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Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. I'm very lucky to be joined by Ryan Grimm this morning.
Saga is dealing with some personal personal things.
Always nice to see you, best of Saga.
Yes, indeed we got a little lefty take over here, So Brian does a good job playing the part of the devil's advocate.
Though, yes, that's right, I'm going to be Sager's advocate all right.
So Laza gets you this morning.
As for usual, we've got the White House Press Secretary not really walking back, but I guess somewhat trying to soften Trump's comments with regard to Gaza. Interesting response there both from Democrats and also kind of a mixed response for Republicans in terms of Trump's idea of hey, let's just go ahead with the full sale, invasion, theft, and
ethnic cleansing, so they'll bring you all of that. We've also got, of course all the latest hard to keep up with, but from the Doge apparatics, there is a report that they have in fact changed some of the code at the Treasury payment system you know, that governs the payments that go on for everything for Social Security.
Just a small matter of all of the money that you've spent, all.
Of the six trillion dollars that get spent, you know, no biggie just kind of freewheeling there in the treasury system. We've got that they have busted into the Medicare offices as well, so a lot going on there. Liberals, of course continue flame leftists for Democrats flaws. This is specifically with regard continuing to be upset with them for critiquing
Gaza and the Biden genocide. There the right wing making up a bunch of bullshit about Politico procescriptions It's kind of an interesting thing because it's interesting about the media. Like the business piece these Politico pro subscriptions is a very like regular business model in this town, where they charge insane amounts for kind of technical trade information knowing that it will be government workers who are putting it on the taxpayer tab and lobbyists who were able to
afford this. But right wingers are making this up like, oh, the USAID was funding Politico with grants, et cetera.
So kind of interesting to get at that one.
Yeah, David Dan is going to come in and update us on legal challenges both to the Trump administration overall and pushing back on Doge specifically and Congress and Rocanna got into a kind of an interesting back and forth with Elon Musk, So he's going to tell us about that and what went down there, and also he's going to talk to us about the Democratic response, which many sort of normy Democrats have been very disappointed with, are looking for a lot more fight in leadership from their
elected representatives. Let's go ahead and jump though into the latest with regard to Gaza. As I mentioned before, the White House Press Secretary trying to sort of soften some of the comments that Trump made. Of course, Ryan and Emily covered the fact that Trump came out and said, hey, let's just get all these people out of there, let's.
Clean it up. They will be permanently gone, and.
We, the US, are going to own the Gaza Strip. So she was pressed on what exactly this plan would look like and whether it would mean boots on the grounds, American soldiers going to fight and die in the Gaza Strip on behalf of Israel.
Let's take a listen to that.
Entire public career criticizing foreign entanglements, nation building, sending American troops to fight abroad, particularly in the Middle East. This plan seems like it could ultimately involve all of those things. Can you explain this reversal and how building and owning Gaza squares with America first form policy.
I would reject the premise of your question that this forces the United States to be entangled in conflicts abroad. The President has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza. He has also said that the United States is not going to pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. His administration is going to work with our partners in the region to reconstruct this region. Let me just take a step back here, because this is an out of
the box idea. That's who President Trump is, that's why the American people elected him, and his goal is lasting peace in the Middle East for all people in the region. And as I said in my opening remarks, we've had the same people pushing the same solutions to this problem for decades, and it's been very made very clear to the President that the United States needs to be revolved involved in this rebuilding effort to assure stability in the
region for all people. But that does not mean boots on the ground in Gaza.
So language there is very interesting to me. Ryan and first of all, oh, it's an out of the box idea. Actually, ethnic cleansing is not that out of the box idea. In fact, the Biden administration was pushing something very simil before they got a lot of pushback from you know, Egypt and Jordan's saying absolutely not, we are not participating in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Gaza strip.
It is not an out of the box idea.
In terms of the Israeli public end Israeli far right leaders who are very open about wanting to force the immigration of Palestinians out of the Gaza strip and completely take over and resettle it.
But the Madagascar plan people.
Can look up exactly.
Yes, So this is a new idea long time, very much in the box. Horrible, but very much in the box idea for this region in fact. But the other thing that was noe worthy to me, Ryan is while she's trying to soften because obviously the minute you go, oh, we're going to send more US troops to fight and die in the Middle East, there is an instant reaction against that, and one that I think Trump himself understands
since he ran on avoiding such things. But she says he has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza. That doesn't mean he's not open to putting boots on the ground in Gaza, which is exactly what he said.
But he has not committed to putting boots on the ground.
And Gaza right because during his press conference he was asked that obvious question and he said, if that's what it takes, then I would be I'd be willing to do that.
But yes, to put a fine point.
In late November of two thousand and seven, Blincoln pressed CC and Egypt to open up the Sinai and said, we'll build a tense city down there. I think if it's out of the box, the difference is him just straight up admitting that they would.
Not come back.
Yeah, because like the way that it's a great kind of contrast between how Democrats and Republicans approached the issue, where Democrats would support ethnic cleansing while saying that it's not ethnic cleansing and they're actually going to let them return, whereas Trump is like, no, they're not coming back.
Yeah.
But then the next day the Republicans are back to the Democratic approach saying, no, of course.
They would be ris this would only be temporary. Yeah.
I mean, this is so not out of the box that I think people like you and me have been saying from the very beginning of this conflict that the goal is likely to destroy Gaza, make it thoroughly unlivable, so that then you can say exactly what Steve Witkoff and Trump are saying, which how could you let these poor people live in this place that is now destroyed as bb Nat Yahoo, a man who of course, with our support, destroyed Gaza, sitting there grinning like a cheshire cat,
you know, delighted at the implication and the fact that this would completely rescue him politically.
Yeah, and it's it's everybody. It kind of spent yesterday trying to decide whether or not he's serious.
Yeah, what do you?
Trump had kind of tried to preempt that conversation, if you noticed where he's where. He said, Look, I have given this a lot of thought. This is not something I'm saying lightly. Yeah, Like he explicitly.
Said that had his prepared statement.
Yeah, prepared statement.
And when he said that, that should have been a clue that that was not the case. It's like, wow, whenever you're saying I don't know because.
I think it isn't. It isn't.
I mean some reporting of the like behind the scenes how this came to be has come out from CNA in New York Times, So whatever you make of them, and effectively that they said, on the one hand, he did not float this through you know, State Department channels and whatever. But I mean that's Trump for you, but that he and Kushner have been talking about this for quite some time, and I think Steve Witkoff has been very much on the same page.
I mean, both of these.
Guys are developers, right, They're very used to the way their brain works. They see a beautiful coastline and they see dollar signs. And also as developers, they're also quite comfortable with displacing a number of people in order to achieve those, you know, those building goals that they may have. So, you know, it seems to me that while, yeah, he didn't go through the proper channels, this is something that has been percolating in his mind for at least some time.
