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All right, let's go ahead and get to some of the liberal democratic reaction to Trump's Gaza ethic cleansing plan, so, you know, a part for the course, rather than saying, you know, gee, uh, it would have been good if Democrats could have beat this guy, because this is all really going terribly and maybe if they hadn't been so committed to their own genocidal plans with regard to Gaza, maybe they could have eked down a win. Since it
was really, you know, really quite close. You have a number of significant liberal accounts who have decided that the real fault was the people who either stayed home and didn't vote, or who you know, actively voted for Trump because they were so horrified by the genocide that was being perpetrated by the Biden administration. So let's go ahead and put the first one up on the screen. Here, we can do speed run through these. These are Samone Sanders.
I think now it's very proper to reiterate that elections have consequences. Obviously that is a job at you know, people who were worried about the genocide.
We can go up to Harry Sisson.
Next says, I hope all of the losers who said and posted things like this understand they played a crucial role in helping Trump get elected. He will now have hurt millions with that power. This was somebody who said, hey, Kamala Gaza is speaking now, bitch. Next up we have Adam Gentilsen, who said, in two thousand, the left said there was no difference between Gore and Bush, so vote nator. Then Bush ared a war of choice in Iraq, and twenty twenty four the left said there was no difference
between Harrison Trump, so vote uncommitted. Now we have Trump proposing that the US take over Gaza.
Gentlesen, by the way, you can check FEC records. He's still a consultant for John Fetterman. He's a former chief of staff to Fetterman. People knew that, but like, go ahead and look, he's on Fetterman's payroll.
There you go, all right, and next one, last one we can put up here a genuine question, not aiming to stunk on et cetera. But for the pro Gaza folk who yell gemicide, Jill and killer, Kamala and abstain voted. Jill's dinary voted for Trump. What's your reaction to Trump saying US will own Gaza? Same thing in your eyes as Harris or regret now or question mark. So you know this is all very very productive. Ryan always did a genuine question at least, Yeah, all right, genuine question.
So it's a genuine question, Like here's a genuine answer. Can anybody point me to any moment where Kamala Harris said that she was going to do anything different than Joe Biden and was going to ever use US leverage to force us these firing Gaza, right, was there any moment where Kamala Harris told voters that she would be less hawkish or less warlike than Donald Trump. Is a genuine question. Back to this genuine question, can anybody find
me an example of either of those? Because I can find you many, many examples of Harris saying the opposite, that she would continue the Biden approach to arming Israel no matter what, and also that she would be tougher when it came to making war than Donald Trump most lethal army ever.
You know, like prosecutor transnational gangs.
Yes, so tell me, like what is the and bringing Liz Cheney talking about, So what is the argument for to make the case that the war would not still be going on now as we speak if Kamala Harris were president, like sending us how everything else that Trump is doing? Like, what's the case to make that? Right now? We'd have a ceasefire in Gaza if Kamala Harris were president, Like, how do you in your mind? How do you get what happened from election day in November to today in
February that brought about a ceasefire? Because we have a ceasefire with Trump's president, what does it hold? Does he send troops in there? We don't know, we'll see. Yeah, but right now we have a ceasefire. What's the evidence that Harris would have gotten that done.
Yeah, no, that's that's exactly right. And also, you know, the Uncommitted movement, they really went above and beyond to give her an opportunity to and a bunch of.
The uncommitted leaders endorsed Harris.
Endorsed her anyway, that's right.
And you know they like the ask to have a Palestinian American make vetted comments endorsing Kamala at the DNC. That's how low the bar was in terms of her trying to extend an olive branch. How many times did she have the opportunity, you know, at a time when people were say, hey, you really need to separate yourself from this guy. Biden is really unpopular. Here on a platter is an area where he is profoundly unpopular, where you could easily distance yourself. It would be the right
political thing and the right moral thing. And she would never ever do it right.
And putting a Palistinian American on the stage at the DNC would have meant something materially because people said, all, oh, that's nothing, why not do that? It would have pushed back against her, the donors and the voters who represented the pro Israel faction who wanted no pressure applied whatsoever
to Israel. Yeah, and Harris's willingness even to put a vetted two minute speech from Palistinian American on the stage that endorses her and endorses her strategy, her willingness to do that would be a glimmer of a possibility that she's willing to take some risks on behalf of a ceasefire. And so that's why there was some meaning to what seems kind of like a meaningful ask, and also is why she said no to it, because she was not
willing to take those risks. So if she's not willing to tick off a tiny sliver of her donors, because a lot of those donors be like, okay, fine, some Palastin Americans speaks like we had lots of different we have a different, vast array of speakers up on stage. Not that big a deal. We can get over it. She's not even willing to do that. Why on earth would she be willing to pressure in it in Yahoo to do something he doesn't want to do. Yeah, And
some people concluded that she wouldn't be. And the other thing that I think this freak out shows is a recognition that Gaza did actually play a role in the election, because otherwise, why like what are you worked up about here?
Yeah?
I mean they love to be like, oh you left ease, you don't matter, we don't care about you.
And then that they lose like it was your vault.
You're so powerful, you know, and it's like all right, well, which which is it?
Here?
We have a statement from one of the co chairs of the Uncommitted movement we can put up on the screen. This is from Leila ellabed Is Layla is She wasn't one of them related to Rashida Tile said.
Oh maybe, yeah, well certainly one of the one of the Uncommitted organizers was.
