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Good morning, Ryan Grim. This is so great to have your hair, cris. If people are listening to this, they're like, that's not very funny. You're just talking to Ryan Grim. But no, I'm indeed joined today by the one and only Crystal Ball.
Thanks for being here.
I would be happy to download Ryan's brain, but I know I'll do my best here.
So we're going to start with updates this morning, Crystal. In the case of Kilmara at Brego Garcia, we have a lot to get to that happened over the last twenty four hours. We're going to talk a little bit about some of the movement in the markets and developments in the trade war, also development in potentially an upcoming hot war. Hopefully not, but Iran intentions continue to escalate
with Iran. There are so there were some moves taken here in DC towards Trump administration officials who may not be on board with the administration's plan just yesterday, who ended up on administrative leave.
Will dive into all of that, Crystal.
The story of the IVY leagues in the second Trump administration is heating up. Harvard is now pushing back on Donald Trump, and you will be shocked to learn that the Dems are in disarray.
Dare I say, maybe I don't know there? Yeah, I mean, yes,
they're always in disarry. But there's some interesting emerging data about how, first of all, the Trump two point zero era plus sort of centrist capitulation has really shifted the Democratic base both against their leadership and also for the first time that I can certainly recall, a majority are saying they actually want the party to be more progressive, and AOC is, according to one new poll, really rising in the esteem the Democratic base as like an actual
potential national leader. So a lot of shifts happening there. And then we have Brian Goldstone on written a really important Wroten. Oh, this is going to be a great show, written a really important new book about you know, we talk so much about the working poor. He digs into the working homeless, which is increasingly a reality. People who are doing everything they can, working full time, but because housing and rent is so expensive, they still cannot afford
a home. And he specifically tells the story of a number of families in and around Atlanta. So I'm really looking forward to talking to him about this because obviously housing is just a central issue to everyone in the entire country.
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that as well. Crystal.
Let's start with developments in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Yesterday, the judge in that deportation case said that she was going to demand information from the government. Judge quote, we have to give process to both sides, but we're going to move There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grand standing. Now, we have a clip here of Abrego Garcia's wife speaking ahead of the hearing that happened yesterday in Green Belt Maryland, so actually not too far from Washington, DC.
We can go ahead and roll this clip. It's a one.
You will not stop fighting until I see my husband alive, Kilmar. If you can hear me, stay strong. God hasn't forgot her about you. Our children are asking when would you come home? And I pray for the day I tell them the time and date that you'll return. As we continue through Holy Week, my heart aches for my husband, Whoshia.
I had been here leading our Easter prayers. Instead, I find myself leading with the Trump administration and the Bugel administration to stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar. Our family is torn apart during the scary time, and our children's missed their dad so much so.
Crystal at the district judge in this case, ordered administration officials I'm reading from NBC News here to quote turn over evidence of their efforts to help bring him back to the US, and she first ordered them to quote facilitate his return, saying the government had not shown her
anything of note on that front. I've got nothing, she said, I've gotten no real response and no real legal justification for not answering, adding that if the admin is not going to answer questions quote, then justify why that's what we do in this house. And many people read that as a sign that she was waiting weighing contempt charges in this case, which would get incredibly interesting. It's already quite an interesting case, but that would make it even more interesting.
Yeah, So just to as a refresher for people, I know, you guys probably know already some of the contours of this case. And we actually, Emily, you and I and Ryan had a chance to interview one of his lawyers and get some of the specifics about the timeline.
Of how all of this ultimately unfolded.
But the Trump administration at least initially admitted that this was an error. He had a court order saying you cannot deport this man to El Salvador, and they deported him to El Salvador and specifically do this notorious torture dungeon in El Salvador. So they acknowledged that they had made a mistake, both in court filings and also in their presentation in court. And their position was we screwed up, but we're not going to do anything about it.
You can't make us and.
That's been their official position now over the past several days, led by Stephen Miller, they are now reversing course and claiming that no, actually this wasn't a mistake.
This is the place where he should be.
So they've had a rhetorical shift, but in terms of their court posture, the things that they said previously and attested to previously remain that this was a clear cut error that he had in order barring his removal to El Salvador, and the administration screwed up when they sent him to this torture dungeon. So now where we are is the Supreme Court says you have to facilitate his return.
They say, we want a clarification on this term effectuate that came from the District Court because it could potentially conflict with the foreign policy prerogatives of the executive So we want a clarification there. The district court judge said, you know, just facilitates good enough. I'm just going to take that word effectuate out. Then she ordered the government to on a daily basis, provide an update about his well being and status and about every step they are
taking to facilitate his return. The Trump administration has at this point done nothing to facilitate the return those filings which are supposed to come in I believe at five pm every day. They've been late with them. They have not been sufficient in terms of what they are supposed to provide. They frequently know. One of them just said, like,
he's alive and he's in the sovereign custody of l Salvador. Basically, so this judge has been for a little while now sort of building a case for potential contempt is certainly what it looks like. And if we put a five up on the screen, this is the headline from Politico.
Yesterday's hearing really was kind of a coming to a head, kind of a moment after Trump had hosted Kelly himself in the White House and they played this little game with Trump saying I can't bring him back, and but Kelly saying, oh well, I don't can't release him.
Both of them.
Acting like they're powerless, which obviously is utterly absurd. Politico says, the judge is now launching an inquiry into the Trump administration's refusal to seek the return of this wrongly deported man. Again, this is really directly in convention of a nine to zero Supreme Court ruling, saying you have to help to facilitate this man's return. And so what the judge is saying is, Okay, you've got two weeks. We are launching
an intensive investigation. She even said, cancel your vacation plans. I don't want any messing around, no gamesmanship. She's giving the the uh, She's giving them a chance to depose the government witnesses, people who have specific knowledge, to get them specifically on the record about what they know. And then it does seem like potentially this is building up
to a finding of contempt. You know, we have had many instances at this point, Emily of this administration either really taking liberties with how they're interpreting judgments, with trying to escape by of not really complying with judicial orders but giving themselves some sort of rhetorical cover. And I think we've all been wondering when does this come to a point where there is a direct clash between the courts and between the Trump administration, And I think this
is the case that is heading to that point. The last thing I said, I'll say, and this is going on a bit of a tangent, but the reason this case is important is because and the reason why the administration is fighting so hard on this case is because the moment you open the door to being able to bring people back from that prison, then it ruins their plan to be able to send people there whoever they want,
including apparently American citizens, with no due process. If the courts have any sort of say over what happens in that prison, then it screws up what they have been wanting to do, which is to use the Alien Enemies Act and whatever provisions potentially the insurrection or whatever they want to do with regard to US citizens, where they feel like, if we can just get them on the planes fast enough, then we don't have to deal with
the court system. We don't have to go through due process, they don't get to have their say in court, and we can just say, oopsie, they're already there. There's nothing we can do. The moment that you are able to bring kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States and they are forced to do that, that plan is completely undermined, which underscores that even though you know, we've talked a lot about the specifics of the case, the specifics of
the case certainly matter. All that is important, but this is about much more than this one man. And it truly, especially with Trump out there talking about the quote unquote homegrowns, truly does have direct implications for the entire population, citizen and non.
Well, let's get to that clip. Actually, control room, I'm going to go out of order, but this is a four. It was from an interview that Donald Trump, or at least aired yesterday evening on Fox and Notesius with Rachel Kipo Stuffy.
So here's Donald Trump a four. Could we use it for violent criminals? Our own violent criminals.
I call them homegrown criminals. I mean the ones that grew up and something went wrong and they hit people over the head with a baseball bat. We have and pushed people into subways just before the train gets there, like you see happening. Sometimes we are looking into it and we want to do it.
I would love to do that. So to your point, Crystal, that is rather chilling.
I'm not quite sure how the Trump administration envisions that process or that execution, but something that we will obviously be keeping an eye on. And I want to play this clip of Caroline Levitt as we transition into how Democrats are now mounting a response. This is a three Carolyn Levett Yesterday's White House Press briefing addressing many questions on the case of Abrigo Garcia, still going.
Off the Alfabador questions.
Yesterday in the Oval Office, administration officials made it very clear that Al Salvador is responsible for mister Abrido Garcia. Yet Al Salvador's president said, we're not going to do.
Anything with him.
So my question is who is responsible for this man and where he's going.
To end up.
Well, No, first of all, President Bukelli said that he is not going to smuggle a foreign terrorist back into the United States of America as many in this room in the Democrat Party seemingly want him to do. Abrago Garcia was a foreign terrorist. He is an MS thirteen gang member, He was engaged in human trafficking.
He illegally came into our country.
And so deporting him back to El Salvador was always going to be the end result.
There is never going.
To be a world in which this is an individual who's going to live a peaceful life in Maryland because he is a foreign terrorist MS thirteen gang member. Not only have we confirmed that President Bukelly yesterday in the Oval Office confirmed that as well, so he went back to his home country where he will face consequences for his gang affiliation and his engagement in human trafficking. I'm not sure what is so difficult about this for everyone in the media to understand.
And it's appalling, truly appalling that there has.
Been so much time covering this alleged human trafficker and this gang member MS thirteen gang member.
It's truly striking to me.
So Crystal, I just this case study. The Trump administration picked the dumbest possible fight as it's trying to do mass deportations because.
An I think from your perspective, there's.
Maybe strategy in it about what they can do with deportations to Al Salvador in particular. But it is founding how stupid this particular case study is. There are, according to the New York Times, there were like eight million net new migrants into this country over the course of the Biden administration. That is the population of multiple states put together. And their case studies are kilmar Abrego Garcia.
They have very little evidence that he actually is MS thirteen, and there were also legal processes in place that they did not properly deal with and you have the other alleged trend Aragua members, the Venezuelan barber et cetera, as Dropsite has reported, and more down in Al Salvador as well, and they're trying to do mass deportations, but they keep stumbling into the dumbest possible fights, not just for a media perspective, but also for the actual substance of doing
these policies. The execution has really been disaster, and it's just like unbelievable how poorly they've handled this situation. It's a real like when you're looking back in the last four years of the Biden administration. For the Trump administration, this is a slam dunk. And I think that's almost hurt them because they came into this with so much confidence and hubrious and political capital that they've just wasted it by not handling these legal processes carefully enough, because
they thought, ah, it won't matter. People just want others gone, so it'll be like a cool Libs on the Libs moment to send people down to bu Calae. Now as we transition to Democrats, I want to.
Let me just let me just say, look, I'm sorry, these people are fascists. They want to be able to ship whoever they want to a torture dungeon for life. The entire purpose of that prison is so that people never leave, never leave. You're talking about this man who Caroline Lovitt says alleged human traffic. There is zero evidence of human trafficking. No one has ever said that they will just make shit up MS thirteen. Bullshit is because he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat. That's what we're
talking about here. We learned about a nineteen year old who didn't even have a tattoo, who I said, this is the wrong guy. Didn't matter. He is now there being tortured in this prison for life. And their position is we don't care. It's not that they genuinely think these are gang members and they're no. The point is to prove they can send anyone you, me, your family,
your brother, That is the point. So yes, it's a strategy, and that's why this fight is so important, because number one, you should care about this man who does not deserve this. I mean very few people do deserve to be locked in this dungeon, which is rife with human rights abuses.
You barely get fed.
It's like sixty people in a cell, no mattresses, no blankets, no time outside, even none life. That's what they have sent these people to do. And again, yes, there was a significant backlash against the Biden administration immigration policies, but when you ask people even more specific questions about like, hey, should we depoor people who've been here for ten years and have no criminal record, they're like no. But they were convinced that the immigrant population was just rife with
all sorts of criminals. And that's the other thing with this policy that the reason why they can't send off the worst of the worst is because, yeah, of course there are some number of undocumented immigrants who are criminals, much less than the native born population, and so it's not so easy to round up planeloads of criminals to make your big statement.
So what do they do instead?
They round up the gay barber, They round up this nineteen year old who's done nothing wrong. They round up Kilmar Abrego Garcia who has a court order saying you cannot do this, and then they ship them off before anyone has a chance to say, well are these gang members?
Did they commit any crimes?
We now know ninety percent of the people that they sent committed no crimes ninety percent. So that's I want to be really clear about what we're dealing with here. It's not an optics problem, it's not a strategy problem. It is an authoritarian fascism problem. That's that's what it is.
