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How do people feel about Donald Trump?
Let's ahead and put this up there on the screen from CBS News. This is the first major indications that we have right now are feeling about the Trump administration some twenty days in so far describing Donald Trump. The top answers this is plus or minus two point five percent in terms of the margin of error, tough sixty nine percent, energetic, sixty three percent, focus, sixty percent, effective fifty eight Let's go to the next one. Please Trump
and the campaign promises, is he doing seventy percent? Quote what he promised in the campaign, thirty percent different from what he promised. Now the coup de gras shall wait. Let's go to the final one. Trump overhaul job rating fifty three percent approved, forty seven percent disapproved. He's got a positive approval rating, something literally unheard of whenever he
was the previous president of the United States. And if you look at some of the individual option or individual things that he has espoused and or is attempting to do, you're going to see some similar support, although there's very important divergence, which we will get to.
So let's go to the next one.
Trump administration's program to deport immigrantcy legally in the United States. Some fifty nine percent approve, forty one percent disapproved. Can we go to the next one please? And here we have interesting numbers that Andrew Kasinski flagged from Yuga of Trump is some plus ten percent approval with voters under thirty, almost unheard of for Republicans. It definitely underscores the shift
the whole idea of you know, mail voters. You could see do you see that number there with a mail voters as astounding us trying to Now this is where the diverges comes. Into and this is what I'm gonna
get to. Of all the things that Donald Trump, I unfortunately was not able to be here on Thursday to rage against this has said that has concerned me most, and what I think would destroy both this country and his presidency is this, US trying to take over Gaza would be thirteen percent good idea, forty seven percent bad idea, forty percent not sure depends to the forty.
Percent in side of the country on this one.
To the forty percent, I beg I plead get with the program, get with the bad idea. There is not a single thing that Donald Trump has done this presidency that has not shocked, appalled, outraged, like incited me to like rage and potential violence if this were to happen.
Then his insane.
Proposal to take over Gaza, which he seems completely committed to, let's go ahead and take to listen to that which he said yesterday on his way to the Super Bowl.
Committed to buying and owning goes as far as US rebuilding it. We may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it. Other people may do it through our auspices, but we're committed to owning it, taking it and making sure that Hamas says it moved back, there's nothing to move back into the places a demolition site.
It'll be.
The remainder will be demolished. Everything's demolished. I mean, you can't live in those buildings right now.
They're very unsad.
So we went from Trump the peacemaker ceasefire too, we're not.
It's so crazy.
I thought that the worst thing that would happen is like, all right, Israel can hand it over. I did not for one million year's thing. Oh, we're actually going to be the ones who administer it. Now Trump says, we're not going to have a single troop on the ground. Okay, good luck trying to find that piece of property without it mating. Something potentially like even worse and more outrageous is removing all the United States actually expelling all of
these people instead of the Israelis. I mean, it's one thing, you know, these two people where they're going to ethnically cleanse them.
It's like, all right, well that's on them. But this is like us not only complicit and shipping arms to.
Facilitate it, but like actively participating. There's that I saw a tweet going around immediately after Trump has said that, and this is not an endorsement, but it's like that is going to incite more terrorism against the United States, And like any potential thing an American president has done since the invasion of Iraq, I'm like, Okay, I'm not getting into a.
Damn skyscraper anytime soon after.
I am beside myself over this, And I'm beside myself over it because he's totally serious.
And this is where the Trump administrated.
There is not a single thing that you could do that would not sink your presidency faster than the political administration of Gaza. Then United States sold service members putting their lives at risk worse getting killed in the because
of the Israeli military's Operation Base. I mean, there is nothing, there's not a single thing a solution to this crisis or whatever that could be worse than what is being proposed here turning the Arab world against US, I mean, you know, inciting terrorism, but at its absolute worst is for some reason Israel gets to destroy Gaza and then we are the ones who have to pay for it, facilitate the ethnical that they want to get rid of all of these I never in my wildest.
Dreams did I think that we would be where we are to. I am just thank god.
You know, hopefully the American people can speak out against it. I'll tell you this if they if a single American soldiers foot in Gaza, I'm going to be out there like some Vietnam War hippie in the street. Like I'm not kidding. That is a complete red line. I think it should be for everybody. What did we not learn our lesson? And you know, with Trump, this is where
his arrogance. One of the things I predicted here on the show is like every president who wins a popular but especially in their second term, they always overreach in some way and it ends up back from I would never predict it that it would be this, but this is the if you want a ticket to not only losing for a generation, destroying your legacy those now this would be a footnote to a disastrous Middle war in the Middle East.
So I just I have nothing else to say about it. It's insane. I could go on for it makes me want to lose my mind.
Where is the anti war coalition? I'm seeing people who I've known for twenty years, who have spoken against neo cons and saying, oh, we can you know, happily administer God?
Am I losing my mind? I mean what happened.
I knew that the right and many others were craven whenever it came to Afghanistan, and they never really believed what they said.
I didn't really believe that it was this bad that we.
Were actually going to be on board, you know, imperialism through bullying like Greenland, I'm like.
Fine with but this, this is too much.
It was like this is this is one of those where I mean, we've learned no lessons. It seems Trump is totally serious, Like it's one of those where something I have learned here with the second term. I'm like, no, no, let's take him totally seriously.
I appreciate you saying that, because that's a lot of the Copeice is like, oh, well, it's just a negotiating position and he's not serious.
I'm like, no, I don't know why you.
First of all, if he says and he said it now repeatedly, right, you should take it seriously. And number two is to your point, like if we've learned anything in this second administration, it's like, no, even the wildest things, even things that he frankly never talked about at the Gambagne trail are completely on the table. So yeah, not a very popular move there, but one that he's in. And you know this, it seems like it comes from Kushner,
who floated originally like waterfront property blah blah blah. And this is Trump's like deranged real estate brain where he just sees like dollar signs and you know, certainly doesn't care about the people there or what it would entail. But it's it's I mean, it's disgusting, it's a moral it's a catastrophe. It's just it is even worse than what I could have imagined.
I never could have cooked something up like Trump.
Would have done, like and I think I had a pretty dire expectation of what his policy Vizavi Israel would be.
This is actually worse.
Yeah, I mean, and look, even though it's even granting Israel aid and all that, I mean, it wouldn't be super popular, but people wouldn't particularly care that much. It's not going to be a deciding factor in the election or in the future, and it would it would definitely be something that people pay attention to foreign pop But this is one of those. Again, nothing will sink you
like an unpopular foreign war. And the craziest thing is even the most hardened neo conservatives who in Washington, not even they could have cooked up US administration and takeover of Gaza, Not even they could have imagined such an audacious scheme. And I mean, did you I'm sure you guys, Ryan covered it. Did you see Beebe's face whenever Trump's the even he appears to be taken up, He's like, wait, what is like?
Wait? I thought it was ours. I didn't think it was gonna be.
Bbe looked totally happy to make well, look I totally had why.
I think he's happy because now not only the two state solution lip service is literally just it's dead because now it doesn't even matter, right, it's often it's a different universe of what now we're talking about.
Oh, if America doesn't own it, then Israel will own it.
But the idea of some Palestinian authority like this is fake, It's gone. H The question now is like all of this open uh you know, uh talk of hitting Egypt and Jordan and all of these people with tariffs, and this is one of those where Look, this is serious shit, Like they were talking about two something million people Jordan.
According to Trump, it's one point seven or one point eight, which is also an omission that they've probably killed more like half a million Palestinians.
I did not even think about it. Yeah, that's crazy. Okay, So one point fine, one point seven million. That would fundamentally change the ethnic makeup of Jordan and of Egypt.
Why would they tolerate that?
What of the Egyptians and the Jordanians told us from day one? Three point one billion in aid to Egypt every year is not going to buy you their political subservience on this question on something that maybe Suez or whatever, it's a little bit different, but we're not talking about Canada trade war, Mexico trade war. This is a like political legitimacy question of the Jordanian and the Egyptian regimes that are in power. They can never accept this status quo.
Same with the Saudi's the UAE. I mean this is this is the perfect recipe for a complete alignment against the United States and the region for inciting terrorism. But I mean again, worse if we were just to think of it from our perspective Why should an American soldier die for the political administration of Gaza.