Well okay in any case, she says, I feel sad, angry, and scared for our communities. For months, we warned about the dangers of Trump at home and abroad, but our calls largely went unheard. Hairs left a vacuum by not visiting Michigan. Families impacted by US supplied bombs to help create a permission structure for their trust. While Trump visited
Dearborn and filled a community in despair with lies. Trump's illegal calls for ethnic cleansing are horrific, But as on so many other issues, Democrats had a chance to persuade voters they were the better.
Alternative, and they blew it.
I think that is all very accurate in spite of the former Kamala Harris aid, responding, deeply unseerious. People who want to shirk their responsibility clowns, because again it's always the voter's fault, never the fault of the people in power who had many opportunities responsibilities something different.
Yeah, responsibility is such an interesting word there, like who has the responsibility?
There? Right?
Yes, exactly right?
And then lastly can put this up on the screen. So the group that was called Arab Americans for Trump has now changed their name after the president's Gaza Rivera comments. They say that the chairman of the group formerly known as Arab Americans for Trump said during a phone interview the group is now going to be called Arab Americans
for Peace. Name change came after Trump held that Tuesday press conference alongside bb net Yahoo and proposed the US take ownership in re developing the area into the revier of the Middle East. The talk about what the president wants to do with Gaza. Obviously, we're completely opposed idea of the transfer of Palestinians from anywhere in historic Palestine, and so we did not want to be behind the curve in terms of pushing for peace, because that has
been our objective from the very beginning. I mean, I will say, I don't know how you could look at Trump's first term in office and think that he was going to be like Propalas. I mean, he gave Israel everything they wanted, and he had Mary Madison giving him one hundred million dollars in being like.
We're going to take over the West Bank.
You know, this was all out there publicly, so no one should be surprised by the approach that Trump is taking at this point.
But you know, one thing, Ryan, I one reason.
In particular why this discourse has kind of annoyed me in particular because I mean, this is the kind of shit.
That liberals do all the time.
But post November, post Trump winning again, there actually has been some liberal lefty alliance and community building because it's so clear that the liberal establishment approach was a failure.
Right, they had this.
Theory of oh, we have an anti Trump coalition and we need to focus on the suburban moderates. We're going to use this channey to do that. You know, that's how we're going to approach this. We're going to focus on rather than addressing people's material concerns, which is what contributed to the rise of this I would say, fascist movement, Rather than dealing with that, we're just going to you know, talk about democracy, talk about fascism in the abstract and
not fully delivered for people. And you know, all of those theories were really wrong. Not to mention that they spent so much time destroying the Bernie Sanders movement both in twenty sixteen and then again vanquishing him in twenty twenty that I would say was their primary goal over ultimately defeating Trump, and all of that edifice has been
has humbled. You know, in some of the favored media personalities, the Joe and Meeka's of the world, have you know, capitulated to Trump after making lots of money being these big resistance figures, and so you know, when he actually gets in there and they want to continue to have
access to power, they immediately bend the knee. So there has been a real a real opening, and I think a real radicalizing of a lot of liberals who have fled MSNBC who are going to more like lefty YouTube channels like my husband's Kyle's, but a lot of others
do David dol MIKE'SO have seen huge growth. So, you know, the other thing that irritates me about the you know, the liberal discourse here around Gaza is that I think it undercuts that new movement and sort of community building within the Democratic base and radicalizing in a lot of ways of the Democratic base.
Elon Musk's DOJ Committee hasn't been able to turn up any serious evidence of fraud, waste, or abuse yet, but did manage to get a win out of White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt. Let's roll this clip talking about a Politico scandal.
I can confirm that the more than eight million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico, the American taxpayer's dying, will no longer be happening. The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments.
Now.
Again, this is a whole of government effort to ensure that we are going line by line when it comes to the Federal of government's books, and this president in his team are are making decisions across the board on do these receipts serve the interests of the American people. Is this a good use of the American taxpayers money. If it is not, that funding will no longer be sent abroad and American taxpayers will see significant savings because of that effort.
Oh boy, this was a wild one yesterday. Normally it wouldn't be the kind of thing we're talking about, Crystal, but it rose to the level of the White House Press Secretary claiming that they're going to come in and cut off these payments. So to bring people up to speed what happened here, USA spending dot gov is a website. It turns out to be very dangerous if you don't
know how to use it. Okay, So people went in and searched somehow Politico and it came up with this idea that Politico is funded by USAID and that then was connected to the fact that Politico had recently had a glie in their payroll and so some political reporters didn't get paid, and was then also connected to the fact that Politico had been one of the many news outlets that had reported on the letter from fifty former
intelligence officials said that infamous letter, infous letter. So they said, Aha, So USAID, the State Department basically CIA funded, the Deep State funded Politico. Politico then laundered this letter from these intelligence officials to benefit Biden and then gets all of this money from USAID and then Musk finds out about it, cancels the money, and now all of a sudden, Politico
can't make payroll, Like, wow, we've got them, incredible. So in fact, what to me, Actually, these guys did actually stumble on a scandal, which is the way that a lot of our Beltway media is funded, which is a political pro Bloomberg.
Whole, some of the newsletters, all of these trades. So like insider trade publications, it.
Goes back many decades to the advent of this trade
what's called a trade publication. So if you are either a government official at the Department of Transportation, you own a trucking company, you own a shipping company, like your own lobbyists, or more particularly exactly you're a lobbyist for those people, you really want to know what everybody, every lawmaker on the subcommittee that oversees your industry is thinking up to the minute, and you want to know what the commissioners and the senior staff at the agency that
regulates you are up to at the moment. And you're not going to find that in the New York Times or drop site or here on breaking points like we're not getting into the weeds like that.
Very specialized, like yeah, down to the subcommittee kind of knowledge.
