Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
So if that is something that's important to you, please go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
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 Thursday, have an amazing show for everybody today where we have a.
Crystal Jimpac show.
Today we're going to try to rip through as much news as we possibly can. So last night around midnight, we got the first Supreme Court weighing in not really a ruling but a temporary stay weighing in on some doge activity. So break all of that down for you what it means, what is going to happen next. Also, big Cabinet meeting yesterday that Elon Musk was at some very interesting things happened there. We'll show you some of
the highlights. Saga really wanted to sound off on the Trump Golden visa, so Ryan Emily covered it yesterday, but we had a bit of a different view, so we wanted to express that as well. Obviously important in the context of sort of like philosophically and what is this country and how do we want to pursue immigration, et cetera. More airplane near missus absolutely terrifying too. Coming in a very close succession, will show you some really shocking footage
from one of those near misses. There's a new Biden book that is going to be coming out.
It is the.
Inside story of his decline and the cover up. Jake Tapper is involved, so that's led a lot of people to ask whether he is the right person to be doing the reporting there, whether he was himself in on part of that cover up. And Jeff Bezos making it plane that the Washington Post is not going to brook any descent from.
The pro oligarch agenda.
So we'll talk to you about that and the fallout that commenced afterwards.
Yeah, that's there's a lot to say about it. It's just so hilarious to me the way that how naked, how all of these people are and more. It actually fits well with a guest that Counterpoints had on it yesterday. Really excited to be able to bring this to everybody. They got to sit down with the CFPB's former roe, Hitchopra, who was behind the scenes working at the Biden administration.
Roichopra previously has not yet responded publicly to a lot of allegations made against him by Mark Andresen and by Mark Zuckerberg. We will be exclusively dropping that for our premium subscribers early, So if you want to go ahead and subscribe, you can, but we're going to give you a little teaser of what that looked like. Let's take a listen.
When it comes to debanking, I don't think people should ever lose their account because of their exercising their religion speech. And I'll tell you one of the first things I did years ago was to put forth a stronger policy that made it clear when that type of discrimination or debanking ran a foul of the law. Guess who sued to block it. It was actually the bank lobby and the Chamber of Commerce.
So if you want to hear the whole thing early Breakingpoints dot Com support the type of journalism that we're able to do here, Thank you very much. But well, why don't we get to the miniblock, Crystal?
Yeah, So some news, some court news, legal news coming out last night, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts weighing in on whether or not the Trump administration needs to immediately unfreeze these USAID funds. Let's go and put the tear sheet up on the screen. Headline here from Politico. Chief Justice allows Trump administration to keep foreign aid frozen
for now. And this actually applies specifically to foreign aid contracts where the work has already been performed and people are waiting on payments, so it specifically applies to those payments. This is part of a back and forth that's been going on that we've been tracking here about USAID that
has been working its way through the court system. Multiple federal judges have said to the Trump administration, you have to unfreeze this aid, and rather than try to do that, the Trump administration has repeatedly come up with different legal rationales why they believe, like, oh, we are complying and we just have now a new different legal theory for why this aid can be frozen. A federal judge yesterday had said, listen, I'm done. You've been playing these games
for weeks now. You have until midnight to unfreeze these funds. The Trump administration basically came back and said, we literally can't do that. They appealed to the Supreme Court. This is not any sort of a final decision or final ruling. This is just to preserve the status quo. John Roberts weighing in and saying Okay, we're going to give you some more time and asking for new filings to be put into this case by Friday. So Supreme Court almost
certainly ultimately going to weigh in on this. But really significant because, like I said, it's the first time Supreme Court weighed in. And also, of course we've been tracking this, you know, building crisis of whether or not the Trump administration was going to comply with the court orders that.
Are coming down now.
So far, like I said, they haven't been in compliance, and there've been multiple judges on this case specifically we have said.
You aren't in compliance.
But at this point they're not just openly defying those court orders.
They are coming up.
With legal theories for why they think they are justified in continuing to freeze this AID. In addition, as part of this filing, the latest legal theory that they've put in front of the courts is Okay, well you said we couldn't do this blanket freeze. Now we've gone through line by line and we've decided that we want to freeze some ninety percent. We want to cancel some ninety percent of these contracts with regard to USAID specifically. So now they say, well, it's not a blank of freeze anymore.
We just have gone through and decided that ninety percent of these contracts will want to be cut. That in and of itself socker of course, is very significant because it includes some of the things that had previously actually gotten waivers. So included in that ninety percent cut is things like pepfar funds for or people largely at Africa who have HIV and AIDS. It's going to tie in with some common city Elon Musk made with regard to the cabinet meeting on Ebola.
