everyone had a fight about DeSantis versus Trump and all that,
and Trump won. So for the last two years, the conservative legal establishment of the Federalist Society, all of these people have gotten together, Okay, like we're doing this if we win, and this is the way that we're going to do. That's so different, I mean monumentally different than twenty seventeen, where everything was up for grabs. Half the people who
worked for Trump they didn't even like Trump. They actually voted against him or they denounced him, you know, a month before they were working as White House chief of staff or whatever like Wright's previous. This time is just
like totally not the case. And with those loyalists. But on top of like the professionalism I would say, of a lot of the senior executive service and others who will be replacing the current bureaucrats, the lawyer people like Will Sharf, the guy who was in that video, who the staff secretary. These are you know, Harvard Princeton educated lawyers, These are people who like a blue blue pedigree background. Stephen Miller and them have been working behind the scenes
now for years to be able to prepare this. So I do think it will look very different this time around. In the intro now, there will always be chaos, there will always be Mika Brazinski facelift, tweets, truths, you know, and all of that, etc. But at an actionable level. I expected and see this in such a different from last time. I mean, don't you remember that travel ban order he put in place in his first week. It was reversed ten days later, you know, and it was
just chaotic, it made no sense. This time around, everything like the tariffs, everything is moving through the technical legal process to avoid court challenge, to avoid many of the things that struck them down and had problems with. So that's really what I what I see in the professionalism
of a lot of the people around Donald Trump. That has nothing to do with Trump himself, but it has to do with his movement, what people believe in, and actually trying to action make actionable many of the things he talked about.
On the campaign.
Yeah, I mean the way that I would say that is basically they have their ducks in a row and there are no breaks left on the car. And he doesn't have to he doesn't have to answer to anyone. You know, it doesn't get really for reelection again, So there's no you know, democratic break, any sort of GOP opposition has been vanquished. You know, I mean a lot of democratic opposition has been vanquished. See the fact that
Marco Rubio got approved is like total neocon warmonger. But whatever got approved ninety nine to nothing in his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday, And it shows you what a great fight the Democrats are putting up this time around. And I think part of that is, you know, not only yes, he won the popular vote, you know by a point and a half. Yes, there's this you know, huge sort of vibe shift with all the like tech oligarchs backing him, and this.
Like cultural right wing cultural.
Consensus that has formed, especially in particular sort of at elite levels, where this has been embraced as their path to make sure that they hold their grip on power, et cetera. So you have all of those pieces that have come together.
And then also you know, Trump from a.
Business perspective, he in his first administration, he his big accomplishment was passing a giant tax cut. Some of the more like populist direction that he had embraced in twenty sixteen. Now he's you know, hanging out with the masters of the universe, tech oligarch types. He had like four of the five richest people in the world at his inaugurations sitting behind him yesterday. And so the business community doesn't feel threatened or afraid anymore the way that they did
the last time. They feel like there's more to be gained from collaborating with him than there is to be gained from opposing him. So so yeah, I mean, and like I said, one of the quiet Okay, so these are this whole raft of executive orders. The birthright citizenship one is not the only one that is ultimately going to be challenged in federal court. And then the question is, okay, well,
how far is he going to go? Because what we're basically relying on at this point is for Donald Trump to check himself to say, you know, the court said I can't do that, so I'm not going to do that because there is no other check in place like That's that has been part of the effort of the past four years and really consolidated by the Supreme Court with the immunity decision. That has been the project for the last four years is to make sure there are
no possible checks in place. And yes, they've been very successful at that. So you know, if I have to look at these executive orders, I took, I read through the whole, the entire you know, thread, listing all of them. There are quite a number of them, a lot of them in a lot of different directions. You know, there were some like woe dei anti dei stuff, the transgender there's only two genders one, but I think the bulk of them, the impetus is on a really militarized, aggressive
immigration approach. And then the uh, you know, really opening up getting rid of any semblance of concern about climate obviously which aren't from the Paris Climate Accords. I mean, nobody's been following those anyway, so I don't know how consequential that is. But rolling back things like the ev tax credits, making sure we're sending any restrictions on where
you can drill, et cetera. So, you know, from my perspective, at a time when we're seeing more and more client extreme climate emergencies, including the ones we just saw in la I think that's a disastrous direction to go in, but those are the two, you know, major pushes here in the early days of the Trump Yeah.
I mean, and that actually gets back to inflation, because one of the things that was most effective for Donald Trump was gas prices whenever he was president.
Is one of the things he's talked about the most.
That's the reason why they're doing it, and that's largely it's to actually try and drop the price of gas, and more importantly, to actually increase oil export for a lot of these people, which is a huge priority of the oil and gas companies.
