Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/10/25: Krystal And Saagar DEBATE Elon Coup, Judge BLOCKS DOGE Takeover

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Krystal and Saagar debate the Elon takeover of the federal government under Trump.     To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of things happening. So we've had a few preliminary court rulings go against Doge, particularly with their access to the Treasury. The Trump administration this morning

trying to fight back. President Trump asked about it yesterday, so I give you the lay of the land with all of that. We've also got some interesting new polls out. Trump's approval rating doing pretty well. Elon Musk's, on the other hand, doing pretty badly. So we'll dig into all of those numbers and what they may portend for the future. Elon and co. have taken aim at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That agency is effectively shuttered this week with potentially quite significant consequences. This is some pretty brazen self-dealing from Elon and his sort of broligarch cohort. So we'll dig into what that could mean as well.

Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the House, is now trying to mend fences with the billionaires who are upset with Democrats under the Biden administration, are jealous of the Democrats in the House is out trying to mend fences with the billionaires who are upset with Democrats under the Biden administration, are jealous of the access that the Republican billionaires are getting and all the things and goodies that they're getting. I mean, it's just incredible stuff. Stephen A. is floating a presidential bid. Kind of interesting. I could get behind him. He's against weed, you know.

That's all I need. Well, what I will say is he lacks one thing that the, like, 99.9% of the Democratic Party, you know, he has one thing that most of the Democratic Party lacks, which is actual charisma. That's true. That's a good point. Understands attention. Yeah. Not afraid of controversy. Has charisma. His politics are kind of like, you know, whatever.

They're kind of like centrist-y, enlightened centrist-y. Enlightened centrist, rich guy Democrat. But you know. That's the vibe. That's the general vibe. Yeah, you got to take the pulse of the country. You can do worse, for sure. So anyway, we'll play you the clips from him and some of the past things he said about politics that we can take a look at as well. And I have a monologue today. I'm taking a look at the way that culture war is being used to usher in a pro-oligarch agenda, CFPB being one example of that. I'm excited to watch it. I've got to give an obligatory Go Birds to my in-laws.

Oh, that's right. It's one of the greatest days of their lives. I can guarantee you that. That game was crazy. Look, I don't watch a lot of football. Yeah, I don't watch a lot of football. I actually watched the entire thing, which is shocking for me. And I was just like, wow.

I could not believe the collapse of that. I genuinely, I don't understand it. Of the Chiefs. I don't understand it either. I've been listening for years. You know, again, I don't even watch football. All you hear, and you absorb through the zeitgeist, Patrick Mahomes, Three Dynasty, greatest football.

And then you're like, this is like high school football. You know, like what's going on here? Six sacks, strip sacks, all the fumbles. The stats at halftime, they had one first down. One first down. In the entire first half. Yeah. Like 30 yards.

I mean, it was insanely. It was an outrageous, outrageous. Insane blowout. There were a lot of funny jokes online, like, oh,

I had no idea they were so reliant on USAID funding. It's like, maybe this is a DEIT. Anyway, so I got a green tie on from my in-laws in Philadelphia for the city, Philadelphia.

I've Come to grow and love it after marrying into it and I am very happy for them. They're a very passionate fan base. You have to give them their culture. I think it's amusing. It is definitely a passionate fan base. In fact, I was shocked at how lopsided even the fandom

at the Super Bowl. When the Chiefs came out, they got booed. Taylor Swift got booed. I thought it would be roughly even, but it was overwhelmingly a pro-Philly crowd. The thing that I liked about it is it made the commanders in retrospect look better because even though that was also a romp by the Eagles, at least they put up somewhat of a fight. Yeah, that's right.

This was just unreal. So, yeah. So congratulations to the Eagles and all the Eagles fans out there. Congratulations to you and your family. Yes, thank you very much. Do not, don't burn down the city.

You know, let's just stay off the polls and all that. I know that last night it was supposed to be the crazy one, but even during the parade they've been known

for their shenanigans, but you can't hold them back. It is a crazy fandom. I encourage people, if you have the chance, to try and go to one of those Eagles games because it's an experience.

