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Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. Welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, good morning, good morning.
Also, if people didn't watch the Friday show, they should go check out Sager's.
Baby little bit of news.
Yeah, congratulations to Sager proud father of a baby girl.
And there are pictures, so if you go to Sager's Instagram you can see the picture.
Yeah, which I tried to pull up and failed on Friday, but in any case, you can go check those out for yourself. Pria June, which I think is a really beautiful name.
So cute too, adorable, adorable, lots of hair, lots of hair.
So we're just so happy for them.
Yes, indeed, meanwhile, you were suffering through our air traffic nightmarish landscape here over the weekend.
So my grandparents' seventieth anniversary was this weekend in Wisconsin. Wow, seventieth anniversary.
Unbelievable.
So that nineteen fifty five, I think.
Wow, connect that's God bless amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah, so we were really excited to go. But the Reagan Airport was a complete mess on Friday. There was a storm that rolled through the entire terminal basically had cancelations and delay so we were at the airport for seven hours until like three am early early Saturday.
So the reason I.
Say that is if you have Memorial Day travel, oh, I just be be aware that our air traffic system.
I mean everyone is already kind of aware of this.
But I think, honestly, the problems at Newark are still that's a problem that creates tangles throughout the entire country. It's such a big hub, So things are things are.
Rough well in Newark has gotten a lot of the attention because they had those catastrophic failures where they actively lost radar and were just completely blind. But the shortage in air traffic controllers is that's nationwide.
It's a massive issue.
Yes, and they blamed actually one of the American air gate agents when she was making announcements that was she was like, we just haven't had enough air traffic controllers. So and that was at Reade National, So I'm sure that's happening in other parts of the country too. Wow, be careful if you have a Memorial Day travel it's it's.
Rough out there.
Yeah, plan to be in for the long haul seriously as well. Yeah, lots to get to you in the show this morning. So there are some major developments out of Gaza amidst a completely apocalyptic ground invasion from Israel. They have agreed to let in some minimal amount of aid, so we'll break all of that. There's a lot of
moving pieces going on in the region right there. And we also wanted to highlight for you THEO Vaugh came out and you know said he made some comments, you know, Mary heartfelt about how he felt that he hadn't said enough about the what he's describing as a genocide and Gazo, which I think is to me undeniable at this point, so wanted to take a look at that and the way that public opinion in the US overall has shifted
with regard to Israel and Palestine. President Biden formed. President Biden diagnosed with a very aggressive form of prostate cancer. We actually have a Biden insider who had already been booked to be on the show, Michael Lorosa.
We've had him on before.
He was doctor Jill Biden's press secretary, and so he's been talking about, you know, what he saw inside of
that world and trying to be candid about that. So, you know, interested to hear his reaction to this cancer diagnosis and look, just to be frank, the timing of it raises a lot of eyebrows, especially the fact that it is so advanced, and this would be someone who would be seen medically, you know, would have been in the White House seeing the White House doctors, and certainly would be subsequent to that as well.
Yeah, absolutely, we actually have some a lot of doctors were weighing in after the diagnosis and some you know, we yeah, I think we have some information from a Yale professor who's a doctor. Like we're not talking cranks who were weighing in on the diagnosis of Biden, in the timing of the diagnosis, or at least the announcement of the diagnosis.
So there's a lot to get to.
Yeah.
With that, Crystal Friday, Moody's agreed with the other analysts and finally downgraded the rating of the United States.
Yeah, and I think the markets are down this morning because of it, So there's a lot there. There's some new comments from Trump and Secretary Bessant with regard to Walmart, saying they're going to raise prices. Trump says Walmart should eat the tariffs, so we'll see if they oblige. We also have our eyes on a horrific system of tornadoes
that hit the midwest, Kentucky, Missouri in particular. I think twenty six people dead after that, and questions about whether or not DOGE may have impacted their ability to alert people in the area rapidly enough. So we'll dig into
all of that. And we're also going to have our Jun Singh of lever News join us to talk about the history of the anti tax movement, which is always relevant, but it's particularly relevant right now as Republicans are trying to get this Reconciliation bill pass They just passed it down a committee actually late last night, and obviously includes
a giant tax cut for the rich. Again, even though public opinion has really turned on the concept of this sort of like overall trickle down concept, they're huge majorities in both parties and certainly with Independence as well at this point for raising taxes on the rich. So in any case, he's going to dig into the backstory of how we got to this moment.
Yeah, We've got some fun clips in history to go through. It'll be a really interesting segment, So stay tuned for that, Crystal. We'll be doing an AMA that's right as well. Yes, Breakingpoints dot com by the way, to get that subscription. If you can't get the subscription, we totally understand. Just make sure to subscribe on YouTube. Believe comments like the videos.
It helps us, Yeah, helps us a lot. So thank you guys for all your support that you've shown. And if you want to be part of that AMA Live, which we try to do every Monday or Tuesday, depending on how long the Monday.
Show us go.
But we got on the schedule this week for Monday, I'll make sure you do that. And one one more announcement before we jump into what is going on in Gaza. Dave Smith is going to join me tomorrow as so that should be fun. I already got a bunch of topics. You know, we'll dig into the latest on you know, Ukraine.
There's movement that I want to hear from him on I actually want to get his take on this Epstein thing with both Bongino and cash matel being like, yeah, he killed himself, there's really nothing to.
See here, Banino said yesterday, like I've seen the file. He kills the whole file. I noticed suicide looks like the other.
One he said, is that there's no there there in terms of many like Trump assassination conspiracies as well.
Which is also absurd to fit. I mean, the stuff going on with that assassination secret Service, it's really something if that's where they're landing to see here less than a year after nothing to see here.
Yeah, in any case, it should be fun. So I'm looking forward to that. All right, Let's get into some news that is quite grim, quite dire at this point. Let's go ahead and put a eight up on the screen here, guys. Israel has agreed to introduce what they're describing as a basic amount of food into Gaza in order to prevent famine, framing it as necessary to sustain the expansion of intense fighting to defeat Hamas. They have the full statement here from bb Netnya, who's office is
from drop Site. They say, on the recommendation of the IDF and out of the operational need to enable the expansion of the intense fighting to defeat Hamas, Israel will introduce a basic amount of food to the population in order to ensure that famine crisis does not develop in the Gaza strip. Such a crisis would jeopardize the continuation of the Gideon Chariots operation to defeat Hamas, that is
the new apocalyptic ground invasion that they are conducting. Israel will work to deny Hamas's ability to take control of the distribution of humanitarian aid to ensure that the aid does not reach Hamas terrorists. I also have Jeremy Scahill of drop Site News, of course, tweeted Netnia who said Israel will allow some aid into Gaza because controversy over a starvation campaign is hindering implementation of his final solution quote.
We're going to take control of all the Gaza Strip, and to do this, we need to do it in a way that they won't stop us. Smotrich endorsed nat Nyahu's temporary aid gimmick, saying it will allow the US and other israel allies to continue to provide us with an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and the Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight until victory. So emily, it sounds like they realized that the world was not maybe gonna just stand by and
let them before all of our eyes start. Somewhere around two million people left in the Gaza Strip. They also will show you some of these images later. They are starting to face some significant internal domestic pushback as well. There was a march to the border fence there with Gaza and attempts actually to cross that were you know, of course rebuffed by the Israeli police, but they were under enough pressure to feel like, okay, we at least
need to allow some token amount of food in. It's been over two months since any food, water, medicine has entered the strip, and we know that there have been children who are I mean children who are severe malnourished and some who have died as a result of the starvation policy.
Well, and just to I mean make this visual for everyone, we can go ahead and start rolling A two.
This is a mashup of some.
Footage of what we're seeing from the strip.
So this was kids who were playing in the street in Gaza and an Israeli drone struck them. You can see here obviously wounded being carried. These are you know, fires amidst the bombing and just just chaos that you can see unfolding here.
Tents that caught fire.
Here they're attempting to rescue someone from out underneath the rubble. They haven't been allowed to have any heavy equipment in so it's just all done by hand. Here is the destruction of an entire neighborhood. I believe this is in or near Rafa. A severely injured child that you see here with head and other wounds. People who are once again trying to looks like carry their belongings, being forcibly, forcibly displaced once again. And here's an overall view that
you can see of the rubble and the destruction. As people go ahead and you know.
Try to flee to wherever may be safe, you know, Crystal, last week we were covering the internal conversation. We talked to Jeremy Skhle about this, but in Israel about whether or not USAID and this is from the far right in Israel, whether or not USAID hampers them ultimately, if it's ultimately something that holds back.
Their efforts to prosecute the war and the way that they would want to.
And that's an interesting context that as the famine was worsening, and as you know, they wanted to continue to go back in, we saw them, you know, saying, well, maybe without the US, without the money from the United States, without the resources from the United States, we wouldn't even have to have these conversations.
We could just do whatever we wanted.
And you know what we saw just in the last twenty four hours at least on the AID side, is that the pressure was successful for now.
But this is Steve Whitcough right now.
He's saying that he's not forcing Israel to end the war according to officials. Crystal, That's where I'm most curious about what's happened over the weekend. In particular, we still don't have a ton of information. The Barack reviewed report on AID and Axios suggests that US pressure was instrumental
in getting the humanitarian aid back into Gaza. But we just we don't know what's happening behind the scenes, but we have indications, like from Steve Whitcough, that they're not being as let's say privately intense as they at one point suggested that they would be.
Well, and we should be clear about what this aid really entails. You know, Israel had gone to a number of humanitarian aid organizations with this plan of how they wanted to distribute aid, and they all effectively said, no, this would be unconscionable, it would violate our principles, your civilians at risk. You're using food as a weapon of war. You know, even in the language that BB uses here,
he describes it as a basic amount of food. So basically, you know, we'll give you enough so that hopefully we don't have full blown famine and people starving to death, because we don't think the world would just sit by and watch that. Potentially, and maybe our own population even would not, you know, some portion of it would not sit back and watch that. But you know, aid organizations rejected this as an outrageous way of going about things.
There's also some scheme that's been cooked up with US non governmental organizations involving effectively US mercenaries who are already arriving in Israel to be involved in this aid distribution, this basic amount of aid distribution. They did not take a vote in the Security Cabinet because the expectation is that vote to allow in even this bare minimum of food would have failed. Smochrich and Ben Gevie have been
opposed to it. But again and their justification is, if we want to finish the job in Gaza, then apparently we're going to have to allow in some amount of food. So that is the context in which this is happening. We have some comments recent comments from Trump as well about whether or not he's frustrated with Netan Yahoo and also once again reiterating his commitment to a full ethnic cleansing plan. This was in an interview with Brett Barrett. Let's go ahead and take a listen to those comments.
Obviously, the Israel Hamas and what's happening in Gaza is driving a lot.
How do you see that?
Are you frustrated at all with Prime Minster?
Net Yahoo?
No, Look, he's got a tough situation. You have to remember there was an October seventh that everyone forgets. It was one of the most violent days in the history of the world, not the Middle East, the world. When you look at the tapes, and the tapes are there for everyone to see. So he has that problem. That problem should have never happen. And now if I were president, that problem wouldn't have happened because Iran had no money. They were stone cold broke and they weren't giving money
to Hamas. The situation in Gaza is going to come to an end soon. The gazzas of nasty place. It's been that way for years. I think it should become a free zone, you know freedom. I call it a freedom zone. It should become a freedom zone. It doesn't work. Every ten years they go back, they have Hamas. Everybody's being killed all over the place. I mean, you ever see you talk about crime sets. It's it's a nasty place.
Are these people, these countries that you were just visiting, are they going to have to be a part of the solution. Well, they would be. They would be. I spoke to all three of them. They would absolutely be. I mean they're really rich and really really really even more than rich. They're good people and they would help, and so money's not even the problem. You got to get countries to say, yes, we'll take them. Look, these are people that want to be in the Middle East.
They really want to be in the Middle East. They the Middle East. I see that there's a spirit for the Middle East. They didn't have to go to Sweden, Germany, these different countries. They could have been home in the Middle East if somebody had the brains to build beautiful communities. You know, one point nine million is a lot of people, but it's not a lot of people.
He says.
