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We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal.
Indeed, we do lots of things happening.
So we've had a few preliminary court rulings go against DOGE, particularly with their access to the treasury the Trump administration this morning trying to fight back. President Trump asked about it yesterday, so I give you the lay of the land. With all of that, we've also got some interesting new polls out. Trump's approver rating doing pretty well. In Elon Musk's on the other hand, doing pretty badly, So we'll dig into all of those version what they may poortend for the future.
Elon and co.
Have taken aim at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That agency is effectively shuttered this week with potentially quite significant consequences. This is some pretty brazen self dealing from Elon and his sort of broligarch cohort, so we'll dig into what that could mean as well.
Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of.
The Democrats in the House, is now trying to mend fences with the billionaires who are upset with Democrats under the Biden administration, are jealous of the access that the Republican billionaires are getting and all the things and goodies that they're I mean, interest, incredible stuff.
Steve and I is floating a presidential bid. Kind of interesting I.
Could get beyond. He's against weed, you know, that's all. That's all I need.
Well, what I will say is he lacks one thing that the like ninety nine point nine percent of the Democratic Party. You know, he has one thing that most of the Democratic Party lacks, which is actual charisma. You know, point understands attention, not afraid of controversy, has charisma. His nice politics are kind of like, you know whatever, They're kind of like centristy, enlightened, centristing.
Lightned, centrist rich guide democrat.
But you know that's the vibe, that's the general vibe.
You got to take. You to take the pulse of the country.
You can do worse, for sure.
So anyway, we'll play you the clips from him and some of the past things he said about politics that we can take a look at as well.
And I have a monologue today.
I'm taking a look at the way that culture war is being used to usher in a pro oligarch agenda, CFPB being one example.
Of So watch it got to give him obligatory go birds for my in laws.
That's right.
It's one of the greatest days of their lives. I can guarantee you that that game. Look, I don't I don't watch a lot of Yeah, I don't watch a lot of football. I actually watched the entire thing, which is shocking for me, and I was just like, wow, I just have I could not believe the collapse of that. I gen't of the chiefs. I don't understand it either. I've been listening for a year. You know again, I don't even watch football. All you hear and you absorb
through the zeitguys Patrick mahomes sonst greatest football. And then you're like, this is like high school football, you know, like what's going on in your six sacks? Fix sacks?
That fumble time they had one first down, one first name higher, first half and like thirty yards.
I mean it was insane.
It was an outrageous, outrageous, insane blowout. There were a lot of funny jokes online like, oh, I had no idea they were still relying on on us.
It's like, maybe this is a de I t so I got a green tie on from my in laws in Philadelphia for the city Philadelphia, come to come to Low come to grow and love it after marrying into it. And I am very happy for them. Well, they're a very passionate fan base. You have to give them their culture. I think it's a music.
It is definitely a passionate fan.
In fact, I was shocked at how lopsided even the like fandom.
Yeah, we were talking about it was when.
The came out.
They got boots, Yeah, Taylor Swift got boots.
I thought it would be roughly even, but it was overwhelmingly a pro Philly crowd. The thing that I liked about it is it made the commanders in retrospect look better because even though that was also a romp by the Eagles, at least they put up somewhat of a fight.
This was jist unreal.
So yeah, so congratulations to the Eagles and all the Eagles fans out there.
Congratulations to you and your family.
Yes, thank you very much. Do not do it. Don't burn down the city. I get you know, let's just stay off the polls and all that. I know that last night it was supposed to be the crazy one, but even during the parade, they've they've been known for their shenanigans. But you can't hold him back. It is a crazy fandom. I encourage people, if you have the chance, to try and go to one of those Eagles games because it's an experience. That's what I had, at least
at the NFC Championship. Anyways, let's get to the newest indeed.
Okay, so we had a few preliminary court orders go against DOGE, in particular with regard to their access. They're trying to shut down USAID and the one that is catching a lot of attention with regard to their access at Treasury. President Trump yesterday was asked in the pre Super Bowl interview about this court decision and whether it was going to quote slow him down or slow Elon down in terms of what they're trying to do. Let's take a listen to how he responded irreparable harm.
What do you make of that? And does that slow you down on what you want to know?
I disagree with it one hundred percent. I think it's crazy. And we have to solve the efficiency problem. We have to solve the fraud, waste abuse, all the things that have gone in the government. You take a look at the USAID, the kind of fraud in there.
Then you've found some moneys goings.
Well, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of money that's going to places where it shouldn't be going.
Where if I.
Read a list, you'd say, this is ridiculous. And you've read the same lists, and there are many that you haven't even seen.
It's crazy.
So let's go and put the details up on the screen of this temporary restraining order that was issued by one federal judge. Now, my understanding is there's supposed to be a more complete hearing on this this Friday. Also update this morning that that Trump and his team have also filed to block even this temporary restraining order, so we can get to some more of the details on that at a moment, but this was the initial temporary
restraining order. A federal judge on Saturday issued a sweeping block on most Trump administration officials, including Elon Musk and his allies, from accessing sensitive Treasury records for at least a week while legal proceedings play out.
In New York.