And the tariffs would potentially cut in the opposite direction.
Yeah, that's right. They're actually good yea.
Although depending on how you know, what the tariffs end up being, that's what would determine.
It would be interesting because it could actually increase net export of natural gas and oil if we do terf because the we wouldn't be bringing as much or so, Yeah, it would decrease our net exports, which is kind of the opposite of where the oil companies and all of them want to go to. So we're being told we do have Shelby Talcott, who was waiting to join us. So, Shelby is the White House correspondent for the Semaphore.
She's a great friend of the show.
She's going to talk to us about these January sixth executive orders. So guys, let's go ahead and bring her in and we'll discuss.
So there she is, Shelby. How are you good?
How are you?
We're great? Thank you so much for joining us.
So, guys, can we go ahead and put a tear sheet here on the January sixth, pardon Shelby.
Donald Trump.
One of the big executive orders that he signed yesterday was commuting the sentences of the crowd Boy and Oathkeeper leaders, along with some over one thousand other January sixth Capital rioters. Just talk to us about some of the background that went into us. There was a big question mark as to who exactly would get commutations and pardons.
Jd.
Vance, the Vice President, was on television about nine days ago and had indicated that it would be less sweeping.
I guess than.
Currently, how do they come that decision and what's the end result?
Yeah, I think everybody thought that it was going to be less sweeping because we heard from so many Trump allies and even Donald Trump himself over the past two years who sort of said that it would be on a case by case basis. And there were a lot of people who told me that they would be doing it on a case by case basis.
And like JD.
Van said, if you, for example, beat up a police officer, then you deserve to go to prison. But that's not what will ultimately happen. And I think what's really interesting here is the backstory. I've done a lot of reporting over the last two years on this situation. And remember right after January sixth, Donald Trump never really wanted to bring that up. He condemned the situation, even if it was a little bit forced, and then he really didn't want to bring it up. He never mentioned it on
the campaign trail. But there was an outside effort from allies of these defendants to get him on board, and so they started sort of petitioning people in his orbit.
And then Donald Trump tapped an individual to oversee the January sixth defendants and their supporters and they started started coming to mar A Lago, and they started meeting with Donald Trump and sort of petitioning him, and over the course of two years, we've seen how his opinion of these defendants has changed drastically, and it ultimately ended up that he just gave a sweeping pardon, which I think people in his orbit didn't even anticipate.
Interesting talk about some of the specifics of the people who were pardon I think there were some like fourteen or sixteen something like that who had their sentences commuted, and Trump said, we can look into them further, maybe
they also deserve a full pardon. But by and large, everybody, whether they you know, just sort of wandered in and didn't know what they were doing allegedly, or whether they were involved in violently assaulting police officers, by and large, they were all set free pardon, full and complete, pardon, et cetera. So give us some of the specifics of some of the people that were talking about here and what they were convicted for doing.
On January side, So, one of the people who did get a pardon is Enriquetario.
He used to head up the Proud Boys.
He was serving twenty two years in prison for seditious conspiracy. And then there were also five other I believe Proud Boys who had their sentences commuted and there were fourteen in total sentences that were commuted, and Donald Trump said that they're going to be taking a look and seeing if they could potentially go even even farther with that. But then there were other people who were sentenced for various crimes for you know, breaking and entering, for violence
against the police officer. We had a wide array of crimes in this January sixth with these January sixth defendants, and everybody has essentially been pardoned or commuted.
One of the things I'm always curious about, Shelby, is how these things happen. And with Trump, we know that there are always, you know, various side characters and pressures and other things happening. What since you wrote the story about this, what's your assessment Like the activists and others who've been involved. I know of some people like Julie Kelly and Lara Logan for example, who really made this into a cause over the last couple of years. Was
it their media pressure? Was it lawmakers? Just talk to us about that.
I don't think it was media pressure, because the vast majority of the media was covering this really from one side of things.
I think it was this.
You have to remember Also Cash Ptel, who is very close to Donald Trump and going to be presumably in his administration, was also involved in this. He had a sort of I think it was a nonprofit where he raised money for some of the Junior sixth defendants.
When I spoke to him about this last year.
He said that it was on a case by case basis and that none of the money was going to violent offenders. I didn't get any details about what that those investigations looked like to determine who got the money or not, but he's been involved, and so these were
people really close to Donald Trump. And so what happened was these outside figures like Julie Kelly, like the lawyers for at the January sixth defendants, started petitioning these folks and then these folks who were in Donald Trump's orbit helped bring them into mar A Lago and helped have events. Donald Trump had events for January sixth defendants at mar A Lago over the past two years, and it sort of all was a slow leak.