There's a lot of pieces here.
Obviously when you cut something by ninety percent that come into play, and this is all building up ultimately to that showdown where they want to take a case of Supreme Court and make the argument that they should be able to unilaterally cut funds as executive branch, even things that have been appropriated by Congress. This is part of
that unitary executive theory. This is part of them wanting to deem the Impoundment Control Act unconstitutional, so that Congress effectively, in their view, sets what is a ceiling for funding, but then the executive branch can come in and say, but we don't like that program.
We don't like that program.
We don't like that program, and effectively consolidates the power of the purse largely within the executive branch. There, we're one step closer to that eventual showdown, and I think it's anybody's guess which way the.
Supreme Court is going to rule. Yes, very good summation, as we said, So it's that this is just a stay. It's a stay that will refer the matter to the Supreme Court, which will allow it to happen before they can make that. I will say, there's some interesting actually stuff also happening at the same time when the House
of Representatives is continuing a resolution to fund the government. Now, theoretically that continuing resolution would do what it would continue to fund these very programs which have been paused by Dose.
So there's actually an interim House maneuver which would both fund these perhaps adding more to House gotis will have to weigh it with the current Congress actually funding the programs right now, so legally as I understand that, that will add to some of the argument obviously for congressional power over the purse. But it will go to the
full Supreme Court. I mean, that's that here before While you said it's definitely anybody's guests, I don't think Roberts would likely rule on behalf of the impownment clause in the way that the Trump administration wants to be with the most expansive views of presidential power are Justice Kavanaugh
and Justice Alito. Justice Thomas is kind of a you know, kind of a wild card in this regard, so you would think theoretically, but again, as I understand it, in his like very small sea conservative views previously in the way they've been applied from a federalist society person I spoke to, he's more of a wildcard. And Justice Gorsich actually would be the number one person, Justice Gorsich and Amy Barrett both come from a similar, more libertarian school.
If you look at some of the past rules Gorsich has made in this, it would seem to indicate likely to side with the liberals. So it's not it's not a slam dunk by the Trump administration at all. They're trying to get this as early as possible so that it could obviously inform what their stuff, what actions they can continue to make in the future. So it's interesting.
None of the last thing. It is the latest thing, as you said, as a relatively routine legal maneuver, we see just go to stays all the time whenever before they want to decide a full movement at the court. And you were talking also about the midnight deadline. It's like, wow, you know, in terms of actually being able to comply with a literal midnight deadline with all these crazy governmental systems, doesn't seem particularly realistic. So they also want want to set up some sort of showdown just.
On that totally, and I think that's an important part of it. I mean, I do think it was probably impossible for them to comply by midnight, which is what they were saying like, we really can't do this because the government is not just a.
Switch you can flick on and off.
On the other hand, the petitioners would say, you've had like weeks and weeks at this point to get it together and try to freeze these funds and in instead of taking any action in that direction, instead, you've spent your time to trying to come up with new legal ractionelles that would justify you defying this court order. So
that's what this came down to. But you know, you have to keep in mind, if you're Chief Justice John Roberts, if you're the Supreme Court, you really want to maintain your legitimacy.
So if you're.
Weighing in and saying no, no, no, I agree, you have to unfreeze these funds by midnight, and you know that that's probably impossible to accomplish, well, then you're already in this situation of a total head to head showdown with the executive branch. And they know that the second that the executive branch, if they were to go down the path of open defiance, then the Supreme Court as an institution is on let's just say, very shaky ground.
So you know, that's part of the.
Dynamics that play in here is they want to preserve their legitimacy. And if there's a credible threat, which I think there is that the executive branch is just going to defy orders that they don't like and don't want to comply with, then that puts pressure on them to weigh in on the side of the Trump administration so that they can preserve the appearance of their own power. So that's one of the dynamics that go in here.
And you've made the FDR comparison before. I think there is an apt comparison here because part of why the Supreme Court ultimately decides like, all right, we'll let you hear some of your programs go through that they were previously blocking is because he had threatened to pack the court. They knew that their sort of like power and legitimacy was on the line, and that's part of what applied pressure to them to go ahead and back what he
was doing. And I think there is a kind of a similar dynamic that could play on here as well.