Manhattan based US District Judge Paul Engelmeyer issued the middle of the night order after an emergency request by nineteen Democratic attorneys general warning that the efforts by Musk's so called Department of Government Efficiency allies to take control of Chargery's sensitive payment system, which have access to personal information of millions of Americans and the government's financial transactions, were
putting their residents at risk. Engelmeyer said he agreed with the state's assessment that the abrupt changes in policy implemented by the Trump administration had created a risk sensitive data would be disclosed or that the system could be hacked. He also said the states were very likely to show the new arrangement was legally improper. Though Ingle Mayor issued the emergency order, the case will ultimately handled by a US district judge, Jeanette Vargas and Joe Biden appointseee who
was confirmed to the bench last year. So that is the state of play. This order non only blocked the Doge people from access to this very sensitive treasury payment system that controls all six plus trillion dollars of federal spending by and large, also said that any data that had been pulled from that needed to be deleted. So,
you know, pretty sweeping order here, temporarily issued. And as I just mentioned, Sager, the Trump administration trying to fight back even against this temporary order while this is further litigator.
Yeah, we've got the order there's of this morning that I was just taking a look at, but basically asking for a vacate of the order and or a temporary stay. I mean, it is actually a pretty extraordinary order whenever you look at it, even no matter how you feel. I've been trying to wrap my head around this. We'll get to the discourse in a bit about whether to
ignore federal judges in the first place. But I mean, it does seem a little bit absurd that the Cabinet secretary, who was confirmed by the United States Senate at you know, at the behest of the executive is not allowed to access Department of Treasury data. Put doges side because Scott
bessen is included in the order. Additionally, as I understand it, previously, it was actually government contractors according to the Trump Administration's vacate motion to vacate and or stay that was filed yesterday, that traditionally has the access to the IT data and the Treasury Departments south. So anyway, so I was like, well, you know, is it really more secure or whatever in the hands of Booz Allen Hamilton or whomever federal contractor
is holding this. But the best thing is actually where I thought that the order was really off the mark. I mean, how can you block the United States Treasury secretary confirmed by the United States Senate from access to Treasury Department data? That just makes no sense.
I read the order differently.
I read it to be anyone from who's not in the Treasury Department, which would not include Scott Bessant.
And perhaps the language is unclear.
It says political appointees, special government employees, and any government employee detailed detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, access to Treasury depart and payment systems. But that is something that Republicans are really seizing on that, you know, this ambiguity means that it could even apply to Scott Besst. Again, it's a temporary restraining order. It's meant to apply just
for this week. But this is being used to really launch an all out assault on the idea of federal judges constraining the executive at all. And so the I think really big question this morning is whether or not the Trump administration is going to comply with this court order or other court orders. And just before we get to some of the things that cause us to raise that question at this point, there was also an order that went against their attempt to shut down USAID.
Could put that one up on.
The screen here as well, just to get the details there too. Judge block Trump from putting thousands of USAID employees on leave. The decision comes amid the first legal challenge against the push by Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk new Department of Government efficiency targeting US foreign aid programs this is going to be you know, another really significant battle. USAID is kind of the test case for
the Trump administration. Some of these cases they want to go up to the Supreme Court to challenge the Impoundment Control Act that says, you know, if Congress approporates money for program, you are then obligated. The executive doesn't get to pick and choose which things because Congress has the power of the purse. We know that part of Project twenty twenty five was, you know, an intentional.
Fight over exactly this issue.
Now, one thing you know, in talking to Emily that she raised is that even the Project twenty twenty five people, you know, they're very they are very careful in their planning of how they want to execute this and which cases specifically they think are the strongest cases to ultimately, you know, litigate this question at the Supreme Court. And what Elon has done has really sort of thrown a wrench into those carefully laid plans because he has been
so aggressive and over the top with his illegality. I mean, USAID, whether you like the agency or not authorized by Congress pretty you know, as an independent agency, pretty clear that this would be a violation of federal law. But in any case, this is going to be one of the big fights because you know, if they can win on USAID and basically say yeah, we can get rid of any agency that we want, then it's open season on Department of Education.
And obviously already see.
There's also a fight right now over the CFPP that we'll talk about a little bit. They're taking the same approach there as well. Any agency that they don't like, whatever Congress thought of it, and whether they authorize the funding or not, they would then be able to just strip it, lay off the employees, and you know, run rampant in destructions around the Federal Act.
It is a very good point that Emily made, and it's actually that this is the key to kind of get to the difference between the Silicon Valley like move fast and break things ideology, which is one that really goes back to like some of the founding law there as opposed to you know, when you're dealing with government, you're doing with especially with courts. You know, I'm very carefully planned legal challenges it could come back to bite
them at the same time to separate it out. So there's the legal case, but there's also the political and this is one where I mean I said this before when I was able to speak with you about USAID. I still think it's very smart strategies start with USAID because nobody cares about the USA. I d's point seven percent of the federal budget. It's pretty unpopular broadly foreign aid programs. I mean, trying to explain this to a normal person is basically like a process argument, like well, Congress,
and they're like, what are you talking about? And this is one of those where I'm really curious about the manifestation of quote unquote resistance and what it gets to. And so I was reading while I was gone. Matt Iglaci has had a really good story where he was talking about a very interesting piece of polling data which said that people who are heavy news consumers overwhelmingly voted
for Kamala Harris. And what I took away from that is that the more capital I informed you are, you know, the more like outraged that and not only out but you know, paying attention. You might understand the gravity of process and the potential for that, but you know, the average everyday voter is far more concerned about the Super Bowl commercials last night. They don't care about USAID. They don't not only don't you know what USAID is, don't
care about process. They really just care about results. And this is going to get to some of the polling data that we have in a little bit, and I think it accounts for why Trump's crew rating is so high. It also goes to why the Trump administration feels very comfortable. I mean, same thing with the CFPB. You may feel when the CFPP is gone if you're getting scammed, but you have ninety nine percent of Americans have no idea what the CFPP is. So yes, a lot is being
set up here. There is potential for major flashpoints in the future that can actually affect people. If we're talking about Medicare, you know, they got access to the Medicare payment system, social Security things like that. But as of right now, I'd say they're standing on pretty strong political ground. That's just my overall assessment from what I could see.