Towards the big Boss, Donald Trump.
And eventually, as he sat down and talked with these folks, he was convinced, as Donald Trump often does, right he talks to people all the time. He always wants people's advice, and I think over the past two years, the other thing to note is a lot of people.
In Donald Trump's orbit.
As these defendants continued to get charged, and as Donald Trump himself was facing legal issues, all of that affected his decision and how ultimately became a January sixth supporter of these defendants. He saw what the Junior sixth defendants were going through and said, I'm going through the same thing.
That makes sense.
I think it's worth remembering. You know, on the day of January sixth, and in the immediate aftermath, there was almost universal horror, you know, both at sort of conservative media outlets, places like Fox News were horrified. Many Republicans in the immediate aftermath, Republican elected officials were horrified. The public continues to be horrified.
You know.
Taking this action is tremendously unpopular. So talk to us about the you know, the kind of what it says about the Republican Party and how it's moved over this past number of years. That now, I mean, I don't know, maybe maybe I'll be wrong, but I don't expect anybody really to pipe up and be like this is wrong, they assaulted police officers on the Republican side, like he
shouldn't have done this. They're just gonna go along with it at this point, which is tremendously different from the immediate reaction in the aftermath of that day.
I think it shows that Donald Trump is fully in charge of the Republican Party. And I've, to be clear, heard from a lot of folks who are close to Donald Trump who were a little bit unsettled by this decision.
But will they come out and say it publicly.
Probably not, because their feeling is Donald Trump is in charge and this is what he has decided. But I know a lot of people in the Republican Party are a little bit uncomfortable by this. I think that they would have been far more comfortable if it had been done by a case by case basis, and if those individuals who did.
Do more violent crimes were not.
Released and shelby.
What do you think it says about this Trump administration coming into that. You know, as you pointed out just weeks ago, his own vice president was like, well, of course the violent ones should be in prison and deserve to serve time. And now here we are weeks later, and it's like no blanket. Basically across the board, they're all no problem, good to go. So it is just conspiracy. Beating a cop doesn't matter. You're set free. What does it say about how he's approaching this four year term.
He makes all the decisions. And I also think, you know.
When Donald Trump comes to a decision on something, he takes the advice of a lot of people, but ultimately, everybody in his orbit has always told me, you can give Donald Trump all the advice you want, but at the end of the day, he makes the decision based on what he wants to do, and he'll take your advice oftentimes and he'll keep it in mind, but he is the ultimate decision maker. And I think this is
also another example of pick your battles right. Susie Wilds, for example, his chief of staff has been in his orbit and survived in his orbit for a really long time when a lot of other people have not, and that is partially because she's learned when to pick her battle.
So my thinking of this situation is his mind was so made up, probably in part because he himself had gone through all of these legal issues that he felt were unjust that it was not worth that fight, and so that's how a lot of people in Donald Trump's orbit are looking at it as Yeah, I don't love this, but it's just not worth the fight.
Also, we wanted to talk to you about Doge in vivike Ramaswami. Guys, can we go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The news is out and its official one hundred percent. Vivike Ramaswami will be exiting Doge before it even really gets a chance to begin, they write, everyone wants him out. How Musk helped boot Ramaswami from Doge. Can you give us some of the
backstory here? I know that I've heard this probably same to you as tension in mar A Lago, etc. Not sure I realized the extent to which Elon Musk had turned on Vivike actually even earlier and prior to his tweet about American culture. So what do you first give us some of the backstory and then give us some of what you think about what it portends for the future Trump administration.
There's a lot of stories going around, right you hear from vi vike Ramaswami allies who say, no, no, this is all just because he wants to.
Run for governor.
Probably a little bit of it, but certainly there were tentions that I think none of us really realized, and I think it came down to from what I've been told by some people.
Another version of the story is that there wasn't.
Enough work being done by the VAKE and that that h one b visa debate where he came out and supported it and kind of trashed American culture was another big reason, sort of the nail in the coffin to get rid of him.
But there are a lot of stories going around.
Some people have said that he was annoying Donald Trump in addition to Elon Musk, But ultimately the run for governor, the impending run for governor sort of gave them an easy out to I think push him out sooner, because I know as recently as last week I was talking to people close to the VAC who were telling me, yes, his plan has always been all along, du doge for nine months and then run for governor, And certainly it has not been nine months.
So are we like he just was annoying, like they just didn't like working with them.
Is that basically what it came down to.
And then they're like, oh, the same by the bell thing, this is our ticket to push this guy on entirely.
Yeah, I haven't.