And so when Trump is out here saying the homegrowns are next, you know again they're actually When they've pulled even on criminal American citizens being sent to this torture dungeon, people have said no, I'm no, no way.
Like, why would we do that?
But there is no reason you should have any confidence that this administration would truly send the quote unquote worst of the worst. Their worst of the worst is Andre the gay makeup artist who was applying for asylum. That's
their definition of the worst of the worst. We know the way that they're expanding the definition of terrorism to include people who dare say the wrong thing about Israel, people who harbor ill sentiment against Tesla's, people who go to hands off protest to push back against the insanity that they see unfolding in their country. That's who they want to use these powers against. To transition to what the Democrats are doing and why they've finally somewhat woken up.
You've got Chris van Holland, who's the Senator from Maryland, and kil Marra Brego Garstia, of course was living in Maryland, and he said, you know what, I'm going to El Salvador to Apparently today, I'm going to El Salvador and I'm going to try to figure out what is going on. I'm going to try to get access to him. I'm going to try to talk to you diplomats or if
he can, the president of El Salvador himself. There are other efforts for other politicians to be able to go because they finally realized that this isn't this is part of a broader project. This is not just about this one man. And guess what the people are on your side. There is the when you ask people, do you want to and send to a torture dungeon an innocent man because of an ad ministry of error and never get him back. Guess what you're going to be on the
right side of those politics. Let's take a listen a six to chrispin Holland.
I saw the comments of President ou Kayley and I look forward to meeting with them. I've requested to meet with him. I reached out to the ambassador here to ask to meet while he's here, but I've also made clear if we can't meet here, I do intend to go to El Salvador to discuss the release of this individual who is illegally detained. First President Trump could have
just said, you know, bring him home. Of course, he could have done that, but this is an administration that has lied about mister Brago Garcia, right, the Vice President the United States tweeted out that he had a criminal record.
That was a lie.
They're just lying. They've gotten caughtline, they don't want to admit it, and they have an obligation to bring him home. But I will say the President of El Salvador should not now take it upon himself to say that he is detaining him for one more day, because that is kidnapping. I understand that the Attorney General said that we would
provide a plane to bring him home. So all the President of Al Salvador has to do now is hand over and release an innocent man and let him come home to his family.
And oh, go ahead, Chrysal.
I was just going to say, and of course, if Trump asked b. Kelly, we need this guy back. He would be back.
If b.
Kelly went to the prison that he runs under a state of exception and said we need this guy, of course he would.
Be able to get this guy back.
There were some women who we tried to send to in a few individuals who are from other Central American countries, and but Kelly said, no, we can't take women. We can't take these other people. He's worried about his relationship with these other Central and South American countries, so he sent them back as well. Like they're playing this game as if we're idiots and we can't see what's going on here.
So we can put the next element up on the screen. Other Democrats are doing what Van Holland is doing a horribly including Senator Corey Booker and planning trips down to Al Salvador. Trying to plan trips down to Al Salvador. This is according to a new report from Axios. Meanwhile, the Trump administration, if we put a seven up on the screen, continues to to your point, Crystal Lean very firmly into this case.
Vice President J.
D Vance was mixing it up with actually zed Jlaanni on X yesterday, going.
Back Richard Hannanian too. I think, oh, really.
Was he tweeting Hanani? Oh my goodness, Okay, he was. He was definitely tweeting back and forth with Zed. In this particular exchange, Zed was making the point he said, why do you say berger Garcia has no legal right to be here when the Supreme Court's at the opposite nine to zero. And that was in response to JD saying, are you proposing that we invade This is to Michel Jellette, we invade Al Salvador to retrieve a gang member with
no legal right to be in our country. Where in the Supreme Court's decision does it require us to do that?
Now?
Obviously, Crystal bou Kelly is an ally of this administration. Bu Kelly was sitting next to them in the Oval office just twenty four hours before that tweet was posted, and would obviously help them facilitate or effectuate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States. But the administration is very much leaning into this idea that this is a guy MS thirteen.
He can be sent anywhere.
And I just want to say the point that you were making about El Salvador in particular, it is a this is going to be an enormous problem I think for the right in the next couple of years, this relationship with Boukele this particular prison, because a lot of Republicans Democrats are now making the truck down to El Salvador or trying to a lot of Republicans have gone with Christinome. Republican members of Congress have gone and done photo ops inside of that prison. They have done their
photo ops with Nahebukel. That is anti American. What is happening in that prison is anti American. And I get that other countries are not accepting their own citizens, and I think.
That is genuinely a problem. I agree with JD.
Vance and Donald Trump on I think that is genuinely a problem. Sending them to dungeons in El Salvador is not actually going to long term fly with the public. If you are also ignoring the legal process is that are in place when people have done things, and this is what Biden I mean.
Some of this is through Joe Biden.
Abrado Garcia applied for asylum, and I think he actually applied for asylum during the Trump administration. When he first applied, I think it was twenty nineteen but there are a lot of people because these pathways were open up to the Biden administration, and that means the Trump administration has to deal with that. It sucks and it's not fair in every case, but it does mean that we have legal processes in place where you do have to deal
with those things. Otherwise, to your point, Crystal, everyone else's rights get eroded down the line. And the flippancy is I mean, it has some conservatives. Andy McCarthy is one, Rod Dreher is another, like really freaked out by what they're seeing from the Trump administration more than I Honestly, I think this is more than I've seen on another issue in the second Trump administration. It's been upsetting to
some people on the right. The only other thing I'll add, though, is Democrats need to be really careful because as important as I think this is, it's going to make it look like they got all up in arms about one guy who did legitimately enter the country illegally when net eight million people came into the country. They need to
play this very very carefully. Under the Biden administration, often with their support, So I do think they have to be careful with how they approach going to Al Salvador, which I think, by the way, is legitimately a brave thing to do, given how Bugle is likely to try them.
And respect on that part.
But they with their own constituents, I mean, Democrats were unhappy with the Biden administration and immigration policies, so they do need to play that pretty carefully.
I think some of that is overstated because, like I said, yes, if you ask people, okay, should we do mass deportation, there's still you know, somewhat of a consensus there. If you ask them any of the specifics, the view is very different, and no, they are not on board with shipping random innocent people to this torture dungeon for life. So but also, frankly, even if the politics were bad, like sometimes you have to fight. Sometimes it's important, sometimes you have to make the case.
You know this, Yeah, I think they should have done that during Biden. I genuinely think that's on the substance. They should have done that during the Biden administration, done what they should have taken what was happening at the border. Much more seriously, during the Biden ad ministries, I've been saying Republicans did it for the right reason. But I mean, I think it was pretty obvious there was something DISASTERUS.
Well.
I mean, that's a whole other conversation because in my view, what Democrats did is completely capitulate to the right wing immigration hawk framing in a way that was utterly disastrous. Now I think there is likely to be a huge backlash in the other direction. I mean, immigration expansion has ever been more popular than it was during the first Trump administration because people were disgusted with the tactics that he was using then and it is nothing compared to
what they're doing now. And also the very clear with Trump talking about homegrowns, very clear implication that US citizens are going to be next. So last thing, just with regard to the specifics of Abrego Garcia, if we could put a eight up on the screen, just in terms of their supposed proof that he's some hardened MS thirteen
gang member. Apparently the cop who was the person who initially claimed that he had alleged MS thirteen membership based on some sketchy confidential informant that are you know, they're
known to be not particularly reliable. He was fired and indicted like weeks later after making this claim for sharing case info with a sex worker, and the only other evidence that they have that and by the way, the confidential informant claim that he was part of MS thirteen in a part of the country in New York where he doesn't live and like has you know, rarely, if ever even been to. And then the only other piece of evidence they have is that he was wearing a Chicago bulls hat.
So that's what.
We're talking about. And then when Caroline Love it's like, oh, he's a human trafficker. No one has ever said that. That is completely utterly made up false. So, you know, I think Democrats have to fight on this issue both you know, I do think they're on solid political ground.
But even if they're not, Like, you cannot create a massive loophole in the law that allows the Trump administration to disappear whoever they want, whenever they want, and be able to uphold this and we can can't do anything once they're there.
That's that when it's not good for anyone.
I mean, that's the whenever civil liberties are threatened, it's you know, always the point. You can tell if people are principal defenders of civil liberty by how vehemently they defend due process when their enemy's due process is threatened.
And so yeah, I.
Mean it could very well end up being used by a democratic administration down the road if we slide fully into Banana Republicanism in a way that hurts Republicans, in a way that hurts conservatives, Christians, whatever. You can see how it would. Those standards can can very easily slip. So we have to before we run on this, Crystal, we have to get the next element up on the screen.
The way we found this.
Love this Christine Nome.
It's sort of a funny image if you're watching this. The Daily Beasts made a funny image to go along with that of Christy Noman, all of her outfits, kind of treating herself like a Barbie. And the Daily Beast writes, Ice Barbie keeps creating all kinds of headaches for homeland security. But actually there was a wash Journal is a long while street journal story yesterday that indicated Christy Nomes peers
are not pleased with her. They think that she, according to this report in the Journal, is harming their efforts
actually to try and do mass deportations. And Crystal, I think what this highlights is there are real fractures within the administration because doing these mass deportations in a way that is actually mass if you're if you're actually going to hit the targets that the Trump administration promised to do, if you are going to do it without causing these protracted legal battles where even the right is divided on how legally or how legally dubious your track is in
that case, and if you're also going to do it in a way that is politically.
Going well, they are not doing that right now.
There's a lot of internal consternation about how ably this administration is approaching it. And it looks like Christy No is going to be taking some arrows Charity is in the Wall Street Journal, But this could bubble to the surface for her in a rather problematic way going forward that can make all of those bouquele photo ops and outfits look really foolish.
Yeah, I mean, she's playing dress up like it's preposterous. She's just making herself look utterly ridiculous. Did you see the video where her like big ass gun was like pointed at some at the dude next to HER's head and he like takes a look at where her gun is pointed and like backs up sort of subtly. I mean, it's just she's a ridiculous person. I mean the Barbie Moniker is actually accurate here because she has all these little like dress up outfits she's taking here herself, swapping
in you know, Oh, she's doing her coastguard thing. She's doing her She's got her ice flat jacket on. I mean she had like a freaking ice like the big bulletproof vest on in Manhattan, like the streets of New York City, Like, girl, where do you think you are? It's in with the full extension and the full eyelashes and the whole bit. And it's also like, lady, you're like fifty something years old. You know, it's I don't know, the whole thing is just it is just a part
of a grotesque spectacle to me. So I'm glad at least someone is also noticing and being like, you know what, this is kind of gross.
Well, Megan Kelly went after her. That reminds me.
Megan Kelly and some others have started, I think and Culter have started going after her.
Sarah Palin went after her. Really, so yeah, she's doing taking some eras.
What did Megan go after her for the outfits? Really? Yeah, it's ridiculous.
It is.
It's like embarrassing.
It really is, like she's a law enforcement officer. It's starting to look complete. I mean, I shouldn't say its starting to look it looks completely unseerious and ridiculous. But I think this is genuinely a problem for the administration because this was like their big ticket issue that they can't at well. And the economy. The Trump administration has
some real problems ahead. Let's get to that, because actually, what we want to say to start with is this sort of Harry Enton on CNN yesterday talking about some of the movement for Donald Trump in the in polling as this trade war has proceeded.
So let's go ahead and roll b one here.
Focus in on Independence here, and Independence feel that Donald Trump has vacated the center of the electric catering to his base. What are we talking about, Well, let's talk about the overall net approval ratings. We're going to look at the worst ever at this point in a presidency. The old record among Independence for the worst ever was Donald Trump back in twenty sixteen, a net approval rating
of minus sixteen points. While Donald Trump has broken his own record here, he now holds, in this particular term, the worst ever net approval rating at this point in a presidency among independents. At get this, minus twenty two points, he is twenty two points underwater with independence. That breaks the old record that belonged to Trump. He is set the new record. He is come completely underwater with the center of the electric k pot.
And this is overall, this is on all the issues now focus on specifically on the economy.
Yeah, let's focus in on the economy, right, what is driving this overall approval rating for Donald Trump among independents to go underwater. Let's take a look at the economy, and let's take a look at Trump's NOTT approval rating on it. And look at the trend line over just the last few months. You go back to January, he was slightly above water a month with independence at plus one point. Look at this drop, Kate, oh my, minus twenty nine points. That's a thirty point drop in under
three months of time. What independents are hearing from Donald Trump? They hate, they hate what they're hearing from Donald Trump, and they are abandoning him in record numbers.