I mean, maybe I guess for me, I don't really particularly care that much about the rule rating. I just think that this is a you know, unconstitutional attack by one billionaire who happens to be the richest man on the planet, who has conflicts with all of these agencies. You know, if you look at the things that he's doing, it's also really clear the way so many of these actions are just blatant self dealing, right with USAID. Is
this the reason he went after them first? I don't know, but they were investigating the use of starlink satellites in Ukraine. CFPB we're going to talk about later. You know, he didn't want them regulating X as X just signed a deal with Visa, didn't want them regulating him, and you know.
They were about to start that.
All of these fintech companies, payment apps, all of this sort of stuff fell under the CFPB purview, and so they want that gone. So that's gone. Trump signed an executive order to take out a specific commission, a specific office within the Department of Labor that lo and behold happened. I'll also be investigating Elon Musk over employment alleged employment discrimination the National Labor Relations Board, which has now been gutted and literally can't do its job and is no
longer defending itself in court. Elon despises unions, like long time, very open about that. He's a union buster, He's a strike buster. And he is actually suing in court to render that whole body unconstitutional, and they are no longer
even defending themselves in court. I think this transitions into the next piece of this, which is there is also something we've talked about here before, an ideological plan outside of Project twenty twenty five that is more revolutionary, let's say, and Elon describes this as a revolution the ideological blueprint really laid out by Curtis Jarvin, and part of the idea there is you fire all the government employees, and when the courts try to stop you, and this is
words that came out almost verbatim from JD. Vance's when he was doing the podcast Circuit before he was elected a vice president, when the courts try to stop you, you just keep going. You just ignore them, you say, you know, enforce it with your army.
Good luck.
And there seems to be a lot of build up right now in that direction of making the case for why they should just ignore every court ruling that goes against them.
So JD.
Vance himself, we can put this up on the screen. This is probably the most significant of the Twitter discourse about whether or not these rulings should just be ignored. He says, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges are not allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.
Okay.
The whole point of checks and balances is that the court system is supposed to be a check on when the executive tries to seize power for itself that is not in fact legitimate.
So in jd.
Vance's conception here, the executive gets to decide for itself what power grabs are legal, constitutional and what are not. That is pretty obviously the polar opposite of the way that the system has been set up and you know, has been used in the past, even as examples here are like kind of off because obviously, if you know, a general commits war crimes, there could be a role for a judge. Their prosecutorial misconduct can also be litigated
through the court system. But you know, this seems to be making the case a case that he made previously. As I mentioned before, that if the judges and the courts strike against you know, issue orders that go against what they want to do here, they should just ignore them and keep going.
Yeah, but right now, look, as far as we are not right now they filed a temper or filed an injunction or whatever vacation for that, So that's not the ground that we're standing on. I think what they're I mean, look, I don't love the tone of the tweet. I can I say that. I think what they're getting to is really about what I mentioned earlier about the Scott Best genuine legitimate authority here over the purview of the government. And that is like kind of the big brain question
about how much of this is legitimate? So for how all of us, however much we may hate Doze or any of this, special government employees, czars and others do get access to federal government data like they have the ability to compel action. Now, the question here for the courts, for Congress and all of that is how much of this falls into the purview even in the legal authority of the executive. I think this is genuinely legitimate question.
But I mean it also is one where if you have to big brain, and I've been trying to think about, like, how did we get here like, how exactly what it is? And I think what has happened within MAGA and really why they have arrived at this position is if you consider the last four years, and I'm speaking purely from an analytical perspective of the way they see it, They're like, look, the court system, the legal system was used to convict Donald Trump, to come after him for the FBI. They
threw everything that they could at him. Clearly, they the Democrats, are the ones who broke the judicial filibuster. They're the ones who pushed the bounds. And I mean, look, there is also genuine examples many times over the Biden administration where Democrats flogged, hated the federal judges, and attacked legitimacy of the court. So it is a bipartisan problem, No, Like when the Supreme Court strikes down the what was it student debt and prior to that, you know they
freaked out. How about the eviction moratry the same thing? Well, sure, but I mean so far they've complied. But they've complied here as well. Right, they've filed an injunction. You're talking big, That's exactly what people have done in the past.
Do you feel do you feel confident that they're going to comply.
I feel relatively confident they will comply, just because that will be such a quote unquote norm breaker that it's one of those where you don't really come back from that. Now. When I say relatively confident, I'm giving you like sixty sixty five percent. Also, what do we have. We have novel legal authorities that people use all the time, you know, for how they govern themselves within the executive It is a genuine question of how the Supreme Court will even
rule on this. So would you really want to just not comply and rather just take it to the court If I had to get I bet Scotus would rule inside of the Trump administration here, especially with respect to those I don't know about USAID or others. There's also the same thing. I mean, USAID has not quote unquote been shut down, right, It's just that the agents or the building doesn't function, the agency doesn't come to work anymore.
