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Washington just got very interesting whole showdown much Yeah, potential government shutdown?
What is trump thing? A lot going on.
Justine's going to join us to break down all of the madness and try to figure out where we are and what might happen next to the best of any.
Of our ability. We also have an update.
So the House apparently secretly voted to release that Matt Gates ethics report, so we've got Matt Gate's response, why did they do it?
What do we expect to learn? Break all of that down for you.
We also have a new healthcare whistleblower coming forward at the same time that Kathy Hochel is setting up a potential hotline for any CEOs who feel threatened out there, so a lot of response there. We've got some new details that have been revealed as part of a lawsuit against a bunch of elite universities, including some Ivy League universities, showing just how much preference they give to particularly wealthy and well connected students. Some of these details are absolutely incredible.
We also have some of the first numbers post affirmative action of minority enrollment how that's been impacted by the Supreme Court ending affirmative action at these schools.
So that's interesting as well.
And we've got some interesting comments on the theovone podcast from Timothy Shallomey about how Bernie Sanders is a folk hero.
Interesting moment there.
We'll talk about it.
Yeah, I listened to the hire thing the game day, Shallow May.
That's not the real shame. I've discovered. I had no idea.
Shalla May is a full on theater kid from like the Upper East Side or whatever in New York.
Oh.
Really, I don't know anything about him.
He was on college game day and he like had By the way, I don't watch college football. All my football friends are telling me. They're like, oh my god, Scharlamy was amazing. He made all of these correct picks. It's pretty clear somebody coached him about it, because then when he was on theo Von, I was like, oh, this kid is like a full on theater.
By the way, I had sports and theater soccer. Don't him tread sales look shallow?
May I'm just saying, I'm pretty sure that you were trained for that game day segment. And look, he's an incredible actor. He's one of my favorite actors in the up and coms, So.
He could pull it off if he was coached.
To absolutely no play the part, and in my opinion, he was acting whenever he was on game day.
No.
I will say he's still an interesting guy. He's a little lit, soft spoken and all that. But I didn't know that much about him, about his background and everything. And he's like, yeah, I went to Columbia and I was a theater kid in New York and I was like, oh, okay, that was interesting. Anyway, he is a better actor. He's definitely who's that of the young guy who's coming up right now? A lordie, He's a better actor than him.
For sure. Women would probably disagree with me.
But anyway, let's get to Jeff Stein and let's talk about all of this government chef down situation. Joining us now, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post, great friend of the show. Good to see you, sir, Thanks for joining.
Us, Thanks for having me back on guys.
Absolutely all right, So Jeff's let's break some of this down. Man. It's been a wild turn of events. First, there was a Continuing Resolution that was a bipartisan deal that was negotiated. Elon Musk takes to Twitter. He starts criticizing the deal, so does a fake Ramaswami, jd Vance, Donald Trump all start to jump in, and it appears that Elon's threat to primary those House individuals who did vote for the CR appears to have been at least contributed to its downfall.
That's what Fox News is reporting. At least, let's take a listen to that. We'll get your reaction.
Tweets from Mosco and has that complicated this well.
I mean, I think that there's always a lot of.
Interest in what's happening up here, and.
This is more than interists. They're telling people if they vote yes, they should be voted out.
In the social media world. Is a part of our politics, and I think members have to expect that, and there'll be a lot of part votes the next couple of years.
The fact is is that, look, this is a sandwich. I don't know how to say that we're being forced into this position. They could have done a standalone.
They did this because they knew that it would put members in this position to support it.
We're damned if we do. We're damned if we don't.
Now, the bill has about one hundred billion dollars in disaster relief, nearly thirty billion to restock FEMA's coffers, and there are lots of healthcare provisions. Jamming everything together in one bill means some Republicans will not support Mike Johnson for Speaker in January.
Have any other of.
Your colleaguescept that they're not voting for Johnson in the express.
Yeah, I've talked to a few.
You know, if you don't seem like they're going to vote for him, you have to ask them, I'm not going to betray based position.
Well you just vote president, or will you vote someone else's vote.
For somebody else?
So, Jeff, there's been a real they've roiled on Capitol Hill. It's now Thursday morning, while we're all talking. The government shuts down tomorrow at midnight. People thought that this deal was done, it was dusted, it was sailing to a vote, and yet now we're at a completely new reset.
So tell us what you know.
Elon Musk is quite possibly the most powerful person in Washington. Donald Trump obviously is the source of his power, but Trump has a million things going on in Musk seems really dialed in on these kinds of spending fights and has huge remit to sort of tell the Republican Party what to do on behalf of Trump.
And you know, it's the money for sure.
I mean, as you were saying, Musk has been threatening primary challenges against Republicans who are out of stack with what he and Trump.
But I think it's it's more than that.
You know, when I talk to Republican lawmakers, they they like the idea of being retweeted by Musk is as silly as that might sound as a reason for how to govern, they want to be in his sort of aura. They feel that he has a sort of a popularity and a vision that they want to be associated with. Someone was like comparing it to high school to me, where Musk is like the cool kid and people want to be at his table, and no Republican wants to stand out of that of that mix if you want
to have a political future. And it's more than just than that too, I mean it's it's you know, Musk is.
Really sort of assuming control for the Trump administration coming Trump administration.
Over spending in regulation, which is a huge thing. I mean pretty much everything.
