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All right, good Friday and morning, welcome to a Counterpoints takeover of this Friday show. Just some programming notes stick around for the very end if you're a premium subscriber. If you're not a premiumbscriber. Premium subscriber, it'll cut off about halfway through. You're going to miss a lot of good stuff. You know, we give so much of this show away, We give so much milk away. We got to figure out ways to make you buy this cow.
And so we're going to have Matt Stoller and James Lee in the back end of it, Matt Stoller talking about the definition of oligarchy, James Lee doing an interview with a former layman trader about the private equity bubble, which I actually think is one of the maybe the biggest issue facing the economy right now, is the potential collapse of private equity, which could just rip through everything and give us another you know, two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine. We're also going to talk in the back half of the show about the latest developments in Israel and wanted to talk about one piece of that before we moved to domestic news, and then we'll pick more of that up. Actually, a producer, Mac who has the YouTube channel Good Politic Guy, picked up on
this earlier this week. I only noticed it recently, but Besilol Smotrich, the Finance Minister, Israel's finance minister, gave a speech this week where he said that he had where he basically says he won an internal battle and Israel is now because he has won this batattle deliberately targeting civilians and the civilian infrastructure of hamas in Gaza, no longer just focusing on the military, but going after civilians. That is a crime against humanity. It's against international law.
You cannot target civilians, even if they work in the government. If anybody told you that it was legal to kill two Israeli members of the embassy here in Washington, d C. Because there's a war going on, they are they're lying to you that that is a crime against humanity. You cannot kill civilian members of the government. Uh, the IDF is finally conducting a campaign against the civilian rule of Hamas and not just focusing on the military infrastructure we
are eliminating. We are eliminating ministers, officials, money changers, and elements of the economic and governmental system. So we'll talk more about that, what that, what that means about this next phase of the Israeli attack on on Gaza In the back half of the show, Emily any any quick reaction to that.
As well, at least have a lot to discuss when we get to that portion of the show, which again is for premium subscribers. You can head over to Breaking Points dot com to get access to the back half of these Friday shows. Usually it's more of a party Who've got Crystal, sometimes Saga, but now it's like today, it's rising Fridays like circa four years ago.
That's right, that's right, that's right. Yeah, you're definitely not going to Ryan.
Also, we have in the front of the show We're going to be talking about Trump's crypto dinner, which happened last night, and the reports are trickling in about exactly how that went.
Uh.
The claim is now that the big beautiful bill cuts the deficit, which is incredible.
So we will break all of that down too.
Yeah, not true. We'll have some updates on immigration policy. Trump telling a four hundred year old university, the top university in the world, that it can no longer accept foreign students. They cited no rationale, no legal rationale for that. So that's gonna that's gonna head to court. But you know, the fight with Harvard is kicking up, and I desperately, you know, hate Trump for making me defend Harvard, you know, one of the worst institutions in the world. But uh,
come on, what are you doing? What on earth are you doing? The the though, the white immigrant, the Denmark guy, and Mississippi's kind of making waves on on the on the right, and and you know, across the spectrum. This guy. We'll talk about this guy who's been in the country since twenty thirteen, was doing everything right. Went to a
immigration hearing. Uh, father of four married to an American citizen. Uh, you know on on his you know do did nothing wrong except I think they missed one one filing or something. Arrested down in Mississippi by Ice Agency's in detention. Now. Trump, now that the talk market has recovered, he's doing his best to smash it again. He's threatening a twenty five percent tariff on Apple, fifty percent tariff on the EU and also the old tariffs are still in place. He's
going after media matters. Democrats are proposing a whole bunch of a whole bunch of different changes that we can that we'll talk about going forward. This interesting, interesting story in the Bulwark.
Even everything you just said, the fact that it's happening all at once, it gave me a.
Little bit of whiplash.
I was like, Wow, you told me ten years ago that that would just be the casual rundown of a Friday show.
Wow, Okay, there we are.
But it is all happening at once, and everyone give me a little patience.
This morning.
I moved yesterday and had all kinds of tech fun this morning. So if there's weirdness in the audio and if I'm at an odd angle, just we're working on it.
Yeah, your computer's buses, So is it hard for you to put up elements.
Crying and it looks like because you're on an i boomer, I'm on an iPad, so we will.
Well, you're a computer broke and you still made it on.
Here, that's right, the one thing that broke.
Yes, at least that's not boomer at all. Okay, so let's uh let's start here, uh with Caroline Levitt talking about the talking about this crypto dinner last night, which is you know, it's hard, it's hard to remain shocked anymore. But this is truly a a a shocking level, brazed and braised, brazen level of corruption. So let me let me share this, uh this, Caroline Levitt.
Here on the dinner tonight, you mentioned this is not a White House dinner, but the president is and the Trump family is making money off of this. So can you just explain how is this not the president using the office to enrich themselvel.