The fact that it's lobbying intelligence is an entire thing like lobbyists whose job is not to actually lobby to pressure members of Congress to do a thing, it's just to find out information and then deliver it privately to different corporations that pay for it. This is the same thing, really political problem work, all these others that do this, and so they charge through the roof for this.
Thousands of dollars because they know that, first of all, it's not coming out of any individual's pocket. It's coming out of either the government or the lobby shop or the corporation or whatever. So for them to spend a few thousand dollars on this information, that's going to prove valuable to you know, if you're a corporation, your bottom line, eh, that's nothing.
Right, and so I think it's a reasonable question, like does a government agency need this?
But we're talking about people here who are raising these questions, who are capitalists who would presumably just appreciate.
The hustle here, right, And this is over more than a decade, by the way, yes, this amount of money. Well, the other thing is not all of it is politico. Not all of it is, and not of all is USA I did.
Like there's a even the number is wrong, so like eight million dollars. They make it sound like, oh, they got eight million dollars from USA i D in a year, even that's not true. Is eight million dollars over a decade, from all from all government agencies combined. Now again I still think like the business model is sort of preposterous whatever,
but it's wildly different than how it was presented. And then the other thing that's funny to me, Ryan, especially talking to you, is that you guys have actually done reporting about some news agencies that USA i D does.
Is actually funded.
And I don't think any of these people cared anything about it.
Right now now they're now they're there, now they're starting to notice it. Michael Schellenberger actually did a piece based on or advancing some of our Reason reporters. So now they're starting to see. But yes, USA I D does fund foreign does fund journalism that's done in foreign countries, and that that journalism is often geared towards US US interests. Yeah, that that is a thing, and that should be you know, probed and should be scrutinized. They're not. They're not funding.
Now I had sent this, I don't know, maybe we can add this in post. It's gotten it's gotten even more upsurred. We can go back to political in a second. But the New York Times got lumped into this scandal. Uh, somebody went through and typed in New York into USA spending knockov and pulled up a number of like twenty nine million dollars or something like that, saying that the US government is funding the New York Times. The tune of twenty tine million dollars turns out brouh and so
it's Ian Miles Chong. It's like completely unreliable online figure is then and then Hooberman, who has a massive following, shares it and he's like, I have to speak out now. This is outrageous. This money could have been spent doing you know, anih research. It's like, as Lefong points out, they searched New York, not even New York Times. So New York University gets a lot of money for research et such, anything with the word New York get it showed up in here. And this should this in the
old days, so to speak, this wouldn't matter. This would be like kind of funny that like people got this kind of thing wrong because Twitter x has now taken on this like central place in the MAGA ecosystem. What goes viral there becomes just quote unquote true and then gets sent to the press secretary, and then the press secretary responds to it even though it's just fundamentally wrong.
And you know, the inability of the community notes to respond to this stuff is also very telling, Like this is just wrong, but it's not getting noted for the most part.
Yeah, and even if it was, I don't know that it would really matter. I mean, Elon Musk himself is what the most community noted person on Twitter. Yeah, and it hasn't stopped anyone, well it has, I mean some people don't believe his nonsense, but plenty of people do, regardless of the fact that he will just you know, take a claim like this and spread it like it's nothing without thinking twice about it.
So, yeah, it's a total destruction.
I don't know if we put that up already.
Yeah, it's a very like, yeah, it's a very post truth, postmodernist kind of a reality.
And you're right.
But now the you know, used to the Biden people back in twenty twenty were able to win with this bedrock assumption that like, what happens online isn't real life, and that's just not true anymore. Now what happens on Twitter as preposterous as it is, like they have filled this administration in part with people who are good posters. I mean, that's basically how Jamie Vance ends up as Vice president of the United States.
Right.
And Elon Musk has you know, I mean, obviously he has a number of power sources, but one of them is the fact that he runs this platform to his own benefit, including something else that you've talked about, Ryan, including silencing critics from within MAGA. So you know, Elon is a Hobber Malay fan, an anarcho capital list, you know, a fan of this like tech, feudalist, nonsense, crazy, and it is directly at odds with the Steve Bannon populist right ideology. I mean, Steve Bannon will tell you that
in quite existential terms. Go read his interview with the New York Times, and so the kind of original Maga type people like the Laura Lumbers of the world, who were going out and trying to you know, trying to push back against this direction which is an existential threat to the you know, populist right. Steve Bannon ask view of what Trump should be and what he should be doing. It truly is Elon Musk is a existential threat to them. They have been vanished on Twitter and suppressed and you
no longer like really see them bubbling up. So you know, it's it has become this incredibly influential platform that has a direct pipeline into what is coming out of the Press Secretary's mouth, which is why we have to pay attention to stupidities like making up these numbers about Politico in New York Times.
And then what you what you will then see is that the most absurd and incorrect claims will end up getting noted, and then that gives credence to ones that aren't noted. And so for instance, now finally this ian Miles Chong one does have a community note, and so they'd be like, hey, this guy is saying that it's New York Times. Actually it's New York This guy's saying it's the last five years. It's not the last. He
didn't run it for the last five years. Because if you don't put in, if you don't put the time in right in USA spending, it gives you like And then what they're noting here is that the actual total to the New York Times over five years would be one point six million, but most of that is from the Apartment of Defense, the Pentagon. These are Pentagon. These are people in the Pentagon or service members who subscribe to The New York Times and expense it to the government.
So instead of uncovering some scandal they just discovered, would like people read the New York Times.
For better or worse? Maybe to them that is quite a scandal, Like yess still do?