That's what I had at least at the NFC Championship. Anyways, let's get to the news. Indeed. Okay, so we had a few preliminary court orders go against Doge in particular with regard to their access. They're trying to shut down USAID and the one that is catching a lot of attention with regard to their access at Treasury. President Trump yesterday was asked in the pre-Super Bowl interview about this court decision and whether it was going to, quote, slow him down or slow Elon down in terms of what they're trying to do. Let's take a listen to how he responded. Irreparable harm. What do you make of that? And does that slow you down on what you want to do?

I disagree with it 100 percent%. I think it's crazy. And we have to solve the efficiency problem. We have to solve the fraud, waste, abuse, all the things that have gone into the government. You take a look at the USAID, the kind of fraud in there. And you found significant things? Well, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of money that's going to places where it shouldn't be going. Where if I read a list, you'd say this is ridiculous. And you've read the same lists,

and there are many that you haven't even seen. It's crazy. So let's go ahead and put the details up on the screen of this temporary restraining order that was issued by one federal judge. Now, my understanding is there's supposed to be a more complete hearing on this this Friday. Also, update this morning that Trump and his team have also filed to block even this temporary restraining order, so we can get to some more of the details on that in a moment. But this was the initial temporary restraining order. A federal judge on Saturday issued a sweeping block on most Trump administration officials, including Elon Musk and his allies, from accessing sensitive Treasury

records for at least a week while legal proceedings play out in New York. Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmeyer issued the middle-of-the-night order after an emergency request by 19 Democratic attorneys general, warning that the efforts by Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency allies to take control of Treasury's sensitive payment system, which have access to personal information, Millions of Americans and the government's financial transactions were putting their residents at risk. Engelmayer said he agreed with the state's assessment that the abrupt changes in policy implemented by the Trump administration had created a risk. Sensitive data would be disclosed or that the system could be hacked. He also said the states were very likely

to show the new arrangement was legally improper. Though Engelmayer issued the emergency order, the case will ultimately be handled by a U.S. District Judge, Jeanette Vargas, a Joe Biden appointee who was confirmed to the bench last year. So that is the state of play. access to this very sensitive Treasury payment system that controls all six plus trillion dollars of federal spending by and large. Also said that any data that had been pulled from that needed to be deleted. So, you know, pretty sweeping order here temporarily issued. And as I just mentioned, Sagar, the Trump administration trying to fight back even against this temporary order while this is further litigated. Yeah, we've got the order as of this morning that I was just taking a look at. They're basically asking for a vacate of the order and or a temporary stay. I mean, it is actually a pretty extraordinary order whenever you look at it, even no matter how you feel. I've been trying to wrap

my head around this. We'll get to the discourse in a bit about whether to ignore federal judges in the first place. But I mean, it does seem a little bit absurd that the cabinet secretary who was confirmed by the United States Senate at the, you know, at the behest of the executive is not allowed to access Department of Treasury data. Put Doge aside because Scott Besson is included in the order. Additionally, as I understand it, previously, it was actually government contractors, according to the Trump administration's motion to vacate and or stay that was filed yesterday, that traditionally has the access to the IT data and the Treasury Department's. So anyway, so I was like, well, you know, is it really more secure or whatever in the hands of Booz Allen Hamilton or whomever,

federal contractor is holding this. But the Besson thing is actually where I thought that the order was really off the mark. I mean, how can you block the United States Treasury Secretary confirmed by the United States Senate from access to Treasury Department data? That just makes no sense. I read the order differently. I read it to be anyone from who's not in the Treasury Department, which would not include Scott Besson. And perhaps the language is unclear. It says political appointees, special government employees, and any government employee detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, access to Treasury Department payment systems.

But that is something that, you know, Republicans are really seizing on that, you know, this ambiguity means that it could even apply to Scott Besson. Again, it's a temporary restraining order. It's meant to apply just for this week. But this is being used to really launch an all-out assault on the idea of federal judges constraining the executive at all. And so the, I think, really big question this morning is whether or not the Trump administration is going to comply with this court order or other court orders. And just before we get to some of the things that cause us to raise that question at this point, there was also an order that went against their attempt to shut down USAID. Could put that one up on the screen here as well just to get the details there, too.