Absolutely, there's a book I'm totally blanking on the name right now, which I highly recommend. God Okay, Supreme Power. That's what it is by Jeff Social. I read it several years ago. It's called Supreme Power Franklin Roosevelt versus the Supreme Court, which goes into this. I should probably reread it for some of these before the decision comes down. But if anybody's interested, that will give you some parallels. So extraordinary cabinet meeting, I guess that's one way, yeah
to put it. Everybody else is in suits, and say Elon's in the dark maga hat, wearing an overcoat and a T shirt. Okay, yeah, got it. That's definitely how we dress inside of the White House. Don't ask me why. Well, what the most interesting part was Trump basically settled the Elon question with his cabinet, which is who has the
authority over this email and compliance? And previously I really thought that that email was a very important jump off point because I was like, Oh, the cabinet's really asserting itself here as the executive They're the people who have been said confirmed to run these government departments. But here is what Trump had to say. He said, if you're against Elon, we'll throw them out of here. Let's take a listen.
I just wanted to ask you that the President Trump put a truth social today saying that everybody in the cabinet was was happy with you. I just wondered if that's if you had heard otherwise, and if you had heard anything about the members of the cabinet who weren't happy with the way things were going, And if so, what are you doing to address those any dissatisfactions.
Left the cabinet Just make just.
If you are, well, throw them at We have a lot of respect for Elon and that he's doing this, and some disagree a little bit, but I will tell you, for the most part, I think everyone's not.
Only happy that the real Okay, all right, I mean settle the question. There you go, you have got there. Trump basically endorsing it one hundred percent, and he said, well, if anybody disagrees with it, get out of here. Elon also expanded, this is more in terms of the relationship. This is why it's important during the meeting where he expanded on why he decided to send that email in the first place, and as Trump had said previously, it was that his own urging. Here's what Elon had to say, Like.
Last week, President encouraged me via truth social and also via a phone call to be more aggressive. And I was like, okay, you know, yes, sir, as president, we'll give you that. The President's commander in chief I do with the president.
Asks so, and I said, can we send out an email to everyone just saying what did you get that last week?
And the President said yes, so it did that.
And you know, we thought a partial response, We're going to send another email.
But our will is not to be capricious or unfair.
It's we want to hear people at every opportunity to send an email. And the email could simply be what I'm working on is too sensitible classify to describe, like literally just where that would be sufficient.
You know, I think this is just common sense.
And what is your target number for for how many workers employees you're looking to cut total?
We wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well. But if they're if the job is not essential or they're not doing the job well, debously should not be.
On public peril.
So I just think it's important to say Trump is set and settled the elong questions like all right, this is this is what the future because conceivably looks like now and he is in control in terms of his ability to send these emails and whatnot. And I will, you know fully admit I had no idea that this would ever be the dynamic. And I would never have predicted that Donald Trump would allow this kind of subsuming
of his own presidency over this. If I were a cabinet official, I would be furious, obviously, because this is like, you know, I got confirmed by the Senate. You know, my shit is all out there. I have to comply with all of these laws and sell stock and all these other like ethics things that you're allowed to do. Like meanwhile, you know, somebody can just bigfoot and come
on in here. But I do think at a certain point we just have to be like, all right, this is what Trump wants, Like it's no longer some sort of secondary project like Trump fully he's had the information. It's February twenty seven, It's thirty seven days into Donald
Trump's presidency. The fights and all of that have happened, and he has settled the question now that he wants Elon to at least be in charge of all of this, all of these cuts and basically of setting the guidance for federal agencies and so he can bear the consequences of that. Now, Donald Trump has made it clear that this is not some sort of fall guy or any of that. He's either endorsed some of the positions and door is basically saying he's a person who's in charge.
And in a sense, that seems to be the point of that whole cabinet show. When I covered the White House last time, Trump famously would have the cameras and you would bring them in here and force his cabinet officials to be like, mister President, you're the greatest president to ever serve in the history of mankind. And I do, I do feel like this. This was the purpose of this entire gathering, especially to try and publicly be like, if anybody here has a problem, you know, go ahead
and get out of here. So yeah, there we go.
Yeah, and also get on camera, yeah exactly say oh no, of course we love elon, we do whatever. So yeah, I mean, that's what's wild is You're right. In the first administration, these gatherings of the Cabinet Secretary Trump were about licking the boots of Trump. This one was about licking the boots of Elon. So yeah, I mean, I don't think anyone could have predicted that. I mean, I
saw the dynamic developing pretty quickly. I think the first real indication was over the H one B fight, Yes, where Trump really had to decide are you going to back Elon in an issue that he said he's going to go to war over or are you going to stick with you know, the previous incarnation in your MAGA base and some of your longtime supporters, et cetera.
He came down very clearly. You know, he didn't equivocate.
He came down very clearly on the side of Elon, and at every juncture he has handed power over to Elon Musk. And I don't think that there's any doubt that that trend is going to continue for the foreseeable future. Our friend Jeff Stein over at the Washington Post, who is doing fantastic reporting.