Why should we first also pay for it.
So we facilitate the destruction, and so we pay for the destruction, and then we pay for the rebuilding. That's like some disaster capitalism meme that's out there. You can't even make, you know, that's like out of a book of Nom Chomsky's fantasy novel to create this entire situation. I've gotta say, I'm very pointed to and Steve Whitcoff, who I genuinely had confidence in bringing about the ceasefire and all of that, but now even he appears to be you know, back saw.
His trip to Gaza to justify this talk.
And this, by the way, there are things that we've been predicting, honestly from the beginning, not that the US would own Gaza, but that they would destroy it so much that then they say, gosh, no one could live there. It's a humanitarian thing to do well, whose poor people.
Out of there?
Right, And that's what Whitcoff used his trip to Gaza to do, to say, it's so destroyed, there's no people are going to the north and they're coming back because there's nothing there, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean it's true, we did, you know, we did help the Israelis thoroughly.
Destroy and demolish it.
And I think the end goal always in the Israeli's mind, was so that they could have this moment of saying and gosh, that's you know, we just we got to deal with moving these people out of this territory.
It's a shame.
You'll remember the Biden administration floated something not us taking it over, but also floated, hey, why don't we set up some tensity.
I was going to say, they in a more neolib way where they're.
Like, well, us and the European Union will coalition coalition of people will pay.
For the admittment. It's like, well, okay, the net effect is the same.
And I mean, I guess that's one of those where this was probably an end result in some administrative form.
But to just say we're going to buy it and own it.
I mean, the MAGA high IQ cope on this one is like, oh, he's negotiating, but I'm like, but negotiating to what what right?
I mean, no matter what, this is going to be bad for us.
Right, We don't need to negotiate because like we own these people, like the Israelis, you know. So anyway, there's that. In addition, listen, I do want to just to go back quickly to the overall approval rating. I do think there's something to Elon Musk is a bit of a heat shield for Trump right now.
Oh, it's an interesting theory, is.
And this is part of why I have always thought that it is unlikely that there's going to be a severing in the near term of this relationship because they both get a lot. I mean, Elon gets everything that he wants and Trump, you know, Elon's taken a lot of the heat. Trump can kind of go. He's golfed like a million times already since he's been golfed with Tiger. The other day, I think that was just yesterday. I was golfing with Tiger and Charlie Woods talking about the Live PGA merger deal.
Blah blah blah.
Who's Charlie Woods?
Is you that's Tiger's son?
Oh?
Okay, yeah? Is he good?
He is very good?
Okay, yeah, very good.
In any case, Trump gets to do whatever he wants, and Elon's taken a lot of the heat, and you know, so I think there's something to that. It's also worth pointing out that Biden at this time in his presidency had a plus fourteen approval rating, So presidential honeymoons are also a real thing.
Absolutely, you're I mean, look, it's early, it's only twenty days. Trump is much more of a polarizing figure and was elected in different shays.
Yeah, for sure.
So I mean I think, you know, you have to compare people to their contacts. So within the Trumpian contact, who was literally president, to have a positive approval rating is nuts. I see danger for him in the Elon way. I see danger for him With Goz. I think Goazza would mostly immediately sink him. Look at Afghanistan. You know, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. A disastrous foreign conflagration can sink you like no other one.
Well, I mean, I also look at a rock with George W. Bush just by the end of his presidency, what his approval rating was like in the twenties.
Yes.
I actually recently was talking with someone and they were like, man, the jubilants, the change, and I was like, guys, it's just too short. And this is where you like you just need to read a book George W. Bush into I mean, imagine twenty days in the George W.
Bush administration.
The second term I would have been like, America is an evangelical Christian country, we are neo conservative, we are nation building, and by eighteen months we've tried to privatize social security. We have a thousand dead soldiers and service members in Iraq. The American people blow out the midterms for the Democratic Party. Oh and then to put a bow on it, we have the financial crisis and Barack Obama wins Indiana.
So let's all take a step back and let's look at where the risk is.
Well, the risk the other risk, Yeah, the other risk is with regard to.
Inflation.
Yeah, so I was about to get to yeah, which is.
You know, people still are like we kind of like, did you do something about this whole price high price situation?
And you don't really seem to have your eye on the ball there.
If anything with tariffs is probably going in the opposite direction. So we can put up on the screen the numbers not enough focus on prices sixty six percent, So a super majority say you got to refocus your priorities here only thirty one percent say it is the right amount. He got asked by Brought Barrick yesterday in advance of the Super Bowl about when families are going to be able to feel prices going down.
Let's take a listen to what Trump have to say.
When do you think families would be able to feel prices going down groceries, energy, or are you kind of saying to them hang on, inflation may get worse until it gets better. No, I think we're going to become a rich We're not that rich right now. We owe thirty six trillion dollars. That's because we let all these nations take advantage of us. Same thing, like two hundred billion with Canada, will three hundred. We have a deficit with Mexico of three hundred and fifty billion dollars.
I'm not going to do that.
So no real answer there, and then shifts to terrafts, which again is part of I think people's however we feel about the terrorists, part of people's concern about prices going up.
And Wall Street Journal had a write up.
Now, listen, Wall Street Journal is just like blanket against any tariffs whatsoever. So I think they do have an ideological interest in writing up this piece, but the numbers that they cite here are really can put this up on the screen. They say, the Trump bump in consumer confidence is already over.
The mood of the American consumer is souring.
They say that consumer sentiment fell about five percent in the University of Michigan's preliminary February survey of consumers to It's the lowest reading since July of twenty four. Expectations of inflation the year had also jumped from three point three percent in januarated four point three percent.
Apparently that is a very.
Significant Like to see a month over month increase of a full percentage point expectation in terms of inflation is quite significant.
Americans is just like they are under Biden.
They'll give you a chance, right, They'll give you like eight nine months, and then if if they feel like you're not doing anything, then they're going to turn against you. So this is the danger for Donald Trump. This is also where I think Elon in them could be a danger as well, because the problem with the move fast and break things approach is it's fine in the interim when people are like oh, it's you know, they're like, oh,
it's it's energetic, it's awesome, it's fun to watch. But you know, right now, I think there's some dose stuff going on with FEMA and they're talking about that.
It's like, look, you're only one.
I didn't mention in my retrospective about Bush Katrina is really what's tank him. If you go back and you look, you're only one national disaster away from the entire mood of.
The country souring and turning against you.
This is like important differences obviously for that in the future. But if you have dose, who is you know, it does something or cuts a program or like the fa A crash that we had earlier. Imagine if that crash was twenty months from now, right, I mean you can imagine the media environment right that that would have looked like.
Previously at that point they were able to be like uh oh dah, yeah, now it's like all right, well you own this buddy.
Exactly right, So it's twenty months.
I mean, look, you know, disasters don't wait for disasters don't just conveniently get time. They could happen literally at any moment. So I think that's where the Elon Doese approach could really come back to bite them a disastrous foreign conflict like Gaza. That would be I mean, that's the ticket to single digit approval rating.
Just ask George H. W. Bush and or George H. W. B George W.
Bush, Joe Biden, every single one of them who's costs their approval rating to this? So that simple, you know, okay, if that's the way that you want to decide. And the other is if they feel that if there's a mismatch. So this gets to the Bush analogy of privatization of Social security. So let's say Trump only does tariffs, but just stops carrying stop only does tariffs and cost cutting
or what doge stuff? Forgets about inflation, and stops bullying the federal reserve, which I think is important to try, and.
He needs to bring that back.
No, I'm like, listen, privatize this.
Can we at least get on board with the coop of that.
Let's march into the federal reserve, let's take it over, and let's bring it back under civilian administration.
Let's drop the rates back to zero.
But if you have a march of two years, you've got all of this doze tariff stuff going on. Prices either are raised stay flat.
I think that's a problem.
If income, wages and all that stuff doesn't start to go up, if gas remains relatively flat. That's where two years from now, when all you have is vibes of doge and media chaos and all the others, that's when the people wally turned against Trump in two thousand and by the way, don't forget all this is in interim. Over the next eighteen months, we're about to pass what a massive tax cut re extension on. I mean, there might be some good things in there, but let's all
be honest about what's going to happen. You're going to see the extension of a huge corporate tax cut, which is one of the worst days of the Trump presidency in twenty seventeen if you go back and you look at his approval ratings. So there are some serious red flags ahead for him, and it's very easy to sink yourself if you go in that direction. But the media environment has changed, so maybe, you know, maybe things are different.