And we had Kushner come out and say that thing about all beautiful water for a property, blah blah blah. And Trump himself had previously said while he was being asked about whether he thought the ceasefire would continue, he said he wasn't confident, and then he went on this whole thing about all that that area is very interesting, it could be very beautiful, it could be very special, et cetera. So in my mind, this is something that he's probably been thinking about for some time.
Oh oh that, I have no doubt.
I think that he's probably been thinking about it for decades, Like that any any realtor, it sees, because you know, he talks about this being the Rivier of the Middle East.
Yeah, and the.
Funny thing about that is you've got like, you know, Rivier has become this brand where they you know, Mexico's got it's Maya Riviera.
And Riviera of Asia.
Riviera is Mediterranean like, so it's on the same it's on the same sea. Yeah, that the actual Riviera is so you don't even almost need of them of the Middle East.
Just Rivier.
It's another rivi Era in the Mediterranean Sea.
And it is absolutely beautiful.
Like when we had amic Con on the show, he was showing some footage Abu Baker Abed was taking some footage of his walk to Gaza City yesterday.
Yeah, and he almost ensembled.
Right Stembinah home mind.
But as he as he says, like in the background is this is the beautiful blue sea. It's this it's this jarring juxtaposition of dystopia and utopia. And for Trump, he's like, well, then let's just build these gigantic Trump towers here.
Yeah, and let the world's people in world people, world people.
Yeah.
The Secretary of State Mark or Rubio was also asked about what Trump had to say. Let's take a listen to his spin on this move.
What President Trump announced yesterday is the offer the willingness of the United States to become responsible for the reconstruction of that area. And while you are rebuilding, while you're clearing debris. By the way, there are unexploded munitions, There are all kinds of hamas weaponry still buried underground. For people to be able to live in a place safety, all of that has to be removed. It's an enormous undertaking.
And the only thing President Trump has done, very generously, in my view, is offer the United States willingness to step in clear the debris, clean the place up from all the destruction that's on the ground, clean it up of all these unexploded munitions, and in the meantime, the people living there will not be able to the people who call at home will not be able to live there while you have crews coming in and removing debris.
It's a unique offer, you know, one that no other country in the world has stepped up and made an offer. But I think it's one people need to think about seriously. It was not meant as a hostile move. It was meant as a I think a very generous move, the offer to rebuild and to be in charge of the rebuilding.
Very generous move.
Yeah, it's not meant as a hostile takeover, as a generous.
Take generous takeover.
Just you know, it's a kinder geddler ethnic cleansing, that's all.
We don't mean any ill will.
It is probably good for Trump that he got an articulate secretary of state because he's going to need all of his you know, lexicological skills to do the cleanup effort that's required for I was going to say four years.
Who knows how long Rubio.
Lasts as Secretary of State, but for all the time that he is in that position, it's going to be funny stuff like this because there's reporting that Rubio learned unsurprisingly about this plan watching Trump's press conference.
He learned it the same way all of us learn about it.
Appears to be how Susie Wiles learned it behind him, appears to be how Netah even learned it, which is the funniest part because net Yah was just in a meeting with him right like, could have could have mentioned that part. I mean, maybe maybe it'll come out that they actually talked about that. It's didn't did not appear. So but yeah, so Rubio learned about it. Then he
and then he's stuck. First he has to kind of go at hoc and say like, well, this is you know, flipping the table, and it's an out of the box idea. Then he has to say, no, it's not it's not what it sounded like. It's actually just generous offer. When he says own, he means just take responsibility for the reconstruction. But also don't worry that responsibility does not include one penny of American spending or any.
American very generous move that involves no spending somehow or
people or people. And it's not hostile at all, even though it requires the forcible displacement of some And now we're being told one point eight million or one point seven million Palestinians, and you and Emily pointing out that now I think this is actually the second time that Trump has mentioned that number of Palestinians remaining in the Gaza strip, which would indicate that the actual number of dead from this ongoing genocide has somewhere in the ballpark
of even potentially like half a million, which does square with some of the some of the numbers of the analysis that have been done up to this point. I don't think anyone who watches this program will be shocked by numbers that high. The far right in Israel is absolutely loving this idea, and Donald Trump, we can put a three up on the screen.
This is Ben Gavier.
It Omar Ben Gavier, who in two thousand and seven was convicted by a israally court for incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization.
Now think of how bad you have to be to be to be convicted.
Bien is rarely court for racism and terror supporting a terrorist organization, He says, Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. This kind of gets to our point about how this is not an out of the box idea. It's a very mainstream idea among the absolute farthest right psychos in Israel who have been outwardly pushing something exactly like this for quite a long time. Another thing I wanted to take note of that kind of got lost in the shuffle, But I think is note
where they am actually curious Ryan your reaction this. We could put a four up on the screen, so we had brought you the news here that Steve Witcoff, this has been Trump's envoy, you know, pressured Baby to accept the ceasefire deal, et cetera, et cetera. It is this sort of like brash real estate developer buddies with Trump.
He had been for ever since the ceasefire deal was struck, really praising the Biden administration for doing the work to negotiate this deal and you know, really giving them credit for the contours of that deal. He's really changed his tune. So the note here says something interesting to note before Natanya who visit. Trump has repeatedly taken credit for the ceasefire, but Middle East Envoice Dave Witcoff distanced the admin from the deal today left the door open to amending the
framework and timeline broker by Biden. Here's the quote from Witkoff. He says, part of the problem is that it wasn't such a wonderful agreement that was first signed, that was not dictated by the Trump administration.
We had nothing to do with it.
So distancing himself from the contours of the deal that only moments ago, of course, he and Trump were celebrating as a terrific breakthrough, right.
For people who were catching up here.
This was basically the deal that was put together effectively in May, which Biden's supporters and we'll talk about this later in the show, have used to say Biden deserves credit for getting this deal done in May, except tell that to the thousands of people who were killed after May in the genocide, and tell that to the more than a million people who suffered every day through the
unspeakable barbarity of that time period. So yes, it's true that that was the outline of deal, and that Witcough forced, with some gentle pressure net Yahoo to finally accept the terms of the deal because he wanted this hostage exchange, you know, to happen on January twentieth or right around there.
So that that's all true.
And Witcoff's mission at the time was get a deal and get me the you know, get me the publicity of the hostage exchange and the ceasefire deal. So now he's saying, okay, well, what can we negotiate it as
we're moving from phase one to phase two? And that allows Witcough, I think, to take a little bit more agency and kind of and kind of continue negotiations because it was always assumed that there would be ongoing negotiations between phase one and phase two, and Nen Yahoo was always and Yah was publicly saying that he wanted to blow up the deal before it got to phase two
and restart the war. In fact, his publicly saying that was one of the main obstacles to actually making a deal, as you can imagine, like what you want to make a deal with somebody who's like, yeah, my intention is to break this deal as quickly as I too, possibly kill coming you.
Yeah.