He's also going to make an appearance in the.
Bezos Blob because you're right in there as well. But anyway, he's reporting major changes coming to the federal government, led by Musk's doge most significant move to dismiss federal workers now underway. This is the big one. Agencies must submit plans to significantly reduce staff size by March thirteenth. Social Security Administration under instruction to cut staff in half. GSA
says terminations there are imminent. Labor Department is eyeing gutting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Office by ninety percent.
Oh, you mean the office that Elon Musk and his companies have run a foul of.
How interesting they're going to be gutted by ninety percent. Mass least cancelations of federal buildings underway, which is also interesting because everyone's been recalled to the office, but now they're not going to have any office, but they already don't actually have enough office space for everybody to.
Be in the office.
One hundred IRS leases to be nixed per records. Helps make sense, Jeff says of why Musk and Trump wanted a unified front today with cabinet secretaries, and you know, I also just want to reflect a little bit on the optics here, which you referenced a little bit with.
You know, everybody else is forced to be in their formal attire, everybody including Trump seated at the table, and there's Elon standing in the sort of commanding position and really kind of running the flow of this meeting wearing whatever the hell he wants to mare where and his own branded dark mag a hat which is not the original red make America Great Again hat. He has created
his own brand, his own following. And I you know, both of these individuals, Elon and Trump, their main genius really is around branding and symbolism, Like they think about what this imagery means. And so I think all of those pieces are very intentional. And Elon is the person in the government more than anyone, including Donald Trump, who holds the power and is making the decisions right now.
And you're absolutely right, Zager, Like, if you're one of these cabinet secretaries, who this is your shot and you get to run the show, and you went through the Senate confirmation, you did all this, and now you get in there and some twenty something year old doge kid actually has more power in your agency than you do because they're you know, Musk's apparatic. That is a wild situation. And so at the beginning of the week, there's a real question are they going to stand for this, are
they going to are they going to dissent? Are they going to revolt over this, and yesterday we got the infinitive answer, and that is no, they're going to do what Elon Musk wants them.
To do, you know. And that's my thing now with Donald Trump and all of this, I thought, maybe, you know, this is one of those times where you're going to try and set somebody else to absorb this. But when you definitively endorse it and then order your people to
comply and listen, that's your prerogative. You're the democratically elected leader. Okay, you know, to build a little bit on your optics for anybody who's never been in that room, if you ever get the chance you go on an oval office tour. One of the very first things they're going to point out is in the cabinet room is that the president's chair is bigger than everybody else, because nobody's ever supposed to be taller or bigger than the president. Okay, interesting, right,
in terms of who gets to stand and to speak? Look, do am I reading too much into it? Not necessarily, It's more just why are you allowing this to happen like this? Is the people who are branding and so called marketing experts, and I have no choice but to just say like, yeah, he believes it. He this is something that he wants, and now Trump will have to bear the sequences of that. So Elon also spoke a little bit about quote mistakes that have been made over
a doze. Let's take a listen, and I should say, we will make mistakes.
We won't be perfect, but when we make mistakes, we'll fix it very quickly. So for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was evola prevention. I think we will want ebola prevention. So we restored the ebola prevention immediately and there was no interruption. But we do need to move quickly if we are to achieve a trillion dollar deficit reduction and financially twenty twenty six, it requires saving four billion dollars per day every day
from now through the end of September. But we can do it, and we will do it.
So there you go in terms of the numbers that evolves. This is part of why I'm also starting to get very annoyed, is listen, you can doze all you want. If Congress can continues to fund it, then I mean, even if the government the government is not quote spending the money immediately, like at least it's being printed in or held or whatever in escrow by the government for the future. It's not like it's actually changed the stuff there.
And also, as I understand it, the current way that the tax bill and all that is shaking out, as we're looking at some four point five trillion dollar increase in the overall debt limit for what the cap that's being allowed. This is openly acknowledged, Like I just want people to understand that it's not only a few hundred more billion in the Continuing Resolution, it's an extra one hundred billion to be spent over at the Pentagon on
top of a major tax cut. I mean, we've talked here till we're blue in the face about the Pentagon and how if you ever really want to cut spending like it all exists right there, we can easily change procurement systems and all that we could spend. We could literally save hundreds of billions and all of that if we want to, I will say, I mean, on the
popularity of this, I still have no idea. I think it's now obvious that there is a like blue Maga backlash against this, the resistance is activated and it exists, and I don't think anybody can say that's deniable. What's open question to me is the similar question of Democrats and Obamacare back in two thousand and nine. Will this
be depressing to overall Republican turnout. Will it be one of those things where Republicans are tacitly okay with it, but they're not enthusiastic about coming out, or will they actively turn against it? And that's one of those very open questions. I also wonder about the independence and all this. You know, attitudes around government institutional trust still remain very, very low. Maybe this will change their mind. I'm still
not sure. I still think, of course, the economy will be the number one determined factor out of all of this. But part of the issue is that at the very same time that all of this is happening, consumer sentiment
is starting to tick down. Go take a look at the S and P five hundred and others and some of the reasons why even though Nvidia beat its earnings yesterday, while you're still seeing some shaky results in the overall stock market, people are pretty worried about tariffs and about the economy and without a big plan that kind of sells it to the American people. You kind of just get this chaotic feeling where feeling about the economy and
savings and all that is bad. The fundamentals remain horrible obviously, as we talk about here all the time for cost of living, and you could end up in a really bad situation.