Yeah, pretty much everything exactly.
And for members, right, if you want you know, this project.
For your district and your constituents.
You kind of need Elon Musk at this point to be on your side. So the stakes for them are existential and go beyond even the fear of a Republican primary challenge. And you know, did voters in November were they upset about high grocery prices or did they want the world's richest man to have discretion over the federal budget. I mean that seems to be the question that you know Democrats are trying to push this morning, but I think it's a legitimate one.
Yeah, we have some of that A two please we can put on the screen just to give a taste of some of the democratic reactions. So initially you had Elon saying that we should shut down the government until January twentieth, that'd be approximately thirty three days.
We then got some more reactions.
If we continue here with some of these images showing you, he says, any member of the House of the Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years. What's even more interesting, though, Jeff, is the plot twist that then Donald Trump has added, so can we put a three please up on the screen, because this makes things even crazier.
And this is from JD.
Vance, which was tweeted out as a statement from President elect Trump and Vice President Like Vance, they talk about the most foolish, inept thing ever done by Congressional Republicans was allowing our country to hit the debt ceiling in twenty twenty five. It was a mistake and is now something they must be addressed. Meanwhile, Congress is considering another spending bill. The bill would make it easier to hide the records of the January sixth Committe, which accomplished nothing.
The bill would give Congress a pay increase while Americans are struggling this Christmas. Let's go to the next slide, please, Because he says, increasing the debt ceiling is not great, but we'd rather do it now on Biden's watch. So he continues, He says, Republicans must get smart and tough. If Democrats tarting to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, call their bluff. It is Schumer and Biden who are holding up aid to our
farmers and disaster relief. So now I think we have three separate that are going on. There's a fight over the disaster relief, there's a fight over the ten billion dollars to farmers, and now Donald Trump is saying, no, Republicans, you don't even vote for quote unquote clean cr. First, maybe explain what a clean cr is. You only do it if we also attach a raise to the debt ceiling. So that adds another layer of what must get done in the next forty eight hours.
Yeah, I mean, we are facing a government shutdown. Musk seems to not be that alarmed by the prospect. I mean, the thing that I'm trying to figure out and calling sources, you know, yesterday and today I can't really wrap my head around, is why did Johnson not call Elon and Trump and say, like, hey, man, like here's my plan. Are you going to go nuclear on me in public and like embarrass me and potentially cost my speaker shit?
And I want to be very careful about how I phrased this because I don't have the like fully confirmed.
But the the.
Thing that lawmakers and aids on the Hill and some people close to mar A Lago are telling me is that Johnson thought, maybe incorrectly, but he thought that Trump had his back.
Yes, as you were.
Saying, right, like the cr right is just the idea that we will basically just extend funding for the government without much attached.
And that's how you get this this idea.
Separately, you have this idea of an omnibus, which, like you, include a lot of different spending changes to the law. Now for Hill speak that nobody but like three nerds of Washington should ever have to hear.
They're calling it a cromnibus.
Which is the CR plus an omnibus, so Johnson that that sort of reflects what Johnson was trying to do here because he knew he was going to lose a lot of Republicans, you know, for to get this spending bill done, he included a bunch of stuff that Democrats wanted.
And the but the fact that.
Nobody that Johnson was unable to have a conversation with Elon have conversation with Trump, like what are they talking about when they go to like the wrestling match and like hang out.
You're exactly right, they were literally together explicable to me.
And the fact that Trump is just so willing to say to Mike Johnson, who he's been photographed hanging out with all the time, like no, like you eat shit now, dude, Like that's you're you're in your on your own is kind of red taking me. I Mean, it either suggests that Trump is just willing to like screw this guy who's been one of his most sward allies, or that Johnson is a spectacular spectacularly inapt house speaker who could not foresee the most obvious outcome from a mile away.
I mean, I've been hearing from Trump people who wanted to kill this deal for a long time and thought that they could get you on board. Even the defense bill they passed, you know, a roughly one trillion dollar annual defense bill which I think you guys covered ten trillion dollars in defense spending over the next decade, which Emil has talked about the DoD budget being too big. And you know this whole time I was watching that fight,
I was like, where is Elon right? Because he could have done to that bill what he did to this bill. It seems like maybe he just like wasn't paying attention enough to do that. But whatever the case, I mean, this is you know, it suggests that we're going to be in for a very complicated few years if the coordination problems this early between Republican leadership and mar A Lago are are this.
Bad and some real power struggles ultimately between the richest man on the planet, who has his own base of support and plenty of wealth to throw around in terms of primary challenges, et cetera, and who controls Twitter, you know, controls this huge social media platform and can use it to push whatever message he wants to push, which you know has been in recent months the same message that Trump wants to push, but it really does set up
this titanic clash of two power centers between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Let's put a four up on the screen.
We have some commentary from Trump specifically which I want to get you to weigh in on what I just said about the power centers. But also I want to understand more why Trump is focused on the debt limit at this time as well. So this is from truth social. He says, if Republicans try to pass a clean continuing resolution without all of the Democrat bells and whistles, that
will be so destructive to our country. All it will do after January twenty is bring the mess of the debt limit into the Trump administration rather that allowing it to take place in the Biden administration. Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should and will be primaried. Everything should be done in fully negotiate part of my taking office on January twenty, twenty twenty five.