They could be home in the Middle East. I'm sure Palestinians will tell you their home is in Palestine. In any case, there were reports as well about a plan to potentially ethnically cleanse Palestinians to Libya. We can put a four up on the screen. After the report was published. Then they put out a denial saying this is untrue. But NBC News had given them a chance to comment, they didn't say anything. The Trump administration, NBC News says, is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to
one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya. Five people with knowledge told NBC News the plans under serious enough consideration. The administration is discussed it with Libya's leadership. Don't say which factions of Libya's leadership, because Libya is basically you know, torn as under thanks to our own
foreign policy. In any case, they say, in exchange for the resettling of Palestinian's administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars in funds that the US froze more than a decade ago. Those three people said, so, you know, apparently there have been some conversations there. In addition, Trump you know, has consistently reiterated that this is his ultimate goal. And one other note on his comments there, Emily that
I just think is you know, worth considering. He claims in that clip we just played that there are one point nine million people in Gaza. That would indicate that you know, some hundreds of thousands of people have been killed since you know, post October seventh. The original estimate prior to October seventh was two point two to two
point three million people. So you know, drop site pointing out that that means if his numbers are correct, and he said similar things before too, by the way, that this campaign's already reduced the Palestinian population in Gaza by about fifteen percent.
Oh my gosh.
Well, speaking of the Trumpman station A six, this is a drop site report noticing as well. So we'll put this in the context of what we were just talking about with Steve Witcough. This is the drop site report saying that this is from Jeremy. Steve wit Cough personally promised to lift the Gaza blockade in exchange for Don Alexander.
And so it is now May nineteenth, and what we've seen, as we mentioned just a couple of minutes ago, is indications to the contrary from Steve wit Cough that or that he's acting contrary to what Jeremy's reporting suggests.
He said that he was going to.
Do and crystal with the humanitarian aid plan that you just laid out. This is for a wit Cough, this
is looking extremely bad. I mean, Trump puts so much of his projects and puts so much of his hopes onto Steve wit Coough to get an into this conflict, but to the point where you know you're telling one of these negotiations, which is Hamas, that you're going to do something, you don't do it, and they just give up a huge piece of leverage for that probably doesn't help your ability to continue negotiating in a way that's helpful to securing an end to the conflict.
Right there or anywhere else. Yeah, yeah, I mean if you're Iran and you're looking at Whitkoff just told them like, okay, you release this American Israeli hostage and we will then you know, will secure this aid relief. We're going to work and press for an end to the war. We're going to give you public credit and there series of promises that were made and then you just don't do it. How do you think that, you know, the Russians and
the Ukrainians are going to look at that. How do you think that the Iranians are going to look at that? How do you think that Hamas is going to look at that going forward? You know, if you do want to seek an end to this conflict. So it's yeah, it's a huge deal in terms of his credibility when as you put it, Emily, he has been put so central to all of these key high stakes negotiations. Will
cover with Dave Smith tomorrow. There's supposed to be a Trump putent phone call coming up in an attempt to you know, to end that war. So in any case, you know, not only did he just like get this and the the possible trajectory here, one possible reading of what the Trump administration has done here, And Michael Tracy said the same thing on his Twitter.
Is basically like they got the last.
American and then they can just not really care anymore about what BB does going forward. And you know, I think that's I think that's a real possibility of what we're seeing unfold, and especially when again everyone wants to go, well, what does Trump really want?
What's he really thinking?
Like he's told us multiple times what he really wants someone he's really thinking he wants this freedom zone, ethnic cleansing, beach development plan. That's what he wants. Now will he be able to achieve that? That's kind of the only question. But to me, it's not really an open question anymore. What Trump wants to see. He wants to see the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza and some sort of real estate development project that he can participate in going forward.
And you know, like I said, the only really outstanding question in terms of him is how committed he is to that and whether that's something that he can actually effectuate.
It just I mean, we talked about this when he announced his first plans for Mara Gaza or whatever.
You know, it's being dubbed that.
It's a recipe for complete and total disaster. Like, on top of the ethical considerations of what it would entail, you're also just going to end up worsening the radical rage at US imperialism, Western imperialism. For like the entire situation. People have fought for decades literally for the land. And we don't even have to get into this, but it's so obviously just a recipe for even more and even more explosive situation because people are not going to stop
fighting for the land and there. It doesn't just affect Palestine, it doesn't just affect people in the area. I mean, it's other groups spread throughout the entire region are react to what happens in God's or react to what I mean, just to the infamous Osama bin Laden letter, what is its site, Well, it talks about Palestine. It's not some
small issue for a lot of America's adversaries. So it's just even on its own terms, a ridiculous idea that they seem to actually genuinely be pushing closer and closer to making the goal at the end stage of negotiations.
So increasingly inside of Israel there are protests that are not just about retrieving the hostages securiancies fire to get the hostages back. They're starting to actually talk about Palestinians and the suffering of Palestinians. Now I'm under no illusion, based on the pulling that this is anything approaching majority coalition in Israel, but this is really the first time we've seen any of that messaging at all, any concern for you know, the lives of Palestinians being expressed in
the protest movements that have been ongoing. So we can put these images up on the screen. You had a group of I believe it's several hundred Israelis who marched towards the border with Gasa. Some of them are holding signs that said Palestinian lives matter, which again is just not something that we've seen in Israel. I mean, it's this sort of thing you could be you know, censored for,
arrested for. You can see one of those Palestinian Lives Matter signs there, and you had even attempt to, you know, directly approach that border fencing, which was rebuffed.
By the Israeli police there.
But Emily, it is significant to me that even within Israel, and we've seen this, I mean this, you know, Schild Benefrem, who we've had on the show as a liberal Zionist who completely changed his mind about He says, Okay, you know what, the left is right, this is a genocide and this is horrific. Now he's still committed to the state of Israel, but you know, I think he's one example of how some liberal Israelis have woken up to the horrors of the slaughter that is being committed in
their names. And so in any case, it's even though it's a small number, I do think it's noteworthy that there's a karen concern for Palestinians here that we at least I haven't seen in any evident in any of the protests up to this point.
It's I mean, I think it's very significant, and I think some of it also has to do with the you know the fact that there it's more obvious now than ever before that this idea that the war and all of the destruction and death that it's wrought is not going to result in the end of Hamas and right, I think.
That just sort of makes everything.
It just it makes clear what all of this was ultimately for and what it was actually going to end in. So it's not a surprising development at all. But I have to imagine that some of it it stems from that.
Yeah, absolutely, I think you're right. Some of these things just have become undeniable at this point. Undeniable at this point, one of those protest testers actually spoke out about what his goals were and why he was there.
Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
While our government, the Israeli government, launches another attack on Gaza, we are marching hundreds of people choose the Palestinians from the rocks to the Gaza voters with that demand to stop this assault on Gaza, to stop the horrible killing of innocent people, hell of children. And we are demand from the Harbor government to sign a.
Deal to a six fire.
And I also a we are.
A human to say very very clearly that Israeli public to not support this government. This sport cannot go on, This war has nothing with our safety. It's only about annexation and building both settlements and transferring the Palestinians, and we would not let it happen.
So he says what you were indicating that, like, at this point, it's undeniable. This war is just about annexation and settlements and transferring the Palestinians, as he says, effectively ethnic cleansing. So that's where things stand this morning in terms of Israel. We did want to share with you some comments from Theo vonn He's been described as Trump's favorite podcaster. It was certainly important as part of the like bro podcast sphere that helped to get Trump elected.
And he took, you know, a good several minutes on his show to effectively apologize for not saying more about Gaza and to you know, express that he does believe that this is a genocide that's unfolding before all of our eyes. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of that.
It feels to me, fact, it just it feels to me like it's a genocide that's happening while we're alive here in front of our in front of our lives. And I don't sometimes I feel like I should say something. I'm not a geologist or geographer or anything like that, you know, so I don't know a lot of the some of it. I do know, though, like I know
the basics of the issues over there. But for me, it's just like how I feel like you see all these photos of people, just children, women, people body parts, just people like putting their kids back together, and I just can't believe that we're watching that and that more isn't said about it. And so I'm not saying anyone else needs to say anything, but I think I'm just
that more isn't said about it by me. So I just I want to be able to speak up about that that I think we're watching, probably, like you know, one of the sickest things that's ever happened. And I'm sorry if I kind of haven't said about it. I've tried to talk about and learn about it, but I don't know. Maybe I just want to. I just wanted to say something. I don't even know what to do,
you know. And it's crazy because our country is also complicit in in it, you know, it's in it and has been for a long time, and and it's just kind of interesting because then you just realize, oh, well, I'm just a Yeah, I'm a member of this country, but I'm just what we want. Sometimes doesn't matter.
That last part is interesting. We'll come back to that. And sometimes in this country what you want just it doesn't matter. Emily, what did you make at the significance of theovon there?
Well, so he just had dinner with Ivanka and Jared Levonka Trump.
And Jared Kushner.
Yeah, literally last week, last week.
And Jared Kushner obviously the architect of the Abraham Accords.
So I actually find this to be very significant.
Joe Rogan has reacted to the war in similar ways. And I think you know, I was, I was reading yesterday and I know you're going to talk to Dave Smith about this, But the New York Times had a big dive into the Heritage Foundation's Project esther over the weekend, and.
Which shout out to drop site reported on this like yes, what a year ago?
Yes, yeah, yes, And you know it's it's basically like they're the plan that they put in front of the administration to go after students and to suppress speech. And as I was reading this story, you know, I know a lot of people at the Heritage Foundation kind of on both sides of the generational divide, like some of the people who are more from the neo conservative version of the Republican Party and people who are in the like new.
Right Maga world.
And as I'm listening to the Avonne, thinking, hmm, this is going to be a real problem for the old neo conservative Republicans going forward, because as as much as it looks like whit Cough is, you know, pulling a fast one and not doing what he said to put pressure on his reel to get an into the conflict, increasingly the younger, younger voters in the Republican Party, but even younger staff is just not on board with this anymore. And they're all listening to people like Theovonne, Joe Rogan.
They just have a completely different worldview when it comes to this particular issue. So as I was watching it, that's what was going through my head that like, this is going to this does resonate, this does move young people on the right, and it's that that you know, is not going to be easily blended with the old neoconservative approach to this for much longer.
Yeah, I mean I appreciate him saying this to his audience. I want to know if he's also saying it to Vana Vanca when he's having dinner with them in a very friendly way, like if you're saying this is a genocide, and then you're I mean, he also just went we can put this up on this green E ten. He was in Cutter with Trump there the Ravon rips on drugs, disabilities,
and homosexuality before Trump speaks at US Space in Kutcher. So, I mean, this is someone who has public power because he's very influential with a large group of young men, and so him using his voice on his platform matters a lot there. But he also has private power because Trump does attribute, you know, some of his electoral victory to people like Theoon, and he's routinely described as Trump's favorite podcast.
Baron probably listens to Theovonna if reports are correct.
Yeah, that's right.
No, that was the reporting that Baron was instrumental in putting them together. So he also has private power. And I think that's the real question is Okay, if you see this is a genocide, which I agree with and at this point many other people do as well, not to mention international organizations as well, like, okay, are you using the inside track that you have to exert pressure internally as well, so that that would be my question.
But I do think we can go ahead.
Let's skip ahead to a twelve to your point about the way that public opinion has shifted, because you know, it's this kind of dichotomy where at the same time that Israel is at it's almost like most powerful all the countries that's bombing in territory that it's annexing and you know, on the verge of effectively a final solution in Gaza. The backing in the US has taken a dramatic hit. I mean not among elite elected politicians so much, right,
but among the people. Just look at these numbers, the way that negative views of Israel have risen in the US. So, first of all, for maybe the first time ever, majority of US adults majority have a negative view of the state of Israel.
So they were asked yes, so this is a question of they were asked if they have an unfavorable view of Israel.
Straight up. That goes from forty two percent.
In twenty twenty two to fifty three percent in twenty twenty five.
That's right, that's right, And Republicans are still the group that it has the largest, you know, favorable proportion. But look at that generational divide that Emily was pointing to. So now you have a majority of Republicans between eighteen and forty nine, So not even that particle early young fifty percent now say they have an unfavorable view. Man, those boomer Republicans, though they love them some Israel, they have barely budged.