And Actually, what the Chiron said behind Harry Eton there, who I have to imagine is hopped up on ghost energy every single day. But what the Chiron said, what is like Sager at the DNC, was that was the worst for any president, the worst net number with independence on the economy. And so that drop in three months time, Chris, I can't remember seeing anything like that. Now, that's huge on the economy with independence. Now, obviously it's early in
the midterm election cycle. God forbid we even consider that we may be in the midterm election cycle.
But those numbers are devastating.
Oh, utterly devastating. And you know, the tariff policy changes every day, even if tomorrow he's like just kidding, I made amazing deals and the teriffts are off and we're back to normal.
The damage is done.
You know.
It does remind me.
Of the drop off that Joe Biden unfortunately had during while he was doing one of the good things in his administration, which is withdrawing from Afghanistan, and the negative media coverage and you know, Americans getting killed and the chaos of all the Taliban taking back control. Like he took a hit to his approval and he never recovered
and I do think with Trump, the honeymoon is over. Certainly, the sense that oh, this is a businessman and he's going to be good for me economically, et cetera, like that is that is done, and that has always been his strength. That has always been the area where he
has performed the best. You know, as much as we like talked about immigrations role in the in the election, the economy was the number one issue, inflation in particular, and people were never really super psyched about the things he was saying about tariffs, but they he also talked a lot about I'm going to get prices down, and they just sort of assumed. I think, like, yeah, you know, it went pretty well last time, like he knows what he's doing. We'll do some stuff on the economy that's
going to be good for me. And no, the reality is that he is instituting this massive terror regime. It will be if he continues with it, a huge regressive tax on working class people. Rather than price is going down, they're going to go up. That is what their you know, consumers increasingly expect, and huge numbers are already saying that what he's doing is making them personally financially worse off.
Now.
I'm actually right now in the process of drifting modelogue probably for tomorrow. About as his approval rating falls, I think you will see more of these sort of authoritarian tactics that are being deployed with regard right now to immigration,
with regard to crushing descent on college campuses. This ties into the Harvard conversation that we're going to have as well, because that's what you know, people who have who are authoritarians or have authoritarian tendencies, when they're back to into a corner, they don't back down. I mean, this is what we saw with Trump with January sixth. He didn't just say, oh I lost, I guess you know, I have to peacefully go away.
No, they crack down.
They go further in terms of expanding the police state and crushing descent and using whatever weapons they can against their ideological enemies too. Yeah, yeah, you know, to make sure that they are able to hold their grip on power even as they become less and less popular. And so I think you know, that's where on the one hand, the fact that his popularity is diminishing is going to give him less power with regard to Republican politicians some
of these institutions, like the media and the universities. The Democrats are starting to like get a little bit of energy because they can see the way that his popularity is waning and his plans are being rejected by the public. But it also enters us into a sort of like new precarious phase in terms of what his reaction to that will ultimately be.
Well, and so I think the way we set up this block is really helpful on this note because as a sort of anti free trade orthodoxy or like dogma type person, the question of short term pain was always going to be part of this picture. And that's sort of the way the elite set up the system is that if you ever want to bring us back from relying entirely for national security purposes for pharmaceutical purposes on other countries that are on the other side of the world,
there is going to be short term pain. But the question is how short term that pain is going to be and if it ever is relieved. And so this is we can put the next elpant element. I think I just an elephant up on the screen element up on the screen, Crystal. This is from Joe Eisenthal, who was pointing out quote dismal expectations for the economy and the New York FED survey of regional manufacturers. Basically every
line new orders, employment, et cetera. Is going down, with the exception of prices received and paid, which are going up, and then control them. Whenever you're ready, you can put the next element up on the screen as well. This is the outlook for new orders from the New York Fed's regional manufacturers literally hit the lowest level in the
history of the survey. Another Joe Wisenthal post on x that he highlighted from these New York Fed numbers, and that gets to crystal whether in this push or pull there's more that's going to be lost or more that's going to be gained. So, even if this is a long term battle, even if we accept that there may be some short term pain, these numbers over the course of the first week have been not great for the administration.
They are pointing to deals with like Nvidia and other places, but it seems like the industrial policy that they want to couple this with is one going to be codifying a corporate tax cut, which I will say as annoying as that is may help with onshoring, but it's not industrial policy. And then their second part of their industrial policies just Trump calling up these companies and talking to them.
So far, that's what it looks like the approach is.
And you can understand then where these Wisenthal number numbers are coming from. And let's just get to this element from NBC News. This is before United Airlines. Here's the headline, gives two twenty twenty five profit outlooks, calling economy quote impossible to predict.
So just the lead of the story.
United Airlines maintained it's full your forecast on Tuesday, but took an unusual step of offering second forecast should the US slip into a recession, calling the economy quote impossible to predict.
Either way, it expects to turn a profit.
NBC Rights But says the carrier warned alongside its first quarter earnings that a recession could drive down profits this year, but said booking trends are stable, stable for now. And lastly, Crystal this next element from Newsweek. This is according to Chinese media. I should add, but this is from Newsweek, saying that Greenland's foreign minister has set it as seeking deeper cooperation with China and potentially a free trade agreement,
according to China's state news agency Shinha. So all of this evidence points to a very if this is a period of temporary pain, Crystal, it is going to be an enormous period of temporary pain, and the signs that there is more onshoring that's going to happen so far to offset the people who say we are actually going to bet on Tchin, or we are going to bet outside of the United States because the United States, you know,
is not a safe haven for us right now. We don't feel confident that we can make long term investments. It doesn't make sense supposed to do that. These are these are not great scigns for the Trump administration.
Yeah, well Trump himself said something like, you know, some of these countries, we may have them pick between US and China.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's not a hard.
Choice if I was running in a country, like why would you do a deal with this person? He's all over the place, Like China is rising power. They have been much more strategic in terms of securing like the rare earth minerals that they need. Technologically, they are just as advanced at least. I think that's actually being charitable to the US at this point as we are, like
they have mass manufacturing capacity. What they have been you know, reasonable to work with in terms of the Belton Road initiative.
Why what do we have going for us?
We just have lots of customers with a lot of disposed boys to come.
And that's a real thing.
Like I mean that China has even more customers. Yeah, just by the numbers, we are, you know, continue to be per capita wealthier country and no doubt about that.
And you know, I don't want to undersell it, but you also have a human element to this too, like Jade Vance going to Europe and you know, tutting them about their supposedly sensoriues practices, which is legit, except then he comes back home and they're crushing descent on college campuses and being way more authoritarian in terms of their like crackdown on any sort of wrong thing on Israel. So you know, they haven't exactly endeared themselves to the world.
Not to mention, China is fighting a trade war against us. We are apparently fighting a trade war against the entire freaking world. So who do you think has the better. You know, they can think strategically just about us and making alliances and trying to you know, isolate us. We're rapidly isolating our and giving the rest of the world a very cular choice in terms of what they you know, what direction they would want to go in. And that's
why Greenland is sort of emblematic here. And you know, just a couple two other points that I just want to hone in on. I mean, first of all, even with the tariffs in their current sort of rolled back state, we have one hundred and forty five percent terraffs on China.
If you are a big guy, you can pay your million dollars, you can go to mar A Lago, you can get your car ount, you can be Charles Schwab in the White House and happen to be you know, perfectly timed Trump's announcements, so you can make two point five billion dollars in a single day, something that Trump bragged about. If you are your average small to medium size business which had no choice but to import, usually from China, you're screwed.
You are screwed.
There is no way you can survive one hundred and forty five percent terraff even if you wanted to bring manufacturing and build your own factory and do all these things, you're not getting any help from the government. The tariffs are they're here, Like, it's not like you have any sort of runway to be able to figure it out or raise capital or do any of that. We don't
in many instances even have the specialty skills here. So you've got to, you know, go over seas to even bring the people in who would know how to do it. Like it's it is not possible, it's not possible. Instead, you're just gonna die. Like your company, your business, your dream, your life, it's just gonna go under. Yesterday I highlighted this woman. She's a veteran. She founded this company called Busy Baby. They make these little mats that you can
that's actually very cool product. You can put it on the table at the restaurant and you can hook the baby's like toys onto and so it's clean and the baby can't throw the toys down on the ground, which is a constant issue.
And this thing was taken off. She got to go on Shark Tank.
You know.
Her sales were through the roof Walmart and Target came knocking. But she had to take out alone in order to finance the expansion into Walmart, and she leveraged her house in order to get cure those small business loans. And now so not only is she at risk of losing her business, she and her dream, which was succeeding and which is a product that people genuinely liked, she's also at risk of losing her home. I mean, these are like, you're messing with people's lives and for what, For what?
The manufacturing index should tell you everything you need to know about whether this is actually going to bring manufacturing back Quite the opposite, Quite the opposite, especially if we end up in recession.
Well, one of the problems with those small businesses as well is that people are having a harder time getting in touch with reportedly. I mean, obviously I haven't tried this, but with the Small Business Administration because of cuts, and that's.
You know, I think, Crystal. We remember with NAFTA.
I was I still a lot on an interview with David Obie recently from like two thousand where he was talking about he was on CNN and he was talking about how he supported NAFTA and wto because there were promises of job training and investment in the communities that would be really hard hit, And he said, you know, I regret that because I never saw that stuff happen. And I think that's a real lesson for the Trump
administration in that there will be casualties. They know that there will be casualties of this adjustment period if it's just an adjustment period, by the way, that's assuming it's an adjustment period.
And what are they doing to make up for that?
What are they doing to help the people who set up their businesses around the pre existing system because it had existed for years and was the way to turn a profit, was the way they were told to be productive members of the American economy, small business owners. I mean, this is the Republican electorate, by the way, has been the Republican elector for a really long time. So they need to tread very very carefully. And there just aren't a lot of signs that they're taking seriously the need
to augment. Again, this is taking their argument charitably that this is an adjustment period.
But even then, even if we give them that the size that.
They're augmenting this with serious off ramps for people effective I just don't see much there at all.
No, No, I mean there's been some floating of a bailout for farmers again, which you know he did in his first administration, but that's it. And you know, I think these tariffs are less about economics and more about power. I think Trump likes having the companies coming on bend and me I think he likes being the person who has soul control over like the entire freaking global economy, certainly the national domestic economy. I think that's really what
it's more about. And the last thing I'll say with regard to like bringing back manufacturing, something I support for a variety of reasons, both in terms of, you know, they should be good union jobs. There are certain things that we should produce here simply because of you know, national security.
We all learn this during COVID.
We learned about the fragility of the supply chain and the way that put us at rice. Like, I support all of that, right, but when Trump is talking about bringing manufacturing, when Lutnik is talking about it too, all the armies of millions of people or robots screwing in the little little screws. First of all, Number one, they a lot of it will be robots. It won't be human beings. So there's number one, you'll be like, you know, you'll have some humans to like service the air conditioning
to keep the robots cool. That's the kind of thing that we're talking about. But number two, to the extent that you do have human beings. Trump is not talking about bringing us back to the nineteen fifties, when we were at the peak of post war manufacturing power, at a time when somewhere around half of the industrial workforce was unionized. He wants to take us back to nineteen hundred. To William McKinley, that's what he talks about all the time.
Guess what that was. That was before you had progressive era labor reforms. That's before you had even federal child labor laws. That's before factory jobs were good jobs. That was much more like think of you know, mord Deckenzian, think of like you know, Upton Sinclair and the way workers were treated in you know, in the jungle, think of the triangle shirtwaist fire. That's the era he want to bring America back to, where our workers are part
of the global race to the bottom. That's the era that he envisions, So everyone really needs to be really clear. There's nothing inherently like good, stable middle class about a factory job. You have to have unions and labor power in order to secure both the safety and the wages and the working conditions to make those jobs good jobs. They were in the fifties, They honestly at this point
they are not great, especially in the South. You know, the I saw Matt Burning tweeted out that like Honda workers in Alabama make less than McDonald's workers in Denmark because of those labor conditions. And so no one should fool themselves about the actual era that in his idealized world he would be returning us to.
So I went and looked at this yesterday, just before we move on.