I mean, this is deeply confusing to me because it seems like he's almost advocating for the cr that Elon just completely tanked. And obviously this piece about the debt life. It is very important to him. He keeps bringing it up. So why is that so significant? What do you make of this whatever Donald Trump is trying to say here?
Yeah, I mean I think what Trump is saying, right, Obviously, there's not to get too into Washington speak, but there's like two key things, as you guys understand, right, there's the funding of the federal government all the government services.
And then there's a separate question about the US borrowing limit, which is the debt ceiling, which basically stipulates that, you know, the government can only borrow up to I don't know exactly what it is now, but let's say like thirty seven trillion dollars, and beyond that it becomes illegal for the government to do that, which means that we become very quickly in the fault of our obligations, which could
cause a global financial crisis. Trump is saying, like, let's let's make sure that that bomb, that second bomb, is not on the table, Like, I don't want to have
to deal with this at all during my administration. I think he knows that if they don't deal with it now, he's going to have to figure out either a how to deal with Themocrats, to give Democrats concessions to prevent the global economy from blowing up under his watch, or be he's going to have to keep every Republican on board for a debt sealing increase, which is going to be really, really hard. So I think it makes sense that Trump is like, let's just clear the debts on
this right now. And I've actually I spoke to Democratic Senator Brian Chatz later this week. He was saying, like, I would love if Trump did this, because we think that this is a huge problem to him. We want to be done with it. I think the thing that I find most inexplicable about this, or like haven't really wrapped my head around, is like the.
Timing is bizarre.
Like Trump was elected over a month ago, and we've known that the debt sealing is going to be an issue this spring for two years. And if Trump had said to Mike Johnson, this goes back to sort of my point about the baffling like miscommunication here. If Trump had just said to Johnson, like put this in the CR I don't want to deal with the debt limit. We I mean, maybe he did privately, and I just don't have the reporting chops to like figure that out.
But like my sense is that this is a new app that Trump is now putting out there, and it
reflects I think. I mean, I spoke to someone who's at mar A Lago yesterday who was saying that, like, you guys in the media and you guys in the hill, like you don't understand like Trump is like feeling himself, like he is so confident he thinks of as this guy referred to Trump as like feeling like he's Charlemagne, where he's just like this like globe striding, colossal figure, like which I mean historically, like he might be remembered as as a quite a significant president.
So he's just like the.
Cr and the Omnibus and like this is like peasant stuff, Like I don't want to be like sucked into this boring mess. So like and I get where he's like Trump won twice, Like he's just like I don't need to spend my days appeasing people in Washington and dealing with this like mechanical stuff.
But it also is like a.
Huge problem for the function of the federal government if he's just going to like barely pay attention in the last minute, like throw out complicated, contradicting to.
Nan, Yeah, here's my theory of what happened.
So I see this Morning playbook is reporting, and it kind of fits with some of.
The people I spoke to yesterday.
They're like, Trump, this wasn't on his radar basically at all. He didn't particularly care. Elon basically decides to pick a fight him and vivek On Doge on the CR.
Trump wakes up to it.
He gets kind of backed into a corner because enough people have now come out against the CR that it's not going to pass no matter what in terms of Republicans, including people like John Cornyn. Right, somebody incentive leadership. So then Trump is like, okay, well we got to do something new. Then a legislative aid down in mar A Lago says, by the way, mister President elect, you may not know this, but the debt ceiling is up in June. Trump hates a debt ceiling, doesn't want to deal with it.
He especially doesn't want to deal with these Freedom Caucus guys. So he's like, okay, let's get a dust now to be able to do exactly an he's his tax cut, so he sees this and he's like, we need to get this shit done. We can't deal with this during reconciliation, and so he puts it in right now. As you said, you know, very very little has changed, Jeff in the last four years. I was definitely assured of more streamlined processes and others. But I'm getting a lot of rhymes.
It hasn't been that long ago since I'd deal with this.
I do think one thing you put your finger on there that I think is really interesting is the idea that you know, Musk is operating as an independent power center. He yes, that's kind of what that if that is true, that suggests that must power doesn't just derive from Trump and this notion that these are co presidents and that Musk is like actually calling the shots here.
I don't know.
That's kind of what it sounds like to me, right, like, yeah, no, no, no, you are right, that's that's correct. I don't think that the So from what I've been able to tell it definitely the Elon tweets, but especially the Vivak stuff attacking this that's totally independent, that was never signed off on.
Remember, a lot of these folks.
Are not even in the same room Trump is down in mar A Lago. Elon is wherever somewhere in the globe every once in a while, pops up in the UK, San Francisco, et cetera. Vivac is here in Washington. None of these people are necessarily coordinating. Allegedly, there is a group chat with Mike Johnson, Vivek, and Elon in it. Somebody never raised the CR apparently in said group chat.
And so I think it's a very real chance of a shutdown here. What do you think?
I mean?
I think it's it's I'm ambivalent a little bit about sort of the substantive complaint being made here, because I do I do think you talked to you know, average people, and it's like members of Congress can't read the bill.
Before they vote on it.
It's like seventeen hundred pages and nobody knows what's in
it before they are expected to support it. It's full of things that have nothing to do with keeping the government open, like those are you know, to be fair, I guess to Musk and Ramaswami like that, that is a thing that I think strikes people as a broken process, and they're saying like it is time to and that broken process at the same time, I mean, there over a million government workers who are now at risk of having their Christmases and their families Christmas is completely ruined,
not to mention all the private sector workers who depend on it.