Look at those, I mean, the number the generational divide is more than so twenty three. Only twenty three percent of fifty plus Republicans have an unfavorable view of Israel. And it's as Crystal said, fifty percent of ages eighteen to forty nine. I bet if you just did eighteen to twenty four, that number would be even higher.
I have no doubt, no doubt about that.
And these are all people in one party. And granted it's not what people go to the polls and vote based on, but it does create a permission structure for politicians to act in various ways. So when you look at those numbers, at some point that has to change the way Republican politicians approach the issue.
You would think.
But that's what theovonn gets to at the end of his at the end of his moment, therey right.
So it feels like there's nothing.
It feels like what we want doesn't really matter. And if you look at the Democratic numbers there, you know, you see a huge shift where now you've got sixty nine percent of Democrats and lean Dems overall with an unfavorable view and a much smaller generational divide, So seventy one percent of eighteen to forty nine year old, sixty six percent of fifty plus and those fifty plus in the Democratic Party, that is the group that has moved the most, because it used to be just if you're
of an older generation like Joe Biden, you support Israel and you really don't think too much about it, and that has shifted dramatically. And yeah, I mean, I actually do think that this issue is important electorally. I think it's going to be quite significant in the Democratic primary in twenty twenty eight. I think it will be a litmus test in the Democratic primary in twenty twenty eight.
And I also think, you know, I mean, this is it speaks to the hypocrisies of America first, when you're claiming like, Okay, we're just going to focus on US interests, and yet you're still funding this genocide with you know, with our tax dollars, shipping all this money and weapons and diplomatic support to Israel to do whatever the hell
Israel wants to do. So there's a there is an electoral hypocrisy there that also, I think, you know, it's I don't think it will be insignificant, not that it's going to be everybody's number one issue, but when we talk to those AOC Trump voters, so a lot of them actually did bring up Ukraine and Israel, and you know a sense of dissatisfaction with Biden Harris on those issues in particular.
So I don't want to downplay it either.
Well, and for a lot of working class voters, you look at that actually as a material kitchen table concern for yourself because it makes you angry that you're struggling in no small part in some cases because of the way the government has structured the economy, because of the way the government spends its money, and you see all of this funding going to foreign conflicts in many cases no end in sight.
And politicians who seem to care more about a foreign country than they do this one.
One hundred percent.
So yeah, I mean I think this is also and this is something that I don't think those older conservative actually I should say Republicans and Democrats have grappled with yet is the post imperial era of America's like approach to the Middle East.
So for generations that grew up.
Amidst the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, that looking at Israel post that post October seventh, I think it's it's actually just a.
Very different dynamic.
And you know, we could go back and have conversations about historical like historical Israel and you know, the last one hundred years of history in Israel, if not longer. But uh, there's there's definitely this is a new chapter in American relationship, like post October seventh is a new
chapter in a relationship with Israel. And in a sense, I think for a lot of people it's it's come across as much more egregious as a different version or a changed version I shouldn't say different, but a changed version of Israel that's engaging in negotiations with the US and that is having these back and forth with US power. So I mean, I think that's one thing that just has not been understood very well, is this is Israel is in a different position, yeah these days.
Well And one of the most going back to Theovonn's comments, one of the most potent arguments that pro Israel people have made in the past is well, you don't understand. The history is too complicated, so just stay out of it.
Just let us worry about it. You don't worry about it, just trust us that you're on the right side. It's all good.
It's good versus bad, right, Like, it's always this very maniqueen dark and light, good and bad.
And what they don't.
Understand is is now with social media, you can see everything, right.
And so I think that that like like that worked really well on liberals for a long time of like, well, the history is just.
Really complicated, you don't understand.
And now because those images are so undeniable, it has sort of overcome this unwillingness to engage with where it's like, Okay, but maybe I don't need to know one hundred.
Years of history.
Maybe I can have my own world judgment about what's being done right now today in the present with my tax dollars and as the world watches.
Ryan and I fell into a long conversation on an episode a few months ago about how what happened to shrin Abu Akla was a sort of changing moment for me, and part of that was because you could piece together so many different social media, so much different evidence from social media, and all these different angles of video, all of these different movements were captured on iPhone cameras or smartphone cameras, and when you're able to see so much
different pieces of the puzzle, you can put it together in ways that gives the propaganda a lot less power.
Yeah, I think that's right, and I think also coming at a time when trust in mainstream media has never been lower, their ability to manufacture consent is vastly diminished, certainly with in the Republican Party, but increasingly within the
Democratic Party as well. There was one more thing we wanted to get to you here, which again I think is kind of a sign of the times, which is Bernie Sanders on the most mainstream shows you could get on with Stephen Colbert Late Night and calling out directly the influence of APAK, specifically in politics, as the reason why Democrats are unable to break with the consensus with regard to Israel. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what Bernie had to say.
But on the Democratic side, and this is what we've got to deal with. I happen to believe that what is going on in Gaza right now is horrific. That we are seeing children right now as we speak, starving to death, massive malnutrition.
Your fellow Vermonter Ben of Ben and Jerry's was actually at one of the hearings I believe you were at yesterday and was dragged out when he was making that protest.
But why do you think more Democrats are not speaking up on the issue.
Money?
Yeah, of course, if you speak up on that issue, you'll have super packs, like a pack going after you in the same way Elon Musk goes after Republicans.
There you go calling out APAC directly to applause.
On.
I still want to call it the Colbert rapport. Old I am, but I wish.
I mean, that would be amazing, that.
Was the peak he was at his height of his powers.
Then, I mean absolutely it will never be anything like the Colbert rapport again.
But yeah, I think it's a good point.
It's just we we see all kinds of anecdotal evidence and then the polling numbers bears it out that just the US public has shifted on this, and it's I think part of it is fatigue and disillusionment with American Empire post Iraq and Afghanistan, and a sort of a sense of cynicism about what's possible, what the American Empire can accomplish and bringing peace to the Middle East as opposed to focusing back a And I'm not going to open up the can of worms that is that debate
right now, but I think that is the sense that so many people have on top of what they've seen over the course of the last several years, and in this case, again with seemingly no end in sight. I mean, every time it feels like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, it goes away, it fades.
So, yeah, people are just sick of it.
All right, let's go ahead and turn to this huge domestic news. We can put this up on the screen. So, Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. I'll read you this last week present. Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule. After experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer characterized by a gleasan score of nine
grade group five with metastasis to the bone. While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone sensitive, which allows for effective management. The president and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians. Can put the next piece up on the screen. This is from Ken Klippenstein puld some research about the five year survival rate for this form of metastasized prostate
cancer which has metastasized to the bone. He says the study found a five year survival rate of thirty two percent. Joe Biden also, you know, relatively elderly at this point as well, which doesn't help for the survival rate chances.
And you know, this comes emily, of course, at a time when there has been a lot of focus on who knew what and when with regard to Joe Biden's mental decline over the course of his presidency and even potentially before his presidency, something we've certainly been talking about since before his presidency. So a lot of questions raised about the timing of this announcement given the advanced state
of the cancer. So to address all of these things and tell us what he saw when he was deep inside of Biden world, We're going to be joined by Michael Erosa. He is the former press secretary to doctor Jill Biden and he's been speaking out about some of what he saw while he was on the inside. Joining us now in studio is Michael Erosa, form press secretary for doctor Jill Biden. Good to see Michael.
Good to see you too, Thanks for having me here.
Yeah, of course, So before we jump into all of this, including cancer diagnosis and you know, the mental decline and what people knew at the time, just lay out for our audience, like what was your role? How close were you with the Bidens? How often did you see the former president? Those sorts of things that we sort of have a baseline.
Sure, so you know I was not.
I was actually considered more of an outsider, and the Bidens did not take many outsiders into their at least into their bubble, the traveling bubble on the twenty twenty campaign.
So I started with them as there as doctor Biden's traveling press secretary starting in twenty nineteen, So I traveled everywhere with her throughout the Democratic primary, stayed with her through the general election in the same position, and then went to the White House as her chief spokesperson, special assistant to President Biden and also primary traveling spokesperson for
the first Lady. So we traveled to about eighteen countries, thirty eight states, and seventy five cities in that first you know, two years of the White House when I was there, spent a lot of because our you know, what they call the traveling bubble was very small and.
Uh and that's COVID era too, so particularly COVID area.
Yes, it was like that.
Prior to COVID there was his traveling bubble, our traveling bubble, and then we all kind of and during COVID we would end up staying close physically together, living together in Wilmington because we tried to keep the Bidens around the same people consistently.
And a smaller group as well.
But that smaller group was really the group that spent the most time with both Bidens is whether it was in Wilmington, Rehoboth, or Camp David.
They left the White House most weeks.
So what was your reaction to the news yesterday of Joe Biden's cancer is.
You know, human, sad, heartbreaking, trying to learn more about how bad it is, and you know how long the treatments can get him.
Obviously he's eighty two.
So things when you're diagnosed, I guess or I'm not a doctor, but I imagine that when you get diagnosed with a cancer like that that metastasizes to bones, that it's not good.
But just praying. I think I've been thinking a lot about doctor Biden.
And I saw the picture that they posted this morning with Willow, their cat, who I have a special relationship with because I watched her for the first year of the White House.
So it made me. It choked me up a little bit to see the three of them.
But yeah, I'm just thinking a lot about them today.
So this has raised a lot of questions for people about you know, this comes in the context of questions about the cover up of his decline. This is unfortunately very aggressive and advanced stage of disease apparently, and so we can put b three up on the screen. You know, it's a lot of people on the right who were saying Is this really when they got the diagnosis or is this actually time to come out now? But this is someone with doctor from Yale.
Yale Professional was.
Also raising questions. It's inconceivable that this was not being followed before he left the presidency. Glease in grade nine would have had an elevated PSA level. That's like something that would show up in a blood test. I'm understanding for some time before this diagnosis. He must have had a PSA test numerous times before.
This is odd.
I wish him well and I hope he has an opportunity for maximizing his quality of life.
You know, given what you.
Saw of the way that the bidens operated, can you assure people that this diagnosis was just made now, that there wasn't some longer term cover up of an earlier cancer diagnosis.
No, I can't assure you that I saw Zeke Emmanuel on Morning Joe for the first twenty minutes of Morning Joe basically say the same exact thing. University a pen doctor. I think I believe he's an oncologist. I have to go back and check. I thought he was. I now again, I'm just repeating what I what I observed and heard this morning, which is that it would be very unusual according to Zeke Emmanuel who was on this morning, that they that Gleason level nine would not have been found
much earlier. He said that generally, you know, he may he may have not have had these PSA tests after seventy years old. However, the three other presidents, I believe it was Obama, Bush and Trump who did have these PSA tests when they were in the White House, according to their medical results, but Biden did not. So look, there's questions, and I understand why there's questions, and I think it was BBC journalist Katy k who was on today who's also said.
On this topic.
You know, given the conversation we are having about trust right now, this does raise questions and they're saying that I.
Am just observing and listening and hearing, but it's.
Given your experience with them and the way that they operated, you're effectively saying you wouldn't put it past them to have hit a cancer diagnosis for some amount of time.
I've always wanted to always give them the benefit of the doubt, and my experience when I was there was it was hard. It was very hard. Their natural instincts. And I'm not talking about Joe and Joe Biden, Okay, I want to be clear. I'm talking about the people that they listened to, the people in that in our circle, in the insular.
Bubble, donaldin Forshetty, not sister.
More about the people who were safeguarding their privacy constantly, which sometimes took the sort of north star to political.
Uh decisions.
So it sounds like there's there's an inner circle which you were a part of, and then an inner circle within that inner circle. And I think that's something that Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson are reporting in Original Sin
is that? But I also wondered to what extent that's a kind of cope And I want to get your thoughts on that that it gives some people the ability to sort of say, well, we were you know, there was this this privacy circle that was being like they were circling the wagons around what may have actually been happening.
What's your take on that?
I mean, was it is it real that maybe it was Joe Biden, Joe Biden and Hunter Biden Valorie, like, what is that? Who would have been keeping it so that even people like yourself. Weren't thinking, oh my gosh, this is out of control, unless you were thinking that.
It's hard to say.
It's all it's a matter of timing, Like what period are you particularly referring to, like at the end, because that's what the.