It is interesting the bien Industrial Policy brought manufacturing jobs back to red states with right to work laws overwhelmingly, And if you look at the map, it's like basically not just red states, but it's states like swing states even that of right to work laws, including Michigan until twenty twenty four when that was repealed. So it's really like the Trump administration wanting to be pro labor, pro middle class. There's a complicated puzzle that needs to be
put in place. And again we're what two weeks into the liberation era, but there's just the all of the energy right now is to fix this tax bill and to figure out this reconciliation bill, which is tax policy basically, and I mean that'll probably haven't expanded child tax credit, but that's about it when it comes to, you know, like relief for middle class, working class families, and there are just there's not a lot of policy.
Momentum at all.
And again maybe that'll change, but there's not a ton of evidence of that right now. Just ask someone on the right. I just don't see a lot of energy on that right now.
Crystal.
We should play this Bill Burr clip because it's really something. Yeah, here's Bill Burr on his podcast. David Sarota actually pointed this clip out. We can go ahead and roll B six. Bill Burr addressing the economy over the course of the last couple of weeks.
This whole idea that other countries stole our jobs, like our factory jobs and all that. As far as I remember, that's.
Not the case.
There's a little quick history from someone who doesn't read a lot in the eighteen hundreds during the what was that period called the Industrial Revolution. They had like kids working in factories like fucking twelve fourteen hour days, like four or five year old kids, in dangerous situations, and people weren't making any money and the one guy who owned the factory was keeping all the money. The working
man finally has enough, they start organizing unions. The robber barons, hire police, the army, all of these people to come in and kill these people in riots, crack their skulls, do unbelievable sorts of damage to them to try and force them to go back to work for sweatshop wages. These people died, were maimed, catastrophic fucking injuries so that we could have a decent wage in this country. And
they had unions and all of that. So then there was like a forty to fifty year period where being a middle class person, middle class white person, was the dream.
It was.
Eventually, these corporations just got sick of dealing with these unions and they're hard nosed negotiating all that, and then they just said, well, fuck you, then you will here. You don't keep your union, keep your factory, we're leaving. And they took their factories out side of the US and went back to eighteen hundred wages. What the fuck
you should be making those things here? And then what the corporate guy said was, well, you know, we would make sneakers here, but if to pay the American work and everything, the sneakers would then instead of costing fifty bucks, they now cost seven hundred. And I was always thinking why it would cost seven on a buy? I can't afford that.
And what it really was was they weren't going to lose the profit of sweatshop labor, so if they came back to America, we weren't going to work for that, so and they weren't going to take They weren't going to lose the profit of sweatshop labor, so they were going to pass it on to the consumer.
You's gonna see why Bilberg's popular. Crystal.
Yes, he needs to run for president. I'm not even kidding, Like, have you heard anyone else, any Democratic politician explain it as well as him?
Like we were talking yesterday, and you made such a good point that I'm producer Griffin I think mentioned this as well, that he just sounds like a normal guy, which is something that most like left class critics don't right.
Said is he doesn't come off as soy.
Yes, I was going to leave that for someone else to say, but what if if we're.
Attributing it to producer Griffin.
Yes, and I think that's actually very well said, because it's the problem. We're going to run a James Carvell clip later in the show. But I do think that James Carvell was right about that. Nina Turner has said this too. The way democrats talk because so many have been sort of funneled through academia, is really academic. It's it's quoted in a way that I don't want to say feminine because it's not all feminine, but it comes across as like very like it.
Doesn't always connect.
Yeah, that says the thing is it just doesn't frequently does not connect. No, he's got a gift for that, and he's one hundred percent right. You know, the the Trump framing is like all these countries stole are workers. No politicians here, collaborate with corporations to create this global race to the bottom.
That's what it is.
And so you know, the left, people like Bernie Sanders, who has been extremely consistent, extremely prescient about the impact of NAFTA, the impact of PNTR. It's not that they're opposed to trade. They're opposed to trade. That creates a race to the bottom where you are just you know, where you aren't dealing with labor standards, you aren't dealing with wages, and so of course capitalists are going to search for the lowest paid labor force they can possibly
find so that they can endlessly juice their profits. Like that is the system that we have. And so you know, Bill Burr I think explains it really perfectly there. In the post war period, the US in a lot of ways was kind of like the only game in town. So we benefit of from this unique period of prosperity. And then once you get into the neoliberal era and they're stripping away of union rights and there there's you know, bad trade deals like NAFTA, like you know, then the
opening up fully of trade to China. Once you have those deals and you create the global race to the bottom, that's you know, that's how you end up with the dynamic that we have now. And to go back to my earlier point, Trump doesn't want to reverse those trends. He just wants to get American workers back into that global race to the bottom. Right, he wants them to also or robots, right, also participate in that global race at the bottom. And we know that because you know,
there's relentless attacks on unions from this administration. The Natural Labor Relations Board has been gutted as effectively without a quorum, unable to operate. That's been a lifelong project and direction for him. He's always been a union buster, we see with regard to like the labor labor standards, you know,
just like basic workplace safety and stuff. Even in industries where Trump has a particular affinity, like for example, with coal miners, they are completely destroyed the health and safety measures for coal miners already an extremely dangerous job where younger and younger men are getting an incredibly virulent form
of black lung. The dog just stripping that away, and dog just stripping the ability of the government to be able to regulate any big business so that even without changing the law, they can kind of sort of go back to when you could have your sweatshop and you could lock people in and you could pay them whatever wage you wanted, and you could get away with it. So when you couple the tariffs with the direction of Doge.
That's the picture that you ultimately get. And then you add to that the other piece that Bill Burr talked about, which is how somehow these billionaires keep being in a position to make lots of money on these big market swings. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what he had to say about that.
And I don't understand what that whole fucking thing was, But all I know is once again the market tanked, and a bunch of rich people, right before they turned it back on again, went in and made a ridiculous amount of money and they're all high fiving.
With each other.
And I don't know. This guy told me something a long time ago.
He says, when you.
Watch the stock market and they go like up two billion dollars was lost today, He's like, money isn't lost, Like where did it go? That's just how they frame it. It isn't lost. It changes hands. All right, that's enough of that shit.
Well, and obviously go ahead him.
Well, I was just going to say, I mean, I do think there are elements of the Trump administration actually, even thank Donald Trump himself, who thinks that he is somehow like the savior of the American working class and all of this, and like genuinely believes that what's happening
is going in that direction. The problem is his administration is infiltrated by billionaires and now a lot of influence from Silicon Valley and out the Wall Street for example, and to one extent, you can look at what he did with the tariffs and all Street freaked out and say he just gave them the middle finger. The ten percent global tariff is still giving Wall Street the middle finger.
They absolutely hate that.
The huge China tariffs, they absolutely hate that. But in a way it also does put them in the driver's seat. And that's the bond market is what made him. People were getting quoe yippie, is what made him walk back. And again he hasn't walked everything all the way back. We still that massive ten percent global tariff and the massive tariffs on China. Nobody in the business community wanted that.
But what happens next is really critical for ver Donald Trump and for people in the administration who want to genuinely it's people on the right who say, these are our voters now, and you let's just attribute to them political motivations and say, we are going to lose these voters back to Democrats. We're talking about that later in the show. How Dems have taken their fighting the oligarchy
tour to really really big audiences, increasingly big audiences. So even if they're politically motivated and they look at that, you have to then step back and say, well, why is uh Howard Lutnik behind the scenes the operator here?
Why that's interesting? He seems to be the one that's making the deals. Didn't he just get off the street? Has he been a Washington the line?
Yeah, well, and I mean it wasn't infiltrated by billionaires. Trump is himself a billionaire and he brought a bunch of billionaires to be around him. I mean, the terror policy is clearly all him.
Clearly definitely, it is absolutely all him.
Yeah, and his that you know, Scott Besten is like putting his game face on and going out and defending it.
And that's his job is to be a sick of fan.
That's all these people's jobs, to be a sick of fan and go out and defend whatever the mad king does. But there's no doubt the like Tariff, some penguins and this ridiculous formula and the whole chaos of the whole situation like that is all one Trump And where I thought you were going with the like them being in the driver's seat is they're in the driver's seat because if you are a well connected CEO oligarch, you get to be the one that's you know, the auto part EXE,
like this is really a problem for us. Or you could be in Nvidia and get your examiner, or you could be iPhone. I mean think about this, like these high tech components that actually we really should have and under the Biden administration did have some concerted policy industrial policy to reshore here and manufacture here.
Those are the pieces that are getting the exemptions.
Meanwhile, like you know this lady's busy baby Matt, American consumers just will not be allowed to buy it. She's gonna look for markets all around the world to sell her product because not only could she not make it here, she won't be able to sell it here because of one hundred and forty five percent tariff yep, so people.
You know.
Yeah, and then on the insider trading piece, like not only did you have the Charles Schwab and some other billionaires there the day that Trump sends the market soaring with a single tweet and he brags about Charles Schwab making two point five billion dollars on the day. Real main Street, you know main Street over Wall Street, guys right.
Posts good time to buy.
I guess who can make the argument that that's actually very egalitarian.
But yeah, what a day that was.
And then and then you know, we'll look at Marjorie Taylor Green bought a bunch of stock on the day, and you just like, okay, when you and this is the problem with having one person in sole control of this massive economic web, nuclear weapon, you single handedly can move the market up and down in huge ways. And so then it's okay, well, who knew you were going
to do that instead to profit? And we know that this administration, you know, Trump's got his hitcoin and whatever and his development properties all around the world, like they are extraordinarily corrupt, nakedly corrupt. So I would be shocked if people weren't out there trading and making billions based on these like monarchical announcements that are coming down on high on a day to day basis. Now some people
are theorizing that's the whole point of the policy. I'm not there, and I think the whole point of the policy is more about Trump's power, which I guess is like sort of related to that. But I would be shocked if there weren't insiders who were trading based on knowing like ten minutes ahead of time, an hour ahead of time, what was coming down, because you know, that's them of this administration, that's what they do well.
And Trump gave everyone cover with his good time to buy post on true Social because it'll be and they knew that. I mean, if you're somebody who's really in the trading on this, like, it'll be impossible, impossible to prove that this was motivated by inside knowledge because it'll be impossible to disentangle. Well, here's this vague true Social post from the president. I just had the sense that when he posted that it really was a good time to buy, or it really was there got a bunch.
There were a bunch of purchases though, betting on the markets to go up before like ten minutes before that post even dropped.
But you're right, I mean, are they going to be able to track it back?
Also, we're relying on Trump's sec to track this out, like, come on, they're going to get away with whatever they want to get away with, but everyone should be clear about while you know, small business owners are getting screwed and consumers are worried are having to dye potatoes because eggs are too expensive, and they're worried about prices, et cetera.
While all of that is going on, Charles Schwab's making two point five billion dollars somehow, somehow, and he just happens to be at the White House one day.
Well, and all the spokespeople for this policy and the administration, and this is for all of the dunking on Peter Navarro, who is genuinely an odd man. There are other spokespeople are billionaires, are multi multimillionaires, and increasingly when I mean Trump is one thing, he's obviously like a singular figure.
He can, you know, wear a multi thousand dollar suit and give helicopterids to kids at the Iowa State Fair and people will still connect with him more than any other Republican politician, even if they roll up their sleeves. But these other guys don't have that. It just doesn't hit the same way. And that if you're messaging this trade war. As you know Wall Street veterans who are worth multimillions yourself, it's going to start to wear really thin.
The public's patients for that is going to start to wear very thin already.
Has I would say yes.
As the Harryenton polling numbers showed to bring this block full circle. Crystal, Let's move on to Iran so we can put D I'm sorry, we can put C one up on the screen. This is a tear sheet from Axios. This is a Barack Revied story. The headliner is Trump holds situation room meeting on Iran nuclear deal negotiations. Trump reportedly held a meeting yesterday morning in the Situation Room
about the ongoing nuclear deal negotiations with Iran. The high level meeting with all of the Trump Admin's top nat SC and foreign policy officials was focused on discussing the US position in the next round of talks planned for Saturday, according to those sources.
Now those talks are.