Judge blocks Trump from putting thousands of USAID employees on leave. The decision comes amid the first legal challenge against the push by Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's new Department of Government Efficiency targeting U.S. foreign aid programs. This is going to be another really significant battle. USAID is kind of the test case for the Trump administration. Some of these cases, they want to go up to the Supreme Court to challenge the Impoundment Control Act that says, you know, if Congress appropriates money for a program, you are then obligated. The executive doesn't get to pick and choose which things because Congress has the power of the purse. We know that part of Project 2025 was, you know, an intentional fight over exactly this issue. Now, one thing, you know, in talking to Emily that she raised is that even the Project 2025

people, you know, they're very, they are very careful in their planning of how they want to execute this and which cases specifically they think are the strongest cases to ultimately, you know, litigate this question at the Supreme Court. And what Elon has done has really sort of thrown a wrench into those carefully laid plans because he has been so aggressive and over the top with his illegality. I mean, USAID, whether you like the agency or not, authorized by Congress, pretty, you know, as an independent agency, pretty clear that this will be a violation of federal law. But in any case, this is going to be one of the big fights because if they can win on USAID and basically say, yeah, we can get rid of any agency that we want, then it's open season on Department of Education. Obviously, already see there's also a fight right now over the CFPB that we'll talk about in a little bit.

They're taking the same approach there as well. Any agency that they don't like, whatever Congress thought of it and whether they authorize the funding or not, they would then be able to just strip it, lay off the employees and, you know, run rampant in destruction throughout the federal government. That is a very good point that Emily made, and it's actually, this is the key to kind of gets to the difference between the Silicon Valley, like move fast and break things ideology, which is one that really goes back to like some of the founding law there, as opposed to, you know, when you're dealing with government, when you're dealing with courts, especially with courts, you want very carefully planned legal challenges. It could come back to bite them. At the same time, I have to separate it out. So there's the legal case, but there's also the political. And this is one where, I mean, I said this before when I was able

to speak with you about USAID. I still think it's a very smart strategy to start with USAID, because nobody cares about USAID. It's 0.7% of the federal budget. It's pretty unpopular broadly, foreign aid programs. I mean, trying to explain this to a normal person is basically like a process argument, like, well, Congress. And they're like, well, what? What are you talking about? And this is one of those where I'm really curious about the manifestation of, quote, unquote, resistance and what it gets to. And so I was reading while I was gone.

Matt Iglesias had a really good story where he was talking about a very interesting piece of polling data, which said that people who are heavy news consumers overwhelmingly voted for Kamala Harris. And what I took away from that is that the more capital I informed you are, the more outraged, and not only outraged, but paying attention. You might understand the gravity of process and the potential for that. But the average everyday voter is far more concerned about the Super Bowl commercials last night. They don't care about USAID. They don't, not only don't even know what USAID is, don't care about process. They really just care about results. And this is going to get to some of the polling data that we have in a little bit. And I think it accounts for why Trump's approval rating is so high. It also goes to why the Trump administration feels very

comfortable. I mean, same thing with the CFPB. You may feel when the CFPB is gone if you're getting scammed, but you have 99% of Americans have no idea what the CFPB is. So yes, a lot is being set up here. There is potential for major flashpoints in the future that actually affect people. If we're talking about Medicare, they got access to the Medicare payment system, Social Security, things like that. But as of right now, I'd say they're standing on pretty strong political ground. That's just my overall assessment from what I could see. I mean, maybe. I guess for me, I don't really particularly care that much about the approval rating. I just think that this is a, you know, unconstitutional attack by one billionaire who happens to be the richest man on the planet, who has conflicts with all of these agencies.

You know, if you look at the things that he's doing, it's also really clear the way so many of these actions are just blatant self-dealing, right? With USAID, is this the reason he went after them first? I don't know, but they were investigating the use of Starlink satellites in Ukraine. CFPB, we're going to talk about later, you know, he didn't want them regulating X as X just signed a deal with Visa, didn't want them regulating him. And, you know, they were about to start that. All of these fintech companies, payment apps, all of this sort of stuff fell under the CFPB purview. And so they want that gone. So that's gone. Trump signed an executive order to take out a specific commission, a specific office within

the Department of Labor that lo and behold happened to also be investigating Elon Musk over employment, alleged employment discrimination. The National Labor Relations Board, which has now been gutted and literally can't do its job and is no longer defending itself in court. Elon despises unions, like, long time, very open about that. He's a union buster. He's a strike buster. And he is actually suing in court to render that whole body unconstitutional, and they are no longer even defending themselves in court. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian,