I honestly have not heard anything, you know, any specific instance or a specific blow up fight. It was just, for my understanding, a bunch of different small things combined with some people.
Some people's personalities just don't just don't work.
Exactly the new with the new Donald Trump also signed an executive order, uh, sort of solidifying dogs within the US government might have been difficult for Vivig Gramos want me to do that while also running for Ohio governor.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. So the Executive Order people are flagging.
All it really did was change with the.
Digital IT Service Deportment that like, yeah, there were some already existing digital modernization thing that was created actually by Obama, and they're like, we're just renaming this DOGE and so it The way the Executive Order is written at least doesn't have this broad reaching like slash regulations and cut
personnel and do all of these things. It's the Executive Order is pretty narrowly focused on it, which you know Suber saying like, oh, well, that would be a great way for you to give yourself and your friends a lot of tech contracts. But what is your reading of the specifics of that executive order and whether that has any bearing on what the ultimate mandate of DOGE is going to be.
So from my understanding, the DOGE will get a White House office with about twenty people, and then each agency. This executive order directs each agency to implement sort of their own DOGE team, and so that is sort of how they're going to go about it.
But you're right, a lot of it is directed.
On boosting the technology capabilities which we already have. So you know, I don't think we know the answer of how effective it's going to be. And the other question that I have that I don't have the answer to is with these teams, with these interagency teams, is there also going to be an out of agency over arching team that sort of oversees all of it and directs each agency into here's what we want you to do for the agency, Here's how much money we want you
to cut. Or is it going to be up to each individual team to try to, you know, get a combined one trillion dollars?
Yeah, very very important.
Are you seeing any there's been a lot of speculation like, oh, Trump is certainly at some point going to fall out with Elon Musk and be upset that he's dealing the spotlight, blah blah. I don't really see any signs of it.
But what do I know.
I'm like totally on the outside. Have there been any indications of that? As best as you can tell, Shelby.
I haven't seen it.
And again, you know, when I ask people about this, they there have been people in Trump's orbit who are close to Trump who don't love Elon Musk. Right Steve Bannon, for example, has not made it a secret that he
has issues with Elon Musk. But Elon Musk has a lot of money, and Donald Trump likes people who have a lot of money, and so Elon Musk also really helped Donald Trump win the election, and so for now, especially with Donald Trump in office, I think actually that helps because it was one thing to be at mar a Lago, where Elon Musk, even though mar Lago is a private club, could get in pretty easily and be very close to Donald Trump day in and day out. Once he's in the oval office, it's going to be
more difficult. And I think that helps Elon Musk because he won't be around every single day.
Interesting, Yeah, that is a really good point.
Well oh sorry, oh well, before I let you go, Shelby, I had to pick your brain on tennis if you had any time to watch the Australian Open. This way for people who don't know, Shelby was a pro tennis player.
Which is crazy. I didn't even unbelievably impressive.
For eight years.
I don't even know that I am in a lot of that. But have you had any time to watch? There have been some incredible matches. I saw Djokovic took out an Alkaraz early this morning or last night or something like that.
Yeah, I'm a big Djokovic fan, are you?
Lely?
I have not gotten to watch a ton of tennis because I've been so busy, but my mom watches it NonStop, so I always hear about it from her and she always text me as if I have it on you know, the screen twenty four hours and him watching it. But I know a lot of the girls who who were compete in it, so I also see it like on my Instagram.
But I that's your favorite? Who do you cheer for? Female tennis player? Who's your favorite?
You know, I haven't watched it.
I haven't really been in tune for years going on. Are like the oldies from like, you know, eight or ten years ago. So like the rain break, I took a break. I was like a little I was a little washed up. I needed I needed a break from it. So date that.
I relate to that, I relate to that having I didn't. I never achieved the athletic prowess that you did. But being a former swimmer and people are like, oh, do you still swim? Nope, not unless I'm just like, you know, hanging out lounge and whatever. So Shelby, in any case, you're a pro and a star reporter that we always appreciate. So thank you so much for helping some shed some light on these early actions in the Trump administration.
Thank you, Shelby. We appreciate it anytime.
So we wanted to talk a little bit about the latest with regard to this what I think we can now pretty clearly call a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, which went into effect shortly before Trump took office. Mac, let's go and pull up just so people can see, you know, as now Palestinians and Gaza are starting to return home. We're getting more and more images of some of the devastation here Mac if you can pull up the Gaza devastation, then also this image of Chibalia that we have here
in the rundown. You know, I mean, the level of destruction is just nearly complete, especially in northern Gaza. It's absolutely insane. What it looks like you can see is just I don't even know what that is. That looks like an ambulance at one point. You can see images
of vehicles, trucks that are crushed rubble everywhere. People have been reporting that as they've been returning to their destroyed homes, horrific reports of relatives remains that they're finding in some instances with sniper wounds having been shot in the head. There have been some reaches by the way too already of the ceasefire by the Israelis in the Gaza strips.