Well, and it becomes increasingly clear it's a pro olagarch agenda. I mean, when you're doing massive four trillion dollar tax cut for the rich. You know, we'll see whether they do any of the populist no tax on tips or whatever. But even if they do, compared to the size of the four trillion that is going to the wealthiest, it's peanuts. So you've got that, you've got massive cuts to Medicaid, which you're talking some seventy to eighty million people, many seniors.
I don't know if people realize as many seniors who are in long term care, it's Medicaid.
That pays for that.
Millions of berths in this country paid for by Medicaid. Many rural hospitals are utter dependent on this program. I saw a stat yesterday about the number of hospitals rural hospitals in Alabama alone that would close. We're in the double digits, so huge cuts to social safety net programs, massive giveaway to the rich, the richest man on the
planet running the government to his own benefit. And I just always think it's important as we go through all of these individual developments of he said this, and he did that, and here's where the're cutting now and Social Security administration is being hacked by fifty percent. I think it's really important to zoom out and try to understand what the big picture is. As Sager says, this isn't
about cutting spending. We know that because of the build that just passed the House with every Republican supporting it save for Thomas Massey and Donald Trump behind it, okay, which would massively increase the debt and the deficit. This is about Elon's ideology and personal goals. Number One, I think you know, as best I can tell, he wants to suck up as much data from the federal garment to feed his own AI to try to win that competition.
Number Two, he wants to use the federal government as his own personal piggybank for his goal of getting to Mars and making humans an interplanetary species number three. I think Sager is right the other day he wants to be a trillionaire. And so the plan here, which has been laid out by Curtis Jarvin and discussed by JD. Vance and Peter Thiels behind it and Mark Andresen as well, is to have Elon be the CEO dictator of the country and Trump to be the chairman of the board.
And I don't think we've ever seen a clearer image of exactly that dynamic as we saw in this cabinet meeting this week. That's exactly the dynamic that was playing out there, where it's really Elon making the decisions. And yes, Trump gets to have some sign off and gets to be involved, but Elon is the really the one who
has taken charge. And of course, if you are taking the power of the purse from the from Congress, if you are completely consolidating power within the executive branch, if you are flirting with I mean, now they are defying court orders, but they're not in technical open defiance of court orders. But if you're flirting with that, all of those things are unconstitutional. All of that is illegal and unconstitutional. Now, how this is all going to play out in the
court system. How the Supreme Court's going to respond when their own legitimacy is on the line. That also remains to be seen. But I also, just before we move on to the nets next set, I have to also clarify that ELIN with this Ebola thing, it's not even
true that they turn the funds back on those. Yes, those funds are frozen, as are almost all the funds actually probably literally all the funds coming out of usaidea again in defiance of court order, in defiance of even the Secretary of State Mark or Rubio, who had put out some waivers for things like petfar and DOGE came in over his head. This is a dynamic ride was talking about yesterday's and none. It's still frozen. So it's not even the you know, agency heads that have control
here literally is Elon Muskindos, et cetera. But Ebola prevention has not actually been turned back on. And of course this is not the only time when they've accidentally fired something that was really or frozen something that was absolutely critical. There was the people who were watching bird flu that they had to scramble and rehire. There was the nuclear
safety guy that they had to scramble and rehire. There were some Transportation safety people, there were some FDA people, all of these big mistakes that if you saw them unfolding in any other part of government, Elon would be calling for these people.
Look at you, how.
Incompetent they are, look at how poorly they're doing their job. They would be fired immediately.
But no.
In fact, Ebola Prevention AID has not been restored. It continues to be frozen, as is almost everything in USAID.