Being led by special envoids the Moddle East Steve Whitcoff, who is somebody that Donald Trump trusts very very much. According to this Axios report quote JD. Vans and Steve Whitcoff think diplomacy could lead to a newnuclear deal and think the US should be ready to make some compromises in order to get it. Other senior members of the administration, including Rubio and Mike Waltz, are highly skeptical and support
a maximalist approach to the negotiations Crystal. Interestingly enough, we've started to see the argument, actually, Eli Lakemande this argument in the Free Press yesterday that what is emerging from the Witcough camp looks a hell of a lot like the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration that
Donald Trump sort of famously scrapped. And I've started to see arguments from iron Hawks that are appealing to Donald Trump on this basis, saying, do you want to look like you are Obama, that you are just copying Barack Obama a couple of years later and trying to kind of goat him out of the deal that Witcof seems
to be intent on getting. Witcoff himself walked back his comments about nuclear enrichment, saying at one point that Iran could do minimal levels, that they would be limited to certain levels of nuclear enrichment, and then within I think it was like twenty four to forty eight hours saying no nuclear enrichment. So there are enormous pressures on the administration right now, and that's where I think it's worth mentioning C two.
Just very quickly.
A couple of top advisors to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth we're put on administrative lead administrative leave yesterday, including Dan Caldwell, who was basically hegsas probably still is hegsa's top advisor. He was put on an admin leave yesterday and escorted from the Pentagon following a quote leak investigation to include polygraphs, according to Jennifer Griffin, that was launched by hegsa's chief
of Staff, Joe Casper on March twenty one. After March twenty New York Times story detail plans to allow Elon Musk to attend a briefing in the Quote Tank with members of the Joint Chiefs to hear about future.
China war plans.
Caldwell, Crystal is a guy who comes from skeptical sort of coke world that has always been very critical of the foreign policy Blob, meaning he has always been critical of hawkish, neo conservative approaches to Iran policy. And another top advisor to heg Seth seemed to suffer a similar fate. According to Jennifer Griffin and other reporters yesterday, Caldwell is familiar to a lot of people who cover this stuff,
but which is why that example stands out. But I have a really hard time separating these two developments, Crystal. It seems like this pressures is coming from a place of uh, it's coming from a frantic place.
Yeah. I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it at all. I mean, Caldwell, I've never read him personally, you know, my understanding of his ideology is that he was one of the better and more consistent voices within the entire Trump administration. And so you can't look at it as an accident that this guy.
All these people are leaking.
They're all leaking, but this is the one that you're going to point out, Oh, we can't have this guy around, come on, right, I mean, if it feels very targeted. I don't know anything about the other dude that you know also got caught up in this, or what his ideological inclinations are. But especially as these Iran negotiations are heating up.
In a way, that could be encouraging.
I mean the fact that there's direct negotiations going on, the fact that you have someone who's as pragmatic as wit Cough has seemed to be, who also, by the way, has come under fire significantly from some of these same types. It's pretty clear there's a massive, like internal battle being
waged here. And just to return to the Iranian nuclear deal piece, I mean the Hawks who are trying to sink it by saying like, oh, you're what, You're just renegotiating Obama's Obamas Deale, I mean, they're not really wrong. I do think that the Trump administration is kind of realizing that the JCPOA it actually was a good deal. Iran was actually complying, and they're not going to be able to get something that's a lot better than that.
Because when Beebe came to town, whole plan was to convince Trump like, oh, you need to push the Libya model on Iran, which, of course no country in the
world is going to go for the Libya model. After watching what happened to the Libyan leader momark Adavi, who was murdered on camera after following the quote unquote Libyum out something that Trump has talked about before, by the way, when he was trashing John Bolton and saying that he was pushing the Libya model for North Korea, so he knew at least at one point that that direction was a complete non starter. Iran is not going to agree
to the quote unquote Libya model. But that's what bb netnah who was pushing specifically to try to blow up these negotiations. Now we're a long way from being there. As you're pointing out, there are a lot of very sticky issues. There are a lot of internal tensions. There are the Miriam Addison's of the world, who contributed a whole lot of money to the Trump campaign to try
to make sure that something like this never happens. Bb Netanyahoo frequently gets his way with this administration in every other American administration in history. So a lot of big question marks, but at least there's a little bit of hope, and it will be a ridiculous outcome if Trump blew up the Obama deal, one of in my opinion, one of the best accomplishments of the Obama administration. Actually, Biden had a chance to get back in never did. That's
on him. You know, he should have right away as soon as he was elected gotten back into that deal. He never did, so that's his failure as well. And then it would be ironic if Trump basically but good, do it, Please, please do it. If Trump ultimately gets back into the something very similar to the original Obama JCPOA deal, I have no doubt he can message it as like this is totally different and this is way
better in art of the deal or whatever. Fine, whatever your ego needs, go ahead and do it well.
And there may be some argument there that the sort of regimes, the regime's credibility with its own people, that maybe make an argument that the economy is really weak and that it's weakened it's the regimes hold over its own people, and so maybe it makes more sense now. But that's actually the argument that some hawks are using the other way around, saying iron is especially vulnerable right now.
But obviously, I mean, I just there's so much history in the opposite direction saying that when countries are vulnerable and.
Desperate, that's actually really not the time.
To try to turn the screws on them when they are unpredictable and eccentric. So let's put speaking of those pressures C four on the screen. This is John Bolton's take. I mean, this Bolton post about Witcough is just gross. He says Trump black strategy and vision with regard to Iran. While we do not know what Trump has the result to do, we do know special Ambi Witcough, Special Envoy Witcough is busy building trust with the Ayatolas. But the ia Tolas aren't to be trusted. They have played us
for over a decade. Accusing wit Cough of trying to just build trust with the Iyatola is foolish, like he's some type of idiot. Well, if you're going to make any type of deal ever, ever, it is built on trust, and that has to be the like predicate for any type of negotiation. You can trust and verify, to paraphrase
Ronald Reagan John Bolton. But the idea that you can just make a deal with people who don't believe any part of the deal is going to be worth the paper it's printed on is I don't even know where to begin with this.
Christ.
I mean, like just Bolton wants a war.
He doesn't want there to be a deal because I mean, obviously, like obviously I do think it's a very negative sign that people like Caldwell are being purged right now in terms of who's winning those internal battles. I think that's a pretty ominous sign.
And did you know that Jennifer Griffin tweet that this was an investigation that came out of March twentieth and March twenty first. I mean, it's the timing, I think is quite why are you hearing about this now?
And you know, if he was the one that leaked that, like Elon was going to get briefed on our China war plans or whatever like that was a genuine public service. So thank you, sir if you were in fact the one that that leaked that piece of information, because that was a crazy, crazy situation and one of many crazy situations that's just like, you know, we almost forget that it even happened. But but yeah, I think it's ominous that whatever forces are trying to purge the more you know,
frankly America First factions within the Pentagon. I think that is troubling. And I think Trump's increasingly perilous political situation could be read into different ways. One is he's long thought and said publicly you know that he thinks, like he thought Obama was going to start a war with Iran because it would be good for his reelection prospects.
For example.
So he might have this I think totally idiotic mindset that a war is good for politicians approval ratings. He also may just like, look, he loves using war powers, right, He's that's his tear justification is like some national emergency. His Alien Enemies Act is martial law. He's exploring whether to invoke the Insurrection Act. Obviously, that's also like, you know,
sort of wartime or rebellion powers. And so he may also like just the power that comes with being in charge during a war and what that could, how that can inorder to his benefit, or perhaps he is intelligent enough to realize that if he thinks he's got political problems, now good luck. If you start a war with you know that almost no one in the entire country, including your own base, wants to actually see the American involved. And that doesn't mean that, you know, his base, the
hardest core they'll go along with wherever he goes. But the American public overall is not down for this whatsoever. They will be absolutely, they will absolutely reject some sort of hot war and escalation with Iran.
So before we run on this block, Crystal, some interesting news just hit my end box, which is you know, so we mentioned earlier Steve Witcoff is negotiating in Rome
over the weekend with the Iranian counterparts. Actually, we have a press release from the White House that I just got that says Vice President jad Vance in the Second Family will travel to Italy in India from April eighteenth to April twenty fourth, depending on the timing there, it looks like Vance will be in Italy during these negotiations in Rome that wit Coough is taking part of and Vance, according the Barack reviewed report, and just what we know
of Jade, Vance is clearly aligned with Witcoff on this question.
Some of the dynamics from that signal chat.
May be pulled into these discussions about Iran going forward. Actually, and that's quite interesting if Vance is sort of dispatching himself or maybe he's being dispatched by the White House to go in and be a wingman for wit Cough during these discussions.
Yeah, absolutely, all right, a lot of dynamics to keep an eye on there.
Well, the Trump administration is escalating its war on Ivy League institutions, in particular, let's put d one up on
the screen. Harvard is now under fire because the Trump administration, as everyone likely remembers, just from the last couple of days, has sent a letter threatening at least two million dollars worth of billion sorry billion, yes, two billion dollars worth of funding that could go up to as much as nine billion dollars worth of again federal funding to Harvard than what you see on the screen if you're watching
this is MIT put out a letter. This is from Sally kornb Both to the President, who said, I write to bring you up to date on developments in two areas where recent government actions are interfering with the normal functioning of miit diminishing our ability both to serve the nation and to attract the world's finest talent. One relates to federal funding, the other to our international community. They say we are responding to certain federal actions by going
to court. Now, this is all on the heels of what the Trump administration did with Columbia University, and they're competing reports on Columbia University's willingness to actually comply with this list of demands. That the Trump administration has sent and said. We'll get into that in the moment, by the way, but what those demands are in particular, but has said your federal.
Funding depends on X, Y and Z being done.
Columbia, there was a leak that said Colombia was assuring people privately that it wasn't actually going to comply with the administration's demands. Now it looks like Columbia's standing by it's a statement that it will comply with the demands to keep the funeral funding. But Harvard is pushing back hard like we haven't seen other universities do.
But it seems like it's.
Actually creating a template for other universities to follow. And Cristal, let's just get into this back and forth that Carolyne Levitt had with Peter Doocey. Wasn't really much from back and forth, but this is what we heard from the White House yesterday.
Follow up on something that you just said, Why do Ivy League schools get so much federal footage?
It's a very good question, and it's a question the President has obviously raised in his discussions and negotiations with not just Harvard but also Columbia.
And many other Ivy League institutions.
We have the Anti Semitism Task Force, which the President promised and delivered on. The anti Semitism task forces across the government representatives from various federal.
Agencies who meet on a weekly basis to discuss the question that you just raise.
And I think a lot of Americans are wondering why their talk dollars are going to these universities when they are not only indoctrinating our nation students, but also allowing such a egregious illegal behavior to occur.
And here's a post from Donald Trump on True Social yesterday he weighed once again and perhaps Harvard shall lose its tax exempt status to be taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological and terrorist inspired slash supporting quote sickness. Remember, tax exempt status is totally contingent on acting in the public interest, Christal. That is separate from the federal funding question. A similar question, but
it's obviously a different question federal funding. What is being said, and maybe it's worth actually just bringing up D six at this point. Sorry to skip ahead, control room, but this is an argument that has been made for generations in the Conservative movement that if you are getting federal funding,
it is tied to complying with civil rights legislation. And this has actually been something that conservatives have pushed back on forever, and it was Rufo who really popularized the idea a couple of years ago, a few years ago now that if Republicans regain power in the White House and the dj etc. In the Department of Education, they should use that power to turn the screws on these Ivy League administrations that have benefited from this sort of
relationship with the federal government, back and forth relationship with the federal government, to punish.
Those universities for not.
You know, being as opened conservative ideas as people in the right want to be. And it is true, I mean, like Harvard is wildly like the faculty of Harvard is, it's not a balanced faculty at all. Like I think we all know that these institutions lean left. So the plan was then to use the Civil Rights regime like Title nine is a good example. Conservatives used to be against Title nine because it forced compliance with the federal government in the schools in ways that would sometimes you know,
disproportionately hurt men's sports. And we could donate a debate whether or not that was righteous and just, but conservatives used to be against it because it was using federal funding as a carrot in particular ways.
So that bringsists a D four.
