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Hey guys, welcome to the Friday Show. Ryanan, Emily, great to see you. Guys.
Nice to see you.
So now that we have officially codified the Friday Show, I guess it's no longer a mini show, and we also are recording some bonus content that is for premium subscribers only, So if you guys want everything that we're doing today, make sure you sign up at Breakingpoints dot com.
We're going to roll through.
We've got stuff on tariffs, Trump can ask questions about Russia, Ukraine. We got huge moves in the courts in terms of deportations, a bunch of interesting stuff going on the Democratic side, and also some Steve Bannon like Elon Musk drama which is always interesting to take a look at. And some updates with regard to Israel. So a lot to get through this morning, guys and.
Ryan, everything good on your end, Yeah, everything's everything's going really well, and you know, thanks everybody for all the kind wishes, the you know, for people just tuning in. Me and my wife got surgery on Tuesday to get the to and removed, and they went in there and they could basically couldn't even find it. These this antibody called her septin, developed in the ninety nineties and two thousands, is just an absolute miracle drug for her two positive cancer.
It was also in the lymph nose, and they were worried and they were going to have to pull a whole bunch of lymph nos. But they went in and the first two that they took out, which were not systematic, were tested negative, and they're like, all right, let's let's wrap this up. Let's sew this thing up and move on. So we'll find out next week if she's cancer free. Obviously,
none of this is ever over. You know, then there's radiation and then there's antibodies continue, and then you got to continue testing because you never know when it's going to come back. But this is what one of the doctors called like a best case scenario. So things things are going well, so so good, covering for about another week or two and then yeah, then start the radiation.
That is awesome, That is so incredibly good to hear Ryan.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this stuff can go lots of different ways. And oh yeah, you know, as as everybody watching.
Those, is this the drug you were talking to Saga about a while back that it was like two researchers at a conference had like shared ideas and that's how you end it.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's called her sept And the story is remarkable. It was this guy who was at a conference and heard a lecture by somebody not in the oncology field, and he was like, you know what, I
think that has implications for cancer treatment. And the UCLA doctor he now runs their cancer clinic, their cancer situation whenever they have at UCLA and genin Tech was the one that had come up with the initial advances and research but didn't want to do anything with it because cancer drugs at the time were considered to be financial losers.
They kept going through FDA trials and finding that they weren't actually more effective than anything else because cancer is so awful, and so they'd failed FDI trial and gen and Tech was like, no, if we go in through another FDA trial and fail, it like it's it's going to be brutal for our stock price.
So they're like, I don't care. We don't really care about this.
And so he went out and got you know, NIH funding and and other grants and did the work kind of on his own and then proved that it actually worked, and it turns out to be one of the most effective. It's the reason that breast cancer has gone from a death sentence to so many people to now something that you can say that this was a rough experience and now I'm moving on with my life. Yeah, thank you to the NIH, and thanks a lot RFK Junior Fort and burning your way through that.
Yeah, Elon has to say in that as well. But you know, I wanted you to share that again because sometimes these things can feel very abstract, but you know, cuts to medical research it's going to have a huge impact because all of the new drug molecules that have been developed over the past couple of decades, it's been with public funding because of exactly the reason you talk about what the drug company is, what they spend most of their like research and development on, is like how
do I game the patent system? How do I do a new formulation of viagra or ozebic or whatever is their hot selling drugs, so that I can You're looking good.
You're hanging in there, Ryan, You're hanging.
In there, hanging in for now.
And the other thing that the dose folks are so upset about is what they call overhead and these NIH grants, right, and a conference or you know, a conference is the definition of overhead. But differences are where into intellectual capacity is exchanged.
The guy was sort of research is not alwaysquote unquote efficient, Right. It requires sort of like you know, creative, haphazard process that isn't going to necessarily be linear.
Yeah.
I've seen people say I only want to fund the effective research. It's like, how do you know ahead of time? Like, yeah, obviously scientists don't want to like spend years doing research into something that turns out to be a whole hypothesis.
But another another example of overhead would be this guy who he was apparently or is still to this day, a hoarder of biopsy samples, like at UCLA had this like absolutely massive freezer of biopsy samples from like years and years and years, and that's overhead, Like that's expensive to maintain, and there was it wasn't obvious that it
was going to necessarily yield a whole lot. But when this new breakthrough came came around, he was then able to test this against all of his old biopsies that he had and get his graduate students working on it. And that's how he was able to initially prove, without a huge influx of money, that there was actually a lot to this. So all of that would have been they'd be like, you know, you'd have a you'd have a twenty two.
Year old with a doge like little.
Lanyard saying why do you need to freeze all these biopsies? Like this is this is done? Pull the plug on this stuff.
Yeah.
Well, we are all really really happy for you and your family and very relieved alongside you, so and thank you for keeping everybody updated because I know, people were definitely concerned and thinking.
About you guys.
Yeah, very relieving.
All right, let's check in with the Marcus this morning, and what the hell is going on?
Latest in terrors. Apparently futures are down. It's nine thirteen, so Marcus haven't opened yet. But I saw an article on the CNBC website that Amazon sellers are starting to hike their prices. And you know, that is kind of where we are in the whole trade war situation. Is we know, even if Trump wacks away from everything now, there's still going to be pain and disruption that is coming.
What we don't know is the size and the scope of that, And I don't think anyone really knows, but we have a lot of indications that should be very worrying to people. At the same time, you know, Trump had backed off this Maximus China position, saying one hundred and forty five percent tariffs. No one thinks that that is going to last. He also indicated that there were ongoing talks with China, to which China is saying, I don't know what you're talking about. There are no ongoing talks.
So Trump got asked about this yesterday. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what he had to say.