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I think this transitions into the next piece of this, which is there is also something we've talked about here before, an ideological plan outside of Project 2025 that is more revolutionary, let's say. And Elon describes this as a revolution. The ideological blueprint really laid out by Curtis Yarvin. And part of the idea there is you fire all the government employees. And when the courts try to stop you, and this is words that came out almost verbatim from J.D. Vance's when he was doing the podcast circuit before he was elected vice president. When the courts try to stop you, you just keep going. You just ignore them. You say, you know, enforce it with your army. Good luck. And there seems to be a lot of buildup right now in that direction of making the case for why they should just ignore every court ruling that goes against them.

So J.D. Vance himself, we can put this up on the screen. This is probably the most significant of the Twitter discourse about whether or not these rulings should just be ignored. He says, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges are not allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.

Okay, the whole point of checks and balances is that the court system is supposed to be a check on when the executive tries to seize power for itself that is not, in fact, legitimate. So in J.D. Vance's conception here, the executive gets to decide for itself what power grabs are legal, constitutional, and what are not. That is pretty obviously the polar opposite of the way that the system has been set up and, you know, has been used in the past. Even his examples here are like kind of off because obviously if, you know, a general commits war crimes, there could be a role for a judge. Their prosecutorial misconduct can also be litigated through the court system.

But, you know, this seems to be making the case, a case that he made previously, as I mentioned before, that if the judges and the courts strike against, issue orders that go against what they want to do here, they should just ignore them and keep going. Yeah, but right now, look, as far as we are right now, they filed an injunction or whatever vacation for that. So that's not the ground that we're standing on. I think what they're – I mean, look, I don't love the tone of the tweet. Can I say that?

I think what they're getting to is really about what I mentioned earlier about the Scott Besson genuine legitimate authority here over the purview of the government. And that is like kind of the big brain question about how much of this is legitimate. So for how all of us, however much we may hate Doge or any of this, special government employees, czars and others do get access to federal government data. Like they have the ability to compel action. Now, the question here for the courts, for Congress and all of that is how much of this falls into the purview, even in the legal authority of the executive. I think this is a genuinely legitimate question. But I mean, it also is one where if you have to big brain, and I've been trying to think about like, how did we get here? Like how exactly what it is. And I think what has happened within MAGA and really why they have arrived at this position is if you consider the last four years,

and I'm speaking purely from an analytical perspective of the way they see it. They're like, look, the court system, the legal system was used to convict Donald Trump to come after him for the FBI. They threw everything that they could at him. Clearly, the Democrats are the ones who broke the judicial filibuster. They're the ones who pushed the bounds. And I mean, look, there is also genuine examples many times over the Biden administration where Democrats flogged, hated the federal judges and attacked legitimacy of the court. So it is a bipartisan problem, no? Like when the Supreme Court strikes down the, what was it, student debt and prior to that, you know, they freaked out. How about the eviction moratorium? But they complied.

Well, sure. But I mean, so far they've complied. But they've complied here as well, right? They've filed an injunction. You're talking big. That's exactly what people have done in the past. Do you feel confident that they're going to comply? I feel relatively confident they will comply just because that will be such a quote unquote norm breaker that it's one of those where you don't really come back from that. Now, when I say relatively confident, I'm giving you like 60, 65 percent. Also, what do we have? We have novel legal authorities that people use all the time, you know, for how they govern themselves within the executive.

It is a genuine question of how the Supreme Court will even rule on this. So would you really want to just not comply and rather just take it to the court? If I had to get, I bet SCOTUS would rule on the side of the Trump administration here, especially with respect to Doge. I don't know about USAID or others. There's also the same thing. I mean, USAID has not, quote unquote, been shut down, right? It's just that the agents or the building doesn't function. The agency doesn't come to work anymore. There's genuinely different authorities. I was going back and reading about the way that Bill Clinton similarly went through the process of shedding a bunch of government employees, transferring to contractors. There are same big questions here that were happening in the 1990s after the budget

reform, which led to the explosion of federal contractors. So they have more legal ground than I think people think. Whether they would come all the way to SCOTUS, the question I think really comes down to this. Would they defy a ruling from to SCOTUS. The question I think really comes down to this. Would they defy a ruling from the Supreme Court? I just don't think so, because it would very much open the grounds to a lot of the previous left talking points, right, about stacking the Supreme Court. Because if you're just going to do that, then that means that this thing has no legitimate authority, which is something that J.D., Trump, and others have staked so much of their legacy in terms of the federal judiciary. So overall, do I think