So it has been largely calm, but not one hundred percent calm. And then Trump.
Actually was asked yesterday if we can prepare the Trump ceasefire side. Trump was actually asked yesterday, in the context of signing all of these executive orders, how confident he was that they would be able to maintain the calm in Gaza. Let's go ahead. When you guys are ready for that and take a listen to that.
Then are the new sur president that you can keep the ceasefire in Gaza and include the tree phases of heal.
I'm not convenent. That's not our words. There were, but I'm not convenent, but I think they're very weakened. On the other side, guys, I looked at a picture of Gaza. Gaz is is like a massive demolition site that places. It's really got to be rebuilt in a different way.
The Mental health reviewsing Kaza my mind.
You know, Gas is interesting. It's a phenomenal location on the sea, best weather, you know, everything's good. It's like some beautiful things could be done with it. But it's very interesting. But some fantastic things could be done with Gas.
How do you see the future governance for.
Dozen, Well, it depends. I can't imagine you could have. We certainly can't have. The people that were there, most of them are did so.
He says there he's not confident at all that this will continue. And you know, Sagarth, this of course comports with some of what Bibe Nina who has been saying as well, and Bezilil Smochridge. So I think Shelle when we had him on later out pretty pretty clearly that basically, you know, as part of Bebe's coalition, he had Ben Gavier, who is now actually exited the coalition because he's upset about this deal, and he has Smotrich Church extracted a promise.
I mean, I don't know that BB was like really opposed to this, but that they would go back to the war once Phase one was complete. And this has now been reported by many Israeli sources. BB himself came out and said effectively the same thing. He said that he got promises both from Biden and from Trump that they would be able to return to the war after
Phase one was complete. And so when you see Trump here, two of his executive actions too, by the way, and I'll get to that in just a moment, had to do with Israel. But when you see him here, honestly just like yeah, whatever, I'm not confident it's going to continue, not seeming to really care whether it continues or not. I think it's a very negative indication of where this is potentially heading.
Yeah.
I mean, look, I mean I think I was modestly I was modestly optimistic that something would happen because I thought that the Israeli government might fall, not because of what pressure would happen on the Trump side. And I don't know, maybe I still am an idiot it, but I mean, Israeli is do you really want to keep this shit going?
Like you're losing a lot of money?
Five hundred year soldiers were killed as a result of the same Seaspire deal being on the table. I mean, I know, baby, the government may not care about the hostages, but I know all of you care about the hostages.
There's still a lot of hostages who are being left.
Like, you know, is this really the course of action that you want to take. We've had a resurgence and or recruitment of a number of Hamas people. If you want to continue the war, this will take I mean, how long has it been since October seven? It's been almost eighteen months, right, so if you think about it in Iraq context, we're roughly in the five mark and like, guess what happened to somebody else's country when they fought a similar type war in five It was a nightmare.
It was a nightmare for years going forward. That's effectively what you were committing yourself to. So I'm maybe I'm dumb. I just think that I still have like commdest confidence like there's some democratic input or something going on in that country.
I have no idea.
Look because America, I think what they would say obviously widely disagree with this, but they would say is it's sort of analogous to when we withdrew from Afghanistan. Then you have to reckon with this what did we do all these years?
Right?
The Taliban is just right back in power, Like what were we doing all what did we spend all this money for? What do we lose all these lives for? What did we destroy this entire country? Were like, what were we doing? And it's a similar thing here like already, you know, Hamas is out in the streets and they're happy that the you know, ceasefire is in place and there is no other because you know, these reallys weren't interested actually in some sort of like peaceful solution that
would lead to a better of governance. B Because always enjoyed the fact that Hamas was in power in Gaza, so he could point to them and say, I don't have a partner for peace, Like those dynamics haven't changed, and so they don't want to have a reckoning with the fact that, yes, they killed a lot of civilians. Yes, Gaza is rubble, Yes they have inflicted mass pain, suffering, starvation, illness, death, et cetera.
But you did not destroy him us. And so I think.
There's a desire to not reckon with that reality that pushes not all, but a large part of Israeli society towards no, we just need to keep killing more.
We just need to keep this war going.
And you know, certainly within the like Bebi's coalition's that's the majority, I would say, sentiment is in that direction. So you know, again there was some hope that like, maybe this would be important to Trump because he would think it would be embarrassing if they just went back to the fighting. But certainly the indications from that sod are he's.