Yeah, please questions.
They're saying they.
Had a meeting this morning, so I can't tell you.
It doesn't matter who they is.
Later, but they had meetings this morning, and we've been meeting with China, and so I think we have Jeff as usual.
I think you have your reporting.
Well, thank you very much.
So there you go your thoughts. It doesn't matter they are It's fine.
Yeah, this is their big I mean, listen, like, if you are making deals, there's a way in which this scenario is so much better for the Trump administration. If you're like actually inking deals, countries are coming to you, you have something on the table with China, and there's a light at the end of the tunnel for people who are looking for certainty in the American market, then there's a world of which again like this, there's a scenario in which this can the sort of bleeding can be staunched.
And that's why where I don't know.
What you guys think, but for me, it seems like there's increasing desperation to project that and maybe to use it as a strategy to bring other people into deals by publicly being like, yes, we're doing X, Y and Z, and then there's not a ton of evidence of that. The Japan does aster that Soccer and I covered earlier in the week. I think probably rattled them a lot, because this is not I don't I mean, I don't want to say that they thought it was easy, because
I don't think anybody thought that this was easy. But it's proving to be a lot harder than My guess is that then they anticipated. And part of that is probably because you guys have made this point the.
Way allies were roped in.
I think maybe that just people have lost trust, and so it makes the deal making, the art of the deal becomes a lot more difficult.
Well, it's it's really embarrassing for Trump here, and it's almost rude now on the part of the press corps, because this is like a situation where you've got some guy who keeps telling everybody that he has that he has a girlfriend in Canada. Everybody knows he has no girlfriend in Canada, and the press is now being these like jerks who like, actually investigate.
Is shan in Montreal?
What's the name of your girlfriend?
Scapschat Like look, it's like just just leave it alone, Like he doesn't have a girlfriend.
There's no negotiations going on with China.
Like it's super embarrassing, Like, just leave this, Leave the guy alone. The whole thing has been a total humiliation. Just let him come to terms with it on his own. But yes, your point is exactly right. He had he had one play. His play was, I'm going to do this thing, and China is going to cave to me. You know what they're going to capitulate to. I'm not sure because I don't even know what I'm necessarily asking for, but they're going to cave and our allies are going
to stand with us. Instead, the allies shockingly got upset that they were also attacked by Trump. They did not stand with us, and China did not cave, and so he has no Plan B.
Plan B is tanked the economy.
Yeah.
Well, and here's the thing is, like, even putting the terriffs aside, this administration had gone out of its way to be, you know, to piss off the Europeans, sending jd Vance over there to like a to them about their free speech, which you know they'll look, there are some valid points there, but hey, buddy, have you seen what your own administration is doing here at home.
We let people say whatever they want inside the van on the way to the detention center that they're being right, that's right against Israel. But inside that van they're free to say whatever they want.
Let it fly, Let it fly. Yeah, and listen.
It's okay if you know you mostly okay if you criticize our own government. Just god forbid you say anything negative about Israel. But yeah, so you know, they they went on like a world tour making it clear that you can't rely on us and basically like we don't like you, and piss off and then launch this trade war against the entire world and are surprised when countries are like, you know, if you're making me pick between
you guys in China. Number one, we get a lot more stuff from China at this point than we give from you.
And number two, you.
Made a crystal clear that you are not a good and reliable partner and that you have nothing but utter contempt and disdain for us. So perhaps there's another direction that we should go in here. And then also this is astonishing reporting from Jeff Stein, who just is you know,
incredible on all of these things. Apparently, you know, one of the first moves that China made in retaliation was to say, Okay, well, we've been spending all these years locking up these rare earth supplies and you're not going to get access to them anymore. You know, We've all like, I don't really understand what these things are, but apparently they're really important and you know, go into evs and
important for defense and all of these different things. And this has been discussed for years and years, and yet the Trump administration are only now holding these high level meetings to try to figure out what to do about the fact that China made the most obvious chess move on the board out of the gates, which was to block our access to this. Jeff Here says Beijing does not feel like it is going to back down, and that the US is in no position to dictate terms.
A bit big part of that is where Earth where they feel they have the capacity to do significant harm to American manufacturers. And they talk to people in this piece, companies that rely on these and they're saying, you know, they're already really drawing down their stock files and are going to be in a very difficult situation if this
isn't resolved quickly. Meetings have involved White House, National Security Council, National Economic Council, Council of Economic Advisor's, Commerce Department, Energy Department, Office of the Trade rep among several other agencies. Financing, capital financing, permitting, and other ideas kicked around, but timeline for scaling up domestic capacity uncertain.
So apparently when you do that first.
You would think that you would have your in your four deals.
Yeah, you might have.
Considered the most obvious thing that China could possibly do to like hit you the hardest down of the gates.
Trump Trump brought his queen out on this like the second move, Like that's that's what This.
Is not a kind way to refer to Peter Navarro.
Yes, actually yes, Peter navav is Trump queen. Trump brought him out on his second move, and the queen is now just dancing around the board. Anybody who plays chess nos like one of the first things that a rookie player does.
The queen is such a cool player.
It's an online chess obsessive by the way.
You bring it out right away.
But if you bring your queen out and there's and you haven't done any prep for it, your Queen is just going to get chased around the board while they set up their positioning. Eventually it's going to get trapped and killed, and then you're gonna get mauled. And that's where he's in. The He's in the queen is trapped position right now and next is us getting mauled.
The Libs won't let us mind the rarest.
Just you just tip your thing over and you give up. Like so they just need somebody put needs to put the finger on the top of Trump's orange head and just tip it's over.