And also the things that.
Are in here that are objectionable include disaster aide and farm made that a lot of people think is important. And Musk circulated claims last night about the bill that are just patently false. I mean, he said, you know, society a report that was saying that the bill includes three billion dollars for the new Commanders Stadium in Washington, d C.
This which is not true.
He said that he circulated report saying that the bill has sixty billion dollars for Ukraine, like not true. So you know, I hear where they're coming from. But if every bit of government legislation is at risk of being mischaracterized as it has by Musk and Ramaswami as I think they did, and maybe not rama Swami, but must did at least in this instance, it's going to be hard to pass anything of substance in the next four years.
It seems to me like perhaps the miscalculation that Johnson made is that he correctly perceived that Trump more or less didn't care and had given him sort of free ring to negotiate what he needs to negotiate. He has a very narrow margin in the House in terms of House Republicans, knew he was going to have to rely on some Democrats. Obviously, Democrats also still control the Senate.
So he struck the deal he needed to strike in order to you know, clear the deck in his language, get this taken care of, get the debt limit taken care of, and you know, live to fight another day and start fresh in the Trump administration. And the miscalculation was really not realizing you do kind of have this co president situation. So it's not enough to have Donald
Trump's buy in. It's not enough for Donald Trump to be like, sure, whatever, go negotiate whatever you want to negotiate, and just make sure that I can come in with the government funded and with the debt limit out of the way. He didn't realize, guess what, you need to also make sure that Elon's going to be cool with this. And that seems to me like where the real failure and miscalculation here was for Mike Johnson.
I think that's well put and I think, I mean, based on what I'm hearing this morning and.
Last night, like Johnson could very well be toast.
I mean, it seems like it.
I agree, he seems like his days are numbered.
But who would replace him?
As always the question, you know, like who can pull this caucausy, who does have the support of the full caucus? And what are the demands on the future you know, potential speaker are going to look like as well.
Yeah, it seems like Trump alone could save him at this point.
I get tom Ember is the name that comes up a lot.
I know, you know, you don't have to be a member of the House to be speaker, so kind of opens up the possibilities.
Rand Paul just today we're about to cover it, said why not just make Elon speaker of the House.
Maybe it'd be easier. Actually yeah, yeah.
I mean if he's I mean he basically is.
Yeah, well, if he was, he would be probably like the most powerful speaker in history in a certain sense. I mean, outside of the fact that the margin would be so narrow. How many seat margin do they have now coming into this too next session, especially with Trump pulled a few out of the House for his administration, Matt Gate's resigning, so will take a while to fill that seat, et cetera.
So it's extremely narrow.
But I think when Elon says jumped the Republican caucuses, pretty clear says how high?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
It seems like like the question I've had for the last year is, you know, over the last few months, I guess is you know, there are so many Republicans who resist some of the ambitious goals that Musk and Ronoswallomy have set out. Two trillion dollars in spending cuts, revamping the DoD, you know, cutting pork barrel, spending out
for this or that district. The list goes on and on, all these regulations that they want to cut, and then there's sort of like the it's not really my lane, but sort of you know, Patel and you know what Trump does with the DOJ and you know what he does with the IRS, which you know, those are all questions.
But this is I think I think it's fair to say this is.
The first sustained barrage of by.
Musk, his first real sort of flex, his first.
Test of can you get congressional Republicans to sort of listen to you, and it's not entirely Musk. Obviously, like conservatives in the House have been a problem for leaderships for like over a decade now. So I don't want to like say it's it's purely like sweet generous from Musk.
But I think by any standard, the test we saw, really the first test, which we'll set the course of the next few years, suggest that Musk is in charge and that there is no willingness in the Republican Party and ability I'm repeating myself here, but to stand up to him and to stand out and put your head above the sand.
Yeah, Jeff.
My last question for you is, you know, Elon is like a fan of Hoavier Malay and sort of anarcho capitalists. He's this very you know, somewhat doctionnaire libertarian outside of where he wants his own government goodies, etc. His ideology is not the same as what Trump has articulated to the country. I mean, Trump has never been like an austerity Paul Ryan Republican. One of the reasons he's been so successful, for example, is pledging I'm not going to
touch social Security and medicare. Elon Musk would love to cut social Security and medicare. Probably the most clear cut example of where there's a real divergence is Trump has been pretty consistently in favor of, you know, a very aggressive regime of tariffs. Meanwhile, Elon was out tweeting praise for Hobvier Malay rolling back.
Terror in his home country.
So help people to understand, it's always tricky with Trump talking ideology because he doesn't have that firm of an ideology. I think Elon is a much more ideological actually figure. Where are some of the frictions between Elon's ideology and at least what Trump has articulated his ideology to be to the American public.
I think that is one of the most important questions that we're going to see play out over the next few years. As you're say in Crystal, you know, Trump has rose to power in twenty sixteen explicitly saying that he would not touch Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, arguably the three most important programs in the federal budget provide healthcare and pensions for tens of millions seniors and.
Other poor people and other people in this country.