All of the president's assets are in a blind trust which is managed by his children, And I would argue one of the many reasons that the American people re elected this president back to this office is because he was a very successful businessman before giving it up to publicly serve our country.
Did she say a blind trust managed by his j ok.
That was comical? That was comical. A blind trust managed by his children? That is? That is indeed what h what she said?
Does that mean? That could mean a lot of different things, by the way, it could mean.
That they are the people who are the like actual they're they're making the trades and stuff. Or it could mean that they're managing the people who are handling the investments. But it sounds like they're the ones that are handling the investments from that quote, Yeah, not not so blind?
Yeah yeah, yes, yes, I'm sure his yes, because we're like, give us the money, give us your money, we'll manage it for you. And they're doing all and they're doing all their deals around the world, Like how does that? How does that? How does that not make it worse? Like that feels a little bit. I guess it's worse than like one of those answers where you're like, oh, wow, this was really bad. When I heard the questions, it's
worse now that I've heard the answer. So for folks not following this, this crypto dinner, if you what, in order to get into this dinner, you had to buy Trump's mean coin, and the top two hundred holders of Trump's mean coin would then get access to Trump, and I think the top fifteen or thirty would get this like VIP access. Now, the way that crypto works is it's there's some transparency in being able to follow the coin.
And more than fifty percent of the of the of the people who bought into the top two hundred, and more than fifty percent bought in the top thirty did so through exchanges that only allow foreigners to participate in them. So we knew for a fact going in that this was a bunch of peace people from outside of the country who were going, we're giving money directly to Donald
Trump to enrich him for access to him. Now, the question then, is they just want it like they just want a selfie, or they are they actually trying to move policy, because then you're at the level of bribery, and so the New York Times has, Uh.
It's incredible, it's exactly respect but incredible nonetheless.
Yeah yeah. Several of the dinner guests and interviews with The New York Times said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing mister Trump and US financial regulations. Sang Rock Oh, a Korean crypto executive, arrived at the dinner with a collection of red baseball caps and blazoned with the words make Crypto great Again that he planned to hand out at the event. He said he had flown all the way from Soul to attend
a dinner. Quote. It's kind of a fundraiser for mister Trump, mister O said in an interview at his hotel in Virginia, and he'll always be good to his sponsors. The dinner was designed to fuel more sales. The organizers framed it as a contest. The top two hundred and twenty buyers would dine with mister Trump at his golf club, while the top twenty five would attend a more intimate gathering with the president before dinner and go on a tour of the White House. So you can't believe anything I say.
I said two hundred and thirty just open bribery, and anyway, that's not The New York Times that's mister Hannah and Aniya there. So yeah, so they paid money to Trump a fundraiser for Trump, not Trump's campaign, which is the way that we've legalized bribery in the United States, but directly to Trump, which is the old school illegal kind of bribery. Is there has anybody attempted a steel man of why this is not just flagrant?
I think Carolin speaking of Caroline Lovitt, I think.
Oh, because it's a blind His money's in a blind. Hrowsn't he doesn't know if all this money that's being given by him actually benefits him or not, because his kids might lose it.
On well, of when she was talking last week about the cutter jet and she said, the notion that Donald Trump would be influenced by anything like that is insane. And I actually really think that's the only steel man that you could possibly come up with.
Well meaning that well, even with.
The tariffs, at least for a couple of weeks, he was willing to give a middle finger to all the Wall Street guys that were messing with him like that's I don't think it's a good argument, but I think it's the best version of the argument that it's all on the up and up, because Trump is just someone who's uniquely resistant to the influence of money and politics,
which is how a lot of people see him. On the other hand, that's not how the people who were dishing out millions of dollars to who have dished out millions of dollars to Trump, see him. And that's in this I mean you see that in this rundown itself. I think the estimate is about forty percent of Trump's net worth is now tied up and the coin in crypto, which is astounding because that's only happened over the course of the last five months. This a man who spent how many.
Years toiling away in the Trench's New York real estate. So it is just to see ryan two things.
On the one hand, the people who are activists in crypto world do fundamentally want to change the global economy, bottom line. That's why they're active activists in crypto world. And on the other hand, what they're doing here is so nakedly corrupt that you just it's head spinning. And so you have activists and corruption combined in one beautiful dinner, one big, beautiful dinner.
Yeah, and this is a good example of it. This is a piece in the Wall Street Journal headlined a crypto billionaire who feared to rest in the US returns for dinner with Trump. It's about this guy, Justin's son, who run a crypto network that is very popular with what they what the Wall Street Journal calls the criminal underbelly.
And this this is a top use of crypto as being trying to trying to move money outside of the banking system if you are involved in things that the banking system is going to flag as as potentially illegal, uh, drug trafficking, human trafficking, uh, money money laundering, you know,
the you know, the the under underworld stuff. And so this guy was, uh, you know, persona non grata until recently, and now he has you know, used this money to buy and if if you are Sam Bankman freed, uh, you have to be feeling like the biggest moron on the planet. Like you you put all of your money into Democrats and then Democrats went and tried to regulate crypto and then locked you up. Like your move, moron was to put your money into on the Republican side.