But he, I mean, he does have an uphill battle to get the rarest mineral mining domestically done because that has been and Ryan, you and I have talked about that they're like all kinds of environmental obstacles to sing that political and environmental obstacles to achieving them.
Yeah, and also manpower and industrial and yeah.
I mean, but we also don't have a stockpile of everything that we would need, Like, we don't have everything that we would need here. And you know my understanding is and this is also part of you know what USAI. Do you remember when Chris Murphy like accidentally told the truth about what usaidea is about it's like, well, we do a little bit of healthcare and then we get access to like these minerals that we need, you know.
So we've been going in the opposite direction of securing the lithium or whatever it is that is critical and that we don't have sufficient quantities of. And apparently this didn't really occur to the Trump administration until now. There's one other piece of this that I wanted to touch on, which I just think is extraordinary. So Charles Gasparta with
Fox News reports this. He says, scoop people inside the Trump White House are alerting Wall Street executives that they are nearing an agreement in principle on trade with India. According to my sources who are senior Wall Street, which ties to the White House, no details on timing, and recall that we have been here before with Japan, only to have the goal post change in terms renegotiated. But if this holds, the India deal being in vision will include agreed upon.
Goals and issues blah blah blah.
So and they think it could be potentially a template for a deal with Japan, South Korean on Australia. So, you know, The sub story here is that the administration, as Emily was saying, seems kind of desperate to say, hey, there, you know, I promise there are going to be deals and we're really close with India, and that's that's going to set off this you know, firestorm of deal making,
et cetera. But the headline here, which guess Brino seems to not really notice, is wait a second, you're giving Wall Street executives knowledge on things that are going to be incredibly market moving at a time when we've seen extraordinary volatility. And I mean, it's just like it's just
classic from this administration. It's it reminds once again of Charles Schwab being in the White House and Trump bragging about him making two point five billion dollars in a single day based on Trump's moves to you know, roll back some of the initial quote unquote reciprocal tariffs. So now here you have this you know, administration aligned reporter.
It's like bragging about the fact that they're giving out inside information to Wall Street executives so they can front run Trump's announcements.
Here.
Well, and if this is real, I'd like to hear more publicly about what that is not through leaks to reporters. I would like to see, you know, if that's true. It's obviously significant, which is why they're using it to ease.
Concerns on Wall Street.
But if it's true, they should be very public about the details because I just I mean, that could go in a lot of different directions and just vaguely gesturing at it behind closed doors to Wall Street executives, I mean, maybe it's not even insider trading. Maybe it's actually them just trying to ease the markets without having anything to back it up.
Actually, it could be, and that's an interesting point.
And I actually think in gas Reno's defense that he did recognize what he was reporting and he phrased it that way so that everybody else would see what was going on, but that he'd maintained.
I don't think so.
Right, he's going back and forth with Wisenthal and a bunch of other people on Twitter about how this is not there's nothing to see here and it's no problem and it's not insider trading.
Well, the separate reason it might not be undercider trading is insider trading is when you get credible information that you can act on what if this White House indible not credible all, Like, okay, you talked to them. Like when I dropped to L's an officer first appointment on Tuesday, I saw Peter Navarro. I talked to him briefly. He's not credible. I don't like, I don't care what he says, like you can't you can't trade on that. And also Trump is such an idiot that it gives other countries
huge advantages in these negotiations. Like if he had somebody like Lightheiser in here telling him, here's what we need from India from a strategic perspective from the United States, then they could make an interesting deal with India that might be useful to us.
He doesn't.
He's got Navarro and he's got his own adult mind, and so he's like, they don't we don't have enough Fords on the roads in India. And so India knows that he's such a moron that all he wants is like to reduce the tariffs on American cars going into India without understanding that you can do that, and we're still not going to sell, you know, more than a trivial number of American cars inside India for lots of different reasons, and so they'll like be like, yeah, sure,
we'll lower our tariffs on your American cars. Uaw is happy, he gets because he's a moron and it's the only thing he understands. He's like, great, we won this. And and in the end, you're barely going to sell any extra cars into India. So can you trade on that? Like, I guess you can try.
I mean sort of, since so much of the market is just like vibes vies, you know, Like I do think if they announced even something that was sort of pathetic with India, there would be a big market spike and they'd get all excited about the deals are coming, et cetera, et cetera, a.
Short Indian car company and then you know, buy it back in like twenty minutes and yeah, take some money.
Exactly, yeah, exactly.
All right, let's go ahead and move on to some of the comments Trump made about Russia yesterday. I'm sure you guys saw his Vladimir Stop truth social that you put out, which is just incredible.
It really was giving for me.
Remember when Hillary said that she went to Wall Street and told them to cut it out.
That's what it was.
That's what that tweet was giving for me.
Do not come, Vladimir, do not come right.
That's right, Kamala, that was her right.
No, it's giving Jersey shore Ron stop because Ryan gets it.
Ryan gets I'm.
Sorry, Crystal serious.
Oh you lost me?
All right?
So he gets asked about, you know, how he feels about because Russia genuinely opened up, you know, a series of new brutal strikes, including on Kiev, and so he got asked about, Hey, I thought you were working with these Russians. What's going on here with your buddy, with your body, vlad Let's take a listener what he had to say social post.
Use the words Vladimir stop. That seemed like a slightly different message of personal message. What is your level of frustration with President?
I didn't I wasn't happy with it, and we're in the midst of talken peace and missiles were fired and I was not happy with it. That's what I meant, and that's you know, I assume that.
Sorry that if the bombs keep falling, will you consider additional sanctions toward Russia? Or what will you do if President Putin does.
Not question in a week, I want to see if we can have a deal. No reason to answer it that, but I won't be happy.
Let me put it that way.
Things things will happen.
You're not putting more pressure on Russia.