The only thing I would quibble with there is I think that Elon's agenda is not nearly as aligned as you might think with Cartis Jarvin, or or with Curtis Jarvin and or Peter Thiel slash JD. Vans. I think all of these are a little bit more distinct. Elon is like a power in and of itself who probably
likes the idea of the so called dictator. But if you really think about the CEO dictator model that Jarvin and others had put out, it's a lot more rooted in like actual small d democratic legitimacy and being like a popular figure who takes strong control of the government, not dismantling the government itself. Much more like.
That's true.
I mean, because Jarvin talked about the rage like rage higher all government employees.
Let me explain it. So rage is not a Javier Malay style thing. Rage is about deplacing the current regime by putting in a new regime. I don't think Elon wants a new regime, Right's the That's kind of the point that I'm trying to explain. As in Steve Bannon. One of the reasons Steve Bannon is against the administrative state is because he thinks that the administrative state as is currently constituted is against the like MAGA ideal. But Steve Bannon would not be against the idea of a
MAGA administrative state right neither. I cannot speak for the JD or any these other people. I don't think so, just in terms of the stuff that they have said previously about government. I don't even think Jarvin would necessarily disagree with what I'm saying. I do think that Elon is against the administrative state period and is much more online with the privatized nature of where things are currently headed.
And so that's where you can come at the same problem attack vector and say we need to get rid of the current government employees. But then from there is
the divergence point. And this is what Steve Bannon ultimately correctly sees is he sees this as an attempt to basically privatize out all of these things so that you can have no regulatory regime as opposed to I would say people probably more like Curtis and JD or other figures who would swim in these waters, who would say, no, we need actually need our own government mechanism to enforce like our abilities and or control over like the broader market.
So that's why I think it's still important to say why Elon is really his own strain of whatever the hell is going on.
I think that's probably true. I think he's less like a true believer in the dark Enlightenment and you know, the neo reactionary movement and more finds it to be a very useful construct.
Yeah, exactly for his own power graph.
Yeah.
But I mean in the end, whether he's like a true believer or whether he's just using that ideology for his own ends, the outcome is basically the same.
And you're right, Elon doesn't want there.
To he is.
I think it's it's closest to say he's an anarcho capitalist. I mean he believes that every function of the government should effectively be privatized. And that relates more to this other related idea of network states, where they want to have these you know, many states, and they're already like, you know, there already are some of these cities that are set up this way that are basically private corporations
and they are completely privatized. And when Elon says he thinks every single federal government worker should be out of the public sector and into what he describes as more productive private sector jobs, what you're describing is an anarcho capitalist ideology, which is.
Distinct from you know, a russ vote.
I think you would put more in the like libertarian category, which we want. He was, you know, libertarians want a small state, but they still think like, oh, we should have a military and a police force and a court
system to enforce proper private property rights. You know, anarcho capitalists truly believe in privatizing literally everything, including security forces, and Elon appears to be much more in that camp, and as the richest man on the planet, even though he himself was the recipient of massive Government Aid Washington posted a great report on this at critical times like Tesla and SpaceX probably would not even exist today were not for loans and subsidies and the government ignoring him
missing milestones at SpaceX and a massive almost five hundred million dollar loan that came into to Tesla under the Obama administration at an absolutely critical time. So even though he personally has been a massive beneficiary of government support, he wants to number one, make sure his competitors don't benefit from that same support. Number Two, that the government is not powerful enough that none of these regulatory agencies
are powerful enough to rein in his power. And that's number three, to be able to have access personally and have the US taxpayer backstop his own net worth and
fund his own ambitions. So if you know these ideas that are floating out there that have become very popular, like the neo reactionary movement, the Curtis Yarvin Ceo dictator with the Chairman of the Board thing, whether it's that, whether it's the network state idea, whatever is out there in the ether that he can grab onto to pursue his own personal ideological interest goals.
And you know one other thing.
And I'm sorry I'm going on here, but I think it's important for understanding his ideology as well. Is he also is a believer in simulation theory, like I think it's and I think that's me.
I believe he.
Is, and I'd be the lowest he does.
I think that part of how he sees himself is that we all, including the President of the United States, including all those cabinet secretaries, we are quote unquote NPCs, non playable characters. And he is ready player one. He is the hero of this story. He is the only acting person with agency who is acting and creating this grand adventure of humanity. And if you internalize that, that
that's the way he thinks of himself. I think his actions and his willingness again to do whatever to you know, whether it's he doesn't care about the kids in Africa with HIV, doesn't care about the thousands of veterans who've already been fired, He doesn't care certainly doesn't care about the laws or the constitution or whatever. He is the ready player one who is going to save humanity by bringing us to Mars, and anything is justified in pursuit of that quest.