All right, We've got David dan standing by to break down some of the legal challenges and legal movement push back against DOGE, pushback against the Trump administration. Some new court decisions have come down, so let's get to that. So for a look at the legal pushback against Elon Musk DOJE and also the Trump administration more broadly, we are glad to have David dan here, of course, is the editor of The American Prospect and great friend of the show.
Great to see you, dude, Good to see you.
Yeah, of course, So give people a broad contour, and then I'll get into some of the elements. We have some of the specifics of some of the legal most significant legal pushback against the moves too, I don't know, seize the Treasury and make Congress irrelevant and fire a bunch of people who and get rid of an agency, and all of these sorts of things.
Well, really every single one of those has some sort of corresponding legal action that we're seeing. There was hearing today on maybe the biggest threat, which is the accessing of the Treasury Department's payment system at the Bureau of
the Fiscal Service. The Justice Department agreed to restrict access to just two people, Tom Krause, who's kind of leading this DOGE team at Treasury, and this twenty five year old Marco Iliz, and to make sure that their access was read only, and apparently that has happened to a degree.
There's been some limitations, particularly.
On Marco, So that was an example of an early success.
That's a temporary restraining order.
Of course, there was also two temporary restraining orders on the payment freeze that was put together by the Office of Management Budget and what that led to was a rescinding of the order to pause all rants and loans. The federal government nicks that hasn't fully kind of taken hold. I think what we're learning is once you turn off some of that stuff, it's hard to turn it back on. So there's projects all over the country like head Start that aren't getting the money that they were supposed to
be able to get. There are other lawsuits, particularly around the firings. There's a lawsuit as we know today is the end of this buyout offer, this kind of fake buyout offer. Unions have sued saying that that isn't authorized
by law anywhere. And then another big one is Gwynn Wilcox, who was a member of the National Labor Relations Board who was fired in violation of the nlrp's own statute, which says you can't fire a board member unless there's malfeasance in office, dude, to try to block that firing. There are other lawsuits about illegal firings. For example, the USDA's inspector General who came to work saying this is an illegal firing when you fired me and was escorted out of the building by security.
She has also sued to get her job back.
So, you know, a really broad section of these across the federal government, across some of the things have been done.
Let's talk about the buyouts for a moment. There's been it's been reported that roughly twenty thousand people maybe it's a few thousand more since then, have taken these buyouts. You guys pointed out over the prospect that that's actually under the kind of expected turnover. So, in other words, the people that have accepted this quote unquote buyout are people who were ready to retire anyway, and they're like, oh.
Likely the case, yeah, most, I mean it's quite a bit under. I mean, the average will turnover within the federal civil service is something between five and ten percent. Twenty thousand employees would represent one percent of the federal government's workforce. There are new numbers out today that say that's up to about forty thousand, but that's still quite a bit less.
So these are people who were going to.
Retire who figure, Okay, maybe i'll get several months of severance as a result. Now whether they will get is really very much in question. We know from the experience of Twitter that many many people sued after they were given a buyout offer because they didn't get the money that they claimed they were going to get. And there's a little clause at the end of the resignation offer that has been made by the government that essentially says that you're not.
Allowed to sue the government over reason.
So clearly they're setting up for a situation where they kind of pull the rug out from these people who have accepted the buyout offer.
My understanding is there's also a question about whether this offer itself is legal because it would again require some expenditure of funds, and you know, there's what a budget deadline coming up in March, and there's nothing that can really be authorized beyond that, et cetera. So isn't there also just a question over whether the courts may say, hey,
you can't even go forward with this. So all you people who took this deal like you're kind of high and dry, because this was an illegal offer to begin with.
Yeah, and that's part of the lawsuit to enjoin this offer because, as you say, on March fourteenth, federal government appropriations run out. So you can't make a promise to the federal workforce that we're going to keep paying you until September thirtieth if they only have authorization to pay
anybody in the federal government until March fourteenth. So, yes, that is a major part of the lawsuit that was put together by two federal employee unions, the American Federation Government Employees, and I believe Sciu And.
Can you talk a little bit about the NLRB unpack not just this illegal firing that's being challenged, but the broader effort to actually deem the NLRB to be not an agency, to be effectively unconstitutional. Where is that fight?
Yeah, there are two things on, like parallel tracks going on. So first, by firing the head of the artmor one of the board members of the NLRB, Trump has put this agency down to two board members. And here's why that's important. Normally it's a five member panel. Two members means that the NLRB does not currently have a quorum, and under Supreme Court precedent, that means that it cannot
it cannot actually adjudicate any case right now. And the NLRB sort of operates as an appeals court on federal labor law.
So there are.
Regional NLRB offices that make decisions. They are administrative law juzes that make decisions, but if anything is appealed, it has to be answered by the NLRB. So it's like having an appeals court or having no appeals court, but people can still appeal. So if a company has a union election and the union wins, and the company decides we're going to sue because we're going to challenge this election, it goes up to the MLRB, where it effectively stays there.
At this point, it can't there nothing else can be done on the case. So this kind of stalls out US labor law. Whether it's union elections or illegal firings or other grievances, anything that gets elevated to the NLRB level can't be done right now. And so that's the benefit that Trump gets from this firing, which has been challenged in court.
Separately, there's a process.
By companies like SpaceX and Amazon, familiar names the richest people in the world who are trying to make the NLRB unconstitutional. That's what they're arguing in court. They've been doing this since the Biden administration. But these cases are starting to wind their way up through the courts. They're at the appeals court level right now, and they may get to the Supreme Court where they would have to
decide whether or not the NLRB is unconstitutional. It's a really kind of operatic argument, but you never know with this court, and so at that point you would end up having no labor law in fact rather than just in practice as we have right now.