What is the Trump administration threatening Harvard over? Well, some of it is civil rights, but Michael Tracy points out that one of the bullet points, among the many bullet points, and the Trump administration's letter to Harvard that kicked all of this out off, is titled reforming programs with egregious records of Anti Semitism or other bias. Chris le, I'm going to kick it to you on that point.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't want to hear from Christopher Rufo or any of these people again about supposed like woke wokeness. This is the most woke authoritarian shit you could possibly imagine, including effectively. What they want from Harvard is some sort of like mega affirmative action program, both in terms of the students coming domestically and abroad
and in terms of the professors they also. I mean, there's just all kinds of ridiculous demands here, and the demand that you get rid of DEI does not sit easily with the demand that you also do everything to
combat anti Semitism. Like the whole thing is just the specifics of it are almost less important than the fact that this is about the Trump administration, just as they have with media, just as they have with lawyers, just they have with the courts, trying to bring to heal in institutions that they see as ideological adversaries and potential
alternative power centers. It is also a very classic authoritarian playbook, right They want to be able to have to ultimately control what is taught, who teaches it, and what students get into the school. Now to zoom out, because the Columbia thing is I think important. Harvard was seemingly planning to kind of comply. They got an initial list of demands from the Trump administration, things like banning masks, that they were like, yeah, I can probably live with that.
Then they got a more elaborate list from the Trump administration, you know, the one that Michael Tracy is referencing there, and they saw that when Columbia tried to comply with what the Trump administration wanted, It's not like the Trump people like, Okay, you're good to go, thank you.
We've art of the dealed it. We're good to you.
Know, all no harm, no foul, no Colombia's capitulate only led to more and more demands. Now the federal government is seeking a consent decree with Columbia that would give them direct power over, you know, over that university and specifically have taken into like have taken over the Middle Eastern Studies department.
Harvard is extremely wealthy.
I think it is one of, if not the wealthiest school in the country in terms of it has like a fifty billion dollar endowment. If anyone was going to stand up and fight, it was Harvard. And so I think watching the way that things went down with Columbia, they realized that there was no choice but to stand
up for themselves. And the fact that MIT then rapidly follows in their footsteps, I think it's an indication that you will see more of a united front from the university system in trying to stand up to what are you know, ultimately like insane and like peak woke kind of authoritarian demands coming from the Trump administration. So, you know, I think those are kind of the dynamics that are playing out here, is that they realized they were not going to make them go away by attempting to comply
with the things that they ultimately wanted. And you know, last thing on this question of like, oh well, why do they even get federal funding? Right, A lot of this is like research grants. You know, Harvard does a lot of medical research. They run a bunch of hospitals, a lot of the larger nine billion dollars that would be threatened, that's like funding that goes to a number
of these hospitals. I know there were some researchers who already were I think one that was researching tuberculosis, if memory serves correctly, like their grants are already being pulled. So that's the sort of thing that a lot of this money is ultimately going towards. In case people were wondering, it won't be easy for Harvard to make up the multi billion dollar gap because their endowment comes with certain restrictions about how the money can be spent, et cetera,
et cetera. But I think they feel like they have the firepower to be able to fight this, and that frankly, they really don't have much of a choice.
I mean, some schools take the funding and put in lazy rivers, which is genuinely a serious problem. They take the research funding and then they have these big endowments, and they keep using tuition jacking tuition up for stupid stuff that gets them up on the US News and World Report list and attracts more students or doesn't attract
more students. But I think the Trump administration's definition of anti Semitism is obviously woke, and it is obviously undermining what listen as a conservative I think is a very righteous cause, which is to scare the living daylights out of these universities that have done, I think, a very poor job preparing people to enter our society after four years of education at supposedly the best institutions in the world.
Ruvo is right like he's run down these examples of where Harvard in particular has engaged in actual discrimination by the definition in our civil rights legislation and in our court system. And that is something that again was used repeatedly during the Title nine battles of roughly the last ten years the Obama administration. We don't have to get into all of this, but this has been going on
for generations. Used federal funding as a way to get sports, to change their policies about men's and women's schools, to change their policies about men's of women's athletics and locker rooms and bathrooms and all of that, which I think brought conservatives to their sort of boiling point.
And that's where you saw this.
New momentum come from to actually do these things. I think that's you know, Rufo has pointed out a lot of DEI coming from all of this, and DEI can be used in a way that is not in compliance with federal discrimination laws. So again, like schools like Hillsdale have had to operate without federal funding forever so that they didn't get the ideological coercion, I always think that that's the best model, even if it's sad that we can't fund public universe in a way that's ideological. I
mean maybe we can't, but ideologically beneficial to everyone. But anyway, all of this is to say, the woke definition of anti Semitism is like undermining I think a pretty legitimate conservative policy argument here, because you end up scooping people like os Turk off the streets of suburban Boston and then claiming the moral high ground on free speech. It is just completely stupid on by the way, a generational opportunity to flip the script on the left and actually
like get some genuine concessions out of schools. I'm not talking about like quotas and affirmative action for conservatives, but just like scaring the living daylights out of them to like just using the money that they have in a way that is actually beneficial to the public.
That's all great.
I think that's fantastic, but this is completely You do not have the moral high ground when you're scooping kids off the street for op eds and it's just stupid.
Yeah.
Well, and I mean a lot of the like the lazy river and the fancy dorms and athletic facilities or whatever. I mean, we know what that's about. That's about attracting rich students. It's that's what it's about. It's a market capital kind of a situation where yeah, who can not only pay filled tuition, but are then going to be in a position them and mommy and daddy to help
to continue to fund the endowment. The direction I would go in is, you know, public funding for colleges and making tuition for or at least much more accessible but you know, certainly the cost of education is a big issue. This has nothing to do with the cost of education. And even on the DEI piece, like you know, this is specifically about these these Ivy League universities, although there's some I think the number is sixty universities across the
country that have gotten similar letters. They're not all you know, Ivy League. I know the school I went to, University of Virginia, was one of the people who got these letters of like you know, threatening them. Basically you have to do X and Y and Z in order to continue to receive your federal funds. So it's not just the elite, but they like picking the fight with the elites very publicly because they feel like they're on solid more solid ground there in terms of their kind of
ideological framing. But you know, these broader executive orders about DEI something that you know, I am in certain ways sympathetic to because I do believe in like a color blind meritocracy. Well I don't really believe in meritocracy, but I do believe in color the color blind aspiration, and I think that the you know, the sort of like extremes of wocism with the as emblematically Abramax Kenny and
these sorts of people went too far. But also these executive orders read it could be interpreted to ban the teaching of things like redlining, the history of redlining, you know, the accurate history of reconstruction, the accurate history of slavery and Jim Crow. And that is a tremendous step backwards. And it's also you know, this is part and parcel of playbook of like, you know, wanting to control history.
History is always contested.
Wanted to control the narrative that we're allowed to tell, the story we're allowed to tell about ourselves, and to erase how central the battles over race and racism have been in this country. And so you know, this is a little bit removed from the Harvard example, but I see all of these things ads connected to an attempt to you know, they'll use language about, oh, we want it to be neutral. No, you want a certain narrative to be taught. You want certain students to be allowed
to attend. You want like Maga affirmative action, both in terms of the students and the professors. You want to control these This is not about academic freedom.
This is the polar opposite of that.
This is about this administration specifically wanting to control these institutions in terms of what they can teach, how they can teach it, and who they can teach it to, even including you know, they wanted they wanted to. One of the demands from Harvard was that they should be vetting all international students for quote unquote anti American sentiment. Well, what does that mean? What does that mean? You know, are you allowed to be, you know, have a critique
of the Iraq war? Are you allowed to have a critique of Tesla? You know, are you allowed you know, certainly, are you allowed to have a critique of our policy
means of eve the Middle East? That's those are the sort of like authoritarian, woke demands that were laid at the feet of Harvard, and you know, I the last point I'll make about this just zooming out from education is I do think as Trump has become more unpopular and as there has been a visible grassroots movement in the streets to push back against him, et cetera, I
do think it has bolstered the courage. You're starting to see a little bit more galvanized resistance from these you know, cultural institutions, whether it's Harvard, the media is being a little bit more outspoken. There's still a lot of problems there. Some of the law firms are now getting together and fighting back. You see, certainly the courts are starting to take a harder line. Democrats are getting a bit of a spy and that's you know, we're about to talk more about the Democrats in.
The next block.
So you do see some of these elite institutions getting their act together to push back a little bit. And I guess you could say that with regard to like some of the business institutions on the tariffs too.
Huh. Yeah, that's an interesting point.
I mean, if people want to read a good book on this age of entitlement by Christopher Caldwell is a short read and it was hugely influential. I mean, I've seen some people point to the book Richard Hannania wrote a couple of years back, but Caldwell is the book that really was influential on the right at kind of mapping out how civil rights legislation and then it's I guess it's process of moving through the courts. So over the course of decades allow the federal government to use
a lot of that for ideological purposes. And what you're describing, Crystal is the Trump administration saying, all right, screw it, we're not going back to neutrality, which is what a lot of or quote unquote neutrality. There's such thing as real neutrality, but sort of this pro American, pro Western civilization sense of consensus in society that used to exists, whether.
Or not that's good or bad.
That is the that was the aspiration of a lot of critics of this, actually on the left and on the right, mostly on the right for a long time. But this is the Trump administration saying.
Screw it.
This is about I guess our agenda items. And that's where I think this definition of anti Semitism is dragging down what is a great project overall. And it is a real I mean, it's a huge unforced error. I don't know who in the administration is pushing this so forcefully without listening to any of the feedback on it. I actually like, again, I agree with what a lot of Christopher Caldwell at Lines and Age of Entitlement, But man, I don't know how you.
Can approach this issue.
As you know, it's it's like we were talking about earlier the shows Jadie Vance going to Munich and then being the vice president for and talking to the UK about speech policies and EU about speech policies, and then being the vice president of an administration that is defending scooping kids off the street for op eds against Israel.
I mean, it's just.
This is like a generational opportunity for people on the white on the right, on the white's that'll immuse some people, but on the on the right that is being like utterly squandered. And I do think by the way that the way that civil rights bureaucracy has been wielded by the left has been intentional in some cases, not in every case, but I do think, you know, there there were abuses of it that were for ideological purposes over
the course of the last however many decades. Uh, that doesn't mean that the right thing to do is do it yourself like it's just it's stupid whatever.
Yeah, it's it's I mean, anti Semitism is the cudgel that's being used to you know, embrace it's truly authoritarian tactics. I mean, that's what we're talking about here, both, I mean, and I'm not just talking about with regard to you universities, but certainly with the snatching up these kids off the street and you know, cracking down on speech and descent, forcing universities to you know, either kick kids down school
who are American citizen. Isn't just about immigrants either, the actions that have been taken, and so they've adopted this like the most hyper woke language you could possibly imagine about like safe spaces and microaggressions.
Sciences anti Semitism, that is what I mean. We saw this argument made at a Senate hearing recently from a rabbi.
It's right.
Matt Walsh pointed.
Out, actually of all people that this is exactly what Abrams Kendy has argued. You know, Natalie Winters, I was talking to her yesterday from Bannon's war room.
She makes a.
Great point that like the and you would still disagree with it, Crystal, but like anti Americanism would have been politically a better framing for the administration than anti this definition of anti Semitism that is also anti Zionism. Now where you and I might disagree with that is okay. Now that you have defined anti Semitism as anti Zionism, I'm going to need to see you outlining exactly what you think anti Americanism is, because I'm not sure that
I trust that definition at the point. So if they want to do anti Americanism, which they are trying in like some different ways that aren't as I think Front centers the anti Semitism point, then they should enumerate exactly what they're looking for when they are when they're telling
schools to screen for anti Americanism. I would be very curious to see that because, you know, personally, I'm like, yeah, maybe you shouldn't bring people here who hate the United States, and there are people who hate the United States, But what are you going to do to screen for that? Is it gonna be people who didn't like the Iraq War? Is it going to be people who don't like Israel and the way that it's treated pass?
I mean, it's just like, who aren't a fan of Elon Musk? Who you know South African board. You know, I personally would like to screen this administration for anti American sentiment, given that they want to turn us into El Salvador. Yes, and apparently are not acquainted with the First Amendment and freedom of speech or you know, whatever it requirements for due process either.
So devs can do that. As soon as they get the power back, they can do it again. Right. But that's really like, that's part of this.
I mean, if if you want to write the template for to be exploited in terms of deportation and all of that, here's the template for devs.
All right, Well, let's talk about dems and what's going on with them, because there are a lot of interesting developments. Let me go and start with this. So AOC and Bernie have been doing this stop oligarchy tour and they've been going to all these like super red places I'm talking about, like Idaho and Utah and getting insane crowds, insane crowds, bigger crowds than Bernie ever got in his either of his presidential runs. And he you know, he
was also famous like Trump for attracting significant crowds. Let's just take a look at a little bit of one of their recent rallies and some of the way he's interacting with AOC and also the energy the crowd.