And so they were always going to be ongoing negotiations no matter what. And so I think this, I think that's all that this is is that w coughs saying, yeah,
we're We're going to keep talking. And from Hamas's perspective and from all of the Palaestinians perspective, talk talking is good because talking is not bombing, and talking extends the time of the ceasefire, and their belief is that the longer you can extend the ceasefire, the more it just becomes the fabric of the status quo and continues.
That's interesting, I read it a little bit differently. Of effectively, Trump and wit cough now distancing themselves from this deal. I mean, part of what we were hoping for is that Trump would see it as a hit to his ego and his accomplishments for this deal to fall apart. And so if you now have Witkoff and to a certain extent, Trump saying like this isn't even our deal?
Who even cares about this deal? To me, that's a bad indicator in terms of their willingness to put pressure on BB to continue through with Phase two when BB is under domestic political pressure from the most extreme parts of his fetchet who have out and Rounte said like, if you go back, if you go forward with the next phase, we're out of your coalition. So I write it as a negative sign that they were sort of
distancing themselves. And Trump has consistently said, like, I'm not confident at all that this thing is going to continue.
I just don't.
He has said that, But I don't think he can distance himself from it because he so loudly took credit for it, and he's now president. So I think it would look just too pathetic too. In February or March, blame Biden.
I don't know the war that breaks out.
In reality, they can try, but like the more proper stuff than that right now, as we'll get to you later in the show.
But that's true, but I mean things that happened during Yes, yes, I mean right, he was he was it was. Yes, this is true, but I don't think he can pull it off. We'll see.
At the same time.
You know, obviously the countries in the region that are very much implicated in this idea, this out of the box idea of Trump's, are not having it whatsoever. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of the response from Jordan.
He also said that everyone loves this plan. He said that in the Oval office this morning.
In fact, the Deputy Prime Minister of Jordan called it the declaration of war on.
The Arab people.
So how does he square the fact that even some Republicans on the Hill are objecting to this sort of questioning this, How does he square the fact thing everyone loves this.
Well, the King Abdullah of Jordan will be here next week, so I can provide you more context on the conversations he will have directly with the President of the United States after that meeting, And I would just point out that there's been a lot of leaders and officials all around the world who have doubted, I suppose the deal
making ability of President Trump. You heard the Panama leader saying that he would not agree to some of the concessions that he has now made because of Secretary Rubio's visit. You had the Colombian president saying he wouldn't accept flights of Colombian illegal nationals who have entered into our country illegally, and those flights are underway. So actions speak louder than words.
So interesting there that she brings up the examples of Panama and Colombia. Of course, there was that whole threat of tariffs on Colombia's use the throat of terrafs against Mexico and Canada to extract not even like really significant concessions in those instances. This is a very different deal. So if he's thinking that he can use TIFFs to coerce Egypt and Jordan into taking this this, they would consider this to be existential to their own like regimes
and power. So I think they would be a lot more willing to write out the economic pain of tariffs in order to try to keep their grip on power.
Right, the populations of Jordan and Egypt are not huge. So adding a million Palestinians to Egypt, a million Palestinians to Jordan.
And Jordan already has a large number of Palatines.
Yea, the majority population is Palestinians, fundamentally destabilizes those countries.
In the opinion.
Whether or not that's true or not, that is the opinion of the leadership of those countries, and so they believe that, you know, you you do this, the clock stars ticking on their ouster. And so therefore, even if it's better for the Palestinians and better for Egypt and better for Jordan, those leaders aren't going to do it like that's that's just not how they work.
There's no amount of.
Characteristics that you that anybody has to pressure a leader to do something that they believe is going to end their reign.
That's just fairly simple.
Yeah, I would say, so as well, let's go and move on to some of the response that we've seen from Republicans, primarily since Trump is not really going to care what Democrats have to say about any of this. Could put Rand Paul up on the screen. He is sort of the most aggressively in terms of his pushback on you know, the idea of taking over Gaza. He says, the pursuit for peace should be that of the Israelis and Palestinians.
I thought we voted for America first.
We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldier's blood. Noteworthy, however, you know, not unexpected from rand Paul, who tries to be fairly consistent in terms of his foreign policy approach. In particular, more noteworth than me. Was Lindsay Graham not too crazy about this idea. Put a seven up on the screen, He says, I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. I
think that might be problematic. But Ryan, he is going to keep it over.
You got to keep an open mind. You got to keep it over mind.
Another one we have here for you here is Josh Holly. He sort of echoed Lindsey Graham, telling Politico he didn't think sending troops to the House to enclave was the right move.
I don't know that.
I think it's the best use of the United States resources to spend a bunch of money in Gaza. I think maybe I'd prefer that to be spent in the United States first.
But let's see what happens. Ryan, you got to wait.
You got a wait to see what happens. Yeah, you never know.
I mean, that's the thing is like, even when they are mildly critical here, they leave themselves, of course, the opening that if Trump goes forward with it, they're going to say, masterful, gambits are brilliant, move brilliant, move out of the box, very generous.
Yeah, I mean, you put yourselves in the shoes of Grammar Holly, and that is the best they're going.
To be able to do.
But yeah, boy, that's not so sure about that.
But you know, you got to keep an open mind.
I got to keep an open mind.
You know, because and it goes back to their problem and the genius from his perspective of his entire politics, which is that there is no ideology.
It is Trump is.
It is like what Trump says becomes the policy.
Of the publican party that's right.
And if Trump says like I think Trump, I think that there is a massive structural and deep opposition from his followers to putting more boots on the ground in the Middle East. But if he said they're going to do it, Like at some point there a lot of a lot of them are gonna be like, well, this is obviously this is America first, Like this is this it becomes America first.
Somehow that's exactly right. I mean I've already seen some of that on Twitter of like, oh, this would be amazing. We'd get to own this, Like think how incredible that would be.
We could do whatever we want with it.
And you see this with any number of issues where it's like, you know, all of a sudden, Trump says something about Greenland or Panama, and all of a sudden, people who had never thought about Greenland and Panama. I think it's the most brilliant thing on the planet, and are a million percent in favor of it, et cetera, et cetera. And the other thing is this time around, you know Trump really, I mean, he has completely cowed
the Republican Party. Any of the Jeff Flakes of the world, the people that were there in the first administration that were more adversarial, they're gone. And I think this part is really important. He's got Elon Musk there to be like, if you don't do what this president wants, you to do, and what I want you to do. I elon musk An elected new leader of the country, then I'm going to drop an infinite amount of money on your head
in the primary. And that is a very real threat and very effective at enforcing the enforcing the line here.
If I were going to channel Sager here, I think he would say, these guys know Trump isn't going to do this, so they're just being as generous as they can in the meantime.
Is that what Sager would say? You think?
I'm not sure because I don't think that he would deny that in the end, if Trump did go forward with this, that they would.
Fall in line. Yeah.