There's genuinely different authorities. I was going back and reading about the way that Bill Clinton similarly went through the process of shedding a bunch of government employees transferring to contractors. There are same big questions here that were happening in the nineteen nineties after the budget reform which led to the explosion of federal contractors. So they have more legal
ground than I think people think. Whether they would come all the way to Scotus, the question I think really comes down to this, would they defy a ruling from the Supreme Court? I just don't think so, because it would very much open the grounds to a lot of the previous left talking points right about stacking the Supreme Court, Because if you're just going to do that, then that means that this thing has no legitimate authority, which is something that JD. Trump and others have staked so much
of their legacy in terms of the federal judiciary. So overall, do I think they're not going to comply? No, I could be totally wrong. You know, I'm very open to it. But I think the big talk that comes from MAGA, from around all of this is a feeling of total and complete political vindication over the legal system over I mean, just think about, you know, the amount that has happened to Donald Trump over the last four years. How many times not only counted out, but being told like, oh,
this is it for him? What is it? Ninety something felony charges, etc. And still not only be able to win the election, but to pray to triumph in the courts to be able to push these things off and still take power with the popular vote. So that's just broadly how I think we got to where we are. And JD also you have to understand his role, right is probably the attack dog of the administration. Now Trump himself was more circumspect. I would say, in that clip,
what did he say? He was just like, yeah, I don't agree with it, but that's not doesn't I'm not going to say I'm going to openly defy it, right.
He was not clear. Brebear said will this slow you down? And he said no, So was not clear. But let me let me ask you, Soger, because I mean, I'm looking at this and you're zooming out. It seems pretty clear they're following the Curtis Jarvin playbook aspects Butterfly Revolution is.
What it's called.
I know this stuff sounds crazy, but that playbook. JD's very influenced by him, Peter Thial Elon Musk, all these people very influenced by here him. And this is from it's a newsletter called The Nerd Reich. And here's the play. Number one, install a CEO dictator. Okay, that's Elon mus
very clear. His claimed control of the federal government is running rampant through it, cutting agencies that he doesn't like, destroying the CFPB, destroying the Partment of Education, destroying going after the Department of Labor that's been blocked at this point, destroying the USAID. Okay, so we see the parallel there. Number two persh the bureaucracy. Yarvin's plan called for retire all government employees.
Rage.
Rage. Yeah, that's what DOGE is doing.
That's what they are systematically doing, trying to push people out through this probably also illegal buyout offer, gutting teams, furlowing them, laying them off, etc. Build a loyalist army, so Yarvin says, Recruit an ideologically trained army to replace experts and enforce the new regime. We see that through Project twenty twenty five. We also see it through the
DOGE apparatics that are running through these various agencies. Not to mention, then you also have the ideological sort of like followers that Musk has himself cultivated in his own power base, that he's cultivated through x. Number four dismantled democratic institutions. Jarvin's blueprints strip power from federal agencies. We
already see that courts in Congress. The Congress part is, you know, seizing control the chargery payments, saying we get to decide Congress, we don't really care what you have to say. We get decide to decide what spending goes out and what doesn't.
You no longer have control.
I mean, they really are making trying to make Congress thoroughly irrelevant. And obviously Musk has undermined the credibility at federal government, downplayed legal oversight to fight regulatory authorities. And this is where you know, part of the question comes in Yarvin's blueprint specifically calls for defying the courts, something JD. Vance has said they should do, something that he and Elon Musk and a bunch of others are now floating on Twitter.
Do they go through with that plan?
Number five sees media and information control to maintain power. Jarvin says take over government journalism, academian social media to control public narratives. Elon Musk bought Twitter. Obviously that FCC has been going after various news agencies, so has Trump in terms of filing lawsuits and sort of demanding these bribes for him to leave them alone and go away. And so that seems like they're very much following the blueprint.
And part of that blueprint is when the courts try to block you, you say.
I don't care.
It's also you know, even if you don't buy that, this is what they're following, which I think at this point it's to me pretty undeniable given how closely it matches all of the steps.
We also know how Elon.
Operates in the private sector, like he brazenly flouts the law and so does basically every other CEO in the country, by the way, whenever it suthes him, because he knows that if you are an elite, you can basically get away with it.
And Trump knows this too.
I mean, Trump committed all sorts of crimes and he's president of the United States, so he also knows that you can basically get away with it. Elon also knows he has impunity because if he does run a foul of law and Trump can just pardon him, so no big deal. So they don't really care what the courts say. Some of these things. You know, maybe whether Scott Bessen can be denied charge or ash or whatever our borderline,
some of them are really not. Like even if we just take the example of firing all of the inspectors not all, but the vast majority of the Inspectors General, there is a law that says you have to give thirty days notice and there has to be caused.
They just didn't do it. I just you know, USAID.
Again, separate, independently established agency by Congress. It has to take an Act of Congress to get rid of this agency. And they're like, no, we're just going to get rid of it. We'll take some pieces of it, maybe put in under marker via the State Department, but we're just done with it. Apartment of Education, same thing, CFPB, same thing. And so you know, I don't know what gives you confidence that they're going to be like but we'll.
Follow the letter of whatever the court is.