Book suggests that it happens after twenty twenty two printer stuff.
I left right after twenty twenty two?
So did you see it?
So that I've always been consistent by the way, I should preface this by saying, no, he never ever gave me a moment's pause.
I was.
I went on Fox News Jesse Waters at the night of the debate to say, look, he's going to run circles around anybody on his record on policy, on the other guy's record. My concern was the performative aspect of debating and showmanship. Did he prepare with a studio light? Did he prepare in a Was he prepared for the unexpected against Donald Trump? That's why it's not like debating a different or a traditional kind of Republican So was
he prepared for that kind of thing? And remember we we were always used to him showing up on game day, especially like we beat Trump in the last two debates, he showed up at the State of the Union, and if you think about it from that inner circle's mind, with everything going back to nineteen eighty seven, which it was the most and first scarring experience in politics that they had Joe Biden to them, and the way they think and the way they make decisions is that Joe Biden
is underestimated. Joe Biden always defies gravity in the face of people who doubt them, So you have to keep that in mind. That's how they make very big decisions.
One of the big pieces of information we just got is the her audio was just released, and we've had a couple of moments here. The first one is with regard to the central question with regard to that was these classified documents, and he appears sort of confused about you know exactly what they were, why there were et cetera. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
You were aware that you had kept it after your Jarman vice president?
Did you know that you had it? I don't know that I knew, wouldn't wouldn't some something I wants started to think about.
The reason I asked, is it's been written it.
Out about Woodward wrote about it.
In one of his books, Jewels we Cover wrote about it and his biograp.
So that's that's the reason I asked if it was something that he wanted to.
Hang on to because he was going to be reporting or his.
Own is gonna be showing reporting. But I wanted to hang I guess I wanted to hang on just proposterity setting. I mean, this was my position on Afghanistan.
His president.
I'm sorry, I mean that's that's what I wanted to do.
I don't know what didn't do with Afghanistan.
Okay, that way, and Mark just really quickly, I promise will be believe. I just really would like to avoid the purpose of the clean record getting into specultive areas. When the President responded and said, I don't recall intending to keep this memo, you then said, well, you know, might two have thought it was important to keeping whatever, And he said, well, I guess I could have his recollection.
As I understand it is, he does not recall specifically intending to keep this memo after he left the vice presidency, and I want that to be I want these questions to be as clearly answered and recorded on the transfert as possible.
I bet we should take a bradiance.
And probably even more significant was the audio that was released regarding his confusion of when his son bo passed away and also when he was in the vice presidency and being confused about the years when he was serving in which office.
Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
I don't know. This is what twenty seventeen eighteen. Men, here is Remember in this time frame, my son is either been deployed or is dying. When boone dye got a mazed twenty eighteen, when twenty fifteen and died fifteen he was twenty fifteen or eat that much of the months.
Or what he goes.
Yeah, that's right.
And what's happened in the meantime is that.
Has and.
SHOUMP gets elected in November of twenty seventeen.
By sixty sixteen, twenty sixteen, all right, so.
Why have twenty seventeen that's when you left office, and so.
No, I let me just keep going to get it done.
Was this year experience of president by at this time and.
That's twenty twenty three.
Yeah, and I was not I wasn't there then. But part of that a couple of things, just observing and listening, hearing how he's responding to answers that are put to him or questions that are put to him in a context that is in private. Slowly, Yes, oftentimes that that could be representative that was accurate of of what I saw, that it was slowly processing, or that he was You could ask him a question, he'd think about it for
a little bit and then answer. But I don't know what if that is a reflective of decline or not, because I only knew him as an older man, right. I met him in nineteen and so that was consistent for from what I knew. So it's hard for me to say that was a like was he messing updates? Sure, yeah he was. But I don't know how much that is met mental decline an age.
I just don't know.
What's interesting from the Tapper Thompson book excerpts is that it seems from maybe the donor perspective and the insider perspective, it became sort of the scuttle butt that people were a bit concerned after what twenty twenty two is roughly were they draw on is that was that your experience that people started to privately talk about it.
Oh yes, yes, that was in June of twenty twenty two. We started to do some fundraising prospecting, start to sort of build out what would be the sort of mechanism or operation for a potential superpack for the reelect. And when we were going around and meeting with donors around the country, I mean there were donors who came up to the First Lady and thanked her for all of the saving democracy restoring institutions. But part of his legacy can also be passing the torch and turning it over
to an open democratic process. That can be part of his democracy legacy. So no, they were hearing from people who were and that particular donor, the one that I recall, specifically asked her not to do this, that her family has sacrificed enough, please don't do this.
Wow.
And it was in a very large room with a lot of people. It was not open to the press, but there was a senior age at the First Lady who then went back and said, would that answer be different if you knew he was running against Trump? Because I think the mindset in Biden world was that Biden can do this if it's going to be Trump, He's the only one that beats Trump. That was the argument that he was the only one who had beaten Trump,
and so that Donor immediately said, of course not. I don't want either of them to be seventy eight or older and running for president. He said, I don't want my doctor, my surgeon, or my pilot to be eighty two either. So no, they were hearing this, But all of that, if you understand the bidens and their mindset again, if you go back to like and understand what happened in eighty seven when they were pushed out very publicly and in a humiliating way, it was not that they
were only going to double down. Ever, if they read op eds or if they saw people on the news or people like that who who were recommending that he shouldn't encant because in our in their experience and what we experienced during the primary and the first couple of years of the White House, it was basically, Joe has defied gravity, Joe always beats expectations, and there's always the doubting class.
How do you reconcile that the public was able to have a better understanding of where he was in his decline than someone who was on the inside lights such as yourself.
Well, I mean even when I on the outside was always you know, I always knew they were running for reelection. That was always he's the plan since the transition.
So the talk about like building a bridge to the next generation, I mean he did sort of, I mean he did all but say it was going to be one term.
Yeah, well yeah, and that, and he implied that, you know, there he was a bridge to the next generation, right right.
He didn't say when that bridge would be.
It was when when he was finished. And no, there I was never under it was.
Let's just put this way.
It was made very clear to me when I raised the issue behind close doors, you know, something like I think, I said, oh, well, we're not actually running for reelection, so what does it matter, and somebody you know, immediately, you know, you know, drop the hammer on me and said, why wouldn't he be running? Of course, we're running for reelection. This is a after this is a second term thing we're going to do. This isn't after the re elect.
The culture and the tone was always so he was running for reelection, and our response publicly was nobody runs for four terms or for for four years. It's always run for president for eight years.
And there's a lot of speculation, and especially people on the right look at doctor Joe Biden, and I'm sure you've heard this and say it's cruel. But she was, she was propping up her husband, and well there was a briefing late in his term that I think she took the helm of and people were saying that it was some type of you know, big power grab.
We have to separate like reality from from rhetoric. What was she propping him up?
No, but was she certainly undeterred and driven like more like as driven to defy the doubters. Of course she was because she believed in him. But she had her own life, like she had her own career. If she continued her own career, she can't stand politics. If if he did not want to be president again or to continue being president, she'd be the first person in her convertible headed to the beach and would never have a reason to come back to Washington because she didn't really
use her platform. And you know, we used to fight about this all the time, but like she wasn't she didn't have her own agenda there. She didn't use her office to sort of pursue a policy agenda or whip votes the way many First Ladies have done for for their initiatives.
She did not do that. She didn't want to do that.
Our office was essentially a continued version of the campaign. It was a permanent campaign surrogate operation, which means that
we were integrated with the West Wing. As for better or for worse, we were very integrated into the West Wing, and she always had a seat at the table because our representatives were there, but because we considered ourselves and they considered us a partner in going out and selling to the American people his vision, his goals, his agenda, the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure, the.
Sorry the chip sack.
Well, but we made We were kind of leading the effort for vaccinations all over the country at that time and for the first year generally. So I considered it what you would call sort of an event driven operation that was very coordinated and very integrated into the West Wing.
Let me get your response to Vader Rourke had some very strong comments with the pod save guys recently that I want to get your reaction to. Let's go ahead and take a listen as be seven guys let's go ahead and take a listen.
Just to be clear, Biden should not have run again, And to be even more clear, he failed this country in the most important job that he had. In fact, the entire rationale for his presidency the first time, and the rationale he tried to sell us on for his attempt to run for reelection. Only I can stop Donald Trump, and he failed to do that. And it's not just you and me, but our kids and grandkids and the generations that follow that might have to pay the price
for this. We might very well lose the greatest country that this world has ever known, and it might be in part because of the decision that Biden and those around him made to run for re election instead of having an open primary where the greatest talent that the Democratic Party can muster could be on that stage, to have a competition of ideas and track record and vision.
I think that credibility problem is going to persist up until when Democrats say we fucked up and we made a terrible mistake.
So he says he failed this country. I think the current president is a fascist. I think you'll leave Emily out of this, but I suspect that you agree with that assessment.
I mean, do you think that don't like ahead? Do you think Beto's right?
Yeah, I don't disagree with anything Beto said that. And look, I said to the New York Times Peter Baker in an article in February twenty twenty four when Biden was still in that this is a gamble that they are taking because they that only they can do this, and that his legacy and this was more of an article about I think his legacy or was you know the pressures that they were facing. And yeah, damn right, there's
pressure because his legacy. And I hope I assumed they knew this in February of twenty twenty four when I gave this quote, but that his legacy was going to be defined on whether he wins or loses to Donald Trump, and that running was taking a gamble on that entire legacy of fifty years in public life was going to be overshadowed. And I think you're seeing that we're not talking about Joe Biden and the Chips Act, or or the American Rescue Plan, or bringing this country back from
the brank, or the Violence Against Women Act. That he was way ahead of his time on we're not talking about those things. And so for the short term, it's going to be very unpleasant for the family to sort of reconcile the legacy that historians and the news media or and Democrats are going to be writing in the short term because of the decisions that they made.
Do you have any personal regrets about how you handled or you know he didn't speak up?
No, because I was speaking up in after I left, at least throughout twenty twenty three year, I wrote, and the way I spoke up, and the way I spoke up was he needs to be his own advocate. When I saw the disengagement, when I saw that they were giving up opportunities like Kristen Welker's for Sunday Show Meet the Press, I tweeted, all right, we can't if we're.
Going to lose the news cycle.
We can't complain that they cover Trump for the entire weekend and all the news he makes because we are turning it down or the Super Bowl interview, or not doing press conferences and press avails.
But did you think that was because he couldn't do it, because he wasn't up to it. I didn't know, and I thought it was just about.
Actually, I thought it was a bad strategy. I didn't know, and I didn't care, because I knew for three years by that point we were running no matter what.
And in history, as.
A student of history, I know, like okay, I even said out loud that it was a mistake to mess around with the primary calendar because it looks like we're scared. It looks like we have something to hind and we don't need to mess with the primary calendar. It does him a disservice, all of these things.
I was saying.
I'm from ground zero of the swing district in a swing state in Pennsylvania seven that we lost, and it was the one of two counties that flipped from Obama to Trump to Biden to Trump. Reaganomics is what killed bethlum Steel. At least that's what the people of Allentown and Bethlehem believe. So to wrap your economy in Bidenomics and take credit, wrap your name around inflation in an unsettled economy. I wrote this in an OpEd and they
hated it. They were furious that I was trying to at least say you have to show.
Not tell.
You can't be a candidate and run for president and try to run out the clock.
It's just not going to work.
It's not going to work, especially against a candidate like Donald Trump, who embraces the media, who is confident enough to go and say, go anywhere and talk to anyone. And they attacked me, They smeared me, they planted stories about me, They were terrible to me. It paid a personal price for speaking out. Did I speak out about his age.
No.
I did not speak about his age, because again, my experience was that I never had that issue with him. My issue was what they clearly decided. It was a choice not to engage with voters, not to engage with the media and the public in the way that you do when you run for reelection. And I was seeing the same polls you're talking about. None of those polls changed. The polls in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three were saying at least three fourths of our voters did
not want him to run again. People and Democrats were speaking through the polls.
I saw that.
I said that, and I would say things that would make them very angry, Like we loved polls four years ago, because when we were running for an entire year, about two hundred, I went and looked it up. Two hundred and fifty one out of two hundred and fifty six public polls had us ahead, and we.