David, one question, one big question I have right now is whether they're going to follow these court orders. So they've already suffered a few losses. You mentioned one at the top, there's an injunction against the freezing of all the payments. We can actually put E four up on
the screen you were referencing some of this. The Trump administration is still freezing many climate and infrastructure grants in spite of the fact that two different federal courts have now barred it from doing so, and maybe that's a misunderstanding, or maybe they just maybe they just aren't listening to the court orders. There also was an injunction against the Birthright Citizenship Executive Order, which is just like briazenly preposterously unconstitutional.
There's an injunction against transferring transgender women into men's prisons as well.
So you know, what indications.
Do we have about how much they're going to actually listen or care about these various court injunctions and rulings that ultimately go against them, Because you do have people like JD. Vansu previously when he was just doing podcasts, was like, yeah, we're going to be like Andrew Jackson and say, okay, well go and force this ruling with your army.
Yeah, it's obviously one of the bigger concerns that we can possibly have, and we're not going to really know the outcome of that until you get sort of a final ruling. Right until we get a Supreme Court adjudication of some of these cases is adverse to what Trump wants. That's when we're going to find out if the river meets the road here. What we do know right now is that the let's start a bit with the one
that started today with the payment system. Apparently, according to reporting from Nathan Tankas, the Treasury Department has started to limit the access of at least one the twenty five year old kid, Marco Aliz.
They've limited his access to the payment system.
It's more closer to read only at this point, which complies with that order. The O NB memo was rescinded. But as you say, there are several or other what seemed to be illegal impoundments going on. Some of that is because the authority or the alleged authority for some of those impowments, like the stuff at EPA, is derived
from different sources. So there was an executive order that said we're going to terminate the Green New Deal is the way that it was put in the EO, and that tries to pause all disbursements of you know, climate related investments that were made under the Inflation Reduction Act and under the Investment Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act. And so even though the pause on all grants and loans has been blocked by two federal courts, there are these other authorities that say.
We're allowed to block foreign aid or pause foreign aid.
We're allowed to pause these EPA grants and things like that, and those haven't really been challenged to the same degree saying your authority in the executive order to do this is bogus and it would represent, you know, basically stealing the power of the purse away from Congress and deciding that you don't have to spend money on things you don't like.
So that battle sort of remains to be seen.
They haven't really pushed that yet, so that's I think that's been lost a little bit. People think, oh, the O and B memo was rescinded, and so now federal money is flowing again, and it's not true. I mean, there are still these illegal impoundments happening in violation of the Constitution and violation of federal law, the Empownment Control Act, which sets very strict limits on when a president can delay funds that have been duly appropriated by Congress, and
it violates Supreme Court precedent as well. And eventually we're going to get to a reckoning on that, because that's what the Trump administration wants. They want to pick a fight over impoundment to try to get this power for themselves to unilaterally cancel certain.
Types of spending.
And so we're going to see that fight happen at the court. But you know the really dangerous question that you ask Crystal, whether after the end of that fight, we're still going to see an administration adhere to whatever it is.
The Supreme Court says that's still in question.
Well, David, thank you so much for your expertise and laying all of this out. We're always really grateful for your time, and it's great to see you.
You got it. Thanks a lot.
Excited to be joined this morning by Commerce and Rocana, who found himself and bit of a Twitter dispute with our new god King Elon Musk.
So great to have you, Congressman.
Great to be back on Yeah.
So okay, let me I'll.
Give people a little bit of the backstory and then you can explain the full backstory. So political reporter put out that you had abstained from a vote that would have subpoenaed Elon Musk to come and test to buy about whatever he and Doage are up to at this point.
That was not entirely accurate.
So you clarified on Twitter, and that leads to the exchange with Elon Musk. Just give us a little bit like what exactly happens here.
So first, let me just get to the bottom line, which is I want Elon Musk to testify, to be transparent, to be subpoena that what he's doing is blatantly unconstitutional. If I was scared about that, I would not have had on Twitter. Knowing that he follows every one of my tweets, made that very very clear.
And we can put that up on the screen. By the way, what you can continue.
Talking and within minutes of me put that tweet up, he tweets back, don't be a dick. We get into it because I said to Ilin, I said this, I've said this privately to him, I've said it publicly. If you want to have an exposure of waste in the government, then the best way to do it is to have sunlight come, do your have your findings, show him to the Congress, and force us to cast up up and down votes. I was I got hammered from my party
in the beginning when Musk was adulgient. I said, Okay, if he is wasteful spending on the Department of Defense, I'm willing to hear him ount but the yeah, yeah, no, But so it's not like, so I got hammered, but I said, when you're doing something that's fundamentally unconstitutional, you you can't be the decider of what is wasteful spending. And that is just a blatant violation Article one.
Uh.
And so you know I've I will stand up to him if and have very very clearly.
Uh.
And what got noticed actually, ironically was my tweet, not any of the committees efforts, because people know that I have had a relationship with him for fifteen years and I'm willing to call balls and strikes where he's wrong. I will be the loudest is standing up for the Constitution.
How did you meet him? Do you remember your first interaction with him. I didn't represent Silicon Valley for people he is.
You know, he's never supported me in terms of politically because he actually wasn't very very political. But I met him. He blured my first book when I wrote a book about manufacturing in the United States, and you know, someone at Estra Wajiski who's known in the valley, introduced me to him.
He blames the book.