I didn't say that, but what I do. I think the problem with Curtis explaining is, Look, I've known and read Curtis Yarvin for many, many years, and I think that his influence is both obvious but also vastly overstated. If and you know, by his own admission, he did not predict many of the results that happened here. He actually ridiculed at certain points people like Christopher Ruffo and others who thought it was legitimate and operable to change
the system as it is happening right now. He's admitted his defeat after Trump's first two weeks, and he said that he was wrong. But taking back that playbook, if you think about what that playbook is, it is an attempt to establish one party rules. That's what FDR and the New Deal it.
Is he wants. I mean again, he wants a monarchy, Elon Musk as a CEO dictator and Trump as chair of the board.
I actually think that's the playbook, That is the plan. This is This is the important thing to understand. That is every single thing you just laid out is effectively what FDR did in the early nineteen thirties. No, it is.
I mean, there was a guy named remotely True.
Look give me the attempt to explain here we had people like Tommy Cochrane and Tommy the Cork and Harry Hopkins and others who were very similar now non elected, special appointed bureaucrats who created all sorts of throw it at the wall programs who moved earth and mountains or whatever you get past certain congress No, but not many of them actually weren't. And actually they would separately appropriate and move bureaucrats around. They had a strike team very
similar to DOSE. But step back and further think about the things that you're talking about there about institutions, about taking over media and others. A friend of mine, Juliu's Crime, has said before that America always has one party rule. It's just that the opposition party becomes one that is
effectively subservient. So, for example, in the New Deal era, there was an attempt by people like god Robert, Robert Taft and others, isolationist Republicans who are anti New Deal in others that fought against FDR and Harry S. Truman for twenty years, and they eventually lost. They lost when Dwight Douiy Eisenhower became the President of the United States, and when he did, he effectively codified the New Deal, social security, the expansion of government, and accepted this new role.
What Curtis has always looked back on fondly, I guess, is the establishment of FDR as a quasi monarch of the United States, and he was by all accounts, and not only in terms of his terms, his total and command of the government. He attempted to pack the Supreme Court. He very often many presents Lincoln and others right have ignored the Supreme Court, have decided, you know, in extraordinary moments to say that we're going to move in a
different direction. And even if you look back on Lincoln, right, it's not exactly like the habeas corpus thing is so tarnishing his legacy. What Curtis understands here was effectively saying, if you want regime change, you have to change the
whole regime. Now, the regime of the United States has been neoliberal and effectively culturally left wing now for basically twenty years, especially yeah, I would say over twenty years, especially pep Far and onwards, from the establishment of the Obama dynasty, etc. Neoliberal worshipment with the worshiping of technocratic neoliberalism on top of the explosion basically and move of the cultural left inside and marching through all institutions right.
And so what Curtis is advocating for is to say, no, this is the only attempt to roll back the institutional takeover of cultural liberalism of all aspects of American life. Now, even he has said he thinks that's a nearly impossible project. And also, once something has been affected, it's very difficult to roll it back because the Democrats could just win
and they could bring uh this forward. My point only is that what if you look at it through this lens of an attack not necessarily on executive power, but as trying to roll back all of this complete step change in American culture and life, all of the Trump orders will make a lot more sense.
Your sager is quote from Curtis Jarvin. If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia. Hes I know what he wants dictator like, My question for you is are you.
Good with that? Means? Are you are you good with FDR?
Dictator?
FDR passed his programs through Congress. Let me read you the list.
I know what they are. I know about one hundred days.
Emergency Banking Act, Glass, Agricultural Adjustment at National Industrial COGAR Acts, Civil Civilian Conservation Corps. And by the way, some of these things were struck down by the Supreme Court and guess what he abided by that Social Security Act, Wagner Act, Works Progress Administration, Fair Labor Staters Act.
These were passed through.
Congress, not from some dictator king who just seized control of the federal government. He had a supermajority, so we had a because through elected representatives, through this thing we called democracy. So yes, he had a lot of power because he had a much larger mandate, massively larger than
what Donald Trump has. But I mean, that's I guess that's just my question for you is like, are you, as you're trying to explain, like the thinking and the well, they're mad at the Democrats for this, and they don't like the cultural institutions for that. Are you comfortable with the remedy being a CEO dictator king usurping the power of Congress and the court and remaking and remaking the country however they want to remake.
It under Elon? Absolutely not. But if you're asking me in an FDR context of like, am I cool with FDR? Yeah? Absolutely? If it was if it's is it nineteen, if it's nineteen thirty six, yes, no, no question.
I'm asking you about this situation right now. Well, twenty twenty five. Are you comfortable with Elon Musk as the CEO dictator of the country with Donald.
Trump's chairman of the board.
No, I'm not.
And you do you think that that is in fact the plan that they're trying to affect it?
Whether you law are, whether.
They are successful or not is an open question. Do you think that is the plan?
No, I don't. I think that's Elon's plan. I do not think that's Trump's plan. I definitely don't think that's JD's plan. And I think this is the fundamental tension of the Trump administration. And this actually gets to the bigger problem, which is the fact that Elon himself is
not aligned totally. And I think you're doing your own monologue about this specifically, which is Elon has very very different, you know, interests, and at the end of the day, is actually a separate power force in a way that the people I mentioned, Harry Hopkins and Tommy the Cork
were employees and we're basically subservient to FDR. So I think that the fundamental tension here is that you really have the quote unquote CEO person who's trying to enact rage and all this who has a very different ideological agenda than many of the voters in the Trump administration. I think that's actually why I'm not quote unquote comfortable with it. I think that the prop and what I'm saying.