Loved Poles then.
So I really hate it that my old teammates were denying polls, denying data, denying the journalism out there, denying the the inflation numbers. It made me angry because you're supposed to at least try to see your flaws and your vulnerabilities in real life for what they are and then tried to confront them and change them.
And they wouldn't do any of that.
It was undermining the media, trashing the media, trashing the Times, trashing the journal and I didn't get it.
They ran scared.
Well, these were the things I had a problem with, and these were the things that ultimately cost me a lot of close friendships and probably my relationship with them. But the other thing that they didn't like, that I'll go ahead and say to you guys, is they didn't like I was joining the effort to help their son.
The Bidens loved it.
I was the only public advocate for their son because I hated the idea of children being weaponized or families of politicians being weaponized, and I saw what it did to the Bidens in a real life nineteen and twenty and through the White House, and the people in that White House who called me disloyal were throwing their son under the bus constantly. Nobody was using the bully pulpit to fight back against Comer and Jim Jordan. They weren't
doing anything. They weren't fighting back to help Hunter. I was out there, but the White House did not want a They wanted distance from Hunter, which is why you know, Hunter fired Anita Dunn's husband and brought in his own knife fighter, Abby Lowell.
And they didn't like that.
They didn't like that we were being aggressive and defending their son, in defending and trying to set up a legal defense fund for him, which by the way, George Bush forty one's donors did for his son, who costs the American people a lot more money than Hunter Biden.
My last question is on family. It's you know, I look at you Biden. I wonder if he was in a place where he could be trusted to make the decision about whether he can run again, if he was like sort of had his faculties about him in order to say I'm running for reelection.
Who was telling him or was it him?
From your understanding is that he wanted to run again, and so as you said, Jill, Biden was all in as long as but he was he in a position to competently say I want to run again and then have the people.
Who love him say, oh, yes, this is a good idea. Or should people have stepped in and said.
Well, you're not well.
I don't want to adopt your questions, but but you're correct that he did think that I have Again, I do not know whether again, there's a difference between covering up age and mental decline. And I have no idea behind the scenes, whether he was there's a cognitive issue.
What I will say, we.
Did see it in front of the scene in the debate.
We ended up seeing what we saw.
We don't know because none of us are medical doctors, right, so we can't say. What we can say is something was wrong, something was not right. Going back to the point where if you can't perform as a candidate, you can't be running because you can be president. But there's a difference between a running for president and running the country. So who do you've land So here's the thing. There
were one of the smartest strategist in democratic politics. I'm talking about a pollster who has a lot of Democratic candidates as clients, governors, senators. John Anslong was our chief polster in twenty twenty and twenty nineteen. A Biden guy since nineteen eighty seven. He was iced out after twenty twenty two because he the team. Who's the team, Anita Dunn, Mike Donalalan. I don't know about the others, Doctor Buden, I don't know. She would not make a decision like that.
But the other one would be the ones to say, all right, he cannot be showing the president this data because John was actually sending us monthly data and polling updates in the first year on you know, where the party was, where the country was, the mood of the country, on inflation, things like that before the Virginia gubernatorial and in twenty twenty two, they just ice. John was never even told he was going to be not with us in twenty twenty four.
The other person, they didn't like the numbers.
They didn't like the numbers.
And Steve Shale another one who ran President Obama's state operation in Florida, not once, but twice. Ran the Draft Biden movement in twenty fifteen, was going to be the lead strategist for the twenty sixteen campaign had he run. Steve Shale ran our super pac in twenty twenty or twenty nineteen. Twenty twenty raised US millions of dollars. He was doing analysis, and he was doing surveys and polling.
In June of twenty twenty two, he also provided the Boss data that wasn't looking good about twenty twenty four and what we needed to do to fix that, and at that point he was iced out, never even invited to the White House in four years.
Well, Michael, thank you so much for coming by sharing your experience.
Sorry for the over talking.
There's a lot to talk about in this and there's a lot of different facets. I love them, I love Joe and Jill Biden, and I love the family, but I do think they were done a disservice by the people around them, and I hope they can start making adjustments to some of the advice that they've been getting.
Michael Rossa, thank you.
You're welcome.
Some more bad economic indicators here in the United States. We can put this first element up on the screen from Bloomberg. The headline is market set for bumpy ride after Moody's downgrades US, so Crystal WIRECORDI this before the bell opens on Monday morning.
Futures are down, I believe.
But the Moody's US credit downgrade, as Bloomberg says, quote sets the stage for a jolt to the trading week. Big tech stocks go from a safe bet to a question mark.
Now.
They also say quote traders are bracing for a rocky starts the week after the US was stripped of its last top credit rating. Now just zooming in on that last top credit rating. Moodies was the last to formally make this decision, and they cided quote mounting concern about debt as it knocked the country score down a notch. Scott Bessant called the move a quote lagging indicator. So they're once again kind of trying to point the finger back at Joy Biden, and he was on Meet the Press.
We have some clips of that. So just yesterday Scott Bessant was asked by Kristen Welker to comment on it.
Let's go ahead and take a listen to C two.
Does the President's tax bill need to do more to address the nation's debt and deficit.
Well, Kristen, first of all, I think that mood is a lagging indicator. I think that's what everyone thinks of credit agencies. Larry Summers and I don't agree on everything, but he said that when they downgraded the US in two thousand and eleven. So it's a lagging indicator. And just like Sean Duffy said with our air traffic control system, we didn't get here in the past hundred days. It's the Biden administration and this spending that we have seen
over the past four years. We inherited six point seven percent deficit to GDP, the highest when we weren't in recession, not in the war, and we are determined to bring the spending down and grow the economy fair enough.
Why is it appropriate for the president to accept a four hundred million dollar jet from Kutchup, Well.
It's not.
The president accepted to be the United States government and Senator Mullens said this weekend that the talks had actually begun under the Biden administration. The President Trump has brought back trillions of investment in the United States. Every stop we made that the enthusiasm in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, in the United Arab Emirates to invest in the United States, that they want to push more and more. They have funds here. And if we go back to your initial
question on the Moody's downgrades, who cares? Kut doesn't, Saudi doesn't, Uee doesn't. They're all pushing money in.
They want to.
They've made tenure, they've made tenure investment plans.
All right, So we can go ahead and put the next element up on the screen as well. Consumer sentiments from CNBC slides to second lowest on record as inflation expectations jump after tariffs. So Bessett, on the one hand, is correct. Biden era spending was really, really high. And it's possible that Moodies, if they're citing concerns about debt, is still is still reacting to those heightened levels of spending. But if that is the case, they should We're going
to talk about this later in the show. Be fairly concerned about the Reconciliation bill that is about to explode the debt as it makes its way through the Republican controlled Congress, the Republican controlled House of Representatives, the Republican controlled Senate, their own party is, you know, waiving kind of the red flag about that problem, and it's not going well.
So it's also.
Possible that Moody's is looking at that and saying, holy smokes, tariffs needed, even by the Trump administration's own admission, some form of industrial policy that is now hinging on the Republican's ability to lose no more than two votes if everyone is there and voting, they can only lose two
votes to get this bill passed. And if it's a deficit exploding bill, if it has industrial policy, We're still not completely sure about that, but I think to some extent bestment, it's probably correct that it's a lagging indicator.
The US economy has been in rough shape.
For a long time, but also the the forecast is incredibly uncertain because of Trump administration policies. Again, by their own admission, they're in the middle of a sort of laboratory style experiment at the moment, and there are a lot of uncertainties in the months ahead. Crystal, what did you make of this and do you agree that it's to some extent a lagging indicator.
I mean, somewhat these things build on each other. But to me, it's like an indictment. It's the final indictment of DOGE too, because you know Doge was supposed to solve. We're going to find all this, We're going to cut two trillion dollars to be all good.
You know, I'm not a deficit hawk.
However, I will say if we do have the world move away from the US and the dollar as the world reserve currency, then we are going to have a problem with debt. I mean this is you know, the flight to safety of treasury bonds, like the fact that the whole world looks to us to buy our debt, and you know, to use dollars as the global reserve currency, you know, the base of basically every international transaction. Yeah, if the world moves away from that, we are going
to have to reckon with some of these things. So number one, like DOJE obviously total incomplete failure. Number two, you know the House Budget resolution that just passed through. You're talking about some four to five trillion dollars in deficit increase because of these massive tax cuts for the rich.
So if this is something you really have a concern about, then they're running a million miles in the wrong direction and did in the first Trump administration as well, So it's just as much a lacking indicator of his first administration, where they also gave massive, expensive tax cuts as it is the you know, the COVID era spending, which was absolutely essential to keeping Americans afloat during a very rough
time through no fault of their own. So, you know, I think it's in a lot of ways, it is a real indictment of the direction and what has already been done in this Trump administration, just judging by their own goals and standards of what they claimed they wanted
to set out to accomplish. And then I do think it also, you know, in terms of the world moving away from the US as like the central essential nation and this incredible privilege that we've had being at the center of the global financial system, you know, this is another sort of this is another knock on US as being the place, the center of everything, the center of the world, and this just puts us a little bit more in the direction of a post US world.
Order into the question of the lagging indicator.
When we put that CNBC Tear Street up on the screen, one of the quotes from it is then the index of consumer sentiment drop from fifty point eight down from fifty two point two in April. In the preliminary reading for May, that is the second lowest reading on record behind June twenty twenty two. That gets to particularly the last five months and the Trump and really it's post
Liberation Day, post April second. Yeah, but that gets to, you know, the fact that Moody's aside, it gets to the fact that the uncertainty in the Trump era economy, which again even by their own emission, is part of their plan, is affecting the economy in and of itself.
Like this kind of meta.
But if you're going to create an uncertainty, that will actually, if you're going to create in certainty as leverage, it's it's going to have an immediate effect on the economy.
Also, I mean, the terrorsts are supposed to make us rich. What happened to that?
I'm feeling liberated.
I guess you're not feeling liberated, but some of us are feeling liberated.
Yeah, well, congratulations to you.
M There was one other piece of this that I actually want to hear your thoughts on that part where Bus' is like, well, why should we care. Kusher doesn't care, the UA doesn't care, Saudi Arabia doesn't care.
It's like wow, And.
It reminded me of something actually, Rocana has been really going after them for which again is the distance between the America First rhetoric and the reality of this administration setting up this massive AI data center in UAE.
Versus we were told, oh, well, this is all these jobs.
Of the future, We're going to be here in the US and you know, as a core part of the America First project, and yet here we are instead they're going to be in the UA.
Apparently.
Yeah.
I thought that was a great point from Rowe. He was making it over the weekend. I mean, them saying hedging their bets with these golf countries. It's actually like kind of frightening for I mean, who knows what happens the next president and Trump administration can do whatever the Trump administration does for three years potentially, and then things can change. But it's quite a way to go about it.
And Chris, so I really want to move on to this post from Donald Trump, and I also just kind of want to inject it straight into my veins.
This is C four.
This is a true social post from Trump where he said Walmart should stop trying to blame tariffs as the reason for raising prices.
Throughout the chain.
Walmart made billions of dollars last year, far more than expected between Walmart and China, that they should, as A said, quote, eat the tariff as one says, as A said the popular phrase popular TIFFs, and not charge valued customers anything all caps. I'll be watching, and so will your customers. The reason I say I wanted to inject this into my vein crystal is this is how I generally feel about most things that get passed down to consumers from these corporations.
It drives me completely insane.
They never pass it down to their workers, and they're doing all kinds of stupid stuff like buybacks and whatever else. But uh, it's it's actually, I think, a really fantastic point. But the problem for Trump obviously is he's not really doing anything to force them.
To pass the to not pass the costs down.
And you know, there are all kinds of carrots and six that can be used as part of an industrial policy, so that aside, I do want to say, I mean, according to Business Insider, I'm sorry. According to the a FL CIO, which tracks CEO pay. Walmart's CEO is the high paid CEO in all of retail, which is not surprising at all, but took home a cool twenty seven million dollars last year. And again, if you're looking at Target CEO, by the way, that was down to nineteen
million Costco sixteen million. I mean, this is an incredibly high level of CEO pay. The ratio to worker pay is not great obviously either. And that stuff actually does drive me absolutely insane that we just say, you know, instead of maybe reshoring, eating some costs whatever, they insist on paying their executives at completely unpatriotic, unethical levels, and it is absolutely bananas. So on the one hand, uh yeah, I think Donald Trump is absolutely one thousand percent correct
on this question. On the other hand, there have to be a series of carrots and sticks.