they're not going to comply? No, I could be totally wrong. I'm very open to it. But I think the big talk that comes from MAGA from around all of this is a feeling of total and complete political vindication over the legal system, over, I mean, just think about, you know, the amount that has happened to Donald Trump over the last four years, how many times not only counted out, but being told like, oh, this is it for him, 90, what was it, 90 something felony charges, et cetera, and still not only be able to win the election, but to pray, you know, to triumph in the courts, to be able to push these things off and still take power with a popular vote. So that's just broadly how I think we got to where we are.

And J.D., also, you have to understand his role, right, is probably the attack dog of the administration. Now, Trump himself was more circumspect, I would say, in that clip. What did he say? He was just like, yeah, I don't agree with it. But that's not—doesn't mean I'm not going to—what did he say? I'm going to openly defy it. Right. He was not clear.

Breitbart said, will this slow you down? And he said no. So it was not clear. Well, it's not a particularly clear question. But let me ask you, Sagar, because, I mean, I'm looking at this and zooming out. It seems pretty clear they're following the Curtis Yarvin playbook. Aspects of it, yeah. The Butterfly Revolution is what it's called. I know this stuff sounds crazy. But that playbook. Aspects of it, yeah. The Butterfly Revolution is what it's called.

I know this stuff sounds crazy, but that playbook, J.D.'s very influenced by him, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, all these people, very influenced by him. And this is from, it's a newsletter called

The Nerd Reich. And here's the playbook. Number one, install a CEO dictator. Okay, that's Elon Musk. Very clear. His claimed control of the federal government is running rampant through it, cutting agencies that he doesn't like, destroying the CFPB, destroying the Department of Education, destroying, going after the Department of Labor that's been blocked at this point, destroying the USAID. Okay, so we see the parallel there.

Number two, purge the bureaucracy. Yarvin's plan called for retire all government employees. Rage. Rage. That's what Doge is doing. That's what they are systematically doing, trying to push people out through this probably also illegal buyout offer, gutting teams, furloughing them, laying them off, etc. Build a loyalist army. So Yarvin says recruit an ideologically trained army to replace experts and enforce the new regime. We see that through Project 2025. We also see it through the like Doge apparatchiks that are running through these various agencies, not to mention, then you

also have the, you know, ideological sort of like followers that Musk has himself cultivated in his own power base that he's cultivated through X. Number four, dismantle democratic institutions. Yarvin's blueprints, strip power from federal agencies. We already see that. Courts and Congress, the Congress part is, you know, seizing control of the Treasury payments and saying, we get to decide. Congress, we don't really care what you have to say. We get to decide what spending goes out and what doesn't. You no longer have control. I mean, they really are trying to make Congress thoroughly irrelevant. And obviously, Musk has undermined the credibility of the federal government,

downplayed legal oversight, defied regulatory authorities. And this is where part of the question comes in. Yarvin's Blueprint specifically calls for defying the courts, something J.D. Vance has said they should do, something that he and Elon Musk and a bunch of others are now floating on Twitter. Do they go through with that plan? Number five, seize media and information control to maintain power. Yarvin says take over government journalism, academia, social media to control public narratives. Elon Musk bought Twitter. Obviously, the FCC has been going after various news agencies. So has Trump in terms of filing lawsuits and sort of demanding these bribes for him to leave them alone and go away. And so

that seems like they're very much following the blueprint. And part of that blueprint is when the courts try to block you, you say, I don't care. It's also, you know, even if you don't buy that this is what they're following, which I think at this point it's, to me, pretty undeniable given how closely it matches all of the steps. We also know how Elon operates in the private sector. Like he brazenly flouts the law. And so does basically every other CEO in the country, by the way, whenever it suits him. Because he knows that if you are an elite, you can basically get away with it. And Trump knows this too. I mean, Trump committed all sorts of crimes and he's president of the United States.