I mean, we've just we've seen it over and over again. At the same time, there were plenty of Republicans who took no issue whatsoever, didn't even express the slightest bit of hesitation about this idea, in particular the new leader of the Senate that would be John Thune, which I'm still getting used to by the way, Majority Leader Thoon and Mike Johnson, who of course is the House Speaker. Here is Manu Raju talking to both of them.
Yeah, we're trying to get the details of it. But I think this is a good development. We have to back Israel one hundred percent, and so whatever form that takes, we're interested in having that discussion. But it's it was a surprise and development, but I think it's one that will applaud.
And I just caught up with the Senate Majority Leader John Thune asked them a similar question about whether or not this was an idea that was worth pursuing if it was a feasible proposal, And this is what the Senate Majority leaders said, Sarah, what do you think of the pumps takeover? Cause on the policy realistic idea.
It's gonna like going to bring more peaceful and secure Middle East and putting some ideas.
Out there, struggling it off of sort of saying just simply putting some ideas out there. Are other Republican centers, including Senator Lindsay Graham, do not think it was quite a workuple idea, But you're not really hearing it nearly the amount of pushback that you're hearing from Democrats. A lot of Republicans think this is an idea that simply is just far fetch something that never will actually be achieved, and that eventually the discussion will move on beyond this.
And as you heard from the sent of majority of there right there seeming to put a lot of stock into this proposal, but the Speaker of the House very much defending what Donald Trump has said last night on multiple occasions, that this would be something that's worth pursuing.
Also interesting to me over on Fox News in primetime, Laura Ingram and her guest or trying to make that spin of how this could be seen as America first. So if Trump moves forward with this idea, I think you'll hear more of this line of argumentation. Let's take a listen to what they had to say.
When Americans are building monuments to Donald Trump as the most consequential president of the past hundred years, I don't think our grandchildren will fully appreciate just how consequential the guy is and just what a radical departure is from both Democrats and Republicans of the past hundred years, who have been presidents who are cautious and careful, and this guy wants to be consequential and solve problems.
Well, I think it's so foreign to us to hear this that wait a second, we actually may solve a problem.
We actually may make money on it.
That's a bad thing for the United States to get repaid for the tens of billions of dollars just in the last few years we've dumped into the Middle East and the trillions we've spent over the years. When we go to Iraq, we break it and then we don't get the oil leases or any of the rebuild and meanwhile we leave our equipment there tens of billions of
dollars in Afghanistan for what. What did we get in either of those places except a massive refugee crisis in Europe, the creation of ISIS and a stronger Iran.
Is so bukers to me.
She even says, we went to Iraq, we broke it, and we didn't even get anything out of it. It's like, we spent all this money to murder a lot of Palestinians, and we think we should also make some money on the deal. I mean, it's just but that's the direction they're going, and is like, that's how it's America first, if we actually acquire this territory to develop to our benefit or at least the benefit of Donald Trump and Jared Kushner.
It's also just openly and hilariously internally inconsistent with its own like one minute clip there saying all of these past presidents have been so cautious, whereas now Donald Trump is putting up for a bold idea to send American troops to the Middle East.
And then she's like, bold, new idea. Guys, never tried that one before.
And then she mentions the very thing that undercuts her whole point, which is that in two thousand and one, in two thousand and two, our bold idea from an American president was we were going to send a lot of American troops to the Middle East because it'd been a big problem.
We were going to solve the problem.
That's right, incredible stuff.
This time, we're going to keep the oil.
Where do you think the oil has been going in the last twenty years? Like we have what we have, we have their oil.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Couldn't leave this this section without letting Senator John Fetterman, Senator of Israel Affair laf Israel first Senator, way in here and take a more hawkish approach than actually even Lindsay Graham can put his response up on the screen. He says, outside the Senate Chamber. That is from a
New York Times reporter in the capital. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who is known as the most staunchly pro Israel Democrat in the Senate, called President Trump's remarks provocative, but said he would support a potential American occupation of the Gaza Strip, adding that Palestinians for years have quote refused or have been unwilling to deliver a government that provided security and economic development for themselves. So at least one Democrat on board with this plan.
Ryan sure.
I mean, I think people should start punking him and saying, like, you know, just making stuff up that Trump says he's going to do just to get Fetterman to support it. I don't think there's anything that you could bring to him, no, and have Fetterman push back against it.
No. Nothing, No, Like if you went to him were like, Trump says, we're going to drop a nuclear.
Bomb on Gaza Strip.
You know, we've got to take out Hamas it's existential, he'd be like, well, it's provocative, but to wait till.
Gotta wait till the winds are going in the right direction. Our allies are very close there. But otherwise, you know.
That sounds good on the side of the box. Yeah, outside of the box.
Let's go ahead and get to the very latest from Elon Musk and DOJ and you know it is the developments. They are coming fast and furious and very difficult to know what is happening at all of these agencies. But this was quite noteworthy to me. The White House Press Secretary was pressed about Elon's many conflicts of interest, and really, truly, Elon Musk cannot actually be involved in anything with regard to this government without running into some kind of conflict
of interest. I mean the number of agencies that have sued him for environmental issues, for labor issues, union busting, securities violations, the billions of dollars in contracts he has as a tech oligarch, the interest he has in scooping up all of our data. I mean, it is incomprehensible, the number of conflicts that he has across this whole government.
So she was asked, hey, you know, how's this whole thing going to work, and basically acknowledges that it is on Elon Musk himself to self police any potential conflicts of interest.
Here. Let's take a listen to what she has to say.
You talked a bit about DOJE.
Elon Musk is currently a quote special government employee who also owns companies that have billions of dollars in federal contracts. You said earlier this week that he has abided by all applicable federal laws. But what steps is the Trump administration taking to address that conflict of interest?
The President was already asked and answer this question this week, and he said, if Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, then Elon will excuse himself from those contracts. And he has again abided by all applicable laws.
Does that make you feel better, Ryan, Yeah, he's abiding by all applicable laws.
And we're going to talk about this in a moment. But you know, Ian Miles Chong and his whole gang.
Yeah, feel like they have discovered the Watergate of the twenty first century because they misread USA spending dot gov to believe that USAID was funding Politico to the tune of like eight million dollars, Like untrue, but in this context is hilarious. So Politico, according to them, is corrupt because of this fake finding of government subsidies going to them. But Elon Musk, whose wealth rests on federal funding, that's fine, Like that's not corrupting.
At all, right of course, And also that's.
True, Like the other argument is false, Like in this case, he really is getting funded, like he's a government contractor.
Yeah, like that's his whole.
Thing, and he's not only you know, obviously he's a government contractor.
He gets at some fifteen.
Billion dollars in taxpayer dollars every year. Like it's a preposterous amount of money that he gets from the US government. He also has many foreign entanglements, a lot of business in China, for example, So you know, just everything that he touches is inherently a conflict of interest. And yet you know, oh, it's fine, he's gonna if there's anything that he's conflicted on, he'll let us know. He'll get back to us on no big deal, don't worry about it.