Well, and listen, corporations are going to corporation, they're gonna business.
Oh, they're gonna you know, they're going to do.
Their care marketab yeah and.
Yeah, and you're not doing anything to your point to make that not be the case. But also, watch me here defend Walmart when you're talking about a thirty percent tariff their profit margins are not thirty percent, Like you can't just eat that. There is inevitably going to be some amount of that even if they eat some of it, and they can't eat some of it. This is a very profitable corporation, don't get me wrong. And they pay their CEO an insane amount. All of those things are
absolutely true. They don't have a thirty percent profit margin. So if many of their goods are coming from China or you know, parts coming from China and being assembled here, etc. Then what you're going to end up with is, yes, some cost getting passed on to consumers, or the other alternative is some cost getting passed onto the small businesses that are selling those goods to Walmart. And that's actually where a lot of the squeeze is going to come.
Remember we talked about this lady who has her like busy baby Matt thing that you finally got into Walmart, small business you know, based here in America. She wanted to make a product America was literally impossible, so she made it in China, and you know it is the only place where she could really go and get what she needed for this very specialized product. She gets her product picked up by Walmart. Well that's at a set
contracted price. So and Walmart, I think, weren't they the ones that put out the thing that we're like, we're not accepting price increases sorry with regard to tariffs. So it's going to be people like her who get completely screwed, who are locked into this contract at this price that is now completely unattainable. Now, thirty percent tariff is better than the one hundred and forty five percent tariff that it was, but that is still a dramatic increase in costs.
And you know, I don't know the specifics for her business, but for many small medium business owners, that will completely put them under. So that's the real, the actual reality that you're talking about here in terms of who is going to quote unquote eat the tariffs.
Yeah, and again like it's Donald Trump knows who how Walmart is going to handle this, Like, yeah, he knows exactly that they can't. The CEO pay thing is an interesting glimpse into all of this, Like it's it's not just one company like Walmart couldn't just stop paying this guy. It's like twenty million of this is tied up in stock awards annually so.
Like they can't do that.
He could choose to be a decent human being and pass some of those some of his salary on to workers and not you know, high prices, Like he could choose to do that. But the entire system is not going to fix itself because the Walmart, because first of all, Walmart in and of itself reacts as Donald Trump wants them, and singling out Walmart, by the way, means that he's taking away or he's trying to take away some of the market advantage for them, and that their competitors can
do differently. So it's it's an incredibly fragile ecosystem that he's working with here, and you can't just expect, you know, one person or one retail chain, even as massive as it is, to do those sorts of things. But CEO pay, I mean, these guys, if you if you want to find a CEO, they're all making stupid, stupid money, and so you have to pay them competitively. The thing to do is just to create a culture of shame around that level of intake, and especially when it's the ratio
like that should be so incredibly shameful. The idea that you would be taking home this type of money and then hiking prices on consumers because there's an attempt to actually reshore some manufacturing and those like that's that should be shameful, and so I think Trump is trying to do some version of that, but it's it's pretty hard for it, especially when they're doing their tax cut bill. Yeah, they're about to cut corporate taxes best in s goals
to take it from twenty one to fifteen percent. It's a really mixed messaging situation for the administration.
That's about the most positive thing you possibly say about it. But yes, I'm in favor of creating culture shame, growing a culture shame around this and many other things besides, because I think shamelessness is one of the sort of like key values of the NAGA world.
And Trump we're actually going to talk about this in the tax block. So stick around, and we're going to talk about how it was created and how it sort of was grown on the right and then's where it took off. So that's actually a good tie in to that segment.
Let's listen to C six.
This is Donald Trump talking about the return of those arbitrary tariffs.
Go ahead, roull it.
We just reached a fantastic trade deal, as you know with the United Kingdom, which was wonderful, And do we have another big one that we just reached with China. China deal is a very big deal. It's in the process of continuing.
To be formed. But they wanted to make that deal very badly. And we have at the.
Same time one hundred and fifty countries that want to make a deal. But you're not able to see that many countries. So a certain point over the next two to three weeks, I think Scott and Howard, we'll be sending letters out essentially telling people it would be very fair, but we'll be telling people what they'll be paying to do business in the United States, so essentially be paying
to be doing business in the United States. I guess you could say they could appeal it, but for the most part, I think we're going to be very fair. But it's not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us. And but this was coming to UAE was very important. Coming to Saudi Arabian Qatar was very important to me because of personal relationships that I had, maybe more than anything else.
So yeah, that was Trump and the UAE now this is.
The personal relationships part was interesting too there at the end of like, yeah, it probably went there because I just I like these guys.
They we're going to give me some business deals.
So yeah, and he also I'm also saying we aren't. We don't have the ability to meet with all the people that want to meet with us. That's something we were told that they did have the ability.
To do during Liberation Day.
Remember, it wasn't that the goal.
It's no problem whatsoever.
Is the greatest deal maker of all time, and he's going to put on a masterclass for all of us.
They're teasing what like eighteen deals that they say they have something like that over the course of this week that they're planning to get to the bottom of. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like what they're doing right there is lowering expectations for that not coming to fruition. And maybe they'll get a few key deals UK, India, maybe Japan, Like maybe they will get a few things that they can point to and say, listen, this is we put
the screws to everyone. But it sounds like they're actually not getting the response that they want from other countries.
Well.
Lowering expectations and other countries looked at what China did, which is basically nothing, and whin, Yeah, that's true, and they're like, well, why should we come on bended me when we've got a model here in what the Chinese
were able to pull off. Now, not every country has, No other country really has as much sort of power in these negotiations as the Chinese do, but I do think that that was a learning and a model and a lesson for other countries that make it less likely that you're going to be able to strike all of
these deals that we were promised going in. And Scott Bessant was pressed on, okay, well, so if you're going to just sort of like figure out whatever the teriff rate is without going through these negotiations, what level are we looking at? And he said, effectively, well, I guess we'll go back to the liberation day rates. So the chart, you know, with the penguins and all of that, and fifty percent on littho and all of that, apparently that's coming back.
So let's take a listen to Charger Secretary Scot Besson.
Mister secretary, does that effectively mean that these negotiations with other.
Countries are over?
And how high should they expect tariffs to go above ten percent?
This means that they're not negotiating in good faith. They are going to get a letter they saying here is the rate. So I would expect that everyone would come and negotiate in good faiths you expect.
That rate though, that you would slap on any country that you think is not negotiating in good faith to be above ten percent.
Well, I think that it would be the April second level. Some countries were at ten percent somewhere substantially higher.
So back to Liberation Day, Emily.
Well, that's why.
So what was this? Yeah, it was last week. I think it was last Monday. I just like was not willing to call Trump's China tariff move capitulation quite yet because I'm like, I think they still don't know what's happening.
Like there's still they don't really have a strategy here.
Their strategy is still just like let people come to us and do ad hoc, have a kind of ad hoc approach to putting the screws to other countries and getting like, they don't have levels that they want to see other countries get to. They just want to sort of negotiate some of these non trade barriers and like the all non tariff trade barriers and all this stuff.
And I think that's what we're seeing from that Trump clip and this Besting clip is just that they're they're feeling like they're not getting good enough deals and so they're going back to threatening April second levels. I mean, it's just completely unpredictable, which is not what they need right now at all. They need some type of certainty
at this point. They need to have a lot of deals inked that look good, that look you know, pretty that people can be confident that that's where the level is going to be going forward, that people can be even if they think it's too high and it's it's not going to be great for the United States, at the end of the day, they can say this is
what it's going to look like, and we can make investments. Accordingly, the bill is a disaster for them right now in the in the House, and well it's not even over at the Senate side yet, but like that's already choppy. So if they're even able to pass that is an open question. And despite or on top of that, they now don't have like they're they're going away from clarity on these questions, and they might need to to get.
Good tax credits even in this bill.
Do we know, Yes, yeah, they're in the bill, but I don't know, like that could change. I mean that could change when it gets the Senate. The whole reconciliation process is right, so so so uncertain. You're throwing things in and taking them out at the last minute to make these deals. So who knows that they stick around?
You know.
The other the reason why I felt comfortable calling it a capitulation still do is in the context of China, the initial rhetoric for Trump was so maximalist about like we I don't even know why we have overseas supply chains, and they were talking about a total decoupling from China and backing off of that unilaterally without getting anything really in exchange, I mean really truly nothing in exchange from China other than oh, they'll talk to us about ventanel.
That I think is fair to call a capitulation. They realized they could not take this immediate maximalist approach to China specifically and be able to survive what the stock in the bond markets and the domestic political situation, all of that was going to throw at them. Now, I think it's fair to say, and I felt this as well, that doesn't mean that Trump is done.
With tariff's say, I think because it's still changed.
Well, and first of all, I mean thirty percent, Like I just we got a level set here. If we had gotten thirty percent, if there'd never been the one hundred and forty five percent and just out of the gates what was announced was thirty percent, we would all be like, holy shit, forget that is a gigantic yeah, right, that's like smooth Holly level style tariff. It's a massive tax increase on working class people, like it is an
extraordinary economic political event. And as I've also been saying, Trump loves tariffs because they give him all of this unilateral power, and we've learned more about that since the Liberation Day and what they've been using some of the things that he's been using that leverage in order to accomplish. And actually one of the key things is apparently to
help out his buddy Elon Musk with starlink. You know, they've been using the State Department, as you've been using the tariffs as sort of a you know, mob boss tactic to get countries that were reluctant to take up starlink to go ahead and you know, accept to have
licenses for this product. So, you know, I don't think that he's done with tariffs, because if there's one thing we've seen in Trump two point zero, it is all about him consolidating as much power as he can in his own hands and in the hands of the executive and.
Tariffs are a key part of that story.
That allows him to you know, all the businesses have to come to him, all the countries have to come to him something that he can use as a carrot, as a stick et, cetera. And that's why I think we're far from finished with the tariff conversation.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And your point about the thirty percent level, I mean when orange Cast in American Compass proposed that ten percent global tariff, there was a massive freakout. And now that looks like sweet relief to the markets and to the corporate class.
Well, what was inflation at its peak in under Biden with COVID It was it never hit ten percent, And so if you're talking if you are talking about ten percent around the world, you know it may not be exactly ten percent inflation that you're going to experience, but it's going to be a significant amount. I mean, that is a dramatic economic event. Just ten percent across the board,
let alone thirty percent here and fifty percent there. And you know what they're what they contemplated on April second, and apparently are still contemplating going back to and.
As possible, we look back at this moment and you know, the the last two plus months, I mean, it's been so crazy. You never know how this stuff ages because they're so at hoc about this. And again I think they see that as part of the leverage that it's creating uncertainty and other countries, to your point, have to kind of come on bend and d And that's sort of what they're saying. Here is Trump and the UAE and that clip we rolled saying, we don't even have
time to meet with all of you. You want to do trade with us, but we don't even have time to talk to you, Like that's.
How powerful we are.
And of course I think we could look back on this and be like, this was just a moment where they were, you know, feeling uncertain about the deals. They felt like they weren't getting enough deals and because they flexed like this, everyone ended up coming back and you know, making better deals whatever. But that's just really not the
trajectory again of the last like six weeks. We're just how many weeks into six seven weeks into post liberation day world, and there aren't a lot of deals coming to fruition, and there's scattershot ones, and I think some of them are like actually good changes. The way that it's looking with the UK, it looks like a decent step, that looks like a step in the right direction roughly, but this was worldwide essentially.
I mean.
Also, it's not like, I mean, whether you think that the UK deal is marginally better than the status quote or not, it's not like this was a game changer.
No, no, no, no, no, it's just all of this, you know, no, not at all. And that's the thing. It's like, you just need to see. I mean, you would need to see a lot more than what's been seen so far.
Let's go ahead and turn to this extreme weather that we saw with horrific deadly consequences in the middle of the country, Kentucky and Missouri in particular, really hard hit by this strong line of tornadoes and storms. You can put some images up on the screen here. Twenty six people are dead after these tornadoes hit in those two states.