Now, I think in his second term, I'll me choose my words carefully here, I get the sense that Trump is softening on that a little bit. And what I mean by that is Trump has always said that he stands for eliminating waste and fraud and abuse in say Medicare, social Security, Medicaid. It's really though, of those three, I mean, Medicare is kind of the crucial, and there's there's so little waste in Social Security because you know, you're just
sending checks to people for their retirement, very straightforward. Medicare, though, is complicated, and there are things in Medicare that people that I do not think are sort of out to hurt Grandma, that can be sort of revamped or changed,
or that there can be cost savings. I think what Trump seems to be suggesting to want to do to me, which I think is an interesting shift from his first term, and as you're suggesting, puts him more in line with Malay and and Musk, is to say, actually, I'm going to propose changes or cuts to Medicare.
But I will insist that this is just waste, and any.
Dorky Washington Post reporter that suggests that this is washing, that this is Medicare cuts, I'm just gonna yell at and be like you are lying about what I'm doing. I'm just doing reforms to Medicare that aren't touching the program. And adjudicating the question of if that's a cut, if that's slashing Medicare is a sort of epistemological like metaphysical question that it's hard to get like a very straightforward answer to, because legitimate people can have legitimate in different
different interpretations of what that means. But but some of those I mean, we'll have to see what he actually does. Some of those programs could, if cut, could lead to,
you know, to less care for seniors. At the same time, there is waste in Medicare, and some of the things necessary to do that could just look like waste to I think a good faith person trying to reduce the federal budget, which is a complicated and nuanced picture and one that I think will be impossible to write in a story without like millions of people being like, you're an idiot who is mischaracterizing things.
But I think that is sort of a dynamic that's shaping up.
Welcome to our lives there, Jeff. All right, man, we appreciate you joining us.
Thank you.
Great to see you.
I guess.
At the same time, Democrats are seizing upon all of this, and they have one goal. They want to drive a wedge between Elon and between Donald Trump. They have now taken to the moniker President Musk. You saw the debut of this on CNN last night. Let's take a listen.
President Musk this morning made it clear, with all his vast government experience, which is basically he became rich on the federal government, that he doesn't want Republicans to pass this, and seemingly Vice President Trump kind of backed him up then at that point. And what it says about the politics is this is going to be a see four years, the whole debt ceiling thing. Donald Trump is making it clear that he wants the debt ceiling to go up.
By the way, the debt ceiling is going to have to go up, but he doesn't want to have to take ownership for it because he will again for four years look at the Democrats and blame them. And so what this says about the politics is good luck for the next four years. I don't think they'll shut the government down because ultimately they'll want to get home for Christmas. They'll do like a one month s R. Pretending like
that's going to fix everything. But yeah, I mean, I think President Elon has made it clear what his agenda's going to be for the next four years.
All Right, So that was Adam Kinsser, Democrat, now hilarious.
But former Republican member of Congress gets familiar with him. January sixth Committee Anti Trump et.
Cetera pro Ukraine. Basically the congressman from the Ukraine lost. Anyway, we can continue.
The point is is that that is now a very popular moniker. The Democrats are going with Bernie Sanders, including let's put this up there on the screen. Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government the richest man on earth. President Elon Muss doesn't like it. Will Republicans kiss the ring?
Yes they will.
Billionaires must not be allowed to run our government. Well, our president is going to be billionaires. It's a little bit difficult.
Yeah, well it's different.
He's not a real billiad Is that correct? From JB. Pritzker.
Well, I think what he means is unelected billionaires.
It's one thing when you were actually you know, won the popular vote and people back to you I don't think that they thought that they were voting for Elon Musk necessarily.
See, I don't know about that. We have this poll we can discuss. Let's put this up there on the screen. Do you approve or disapprove of Elon playing a prominent role in Trump administration. This is from Quinnipiac, simple sized, nine er and twenty four people to see. Fifty three percent disapprove, forty one percent approve.
I don't know quite yet. I mean, Elon does have.
A pretty high approval rating with the American people, especially with Republicans, so certainly Republican to see what that is. I mean, you know, he was up there with Bezos and the other industrialists for a while in terms of the most popular people in the country. It took a huge hit obviously after he started getting political. I think the big question is not about even like small d
democratic question around Elon. It's about Trump. There's a huge question here about how milong Trump is going to allow this. So there's a couple of things that are happening right now. Trump seems to have made peace with the Elon stuff because he has now decided to make the debt ceiling part of his crusade. But look, Trump doesn't care about spending and he doesn't care about debt. Okay, you could just look at his previous administration if you're curious for evidence on that one.
He doesn't care at all.
But the thing is is that if he gets backed into an unpopular corner, as we've seen a million times, he'll drop you. And so if Elon starts to cause political problems for Trump, that I could see to be a real issue. So, for example, let's say there is a shutdown in the next forty eight hours. All of us, especially me, we're all getting on airplanes right pretty soon. I think fifty some sixty million people are going to take a flight in the next two weeks or so.
You want to know how TSA functions during a shutdown. It's not pretty. I've seen it before, So imagine that. Imagine we have that, and we have headlines all across the country. Not to mention what just happened. Yesterday, the S and P five hundred dropped by three points. We have the largest ten day, We have the largest daily decline in the Dow Jones in the last fifty years.
Things are not great right now. They're a little precarious.
We're going into a situation where Dervy I would say, let's say we have a government. By the way, government shutdown always nukes the doo every single time, you're gonna have one thousand point drop another one like that. Let's say the S and P drops another eight percent, and so you could even have a systemline. We have more political chaos around the debt ceiling. That's another couple percent.