He was what he did fairly, Yeah, it was it was like sixty forty.
Yeah, he was spread he was spreading it around. He gave a bunch of McConnell, right, Yeah, he was definitely spreading it around. Yeah, but he was a little more.
No, he was, and he was he was sort of culturally aligning himself the left, which is again very interesting too, Like he was because at the time how quickly culture changes.
Now, at the time, the idea of.
You know, the the what do they call it, it's like so out of vogue now, the effect of altruism that was really that's right and sort of left wing progressive business circles to the extent that makes sense, sort of like the center left circles. And so he thought he could pitch crypto as effective altruism instead. You're right, it should have just been you know, piracy and take it to the libertarian right.
Just leave it at that.
And while we're while we're on the topic of corruption, pro Public has this news story that what is a dozen top congressional aids and executive brank branch officials sold huge amounts of stock just before Liberation Day. Now in their defense, uh, Donald Trump went to Congress with his in his State of the Union and announced that he was going to do his Liberation Day. And as Jeff Stein kept complaining about Wall Street guys like we've been saying he's going to do this, he has said it
out loud. He has said it out loud repeatedly. So what I think it It goes to a fundamental corruption in the system that these officials hold. That's those shares at all. Like, if you're a public official, you should, to me, you should not have public any kind of public servant, any stocks. Yeah, public servant, yes, exactly, yes, yes, serving serving the public. Put you know, your money should be in an actual blind trust, not run by It's insane.
I mean, but the thing is it doesn't matter, and I don't even know I mean it it matters. It doesn't matter for Trump because I guess what's the best explanation of this. It's always been baked into Trump and there's no other politician like it.
I mean, this is the.
Man who actually based a not insignificant portion of his twenty twenty campaign on Biden family corruption. The twenty sixteen campaigns was not insignificantly based on Clinton corruption, and.
That was also about insecure use of messaging. Like there the personal emails were said to be the greatest, like national security castrophe. Let's get an update on that.
How's and foreign influence?
How's that going? How's how's the Trump administration handled.
When it was really particulars about foreign and pebbling, both with the Clinton Foundation and with the Biden operation. And I think Hanani described I think he described one of the pictures from the Times articles like a United Nations of corruption because it was people from so many different countries who were racing to be involved in the dinner. While again Trump is this is the sitting president of
the United States. So Trump is not like yeah, it's the only difference between Trump and Hunter Biden whatever is Trump has Caroline Levitt go out there and just say to everyone, well, yeah, people can give him money.
It doesn't mean it's going to change his mind.
Like he's he's taking all of this, you know, he's he's doing all these events. Doesn't mean it's going to change his mind. Whereas with the Bidens, it would be well, everything is legal, you know everything that nothing is. It's nothing to see here. Everything is perfectly in compliance. They're just like screw it, you know, like it doesn't don't even worry about that. The question fundamentally is whether it's
changing Trump's mind. It's not so look somewhere else. Did you see Tucker By the way, Tucker, sorry, maybe Sean Ryan was on Tucker Carlson Show this week and brought it up. Brought up I think they were in the context of last week's trip to the Middle East, and Tucker was like, sure, looks corrupt. And if you're a consistent sort of supporter of Donald Trump's, because he is a very effective critic of the swamp in Washington, d C. There's only one way to be consistent.
It would be to see that as outrage.
Yes, yeah, it's corrupt. The only defense of it is that people who like Trump like Trump and that is cool. They don't care.
Well, yeah, the argument is that doing outweighs the personal enrichment. But of course, again, it makes it look like the United States is for sale, and the United States has been for sale in many different ways over many, many years.
But there's something about.
Right, all they have is what about.
And there's something also about the sort of pretense of.
It's not even just a pretense, it's an ambition that as you sort of respect the will of voters, that they respect our laws that they say, hey, we don't have a spoils system. It's something we're very opposed to as like average Americans, we don't like it when the people who are elected abuse their office for the sake of personal enrichment.
But the I mean it just.
That's out the window and who knows what happens afterwards because of that.