There's so many developments here. Let me go and put this up on the screen. So this is an important important note. USAID obviously has been a major target of Elon and DOJ and the right, et cetera. There was backlash against the defunding of this one particular program to come that HIV.
It's a George W. Bush era program.
It's been you know, really successful, important to the health they say here more than twenty million people worldwide, and in cleaning five hundred thousand children. And since there was a backlash, Marco Ruby at the State's Department issued a series of memos that say, basically like we're giving an exception. The foreign aid freeze does not apply to this. But because this is all done so sloppily and so imprecisely, the money for that HIV relief still isn't going out.
It still continues to be frozen with potentially I mean not potentially with dire consequences. They did a survey of two hundred and seventy five organizations and eleven steps Aharan countries. This was all conducted over the past week. All of them all of them reported their programs or services had shut down or were turning people away. This is especially critical for babies who acquire HIV at birth because the
infection can progress really quickly. Death can occur if you don't don't receive the proper treatment within eight to twelve weeks after birth, which would be a shorter period of time than the ninety day pause on foreign aid. So, you know, lives put being put at risk here. And obviously, like there are many things that USAID does that you and I would not be particularly crazy about, but it's also true that it does genuinely beneficial things like this.
And so even in this area where there was public pushback, where it fell like, okay, well if something is too egregious, they're going to pull back and they're going to kind of fix it, which happened with this, which happened with the Medicaid portals being shut down. Even in that instance, you know, they have not actually been able to roll back the freeze, and those funds are still locked down.
Right because it it appears deliberately destroyed. What's going on here is that they and that Times lays this out, the government sent out stop work orders to everybody doing work that had you know, any connection to this money, and so they stopped the work. Then Rubio says, Okay, you're right, this is embarrassing, Like, will continue to allow
some of this work to go on. People can get waivers, and so they issued memos saying some work involving HIV treatment can continue or going on, or HIV tests and can continue going on. But that is that a memo like that is not what.
These organizations need.
The organizations need a full on letter that says this particular program is back on and here's the money. They also need to send the money, obviously, and they haven't done it. So now then they send a superseding memo that tried to clarify a little bit more that yes,
we're this some of this work actually is okay. So what they're doing is are shutting everything down and then trying to like rebuild it from the ground up where they believe that these are the okay things that they're doing right, which a is not legal, Like Congress has authorized this pep far program, right, and that's it, Like Congress has authorized it directed to whether he.
Likes or not. He does not get to decide, you're yeah.
And so because they're being so nitpicky about what's okay and what's not, nothing is getting going like zero. So then Rubio said, well, it sounds like these are incompetent organizations who can't figure out how to get waivers or they are deliberately sabotaging their programs so that they will get derived some political benefit and embarrass us. But what these organizations are saying is that their waivers are being sent to staff who have been furloughed. They furloughed, We
posted the memo yesterday. Almost everybody in the implementing agencies there, their emails don't work anymore like these, and they're being told to come home, come to the United States by this weekend.
So who's going to approve the way?
So it's either the most idiotic cough gasque arrangement ever or it's quite obviously just designed to throw a wrench in it and break it right, because it's anybody who thinks it through, it'll be like, okay, actually, we do need employees to be able to approve the waivers if we want waivers to be approved.
Right.
That's we're not we're not talking like sophisticated bureaucratic understanding understanding here.
Some people do need to exist to be able to.
And the email email should.
Yes, exactly. So that's what's going on at us AID. But they have expanded their reach through a variety of other agencies. You know, some of them deeply troubling in you know, really important to American lives as well. It can put B two up on the screen. So they have reportedly breached the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, have gotten access to key payment and contracting systems there. The DOGE representatives have been on site at the agency's office this week.
The people said they're.
Looking at the systems, tech as well as a spending that flows through them, with a focus on pinpointing what they consider fraud or waste. Which that's an important line because so far the things that we have been given as examples of fraud or waste are either just completely invented or they're just things that the right doesn't like but were in fact, you know, properly authorized, et cetera.
That's been their definition of fraud or waste. White House and DOGE officials didn't comment, but Musk on his platform posted, yeah, this is where the big money fraud is happening, referring to the Medicare Agency in a repost of another user who referenced the journals reporting in the nerve center of much of the nation's complex healthcare economy, with outlays of about one point five trillion dollars in fiscal twenty twenty four,
about twenty two percent of the federal total. The around sixty seven hundred employees overseas, Medicare of course, and Medicaid which is for lower income rollies, which is sort of overseen primarily by the States. But I mean, he's not wrong. Like, if you're going to look at the money, the real money, buckets of money in the federal budget, it ain't Usaid, which accounts for a zero point seven percent. It is healthcare, right, and it is the Pentagon.
And Social Security.
Yeah, well, he gets a lot of money from the Pentagon. So for some reason, the Defense Department, which is the area that if you ask him, ya, we've looked at the polling, if you ask Americans, that's the area they most want to cut for some reason.
That has not been tackled whatsoever.
But going after healthcare, going after you know, HIV treatment for poor kids in Africa, going straight to the pipes of the treasury to shut off, to attempt to you know, mess with their shut off any funding that they don't agree with their that has been very much on the table.
Yeah, and just to underline it, the point this is not a pep FAR is not about USAID. I've been a long time consistent critic of USAID and it's its role in toppling governments and you know.
Building up fake cific society, et cetera.
Pep FAR is a separate is a separate program started by George W. Bush, which one of the implementing agencies is us AID. It could be implemented by other agencies right now, USA ideas is essential to getting it out. Some numbers from an NGO source said about two hundred and twenty thousand patients visit pep FAR supported clinics every day.
Wow.
So and there are about twenty million people who rely on on this treatment. And so this is treatment that if it gets disrupted, you know, causes you know, long term implications for your disease treatment. And if if you don't care about Africa, you don't care about American solid power, you can also understand that that treating it poorly, you know, risks creating all sorts of you know, bi mutations.
Right like, there is a selfish reason for the.
US to be concerned about disease prevention and treatment in Africa, even if you even if you don't care on humanitarian grounds at all about Africa or anybody else outside of your family or your country or whatever else. It actually does have potential impact back here.
Well, the other thing I've been thinking about is, you know, the first of all, Congress authorize USAID as an independent agency. Again, it is illegal to just shut down USAID, even if you're saying, oh, we're just going to put it under the State Department. No, it was authorized specifically as an independent agency, and it would, if you're going to follow the law, require an Act of Congress to do something different with that.
So that's number one. Number two.
I find it so silly to think that if the goal is to put USAID under the State Department, that it's going to do less of the like meddling and regime change stuff. I mean, the way Rubio talks about it, he's like, it needs to align war with US foreign policy American interest, which to me reads like, actually, we want to get rid of all this like you know
and b pamb humanitarian help the kids with AIDS. We just want to do more of the like directly meddling and trying to secure the mineral resources and supporting the quote unquote freedom fighters as a Senator Chris Murphy was talking about, Yes.