I know a lot of.
Europeans would like to see that.
You know what pressure I'm putting on Russia?
They're dealing.
You have no idea what pressure I'm putting around. You're putting a lot of.
Pressure, I'm sure are you putting on the Russia in Russia?
And Russia knows and some people that are close to would know, or he wouldn't be talking right now. The Prime Minister understands that better than anybody. He wouldn't be talking right now. He's talking, and we're putting a lot of pressure. I think he wants to make a deal. We're going to find out very soon. But it takes two to tango, and you have to have Ukraine want to make a deal too, and they're being hit very hard, and I do believe they want to make a deal.
So and this turns out to be the longest twenty four hours in history, since he said he was going to get this deal in twenty four hours from the time that he's inaugurated and By the way, I just got a news alert on my phone that a senior Russian officer was killed in a car explosion near Moscow. So almost certainly you know Ukrainian ops going on, and this is a pattern we've seen from them before, sort of potential retaliation for what for these strikes within Ukraine.
And let's just pull those social post up. This was from Thursday.
I'm not happy with Russian strikes and Kiev not necessary and very bad timing. Vladimir stop five thousand shoulders a week or dying, let the peace deal get done.
So that's what he was being asked about.
And I mean he Another interesting thing about Trump is what we just saw him being like, you have no idea what's happening behind the scenes, which of course is why the press is there to kind of sus some of that out. But it's just his This is why he thought he could end it in twenty four hours, because maybe he'll land the plane, Like maybe he'll be able to land the plane in a couple of days. And I think the outlines of the peace plan look like pretty legitimate that we've seen and look like they
can be worked with. But all along everyone has said Putin will gesture at this and not ultimately be serious about any of it.
And does Trump end up I don't.
Want to use the phrase taking that bait, but does does he end up just with egg on his face and Putin just walking away? It seems like that's what's inching closer and closer to the reality.
I mean, Ryan, when jd Vance and then Trump like exploded on Zelensky in the Oval office, that was basically what he was trying to say. It's like, you can't you know, it's very hard to negotiate with these people. And I mean in a sense, I'm somewhat sympathetic because I just don't think there are any easier answers at this point.
You know.
The time to deal really ideally was at the beginning of this war, with the peace negotiations that Biden intentionally blew up because they thought they could play regime change.
You know games.
And now here we are in a situation where Zolensky does not want to give up anything, including CRIMEA, and the Russians are like, why should we deal?
Like we're in a strong position. We can just lock in here for the long term.
Yeah, And the Trump administration is trying to give them as much as they can think of. It seems like he's you know, they're offering recognition of Crimea as Russian territory, and they're offering you know, significant amounts of Ukrainian territory
as recognized you know, Russian territory. And the thing that Trump says, he's uh that he's that that Putin is conceding in exchange is not taking over the entire country, which, unfortunately for the Ukrainians at this point, does appear to be an actual concession because you know, the Russians, you know, have the industrial capacity and the manpower capacity to to continue this war. Now, if they did try to take over all of Ukraine, they would face a decades long
kind of insurgency funded by the United States. Victoria Neulan said that like out loud.
I think it was on.
NPR, or maybe she said it in congressional testimony. She said, you know, if when it when it looked like Russia was going to like roll in to keieve and take it, she was saying, well, you know, look out, because we're going to fund a guerrilla campaign against you and and just bleed you for for decades to come.
Wow.
And in some ways US would almost prefer that from a strategic perspective, because then they get to you know, fund their guerrilla campaign and cause lots of problems for Russia. So, you know, so Putin has to look at that as a cost of doing business there, Like does he just want to take them take a massive win here sees enormous amounts of Ukrainian It seems like he wants to you know, push you know deeper into the Black Sea and fully turn Ukraine into a you know, complete rump country.
That that then he can he can go back to the original Russian plan for Ukraine, which was to have of the Ukrainian friendly you know, proxy government now in place in Kiev. It would be a nominally sovereign country, but effectively kind of under the sway of Russia.
Yeah, I think the the you know, this is in some ways the least important part. But I think the politics here are difficult for Trump too. Like everybody likes the idea of him coming to the table and trying to get some sort of a peace deal and end this conflict, but the public is very negative on the
idea of Russia being able to annex Ukrainian territory. And you know, I think we obviously saw with the end of the Afghanistan war, the way that winding these conflicts down, when you have to actually deal with the reality of where things are, you know, it can be very ugly. So, you know, I when you're looking at we've been covering this week some of the you know, the polls in the fall and approval rating and where Trump is on
various issues. His foreign policy is now one of his lowest rated issue areas when you ask, you know, how do you think he's doing? And I do think that this is part of it because you know, and this part I'm not sympathetic too. He said We're going to have a deal in twenty four hours. He made it seem like this would be easy. Psy, I've got a plan, don't worry, We're going to get it done. And that was just not honest, Like, it just wasn't either He's
a complete fool, I mean fully and a liar. But yeah, so I think it could be all of the above.
And you know, honestly, again, like I didn't think that was completely insane because well, first of all, what they did with the ceasefire, the first ceasefire all apart was start working with the Biden administration and pressuring the Biden administration, and they were able to just sort of make something work. Now, U can I think is you know, obviously, because it's it's they're looking to something very very long term, like a demilitarized zone, like conversations about those types of things
is going to be a very very heavy lift. But at least having like a significant breakthrough in the first twenty four hours didn't seem completely insane.
But I'd prove me wrong.