So he also knows that you can basically get away with it. Elon also knows he has impunity because if he does run afoul of law, then Trump can just pardon him. So no big deal. So they don't really care what the courts say. Some of these things, you know, maybe whether Scott Besson can be denied charge of action or whatever, our borderline, some of them are really not. Like, even if we just take the example of firing all of the inspectors, not all, but the vast majority of the inspectors general, there is a law that says you have to give 30 days notice and there has to be cause.

They just didn't do it. It's just, you know, USAID, again, separate independently established agency by Congress. It has to take an act of Congress to get rid of this agency. And they're like, no, we're just going to get rid of it. We'll take some pieces of it, maybe put it under marker, we'll be at the State Department, but we're just done with it. Department of Education, same thing. CFPB, same thing. And so, you know, I don't know what gives you confidence that they're going to be like, but we'll follow the letter of whatever the court. Oh, I didn't say it. I didn't say that. But what I do, I think the problem with Curtis explaining is, look, I've known and read Curtis Yarvin for many, many years. And I think that his

influence is both obvious, but also vastly overstated. And by his own admission, he did not predict many of the results that happened here. He actually ridiculed at certain points, people like Christopher Ruffo and others who thought it was legitimate and operable to change the system as it is happening right now. He's admitted his defeat after Trump's first two weeks, and he said that he was wrong. But taking back that playbook, if you think about what that playbook is, it is an attempt to establish one-party rules. That's what FDR and the New Deal did. He wants, I mean, again, he wants a monarchy. He wants Elon Musk as a CEO dictator and Trump as chair of the board. I actually think that's the playbook.

That is the plan. This is the important thing to understand. That is every single thing you just laid out is effectively what FDR did in the early 1930s. That is so not true. No, it is. That is not remotely true. Look, give me the attempt to explain here. We had people like Tommy Cochran and Tommy the Cork and Harry Hopkins and others who were very similar. No, non-elected, special appointed bureaucrats who created all sorts of throw it at the wall programs, who moved earth and mountains or whatever.

Which were passed through Congress. No, but not many of them actually weren't. And actually, they would separately appropriate and move bureaucrats around. They had a strike team very similar to Doge. But step back and further think about the things that you're talking about there, about institutions, about taking over media and others. A friend of mine, Julius Krein, has said before that America always has one party rule. It's just that the opposition party becomes one that is effectively subservient. So for example, in the New Deal era, there was an attempt by people like, God, Robert Taft, Robert Taft and others, isolationist Republicans who are anti-New Deal and others that fought against FDR and Harry S. Truman for 20 years.

And they eventually lost. They lost when Dwight D. Eisenhower became the president of the United States. And when he did, he effectively codified the New Deal, Social Security, the expansion of government, and accepted this new role. What Curtis has always looked back on fondly, I guess, is the establishment of FDR as a quasi monarch of the United States. And he was, by all accounts, not only in terms of his terms, his total and command of the government. He attempted to pack the Supreme Court. He very often, many presidents, Lincoln and others, right, have ignored the Supreme Court, have decided, you know, in extraordinary moments to say that we're going to move in a different direction. And even if you look back on Lincoln, it's not exactly like the habeas corpus thing is so tarnishing his legacy. What Curtis understands here was effectively saying if you want regime change, you have to change the whole regime.

Now, the regime of the United States has been neoliberal and effectively culturally left-wing now for basically 20 years. Especially, yeah, I would say over 20 years, especially PEPFAR and onwards from the establishment of the Obama dynasty, etc. Neoliberal, the worshipping of technocratic neoliberalism on top of the explosion, basically, and move of the cultural left inside and marching through all institutions, right? And so what Curtis is advocating for is to say, no, this is the only attempt to roll back the institutional takeover of cultural liberalism of all aspects of American life. Now, even he has said he thinks that's a nearly impossible project. And also, once something has been affected, it's very difficult to roll it back because the Democrats could just win and they could bring this forward. My point only is that if you look at it through this lens of an attack, not necessarily on executive power, but as trying

to roll back all of this complete step change in American culture and life, all of the Trump orders will make a lot more sense. Here, Sagar, is a quote from Curtis Yarvin. If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia. He wants a monarchy. I know what he thinks, but that's what I'm saying. He wants a CEO dictator.

I'm not talking about arguing against Curtis. Okay, no, but my question for you is, are you good with that? Well, I mean, it depends what he means by that. Am I fine with FDR? With a dictator. Yeah. FDR passed his programs through Congress. Let me read you the list.