Here's some footage from USA today.
They say deadly tornadoes leave a trail of destruction Kentucky. There you actually see the tornado itself. They say this is Scott County, Missouri. Here this is terrifying, as part of an apartment building just blows apart like it's made of absolutely nothing. We've got some of the aftermath here. I'm not sure if this is Kentucky or Misseri. I think this is in Kentucky, but I'm not one hundred percent sure. But you can see just the level of devastation.
And this is in London, Kentucky. Looks like it was a small airport there. You can see the debris and wreckage of some of those small planes that were just
absolutely torn apart. And this obviously is really significant in and of itself, just given the loss of lives at least twenty six people dead that we know of at this point, but it also has raised some real questions about the impacts of DOGE cuts and whether there was sufficient warning given or whether more lives could have been saved if the relevant weather office there, which had experienced
these cuts, had been fully staffed. Ryan Hall, who's a fantastic whether YouTuber Kyle's a big weather guy who watches him all the time on YouTube, was astonished that there hadn't been sufficient warnings put out at the time as he was covering this live. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little of what he had to say.
We're talking about here is a big deal.
I am so.
Surprised that we don't have an upgraded warning from the National Weather Service. One of the things that I do want to mention is, I'm pretty sure this is the National Weather Service in Jackson, Kentucky, my local National Weather Service here. This is one of the places that's understaffed right now. I don't know if you guys have been following the news big layoffs across National Weather Service and stuff like that, that might be a result of a
problem that we're having there. If so, that's crazy. That's crazy. We're about to have a large tornado go through a very populated area with much less warning than what there should be as a result of that, guys, all I can tell you right now is if you know anybody in Somerset, call them, call them right now and let them know what's going on. I'm not kidding like this is a big deal. This is a huge deal. We've got a massive tornado about to slam through o'kill, Bourbon and Ferguson here.
And he was absolutely right in the dire nature of those warnings. That Kentucky Weather Office, they say scrambles for staffing is severe storms bear down. New York Times right up here, Washington posts how to write up as well.
National Weather Service office in eastern Kentucky was scrambling to cover the overnight forecast on Friday as these tornadoes were moving through much of the eastern US, According to the union that represents the department's meteorologist, Tom Fahey, the legislative director for that union, was one of four that no longer had a permanent overnight forecaster after hundreds of people left the agency as a result of cuts ordered by
the Department of Government Efficiency. Mister Fahey said on Friday that because of the threat for flooding, hail, and tornadoes facing eastern Kentucky, the West Weather Service had to find forecasting help for that office spoke women for the Weather Service said the Jackson's office would be relying on nearby offices for support throughout the weekend. So Emily, that's you know, the lay of the land here. Now, I will say that the government is claiming, no, this did not impact.
They were able to fully staff, They were able to have the coverage that they need. But you know, it certainly raises questions whether lives could have been saved if this office had been fully staffed and not subject to those DOGE cuts.
It does.
I mean, there should be an investigation. And I think it's crazy, Crystal. I mean, this always happens with tornadoes. You lived in Kentucky briefly, I did. Yeah, yeah, so you know this. It's whenever there's a snowstorm in New York. I actually, like when we I used to teach students, I would use this as an example, and never there's a snowstorm in New York, it's national news for days.
A tornado can rip through the Heartland, killed twenty eight people and it's a blip on the national news radar because most of the newsrooms are in New York, they're in DC, they're in LA and the gutting of local media means that there are just a few newsrooms that are kind of concentrated in big cities Saint Louis, for example, throughout the Midwest, but the main producers and editors and
everything aren't there. And so I mean, this is getting to the bottom of whether or not these cuts actually may have actually like resulted.
In a loss of life.
I really hope that national media is sending people, is paying attention to the local media, sending people out to get to the bottom of this, because it's a hugely significant story. And it's one of those things that when you look at Elon Musk in the way he's been parading around with the chainsaw at Seapack, for example, that Melee gifted him, it's never been funny. It's just it's not funny. It's eighty percent of federal workers are outside
of DC. And I say that as somebody who loves the idea like in theory of doge, but like you're
actually playing with people's lives. And it'd be one thing if the Trump administration had tapped someone like Russ Vote, like a type of like policy person to do it, but they went with Elon as the figurehead of it, and it just gave the whole project this sense of what's the right word for it, Like, I don't know if casualness is the right word, but that bazard Yeah, yeah, this sense that like, and he has openly said that his strategy involves mass firings and then if you realize
you need to bring people back, then you bring people back.
Like that's he said, that's the way to do it.
Basically is that, like you learn who's essential after you fire them on a nationwide scale. And me, we're talking about one of the biggest countries in the world, one of the biggest countries that has ever existed, massive piece of land with a huge population. That's a really really really really really dangerous game, and that is obvious to everyone.
So I'm really curious.
I mean, maybe it turns out that you know, they were they came in overnight and they staffed up because they realized these storms were going to be bad and this would have happened no matter what. Maybe that turns out to be the case. But when you juxtapose it with National Weather Service cuts and Elon Musk parading around with the chainsaw, it's a pretty bad look.
Yeah.
Well, and Here's what I would say too, is I do think some of the cuts were just completely haphazard. But there even with RUSS vote like Project twenty twenty five took direct aim at Noah, and there is an ideological project on the right that would like to see some of this weather tracking privatized so that we don't all, you know, Ryan Hall and everybody else who wants access to the data doesn't get access to the data. You have to pay for it. There is an ideological agenda
behind it as well. So it's not just random that these offices get hit with cuts. In the National Weather Service gets hit with cuts, and you know, Noah overall gets hit with cuts. There is also an ideological project behind it, and this is the fallout from that project, or demonstrates what the potential for the fallout could be from that project. There are a lot of things the government does that you know, actually are effective that we just don't think about, you know, like.
They do track the weather very effectively.
It takes a lot of resources, it takes a lot of people, it takes you know, these weather balloons going up, which also have been cut significantly, but actually they do have done a pretty good job at that and that is now being put at risk. We see it also, you know with the air traffic controllers and the horrific situation you know with the FAA. Again, this is something that is a life or death issue that we really depend on the federal government for and when it doesn't function.
When it does function, you don't think about it too much.
When it doesn't function, suddenly it becomes really front of mind. If you want to, you know, go somewhere from Royal Day weekend and be able to actually, you know, get where you're going and not be terrified that what's going to happen when you're trying to land and there's another Let's go ahead and put this FEMA piece up on the screen because this is you know connected. Obviously, you have a newly appointed head of FEMA, and Trump.
Has been FEMA is a mess, like a mess.
I think everyone.
Yeah, And like I think anyone who's been associated with FEMA would have said going into this administration there were things that needed to be resolved. Trump has an ideological agenda against FEMA at all. He thinks this should be basically dismantled and it should all be sent to the States. Now if you have a minor weather disaster, states may
have sufficient funds and resources to handle it. When you're talking about increasing extreme weather events year after year after year, you need the federal government just for you know, resource's sake to be able to assist, and states do not have the capability to be able to respond. So this
is coming, you know this. There was some leaked information coming out of FEMA that the newly appointed head says the agency does not yet have a fully formed disaster response plan going into hurricane season.
A little bit of this.
David Richardson, who previously served as a senior official at DHS does not have a background in emergency management, told staff he would share a hurricane plan with CHRISTINOAM after he completes it late next week. He said Thursday, he's eighty to eighty five percent done with the plan. Agency is already months behind schedule in its preparations for the hurricane season, which starts June one and is expected to
have above normal activity. Richardson said in a recent meeting the FEMA staff that clarifying the intent of the president, who has called for terminating the agency, was a challenge
in preparing a strategy for hurricane season. According to a video recording of the media of the meeting that was viewed by the Wall Street Journal, and there was another wild quote in here, Emily he was apparently asked during this town hall meeting if the will of the president or the will that well being of Americans was more important, and he responded, I think those two things are essentially
the same. So this is a you know, this is a Trump loyalist, yes man whatever, And FEMA is dramatically behind in preparing for the impending hurricane season.
Yeah. The Reuters headline three days ago, staff losses and low morale are derailing FEMA hurricane preparations. Internal documents says, And then there's another headline this is two days.
Ago as well.
Trump's firing a FEMA director unsettles GOP. Senators and the Republicans made a big deal, rightfully so of the FEMA response after.
The hurricanes Helene.
Yeah, after Helene, North Carolina, last South Carolina last fall, that was I mean reasonable, Everyone was right to be outraged about the FEMA response there. So if the FEMA response to these tornadoes, which have now killed what twenty eight people, is lacking, Trump is going to hear from the senators in those states, Republican senators in those states.
He's going to hear.
From the governors in those states, Republican governors in those states. And what's interesting, Crystal is that's the type of thing that will start to change the prem mission structure for DOGE and for massive cuts. If Republicans are saying the way you were going about, these cuts are worse than just continuing to spend at the same level, Yeah, which is not impossible.
By the way. That's the thing, like you can again, like I.
Support the idea of DOGE in theory, and I would say like in some cases these cuts are like if they you can still end up when you're making cuts that are necessary or that I think are necessary from a perspective of like just a more limited government perspective, you look at them and you say, the cuts themselves can be worse than the alternative status quo because they're.
Done in a way that is cruel.
And one thing I wanted to mention is if you are in DC, you don't understand how important the emergency warning systems are for tornadoes and saving lives because people rely on them to make a judgment about where to go, what to do? Do they get out of the soccer car pool and go home right away? Is it that serious or are they up ending, you know, everyone's routine
for something that's not serious at all. The warnings are important to that if you live in the Midwest or in the South, or in an area with tornadoes, and if you don't understand that, and you're just saying we will fire people, then we will learn and hire anybody who's necessary. People get caught and fall through the cracks, and tragedy happens.
And some of his strongest supporters, like in terms of states, have already been impacted by the denial of FEMA assistants, so flooding in West Virginia. FEMA denied assistance for windstorm damage in Washington, not a Trump's state, but FEMA staff said there's no longer a clear process for assessing assistance requests from states. Their concerned disaster victims aren't get the
help they need. In Arkansas, they were initially denied funds, but Sarah Huckevee Sanders is now the governor of Arkansas, so she was able to go to Trump and say, please, we need these funds and eventually they were able to
they relented. But if you don't happen to have a personal relationship with a apparently are our sovereign monarch now, then you you know, then your residents are going to get screwed, including you know, in a state like West Virginia, which I covered here, that flooding was apocalypt It's the worst they've ever seen the level of disaster, and it hit the poorest part of an already poor state which has been screwed over and left behind, you know, many
times over and so denied assistance for flooding. There is you know it honestly, to me, it shocks the conscience. But this is the direction that they have gone in, and they put in just you know, a Trump scaphan and the head of this agency who was apparently unprepared for the hurricane season. So you know, it's it's very it's unsettling. It's very unsettling to see things that were previously taken for granted. And again not to say FEMA was great or perfect. We've all seen, you know, what
happened with Katrina. We saw the inadequacy of a response in Helene et cetera. But once again you're taking something that needed work and you are eliminated and eliminating it.
Entirely or making vastly worse.
And I think, you know, this is an indication of potential things to come.
Yeah, with a tone of flippancy and you know, job reality, like it's just all a chainsaw game, Which is probably why Ela Musk has stepped into the background, because they realized.
Quiet lately it wasn't.
He's devoting its time to reprogramming GROC to talk about white genocide and deny the Holocaust apparently is what he's spending his time doing.
Now, let's get all kinds of stuff to do.
Yeah, as a man, Crystal, let's move on to the system.
Is so interesting.
I'm really excited about Argent Singh, who joins us to talk about the history of how Republicans became an anti tax party, fundamentalist anti tax party, and what that means for today.
So, guys, Trump's big beautiful bill passed a clear, cleared and important hurdle in the House.
I can put us up on the screen.
The Tax and Immigration Bill clears hurdle after late night vote. It had previously failed in committee, and a late night vote was able to pass after some Republican dissenters just voted present, so it can make it out of committee. All of that is a long way of saying this bill still has a long way to go before it actually is efectuated into law. But at the center of the bill is a big old tax cut for the rich, doubling down on Trump's key priority accomplishment from his first administration.
So joining us now to discuss.