I don't know, yeah, maybe, I mean I still think people, you know, people are tuned into reality. So if their lives are not getting better and prices are high, and we're getting entangled and more.
Well, if you have more.
Wanted, people are gonna be like, yeah, you know, I'm not really.
Down with it. And there's also just there has been a swing.
Back and forth backlash effect where people are feel like the country is on the wrong track and they're not satisfied. And so I think, you know, I think the rests are pretty high for him.
Also, the average mortgage rate right now in the United States is six point ninety seven percent, So if that doesn't go down anytime soon, like that's just going to say, if you have four more years of this, people who are elder millennials, they're gonna be almost what like nearing fifty Yeah, and they're not gonna be able to buy a house. Like what, that's that's too much, right, So if you can think about some of the some of the ways that can manifest itself politically.
Still we always covered it here over the last several years.
I still think that's a huge reason why oh yeah was successful in this election.
Let's get to the elon part.
This is important too and gets to some of the stuff we're talking about here. Let's put this poll up there on the screen. This was from The Economist and you Gov, and they did a poll of Republicans where they supported. They asked them in November of twenty twenty four how much they wanted Elon to have influence in the Trump administration. So at that time post election, they said they wanted Elon to quote have a lot of
influence over the incoming Trump administration. Forty seven percent, twenty nine percent said a little, twelve percent said none at all. Now let's go to where we are today in February. You have twenty six percent a lot, forty three percent a little, seventeen percent none at all. So a big shift from a lot to a little. This is difficult to parse, you know, it's kind of complicated in terms of all of that. But this is big questions too in terms of like what is fueling then what even
that really means. But there's some signs for some problems there for Elon and for Doze.
Let's go to the next one.
Let me just before we jump to the next one, let me just also point out the numbers from there with regard to Democrats and independence. I mean, you can imagine Democrats were never super psyched about Elon having a lot of influence in the Trump administration. But in November you had fifteen percent of Democrats and twenty six percent of Independence saying they wanted him to have a lot of influence. Overall, thirteen percent of surveyed Americans want Monthks
to have a lot of influence on the Trump administration. Now, So at this point in time, whereas previously it was fifteen percent of Democrats twenty six percent of Independence saying they wanted him to have a lot, now it's only six percent of Independence who say they want him to have a lot of influence. And if you take the entire American public together, only thirteen percent say they want
him to have a lot of influence. And you know, I think there's just a natural reaction against like the richest man on the planet making all of these decisions about whether you get Social Security, whether your public school system gets funded, whether your head Start has funding, whether your rural health clinic has funding, et cetera. There's a revulsion to that. And I think, you know, as he has aggressively asserted himself in ways that frankly went far
beyond I always thought Doge would have teeth. I never thought it was some blue ribbon commission make work project. This has gone way beyond what I expected, and is a piece of this that you know, of the Trump administration that I really didn't factor in, you know, going in thinking about how this was all going to unfold.
And so I do think there is a reaction against that usurping of power from you know, the dude that just got elected and the Congress, et cetera, and all consolidating power in the hands of this one.
All.
I think it's possible, but there I'm still very skeptical of this theory I have. So I'll just say this politically I have really had to force myself. Is the media being institute utionally left wing and the narratives of a lot of this stuff that have been able to shape.
Think about the biggest syops of the election like Brat Summer, fake right, Tim Wall's incredible candidate fake such incredible with the men, all that fake beyondce say, all this other stuff non existent when we think back through the election, even with the Poles and other childless cat ladies, is going to sink them with women? Fake Springfield, Ohio, Oh, that's gonna newke them. Nope, Actually Springfield voted more for Trump.
Puerto Rico garbage, git, all of that complete siop on all of these.
I still I'm not sure I yet.
Grasp the lack of power the media has in shaping its narratives. So, for example, in this question, the United States isn't a constitucial crisis, they say, agree to fifty four percent, disagree twenty seven.
So people are like, see, people are turning against Elon.
It's like, well, if you ask the average Joe on the street, is the United States in a console crisis?
And he says yes, Is he talking about Elon?
Or is he talking about Mitch McConnell being like ninety nine years old and collapsing in every stroke? Is he talking about is he probably just evergreen agreed because he doesn't like the way that the government is going. Yeah, I'm still just deeply skeptical that Americans are as tuned in. I think what I really learned from the election was that the power of these media narratives around childish cat ladies, around haitians, about I mean, all of this, it just
it ended up being literally the opposite. I mean, so much of the institutional credibility from the Seltzer poll, all of these shibbolets that we all had in American politics were broken fundamentally.
And I'm not talking about this from like, oh.
My god, this is amazing, but you're like, you really do have to look at it and be like wow, wow. I mean really, when you think about all the things that people said that we're going to sink Donald Trump and they ended up having, if anything, a negligible or the opposite effect in the electorate, I'm just deeply skeptical about this elon thing hitting home unless something like what you're saying materializes. So far, social security has not been
touched right, getting access to socialecurity. Okay, even Medicare, it's like, well, if you get Medicare fraud, it's great. Actually some estimate of fifty billion dollars in Medicare fraud.
Will they properly do it? I don't know what they're doing, but I don't know. Listen, I have no idea.
The question is time after Rick Scott, Well, actually we.
Should go after Rick Scott.
They're not going to do that. The question is how.
It materializes functionally, and also how people experience these events really in their lives. And I really took away from the election that because if you turn on CNN and all of that is all this must talk and all of this. I don't think it's bad because you know, here we're talking, we're trying to predict the impact of stuff, but really, when you think back to that effect, it
just didn't exist. So I'm skeptical of some of this stuff, deeply am in terms of just you know, even in the polling, and I've I've had to learn that on immigration, mass deportation.
I'm not going to excuse the America's totally with this.
I know how Americans are, right, Like the moment you see a little kid in a cage is like things can change a lot, and they can change on a dime. So the vibe, the way that you experience, and the way that you actually execute a lot of this stuff.
I think that stuff matters the most.
And so I'm not ready to make a call like Elon is dramatically unpopular, Elon is all this All I can say is a risk.
I know he has his own agenda.
You know, Analytically, I can see the ways that this could go wrong, but I could also see how it could be a pretty popular success.
I don't think so, but I mean to be honest with you, like I, this to me is the least important point. You know, what we were discussing before the reality of what he's doing and what it means for the country, to me is the most important point.
But you know, the trend, the decline for Elon.
He used to be very popular, you know, and people, oh, he's a genius, he's an inventor, blah blah blah, made my electric car.
I think it's awesome.
I mean, a lot of liberals love this guy, right, I'm seeing a lot of bumper stickers on teslas that are like, I bought this before we knew Elon was insane and things like that.
But you know, he had high.
Approval ratings kind of across the board, and ever since he really, you know, became a partisan figure, obviously, his approval rating took a hit because that's just gonna instantly, instantly, you know, lead you into this very tribal, partisan mindset. And then since he's been so aggressively at the forefront of the Trump administration, it seems pretty clear his approval
rating has continued to decline. I don't disagree on the constitutional crisis peace, even though I do think it's pretty you know, we're pretty clearly into a constitutional crisis, or at the very least, if they go forward with their threats to ignore court decisions, we will certainly be in a constitutional crisis. I think you would even agree with
it at that point if that ultimately happens. But I do think that there's probably a lot of people who, you know, just like they're not happy with the government, and then it's just like, yes, it's a constitutional crisis, sort of like you know, on an election night, there was like what was what was.
Your top issue?
One of them was preserving to be boy or whatever, and there were a lot of Republicans who were like, we have to elect Donald Trump.
To present the election was stolen democracy.
Because the election was and even you know, with the institutional crisis thing, even if I'm to read into it that people really are paying attention, et cetera.
I mean, now you have you had Elon.
We showed the tweet earlier where he's calling a federal court making a ruling a judicial coup.
So they're also.