It really proved me wrong because it just hasn't the the attempts so far to operate, like to do an art of the deal on Putin. Uh, it's that's not Trump one point zero anymore. It's it's not quite the same. So we'll see if you can land the plane. I mean, it's possible, And this is actually I mean, it would be a good thing. It would be a good thing if he could land the plane. Yeah, land the plane on the road. But that's not like I'm genuinely cheering
for them to land this plane. Because this absolutely looks like something that could have been negotiated by the Biden administration a year plus ago and at the time, every single Yeah, yeah.
That's update on our first segment.
By the way, on China, producer Griffin sent this to our chat. Trump told Time Magazine that she called him and the Chinese embassy is denying it.
Like, so, not only is he claiming that there are non.
Existent talks that are happening between they, he said his Canadian girlfriend like visited him over the weekend, and the Canadian girlfriend is like, no, we're not.
We're not We're not together. No, I've never seen I don't even know what.
This person is, not even not even unofficial.
He's just talking to.
Like a Chinese businessman or something.
Yeah, somebody called him and was like, hey, Howard Stern pranked him.
Like He's like, I have three trillion dollars in trade locked up in an account. If you send a billion dollars to this account, I can unlock it.
And show your Social Security number.
And for some reason it has to be it has to be in crypto, has to be in Trump coin.
This is one of the interesting Like he does seem like so desperate for this conversation, keeps asking for it, keeps doing I mean, they.
Have to the inauguration, that's right, Yeah, that's right.
And also, if he wanted to meet with she, all he had to do was send out a polite request, like She's entire thing is China is not going to be bullied and humiliated. And that's been his thing since he became premiere. Right, That's all he wants is to be treated with respect, and it's the only thing Trump won't do, so weird.
Yeah, yeah, no understanding of the psychology.
There, ask him anything to be nice.
Yeah.
And the other thing that's funny, just as a side note, is, you know, the Canadians have their elections next week, and the way that Trump has like rallied liberals around Canadian patriotism and opposition to him is truly extraordinary. And you know he's sort of having that effect of like unifying the world against us and bolstering some of the like sort of liberal internationalist forces that he's ideologically most opposed to.
This is like James Uchanon level like incompetence, Like it's it's incredible. None of this had to ask that every other tongue, but every other crisis that a president has faced has had some external element to it, right, that was out of their control. Right, And then they screwed it up or they responded well to it. He created this and then responded terribly to it. Yeah, it's utterly incredible.
I mean, if you're going to take if you're going to try to do some global economic reordering, right, like you know, we're going to get rid of the Breton Woods system and we're going to figure out this, you know, like the thing that Janis Verifac has laid out that he thought the dambit was here, Like we're gonna maintain the dollars reserve currency, and we're going to get the Treasury bond yields down, and we're gonna use these stable
coins to force people to stay on the dollar. But we're going to reduce the trade and balances so that we can reindustrialize. Like, if you're going to do this giant, extremely risky, massive gambit, like there needs to be some thought in preparation put into into this. And I mean, I don't even know if I buy that that was the level of you know, maybe some people had some
ideas about that. Maybe you know, to me, for Trump, he just likes terrists because it gives him power and control and you know, puts him in the position of being this ultimate deal maker, and I think he likes that. I don't know that he was doing all the like, oh, the dollar will do this, and the reserve, you know, the bonds will do that, and here's how we'll rectify the trade ballot, and here's why we're getting right. Like, I'm not sure that he was operating on that level.
I think he just instinctively likes terraces because he likes the feeling of being in that position. But if you're going to go for it like this, you have to have thought through. Okay, here's how the world's going to respond, here's how China's responded, here's how we're going to support our small businesses. Here's how we're going to lock down
our rare earth mineral supplies. And none of that happened. Yeah, And that was never more clear than when we learned that the way that the terrorists got rolled back was because Peter Navarro was tricked into going to some meeting on the other side of the White House and Bessett and Lutnick are able to sweep in and force Trump to type out the tweet in real time while they're sitting right there.
And I think Trump one was able successfully to jawbone Mohammed bin Salmon twice into making moves on oil prices that he wanted, which changed changed the global economy in directions that were favorable in each case to Trump. And he was also able to jawbone Powell into lowering interest rates twenty nineteen and twenty twenty, and Janet Yellen is as well in the early days. And so I think
that like he took that experience away. It's like, oh, I could like tweet at these people and use American power and they will do these things for me, and then he extended it to the entire world.
I also think they live in the sense of unreality and because genuinely, like you know and Trump one point zero, they did some tariffs, like there was some protectionist policy. There was a lot of economists freak out about prices are going to go up and it's going to escalate, and it's going to be tit for tat, and that you know, there were not no impacts. There were impacts, but it was not this sort of more catastrophic scenario
that some had sketched out. And so I don't know, I just I also feel like there's an element of their brains are so cooked by being online all the time where nothing ever feels like it's real. Everything exists in this state of like suspended or mirror reality that they can't really comprehend that what you're doing is going to have these like real, massive, reverberating, terrible impacts with no real compensating upside on the other side of it.
I think it's their brains are like that.
It's this on the LIBS reflex and the idea, it's it's in a way, but the idea was just basically to give a middle finger to the global financial system and say, because the chips are in the US hand, that it'll be the shock to the global financial system automatically will reward the United States in the long term because just giving the giving everyone else the middle finger and exploding the foundation of the global financial system, that will just people will have to come to United States.
And you can see the kind of like logic behind that argument. But what happens in the immediate aftermath of you have to like if you if you buy that, and that's your philosophy, you have to manage really carefully, even by your own even by your own argument and your own strategy, which is told, just blow things up, you have to then augment it with all kinds of
different policies. The chips are not just going to fall in a way that's automatically better for the United States when you also have China on the other side offering all of these other alternatives. So I think a lot of it was just screw everyone. They will come crawling back to us. And that's where the details got completely
I don't want to say like overlooked or lost. I think the details were like intentionally not ironed out by the President's inner circle and the President himself because it was like that'll be fine.