How the Republican Party became this anti tax juggernaut is Argent saying with lever News, and you guys have a new podcast series out called Tax Revolt, which tracks the history of.
The anti tax movement. So great to see, Argente.
Yes, thank you for having me.
Yeah, of course, so we can put you two up on the screen.
That's just the logo, so you guys can see here's Tax Revolts. We've got four part series. And let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of the trailer to set this up for everybody.
All taxes are bad. The power to tax is the power to destroy.
Some are worse than others.
We have a new revolution against the tax, tax, tax spends and spend.
The mindset of diehard tax cutters has dominated politics since the.
Nineteen eighties, and today cutting taxes is practically a religious mandate in conservative politics.
And government agencies like the irs are partisan battlegrounds.
The dream in America is not to make the rich poor. The dream is to make the poor rich. The era of big government is over.
Don't hurt the top, and if you're gonna fight rich people, you're gonna lose.
From the landmark California tax revolt to Trump's latest push to cut taxes for the rich, this movement claimed to fight for the average American, but really deepened inequality and helped the rich get richer.
This is the story of how a small but powerful movement reshaped our economy, weakened our democracy, and left the government scrambling to serve the people it was.
Meant to protect.
But that's not the way the world is.
Guys.
Do you want to sit there and scream and holler and hate rich people and lose every election.
It is time for a wealth tax.
And a mirror.
You'll lose everything. If you don't lose the election, you'll lose the country.
So I like the description there of tax cutting as an almost religious mandate, because at this point, you have a broad national coalition, really quite bipartisan at the grassroots level in favor of taxing the rich more, and yet you still have the Republican Party going in the polar opposite direction. Yeah.
And one of the funny things that we actually talk about in this series is that when you get to the nineteen eighties, when Reaganomics is becoming very popular, Democrats vote for Reagan's bills. Tip O'Neil's Speaker of the House. Reagan's got these Democratic legislators, and part of the reason that Democrats are on board with it is they hear from their own constituents how upsetting it is to see
how easy it is to gain the tax code. They're saying that our rich friends who have fancy accountants can do all these loopholes. The tax code is so complex, now, why don't we get any relief just because we have to pay our taxes like suckers. And the Democratic response was, you're right, the tax code is too e to game, and so we'll bring down your tax rates. And they
tried to fix some of the loopholes. But as we know through history, the winners of all of that was the business community and corporate interests who managed to bring everybody's taxes down and also take their taxes down to the point that some billionaires don't even pay taxes, they pay negative taxes they earn from government subsidies.
Believable. Well, yeah, let's keep pulling at this threat of religion.
Actually, because this is one on the right, we're seeing what on the right is the fading of what's called fusionism, which is the three legged schools Frank Meyer a whole thing basically as it combines limited government, social conservatism, and neoconservatism, and that's completely falling apart at this moment. Maybe it'll reconstruct, but at this part, at this point, it's really difficult
for the publican party to maintain that coalition. So, as you went back through history, can you can maybe tell us a little bit about what it was like as the Milton Friedman wing coalesced with the social conservatives and the neo conservatives. It's such an interesting marriage, especially between neo conservatives and Milton Friedman types, because the Reagan eras saw massive spending on defense and at the same time there was this mandate.
For tax cuts.
It's sort of similar to what we see people talking about right now.
Absolutely, I'm so glad that you distell that like that, because that is one of the most fascinating things that I came out from the series is that the Republican Coalition is kind of a Frankenstein monster of different groups that have made alliances with each other, but when it comes down to it, do end up being on different
ends of the issues. So when we start in the nineteen seventies, you have the post Watergate era and you have stagflation happening, high uninflated, high unemployment, and high on and high inflation. You want to which I think is what everybody which is what's happening, But no, you had stagflation, which was the worst of the worst, and so you had an economic crisis. You had people actually seeing real pain paying their taxes because their money was getting cheaper
and cheaper by the day. And what you see entering that is different groups of conservatives trying to take it advantage of that. So you have the people from the business community who say, listen, let's just knock down the whole tax code. Free market capitalism, you know, this is
the way everyone's going to prosper. That would be kind of like the art laughers who we heard in the trailer just now, the godfathers supply side economics, you know, will take them at kind of face value that if this is what they believe, they believe that low taxation will lead to so much prosperity, you don't really need a government to play the role of an administrative state.
Those people find alliances with another group of conservatives who are seeing integration happening, who are seeing changing social values, and they're seeing a Democratic party in a government that they feel is becoming too tolerant of women and minorities, and that a lot of the white working class people are being left behind. And in our first episode we talked about Howard Jarvis in California in nineteen seventy eight.
He gets this ballot proposition on there that says, let's just cap the property tax, and he messages both of those things, isn't the government bloated? Aren't the bureaucrats overpaid? Isn't your tax Aren't your taxes too high? And he would also say to certain people, should your taxes pay for school integration? Should your taxes pay for a social
educational system that is slowly moving away from you? And he merges these two things together, and we talk about Newt Gingrich the same year, nineteen seventy eight, that's when he wins his selection to Congress. He sees the potency of the practicality of telling people you don't have to
pay as much anymore. A lot of people vibe with that message, but he sees an undercurrent of people who are starting to view the federal government as something that they should be opposed to, that's an enemy to them. In the nineteen seventies, Jimmy Carter's IRS was withholding tax exem status from schools that refuse to integrate violating court orders.
In this period nineteen seventy eight gain Rich, but also you know people like Howard Jarvis and California that started the ANTIIRS movement, which they said, the tax collectors are
a tool of an ideologically driven government. Your taxes going to them is helping an ideological battle, not just funding kind of the base social services that were pretty popular and that a lot of Republicans agreed with too, because, like you said, Republicans like George Herbert Walker Bush and Ronald Reagan wanted strong military, they wanted more spending on the on defense, So they wanted government.
To do things.
They just didn't like the intrusion of government on the tax codes, certainly taking big business as profits. And so
that's kind of what the series leads up to. And by the nineteen nineties, when Newt Gingrich gets into office, the movement of conservatives has become so fractured that the Pat Buchanan hard proto Trump conservatives now they have a lot more influence over this party, and they're saying Ronald Reagan's too moderate because he compromised with Democrats, and George Bush is of course way too moderate because he would
even consider raising taxes. And they see new Gingrid shut down the government and they say, this is what we're all about, aggression, hostility, and the movement takes a hard turn to the right right there. And it's not to say that the entire Republican Party believes like this. I
think that the Republican Civil War is still happening right now. Yeah, But that is how this tax issue then mores into what we see right now, which is you have whole anti government forces, people who saw Waco in Oklahoma City saying, you know what, the government is taking away our rights and it is a frightening force. And if our taxes defund the government, more power to that. And that's by the way, Grover Norquiz do we interview in our last episode.
He's that faction of the conservative movement.
Art Laugher, who we heard on the trailer is the other side, which he says, low taxes equals prosperity. But he'll message all these kind of pro government values.
Interesting.
Yeah, well, no coincidence, by the way, that happened during the fall of the Soviet Union just that time when in the early nineties.
Yeah, that's a fantastic point, and so sort of bring us to today. I mean, on the one hand, again, this four trillion dollar tax cut for the rich centerpiece of the Trump agenda, he sort of flowed like, oh, maybe I won't cut taxes as much on the millionaires with an He backed off of that immediately when it became clear that he'd actually have to exert some pressure to get that to happen. He wasn't all that interested
in doing it to start with. On the other hand, you know, in the time period that you're covering, they really were on the offense. They felt very confident in their messaging. Now you can see from Steve Bannon and others that they realize this. If they're going to really position themselves as this populist party, it's a little bit of a problem for them. They're at odds with their own voters, let alone the national conversation. So kind of where is the anti tax movement today?
I think the anti tax movement is still very powerful because of things like Elon Musk and Doge, and that is that they are taking the rhetoric that the government's
a hostile action and dialing it up to eleven. And as we talked about in the series, when you message that rhetoric in an era where people are already dissatisfied with their government, they feel let down by it and they're frustrated, you can get people who initially were pro government agreeing with you that you know, the government is doing negative things.
I think the biggest contract is.
A big part of that.
Guy is a big.
Part of that. I think the big thing that the Steve Bannon thing is trying to do is he's trying to make more language of the progressive left and the left wing and hoping that left wing allies will also say, hey, isn't this the future, we should be no taxation on everybody else, but putting some taxes on the wealthy. And I think that the anti tax movement is realizing. The Republican Party was never a good vehicle if that was
the kind of politics that you wanted to espouse. The more progressive Bernie Standers style of politics vibes a little bit more with that. So the anti tax movement is still clearly very strong. Because Trump himself got scared by his own statement of putting taxes on multi millionaires, and I think the quickness with which he kind of pulled that back, and even his Trump his Truth social posts where he was like, I'll put the taxes on there, but if they don't want to, I'll still be okay with it.
It might be a good idea.
You can see his hesitancy and how powerful the entrend interest that run the party really are.
And that's the struggle for the Trump administration. He's tried to tailt his base towards the populist working class base, which was the Democratic base for a long time, and he's seeing why Democrats politically found favor when they would raise taxes on the wealthy.
That was their base. So that's the base he wants to have, but the party is still dictated by the entrenched corporate interests.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean that's the problem for Grover spent decades. He spent decades on this like anti tax, you know, hard line. Yeah you said, and he bullied everyone into a signing. I shouldn't say bullied. I mean everyone was doing it willingly.
Sign He was quite the bully that It sounds like, oh yeah, that'd.
Be a bully.
But when you know they have an opportunity to do a big tax bill in twenty seventeen and Paul Ryan saying we're gonna get your taxes down to a postcard, it's going to look like something like a flat tax.
Well that never happens because the corporate interests need there to be significant tax rates still to fund defense spending, to fund all that other corporate fair And that's what Grebern Norquist and the anti tax crusaders, who genuinely do believe in limited government and extremely limited taxes, they've ended up sort of being the vehicle for corporate interests to continue the welfare's bigot.
Yeah, the flat tax debate is really interesting to me because you know, I will say that when I sat down with Grover Norquist. There are people on the anti tax side who seem to genuinely believe just a complicated.
Tax code is bad. Yeah, that's right.
Need it will lead to people gaming the system, which it completely has, and it's unfair to people who don't have the means or the knowledge base to understand what
all the complicated tax code means. And I think that's why tax cutting a flat tax became a really salient message, which is that if you're trying to live your life, you have your full time job, you have your family, and if someone says to you, do you just want to pay a simple tax code and know that the code is fair, that you know your neighbor who's an accountant who knows the system is paying less just because they have that knowledge base. That's a really powerful message.
But again, the flat rate cutters, and a lot of them like to talk about Ronald Reagan, they're like, Ronald Reagan was our hero, he was gonna do that, but you know, everybody else made the tax code more complicated. Well, the story of Republican politics, and you know, arguably democratic politics too, is that the powerful interest whenever you offer a tax cut are going to be able to find
what they can do. They used to call the hallway outside of the Senate Budget Writing Room in the eighties Gucci Gulch because Bob Dole came out and he saw all the tax lobbyists wearing Gucci shoes and suits, and he would say, it's Gucci to Gucci in the whole way.
Gucci.
Yeah, and that's who wrote the nineteen eighty six tax cut bill.
There you go. That says it all right.
There.
Tell people where they can find the series and take a listen so you can.
Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is levernews dot com and if you start Tax Revolt in your podcast players and lever time, you will find our podcast.
Fantastic. Good to see you, Thank you.
Yeah too, Thanks for having me.
You're pleasure all right, guys. That does it for us.
We are going to do an AMA live today, so if you want to be part of future amas, make sure to sign up at Breakingpoints dot com. I will see you back here with Dave Smith tomorrow and then we will go from there. Emily fun always.
I'll see it too, because I'm going to be watching.
Oh wait, there you go.
I'll be fun.
I was watching and Ryan's here, Just so you know, you watch everything I do. I do I genuinely like I learn and I'm.
A fan, so I mean, how can you not learn from Ryan? The man is just a font of wisdom infinite.
There is a lot. There is a lot going on in that brain, isn't there.
Well, he'll be here on Wednesday. Dave is in tomorrow. Can't wait to see it.
Yep, sounds good. All right, guys, have a great day.