Setting up language about how it's a constitutional crisis because the courts are overreaching and they're checking the legitimate power of the executive, et cetera, et cetera. The reason though, why I depart from you in terms of like, I don't again, I don't know that it matters that much whether it's popular or not, although we have seen some pushback work in some limited ways. But the way he's trying to consolidate power is to make like your democratic
always completely irrelevant. That is part of the project of installing a monarch and a CEO dictator. But the reason why I think it's going to be dramatically unpopular is because the you know, even if you take the Silicon Valley framing, the like move fast and break things, that means you're breaking things, and the federal government does matter for people, you know, for planes not falling out of
the sky, and your local health clinic getting funded. Right now, in Virginia, half of the rural health clinics that are particularly dependent on actually in rural like red parts of the state, like southwestern Virginia, half of them are still funding. Quite a number of them have had to shut down. Virginia's not the only stay of Rhode Island. Other states
across the country still are lacking funding. You've had farmers who were depending on deals that they had made with the federal government to finance certain investments in their farms. Those contracts have been at least paused, so they are on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars that they thought the federal government was going to participate in those costs for that upgrade those you know. And that's
just like the small ball beginning of the situation. But the way he operates, if you just look at the way he operates a Twitter, if you look at the way he's operated at Tesla, at SpaceX, etc. Things literally break, Rockets literally explode. Twitter is unable to host a spaces with Ron DeSantis, and then the one with Trump has all sorts of audio issues and problems and sounds like shit as well. That's one thing when you're running a company.
It's another thing when you're running the government. So even by his own description of what he's doing here, it's going to require it's going to lead to things breaking that are important to people, and I do think there will be a tremendous backlash against that. Now, whether that backlash matters or not to me is the more of the open question.
I think you might listen. I think the risk is there, it's still a hope if they're smart.
What you do is you just keep.
It on CFPB, Usaid Medicare fraud. If a single check gets stopped, that's when there's going to be problems if old people don't get their healthcare.
If old people don't.
It's already happened.
I mean, these healths. Well, then actually, let's get to a bigger political point.
I mean, maybe we'll talk about this with CFPB, but let's be honest here, right, a lot of the people were being affected voted red.
Are they really going to blame Trump and Elon? Are they going to blame democrats? Like? Are they actually going to make the dots?
Skeptical personally in terms of the way that politics has changed, and just think about the media environment that people swim in.
You know, this is do we have Thomas Frank's book here? I think we used to.
I mean, what's the matter with Kansas? I understand how left to see it. It's also a diagnosis for literally how the playbook of all of this has happened.
Yeah, I encourage people to go out and read it.
This is kind of my monologue about the way that even like the you know, changes of the CFPB are being ushered in under like a culture war agenda, and you know it's similar to what like similar to what liberals did with like, instead of lifting wages, we're going to just you know, have a diversity statement or how you know, yeah, land acknowledgments and these sorts of things. Or we're going to pass a resolution affirming the Equal Rights Amendment.
You know, yeah, with the very last women's rights or whatever. Oh was that. I wish we cover that more, but yeah, I.
Mean, I'll save this for my monologue. But that's effectively the playbook here is.
Speaking of all of this, there has been the latest in the Trump administration's war on the administrative state. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Russbaut, who is the OMB director, has said, quote, pursuant to the Consumer Financial Protection Act, I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not reasonably necessary to
carry out its duties. The Bureau's current balance of seven hundred and eleven million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment. The spigot long contributing to CFPB's unaccountability is being turned off. So Russbot is the OMB director, but he's also the acting CFPB director.
And what this does.
Is it's an effective way to backdoor shut down the government. CFPB has been the subject of insane amounts of litigation over the last decade or so, so this is the way that they have been able to become the acting director even though it's an independent agency. Stopping requests for funding is the only legal way to be able to get around some of this. Although we'll get to in fact how that will progress. Let's put this up there
on the screen. There was the latest direction here from Russpot which said that directed the Consumer Financial Protection Beers staff to quote issue no rules, suspend the effective dates of all final rules, and cease any new investigations. So I mean, you don't appropriate any more funding, and then you also don't you don't appropriate more funding, and they
also tell them not to do anything. This is kind of what the Trump administration tried to do last time, Crystal with the establishment of god Blake.
His name right now, The acting chief is mc malvainey. There, it is mc malvaney.
They also made him the acting CFPB director, there was huge amounts of litigation. I think it was a Supreme Court case happened CFPB as well. That gets to this whole independent agency versus an executive part of the executive.
Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion that's right seven to your decision that it was in fact that it.
Was a constitutional agency.
That has not stop people from saying it's unconstitutional, which we'll get to in a little bit, but this is one of those where it look, I think we can all be honest here about who is the most who is the happiest to see CFPB gone, And it is the crypto industry. Now you could judge for yourself as to why that is. You know, Crystal, obviously you're very
skeptical crypto. What they say is the mark end recent Line and others, is that effectively stifles competition by forcing these crypto and fintech companies to comply with all of these, according to them, onerous financial regulations which make it impossible for them to do business. So the CFBB and the SEC have been the two regulatory twins that have really stopped people like Meta Twitter, all these fintech companies from being able to move into the legitimate financial system and
to compete against them, they claim that they're better. You can judge again for yourself for how all of it is, but.
That is the main ass that they had coming into this.
There were three things CFPB, FTC SEC, yep, and they've gotten all of them.
They've gotten all of them.
Yeah, And so I mean, just to zoom out the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau set up after the financial crash too. I mean, it's in the name to try to protect consumers, and they've returned some twenty one billion dollars to consumers
who've been defrauded and scanned in various ways. It actually has quite a relatively small budget and has been a fantastic return on the investment in terms of taxpayer dollars, although it's not even really technically taxpayer dollars because it's funded by the Treasury, but whatever, it's been a fantastic return on investment in terms of providing value to consumers.
You know.
Let me just Stoler had a great post about the CFPB and what this means going forward, and he points out some of the things that you know may have interacted with your life in a way that is relatively meaningful he says, let's start with some of the small stuff they do. Rules against excessive overdraft fees. That's going to be gone. Rule capping credit card late fees, that's gone. Oversight of debt collectors and payday lenders no more, an
honest site to compare credit card products likely gone. In twenty twenty three, CFPB said big banks can't charge junk fees for basic customer service, things like being able to check your money in your own account. The reason isn't just that it's nice, but the big banks themselves weren't unable to offer basic information like who owned mortgages prior to two thousand and eight.
That's gone too.
Another rule put forward recently is the mortgage servicers can't garner excessive fees when they foreclose, which is an incentive to foreclosed rather than working out loans.
So all of that is going to be gone.
Anybody who's had an issue with their bank, or with crypto coinbase, whoever you can go to. You used to be able to file complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and oftentimes they would handle it and you would get your money returned to you. Actually, Kyle was a victim to you know, sort of scam run by his bank, and he didn't even file a complaint or anything, and they just reached out and said, hey, you were victim of the scam. Here's some money back to repay you
for what happened here. So that's what this agency is. It's no accident that Mark Andriesen and Mark Zuckerberg both go on Joe Rogan's podcast and they frame their opposite. First of all, they just lie about what CFPB does D banking. Conservatives like quite the opposite. Roju Chopra, the previous director of the CFPP, was opposed to d banking based on political reasons. He took heat from liberals for staking out that position, so it was quite the contrary.
Zuckerberg tried to claim that like, oh, they went after me from the CFPB because of my bucking them on COVID censorship. Also, you know, completely made up fiction. But they tried to cloak their opposition to CFPB in these conservative cultural critiques because they knew that the argument of like, well, they just don't really want to be regulated was not going to fly.
Now.
Elon has a particular interest in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is what Soccer was alluding to. So Elon wants Twitter to be the everything app. He just struck a deal actually with Visa to incorporate payment processing, and that would have meant that the CFPB was very likely to you know, designate him as I think they call it, like a larger payment provider something like that, and he would have been subject to these regulations.
So he specifically has.
A personal financial interest and goal that he wants to accomplish in gutting the CFPB, and so that is what is now being accomplished.
The budget has been zeroed out.