Just like, it's their war.
Whatever.
I don't think it'll really hold, but we'll see.
I think you're right.
I mean, look, let's also be honest, like Trump is the most pro Israel president to literally ever take office, not in terms of his background, but in terms of the concrete promises he made and the.
People he's put in place. And yeah, Miriam Madison was sitting right there in.
The inauguration, as you said, I've tried to prepare people for reality. The reality is Israel is going to annex West Bank.
Okay, get over it.
And if you were with Trump, like, that's just part of the things you're gonna have to think.
If you care a lot about.
It, you shouldn't have voted for mem I don't know what to tell you if you didn't want if you want them to cut weapons off to Israel, it will never happen. In the current political context, the issue has become totally polarized left and right. There is zero what reward mechanism in the Republican Party for Why would you do it?
You know?
I mean I can't. You don't even want to know. Maybe one day I'll.
Tell everybody the stories here about what even my modest commentary I would think maybe you would disagree on. The Israel issue has cost me in terms of my personal life, in terms of ties, cut et cetera, and bullshit smears, you know, being pushed behind the scenes.
Yeah, I should do it. One day.
But my point is just like that's and I'm an idiot. I'm nobody, just a commentator over here. Now imagine being in power somebody who's a congressman or a senator. Their roar mechanism doesn't exist here. Again, the truth Israel will never be cut off. That what really happens is up to them. They will annex the West Bank. Our ambassador at Israel, Mike Huckabee, said he doesn't believe in a two state solution, which basically means that's US government policy.
The best thing that you should all hope for, if you're pro Palestine or anti war, whatever is you should hope that the chaos over there is so out of control and so affects domestic politics and or energy prices here at home, that they'll do something about it, Which is the main impetus right for a lot of this is he loves the peacemaker, the image. He doesn't care about the issue. By the way, who cares how we
get it done? If and you know, I gave advice to people, send the people in Godza Maga hats like if you really want this to happen, like you need to make it politically convenient interesting for Trump to posture, like for example, he remember that article that we put up on our show Arab officials from the Times of Israel. Trump pressured net and Yahoo more in one meeting than anyone else. Guess what he posted that on his truth social because all he cares about is his own ego.
Apparently the Israelis are now attacking Steve Witkoff. They've been leaking and being like he's a Katari owned asset or what the Las Vegas Jewish billionaires.
Of course a Katari owned asset.
They hate it because he pressured them to take this ceasefire deal.
So stuff like that. If you get it to Trump.
He's you know, an egotistical person, so to the extent that if you guys all want to play the game, that's the only way this is all going to happen.
Yeah, but even that, like I mean, Hegsath and Hugby are both in times like stell it. You know, the administration has already been staffed in the way that Miriam Maddilson wanted it to be staff That's true. And so you know, to your point about the West pank, which I will not personally be getting over, but I know what you're saying, just like that's the reality.
Q Trump.
I'm saying, Look, I'm being totally honest. I had to reconcile myself for this. I'm like, all right, this is Look, we have two choices. It's binary.
It's not easy. What do we choose.
We choose probably in the same way that you used to think about Biden before Gaza or like I like the Iri task credit, so I like Lena Kahan, right, You're like at the end of the day, Look, I mean, people know my worldview. I don't give a shit about most other countries. I mostly care about what's happening here to the extent I care about what's happening abroad is to the extent that it's affecting us here at home.
That's probably the decision I had to make. That's probably millions of people had to make that type of decision.
And I don't progrets.
Well, but I do think that there was a lot of like fake wish casting.
About that was not like campaign No.
I know, but I'm just saying, like, you may have been in touch with that reality, but I don't. I think there were many people who weren't, and honestly aren't still. But you know, I mentioned two executive orders from Trump relevant to Israel. One of them was I mentioned before Biden put in place. I mean, it's just it's like the most tiny slap on the risk sort of thing that Biden could have done. But sanctioning some of the violent settlers, pretending like they're not like fully backed by
the Israeli government. But in any case, there were something like thirty three individuals who we're sanctioned through these methods. Trump rolled that back, and he also rolled back some limitations that have been put in place on shipping two thousand pound bombs, which I didn't even know there were any limitations on any arm shipments from the Biden administration.
But in any case, that's a supply thing.
It's not because of morality. Yes, it's to keep them for ourself, that's the reason.
So in any case, those restrictions have been lifted under Trump as well, just to give you a sense of where things are headed. And then you know, in addition to I think very likely after phase one, you know, bombings continue in Gaza and they go right back to the fight. The West Bank is under increasing attack. You can put this up on the screen. Jeremy Skhill and drop site News and R and Ryan Graham have course been doing a great job of covering what's going on there.