So S and P. Let's say it's down by ten percent by January twentieth, the day that Donald Trump takes office. As a whole other picture from your nice mandate and all these other things, if that.
Starts to fall on Elon.
As we know with Trump, nothing's ever his fault, and so if this starts to fall in Elon, you could have a situation we're on day one of the actual administration, there is some sort of split between the two. I would not be surprised by that outcome, especially if we do go two shot. People hate when the government shuts down, you know, and look, I know it's try. Everybody talks about it, but like, look, everyone always focused on the soldier pay. They usually take care of that. I'm talking about,
like seniors applying to medicare again get denied TSA. Everybody, Oh, now we have six hour lines in the airport. There's no FAA problems. By the way, I'm not sure if anyone's aware, but we're actually in the middle of a presidential transition right now. Good luck with that in terms of making sure that if all those people can't come to work, it's like, how are they going to leave anything in preparation. I know, all of this sounds extremely stupid, like, oh,
we don't need the government. It's like, yeah, we don't need it until you have to go to TSA. You have to wait for seven hours.
Yeah.
The thing is part of what they put in this bill is disaster relief.
I mean, people in North China and throughout that whole hurricane path were devastated, still recovering, and that need is extremely urgent.
So the same passes. Yet it should have been pass day up.
I agree.
I agree it is nuts, and yet I mean that's part of what is entangled in this bill. There's also some farming that is incredibly important for farmers because the previous farm build ever got passed, so you know, levels have been stuck in terms of what they've been counting on, So that's important to I just wanted to mention there is one provision in here that I actually really support and I think you do too, which is the reigning in of pharmacy benefit managers.
That's included in this bill.
As well, and it's one of the things that you know, it gets dried as oh, you just threw in these things that I have nothing to do with just funding the government, but it also would be actually a really good reform that would help to bring down prescription drug costs and has a significant amount of bipartisan support. This is something that Josh Holly's proposed alongside with Elizabeth Warren
that is also entangled in this whole thing. So it's not just I mean, the federal government shutdown is bad enough, that creates a lot of headaches and a lot of problems, but there's also funds in here that people are really relying on. So you know, the other piece with Elon is, I mean, number one is the richest man on the planet, Like none of this is ever going to affect him or really anybody that he probably knows at this.
Point in his life.
The other thing is like he doesn't really know anything about the government, is my sense, Like, I don't think he really understands how important some of these pieces are. I don't think he really knows what it means if the federal government shuts down. So it's easy enough for him to tweet like and just shut it down until Trump comes into office without really having a grasp of
what the implications of that ultimately are. But to go back to this question about the potential drama playing out between Elon and Trump, I think your right, suger, And the reporting suggests that Trump was cool with this negotiation. It actually serves his interest quite well, because he certainly doesn't care about the spending at all.
Whatever, it's fine. It got the debt ceiling out of the way.
He wants to be able to do his tax cuts for the rich, extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in the new year when he comes into office. You need to have the debt ceiling cleared to be able to accomplish that. And so it served his interest. All of the spending pieces that Republicans could object to, like basically get pinned on Oh well, the Democrats were in power.
It's not our fault, is Like Joe Biden a chucksit umor and whoever, it's their fault that they had these provisions that maybe a lot of Republicans aren't particularly supportive of. And then he can start with the government funded and with the debt ceiling out of the way. So he really did get back into a corner here. And I don't know if he feels that way or not, but part of the goal of this calling him President Musket c is to irritate Trump and get under his skin
and threaten his ego. So I think it's one thing if this becomes a political problem for him, and it's government shutdowns always very unpopular, you get this sense of just total chaos already before he's even set foot back in the White House.
That's an issue.
But the other issue is this is a man who has a very fragile ego, and if he feels like, oh my god, people think Elon is more powerful than me, I don't think he's gonna like that. And we also know think about how he in that debate with Kamala, think about how he took the bait on literally everything. So it's not like he's capable of sort of like rising above it. That has never really been a Trump
strong suit. On the other hand, you know, I think ultimately in a battle which Dan Trump and Musk, Trump wins. But Elon has his own cards to play because he does have so much money and can fund primary challengers, and has his own base of support, has his own media platform that he controls to his own ends that is extremely influential, both in terms of the Republican base and in terms of the national conversation and elite media.
So it's not like he's not that he's without any of his own cards to play in this chess match saga. One last thing I was thinking about is remember when Elon was tweeting about who he wanted what he wanted Howard Lutnik for targery. Is that what it was, and then it ends up not getting picked for chargery, gets put in a commerce. But you know, he was able to do that and assert what he wanted for the
government even though he didn't get his way. There was no blowback from Trump on that, and I almost feel like that was a kind of like testing of the waters of how much he could.
Oh, there's no question how much.
He could freelance, and he's sort of sort of like a toddler, like pushing the bounds, pushing the bounds, pushing the bounds of what he can get away with.
This is all in Donald Trump's court right now, and if it works out, then it's fine, right Because if this works out, honestly, it'd be pretty good for Trump. If you can get the debt ceiling off the table, that's fantastic. You really don't want to deal with that. Well, you're in office and you can just focus on your tax bill and all that. I have a difficult time thinking that will happen. But look, we'll see. I mean,
this could drag on for probably days. Honestly, Congress could be here all the way till Christmas.