Now russ Vote does point out they do have a like fairly decent reserve and the budget is not all that big to start with, so you know they have the funds to be able to operate for a time. But the staff has been told to stay home. This is subject now also to a lawsuit by the union
representing the workers at the CFPB. And most importantly russ Vote has said any investigations you're doing, any enforcement, any new rule making, like basically whatever you were doing to try to check and keep financial fraud and scams and check, you need to stop doing that. So all of that activity is effectively halted. Elon himself tweeted out rip CFPB,
and it was kind of interesting the response. So you can see Elon there at the top saying that, and some of his reply guys who are normally on board with what he was doing, were like, but wait a second, I actually kind of like this agency.
So shout out to Nuance bro. He loves the show, by the way, he watches every episod.
So he says, what's wrong with the CFPB?
They actually got consumers wins, and he tweeted a linked or not a link, but a screenshot because links are highly discouraged on Twitter. CFB announces a return of one point eight billion dollars in illegal junk fees to four point three million Americans harmed in a massive credit repair scheme. Another person and I saw this one shared a lot, says what is the deal with the CCFPB. I'm genuinely curious, Elon, as a normal guy, can you please respond and tell me?
I assumed it was creative for our protection.
I've used the CFPB after my bank was giving me the run around. I had a bunch of fraud charges they wouldn't refund me after telling me they found them as fraudulent. Within a week, I had my money back. So explain to me how this doesn't benefit us as American citizens. This one just really baffles me, and I'd love an actual explanation. So the you know, people were not fully on board with this. Another person said, yeat, not on board with this one unless you bring some
pretty damning evidence as to why. So there you go some of the pushback there. Do consumers not need to be protected? Question mark?
Yes, so, I mean, look for those who are shocked by this, sorry, like you're an idiot. I don't want to be to voter shaming and all this, but there is an element where some people pretend to be surprised by some of the moves of the.
Trumpetman, like were you not paying attention? Dude? Like were you just not like did you not have your eyes open? It gets I get annoyed. I mean pretty clear what was going to happen?
I would say, yes, yeah, but I mean there were there are a lot of things happening, like, for example, taking.
Over Gaza that were not enough crazy about.
It, taking over Canada Panela, like none of these things were actually run on. So I have shared the same sentiment in some regards of like, well, what did you think was going to happen? That this is literally what he ran on. But you know, it's not like Trump was going around at rallies like and we're gonna get rid of the protections for consumers and allow banks to
scam you. So people put a lot of trust anyone, Like a lot of these guys think this guy is really great and brilliant, you know, have deluded themselves into thinking that the richest man on the planet is really looking out for their interests rather than his own interests.
And he's not. He's looking out for his own interests.
Yeah.
Well, I meant as a certain point too, with these tech guys, it's like they were pretty naked about what they wanted the whole time. I could have told you literally eight months ago exactly what all three of these agencies. All you have to do is read the news for any of this. And as I said previously, but Crypto in particular, being very happy about this, put this up there on the screen. Brian Armstrong, CEO of coinbased, as one hundred percent the right call CFPB is unconstitutional on
the face of it. Even if it wasn't, it should be deleted as we already have a DJDJ to prosecute fraud and many other fine answer services regulators. It's an activist organization that has done enormous harm to the country.
He got community noted there.
You can decide for yourself whether it's would decide for yourself if that indicates a vibe on the platform.
The community note was what you said, Justice.
Thomas righty for the majority that it is constitutional. I this is the type of thing from Trump and others that makes me sad because it relates to what we were just talking about, yeah, with virgin and you were like, oh, but these Virginas. I'm like, look, I see no evidence that you know, scamming people, taking away their money, cutting programs or any of that when you're inside of the
bubble has any effect on voter behavior. I wish it were otherwise, but I don't see any political evidence for it.
Well until I think people want to be scammed. I'm being serious.
Like this Dave Portnoy thing you sent that video remember of him talking about the pump and Dump shitcoin and how enamored he's obviously is with the Trump meme coin and all that, and how there's zero outrage from most people on the right who talk about corruption and all that, But look at the voters, the voters, and then the
people who support Trump they like it. I'm mystified by the way that people can twist themselves into knots to just say like, oh, this is total or just have like blind amnesia around these because it's not just partisanship, it's not about elites, it's about the actual voters themselves. If you ask them about any of these Trump things, they feel, no, they're not angry. They'll find an excuse, they don't care, or they'll say that you're.
Lying to them. And I just don't know what to say.
At a certain point, like the CPPB thing, I predict not one iota of pushback, not one iota from Republican voters.
So I mean, what's the point?
Agree?
Agree, but yeah, but the point is the substance of what it actually the fact that getting rid of this agency makes people's lives worse, makes them more open to fraud.
And Stiller makes this point, it's not like so previously, It's not like there weren't laws against before the financial crash, but the prioritization of that was very low, with these various agencies that were tasked with enforcing it, and so the idea behind this agency is that, okay, we're going to put it under one agency where it's really like their number one priority is going to be looking out for the little guy, making sure that if they are scammed,
that they are repaid, that there's some fines levied like that. This is our top priority and our focus. So it's going to be important. So now all of that function is consolidated here, so when you get rid of that enforcement from this agency, it no longer exists in these other places.
So it's just gone.
So you're actually in a worse place than you were before the financial crash with regard to you know, enforcement of these particular things.
So you're going to see, you know, a.
Flourishing of scams and fraud perpetrated on people because there is no one why, Like it's not even the fox guard in the head now there's just no one guarding the hen house.
Now there's there's nothing there.
And the other thing that he points out, which is relevant to your point is like, you know, when Glass Eeagle, which separated out, you know, kept the investing in financial speculation part of banking separate from like the main like customer focused. Okay, we make a deposit type of banking. When Glass Eagle was ended, No, there wasn't a huge like public.
Backlash to that.
But that action directly, along with other things, leads to a massive financial catastrophe. So it has a huge impact outside of what the you know, initial public response was, and of course ultimately there was a huge I mean, this was one of the seminal events in terms of our lifetimes that helped to shape these you know, this populist right and populist left movements and all of the anger in the country. I mean, this is still reverberating to this day. So I think there is very likely
to be significant fallout. And you know, I'll just one more quote from Stoler, because he really, you know, he focuses on this, and I think he put it quite well. He says he sees destroying the bureau as a strategic error for the banking sector in big tech. He says, the banks were already losing to Silicon Valley. Now they're at a regulatory disadvantage to boot. More fundamentally, the shutdown breaks a basic deal. He says he worked in the
House during the Great Financial Crisis. The arrangement was the banks would accept some mild oversight via the CFPB, and in return they'd get a multi trillion dollar ballon and make excessive profits. I didn't like that deal, encourage the member I worked for a to vote against it, but it was forced on liberals by Barack Obama. It was an egregiously terrible choice, one that liberals couldn't acknowledge because then they'd have to admit a whole lot of uncomfortable truths,
notably that Wall Street is a malevolent force. But he's effectively saying like, now that deal is broken, like the minimal oversight that they accepted has been stripped away, and so now they can just run rampant with their you know, fraud of variety of kinds, including crypto fraud, et cetera. If you're running one of these payment processors on Twitter or elsewhere, now you can take people's funds that they
deposit with you. You can do what sam bekmun Freed was doing and investment invest it in all kinds of like high risk crypto schemes. There's no cop on the beat to really stop you from doing any of that, and the potential fallout from that is truly catastrophic. It may not show up, you know, some small ball things that are really important to like the credit card late fees and the junk fees and those sorts of things, not having medical debt I'll appear on your credit reports.
That was something the Biden administration is putting in place that's going to be gone now. Like there's an immediate impact, but the deeper, the deeper fear is what this kind of bubble and crash this could ultimately contribute to. And then you know, also with regard to Doge and Elon and whatever like. It's also example number one of the way this is not about some like populists. We're going to root out waste, fraud and abuse, blah blah blah.
The CFPB is proof positive that this is about them can sellleating power and organizing the government in a way that is going to be friendly to them their fronts and their interests and not necessarily you.