If there was a different CEO dictator, you to be comfortable.
Yes, yes, because listen, there are many things.
You're in favor of, like a monarchy in the.
I am in favor. If you were to call FDR a monarch thing, yes, I'm in No, this is not what str did.
I'm talking about today in the here and now, what they are trying to accomplish. If you had, instead of Elon Musk in the role JD. Vance in the role as CEO dictator of the country, with Donald Trump the chairman of.
The board, you'd be cool with that.
Bay Like we're done with.
Democracy, We're having a king. That's where we are.
Is that the use of the terms, the use of the terms in the American context is the closest we ever got was FDR. So if we were FDR style, yes, absolutely, Now would I be comfortable with that?
Not what they're doing.
I'm trying to exprest.
F DR went through Congress. They are trying to complete like you're taking this to literally the role of Congress.
They're taking this to literally and not at that time what they're doing because at that time there were no government agencies that existed, and so the way to enact like crazy change was to create new agencies. Right, Whenever you are doing a revolt against institutions, what do you do? You take over those institutions and you try to dismantle them. In fact, this is probably more analogous to the Bolshevik revolution in taking over all of the institutions, burning them
down from the Czarist illegitimate regime. I think we would agree, right and basically trying to enact a new form and a new paradigm shift. Now, none of this is one to one because obviously things rhyme. What I'm saying in the context of where we are right now, if it is aligned, and part of the reason why I don't feel so alarmed, like you said, is I don't believe
what you do. I don't think they're going to defy a Supreme Court order if they do five alarmed fires, you you do accept that at least Elon is trying to effectuate this butterfly revolution, which calls which he's gone step by step, and which does call for ignoring and defying the courts, something he has done in the past.
By the way, I don't think something JD Vance has explicitly called for multiple times. Something they are, you know, on Twitter, basically fomenting popular consent for going again and just ignoring any federal court order that goes against them like that. That is what they're doing right now.
Again, whenever they actually defy a Supreme Court order, then I'll say something. But at the current time, I don't think that that's happening. I think we disputed that jd quote before, as we did on our last look it up I did. We talked about it. Yah, show me he specifically. There's a whole Reason article about this. I mean, look, if we want to do it, we can. I read it last time. How it has JD Vance raised the specter of open disregard for court rulings. It's right here.
I will send it to our group chat so that we can all discuss it and we can look over
the transcript. We can even put it on said this as a pull, as he said, I So, I think what you can do in the Senate is push the legal boundaries as far as the Supreme Court will let you take it to basically make it possible for democratically accountable people in the executive and the legislator to fire mid level up to high level civil fervents like that, to me is the meat of the administrative state twenty twenty one podcast appearance, which I believe is the same.
One twenty three one.
Fire every single mid level, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. That's what they're doing the Chief and he further suggested that if the Court's intervened, Trump should respond by saying, the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it. Very much imployment here, and he's also saying the same shit on Twitter.
Right now, Here's what the Reason fact check said. I think, if you consider the full podcast, advance is not actually calling for the defiance of the Supreme Court. The Andrew Jackson line is almost cliche at this point, is apocryphal. Anyway,
Jackson almost certainly didn't say it. Now again, we could say parsing in all of this is almost foolish, because let's see what they actually do when they're in power, and let's get back to the meat of what we're talking about is if you think about the twenty twenty five Trump administration, what is the actual goal. As I've been trying to say, it's about dismantling technocratic neoliberalism and turning back the tide of all institutions in America. That
is both how they see it. I think to a certain point that is what the American people voted for. Now when we put those two things together, it makes sense about how the whole coalition has come together. And I spent a lot of time trying to think about this through line because it can seem really inconsistent to have liberals like RFK Junior and Tulca Gabbard and Mark Andresen and Elon Musk and Trump and JD people completely
across the ideological spectrum. You put all of those people together, what unites them It is being oppositional to the quote unquote technocratic neolip point of view in almost every way. So with Elon you think about him as the most unconventional CEO basically of all the time, built two companies in spaces that were never supposed to work, both in SpaceX and in cards to find the conventional wisdom. For crypto, it's about attacking for this is why you do the CFPV.
It's about attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take on the legitimate financial system. Now you may think that's bad, but that's the impetus for RFK Junior. It's about what it's about the establishment of healthcare, vaccines, all of that. It's anything that thought. For Tulsi Gabbard, this is somebody who literally whose entire career has basically been trying to
be against the security state and others. Now they're all have been compromised in many, many different ways, but the through line of those three of those things is against these institutions, which are both governmental, non governmental, academic and others.
That's fine, go to Congress.
Don't get to just run rampant and cut out the pieces you don't like, because that's illegal.
It is a crime spree. Now.
RFK Junior, I think is a disgusting human being who puts us in danger, and I think it's a whrror that he is being confirmed to run HHS. It was done through legal channels. He was part of the I think he is a big part of the reason Donald Trump got elected. He has now been confirmed. The Senate is majority Republican. They're going to buy and large get with.
It.
Was the same thing with Telsey, got the same thing with all of these people.
Right.
I don't like it, but.