Exactly, Rubio saying that the USAID's functions will continue, but be directed America First. It was so revealing in a drop site piece on Monday that we wrote.
That touched on the Romanian election.
So we previously reported on this show as well, reported on usaids and the State Department's role and basically annulling presidential election in Romania.
Totally insane story.
Totally insane story.
They the candidates that the u was supporting, there were the establishment candidates. So does America first exploitation of USAID mean that it would be the populist right candidates that we're supporting, Like, That's that's what makes me nervous, right, that we're not going from Okay, we actually are now supporting the sovereignty of every country and whoever you elect, whether it's somebody we like or don't like, that's for Romanians to decide. And we're not going to go and
interfere with your election. That that would be my preference. Right, Let people decide. But is Rubio saying no, actually, we'll come in and USAID will be supporting the right wing populist Yeah.
Well, and also, I mean Rubio very hawkish guy, especially when it comes to Latin America.
Never seen like a coup.
Or receive change operation there that he didn't like, right, Yes, so you know this is guy.
It was all all about Wang Guido, et cetera.
So I don't think anyone should feel like USAID is going to be more to their liking when it is more directed by the State Department versus as it is currently as an independent agency. There's a bunch of developments to probably the most important piece of this is their infiltration of the Treasury Department, because that is where the payments that you know, Wall six trillion dollars that go out from the federal government. That is where the bones
and the pipes of that operation. I mean, they were savvy enough to know, like this is the place we need to go.
And so there's been.
A lot of dispute about what exactly they've been up to there. You know, there were claims me to reporters that the DOGE apparatriics only have quote read access, which is by the way, troubling enough. There's a lot of damage that can be done just with read only access. But we now have confirmation that that is really not the case. Let's put this reporting b to be up on the screen here. We've got talking points. Memo has
some sources inside the Treasury Department. They've broken a number of stories here, but they say specifically, a doage worker named Marco Ellas, who has admin privileges on chargery systems that control ninety five percent of government payments, including Social Security checks, tax refunds, has already made extensive changes to the codebase for these critical payment systems, and these have been implemented too. They weren't, you know, it wasn't in
some like you know, test environment. They've actually gone in and messed with the system, according to this reporting. And in addition, they said what it looked like this individual was doing was either trying to make it easier to freeze or shut off payments and potentially to make it so it's harder to track what payments have been messed with have been frozen. So again, I mean, just a
brazen violation of the separation of powers. You know, power of the purse belongs with Congress, and you've got these sort of unaccountable young dudes running around doing what they want to do. There's also new York Times reporting this morning that backs up some of this. This just broke literally this morning, they say. In the days after President Trump took office, as Elon Musk's team began pressing for
access to the Taragery Department's payment system. Officials repeatedly said their goal was to undertake a general review of the system. They said they would observe, but not stop money from going out the door. But emails reviewed by The New York Times show that the Treasury's Chief of Staff originally pushed for Tom Krause, one of those Doge acolytes, to receive access to the closely held payment system so that
the Treasury could freeze Usaid payments. In a January twenty fourth email to a small group of Treasury official, the Chief of Staff Dan Katz, wrote that mister Kraus and his team needed access to the system so they could pause Usaid payments and comply with mister Trump's January twentieth executive order to halt foreign aid to the extent permitted
by law. This is the quote from the email. We would like to implement the pause as soon as possible in order to ensure we are doing our role to comply with the Executive Office, so increasingly getting confirmation that you know, they have been going in, they have been messing with the code, they have been at least planning to freeze payments, et cetera.
Yeah, Nathan Tankas, uh TPM, like these.
These early reports are being vindicated. Yeah.
Wired has also done really wired, really great reporting because they have all these tech sources, you know, so they're sort of outside DC, but they have all this insight into this tech world, and so they've broken a lot of stories with regard to DOJ.
And some of it is also random, like it looks like you know, TPM, Josh over there just happened, and like know the people in the right place, that's the thing, Like you he's been doing this for twenty five thirty years, and clearly somebody who's like buddies with or something over
the years happens to be in the room. And so that that has enabled these independent journalists to scoop the mainstream press like New York Times and others, who you know, very strategic focused their sourcing on the people closest to like Trump or Biden or the Treasury secretary. But when Musk is going around them and going to the bowels of the building, and.
You're talking about these sort of just middle.
Like happen to be your neighbor, and now all of a sudden they're in a political position that they weren't in before, and so's.
That's been interesting to watch. But yeah, so this is confirming that.
The kind of worst fears that there is there's kind of aggressive manipulation going on inside the system, which is and we discussed as usually it's like sixty years old, like right, people like the code that put this system together was being written in like the nineteen sixties and just updated consistently since then rather.
Than My first job on in college was working for a government contractor that worked with these enterprise systems, and my particular client.
Was not Chargery, was the federal court system.
So I have no knowledge of the treasury systems, but I have extensive knowledge of how cluge together and like eccentric and you know, just very specific kind of knowledge you have to have of these systems and how outdated they.
Are, and all of that is certainly true.
But yeah, you have a few individuals who will be in place who will know all the quirks and the ends of an ounce of these weird systems. I worked on the help desk there for quite a while, so I was getting all the incoming problems. Why won't this happen, why won't that happen, etc. You got to go in the back end and search and figure out what the hell is going on, how these systems fit together, et cetera.
And so I like have a sort of visceral understanding of how brittle and how quirky and weird and outdated a lot of these systems are. And so if you're this, you know, hot shot kig coming in thinking that you know everything. And I think you see this a lot from the business world too, where people who are successful in the business world think that they know everything about any they can just drop in and like do a
way better job at anything. But you know, certainly these systems could use an upgrade, They could use some increased levels of efficiency. But if you're just going in willy nilly and messing with it, you are risking total catastrophe. And that's just one of the risks here. I mean, you know, risk of total catastroph the whole thing breaking down. Tax refund's not going out, social Security checks not going out, medicare not going out, the US not meeting its obligations
and having some sort of a default. You know, you've also just got the there's clear We're going to talk to David Day and.
More about the legal pushback here.
We have privacy laws in place that say you can't just have random people accessing you know, all of American social Security numbers as an example. There's really specific sensitive protocols that you're supposed to follow that don't appear to be followed here as well.
And then the key you.
Know, what really makes this, I would say, even beyond a constitutional crisis, is you don't just get there's a reason why Treasury just is the clearing house, right the payments get the appropriations made by Congress. The agencies say, okay, this is how we're going to go about executing the wishes of Congress. And then treasuries they're there to make sure that the checks are actually going out. The idea that you can go in and just pick and choose, like I like this one, I don't like that one.