But there's some good lessons there for the left there in terms of technocratic neoliberalism and that you know that Devil's Bargain that was made in two thousand and eight that led to the fallout the breakup of the Democratic Coalition and of the rise of the Trump movement, and obviously is now popular vote election, which is trying to
put I'm also honestly skeptical of Stolar's analysis. I'm not so sure that it leads to the Democrats being like, we're never going to give you CFPB again because we're about to talk with Hakim Jeffries and all that are about Hakim Jeffries, about how their theory of government and all that looks in the future. You might be right, but you know, it's been twelve almost twenty years since
the financial crisis. It's been sixteen years or so seventeen right since the crash, and has really anything changed with respect to too Big to Fail? Most people either don't remember or you know, they don't really understand the legacy impact of that. So I don't just but how long did it take between the repeal of Glass Steagle and the financial crisis Glasstegle happened under the Clinton administration. I want to say maybe it was ninety eight. I think it might not be, so it took about a decade
for something like that to materialize. Nine I apologize, So yeah, but it was about nine years or so for the global financial crisis to get kicked off in two thousand and eight, and if it's a similar lag.
Time, what does politics look like in that moment.
I genuinely have no idea, but I'm not so confident in the stolar analysis that some Bernie style revolution will happen in terms of oh, the banks, like you guys are never going to get your bail out again, right, In terms of the way that the Democratic Party is currently trending now. I'm not saying the Republicans are gonna better, I'm not saying that at all. But I'm just not so confident that there's this elite recognition of what has really happened here in terms of the failure of the
Obama project. This is something Irami and z Jelani have both been talking about a lot lately. I think it's very interesting from their perspective.
All Right, well, let's talk about those Democrats, shall we hakeem Jefferies?
Of course is.
I mean, they're leader lists effectively at this point. Even if you ask them like who's the leader of the Democratic Party, They'll all be like, well, I don't know, but hikeem Jefferies is the top Democrat in the House, and he was asked, you know, their phones are ringing off the hook with Democratic base.
Voters who are like, what are you doing? Where is the resistance?
Like there was a video that came out last week of all of these Democratic members of Congress going to the Department of Education and wanting entry. There's one dude standing in their way, and they're just like, oh, I guess we can't go in that, I mean, and so.
What are they going to do with it?
There's such frustration that they seem to be asleep at the switch. And so in any case, Hakiem Jefferies gets asked about this dynamic and effect was like, whoa, what could we really do? Let's take a listen to what he has to say.
I'm trying to figure out what leverage we actually have.
What leverage do we have the control the House to send it and the presidency it's their government.
What leverage do we have?
So there you go, what levers do we have? I mean, I love, I do love And I think it was Ken that pointed this out on Twitter. How when Democrats have control of the House, Senate and the presidency, it's like the Republicans are this immovable obstacle that they can't possibly get anything done. And when Republicans are in that situation, suddenly like oh they can just you know, run rough shot and do whatever they whatever they do.
Yeah, I mean I think that they'll learn. I don't know.
I really am still really skeptical of this Democratic resistance because it just feels like a very elite media project right now. Like it feels like the neurotic liberals who read the New York Times are very outraged the bureaucrats Washington. But they mean that's a question two of like what is the Democratic base? What do they actually want here? I mean, what would a bunch of silly Maxwell Frosts charging into the democratic of education do?
I mean for great media spectacle? I mean that's the thing is like what only tool in lever is attention? That is your only tool and lever really and that is the failure of the Democratic Party is they do not understand outside of like literally AOC and Bernie, they do.
Not understand you understand it though your style of economy.
Oh first, is her style of politics really going to be like her flat? You know, going on Instagram live calling Elon a Nazi, Like, do we really believe that that's an effective political strategy.
I don't. I think he just looks silly. Well, you look like a college liberal.
Well, let me say at least she is doing something. But yeah, in terms of in terms of understanding the attention economy, yes, I think she and Bernie are kind of the only two that truly do. And Bernie is impressed the hell. I mean, his man is really old and he's still out there. Like with I think some of the best messaging coming from the Democratic Party. But yeah,
that's your only real lever and protests. And I would just say, like I had all kinds of problems with the flavor of the Democratic resistance back in twenty sixteen. You know, I Russia Gate, I was a critic of et cetera, et cetera. But ultimately, in some ways it did work. They we were talking about Trump's approval rating. They were able to keep his approval ratings suppressed and under a majority of the entire time, they did very well in the midterms. He lost in twenty twenty. So
there's been this among elite elected Democrats. There's this assumption of like, oh, well, we you know, we try this like all all in Trump resistance, and it didn't work, and it's like, well, but doing at least it did do something like clearly just sitting back and letting it all unfold. And I think one of them said, like letting him punch himself out is not going to do anything, and I think is foolish.
So I think that there's two problems.
One of them is they don't understand the attention economy and how that is your major lever for pushback and generating doing what you can to contribute to a genuine grossroots revolt, which again there is there is something happening here because because the level of calls that they're getting at the Senate sixteen hundred a minute is off the charts normally democratic like the you know, local Democratic voters are disgusted with the party and the fact and that
is very different. You know, these people were like heroes to them previously am mis NBC was heroic to them, et cetera. That is all broken and gone. So in any case, that is the best thing that they have available to them. But the other problem, which gets to the political chair sheet that we can put up on the screen is that, you know, really, what they need to do is make an argument against oligarchy, make an argument against an Elon Musk and his billionaire buddies running
the government. And that is going to require a choosing a true like which side are you on kind of a moment. And you have leaders in the Democratic Party like Haheen Jeffries, who instead is trying to go to Silicon Valley and mend fences with the billionaires who happen to be and not the one hundred million, the mere hundred millionionaires that happened to be on the Democratic side of the ledger. So he met quietly, they say, with more
than one hundred and fifty Silicon Valley based donors. Last week in California early step in Democrats' efforts to repair relationships with a once deep blue constituency.
The meet and greet in.
Tony Los Aalto's Hills comes at a precarious moment for Democrats in the tech world, which is lurch right word in the second Trump era, world's wealthiest tech mogul is upending Washington. Democratic leaders are facing criticism from their own base for their halting response. Jeffreys, meanwhile, was on the West coast, seemingly trying to avoid the next Elon Musk. Let's put this next quote up on the screen. This is kind of like the money quote, so to speak.
So he says, there's significant fear that these tech folks who've been with us for a long time will say, effort, we're going with the other guys that a major Democratic donor advisor. These donors are also pissed watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power and getting richer off of this, and they're not Democrats are trying to mend senses, and they're also trying to keep them in the tent. According to this individual, so you know, let's go ahead.
Actually to the Nate Silver piece, because I thought he broke this as a D four. He actually broke this down pretty well. It's like, you they need a billionaire strategy. You could be pro capitalism or anti oligarch, but middle ground won't persuade voters. And the middle ground is kind of where the Biden administration was because they did things that were genuinely adversarial that this class of people hated, and the Wall Street people hated and were pissed off
of the anti trust stuff was really adversarial. It was very unpopular among wealthy people. The aggressive enforcement at the CFPB, aggressive enforcement at the National Labor Relations Board, all of these things were deeply unpopular with billionaires. But rather than doing the FDR like and I welcome their hatred and embracing that as your identity is, like we're going after these guys, they tried to do like what Hakeem Jeffreys is doing here, like wow, we really we still like you,
still want you in the tent. We're going to do these various cultural things that maybe you like, et.
Cetera, et cetera. And that approach is not going to work.
So Nate Silver is one hundred percent right that this middle ground of what he described separating the world into naughty and nice billionaires, which is what the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, which he floated as the appropriate approach here.
That is not going to cut it.
And if you're actually going to push back against this movement and the elon takeover and trump Ism in general, you are going to.
Have to make a choice.
You are going to have to either basically capitulate to that or you're going to have to burn some bridges. With the donor class, and they do not seem ready to make that choice.
Well, I don't think it's structurally possible.
The Democratic Party is the party of elite, white educated liberals and elderly black people.
Like that's basically it.
So okay, So if we look at the elite white educated liberals, these are Nimbi style process elite institution worshiping, neurotic master's degree holders who make approximately two to three hundred thousand dollars per year. They love like Reid Hoffman and all these other people. They to the extent they hate Elon it's because of I don't even know it's not because of CFPP, should we put it that way. They hate him for being like a trader to their
class or culturally right or whatever. Even a lot of these Stilicon Valley donors. I mean, if you look at the it's the things that they care with the most about. It's going to be literally DEI and like transgender issues. That's part of the reason the party is become the way it is. So how can you turn against oligarchy? I mean, if you don't have the voter base to sustain it, those people don't culturally trust you. Can you roll back twenty years of cultural left direction?