And then we got into it on Tesla because he was begging in a essue who's a neighboring Member of Congress from Silicon Valley for a Tesla loan from the Obama administration. I was in the Obama administration.
Your Commerce Department, in Commerce.
Department, and there are those of us saying, well, okay, but you need labor neutrality, and we don't get labor neutrality out of it. But I'm active on the record in Fremont saying that Tesla should unionize, and so he knew. We've known each other for years, but I've said Tesla is obviously was a great company in terms of electric vehicles, but should you noton ize it.
So I've known him for many, many years.
What do you think he wants?
You know, he's he's maniacal about when he believes in something. I mean, this is I Those people are saying, Okay, he's just in it for financial reasons.
That's not my read on him, though.
I think he should have financial disclosures like I do, and there should be conflict of interest and he shouldn't be the one deeciding.
But I think what he believes that he's out.
There in a mission to save the American people for thirty six million dollars of deficit and it's actually a bigger problem because when you have an ideological drive like that, and when you're Elon Musk and you believe that you've been right time and time again in the private sector when other people have been wrong, he's basically thinking, okay, kind of standing in my way, I'm doing great service for humanity and go. You know, anyone is in my
way is going to be roadkill. And that's why it's so important to stand up to him, and to stand up very very clearly and say this is unconstitutional.
Having the richest man on the planet also be one of the most powerful people in the federal government is itself a unique situation. But he also controls ex Twitter, which is still, despite his best efforts, is a central organizing platform for how we understand public sentiments. And so I'm curious if your colleagues or you think about his power over that platform, as your colleagues think about how hard to go after him, because he could you know, with the flick of a switch.
I knew he would right to send you or all of a sudden, you're getting like Q likes and one.
Follower count starts to go down, and you know, people aren't really seeing your tweets anymore. I mean this has happened to many people who have come after him on Twitter, right.
No, I mean, look, he in my case, my reply to him saying don't be a dick got more views than his actual tweets. So I mean, in my case, so far at least, he hasn't done that type of censorship. But I do think it's a problem more generally, which is why we need many more platforms, which is one of the reasons I was defending TikTok and saying that we shouldn't ban TikTok and we shouldn't have Musk or Meta acquire TikTok because you need alternative social media platforms.
And I think TikTok actually is a place where we've gotten the most response frankly on standing up to Musk. And we need more social media platform so we can push back on Musk, etc. That's going to be important, but on the platform. But what we really need is, and I cruss enforcement and more platforms coming up that we're less is can have a voice.
One of the things Ryan and I were talking about is like Elon describes what he's doing as a revolution, and I think that's accurate. I mean, you don't go into the Treasury Department. And now we have new reporting that they are changing the code that they The New York Times says that there were emails flying around saying, we want to use our access to the Treasury payment system to freeze funding to USAI D. I don't have to tell you that USAID is authorized by Congress as
an independent agency, Elon Muskin, no one else. Donald Trump can't just single handedly say we don't like this agency, We're getting rid of it, or we're subsuming it understate et cetera, et cetera. They're doing that. They've gone into the etc. For Medicare, Medicaid into NOAH GSA. You know, the list goes on and on, and none of this congressionally authorized. It's obviously a constitutional crisis. They have a broader plan to, you know, have this go to the courts.
Whether they even abide by court decisions is an open question, I think as well, there's already indications that some of the court injunctions are already being ignored. So while he's doing what he describes as a revolution. You know, we were earlier talking about like, oh, they're trying to keep themselves free from foya. I mean, it just feels so small ball, right, compared to the grand plan that they are executing.
Before our eyes.
Yeah, So how are you groppling with that as a member of Congress And what are the conversations like among your colleagues about how to about the gravity of this threat, right, and how to truly push back against it in a way that's not just going to be sort of like impotent or pointing to like you weren't confirmed by the Senate and where's my foyer required?
Right?
Well, you're asking what people in my district around the country are asking, which is what the hell's the plan and why don't we have a clear plan for the
Democratic Party to meet the moment? Because I think you actually understand Elon really well, he've used this as revolutionary, He've used this as there's a thirty six trillion dollar debt and Congress has been part of the problem, and that he's not just going to be some bureaucrat who gives a report to Congress, because that's what he When you say, well, why don't you just get the transparency in the sunlight, He's like, I'm not just going to
just give some report to Congress that they're going to disregard. And I'm going to try to stop this.
I'm going to be CEO of the country, right and rule it in the same dictatorial way that he rules Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX, etc.
And one is a company. I mean find maybe a great company, but a company is not even a few pages in the American story, right. This is a much much bigger thing. This is a country that won the Revolutionary War, that wins the Civil War, that wins World War two, wins the Cold War. It's the greatest enterprise ever. So you can't have one individual do it. But I say that so we understand his psychology, and it means a equally tough response. What is that response here? It
needs to come down first to the debt ceiling. We need to have every House Democrat and Senate dem crat say we will not give a single vote to the debt ceiling increase unless Donald Trump in the beginning commits in ironclad writing that he will spend every single dollar that is appropriated and authorized by Congress and honor Congress on every agency. And you know what Donald Trump's going
to fold. You know why He's going to fold because when the stock market went down five hundred points, he's folded to a Prime Minister Trudeau, and he folded to President Shane Baum. And the reality is that the Democrats need to be strong. Who's asserting the will of Congress? Like it's not we're going to go for your request. It's like you want to crash the economy then defy the will of Congress.
Well, let me let me ask you a question about that, because again, they have control of the treasury payment system. So what is the response if they say, Okay, that's fine, we just are going to ignore the debt ceiling and we're going to just pay the bill. We're just going to pay the bills that we want to pet. We just want to pay the bills that we want to pay.