And maybe we disagree on this Harvard, this Harvard issue, let's move on to that one. So let me let me put this up. So Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard saying that in the headline in the Times as Trump administration says it is halting Harvard's ability to enroll international students. That's that's what they did. They sent a letter to Harvard saying, you are no longer eligible
to enroll foreign students. They're what twenty twenty seven percent like some Yes, twenty seven percent of the student body six thousand, eight hundred international students attended Harvard in the in the last school year. It had been it had been nineteen point seven percent in twenty ten to twenty eleven,
so it's slightly increasing number. And so they're telling Harvard forget it, like you can't do this anymore now as people have who've you know, looked closely at the letters that it doesn't have don't cite any law, doesn't cite any authority under which they're going to single out Harvard. She's BONDI said out Now, this tended to send a message to the rest of No song Nome said, is intended to send a message to the rest of the
universities that they better not fight the administration. So, you know, presumably who knows, presumably the Supreme Court or whoever rules on this will knock this down. We could talk about that that whether or not that's the case, but also the merits of it. I guess the argument on behalf of it is that, hey, it's an American university. It
should be a it should be there for Americans. The argument for it is that the United States doesn't make much anymore, but we are still the innovation center of the world. China is challenging us, but we're we are We're still at minimum competitive with them, if not, if not better. And the reason for that is that other countries aren't just competing against the top graduates of American high schools, but of the best and brightest from all around the world who come to the United States to
go to the best university system in the world. Many of those students then become permanent residents and become citizens and stay here. They found companies like Google here that you know, put us in the in the forefront of
this kind of innovation economy. The ones who then reached, who don't stay here and return to their capitals or to their big metropols, develop an affinity for the United States and give us another advantage when it comes to kind of soft power around the world, because they had a good time while they were here, and they have a lot of friends here, and they understand our country in a way that Americans don't, for instance, understand China.
I was talking to a Pakistani guy who was here in the United States a week or two ago, and he was talking and he travels to China lot. He's uh, he's in He's in London a lot. And he was saying that this the advantage to him that the United States has is that he doesn't feel like he is a foreigner here. But he doesn't feel like a foreigner like he he comes to the United States, he feels at home. He's welcomed despite all of this Trump rhetoric
and the attacks on immigrants and such. You look around and we're a genuinely diverse, pluralistic, multicultural countries that you go to China, he so you immediately feel like a foreigner and and that's not that's not the sing a lot of China. That's that's the case for so many other countries. You just feel out of place. And that gives us this this advantage without which we're then competing in you know, textile mills and like just just manufacturing.
And we don't have that capacity right now. So if we get so, if we cut off our head, like the body is going to die too, would be my argument. What's your take on the value of well, these elite colleges and foreign studiyah.
I mean, so they're a couple of the couple different parts of that. The first part is the question you just were discussing, which is the value of foreign attendance at elite colleges and universities, and then the others the value of this policy if we break it down that way, I think probably if you look through some of the highest achieving Americans in the last you know, fifty plus years.
A lot of them probably came to the United States because they were exceptional students and you know, got to Harvard or wherever and the sake of their merit and made incredible companies and careers in the United States because they love the United States. And as we talk about, often immigrants to the United States are often the best Americans because they love.
The US so much.
Yeah, they necessarily take it for granted in the way because they come from places where you.
Don't have as much freedom, you don't have as much prosperity.
So I don't think it's wise to shut that off completely because some of the most brilliant people from around the world. In fact, it's a real benefit to the United States that still today. If you are high achieving in any other part of the world, you're not going to Chinese universities. You're trying to go to Harvard and Yale in Princeton wherever else, and actually even some of our big.
Flagship state schools. So I think that's actually.
Creates a The United States becomes a magnet for the best talent in the entire world. How we then integrate that talent into the United States is another question. That number twenty seven percent enrollment of foreign students at Harvard, which is the pride of America's higher education system, seems exorbitantly high. That seems like it is actually you know, this is a publicly funded university funded by US taxpayers. That seems like it probably is closing the door to
too many American students. So I think it makes sense to have a conversation about that. On the other hand, policy wise, this is another sort of creative attempt or an attempt to create a new novel avenue to the They're like bushwhacking their way to like screwing with elite institutions. And I'm I have the letter in front of me just to get what Christynoam is saying out there.
They are saying.
They sent a letter in April to Harvard where they quote, requested records pertaining a non immigrant students enrolled at Harvard University, including information regarding misconduct and other offenses that would render foreign students inadmissible or removable. They said twice they got insufficient response. They say, as a courtesy that Harvard was not legally entitled to, DHS afforded them another opportunity to comply. Harvard again provided an insufficient response, so.
Right, and they're asking for like five years.
Yeah, within seventy two hours, they have like six demands yeah that include that. And they also are saying that this is under the auspices of a revocation of the Student and Exchange Visitor program, which DHS apparently I didn't know this, right, but DHS apparently administers. So that's why it's coming from CHRISTINOAM and DHS, and it is part of this administration wide effort to again like bush whack their way through uncharted territory, to screw with elite institutions
via all kinds of different mechanisms, creative mechanisms. And so as much as I want to screw with elite institutions, it's just sounds completely silly. It doesn't seem entirely lawless. They do admit the program, but it seems like, I mean, it seems maybe silly is the best word. It seems like kind of a joke, yea.
And yeah, in the sense that they are the law. It's not lawless, but they're not citing any particular authority that they have as the administers administrators of this program to just kind of arbitrarily target them because they're not turning over footage of protesters. It's like, what it's like, get out of here, Like who are you? DHS? Like, and I want I missed the the free speech right. That would be like, wait a minute, you want the government.