One thing that they did is they announced this quote unquote counter terror operation in the occupied West Bank. They shut down all kinds of roads. I mean, Palestinian movement in the West Bank is already extremely limited, and now it's even more so. And then you have settlers that have just been violently rampaging in a number of Palestinian villages, in some instances overtly backed by Israeli forces that are now,
as Jeremy reports, invading and attacking parts of Ganine. In addition, there was actually an incident where settlers were setting fires and attacking this village and Israeli police thought the settlers were Palestinians and shot them. And now this is like, this is a big story in Israel because of Turnau. What's they weren't Palestinians who we don't care about killing.
They were actually settlers, Jewish settlers. So there's you know, this is sort of an explicit plan that all right, while we're having this calm in Gaza, temporarily we're going to move on the West Bank. This will be also a pretext that's used in addition to, you know, to return to the war as well. So that's the latest that we have coming out of the Middle East, and none of it is particularly good news.
Yeah.
Look, I my only optimism for a cease fire for any of this was the at least credit. By the way, if another reason way that you would want this happen is you should have the Nobel Foundation award Trump the Nobel Peace Prize. They should come out and do that immediately to give him more of an incentive.
People think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding.
This is if you got to if you guys play Washington, if you look, you could care about one thing. You could care about posturing, or you can care about getting shit done. I can guarantee you the people who would be alive from you know, influencing Donald Trump, they don't care how you accomplish this. So if you are the Irish government or any of these other people were taking a little bit of a dissonance you know, policy or whatever towards Israel, that's how you should get it done.
That's the only way is you have to feed him. You have to feed his ego. That's how it's gonna work. By the way, I'm already prepping for myself on Ukraine, just to give people the background, like there is a titan fight behind the scenes going on right now over Ukraine, because you have people like Mike Waltz and others who have completely different historical pass on the Ukraine issue and are willing to come along, but they're not going to
do the work right. Some of the people who are actually going to be in charge of this policy, Keith Kellogg and a few others, are true believers, but you have to work your way through the bureaucracy to get that up. And then when I turn on Fox and Friends, the dumbest program on cable television, which Donald Trump watches every day is Brian Kilmead, who is a Ukraine fanatic.
Right is like, still is absolutely I mean, he's not going to say it, but.
I'm listen, some of us haven't forgotten on their ideology, Brian. Some of us have not forgotten, he says, old school neo khon Republican.
He's worked at Fox News for twenty years and he's a brain.
Just stopped calling themselves neo cons but did not change their ideology even in a sliver. You know, they just realize that the term has a negative connotation.
Now, so oh, I'm not that, but I totally support every war that's ever existed.
Right, So that's the thing about But my point is about the media environment. Right, So the media environment that Trump needs to consume is one which actually has some dissonance in it. Now that's helped a little bit because of Tucker being no longer at Fox News, and he's in his ear on Ukraine and on Iran.
And a few other things that he can do. But he's just one man.
I mean, you can't ultimately, you know, truly affect everything through just being on the internet. We're dealing with what seventy nine year old man here at the end of the day. So yeah, look, I'm being very transparent, Like that's the one thing I'm gonna peg myself to is trying to end this war.
I think it will be one of the biggest.
Fights in the history of Washington because Afghanistan is nothing compared to the Cash Cow and the ideology around this, Like remember you know how Biden worshiped at the feet of NATO, Like that's.
A real thing.
Like people the Atlantic Council, the Carne.
Every August viggers here with mile.
That these people religiously pray to the god of NATO.
There are people in my neighborhood who have NATO flags. Where do you even get a NATO flag? It's unbelievad.
I mean, it's still like Cold War hangovers quality, and it is wild how much that still really dominates the foreign policy blog in this town. I mean, I took very close note. Maybe in some of the later speeches in the day, Trump brought up Ukraine, but considering how much a focus it was among Republicans, how much of I mean, he talked a lot about it on the
campaign trail. I think partly he didn't really bring it up because, I mean, he repeatedly promised, like it's going to be solid before I even get into office day one, we're going to have a deal. Obviously that didn't happen. So, you know, I think it's an acknowledgment that even if he wants to end it, it's not like you can just this isn't one Israel. You could actually just snap your fingers and be like, we're not supplying these weapons anymore.
You're gonna stop. We're not doing this like you could actually do that with Israel, Ukraine and Russia. It is a little different because you have to figet down to get that's.
The table you got to, you know.