Yeah. Well, it does remind me that the movie is also very good. Let's continue here, shall we. Let's put the next one up on the screen. This one is about Medicare, and we're going to go ahead and play. That was just reaffirming what you were saying about Ebola. Let's get to the Medicare part, because this is also important for what the future of dose and all of that will look like in terms of whether they're actually going to be even able to achieve any cuts. Let's take a listen.
I think we build their pass last night aims to cut.
Two trillion dollars. Can you guarantee that Medicare, Medicaid, social Security will not be touched?
Yeah?
I mean I have said it so many times. You shouldn't be asking me that question. Okay, this will not be read my lips. It won't be read my lips anymore. We're not going to touch it now. We are going to look for fraud. I'm sure you're okay with that, like people that shouldn't be on people that are illegal, aliens and others criminals in many cases, and that's with social Security.
We have a lot of people.
You see that immediately when you see people that are two hundred years old that are being sent checks with Social Security.
All right, So there we go. Trump continues to say that he will not cut Medicare, as we said, the problem is that the current vending bill aims to cut two trillion dollars. It's going to be a difficult one if you. I mean, I was talking with a tax expert just yesterday and we're like, okay, so how do we even get to four point five trillion if we're
doing no tax on tips, no social Security. We're also raising the salt cap up to twenty percent, which is not even what the New York delegation and all those other people want. And you extend all of it, it doesn't It doesn't pencil like the Marrier does not. And I'm not even talking about Medicare or Medicaid. That's leaving all that stuff untouched. So either they're lying or they're going to have to cut something else. I'm going to probably bet. Online speaker Johnson yesterday was on a was
on TV and was asked specifically about this. He says, yes, we won't cut Medicare or touch medicare literally at all. But you know, we'll see, As I predicted.
This Medicaid is the one that's really on the medicailock. Well, Johnson is out there saying we're going to do work requirements. Yes, if you're you know, a single mom or whatever, it'll be there for you. But if you are able bodied,
you're going to be kicked off. I mean, they are talking about significant Medicaid cuts, and the numbers just I mean, the numbers just don't add up to make that level of cuts with adding money to the defense budget, by the way, and most of the federal government is military spending, healthcare spending, Social Security, and the bucket that they have
targeted in particular for massive cuts is Medicaid. Now, when I hear Trump saying that in that particular sound bite, what I hear is him giving himself some wiggle room of no, we're not going to cut benefits, Oh, but
we're going to root out fraud. And I think that's going to be the fig leaf of you know, we're not cutting really cutting benefits to people who deserve it, but they're still kicking millions of people off of Medicaid that they decide undeserving or they decide are quote unquote fraudulent. Because that's certainly the direction that things are.
Hiking right now. Honestly though, that's going to be a much more difficult fight, right because welfare reform, whatever you think of it, was very popular in nineteen ninety six. So work requirements in general, from the polling and all that I've seen, are extremely popular. That would be an interesting way for them to square the circle. But I'm not yet sure. There was all these politics back in
the day called Dole politics, absolutely fascinating. If people want to go back and look, let's just look in terms of any potential blowback and what all this is. Let's put this up there from NBC News. Guys, this is a six Somehouse Republicans are currently hitting the brakes on town halls after some of the blowback over the Trump cuts to try and avoid some of those some of
those scenes that we've seen previously. And Crystal, you have one from your own district, which you're going to set up and tell us about.
This is a district I actually ran for Congress, and they've since redistricted it, so I'm not technically don't live in this district anymore. But this is Republican Congressman Rob Women. He's really tried to position himself. He's a real kind of like Beck venture tries not to say too much, tries not to really rock the boat, et cetera, but just goes along with the party line.
He had. It wasn't even him.
One of his staffers had some remote town hall and it was flooded with you know, ultimately there were some one hundred constituents. There's a very mostly like rural part of Virginia. It's quite Republican. You know, he usually gets re elected pretty pretty easily, pretty handily, et cetera. And they were quite upset that he wasn't there and demanding him to show up and answer their questions.
Let's take a lism where.
Where ro.
So flooding in even when he's not going to be there. And I predicted that they would just stop doing town halls. And I think that is certainly what's going to ultimately happen here because I think some of the early ones these are Republicans in super red districts that thought they would be safe. But obviously even in very red districts, you still have Democrats, right, still have in almost every
district in the country. You still have a pretty significant number of Democrats who can show up, and you know, I have no doubt like there's been a lot of republica oh well, these are just astroturfed and they're just you know, being organized to show up. I don't doubt that that's the case that Move On and Indivisible and these other organizations and even just the local Democratic Party organizations are organizing people to go to these town halls.