The DHS wants a private institution to turn over five years of video footage of speech, the.
Heavily funded private institution, a heavily tax payer funded private institution.
That's fine. Still, it's still we're all tax payer fund on some level.
That's thing Obama.
You didn't build that, even if it's public, even if it's public, even if they went to the University of Michigan as for five years of footage of protests, like it is First Amendment. The right to peaceably assemble right there in the First Amendment, not just speech. Peaceful assembly is right there in the Constitution. It's one of the key things that we're so proud of that makes us a free country. DHS demanding that and if they don't turn it over, they're gonna basically try to destroy them
is just a fundamental threat to civil liberties in this country. Now, everything I have said is an argument as an American for the United States of America. I think for a person in the world, you could argue, go ahead, good, it's actually it will be better for the world. If the United States commits suicide, it will be better for these other countries. If the United States is not creating a gravitational pull that creates this brain drain out of
all of these other countries. If the United States is weaker and is interfering less in the democratic governance of other countries, that's probably a good thing. Now for people in the United States, their quality of life will go way down. This country itself will spiral, but the rest of the world may actually do better. So in that sense, you know, I guess go ahead, Christine.
No, yeah, I mean, look that twenties again, twenty seven percent just seems it's probably.
What although it's probably low, Like if you think about it, if this is you know, there's three hundred million people in the United States. There's eight nine billion around the world, maybe ten all competing for spots in the best college, and you American students are getting them. Somebody's putting yeah, I.
Mean the public learning of the institution is one hundred percent of American but.
The yeah, right, but the private the far, and that's what I was just going to say.
Yeah, that's what I was just it's it's I wonder how much of that is actually merit and versus you know, the rich chikhs, you know, buying their kids into Harvard or wherever else. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to have a conversation about that. Also, these schools do have legitimate problems with espionage that they kind of opened in or welcomed in for a long time. They seem like they're all kind of cracking down on it now, but whether it's Cutter or China, there's been all kinds
of stuff happening at it's these igue institutions. It's hard to tell whether this letter is specifically.
Yeah, and the federal CHUDG has already blocked it.
Well that's why I think so when you said it's a serious threat to higher education, it's like in I look at that on paper and I'm like, yes, that's true.
But then I look in practice and I'm.
Like, yeah, I know some of these people. Spend time with some of these people, and they're just trolling with a lot of this stuff. And it's not funny if you're Harvard but the only point that I would make is just and again, this is it. It's controversial and not entirely fair. But the only thing I would say is, I don't know how serious they are about going through with a lot of this stuff.
It doesn't it doesn't make it right. I just think that they're they're throwing, like.
Jackson pollocking the whole administration, like they're throwing everything at the wall and trying to make a beautiful portrait out of their mess.
And yeah, it's it's It doesn't Again, it doesn't make it right.
It doesn't mean that it's not gonna have implications, But just to like explain it from their perspective and explain why it doesn't feel like a grave threat to me is partially just because I'm like, I don't think they're going to go through with it. I think they're just doing this to scare the universities and appliance with other things that they are more serious about, and some of those will be I mean, the endowment tax that's in
the big beautiful bill is significant. That actually is a huge deal if you're Harvard or any of these schools. So some of the stuff is completely serious. Some of it feels like, Okay, we're you know, just creating these funny like legal ideas that somebody came up with at a happy hour and was like, hah, and this will f with Harvard.
Let's see what happens.
Yeah, So let's let's talk briefly about this this father in Mississippi. And I guess you can let me know if the right is angry that I would that I call him a Mississippi father, just like they're angry about calling Braio Garcia Maryland.
Maryland that this is That was the Atlantic headline.
No, they hated, they hated Maryland father in particular. How dare you humanize him? So I'll just read from this this report. His father went to his This father went to his citizenship hearing, expecting a handshake. Instead, Ice shackled him, threw him into a van, and tore him away from his pregnant wife and four children without even letting him say goodbye. Casper Erickson arrived in Mississippi from Denmark in twenty thirteen, fully documented and determined to build a life here.