It wouldn't see. Yeah.
Well, the other thing is I don't think Democrats are in the mood to rescue that.
No, here's the why would you? Right, because you're letting this all play out. If the government shut down, there's always a fight about who's responsible, etc. But there's enough tweets out there now from Eon shut down. There's enough teats out there of Elon being like shut down the government right. Yeah, And like I said, in normal times, government shutdowns it's kind of a wash people.
Usually don't like them.
But I think during Christmas, I think it would really the travel stuff, I think could really cause a lot of headaches. And you know, by the way, the Biden administration has every incentive to make it as painful as possible. Because something Obama did which was very smart, even though it was all propaganda, is during the twenty thirteen shutdown, is even though we didn't have to, they closed all the national parks. Even though they didn't have to, they
started to. They made Americans feel it the shutdown. So if you're Biden, you've got thirty one days left in office, you're like, screw it, boom. You know, you want to tamp down the temperature, or you want to tamp down any positive feeling in the country as much as possible. And now imagine this, we have an inauguration to plan.
This entire city is about to get shut down. There's a million National Guardsmen and all these other people are supposed to descend on this place, and you've got to plan all that when people literally aren't even allowed access to their email accounts.
So it could be a complete shit show, is my point.
You sent this in this morning, Sager David Plovo's Yeah, FANTASTICGN campaign is Kamala Harris right. I also, obviously it was a very significant strategist for Barack Obama. But anyway, he tweeted less it's to get rid of the debt ceiling permanently. There should be no dem votes to raise it prematurely. Now a lot of talk about mandates, landslides and trifectas. Let those claiming absolute power use some of
it to deal with the debt ceiling next year. And I saw Chris Murphy tweeting about this as well, a Senators Chris Murphy, and I think this is I think there are a lot of Democrats who feel this way of like, Okay, you guys want to deal with go ahead, be our guest. You all figured this out, because we are not going to come and ride to your rescue.
I think the only thing that would potentially cause Democrats to really come back to the table, because they did spend a long time negotiating this deal with Mike Johnson, ultimately didn't just come out of the ether.
This has been months in the making.
But I think the only thing that would really cause them to come back to the table would be something like getting rid of the debt sealing permanently, which the debt sailing is this like archaic, meaningless, stupid thing that is only gets used as a hostage taking mechanism at this point. So if they could get the debt ceiling
taken out permanently, that would be worthwhile. But you know, I seriously doubt, seriously doubt that austerity minded Republicans are going to want to go along with getting rid of the debt ceiling for up.
The alternative is Trump mints the coin, which if anyone would do it, he would. He doesn't care about He's just like, screw it.
I'm just going to do it.
So true, So maybe maybe that's where we're headed, and that would that would effectively nuke the debt.
It would be over.
Yeah, if he meanted, because then once he's done it once then everyone will.
Just be this is what we did.
It's over.
This is what we do.
Talking and speaking of the House of Representatives, let's put this up there on the screen. The House Ethics Committee has now secretly voted to release the Matt Gates Ethics Report. So let's take everybody back in time to November, whenever Donald Trump wins the election. He shortly afterwards, makes announcements about who are going to get appointed to major cabinet positions. One of them is Matt Gates as the Attorney General of the United States. Matt Gates resigns from Congress as
result of this nomination. However, it quickly comes out that at the very same time, the House Ethics Committee was slated to release a report about Matt Gates involving ethics complaints about him and his involvement with young girls and even allegedly somebody who was under age, again allegedly. Keep in mind, the Department of Justice did investigate this and
he was never charged. Well, all of this then comes full circle when the so called ethics report was allegedly going to get released if Gates stayed in the nomination process. It appears crystal that he had to drop out as a result of that, because multiple Senators said that there was no way in hell they were ever going to vote for him, and that it would eventually become a public circus.
So he drops out of that.
So now he is both no longer in Congress and no longer an incoming member or at least cabinet administration figure in the Trump administration. He has since announced he will be taking up a position at One American News, where he'll be hosting a primetime show. So, Matt to the media game, it's great.
To have you the lane he should be in to be hobsolutely.
And he's always been good at it. Yeah, let's be on a his talented.
He's good, right, He's got a big he's got a lot of people who like him, and at this point he's got a big personality exactly, that's what you need to be in this game.
So I have no doubt he'll be successful.
Now, we thought, okay, stusted ethics report, it's never going to come out. They say, no, no, no, no, no, he's not getting away so free, even though he won't be the attorney general, even though he's not even a sitting member of Congress, screw him. So basically they are still furious with him. Kevin McCarthy, who previously had allegedly read this report and had said previously he's like, I've
read all the reports, I've seen the text messages. That's the only reason Matt gatez hates me because Gates was one of the people who got McCarthy kicked out. It is speculated that McCarthy was behind the scenes encouraging all these members of the Ethics Committee, many of whom he raised a lot of money for, and he's like, no, no, no, get it out there.
He's like, screw him. We got to nuke his public reputation.
So it appears that this is up behind the scenes, long campaigned by Kevin McCarthy to try and to get this to the front. It has been successful, at least in terms of the vote. We haven't gotten the report yet. And by the way, I just want to say, for all these reports, release all of them, anybody sure, every single one?
That's everybody, invest any.
Payoffs, every ethics complaint, et cetera. You know, here's the thing they don't. This isn't a criminal proceeding. It's not about due process. If you're a member of Congress, you should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us.