But that was the same case during the Tea Party era, and there was a lot of Democratic cope at that time as well about the way this was funded by the Cooke Network, et cetera. That was all true, But you have to have people who are upset and energize enough to listen when you send out your email blast saying show up at this town hall. And it takes extraordinary times for people to break down of whatever their normal routine is and show up at a congressional town
hall to yell at their member of Congress. So I wouldn't dismiss it just because yeah, of course it's it's organized and there's you know, involvement from these activist groups. There still is a reflection here of genuine base energy. And when you're talking about a miterm election, in particular, that ends up really really mattering, and that's certainly what.
We see party. Look, obviously they're being funded and or organized. It's like, okay, welcome to politics. That's how it all works. By that definition, the entire Trump campaign, half of which was privatized by Elon, was privately you know, was organized right to get.
Out the vote.
Okay, you're still on right? Are we going to say that it was fake? Obviously not right. This is one of those where you're exactly right. Back in the day, it was such a democratic talking point. I can't even still remember. I can still remember they were like the Tea Party was fake. It was all funded by the Koch brothers. I actually I went to college here at that time, and I just remember all of the protesters flooding in from across the country. Did somebody pay for
their transportation by busting or whatever? Yeah? Maybe Did that mean that they were any less activated and or organized whenever they went home to get people to vote for them? Absolutely not. These people were die hard. They would have paid for it if they could have, or they would have been at home cheering it on on TV. So just for people understand, like, just because you fund something and bring people here and try and bring it in tink does not make it fake per se. It's still
a reflection of something. So I would very much caution Republicans from trying to get themselves out of like, oh, the big money groups are paying for it. I'm like, yeah, well that's what they always do. But you've got to have something to activate, you know, to be able, you have to have somebody there be ready to organize. You can't just you know, create it out of very thin air. So caution there for Republicans definitely could continue to be
a problem. Turning now to Elon Musk and the potential interview situation coming up, which I think all of us would like to see. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Elon, responding to a video claiming that he should go on John Stewarage's show, replied saying I will do it if the show airs on an edited Daily Show quote tweeted and said at Elon Musk, we would be delighted. So that could be very interesting.
And he did add one more condition after this, which was like he was like, oh, and it has to stream also on X which feels to me like he's kind of trying to get out of it.
He tried, right, because from a copyright perspective, that would be probably really difficult or jailing in Comedy Central here, which is like archaic and stupid the way that they handle their copyright stuff. So maybe that could be the way that he'll get out of it. Let's discuss that after though, we see how John Stewart's been talking about Elon lately. Let's take a listen, and ten is all of them? Right? It would be embarrassing if it.
Was a small drop in the bucket, and that the American people didn't expect that we should negotiate for all their frecking drugs because we've already paid for him with our subsody.
It's fine. So he got so mad he literally busted a cup in his own hands.
It was one of his better, better ones.
Actually, I think John's back and forth, I.
Feel like he I'm meeting the moment.
I found obviously, you know, like became a fan during the Bush administration, and that's when I think he really became like a singular and very important force because he kind of did what we do. But before it's time, almost twenty years ago, where he would both call out Fox and MSNBC and CNN, ridicule kind of the mainstream media, but directly take you know, take like a very hard line against Bush and Cheney and a lot of the
other bullshit claims. And he was really good in the Obama years too by basically countering not only like tea Party adioc from time to time, but he would give it to Obama and Nancy Pelosi and them just as much. And so I do feel like he's really made for this moment kind of to just ridicule every they makes sense, you know that he had to come back for right now.
Yeah, And the most of that segment was focused on like, hey, if you want to cut here's a bunch of places you actually could, like tax subsidies for the rich and oil and gas companies, or the defense budget. Here's you know, like all kinds of places where if you're actually serious about this, let's do it. And it was very effective, which is why I think Elon felt the need to jump in and you know, pretend like he's going to do this interview, which I don't think is going to happen,
but we'll see. Somebody on Twitter was saying This might be another like you know how one was. Yeah, Elon and Mark Zuckerberg were supposedly going to fight and then of course that never came to fruition. If he does, I mean I would absolutely love to see it. John
Stewart is a great interviewer, underrated interviewer. That was one of the best parts of his Apple show was all these people would sit down with him, was all it is John Stewart or the VA secretary or whatever, and he would just rake them across the coals or Janet Yellen, I mean, all these high level people, and he comes in prepared and serious and is very smart person and was able to do a very effective job. So I think it would be I think it would be very
interesting and quite a uh. I think it would be quite good head to head combat for us to all watch, which is why I don't really think that Evan is going to go.
Forward with it. All right, well we will see, shall we. They'll be exciting, h