Now I want to say a word about my daughter, No, I want to say a word about Alexandria and why why what she's doing is so important. And here's the story. Six years ago, six years ago, what were you doing for a living? She was a waitress, but she looked around her and she saw a society that was fundamentally unjust and in many ways ugly to the people in the community in which she lived in New York City. She stood up and took on one of the most
powerful people in the House of Representatives. And she started with almost no money against the guy who had unlimited funds, and she'd beat him.
Okay, we saw it just happen with Trump's corrupt and disastrous and rushed tariff scheme. We saw Marjorie Taylor green by that dip. I dont question for her, how much did you make? How much did you.
Make off of people's despair?
How much did you make off that panic? How much did you make off of that suffering? No more, we can't accept it.
And I think, Emily, what you've seen as Bernie and Aose, they were first out of the gates. They launched this tour. They've been all over the country. They're attracting these just absolutely blockbuster crowds everywhere. They're putting up a fight. They have a strategy. And then you see the Centrists like Chuck Schumer who are completely adrift, have nothing to say, out of touch with the moment, putting up no fight, capitulating the Republicans in the one moment that they have leverage,
et cetera. And watching this dynamic play out has completely shifted the Democratic base in ways that we have not seen before where they are disgusted with their own leadership, very different from last time Trump was in office, where Nance, Bloci and Adam Shift and all these four heroes.
And now that.
Is also being reflected in who they see as the leaders of the party and in what direction they want the party to shift. So this is one of the fascinating dynamics is playing in. I think what was important about that clip where Bernie says, you know my daughter Alexandria.
Yes, Like, first of all, he clearly loves her.
He is not a like warm and cuddly guy like to have that level of affection from Bernie Sanders, that's very telling.
Yeah.
And number two, you know people have been asked you like, who's Bernie's successor who's he gonna you know, annoint for to lead this movement going forward? Like I think we have our answer. He's he has picked AOC like that is the person he is elevating, and I think very likely will be the person he pushes forward in twenty twenty eight.
Yeah, I think that's right. And actually we teased the segment. I tease this segment earlier in the show by saying Dems are in disarray, and I still stand by that, but both parties are always in disarray.
The reason I stand by that here though.
And should be by the way they should be in disiroy totally ruth.
But the reason I stand by this here is, you know, what Bernie and Alexandria Casio Kortez are doing here is showing the establishment of the like. This is as much a message to all of those people in the crowd and to people who support them as it is to democratic elites who really, really really don't want to hear this, but it's going to get hard for them not to hear it. And I know this is going to be
a little bit out of border. But the reason I want to kick to James Carvill actually now that i'm thinking about it, Crystal, is because he's proposing that the populist, the economic populist Deems break away from the sort of he wouldn't use this phrase centristems, but I think that has to be accurately described as centrist stems. What he's talking about, he's sort of saying the third way Dems should own the Democratic Party and everybody else should beat another party.
And Alexandra A.
Cosio Kortez has said herself, you know, if we were in Europe, Nancy Pelosi and I would not be in the same party, and that.
These two poles. Krvil is just proposing a toll divorce it.
And the reason I want to tick it to this with that, and I'm curious for your thoughts, is that is not even good for the movement he wants to succeed, Like you're just asking for everyone to agree on pronouns and neoliberal economics. So anyway, let's rule carvel and then we can get into some of those.
At most of the things at the faculty lounge that Dynasty Left wants eighty five percent of them. I want to we like to expand opportunity to people. We'd like to expand people that to have health care. We'd like to do more to help young voters. We think that environmental problems are totally crushing every phrase. We want solutions there.
We think income inequality is a terrible thing, and we've got to do certain things to address it, like, okay, we be around, raise taxes on incomes over four and thousand dollars here, raise them in wage the the things that we can work on. I don't think we can work together on pronoun politics. I don't.
I think that you're not.
This election did not teach you how damaging that is. I don't think there's anything that I can tell you. And you say, this guy is stuck in another century, not another decade, and he represents nothing to do with the future of our movement. I can accept that you're not really going to hurt my feelings. So maybe we could have a kind of amicable split here and we go to post in twenty twenty six, because you don't have a run again. They never run against a Republican, Okay,
all they do is run against other Democrats. Don't quite understand why you're so anxious to have the word democrat in the description of what you do. But we can have a amical split here.
Chrystal, this is a very bad time for James Carvel to be making this argument because the split screen is AOC and Bernie Sanders drawing record crowds in red states.
Right, and you want them out of your coalition? Like what are we talking about?
You're in a message of economic populism, quote fighting oligarchy.
Right, Because here's the thing is, like previously AOC would have been the emblem of that like faculty lounge language that he talks about. Okay, she sounds there like Marjorie Taylor Green's insider training and stop oligarchy, and they're comming for your social security and your medicare Like she is fully on the economic populist message, and you know Bernie always has been more or less fully on the economic populist message. So talk about being out of touch and
missing the moment. And also, by the way, if you're like setting up your tent pole of who wants to come over the James Carvel version of the Democratic Party versus the AOC and Bernie Party, I gotta tell you there ain't gonna be a lot of takers on your side because even people like MSNBC Nicole Wallace, I'm here and things coming out out of their mouth that I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined, because they, I think were chastened by the fact that Joe Amiga
made their trip to mar A Lago and there was such a massive backlash and the network was sort of like cratering, and they took their cue of like, Okay, we have to at least align with the part of the Democratic Party that wants to stand up and fight back against Trump because otherwise, what like what are we even doing here? Like why do we even exist? And we will have zero people watching us and they will
all hate us. So they've followed the ratings and the people who are demonstrating, as you said, how to fight and putting on the class for all of the Democratic elites are AOC and Bernie. So you even have people like Nicole Wallace, who is out there former George W. Bush spokesperson, Cole Wallace out there freezing the Bernie and AOC stop oligarchy to artagalism.
And we should say AOC and Bernie Sanders have been traveling the country and generating crowds that size Christie all over the place, and not just in Democratic strongholds. There is an appetite for economic populism that there hasn't been in many years.
And here comes AOC. We have the next element we could put on the screen.
This is a poll.
Look who's catching up in the like these numbers are. It's obviously early, but look who's catching up In twenty twenty eight Democratic primary poll numbers from Yale. We've got Kamala Harris at twenty eight percent, AOC at twenty one percent, twenty one percent. So Crystal's your point. If Bernie chooses Alexander A. Kaser Cortes as his heir man, things are going in quite a good direction for populists on the left. We can put the n pole. This is the next element.
We can put this next poll up on the screen. Among Democrats, here are the net favorables. AOC is up sixty two percent plus sixty two percent, Harris plus fifty nine percent. So that's close. But Harris right now probably, I mean she's just getting off a presidential run. So that's even a failed presidential run with name recognition and all of that.
It's it's just kind of like the default. Yeah, yeah, but then you see is there at the bottom. See it is with friend John Patterman.
Yeah, But anyway, the argument that, and I will say Bernie and AOC I think have learned from the last four or five years in politics and are not leading with identity messaging in a way that I think AOC genuinely did struggle with Ryan documents that in some book like that really was a stumbling block for some left populace.
But I think and maybe the right is underestimating this they have learned from that. And James jamesting that too.
Yeah, apparently I'm like, the who are you talking even talking about? Like the pronouns are out of the bio you won, Like that's you know, go look at who is the emblem of that politics. And she's touring the country getting massive crowds, many of whom were not Bernie supporters, talking about how we're going to fight back against oligarchy and.
Probably Trust supporters.
By the way, Yeah, I mean to some of those people there probably are Trump voters.
That's very possible.
Possible if you're going to Idaho, there's going to be some likely Trump supporters there. And you know the thing that to me is even more noteworthy because you know it's one poll whatever, who knows other poles have said other things, et cetera. But the thing to me that was even more noteworthy is if you could put the
last element up here on the screen. As long as I've been following these polls, when you ask Democratic base do you want the party to move to the left, to move to the right, or to stay the same, they generally say they should be more moderate. Now, I've said, usually people's version of moderate is like they should increase social security and they should increase the minimum wage. It's like very economically populous. But you know, maybe that was cope.
I don't know.
So in January end of January of this year, that continued to be the trend. Forty five percent of Democratic base voters said they want the party to be more moderate, only twenty nine percent said more liberal. Now, in a new poll, things have completely shifted. Now you have a majority fifty percent who say they want the party to be more progressive, twenty four percent who say that it should stay the same, and only eighteen percent that say
it should become more moderate. Now, again, I think these terms are very squishy. The one pole says liberal, the other says progressive. Maybe for us is better branding, et cetera, et cetera. But when you see this big of a shift. I do think it signifies something going on here because again, who are the people that they're seeing who are actually fighting. I mean, this is all the Democratic base ones they want people to fight back against Trump, and who is
fighting back against Trump. It's the progressives. So they're like, yes, we need to do that more. And I think that is what is causing this real sea change within the Democratic base and their conception of who their leaders are, who their leaders should be, and the way that the party should orient itself going forward.
James Carvel got Bill Clinton elected so we could get on the path to wto I mean.
It's just like well, and not to mention Emily, his whole thing like oh they only run against Democrats. DLC was all about taking over the Democratic Party and like kicking out the establishment of Democrats.
Yeah, so, like, you know, there's a lot there.
The last thing I'll say is this just reminds me so much of what happened on the right in twenty twelve after Mitt Romney lost the Republican National Committee. At this time, under Wright's previous if I'm remembering correctly, put out what is known infamously in Republican circles as the.
Autopsy, and that autopsy called.
For the Republican Party to quoteunk moderate on issues like immigration, social stuff, and you could. I mean, if you read it now, you can tell it's just sort of dripping with anger over kind of tea party voters. And what that missed is Republican voters. To the exact point that you were making, Actually, some of this popular stuff is
moderate to voters. It's not moderate to d C because it's really radical for the clients of many people in Washington, d C. And the influences in Washington, d C. It's radical to their bottom lines and to the way that they do business. But most people would be like, oh, campaign finance reform, that's not radical.
It's totally everybody having healthcare that seems moderate, you know, like that seems like something we should reasonably do.
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, Washington is just completely out of touch when it thinks that something that is like the dumbest statement in the world because it's so obvious at this point.
But when it thinks that.
Tune into breaking points for these stellar insights about how Washington is out of touch but in all serious is like they never learn and that's what we can do.
Like, this pattern just doesn't stop.
And James Carvill should look at what Republicans did in twenty twelve when they said the only way to win presidential elections is to moderate on immigration and social stuff.
And then Donald Trump beats Hillary.
Cutting on a platform of like political incorrectness and building a wall. I mean, they're so stupid, They're so stupid, and they can't stop being stupid. And isn't it isn't it Carville's statement, it's the economy stupid?
Isn't that? Like him? Yeah, that's him?
I just I mean, and this has been the case. This has been the case since the advent of you know, the rise of the Bernie movement. You see the energy for this guy. You see how powerful this is. I mean the number of people who gave him ten twenty dollars whatever they could. Yeah, the agenda that they rallied around, that they would show up, they would knocked doors, they would do anything for him.
And you want that out of the.
Party, Yeah, Like, I mean not really is a big part of where they want went sideways. Instead, you're going to foist on as Hillary Clinton. You're going to foiste on as Joe Biden, like Joe Biden even more so than Hillary Clinton, because she did have some genuine like supporters are excited, first woman president, etcetera, etcetera. Joe Biden had none of that. And then you're like, oh, why aren't we cool anymore? Why doesn't anyone want to talk
to us? Why did all these you know bros that we spent years maligning as being toxic and spearing relentlessly? How come they don't want to support us anywhere? Oh gee, I wonder, I wonder, wonder what caused them to shift
away from you? And so once again here you have just very clear example of where the energy is in the party, and you still have people like James Carvill and I would say also like the Ezra Cline abundance movement thing like no, not that thing, that thing which is garnering massive amounts of energy in which people are responding to in real time. No, that can't be the message of the party. It's like, you know, sometimes you
have to put the think tankers side. Sometimes you have to even put you know, some of the like focused group tested popularism stuff aside and just see where's energy, what works? And you know, the Democratic base is going to have a say in the future direction of the party, and it's very clear right now what direction they are heading in.