I mean, obviously there's a lot we could do, but it's not a simple of a fix and it does require like real ideological consistency of sort that Donald Trump is frankly not particularly known for. And he has a soft spot for Zelensky too, and he's always likes the lens.
So that's another thing I highly encourage people. Lex Friedman in his latest podcast did a breakdown of his Zelenski interview, and I don't think you would mind saying this to spend a lot of time with him this weekend, and because he said it publicly, so I'll just repeat what he said, what he was telling me and what he also said publicly was His big takeaway from his Zelenski interview was it's.
Not a show.
He believes it, and he does not care about peace. He has no interest in peace. So Lex asked multiple iterations of peace questions to Zelensky. Zelensky has drank his own kool aid to the extent that he believes he is like Winston Churchill. And the policy which will Choir to force a political settlement on Zelenski, which is now the only option to achieve peace in Ukraine, is either we'd have to support a coup in Ukraine, which I don't think is a good idea, or I mean, maybe
they could have their own elections. That's something Zelenski's not going to allow that to happen. We have there's the only option here basically is a return to some like you know, treaties from the eighteen hundreds, where Trump and Putin will sit across a desk from each other and just be like, here's the line of control. That's it, and then you go to the Ukraine and be like,
this is what's happening. And I mean, as you know, and we were just discussing, do you know the political fallout from the freakout of the media here in Washington of forcing a political settlement on Tim. I don't think Zelenski will ever play ball based on what Lex told me.
I could be wrong.
I mean, at the end of the days a client state, right, He'd rather be alive than be you know, like be defeated and humiliated on the battlefield.
But equally Trump would want to.
Avoid that at all costs because look, even if Ukraine got taken over, I mean, I still wouldn't think it'd be worth going to nuclear war for it over. But as we all learn from Afghanistan, if you broadcast Cities Kiev twenty four to seven and turn this into a cause celeb it can go like this in public opinion. Public opinion is still not, in my opinion, great on Ukraine, and it's still number three issue that people rate Biden's
effectiveness on it. There's a Boomer mentality about Russia that lives deep in the American mind.
Yeah.
I mean it was really sold as like a values proposition, and I think a lot of people and I mean, and there is a value proposition there, Like that's not like our country doesn't have really the credibility to frame it as a values proposition. But this idea of like, no, we have this established order that you don't get to just push your weight around because you're the larger country,
like Russia invading Ukraine was genuinely bad and wrong. But then you have to ask, like, Okay, given where we are, what is the best and most reasonable path forward?
And the Ukrainians would have gotten a.
Much better deal if instead of being interested in continuing this war, if we had been interested in negotiating a peaceful settlement. And that was really the massiveness opportunity, so many lives, so much destruction between then and now, only for Ukraine to be in a worst position, worst position in terms of what they're going to end up getting here at the end of the day, whenever this thing
burns out. So I don't know if I don't know if I read the mediate landscape the same way you do, because I feel like there's a lot of Ukraine fatigue and also just less willingness to resist Trump's liketics than any particular direction.
Jake tappergily wrote a book.
No I expected the Afghanistan withdrawal or reaction.
I definitely expected that.
But with regards to Ukraine, I don't know. I think there is an increasing mainstream media acknowledgment that Ukrainians are not winning, that it's going to be impossible for them to get all of their territory back, and something is going to have to be figured out.
I would nobody would like that more than me.
Whether it actually happens, I don't know, I still think that these people have religious connections to Ukraine. They think Kiev is the fifty first state. It's crazy, like you know, the way that they think about the issue. And if there were ever, like if there was ever like real Afghanistan type images that came out, I do think it actually would cause a big problem for Trump. And at the end, like what is my theme of all my
commentary here with Trump? Trump is a transactional, bigger and Afghanistan influence.
The Afghanistan example is instructive because he knew it was popular in theory to gain out of Afghanistan. But there's a reason why he didn't pull the trigger because when you end a war, guess what, then you had to actually grapple with the reality of what was accomplished and failed in all of those things over those years. And so it wouldn't be quite the same event as Afghanistan because obviously we didn't have troops directly there, it was a shorter time period, et cetera.
But you know, Biden that he was popular.
Biden was up until the Afghan WITHDRAWALKEM and it did NUKEM and he never recovered. And obviously there were other things that contributed to that negative sentiment towards him. But that really was kind of the beginning of the end of his presidency, unfortunately, because it's one of the best things that he actually did and one of the more courageous things that.
He actually did.
But nothing will form a bipartisan consensus faster than you know, trying to not be in a war. They will unite against you, Fox and CNN and MSNBC. Man, they will all be seeing in the exact same tune the minute that you try to exit or avoid a potential war. And yeah, I do think that Trump is quite aware of that.