And you know, I mean, I think the debt dealing is a ridiculous, you know, absurdity that we even have it right, And so you could easily say Trump saying we're just not doing that anymore, and we're going to add treasury like pick and choose what funds go out, as they already say they are doing and want to do.
Well, I think if they actually do that, they're going to lose the chip Roys. I mean where chip roy and others would come in and say impeachment or other things.
I genuinely think.
There are thirty for me to believe.
Congressman, well, I'm not talking about the average Republican, but there are thirty people in the Republican Caucus, the Freedom Caucus who have stood up to them. They stood up to Elon Musk before Trump was inaugurated, and they said, Elon said, let's blow up this deal. And they stood up to him on that.
And I can I tell you what I'm looking at. You know, Pete Hegseth was his confirmation was in big trouble, and Jony Ernst in particular, who is herself a sexual assault and was deeply concerned about his comments saying women can't serve in the military, et cetera.
She seemed like she was a no.
And then Elon comes out and says, I will drop an infinite amount of money on the head of anyone who poses any of the confirmations, and lo and behold, Pete hag Seth, looks like all of them are going to ultimately get through.
So I just don't see.
I mean, even with the you know, the spending flap that happened in December. Yeah, I mean Elon drove that whole train and again threatened to use his billions and billions on you know, soon to be probably trillions of dollars to primary anyone who didn't give him the bill that he wanted. And it worked, Chip Roy and all the rest folded like a you know, like a deca card.
They didn't fold on increasing the debt ceiling and Elon didn't get a dollar actually saved.
Now he got his the restriction on investment in China.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that that you know that he may very well have. I'm not saying that he doesn't have influence, but I think if you have a group of House members twenty to thirty in relatively safe districts and you see Elon's numbers have been declining, I mean he's the big question for Trump is how long is he going to have someone who's as unpopular as Elon is becoming.
I do think the.
House can assert back, and at the very least, the House we need to have a plan of what we're going to do to take the fight to Trump. Now maybe you're saying, okay, we take this fight and then Trump makes a counter move. Right now, I think why people are so upset is they don't see us having a real plan. I mean, at least Schatz, Senator Shatz had a plan. He said, Okay, we're gonna put a hold on every nominee to the State Department, including Stefanic.
But what we need from our leaders.
Is three or four things that says we are going to assert the power of Congress. We're going to punch back in terms of our power, and then we're going to wait for Trump to make the next move. The only people who winning against Trump for President Shane Baum and Trudeau.
They're the only ones who've gotten to fold on anything.
Is there any regret among Democrats? So the other day, while Oversight was doing whatever it was doing, AOC was having like an Instagram live that had like tens of thousands of people tuning in, Like she's clearly still one of the parties like leading messengers.
That's one of the best communicators. Yeah and authentic.
Yeah, and you watch these some of these rallies, no offense, just deeply cringe stuff coming out of Democrats.
Humor was not made for this moment.
Val Green was shaking his cane. Any regret from your colleagues telling AOC, you know, get in the back of the line, like, because it's not as if Democrats aren't doing things, like there are a million lawsuits that have been filed, like lots of things are happening and people are active, but there's no national voice.
Now, well, let me let's take an example this oversight hearing. The fact is everyone is yawning about the subpoena until I tweet out that Musk should be subpoena because of the missed vote, and then Musk replies, imagine if AOC was the ranking member leading that, it would have been a very different case.
That would have been national needs.
And because he's fighting, he loves to fight with her, he would have she would have said something, he would have responded.
That would have been national news. It wouldn't make something right.
It wouldn't have taken my missed vote to provoke that. So I think it was such.
A blunder not to put her there.
What I said to moderate Democrats when I because I was one of the first out of the gate to endorse her, support her, rally support for her, and I said, okay, you disagree, I get it. You disagree with AOC in her position on Gaza, you disagree on immigration. But she is not running to be ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. She is not running to be ranking member the Judiciary Committee. She's running to be ranking member of the committee that punches Donald Trump.
Like, isn't isn't this the role where she would be the best in our caucus?
And I mean, this is where the Democrats need to get the next generation out there.
The optics of some of the stuff at the rallies has just been cringe.
I mean because it looks ineffectual, it's non an actual plan, and it doesn't look like we're flexing our power like Congress.
You know, it's not like JD.
Vance and Donald Trump are out there protesting Congress.
They're saying, we have power. Well, we need to act like we have power. We do.
We have the power of the purse, and we have the power of votes in confirmation, and we need to stand together.
What are you hearing most from your constituents, Like what kind of First of all, are you getting like a flood of calls? Is there a lot of energy? What are you hearing from them? What are their concerns?
What are they? You know, what is that vibe like?
So for two months after the loss to Trump, it was pretty muted. But as soon as Trump became president and Musk stopped those payments, I think a light bulb went off. And in my last town hall this weekend, over six hundred people showed up, people holding up signs stopped the coup.
Stop the Musk coup.
In a sense bluntly that the Democratic leadership has not been tough enough that we are a response has not been clear enough. I do think Hakim has an opportunity to be the voice because it's not coming out of the Senate. I think this fight in the House debt ceiling is that opportunity and one of the things we got to do. Yes, take on Musk, but we also
need to take on Vance and Trump. I mean they're the ones who are ultimately responsible, and not give them a free pass on taking away funding for kids in working class neighborhoods for their schools, I mean taking away money for kids with special needs then, And we've got to just be tougher as a party.
And you've been going at Vance a little bit. What's your sense of his position here?