I'm not saying it's illegitimate or it's a constitutional crisis. When you just go into the treasury payment system and are like, I'm going to cut off the pieces. I don't like me one person, Elon Musk, who you know, I mean, whether it was Donald Trump, even if he was, you know, as the legitimate elected president was the one doing the picking and choosing, that would still be raisingly illegal, unconstitutional assault on the way our entire government is set up.
So these things are very distinct. And you know the piece of this too that I don't know where you get your confidence from, is Trump has done everything Elon has wanted him to do.
I mean, Trump is out there issuing.
Executive orders about South African like boor the resettlement which.
They don't even want apparently they don't even.
Want, which because they claim they're indigenous, which don't even get me started down that particular rabbit hole. But this is clearly coming directly from Elon Musk. As I mentioned before, the executive order to ban to dismantle this one particular part of the department lever which just so happens to
be investigating Elon Musk and Tesla. You have the secretary of the Air Force that Trump has now put it into place just so happens to be the guy who greased the skids for Elon Musk SpaceX to get massive contracts, effectively rigged the contracting process to make sure that SpaceX would win. Oh no, he's got him as the Air Force secretary. Okay, Trump has completely changed his views on crypto and is now you know, totally pro crypto, got
his own shit coin. I got a lot of questions too about who is who the whales are that are involved there, because it's also very possible deal was made of basically like we will make you wealthy on the level that we are, and we're you're going to stay on in jail. Elon's gonna help you win and we're gonna get to do what we want to do. We're
gonna run the government the way we see fit. You know, all of these like agency hands that people are so excited RFKA and told seeing whatever people I think are terrible people. But whatever they're like I said, legitimate, These
people are irrelevant now, like they don't matter. What matters is what Elon decides, whether you know, whether you're agency is going to stay or go, how much budget you're going to have, how you know, how much enforcement you're going to have, whether your agency having to tick him off and try to regulate him, like from his perspective, from Elon's perspective, and I do think Elon is running the show at this point. There is no sign that
Trump has resisted him on anything. H one to B is another example where Trump completely changed his orientation to be like, yes, I want you to have your indentured servant workforce to whatever extent you possibly do. The reason Elon, I think and I think you might agree with this part. Elon has cast himself in the role as the hero and savior of humanity. He truly believes he is the most brilliant person on the planet, that he alone can rescue us from whatever ails us, whatever ails the country,
whatever ails the world. You know, he has these fantasies about colonizing Mars and whatever, and so he has almost this sort of the like effective altruist mindset of like, since I've decided these are the existential threats to humanity me alone, I've decided it justifies anything to get to those ends, right, It's the definition of the ends justify
the means. So if you know, kids with AIDS in Africa have to die, or if the Democratic Republic of America has to come to an end and laws have to be broken, and I mean that's the least of it.
He doesn't care.
Anything justifies the ends that he has decided on as himself again cast in this role as hero and savior of the universe. And so that to me, very systematically is what he's pushing towards and what is playing out. And no, I don't see any resistance from Trump, and I see Jdvans very much echoing, you know, and trying to bolster the arguments that Elon is making in this.
I don't think that you're wrong on a lot of the track that you just laid out. The question is again where it arrives in terms of genuine impacts. So you could look at it the way you just did, and I think that's I think it is totally legitimate. I think that's the way a lot of people who are reading the news who are elite Democrats and others who are feeling about this because they can understand the stakes,
the process, et cetera. The problem that I think is that, look, if we're actually talking about payments with the Treasury Department, they think cut off a single payment right now? We we will? I mean, I think we would know at this point, wouldn't we? How do you know? I mean, like there's fairly certainly there's.
Also reporting that they were changing code in the back end to facility to facilitate the ability to cut off payments and also reportedly to make it more difficult to track.
But I think that's a pretty distinct difference than actually that's a very distinct difference in my opinion, then actually cutting it off again Usaid. USAID workers are not coming to work the budget. It's still appropriated as far as I understand it. The payments and all of that, at least some have gone through.
No pals are not going through.
No no haven't gone through to certain programs which they say that they don't agree with. But not all quote payments have been shut down.
How much all payments including PETFAR which was specifically supposed.
To be exempted.
But if you only have you know, one hundred and two hundred workers at USAID, nothing is going It's.
A different process, something that's going out.
But and it actually still gets to the end result here, which is that is quote unquote is the Department of Education if it gets shut down but all funds continue to go to the states. Is that a bad outcome that most people will feel. I don't think so. I have deep skepticism as to whether people will care at all whether some Department of Education bureaucrat has a job if their state funding still continues to come through.
But how is the state funding going to come through if there are no employees to issue with stagger?
Well, I mean not the way that it's not.