He started a family, became part of his community, and followed every rule. He was never accused, let alone convicted of any crime, But as best we understand, he's now in prison because of a single clerical mistake made years ago. In twenty fifteen, Casper and his wife Savannah missed filing one form among the hundreds acquired on the complicated path to citizenship. Savannah had just suffered a still birth, losing their first child. In the painful days that followed, paperwork
deadlines understandably slipped past unnoticed. Now over a month after his arrest, Casper remains locked in a detention facility notorious for cruelty, neglect, and abuse. Savannah, eight months pregnant, at high risk, and terrified, is desperately pleading for her husband's return. She and their children have no idea when or if they'll ever see him again, and she doesn't know if he'll be present for her child's birth. Every day brings
another nightmare. Under the Trump administration, actions of our government are evil or simply no other way to describe it. May God have mercy on all of us for allowing this to happen. Here's the family, you know. This comes at the same time that Ice is also denying Makmood Khalil a contact visit with his want with his one month old baby for for no reason, Like there's contact visits are a thing that you can allow people who
are in detention. Khalil was arrested or blocked up a month before his child was born, as he has not seen his child since then. This one, you know, struck me. You know, we also suffered a still born with our with our first daughter and also now have four children. And I can I can only imagine that. Of course, you're missing paperwork amidst amidst the deepest grief that that a human being can imagine losing a child, like there's
there's nothing deeper than that. Ah. And two to use that to have a system that says you missed that deadline, there's nothing we can do. We must put you in this private prison for months on end as we work to deport you to Denmark is like this. This guy here described it as evil, and like, I'm hard pressed to find a different.
Yeah, I mean, there's the legal question in the ethical question, and on the ethical question. One of the things that bothers me about the.
Way, particularly.
We looked at like Venezuelan asylum seekers who ended up in Seacott and we're legitimate asylum seekers like the barber that we discussed by me about that is I feel like the United States made a promise, and I feel that about many of the asylum seekers who came under Biden.
It's one of the things that bothered me about the Biden policy because I knew that at some point we were going to break the promise, because it was unsustainable to make those promises to so many different people that you will have a fair asylum hearing and that if you are and I know I'm just talking narrowly about asylum here, but the point is that we do promise rule of law and legal processes, and we you know, people come here with the expectation that the United States
will do it fairly and will you know, treat people humanely. And so whether something is legal in a narrow sense is different than whether it's ethical, and it just it does you know, looking at some of the particularly some of the asylum cases Cubans, it just eats me up when I think about just having that sort of removed after people because the United States extended a hand and said make an appointment on CBP one, come here.
You know, you can just tell us like go through the legal process.
Tell us why you want to asylum, tell us why you're a refugee. And it's I think sort of been that it feels like we've let ourselves down in some of those cases. And again that's coming from somebody who actually is pretty supportive of a lot of what Donald Trump has done on the border, Like the crossings are down so significantly, the border basically is closed to the point where it doesn't justify.
Any policies based on a quote quote invasion. But you know that.
It's not Trump's fault that Biden did what Biden did, that the Biden administration did what the Biden administration did. It's not the Republican parties, well, Republican party is different. It's not the Trump administration's fault. But they do have then a moral obligation to deal with the people who came here humanly.
Yeah, right, Because we can choose what kind of country we want to we want to be. If if we want to be vicious and cruel like that is that is a thing we can do like that is within our power and our ability, or we can be or we can try to be a civilized country. That's that's the true We.
Are refugees we should be. That's the other thing. That's another the United States. We were just talking about this when we're talking about academia. We have been a place a talent magnet for generations. Uh, and there aren't and there have been excesses of that. We have been a magnet for desperate people seeking freedom for decades, and there have been some excesses of that. But in the concept in of itself, is part of what makes us a
great country. Is because we are comprised of this amazing collection of people who are really talented, love freedom, and that's an addition to our native born population, and it's additive, and people integrate and love the United States. And again we have to fix those processes too. There's nothing to say that I think there's more. There are plenty of questions to be raised about that. But on the other hand,
it also is part. It's always been additive. It's part of what makes us a good country and a place that a lot of us are proud to live.
There's also news last night we're out of the Supreme Court, and I can put this up that the Trump administration one in the Supreme Court and is being allowed temporarily. It's a temporary victory, but it's a significant one being allowed to temporarily remove gwyn Willcox from the National Labor Relations Board and also Kathy Harris, who's on the Merit Systems Protection Board. People understand the NLRB, that's this, This
is board that oversees labor rights. Uh. The the kind of I think failure of the bipartisan populist movement or or transpartisan populist move whatever you would call it, has been that despite the kind of working class shift in the Republican Party, the NLRB has remained a you know, public enemy number one because of the kind of corporate control and it's the ond a medium business control as well of inside the Republican coalition. We can talk about that in a second. I just want to say a
word about the Merit Systems Protection Board. But basically what this is is there are all of these rules around, you know, how you can hire and fire people in the federal government, and so if if you are wrongfully fired, you can then appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
And what Trump, what Trump is doing here is trying to destroy the the merit the Merit Board, which then would allow him to get rid of all of the protections, because the protect if the protections are there on paper but there's no avenue for you to challenge them, then they don't really exist. And so this is a huge win in his kind of assault on the federal on this federal.
Yeah, and Kagan and so to Major agree with that. I'm reading from their descent here. She says, the current president believes that Humphreys, so that's the Humphrey's executor case, should be either overruled or confined, and he has chosen to act on that belief, really to take the law into his own hands. Not since the nineteen fifties or even before, has a president without a legitimate reason tried
to remove an officer from a classic independent agency. And they write, our Humphrey's decision remains good law, and it forecloses both the president's firings and the court's decision to award emergency relief. So it's a very long descent, but basically they feel that Humphreys is threatened here, and Humphreys is My preference would be that Humphrey's executor is is overturned. I do think that these outside agencies need to be accountable to the executive But at the same time.