By the way, some of those bro podcasters, Rogan for example, support universal health care. Maybe, I mean, that's why Bernie sat down with him. I mean, it's just it's such a mess and it's their solution is exactly what the Republicans was in twenty twelve. Trump woke the Republican Party up to what their base actually wanted. So that's what AOC and Bernie Sanders are trying to do in a less Trumpian way.
Yeah, well, we'll see how that goes.
Let's move on Crystal to housing, speaking of things Democrats struggle with, and get to our guest.
So one of the issues we've really tried to consistently cover on this show because it is so central to
literally everyone, is the issue of housing. And with that in mind, we are really happy to be joined by an author, Brian Goldstone, and journalist who's just put on a fantastic new book called There Is No Place for Us, Working and Homeless in America that takes a look at a number of families in and around the Atlanta area who are working doing everything right and yet still because of the cost of housing, find themselves homeless a much undercovered And I guess we could talk to Brian about
whether or not it's a new dynamic. But Brian, I'm great to have you, welcome.
Thank you so much, Crystal, it's great to be with you.
Yeah, of course, just tell us share if you would, the inspiration for the book, and also a little bit about just one of these families and how they end up in this situation.
Yeah.
So I first got launched into the subject when my wife, who's a nurse practitioner, was working at a community health center here in Atlanta where we live, and she was just stunned by this trend that she was seeing where you know, pats who were working at like Walmart or McDonald's or driving for Uber and Lyft when they finished
their shifts, they weren't going to an apartment. They were going to shelters or living with others, or sleeping the very cars they had just done, you know, an airport run in for Uber and Lyft.
So as she told me about that, I was shocked.
I was like, I haven't in all of the reading I've done about homelessness, I've never seen this sort of discuss this phenomenon of the working homeless, and so I ended up writing a magazine story for The New Republic about it. And even when that was over, I felt
like I had only scratched the surface. And you know, one of one of the families who I profile in the book, who I followed, I think their story really illustrates this trend, this this dynamic where families aren't falling into homelessness, they're really being pushed this one family, Celeste is the parent's name. She Her story begins in this really dramatic way with her her rental home burning down. But as the reporting shows, it wasn't this dramatic house
fire that pushed her family into homelessness. It was the fact that months later, after the house burned down, she realized that the private equity firm that owned her home, who was her landlord, had filed an eviction on her on a home that was no longer standing, that was uninhabitable, and her credit score was tanked, this three digit number that has come to determine whether millions of Americans have access to something as basic as a place to live.
Her credit was destroyed, and that is what forced her and her children into homelessness?
And what are some of the common I mean, how I'm sure every story is unique, but what are some of the commonalities throughout the families and the.
People that you talked to? What are some of the common themes?
Yeah, I mean, each of the five families who I followed over several years, you know, to write this book, they all have really singular, really distinctive stories and journeys. But I think what comes through really clearly is the common denominator that the reason so many people are becoming homeless in this country is because they don't have access
to housing they can afford. And you know, the term working homeless really demands that we confront not just the homeless side of that equation, but the working side as well. These are people who are working and working and working some more. And it's not just that their wages are too low, although they're certainly that as well. It's that the very nature of work has changed for millions of Americans.
It's become ever more volatile, insecure. People don't know how many hours they're going to be working from one week to the next. Celeste, that woman who I just talked about who's house burned down. She was later diagnosed with ovarian and breast cancer and she was having to choose do I go to my warehod house job or do I go to my chemo treatment, because if I miss a shift at work, I don't get paid, and then me and my kids go from being the squalid extended
stay hotel room to being on the streets. So that it's not just wages, it's not just rents, it's not the nature of work, and really the nature of housing, a lack of basic tenant rights and tenant protections that has caused homelessness to rise to the highest level in recorded history.
Yeah, I mean, it's really a perfect storm that spells disaster for these families because you have years of wage stagnation, years of attacks on unions, you know, and fits in with the conversations we've been having about de industrialization, and you know the fact that it is so difficult to earn a living wage in this country, and then you add to that skyrocketing rents, skyrocketing housing costs, and you have utter disaster for so many families that are trying
to do everything right. You know that are they're working hard, they're trying to, you know, follow the playbook of how you get in a head in America, and it just doesn't work for so many people. Now, you know, I
was curious as I was reading the book. I'm sure you've been watching some of the discourse about the abundance agenda, and you know how one of the factors that has led to housing on affordability is too many owners, zoning regulations and the way that's limited construction or made it so that it's you know, there's less affordable housing available.
I just was curious, based on your reporting with these individuals and the dynamics that go into the housing market, how much of a fix some of that you think really would be.
Yeah.
I mean I take a kind of ecumenical approach to solutions and how we can finally solve this this mounting catastrophe.
I think we need a kind of both and approach.
But I do think that simply like deregulating the market, letting the market do its thing, cutting the red tape and really allowing the private market to sort of, you know, provide for the housing needs of Americans who need it, is not adequate.
I think what some of that discourse maybe leaves.
Out is power, the question of power, who has it, who doesn't have it, the immense power asymmetry that exists in this country between the renter class and those who are fortunate enough to own property and to be landlords.
And also I think what's missing is just.
How incredibly profitable all this insecurity has become, not just for you know, nimby homeowners who don't want an affordable housing complex built near their you know, neighborhood, but how profitable it's become for some of the most you know, influential and powerful Walsh Street firms in this country. I was absolutely shocked to discover that at every step in these families journeys, the five families who I follow in this book, there were entire business models designed to capitalize
on their precarity. And that's not only the private equity firms like Celeste Landlord who are buying up vast swaths of America's rental housing and really making that housing much much more insecure, pushing people out through these automated eviction systems and algorithms that determine, you know, that someone just gets an eviction filing if they're two days later on their rent and there's no human to interact with, not only pushing people out of their housing, but increasingly buying
up the very sites and places where families and individuals are pushed into once they become homeless. And nowhere is that truer than with this phenomenon of extended stay hotels. It's an entire world of homelessness that we're not seeing.
And you know, during the pandemic, Blackstone and star Ward Capital, these two private equity giants, they saw that that Extended Stay America was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars while all other hotels were at like zero occupancy, and they spent six billion dollars buying this because they saw that these hotels are concentrated in areas of our country we're working people are most likely to become homeless and
to lose stable housing. And so you have entire business models, very powerful business models, that are actively exacerbating and really profiting off of this this insecurity.
Are there examples of communities or policies that have dealt with this in a constructive way? Are there, you know, things that we can point to and say, you know, look, this does work, this community used it.
You know, to some success. What do you make of that?
Yeah, I mean, I think as far as like if we really open the lens on this crisis. And you know, one of the big things I'm trying to show in the book is that the official numbers on homelessness, as bad as they are, and again we had over the last two years the highest level of homelessness on record. As bad as those official numbers are, the reality is actually much much worse.
It's exponentially worse.
And I estimate that it's that the actual number is roughly six times that of the official number. And the reason I say that is because once we get a sense of the true severity and magnitude and crucially the actual root causes of this homelessness catastrophe, we realize that that the kind of nibbling around the edges solutions that are often floated will simply not be enough. And a huge thing is keeping people in the homes.
They already have.
And you know, I think I've been disabused in the process of reporting this book of the notion that, like, if this is solved, it's going to be because some policy maker in Washington or at state level wakes up and is like, I'm going to he's the suffering for
these people. Some of the most promising trends that we're seeing is the emergence of a really powerful and vibrant tenant rights movement across the country, people organizing in their buildings, in their run properties and saying this is intolerable, We're not going to stand for it. And in cities like Kansas City, we had the emergence of casey tenants over the last several years that has demanded large scale policy shifts.
And I think that's the most promising thing we have right now that this is going If solutions come, they're going to come from those who are closest to the problem and those who are directly impacted and their neighbors who simply say, you know, like, we're not going to allow millions of people to be the casualties of our city's renaissance, of our city's success and growth, Because that's another dynamic. All of these people are losing their housing not in the midst of like poverty, but in the
midst of mounting prosperity in cities like Atlanta, Nashville. So that's really what I see as most right now.
Yeah, because you have this mass inequality too, where you know, in these cities you need the people who are going to work at McDonald's, who are going to do the uber eats or the door dash you need, you know,
given that's the economic system system we apparently have. You need that working class, but you increasingly have completely priced the amount of housing and then you don't have you know, I know, Atlanta's notorious for not having sufficient public transit also so that people can actually you know, conveniently commute in and you know, speaking to some of that gentrification aspect, one of the families I'm blanking on the name of
the woman that you focus on. One of them had lived previously and grown up in Atlanta in a public housing project and actually have very fond memories of that public housing project and what life was like there. Those were demolished and then I believe what happened is they built some replacement that was like mixed income housing, but never sufficient to replace the number of units that it
previously been lost. And so I wonder what we can learn from that dynamic and the way that you know, this kind of like well intentioned reform movement ultimately exacerbated the issue of a housing crisis for people in the city.
Yeah, it's a great question.
I mean, I think through Britt's story, Britt is the name of the person that you were just referencing. Through her story, I mean, you kind of get American housing policy in the life of one one single family, one single individual. And like you said, she grew up in public housing. She was determined to make Atlanta her home, to make a home for herself and her kids in the city. And she has this line like this city is just mine, as is just as much mine as anyone's,
Like I'm not going anywhere. But the title of the book comes from Britt, there is no place for us, because she realizes that the city that she's.
Given everything to.
You know, Brett works at the airport when the book begins, she's working at, you know, a place that's like the pride and joy of Atlanta's economy, the busiest airport in the world.
And I think it's important.
To note that one of the most perverse things that this book documents is that the working homeless, these are not people on the fringes of society. They are the people whose labor, whose bodies are powering the very growth that again, perversely is not just pushing them out of the neighborhoods they grew up in, but pushing them out of housing stable housing altogether. And you know, the policies that emerged in the in the absence of public housing.
Once all the public housing in Atlanta was demolished because Atlanta was the first city in the country to build public housing in the thirties, and it was the first city in the country to sort of undertake this neoliberal experiment in demolishing it, demolishing public housing and turning to the private market through vouchers and through other you know,
incentivizing private development to fill that need. And Britt's story is are really tragic example of how how much that promise has failed, and ultimately her story is an example of how we need just a radical paradigm shift in how we think about housing in this country. Like housing is as it's currently conceived, it's just auctioned off to.
The highest bidder.
We've you know, one caseworker in the book refers to it as the housing Hunger Games. And what we've done is we've said this essential human need is going to be you know that people are just going to be at the mercy of a market that may or may not have an incentive to keep them housed. And if rents skyrocket past the rate of inflation, so be it. We need a different approach where we start to treat housing the way we do like public education, where we just say this is a basic part of being in
this country. We're going to guarantee it for everybody. And there was a time when we had that vision as a country, and there are pure nations who have implemented that vision. It's not this utopian, you know, radical ideal.
That's that's exactly right.
Well, the book it will break your heart if you read it, will absolutely break your heart. But I really recommend it to people because you have so many examples of you know, people who they win what they consider as like the lottery, they get the voucher to be able to help them afford you know, housing, and just how that process is all but you know, fraught with insecurity and no guarantees and creates this housing hunger game
situation you're talking about. You go through some of that history and just the dynamics that that people are really dealing with on a granular scale, very much reminded me of the work of Barbara Aaron Reich, so highly recommend it to people. And Brian, thank you so much for taking some time both to explore this issue, which I do think that is there's a complete blind spot in society for and also to join us today and help us understand your work.
Thank you so much. It's really meant a lot to talk to you.
Our pleasure, Crystal.
That was depressing, but I think a very important discussion. Thanks for bringing my guest to us and for being here today.
Yeah, my pleasure as always. And yeah that I really genuinely recommend the book, even though it will absolutely break your heart multiple times as you read it, but it's so important to understand what's going on in this country. And Emily, always a pleasure to get to chat with you. And guys, I'll be in like normal with Sager tomorrow in the studio, so I will see you then. And then oh, one last thing, we made it official. Friday Show is now every week every Friday. We're committing to it.
We're doing the thing so and with a bonus second half that's just for premium subscribers. So thank you guys so much for supporting us and making that possible.
We'll see if Sager decides to show up fingers crossed.
Well, as everybody learned, he's got some things going on right now, so.
Yeah, he is more than forgiven.
Yeah, but the two of us are always happy to slum it with Ryan. So we will see everyone on Friday for that show. Breakingpoints dot com for a premium membership if you want that second half otherwise
We'll be back here with more tomorrow