I don't think so. But that's what.
But so the thing is, first of all, I don't think you're right about what the normy Democratic base wants, Like.
They are a what do they want?
They are appolled by They want process going on here, They want to preserve the country, They want some you know, they want to.
Charge you.
I think you underestimate too how much the economic precarity has creeped up to middle class, upper middle class people, where it's not just the sort of traditional working class that feels that level of procarity. I also would say you very much overestimate where we are in terms of the realignment. Trump narrowly won you know, voters under what was it, one hundred thousand dollars. He didn't even win a majority of the vote. He won the popular vote,
but he did not even get to fifty percent. So you still have, you know, plenty of working class voters within the Democratic base coalition. So there's no doubt that the Democratic base is appalled at what they see.
Unfolding under trump Ism.
Like that piece is not a question to be whatsoever, And the Democrats have to to your point, they have to regain some of those working class voters who who voted for Trump this time around. They have to bring them back into the coalition. And if you're actually going to do that, I think you have to make a stand against Elon and Oligart control and you have to have credibility with regard to, you know, burning the bridges
with you know, your own your own donor class. Now where I see the more structural problem is that people like Haquem Jeffries, like Akaeme Jeffries, is not in this position because he's such a like brilliant visionary or whatever politician. He's there because he can raise a lot of money. Nancy Pelosi, who does have some skills at least, you know, but she her main hold on power was because she
was an absolutely prolific fundraiser. The vast majority of Democratic candidates are not there because there was like a grassroots well of support for them. There's a few of them that that you know, could genuinely be said are the case. But by and large, the game that you had to play to get to power the Democratic Party is all about sucking up to the type of people that a Geme Jeffries is sucking up to so is a party that has self selected for that people who has these
connections and whose primary skill set is raising money. Are they going to cut off their own individual politician or politician. Are they going to cut off their own sorts of power? And that's where I think the real structural problem ultimately comes in, because if this was how you got into whatever position of power you have, you're not going to be really particularly amenable to completely changing course and orienting the party in it.
I think it's completely correct.
I think it's a bidirectional problem, though, because it does get point taken, etc. But who is the center of gravity of elite democratic thought as reclined right Nate Silver, Like people who work in NGOs the New York Times op ed page. If you look at that center of gravity, it's not one that's ultimately going to be consistent with an anti aligarchic strategy.
That's one that's really uncomfortable.
I actually think your point about economic procarity at the middle class and upper middle class is important because part of the black pilling of the upper middle class has been very interesting to is actually also part of how you have this more elite turn against the Democratic Party because they're also bleeding some voters in that category, which leads to people like Bill Ackman and all these not saying they're in that category, but I'm saying that creates
a permission structure for like white people who make two hundred grand who are like grill dads or whatever to say, Okay, screw the Democrats, even though traditionally they have been. Whoever is left are people who are like really into cultural liberalism on top of the Democratic Party coalition which raises a lot of money from these same people, and I don't think that they have that credibility yet, because to do so, you'd have to burn down everything that you've
ever stood for. You'd have to both shove this like cultural bs to the side, pretend that you have never said any of the things that you have, and you would have to base like, how could you revamp your entire fundraising structure. I mean, you talked about this with the Bernie guys, but Bernie bros. Are just Trump voters now,
so can you win them back? I'm genuinely skeptical. I feel like once you have lost credibility with people on because it's a long burn period, that the way that this happened that they would so quickly be able to turn. I think that the way that the Democrats can win again is to drive up their suburban margins and then convince younger Hispanic black voter, Hispanic.
And black voters to come back into the fold and vote for them.
And that's really the coalition at least in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin that remains where their deficit was on top obviously of white working class voters. But I'm not sure that those people are ever coming back. So I just think it's a very very tough structural problem for them. I don't know, I don't know how you could get out of this Gordian knot when you've elected the DNC person that you have the good billionaire person.
So you know what's interesting is even though that did say that same the reason he got picked instead of Ben Wickler, they're both state party chairs, both from like Minnesota. Right, one is Minnesota and the other one was Wisconsin. So Ken Martin, the one that got elected is Minnesota. Actually, what tanked Wickler's campaign is that he was seen as being too close to billionaires. So he was backed by Reid Hoffman, and he really had all the energy behind.
You know, when Emily and Ryan interviewed him here, it was very much thought, oh, this is going to be the guy. And because he was perceived as being too close to the donor class, that's why he lost. And actually Nate talks about this year. But I also talked to Marianne about this as well, who also was involved in the DNC chair race, so she really saw it from the inside and that was what really caused people
to turn on him. So even at the you know DNC like these are these are insiders, they're not like all wealthy people, but they're just like local Democratic party chairs and whatever. They saw that as a real liability and a real problem for him, which was very.
Interesting to me.
But that yeah, but back to the point of like, you know, people who are not learning lesson whatever, but D three up on the screen.
So center Reuben.
Diego has apparently he benefited to the tune of ten million dollars in his Senate campaign from crypto campaign contributions, and lo and behold, he's now the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Subcommittee overseeing digital assets i e. Crypto and is now hosting a luxury retreat with Marc Andreesen, who obviously one of crypto industries based investors and cheerleaders. And guess one of the featured speakers at this event too was Mataglesius, which was kind of no way, Yeah, yeah, Matt.
What are you doing, bro? You got plenty of money in that sub stack. Please tell me you not ticket to Beacon fees.
Oh god, he claims he wasn't paid to. Oh we'll take sold buddies whatever. But but you know, the crypto
industry is an important force. They really made an example of Katie Porter, who had been adversarial towards end one of them regulated under the SEC and whatever, and they dropped millions of dollars on her in her race and she lost, And that was meant to and did send a signal to anyone else who had thoughts of being adversarial and you know, looking seriously at enforcement and regulation of the crypto industry, that.
You better sit down and shut up.
And so even though some of the thought was that there would be a crackdown after SBF was exposed in all of that nonsense, actually they just got smarter. They put more money into politics. Crypto industries now one of the biggest contributors got rich two political campaigns. Well, that's that's true to you.
Point is literally went from like thirty k to one hundred k in that time period.
And so so now at this point, you know, you've got Democrats and republic Diego very much in their pocket, all kinds of other bipartisan officials very much in their pocket, them getting their way at SEEFPB, et cetera. And so you know, it's quite noteworthy to have Diego at this luxury retreat with Mark Andreeson.
Amusing.
But also remember Diego is a star, right, people have already floated him. As you know he won in Arizona. There's a didn't he have the biggest point spread of any senator? For the Democrat who won?
You might be right, yeah, no, oh for one who won.
Yeah, I think Tester probably did of like point spread laws overall shared, Brown I think was second, but in terms of those who won, it might have been Guya Go.
I mean, that's that's crazy, because what did Trump win Arizona by four or five points? And then I think Diego also want it buy a few points as well, So it's almost an eight to ten point spread.
You know what the top of my head.
You know what cares some cinema's up to Now it's on the board of some crypto bols.
No, it's too good, too good. See, I would have thought she would have joined Uh what was it? What is she nuke the carried interest loophole? Yeah, yeah, so I would have thought she would have become a ven.
She might be doing that too.
I don't know, but I do know one of the things she's doing is she sits on.
Some crypto board. Just too good, too good. This is we predicted here on the show. Hey, guys, we're gonna cover Stephen A. Smith tomorrow. I want to make sure that the show goes out on time. So Crystal, what do you take it a look at?
Well, if we broke up the big banks tomorrow, and I will if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic.
Risk, I will. What that is racism? Would that end sexism?
Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community?
Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?
Would that solve our problem with voting rights and Republicans who are trying to strip them away from people of color, the elderly, and the young. Would that give us a real shot at making sure that our political system works better because we get rid of jerry mandering and redistricting and all.
Of the gimmicks that states use to give these.
Republicans safe seats so they can continue to tear down the progress we've made in America. I'm the only candidate who will take on.
Every barrier to progress.
I'm the only candidate who has a record of taking on those barriers. I'm the only candidate you will stand with you in every single fight, no matter how hard it is or how long it takes.
That was Hillary Clinton in February twenty sixteen, desperately trying to block the class based juggernaut of the Bernie Sanders movement from ascending to power. That lower riff was essentially the playbook use identity politics and culture war to posture as being the real progressive whilstmearing Bernie and the supporters as secret sexists in bigots, all in order to accomplish the ultimate goal of protecting corporate power.