Although the FED in here, they also say that the FED is cool, right, which is just they're just making it up as they go along, Like, yeah, just there's no principle here, by the way, just this independent agency. You can destroy this independent agency, which we're very nervous about what Trump would do with that one constitutionally is protected. It's like what they all are none of.
No argument with me on that one. But that's what's I mean.
Like when they when they handed the White House to uh Bush, there's this famous line in the in Bush v. Gore. Uh this sets no precedent and can never be referenced again. Oh all right, I would.
Add that as my email signature.
Yes, delete this email.
But that is the reason that's a fault And actually, to your point, the reason that the NLRB is particularly a fault line, even amidst the transpartisan like FTC populism, all of that is because it brings into the question the size of the executive branch, period and most people on the right still believe that the executive branch is bloated and unaccountable to the president, and I include myself
in that category. So Humphreys to the point that Kagan and so do my rr making is sort of a foundational like that is a load bearing decision for the entire executive branch.
Let's talk about this comical clip with Caroline Levitt being asked, Hey, man, you guys said you're going to cut the devasit coms bill explodes it. She had a very she had a very clever response to that challenge. Let's let's play this.
The One Big Beautiful Bill also to get our fiscal in order by carrying out the largest deficit reduction in nearly thirty years with one point six trillion dollars mandatory savings. Every single Democrat in the House of Representatives who voted against all of these common sense and massively popular policies. The Democrat Party has never been more radical and out of touch with the needs of the American people. The One Big Beautiful Bill is the final missing piece toward
ushering the Golden Age of America. The Senate should pass this as quickly as possible and send it to President Trump's desk for a Yeah.
So we want to hear that again just for fun. It's just it's just amazing.
Well, also helps get our fiscal house in order by carrying out the largest deficit reduction in nearly thirty years.
That's amazing the fiscal I didn't know you could do that.
So in order you are going to be sick of the fiscal house being in order.
It's a really clever governing strategy. So instead of actually creating a bill that that cuts the deficit, as you said you would do, you you create you create a bill and pass into the House that blows up the deficit, but it cuts it off.
It's you're putting diet on the sugarful yogurt.
That's exactly what this is. It works, That's the American.
Way, except the the problem apparently is that the American people don't don't quite buy it. H So this is the COBC. We were trying to figure out yesterday how you say this the COBC letter. Americans have never been so pessimistic about future finances. US consumers expectations about their financial situation over the next year drop to an all time low in May. So this is how do you feel like you will be doing one year from now?
And you can see that. So that chart there, if you're listening to this, it's just a just a cliff like that. The numbers you know, you know, fluctuating over the years and over the last couple of weeks, two months,
it's just a it's just a straight line. It looked like the chart looks like you're going to have to quickly hit that minus button and start like zooming out to give it, to give it more room, to be able to encompass the depth of the pessimism that is engulfing the American public right now.
If I had to, I wouldn't have bet this week on whether the big beautiful bill passed the House or not, because it was just such a close call.
But the fact that it did.
Pass, I think bodes well. Actually going into the Senate, it's going.
To be very very, very very difficult.
But what the passage in the House suggests is the Republican Party is sufficiently desperate to have some type of
augmentation for the tariff policy. Uh and they're they're freaked out about the chart, for example, that you just showed and other charts liked it, like it, because that's the only way you really get people on board with blowing up the deficit is when they are deficit hawks is saying, well, if nothing passes, then you are even like you're you're tanking the economy because you're not.
Having you have no reshoring legislative policy.
You have no one tax right off you know, retroactor to January for building all of that stuff. And so if you if you don't pass this bill, you know, cut the corporate taxes, you don't have the reshoring incentives, then you have a much worse situation. So it's a it's a wonderful way we make laws.
By the way, I got some details from that Trump meeting that you had with the Republican Conference from a source that hadn't made it into the press yet. You think some of this up back to your sources. Uh, they'll they'll they'll enjoy this. Uh, you know, they're the thing that the Freedom Caucus put out leaked out. He said, I love the Freedom Caucus. You know, these are my guys. The fuller quote was, I love the Freedom Caucus. These
are my guys. You know, give me liberty or give me death, and then he added, vote for this bill or it's gonna be death for you. They and when the Freedom Caucus members leaked that out, to the press. They conveniently said the washing.
So that's funny.
Yeah, they love that he loves us. He loves us so much. They left out that he's threatened to kill them metaphorically kill them, I assume.
Uh.
He also, at one point, I forget the exact context, said he was the first gay president because he was complementing somebody, and uh, it will be Buchanan. Come on, this is Buchanan erasure.
Yeah, okay, it's fair.