Well, I think he wants to be the nice guy. He's kind of wants to be I'm the reasonable guy. I think Tim Waltz made a huge mistake in that debate by not going after Vance. They were coached to say, just go after Trump, and Vance comes up as this like, oh, I'm reasonable, giving Trump the sense of that, oh he's appointing reasonable people, and what the what the reality is Vance is driving the nominations of heg Seth and Gabbert.
Behind the scenes, he's the one pressuring the senators. Vance hasn't raised his voice once to question why we're going to get rid of all of these programs for working class kids. In the Department of Education, pell grants Title one funding for decent schools. He's he's basically quiet, and the Democrats have an opportunity to define him for the extremist he is and not let him just kind of be this reasonable person. I mean, look at what the Republicans did to Vice President Harris.
Yeah, and to Walls as well. You said that constituents showed up with science that said, you know, stop the muscoup, Like do you think that that language is car Do you think it is a coup?
I think it's a constitutional crisis. I mean, I think the coup would be if he succeeds. But I don't think he's going to succeed. I think we've we will push back.
With attempted coups.
It's it's it's certainly a violation of the constitution. Cool. You know, these turns get thrown around.
And I'm not saying that it couldn't come to that if we if we're complacent, but if we pushed back, uh, and we make sure that we stand up for our construcial prerogatives. I think we have we had them on the defensive. I actually think they have really overreached. I was in Johnstown, Pennsylvania this past weekend. I met Tracy. She's at a barbecue place. She's a part owner. She said, you know, I voted for Donald Trump. I said that that doesn't surprise me. Why But she said, I have some concerns.
I said why.
She said, well, I voted for him because he was going to make sure that there were no taxes on overtime pay I want. I voted for him because he wasn't going to text tips. I was like, Wow, these messages are really getting through. I said, what about Kamala Harris. She said, you know, candidly, I considered her, I really but I felt she was a phony. And I said, well, what do you think now? Well, I'm concerned my mom
is in the hospital and Medicaid is maybe cut. So there is a chance to be talking to people like Tracy. We've got to go on the offensive and be willing to assert our power.
Last question for me, are you are you are you sensing any institutional prerogative from Congress? Like if this continues, this idea that Elon Musk can and Donald Trump can like pick and choose where they spend money, Congress doesn't really have a role in this liket. Yeah, Congress can I guess Congress could.
Like settle the ceilings.
Yeah, and then if you need more money than that, you have to go figure it out some other way. But that but that becomes it. And if all you're doing is setting a ceiling, you don't need you certainly don't need five hundred and thirty five members of Congress to do that. That's just two people and basically just
Trump telling them what to do. So is there any sense from Republicans that like, okay, we are ideologically and politically Republicans first, but secondly, we're we serve in this institution that is potentially being wiped out as a force in American politics, and we should do something about that. Is there any sense of that or is it more we're so partisan now that that's okay as long as the Republicans come out on top in the new system.
So we need to make the argument he made more because where are the three Republicans that are going to stand for the institutional prerogative of Congress? And there may be if this fight happens with the dead ceiling. I mean, that's something like a chip roy or something. But the reality is there's fear, and the fear is that the people who have taken on Donald Trump and the Republican Party are gone. You know, they're Adam Kissinger there, Liz Cheney's a whole list of people who are not even
as famous. And the ones who have stood with Donald Trump are National Security advisor and in the cabinet and are going to be you an ambassador. So if you're a politician on the Republican side, the lesson is pretty clear that you stand with Donald Trump if you care about your career and people rationalize it saying, well, he'll be there for four years and then something else will happen. And so it's a palpable fear that's not irrational about
losing their jobs. And that's that's I think why they haven't spoken out.
Yeah.
Well, and like I said before, now you have the additional enforcement mechanism of Elon Musk being willing to spend you know, which would what would be a trivial amount of his net worth in order to primary and take on anyone who doesn't inline right.
That graveyard was filled before Trump had access to Musks.
To unlimited, virtually unlimited money.
And he would spend it. He will if he's not an idle threat. It's not an idle threat.
And it's a and for a house race that could you know, ten million dollars twenty million dollars, even if you don't beat an incumbent. You know, people, this is is instill an enormous amount of amount of fear. Yeah, so you know, we're in a situation where this is
a real, real fight for constitutional democracy. And I think the they what people are frustrated that watch probably breaking points or come to my town halls is they don't see the Democratic Party right now, rising to the moment, understanding the stakes, taking on the fight, having a clear plan uh and and saying okay, we're going to push back.
Yeah yeah, I mean they're really on the on the Elon Mustoje side there.
As Ryan said to me, they're really going for it.
I think it's pronounced doggie.
I prefer that pronounce doe is the other way. They're really going for it.
You know, they're now, they're no guarantees they'll succeed, but they are mounting a revolution, and so people want to see a response that is commeaserate with that, with that true threat. So current, and we always appreciate your time.
Thank you, thank you for having me.
I guess it worked out for you to miss that vote since the drew tension of the.
Whole generation area of confidence Elon. Thank you guys, Thank you.
All Right, that's it for today. Tomorrow, Emily and I have our interview with Natalie Winters. That'll be up for premium subscribers later today for everybody else, the freeloaders. Tomorrow. She is the war Room, Steve Bannon's war Room with White House correspondent. It was a fascinating wide ranging conversation should get.
Us an interview with Steve Bannon, because I would kind of like that.
I'll ask her sure, that'd be fun.
Yeah, make that both of them for us, so that would be very interesting. So in any case, Ryan, thank you so much for filling in, and stay tuned for that tomorrow and we will see you guys next week