The way they need to work, But how many do you need? I mean, And this is the genuine question that gets to kind of the way that Elon has run Twitter. I'm not even disagreeing that Elon doesn't have
a completely separate agenda. I don't know for sure whether and this where they're analysis of whether Trump has completely deferred to him is entirely correct, because he still is playing small ball in a certain way and This is part of why again, I want to step back, and if you look at the way that DOGE was originally sold, and actually if you look at Vivek Ramaswami's decision not to join DOJ, you can maybe give him some political credit because what's the thing he identified, which was the
word the bad way that he was taking, the bad way that he was going down this road. The way that he was going down the road, according to Vivek, is that he believed that the way that they are going down was from this technical approach as opposed to a legalistic and more Project twenty twenty five attempt to dismantle the government, one which was like a carefully laid plan. He specifically appears to have dissented from Elon whenever it came to this approach of this. Well, I mean you
could call it that. I'm sure. I'm sure I know that that's what many people would like to believe. I think it's a bit of a fan full term here currently, But that's fine. You know, we can all use the rhetoric that we decide. But my point that it comes back to is we're talking about point seven percent of the federal budget. Even we look at the Department of Education. These are completely these are rounding errors. They told us they were going to cut what was it, five trillion
dollars from the federal government from the federal budget. I believe Elon has now revised his federal spending to if we can cut five to ten percent, which is already, by the way, a massive retraction from where he originally was. Much of this is almost an attempt, like at the political level, to initiate what I think is the response that they're getting from the Democrats, but at a fundamental level is not really altering the entire United States federal government.
Like nobody in the country is feeling except the people who work here in DC, and that's where all the protests are hilariously is because it's the bureaucracts. The employees that work for these agencies cares about USAID. Nobody cares about a mid level Department of Education person. It gets back to my point here about the disman of these institutions, of these make work programs, of these NGOs and others. If you want to attack the center of gravity of
what liberalism is. Liberalism is about the worship of elites and institutions at fundamental at an operational level. That is what the Elon, Curtis Jarvin and Trump attack really brings it to full circle.
It's about having a dictator. You're right. I mean that's yeah.
It's an attack on the institutions, dismantling them and installing Elon as a CEO dictator.
Well, I think that again, I think that's Elon's plan. I think that is Elon's and.
He's effectuating it like he's putting it into place. So, I mean, you're right about you know, is he gonna The amount of the point is not how in spite of what Elon says, The point is not a government efficiency. The point is not shrinking the federal budget and deficit blah blah blah. The point is consolidation of power in the hands of Elon Musk.
That's the point.
That's you're right, yes, yeah, And Elon has been given carte blanche, is being.
Backed up Trump administration by Trump and JD.
Vance.
So and also, you know, it's not true by the way that just the protests are only in DC. They're having protests elsewhere. But also senators say they're getting sixteen hundred calls a minute, right, now freaked out about what's going on. That is as opposed to the typical forty calls per minute. So it's not you know, to say, oh, it's only federal government and employees that care about this.
That's just factually not true.
Okay, But it gets to my neurotic liberal point about people who are obsessed with that that is not But we're the ones who are the most freaked out.
Okay, But yeah, people should be paying attention. That's not a bad thing for people to be paying attention to the news. Our whole business.
Happy to have you all here. But as I've tried to tell you all many many times, if you read the news every day, you are very out of step with the general public. I have deeply reconciled myself to that. I mean, think about the way that Americans experience the world. They're like, oh, they're shutting down the US idea. Okay, didn't even know what that was. But Department USA. I hate the Department.
They're going, they're going, okay, USA, D you're wrong about Department of Education. The public school system, especially in rural or.
You're talking about funding. You're not separate from the actual Department of Education.
And having a Department of Like, if you're going to get the funding, you have to have some sort of bureaucracy in order to issue the pelgrants and the special education funding and the Title I fund. All of these things have to go through some sort of bureaucracy, and it's called the Department of Education. They're in the Social Security systems. They're in the National Oceanic the like hurricane
Watch weather systems. They're in the Medicare systems. Elon is out there post reposting Mike Lee about how social Security is a scam and you should just have a you know, private market based retirement account. That's like, all of these things are on the table. He's already moved way beyond usaid there. We're going to talk in a little bit about him dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which means that you are going are much more likely to get scammed.
Like.
This is an agency that was set up after the financial crisis to try to curb some of the accesses of banks, Wall Street and other types of scammers. It has been very successful too, by the way, has returned some twenty one billion dollars to consumers that is gone now as well the nationale RELATIONSHS where your ability to organize, so.
To be like, oh, it's just the usaid, it's.
Already gone way beyond that. That's already like, you know, that's already old news. We're talking about way down, way down the line in terms of the things that he is targeting. I just want to get through these couple of tweets that we have and then we can move on to the polling, because I do think that's the next logical place to go, and some of we've already previewed.
So we've got Tom Cotton, who is also you know, attacking the judge here, outrageous Obama Judge Paul Englemeyer didn't just bar Elon Muskin dog treasury systems, barred the Secretary of the Treasury himself. Again, I didn't read it that way, but I admit the language's of ambiguous.
With outsiding a.
Single law that's a lie, or even allowing the Trump admin to appear in court, the Trump administration is going to have their chance to make their case. This outlaw should be reversed immediately, and Engelmeyers should be forbidden by higher course from ever hearing another case against the Trump administration. We can put the next piece up on the screen. So Mike Lee says about this court ruling, this has the feel of a coup, not a military coup, but
a judicial one, to which Elon replies yes. Elon also reposted a longer post that was calling specifically for ignoring the decisions of the federal judges. And then the last piece here is there was reporting about there was a contractor from Booz Allen Hamilton who wrote a report saying that describing the Doge incursion to Treasury as a quote insider threat, so you know, significant threat risk based on
what they understood to be happening. The Booz Allen Hamilton now have said oh no, no, we didn't mean it, and we fired that person, etcetera, etcetera. But you know, people who are looking at this, many of them find it.
To me, it's one guy in Booz Allan. I'm not taking it all that seriously. So okay, thank you for your opinion, sir,