As this richest man on the planet is I mean it truly is approaching coup type territory. Now he doesn't have control of the military. So I don't think you're quite there, but it is to be significantly beyond even just that of a constitutional crisis because of the level of control that he's trying to exert here on a you know, line by line basis as someone who wasn't elected or converted to anything.
Yeah, And the counter argument is that he's going after corruption, waste, and he's going after waste, fraud, and abuse, which a so far he has not elevated any incidents of core of actual up corruption, waste or fraud, which which would stand to reason because the way that you would find his waste fraud abuse would be to you know, find out where the money went and investigate the people who got the money.
He's not doing that.
He's looking at how it's getting how it's getting sent out, and and then he and he's just looking at the names of people getting money. Like Mike Flynn was circulating a spreadsheet where a bunch of Lutheran service organizations were getting money, and they're like, Aha, look at this corruption, right, It's like these these Lutheran organizations actually do a lot of implementation of like medicaid, of like getting medicaid payments
out to providers like they do that. Like, so you found the word Lutheran and you think you've discovered fraud, Like, that's not that's that's not how it works. There is an absolutely insane amount of fraud in the in the medicare system.
Yeah, but just as Scott, yes, exactly.
And it's a way and it would be a place I think that AI and technology could be beneficial because like and most of it.
Is down in South Florida.
You've got these fly by night companies that will set up they will pretend that they're selling, you know, wheelchairs, they will steal a bunch of Medicare numbers from the dark web. They will submit, you know, for ten million dollars in reimbursement from Medicare. The money will come through and then they shut down and so like that. That's the kind of thing that maybe you can get away with the nineties, but with the technology we have today, you should have to be able to.
Approve like this is a real need for a real person.
Where the where are the wheelchairs? Where's your physical address? Who are you? Like, so if they were, if we were serious, there is actually billions of dollars to be saved.
There well, it's also worth saying there is a government the Government Accountability Office is meant to root out this type of fraud. On an annual basis, finds hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.
Vastly more invest more in that.
Vastly more than what they're I mean they haven't found. They've found in terms of actual fraud that's been elevated at zero dollars. They've found some things they just like don't like, you know, money going to organizations that they just have an issue with, or just completely fabricated things like the one hundred million dollar condoms to Gazo, which was not even a thing, right, And we'll talk about the Politico example later, but your point just.
So, yeah, people don't miss it.
Rick Scott his company oversaw the biggest medicare fraud in American history.
Yeah, so get him involved. You should know where to find it.
So, and that is also an indication of because what I described sounds like it should be doable by the richest.
Country on the planet to root out this fraud.
But you're getting way up the river, Like the level the amount of money being made on this puts you in rooms where people have the power to stop that from happening.
So why isn't the GAO getting more money? Why I jeez that the HHS getting more money.
Why is it FBI being directed there instead of wherever.
The hew the FBI is being directed.
Well, Rick Scott's a senator from Florida, and you know, he might be the most prominent example of somebody like this, but he's not the only one.
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
And again, if you really wanted to root out fraud, you would be taking a look at that the Pentagon budget, which has.
Never passed an audit.
That might be the place that you would actually start, but not if you're getting billions of dollars in your own contracts from that entity just to continue on here. So they've busted into Center for Medicare. They also put B three up on the screen, have gotten access to NOAH, that's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Why should you care? That's right? Well, why should you care?
Because if you like to know when hurricanes are going to hit in your area.
Or what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, you.
May appreciate the work that NOAH does. But Noah has long been in the sites of conservatives because they don't like that it you know, that climate change is real, and the Noah data proves that to be the case.
They don't like that.
Project twenty twenty five took aim at Noah in particular. They describe it as harmful to US prosperity for its role in climate science. And they also have wanted to privatize the data that's collected here so that you the public don't have access to it, only private corporations have
access to it. And I mean, since there's a time with the conversation you and Emily were having about housing, which is that all these insurers are looking at the data and are like, Yeah, your house in this area is really prone to a wild buyer or really prone to being destroyed by a hurricane.
And this is a problem.
But because there's been such so many political lies about the climate crisis, it has kept people from being able to really absorb how much risk they are personally at wherever they happen to be living. And so they would like to go more in the direction of only private corporations really getting to understand the data and the science that is collected around the atmosphere.
Yeah, and it's crazy to think that there really are these niche companies who just hate the idea that Noah gives this information away for free, which then allows your weather app and your various weather apps to then be available mostly for free. They're pulling data from you, or you can get the fancy ones where you pay, but then you get a little.
Extra from those from those asks.
Well, yeah, they want they want you to have to pay for everything.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Sager would agree with me on that one.
I think he's.
Brought up Noah himself before, so yeah, I think he'd be on board with that. Let's put before up on the screen. The GSA is a General Services administration. They basically keep track of all of the kind of like hard assets, including real estate, of the federal government. And so they received a message from DOJE saying that they are trying to get rid of terminate the leases on and many of the federal offices nationwide to cut back
the real estate budget by fifty percent. Kind of goes against the whole idea of everybody's got to go back to the office, because actually already some of the office space has been let go because you had a post COVID shift away from everybody being at the office all the time, and so you know they're wanting to strip this back even further. And you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see if some closely connected people are able to benefit from some.
Of these sales.
You know, some potentially blow market possibilities here. But this is a you know, another DOGE effort to just come in and slash and burn. And then the last piece we have for you, while we've got two more pieces for you. One is they are trying to move to a system where their communications within DOGE would not be subject to FOIA requests. That we can put B five up on the screen. This is another one of these kind of outsider outlets that was able to get this scoop.
This is for a four media. They say DOGE employees the order to stop using slack while agency transitions to a record system not subject to FOYA. This is a little bit there's like different reporting requirements. If you're right now, DOG is under the Office Management and budget. If they were to report directly through the White House, then they're subject to different records requirements. Ryan, you could probably speak
to this better than I can. And so they want to say, no, no, actually, we're just reporting to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. We're just under the Office of the President. That's who we're advising. And so then we would become under what is it called like the Presidential Records Act, which holds doesn't allow you to FOYA anything until you.
Know, years down in the future.
So just an effort here to make sure that there is truly no transparency about what's going on there.
Right in order to stand up their their DOJ committee. Immediately they took over a digital committee that Obama had set up, which had been under omb and in the executive Order, he said, it's not there anymore now, it's so for it.
The White House.
And a lot of lawyers are like, well, that's not how it works. You can't just like you actually have to go through serious process to like rearrange that.
Yeah, you don't get to just say like, yeah, I don't really want to be SUBJISTI for it anymore.
So we're just not going to do that.
But you know they probably can and they will.
Uh.
It's ironic that the Twitter the guy, the Twitter files guy, the dude all about transparency is now seeking to undermine it. And then separately on the on the gs A thing where they're canceling all the leases. That's another speed run through his Twitter takeover, Like the first thing he did was get rid of the get rid of a bunch of leases, break the leases, stop paying, make make, make them sue and going.
Back to the idea of like.