It was just like a gut instinctive, which I mean even Trump said like I'm just doing this by my gut, Like that's insane. We're going to talk more about the some of the stuff going on with the Democrats in the premium portion of the show, but I did want to ask you guys. Did you guys see Hennania's tweet where he was like, AOC is going to be the Democratic nominee and these people are going to make me like have to vote for her.
And I've something to us. I don't know that you read everything. I said them, Oh, I do.
But but I was thinking about that, and also I was thinking about I think it was Wisenthal who tweeted out, you know, Trump just recently came out and said that they're not going to do a tax on millionaires because it'd.
Be too disruptive, too disruptive.
Imagine this guy saying something is too disruptive and that millionaires would leave the country or whatever. And he said, if you pulled millionaires, the choice between like I'm going to have to pay a little more in taxes and this whatever this is, they would overwhelmingly be like, I'll just pay a little bit more in taxes, It's fine.
And so it did make me think of you know, now, I'm like going back in history, and the way that FDR was able to forge this New Deal coalition is that there was a threat of something that was much worse for capital on the other side.
At the time.
It was communism, right. It was like, listen, you're going to pay more in taxes, you're gonna have to fund the government, you're going to set up social safety debt, we're going to have labor regulations. That's happening, or those people over there can just totally take your shit, like
which one do you want? And I almost feel like this Trump maw kind of approach is setting up a similar dynamic where this has been so destructive and so terrible for corporate America unless you're one of the Wall Street executives that gets the like insider trading info that when you compare on the other hand, like oh, or we could just like pay a little more in taxes than people get healthcare, like that doesn't seem so bad and so crazy in comparison to what's being done right now.
Well, this is the argument that Bannon kind of made yesterday about how it was like do you see Luigi Mangioni? Do you do you see that people genuinely really like him? And he's like looking out in this crowd of elites saying the reason people like him is because they don't have healthcare, Like people are not doing well, and so you have to like, if your alternative is paying a little bit of higher taxes, you know, that's probably better
than continuing to let the world burn. And that's a different version of the argument that you made, Crystal, But it's Bannon. I think maybe he's even drawing on that exact example, saying, you know, the pitch to the elites right now is that this, this populism is your better alternative to what comes after if the populism isn't sort of dealt with through policy. Yeah.
I saw I saw Mike Cernovich saying that too. Oh really yeah, yeah, that And he was saying, look, we're trying to take our country back. And if if you oligarchs, I don't know if you use the word oligarchs, but if you oligarchs screw this up and and don't allow us to successfully you know, implement our populist revolution here and you get AOC instead, do not come to us asking for help. We're stepping aside that do not come. So's he said, We're gonna step aside.
We tried.
We're not fighting for you, We're fighting for us. And if you, if you screw this up, we're just gonna let let AOC run her communist you know, tyrannical empire or whatever whatever you deserve. Because he he was like, his argument was like, Magga, is the compromise right the same way that you know FDR, you know, was the and the New Deal with a compromise stopping either a communist revolution or a fascist revolution like that.
That's kind of the argument being made.
Let me go ahead and jump forward then too. I have some of the banning comments about both him saying like we need to tax millionaires more and also really taking the moment where Elon seems to be able down and out to to really go after him as well.
Let's go ahead and take a listen to this.
So the day of reckonings here, folks. The simple math is unless you raise the taxes at the upper bracket, the math doesn't work. The math ain't that great with doing that. But that's kind of a starter.
And so anybody wants to show the come back with the math, and you know what they're gonna say is like what Elon said, it was gonna be a five percent growth rate. What Elon said a lot of stuff, and none of it's turned out to be accurate. Like where's my two training cuts, where's my one training cuts?
Where's my one fifty billion cuts?
You just show me any cut that's not programmatic because the programmatic.
Were being done by other people. Show me waste, fraud and abuse.
You've been over the Pentagon for two months, bro, that's a Viper's nest of wait for it, hang on, wait wait, waste, fraud and abuse.
Yeah, nothing, and you're gonna have to cut the defense budget.
All these fantasies people got fan people running read they got fantasies.
They're fantasizing. Now the global bomb market gets a vote here.
Don't forget the equity market, right, that's just long a the cost of equity capital for the the companies.
It's important, it's very important, but it ain't the main thing.
The main thing is the bond market because the world's got three hundred trillion dollars of debt at every level.
And guess what, we're having a margin call there.
You got a lot packed in there, Ryan, You got the taxes on the Rits, you got the like Elon failed, he didn't even touch the Pentagon. What's going on here? Bro, show me even a single cut that you made. And then the reference to basically, you know, bond market being the real deep state.
Yeah no, no, lives detected there. I've told this anecdote before, but you know James Carville, when he was Clinton's top advisor that you know, they ran on this big agenda that they were going to launch after winning in nineteen ninety two, and the economists, their economists came to them and said, if you do this, the bond markets are going to freak out. Interest rates are going to spike, and here's what will happen to the economy, to mortgage rates,
to unemployment. And James Carville later said, you know, when when he dies and gets reincarnated, he wants to come back as the bond market because it's the most powerful thing in the world.
Uh.
He understood that at the time, and unfortunately it is true, and now Trump is finding out. It's it's kind of shocking that Trump didn't know that because one of the only things he does understand is interest rates is debt. Yeah, interest rates and debt. Because his entire real estate stick was basically a cash flow play using an arbitrage between the money coming in and the and his and his refise and is different and and the way that he was playing with you know, different interest rate movie.
He's basically said that by the way he's he's come out and basically he's not like ashamed of that. Mostly this is like very trumpy and most people would see that as like a very shameful predicate for wealth.