So I'm happy about it.
Actually, yeah, No, Kevin McCarthy is gonna hunt Matt Gates until the day he dies, right, Like.
That is pretty clear.
And I mean there's some really basic just like human lessons here too, which is this would not be happening if Matt Gates hadn't been.
Like people hate this guy, Like people in Pocket really.
Hate this guy because he was he was an asshole and they just didn't get along with him.
I mean, it's really not ideological.
The only ideological part is like the fight he picked against Kevin McCarthy, which even though wasn't really ideological, there were some things that he wanted out of that, and then he aligned himself with you know, the small group that could hold up Kevin mcar these nomination is sent to Speaker at the House, So to the extent that that was ideological, I guess, but most of this is just personality. And so yeah, they took a secret vote.
This happened apparently a while ago. We're just now learning about it, and the report is supposed to be released sometime in the coming relatively soon coming weeks. And I also think it's pretty clear that you can say Gates, who I don't know that he has a lot of shame, did not want this to come out because when he got the attorney general nomination, originally he didn't have to He did not have to resign from Congress.
That's not a thing you have to do.
And then not only did he resign, and when he resigned, that report was supposed to come out two days later, so he did it, like in the nick of time. He resigns, and not only does he resign from this term, He's like, no, no, I'm just going to resign the seat I literally just won re election for. I'm also going to resign that seat in also an attempt to
keep apparently this report from coming out. So you know, he there's there are things in here that are clearly embarrassing to him that he doesn't want to see the light of day. We do have a response from Matt. We can put this up on the screen that is, it's interesting what he has to say here. I'll just read the whole thing and then saga, I get your reaction to it, So he says the Biden Garland DOJ
spent years reviewing allegations I committed various crimes. I was charged with nothing fully exonerated, not even campaign finance violation, and the people investigating me hated me. Apparently many people do, Matt. Then the very witnesses DOJD not credible, were assembled by House ethics to repeat their claims absent any cross examination or challenge for me or my attorneys. I've had no chance to ever confront any accusers. I've never been charged,
I've never been sued. Instead, House Ethics will reportedly post a report online that I have no opportunity to debate or rebut as a former member of the body. In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated, even some I never dated.
But who asked.
I dated several of these women for years. I never had sexual contact with someone under eighteen. Any claim that I have would be destroyed in court, which is why no such claim was ever made in court. My thirties were an era of working very hard and playing hard too. It's embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank, and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. I live a different life now, but at least I didn't vote for crs that f over the country.
So there you go. There's his response.
Of course, the most noteworthy line there is that he sent funds to women he dated, and even some he never dated, but who.
I never dated, just who asked?
Wow, Oh you know that's as guy.
He's just a nice guys.
When people come up to me, I always give up money, right, that's what you should do. That's goodness of your heart. It's the holiday season. You know who amongst us is not the son of a Florida scion milionaire.
It's just whose best friend is in prison for one tax I brought.
Or I don't I don't even remember.
Yeah, the whole this whole thing with the yacht and who the guy who was partnered with I think that story is too there.
There he was a victim of blackmail. That was a whole other thing.
Don't forget Matt Gates. His father is very, very wealthy and powerful. I think he's a former public official as well.
Anyway, So one thing is I think part of maybe the rationale and why people were compelled to vote for this report to come out is because even though he's taken his one American news network gig, I mean, it's not clear he's done with politics. Yeah, so I think it is an attempt also to spike his reputation and limit his prospects of coming back in what's going on with this Florida Senate seat.
Yeah, that well, that was a big question. And actually I don't think he was ever in running for senate.
Really, because there was some talk about it.
There was some talk of it.
It seems that Lara Trump, who is Trump's sister in law or sorry, daughter in law, wants the job. That's Eric Trump's wife, and she was obviously a major figure at the RNC, and so she's got a lot of interest in politics. To Florida Resident, to Ronda, Santa's under a lot of pressure to a point her it's not yet matter. It's not yet clear whether he's going to do that. Then there's a big question in about Gates
in his future. Apparently allegedly been wanting to run for governor, so apparently that's something that was there at least after DeSantis is gone. So you could see how One America could kind of be a bridge thing for him before he ran for the governor. But apparently him and Santa hate each other. So there's a lot going on here. I don't know what it is, but yeah, the Florida send a thing. I think Lara Trump will probably get it, but we'll see.
I mean, I would assume he had also been talked about for running for the North Carolina.
I'd yes, that's right, that was previous. But I think whoever it was, his name Tom tillis.
I think he's the one who's I think he's running for reelection, so that one's not going to be up, and he seems to be playing better with MAGA, and I'm probably not going to face a primary, and it's just way easier to just get a pointed to a seat and then defend that seat in a special election, which he almost certainly would win.
Now the Florida's a red state, so yeah.
But the other thing is, I think DeSantis maybe a little bit has his own eye on that Senate s he could appoint a kind of policeholder who's he good live, who you know he has an agreement with that they're not going to run again.
I don't know if he would.
He hates Washington. I mean, he hated being a congressman. I don't know why you'd want to be a senator, I mean a senator. Yeah, just to stay in the game. That'd be the only reason if you if you really wanted to. But I mean, by all accounts, he really did not like going back.
But yeah, I don't know. We it'll be it'll be interesting.