The random connections you have, like I've you know, whole bunch of neighbors who are federal workers.
And then they're being asked to come in.
And what they've said is that, you know, over the last several years, in order to save money, their agencies have downsized their their offices. So now it's more like, all right, what what kind of office size would we need if people came in two or three days a week, and oh, we would need shared workspaces and more.
Yeah, we're mutable, we really have their own space.
You come in, you grab whatever cubicles available, with an assumption that only you know, maybe fifty percent of the workforce will be there.
On any given day.
And so now that they're saying, okay, actually everybody's back for five days with oh we need to go get a bigger office yeah, and if that's what they want us to do, to have that coupled with actually we're getting rid of all the offices, Like wait a minute, I thought we were coming.
In coming in to wear exactly. Yeah, that's that is all very accurate. You know.
I live out in King George County, which is about an hour and a half from years, the town that I grew up in, and it's based around the economy there is based around a naval base, but it's mostly civilian scientists who work there. But then it also is the type of place that during COVID, when people were able to get these flexible work schedules, suddenly like if you're commuting into DC an hour and a half a day plus traffic makes it like a ridiculous, miserable commute.
You can't really do that five days a week. But if you're coming in.
Two days a week, three days a week, okay, that becomes more doable.
So there's been a lot of movement of people out to where I live who do have to go into DC, who are you know, obviously their lives are going to
be turned upside down. And the other piece of this that you know, we didn't even touch on is the big fork in the road letter that sent out the quote unquote buyoun which is not really biol but whatever that they sent out is also coming under a lot of legal scrutiny, and there's huge questions and about whether this is truly a real whether it's a legal offer because again there's no funds to back it up because that has to go through.
Congress, and whether or not they could just.
Kind of renick on it at any time because of this not actually being a legal offer. And then very few federal employees took them up on this effort, and it seems to have had this kind of backlash effect where people are like, you know, people being stubborn creatures as we are, We're like, oh, you want me to leave, will screw you. I'm definitely staying now. So it's you know,
so that piece is going on as well. Last on the politics of this, we could put Jade Vance's tweet up on the screen here, which is interesting for a variety of reasons, but anyway, he says, quote, no one voted for Elon Musk. They did, however, vote for Donald Trump, who promised repeatedly to have Elon Musk routout wasteful spending in our government. You know, to me, this was a sign that they are sensitive about the criticisms of Elon Musk.
You know, his favorability is plummeting. Doge is underwater, which is kind of amazing to me because if you just ask people in general, like, oh, should the government be more efficient? Of course they're like, yes, that sounds great. So the fact they managed to get that project to be have a negative approval rating is kind of incredible. And then it's also I mean, it's also funny to me because Elon and Trump are the only two people that matter in this administration.
Like JD.
Vance has been thoroughly pushed to the side. Now this is the Partzoker would.
Probably this is where he would probably and put it back and object to. But it's true.
You know I was saying to you before when we're watching Mark or Rubio all of these agency heads, like they're all irrelevant. You know, the plan truly from these in this It sounds crazy when you lay these things out, but go and look at what their intellectual influencers, people like Curtis Yarvin, are saying. They want Elon Musk to be the CEO the dictator of the country and Donald Trump to effectively be like the chair of the board.
And that's how you should understand this dynamic. Elon is a megalomaniac, like he truly believes he is intellectually superior to everyone that he deserves by dent of being the richest man on the planet to not just run our country, but run the world. I think in his mind he's a hero who's trying to save humanity by you know, bringing us to Mars or whatever. And he has this kind of you know, I don't know that he would describe himself as an effective altruism, but it kind of
is that mindset of the ends justify the means. I can hurt any people, I can break any laws I can do, you know, do whatever I think.
Is best in service of these like.
Multi generational interplanetary goals. And so that's what you see in operation here. Like if he knows that, you know, let's say one hundred thousand kids with HIV are going to die because of his actions, he sees that as in service of this greater goal that he has decided for himself in his head that he wants to impose on all of US. He also, as the world's top oligarch, sees the United States government as the one force that could be powerful enough to reign in his desires and
his power. So you know, when we're talking about there's a risk of him breaking things like for him, that's a.
Feature, not a bug.
The United States government not functioning and people you know, suffering, people being more poor, people being less educated, those are all things that benefit him personally because number one, it makes people easier to control. Number Two, there's actually a YouTuber who pointed this out. He's obsessed with this whole birth rate thing and talks about how people who are
poor and less educated have more kids. So it also solves his problem in terms of, oh, I want people to have more kids if you are poorer and less educated. And so you know, if you go and read these guys and their philosophy, like I said, Curtis Yarvin is one of the primary influencers here. They want a tech feudalist society with a CEO king and the end of democracy,
and that is a fact. What we're witnessing here, step by step is Elon Musk himself trying to take control of the reigns of the federal government and be able to control the spending and have it just go out and take control of the agencies that are both critical and have it run according to his whims, ideologies and wishes.
Yeah, and the scale of the investment that he needs to achieve that long term vision requires that you US government to invest a significant amount of its money in that direction, Like if he's going to go to Mars, right, like you need the federal you need the American federal government, like printing the money to make that happen.
And by the way, he was able to get Trump to install his choice for Secretary of the Air Force, who had previously been influential in getting Giant SpaceX contracts, you know, for the for Elon. So in all the areas where he wants things to happen, they are happening according to his wishes. Now there is a legal pushback that, like I said, we'll talk to David Daan about And I do think you know, at some point the state
probably reasserts itself against this oligarch. But you know, how much how much damage is done between then now and then? And when is when is that going to actually happen?
In the meantime, I think jd.
Vance is playing the long game, where like he is currently in the pole position to take over the Republican Party in the absence of Trump. There's obviously a lot of competition, Don June and plenty of others. H And Elon Musk will be a king maker unless he's in prison by that or something. But like along this trajectory, he he can make or break, you know, the next
chairman of the Republican Board. And so Jadie Vance I think you're going to see him, uh linking himself very tightly with Elon Musk in the coming years.
And Jade Vance has you know, close ties with Peter Teel, who's you know, tied into this whole world as well. I mean he was put in there very intentionally as well. But yeah, I mean the real figure at this point is Elon. He is the you know, previously, when I was reading these guys, I thought they were thinking of Trump as the like CEO king, but they actually weren't thinking of Elon, Who's who's the real.
A wild card anyway.
Trump is too much of a wildcard. Trump is not ideological in the same way, you know, so he gets to be over here doing his you know whatever things he's interested in, immigration, tariff threats, you know, quote unquote turning on the water in California. Like he gets to go over and do play with and and go golfing and do whatever he wants to do. And meanwhile, Elon is actually taking the reins and going forward with what I think you can truly describe as a revolution.
Which he continues to call it a revolution accurately.
Yeah, that's which makes our whole like, what about Foya seems so.
Trivial, completely completely Yeah, no, that's absolutely right.
Well, it's absolutely right