But yeah, no, he get but he so he he completely understands the role of debt and interest rates in the there's and their centrality to our economy. So for him to make this fundamental mistake is just comically inept. But yeah, so Bannon's right about everything there.
Emily, how are magotypes feeling about Elon these days? Because I thought it was interesting, you know, Bannon initially was taking some shots at him H one B. By the way, New York Times had a fascinating analysis of how Laura Lumer and all of those like aligned accounts who were going after Elon over H one b they got crushed
in Elon's Twitter algorithm, which interesting side note here. But Bannon kind of laid off for a little while when Elon seemed to be writing a little bit higher in the President's esteem, and now that he's relegated to like meekly being at a cabinet meeting, like well, actually, maybe the cuts are more like one hundred and fifty billion. And by the way, I'm on my way on a here, and Tesla's stock is.
Greater as like, let me see one hundred fifty billion.
It's like I gotta go yeah, right, exactly.
Now, Bannon is coming back at Elon in those comments, and also he said something at a conference where he was like, you know, Elon's looking out for his own interest, not the nations.
Yeah.
So this is what I mean we predicted on this show is that there wouldn't ever be like a big kinetic blow up between Trump and Elon Musk. But what would happen would be the sort of quiet quitting, the conscious uncoupling of the relationship, that it would gradually wind down in a way that saves face for both parties. And I think Elon is throwing in the towel. Clearly he's throwing in the towel a little bit early.
You know.
Again, there are limitations on the special government employee status that he has, but.
And we know they're all very you know, get sure not to exceed the proper time period of the special government employee status.
That would be important to them.
He's also supposed to be delivering regular like getting exceptions for conflicts of interest according to the statute.
So right, yeah, sure, what's that going?
Yeah, So, but.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying, Like, I don't think that they particularly could have come up with a different role. Maybe he could have been an advisor to the campaign, or they could have actually created Doge as like an outside group, which it was originally intended to be to avoid any of these problems, and Elon could just indefinitely be, you know, an advisor to this outside group. And if he had a lot of momentum, I think that obviously would have been the case if he had this like
big political capital behind him that was growing. But that is not where he is right now. And because he's said, especially on that Tesla investor's call Crystal that we covered Wednesday, that was a Tuesday call, nobody is even like, at least that I can see. Nobody's even really fighting bitterly about Elon anymore because he's fading into irrelevance. And that doesn't mean he's not going to be powerful. It just
means he's not going to be running the show. So it's like, why are people, why would you at this point waste your own political capital getting over getting in a fight over someone who is giving a bunch of money. The Republican Party is still going to be a powerful backer of Trump, but is not going to be at the center of the action and the administration in Washington, d C.
It's almost not worth it for people.
But but his stench is going to linger, and as crises pop up over the next three years, people and we are unable to respond to them effectively, which always happens uh with with government. Uh, people are going to be able to point back to what he did to
the government. Already You've got you know, bird flu ripping through everything, and you have the FDA saying that it can't actually you know, keep up with the different you know you cole I inspections and then and they can't really inspect milk like they would like to.
You can't do the same kind of quality control.
You got the measles outbreak, you got like uh, you know, Arkansas is being told it can't have emergency.
Declaration Kentucky to.
Kentucky like and all of these things are then going to go back to the stench of elon. And so right now, bird flu is like, you know, somewhat contained, and people aren't like it's it's not having the it's not contained. It's contained as a story. But that might not always be the case. And when if that is not the case, people are gonna be like, oh yeah, that guy came in and destroyed everything out of spite to own lives and arrows.
Yeah right.
Government spend.
I mean, you know, I never thought this was about government spending, as you guys know, but government spending is higher than it has ever been. They're doing a trillion
dollar budget, Pentagon budget. They're giving massive taxes for the rich, and even Steve bann Is out here like, show me any of you, like, show me a single cut that you made, just one, so you know the in terms of the numbers, it's gotten to a point where you either just have to blatantly close your eyes or it is clearly obvious that they either failed or in my opinion,
that was never the real goal to start with. But to Ryan's point, that doesn't mean that their actions didn't have extraordinary impact and won't have extraordinary consequences, some of which I think will be really unpredictable going forward.
You know.
It could be something that's on our radar, like bird flu or like you know, airline safety or something like that. It could be something that we're not even aware of or thinking about that got slashed in the melee that turns out to be really critical and really important and you know, the other thing I was thinking about politically is like, first of all, I think that Supreme Court
race genuinely was a turning point for Elon's power. That really seems to have been the moment when it was like, Okay, well this guy doesn't have.
The juice, so goodbye.
And number two, you know, the two big stories now that are dominating the news are deportations and tariffs and Elon, I mean, Elon's actively opposed to the tariffs and told his has said that before and ideologically been very clear and also reiterated that on his Tesla investor call. He has apparently been trying to lobby Trump behind the scenes to back away from this, and there's no indication that his entreaties had any impact on Trump whatsoever. So he's
irrelevant effectively to the terror story. Is also irrelevant effectively to the deportation story. So you know, in a cultural in a culture within the Trump administration that values who's able to trigger the libs and who's able to grab attention and hold on to it, his currency in that regard is also really diminished at this point.
Yeah, I think that's a good point.
I wonder actually if his lobbying on terraces behind closed doors maybe diminished him in Trump's esteem, because Trump is an ideological protectionist, and he does have this like bitter hostility towards people who are you know, what he sees as like not America first. And that's where Elin got really offended by Peter Navarro saying that, because he's like, and his supporters are like, look, we're doing so much more in the United States than a lot of other auto manufacturers.
Like what are you talking about.