Sad to say it worked.
Hillary beat Bernie an agenda of woke virtue signaling, took over the Democratic Party, accelerating its decline with workers and the one movement that actually cared about fighting oligarchs on behalf of the ninety nine percent was by and large vanquished.
Perhaps the most perfect distillation of this use of wochism to protect corporate powers when a union buster for ARII opened up their anti worker meeting with a land acknowledgment and pronounce progressive cultural posturing would be offered as a substitute for and distraction from actually checking the billionaire class. Now, this playbook is not unique to corporate democrats and has
never been. In fact, it is being deployed with overwhelming success right now against the right, some elements of which had flirted with a break from Reagan conservatism. Some factions had flirted with union rights, anti trust enforcement, lifting wages,
protecting safety net programs. The TLDR is this though, to my populous right friends, y'all are being played the same way liberals traded away a minimum wage hike for Nancy Pelosi Kneeling and Kent take loth You are trading away an anti trust agenda for an executive order taking pronouns off of passports. Elites are ushering in an oligarch agenda under the guise of culture war.
And this is the playbook.
They will feed you culture war scraps while they eat the whole universe. And it's happening now at a pace we have literally never seen before. Oligarchs are lying to your face telling you that the agencies that police their scams and fraud are actually woke and so deserving of dismantling. That ending DEI requires stripping your local public school of
funds and privatizing weather data collection. That the few politicians like Bernie and Warren who have actually taken a principled stand against the rupting influence of big money in politics are really bought and paid for, so their stances which challenge corporate power could be disregarded. The real fraud in the federal budget can be found in imaginary gaza condoms instead of juicy billion dollar contracts and tax havens where the billionaires hide their cash. Now, let me ask you
a simple math question. Which do you think is more important to the federal budget deficit Politico pro subscriptions at USAID or the fact that Tesla pays a grand total of zero dollars in federal taxes in spite of billions of dollars in profit. They're tricking you it's a scam and sad to say it's working now. One of the most brazen examples of this scam was perpetrated by successive
oligarchs on the Joe Rogan Show. First Mark In Dreeson came by to lie to Joe's audience that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was actually an evil plot by Elizabeth Warren to dbank conservatives.
Let's take a listen to a little of that.
I'm Sully for example, with this thing called the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau CFPP, which was the sort of Elizabeth Warren's personal agency that she gets to control. And it's an independent agency that just gets to run and do whatever it wants. Right, And if you read the Constitution, like, there is no such thing as an independent agency, and yet there it is. What does her agency do, whatever
she wants? What does it do though, we basically did terrorize financial terrorize financial institutions, prevent crypt fintech, prevent new competition, new startups that want to compete with the big banker. Oh yeah, house, just terrorizing anybody who tries to do anything new in financial services. And can you give me an example, said, you know, de banking, this is where A lot of the d banking comes from is these agencies.
So d banking is when you're you, as either a person or your company, are literally kicked.
Out of the banking system like they did to Kanye.
Exactly like they did to Kanye. My partner band's father has been d banked. Really, we had an employee for what for having the wrong politics, for saying unacceptable things under current banking regulations under okay, here's a great here's a great thing. Under current banking regulations. After all the reforms of the last twenty years, there's now a category called a politically exposed person PEP. And if you are a PEP, you were required by financial regulators to kick them off
of your to kick them out of your bank. You're not allowed to if you're politically on the left, that's fine because they're not politically expressed.
So no one on the left gets dbank.
Now, I have not heard of a single instance of anybody in the left getting DOE.
Can you tell me what the person that you know did, what they said that got them de bank?
Well, I mean, David Herwitz is a right wing you know, he's pro Trump. I mean he said all kinds of things. You know, he's been very anti Islamic terrorism, he's been very worried about migration, all these things.
None of that is remotely true.
This agency is one of the best expenditures in the entire federal budget as it fights against scams. It's actually returned billions of dollars to regular people who've been tricked and robbed by elites, So you can imagine why elites would like to see it eliminated. Specifically, and recent elon Musk and Coo are upset that the CFPB was regulating fintech, trying to make sure that online payment processors can't take your money and gamble it on crypto or other hair
brain schemes. But you can't just tell people that this agency gets in the way of your scams. So instead, what do they do a trojan horse and all agark agenda through some culture war bullshit. Mark Zuckerberg was up next, also stopping by Rogan's pod to advance war lies about an agency that has served as a check on his power as well. He pretended like the CFPB took aim at him because he stood up to Biden. COVID censorship again,
complete and total nonsense. It's worth noting that Zuckerberg was a Democrat like five seconds ago, using all kinds of woke virtue signaling to paint himself as some sort of a progressive ally when that was the most expedient paths of protecting his power. It is nothing for him to switch teams and use the same playbook of throwing out culture war red meat to cover for a pro oligarch agenda. It is literally the same playbook, just tickling the right
wing cultural orogonis zones instead of the liberal ones. How has this worked out for all of them beautifully? Chef's kiss Elon announced a war on the CFPB with this particular tweet. Now that agency is effectively dead, the new head announced he wanted a zero dollar budget for the year, that all new rulemaking and investigations should cease, and the workforce was told not to show up this week. Victory for the fintech Robert barons who want to fleece you.
This also means that rules such as ones promulgated under Biden which would have kept medical debt off of credit reports, have been halted unlikely to return. See if Phoebe is cracked down on junk fees gone after predit directory, payday lenders checked, abusive practices by debt collectors, stopped foreclosure abuses against veterans with VA loans, and a lot more.
Now all over, do you see how this works?
Though, in a world that made sense, the interest of the ninety nine point nine percent would routinely prevail over those at the top point one percent. So those at the tippy top, what do they do? They break the game. They lie to you, They confuse you about who your real allies are and who your real adversaries are. An executive order on girls and sports that applies maybe a few dozen girls in the entire country is no substitute for your ability to organize and have a voice in
your own workplace. But they are systematically destroying the National Labor Relations Board. Christy Noam running around playing dress up like Ice Barbie is not worth giving up on breaking up tech monopolies and keeping them from automating your job out of existence. But Trump is propping up the AI
overlords who openly brag about making all of humanity irrelevant. Now, some of you have been genuinely convinced that the richest man on earth, who is rapidly consolidating power solely in his own hands, is engaged in some sort of a populous project for the people. Please do not be a fool. Here's the truth of the bargain that is being offered to the right right now. You will get to own the Libs, and Elon will get to own the country. He will make you poor while he and enriches himself
and his friends. He will strip away were rights to freedom of speech, privacy, while he makes himself all powerful and untouchable. This man wants to put chips and all our brains for God's sake. Like, let's be serious for a second. Allow me to quote from Steve Bannon on this particular point about Elon and on the philosophy.
Of these particular tech oligarchs. He said to the New.
York Times, quote, now here's the point in techno feudalism, you are just a digital surf.
Your value is a.
Human being, as someone built and made in the image and likeness of God and endowed with the life spirit of the Holy Spirit. They don't consider that everything is digital to them. They are, at the end of the day, transhumanists. And what is transhumanist? Transhumanist is somebody who sees homo sapien here and Homo sapien plus on the other side
of what they call the singularity. And that's why they're all rushing, whether it's artificial intelligence, regenerative robots, quantum computing, advanced schip to sign Chris, or biotech, all of it to come to this point of which the oligarchs are going to lead that revolution. This is taking us back a millennium to feudalism. Their business model is based upon that.
That's Steve Bannon saying that, now, if Elon and cole Co told you that their goal was to make you a digital surf in themselves ceo kings of the world, I don't think a whole lot of people are going to sign up for that project. So they cloak it in wokeness, gender ideology, some other real or imagine liberal excess, or simply in the delight of making liberals squeal.
I beg you please keep your eye on the ball. The stakes here are too high.
The best way to own the Libs would be to learn from the mistakes, to not get distracted by a bunch of surface level culture war obfuscation that lets billionaires empty the vault to not give away your country for a few anti woke bubbles. Do not let yourself get played and Saga, I know you took a look at it.
And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Okay, great show for everybody tomorrow. Thank you all for watching. We love you and we'll see you the