He was married Joe Senator from like Mississippi or whatever, like, well, it's an interesting one.
Uh.
And then he got into a back and forth with Massy.
Uh.
Source told me where he said, like Massy, very smart guy. Uh, he went to mi T But look it up. Wharton much better school, much harder to get into.
I want to see Trump than running his on Tesla batteries, you know, making that that's mass.
Is absolute genius. He's like literally self sustaining farming.
Yeah, Wharton, harder to get into.
Incredible.
I'm smarter than Massy. So let's here, Let's roll Massy's Uh he did vote against He's one of the few that did vote against it. Let's play his his speech reserves gentleman from Massa Chiefs is recognized as a speaker. I yield one and one half minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky, a man who is not afraid to speak his mind about fiscal responsibility. Mister Massey, gentleman from Kentucky's recognized for ninety seconds.
Well, I'd love to stand here and tell the American people we can cut your taxes and we can increase spending and everything's going to be just fine. But I can't do that because I'm here to deliver a dose of reality. This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises? This bill
is a debt bomb ticking. Congress can do funny math, fantasy math if it wants, but bond investors don't. And this week they sent us a message. Moodies downgraded our credit rating, and the bond investors who buy our debt and finance our debt demanded higher interest rates on the ten year note, the twenty year note, and the thirty year note. What does this mean? Very soon the government will be paying sixteen thousand dollars of interest interest a loan per us family. And what are we telling them?
Instead of taking care of that problem, We're going to give you a sixteen hundred dollars break under the taxing and spending levels. In this bill, we're going to rack up the author say, twenty trillion dollars of new debt over the next ten years. I'm telling you it's closer to thirty trillion dollars of new debt in the next ten years, mister speaker. We're not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic tonight. We're putting coal in the boiler and
setting a course for the iceberg. If something is if something is beautiful, If something is beautiful, you don't do it after midnight.
I that's a quote. It's not true.
It's a good one, so messy, not always true. Real real quickly, let's uh, and we got to get to this back half the show. But I did want to talk about this, this bulwark piece real quick, where Democrats are planning a whole uh, claiming that they're going to do a bunch of changes. The funniest one that I thought, UH, from this one is that they're saying that Joe Joe Biden operatives, they're going to attempt to blacklist them. We'll see.
That would be like the first blacklisting of any like kind of mainstream operatives for anything ever in in democratic politics in the in the past, it's only been a blacklist for people who challenge the democratic establishment. Uh there. And they're also going after uh South Carolina like they're Carolin well making no, making South Carolina the first in the nation state like that was done for Cliburn and for but for really for Biden, who you know, credits
South Carolina for for that win. And so now they're they're looking at that again. It's we'll see. If I don't I don't. I don't think they'll actually do it, uh, but we'll see.
I think that's a that's actually very interesting because you have both of your books behind you, the posters for them. But we see some of the starting to happen on the right, like if you have worked in Coke Universe, you were supposed to be kind of booted from Trump circles, that you were supposed to be off the list of the administration.
That didn't totally happen but it's still kind of.
A it's still not great on a resume if you're trying to move into the mainstream conservative movement now and you have recently like a Coke group on your resume. But you know, the idea that someone who worked for a mainstream Democratic politician campaign presidential campaign for an establishment Democrat like Joe Biden, that that would be a problem for you. I just genuinely don't believe that that's durable.
It seems to me like something that is being discussed right now, but then everyone will just pretend never happened in six months or something like that. But maybe it applies to the tippy tippy top, like maybe your general Malley Dylan. Maybe you're like other people that are up
that were up really high in that world. Maybe that's why, maybe that's why people like l Rosa are, you know, talking to breaking points for example, to sort of say, well, we were in here and we were the sane voices, or we tried to be the sane voices.
I don't know.
I would think Jenno Mali Dylan is done anyway. Like she you know, she ran the twenty Obama twenty twelve campaign and then Biden in twenty twenty and then this one. And she's a corporate consultant, like that's her Her main gig is her firm does corporate consulting. So I don't
expect her to run another presidential campaign. And once you've run them, you don't you don't go into you know you maybe maybe she'll still do some like socide consulting work for a future presidential campaign, but that's peanuts compared to the amount of corporate money that's available to her and other Democratic operatives. But let's move. Let's move to
the back half of this show. This is for premium subscribe uh breaking go to breakingpoints dot com this because it supports all the journalism that that we do here. And you'll also get a Matt Stoller clip that we're going to play towards the end, and also a James Lee interview that he did with this and we should uh Layman Trader, Jared.
We should also mention we're doing an A M A in the second half of the show, so we're taking some.
Premium describers questions.
So if you want to see the rest of the show Breakingpoints dot Com, you can do that. You can send questions for future ames, and you can hear all the fun stuff we discuss today.
And so so let's talk about some of the political fallout from the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers and killing in here in Washington, d c UH the other night