That they're actually the most American car in terms of the parts and the assembly taking place to the largest extent in America.
Yeah, Peter Novara is an auto assembler, not a manufacturer. But I think that's a I think Trump will probab we agree with that seriously, and I think he's he's much more in the Navarro camp. So I wonder if that also he found He was apparently really upset when he that leak happened about Elon potentially getting briefed at the Pentagon on China.
The leak suggested that Trump was actually furious.
About that, probably whatever, probably because he sees it as something that's really damaging to him. He knows that his grassroots is more aligned with the Bandon wing, and it sounds like he was furious about that. So it's possible that Elon started greeting on him from those sorts of things too.
Well, it's not a people person either. He doesn't know how to you know, Trump requires a lot of massaging and like tiptoeing and jiu jitsu to try to make your point, and Elon is not. Really that's not really his particular skill set. Quite the opposite, Ryan, I wanted to get you in particular way, and just quickly on this piece, this Trump targeting apt lou in this presidential memorandum basically directing the Justice Department to investigate them. Your
Republicans have this. They've really just completely lied about what ACTBLU even is. Act BLU is just this payment platform so that democratic candidates are causes can raise grassroots dollars. They're framing this as being some you know that ACTBLU is some way that George Soros can nefariously funnel foreign
contributions into democratic causes. And then of course that's before we even talk about the fact that, you know, one administration ago, it would have been absolutely blockbuster news for the President to direct the DOJ to investigate the you know, anything to do with his political rivals. So just wondered your reaction to that executive order, which has been rumored for a while.
And I've argued with a bunch of people on the right about this. But you know Act Blue who think that ACTBLU is this giant scam that allows billionaires and people from overseas, you know, to funnel you know, hard dollar, small contribution to Democratic candidates and organizations. And that misunderstanding about what Act Blue is flows from the same mistake that Democrats and on the left sometimes make about Republicans,
just not believing that their opponents are real people. Like they saw Kamala Harris raise hundreds of millions of dollars in the first day and then like a billion within the first month or whatever, and they're like, that's impossible, Like nobody likes Kamala Harris. This must be like George Soros money that's being secretly funded to her, funneled to her. It's like no, Actually, you know a lot of people do like Kamala Harris, like a decent number of like countries,
middle class people do like her. And also they really hate you, yes, like they hate you so much.
Think about that.
They don't like her at all, but they despise you with enough of a passion that they will send fifty dollars in there. What and so when Red does the basically exact same thing as Act Blue on the Republican side.
Yeah, it was modeled on Blue technology.
It totally and Trump is not acting asking the dj to go after when read what he's saying is that and what the EO points to are instances of fraud that Act Blue itself identified and publicized and then kicked off of their platform. Act Blue will allow you to like keep your information saved, just like say Stripe or something like that. So it's easier than when you get another email or to see a tweet or a Facebook post to then donate to this person because you're mad.
And what the Trump administration wants to do is put more obstacles in the way of people and basically make them, you know, re enter all of their card info and all of their you know, their occupation data and everything each time they make a contribution. Because the data analysts know that, you know, every hurdle that you put in front of somebody is going to make it less likely
that they convert all the way. And we understand that over here at breaking points, you know, you go to break point dot com, and that the more complicated that it is made for people to subscribe, the fewer number of people are going to subscribe by the time they get through the maze and their entire you know, business models built around making it easy, because there's nothing more frustrating in this world than when you're trying to like donate your money to something or give your you know,
subscribe to something and you keep running up against error messages or like oh you didn't fill in this thing, and then so you're like, you know what, I'm out of here.
I don't have time for this.
The one that drives me crazy is when I'm trying to pay a bill and it's like that, I'm like.
You're money, really trying my best here, you know, take take.
My money, Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you?
Now? ActBlue.
What ActBlue is telling people in the democratic space is that this is gross and the threat and all that, but that they're not.
They're not worried, scared, worried.
You know, it's going to cost some money, but they said they're not shutting down, they're not changing anything. They're going to sue, They're going to counter sue. They're going to fight this in court, and they think that they will win, Like it is flagrantly criminal what Trump is trying to do here, and they don't and they and they're confident. Maybe this is naive, but they're confident that the courts are not going to not going.
To allow this.
Okay, interesting, Yeah, And I mean I do think there's an element here too. Obviously it's aimed at Democrats, but also, you know, the more difficult you make it for grassroots donors to contribute, the more important the big donors, the people like Elon Musk are to, you know, to campaigns. So I think there's an element of that as well, of like, let's get these small dollar donors out of here and just make sure it's us, you know, the people are able to stroke the big checks who really.
Have all the power.
Democrats themselves have been trying to get the small small dog.
I think it's just like true.
I think it's just like mob mentality, Like that's how Trump thinks it's okay to run politics, and it was just fueled by the way the like Russian investigent, Like, this is all downstream of right and this was.
Sparked by this Jack Pasoviac, Right, didn't Jack pasbec Jack Pisobiac pulled like some data from the FEC and like posted it and went viral on the right. Oh really, and it was like you totally read this wrong. It's like it was like literal fake news and they're now they're doing an EO based on it.
But no, yeah, I mean, it's it's all downstream of the this correct upset about what happened with the FBI and what happened with these law firms, and it's all saying this is the this is fighting the fire with the fire. And again my argument is not that makes it right, but that's the mentality that I think is behind it. It's just we're we're doing this, We're we're roy coning it now.
Hmm.
I want to get you, guys reaction to one more thing on the Democratic Party side. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching the free portion of the Friday show. We're going to move into some premium bonus content, so if you want to watch that as well, make sure to go and subscribe at breakingpoints dot com, and for all of you guys who are already premium subscribers, that portion is going to start right now.