Yes, I know what they are. I know about the 100 days. I'm very aware. Emergency Banking Act, Glass-Steagall Act, Agricultural Adjustment Act, National Industrial Recovery Act, Civilian Conservation Corps. And by the way, some of these things were struck down by the Supreme Court. And guess what? He abided by that. Social Security Act, Wagner Act, Works Progress Administration, Fair Labor Standards Act.

These were passed through Congress, not from some dictator king who just seized control of the federal government. He had a supermajority. Not from some dictator king who just seized control of the federal government. He had a supermajority. So he had a, because through elected representatives, through this thing we call democracy. So yes, he had a lot of power because he had a much larger mandate, massively larger than what Donald Trump has. But I mean, that's, I guess that's just my question for you is like, are you, as you're trying to explain like the thinking and the, well, they're mad at the Democrats for this and they don't like the cultural institutions for that. Are you comfortable with the remedy being a CEO, dictator, king, usurping the power of Congress and the courts? Am I comfortable with Elon? No.

And remaking the country however they want to remake it? Under Elon, absolutely not. But if you're asking me in an FDR context of like, am I cool with FDR? Yeah, absolutely. If it's 1936, yes. No, no, no. No question. I'm asking you about this situation right now. Well.

In 2025, are you comfortable with Elon Musk as the CEO dictator of the country with Donald Trump as chairman of the board? No, I'm not. And do you think that that is in fact the plan that they're trying to effect? I think that is Elon's plan. Whether they are successful or not is an open question. Do you think that is the plan? No, I don't. I think that's Elon's plan.

I do not think that's Trump's plan. I definitely don't think that's J.D.'s plan. And I think this is the fundamental tension of the Trump administration. And this actually gets to the bigger problem, which is the fact that Elon himself is not aligned totally with, and I think you're doing your own monologue about this specifically, which is Elon has very, very different, you know, interests. And at the end of the day is actually a separate power force in a way that the people I mentioned, Harry Hopkins and Tommy the C of the day is actually a separate power force in a way that the people I mentioned, Harry Hopkins and Tommy the Cork, were employees and were basically subservient to

FDR. So I think that the fundamental tension here is that you really have the quote unquote CEO person who's trying to enact rage and all of this, who has a very different ideological agenda than many of the voters in the Trump administration. I think that's actually why I'm not quote unquote comfortable with it. I think that the prop and what I'm trying. But if there was a different CEO dictator, you would be comfortable with it? Yes. Because listen, there are many things. You're in favor of like a monarchy in the United States of America. I am in favor. If you were to call FDR a monarch, then yes, I'm in favor.

No, this is not what FDR did. I'm talking about today in the here and now what they are trying to accomplish. If you had instead of Elon Musk in the role, J.D. Vance in the role as CEO dictator of the country with Donald Trump as chairman of the board, you'd be cool with that. Of saying like, we're done with democracy. We're having a king. That's where we are. Is that the, the, the use of the terms, the use of the terms in the American context is the closest we ever got was FDR. So if we were FDR style, yes, absolutely. Now, would I be comfortable with that? But this is not what they're doing.

I'm trying to explain this. FDR went through Congress. They are trying to complete, like, explicitly. You're taking this too literally and not serious. You served the role of Congress. They're taking this too literally and not serious. Because they're watching what they're doing. No, because at that time,

there were no government agencies that existed. And so the way to enact, like, crazy change was to create new agencies, right? Whenever you are doing a revolt against institutions, what do you do? You take over those institutions and you try to dismantle them. In fact, this is probably more analogous to the Bolshevik revolution in taking over all of the institutions, burning them down from the czarist illegitimate regime, I think we would agree, right? And basically trying to enact a new form and a new paradigm shift. Now, none of this is one-to-one because obviously things rhyme. What I'm saying in the context of where we are right now, if it is aligned, and part of the reason why I don't feel so alarmed, like you said, is I don't believe what you do. I don't think they're going to defy

a Supreme Court order. If they do, listen, five alarm fire here. You do accept that at least Elon is trying to effectuate this butterfly revolution, which calls, which he's gone step by step and which does call for ignoring and defying the courts, something he has done in the past, by the way. I don't think that. Something J.D. Vance has explicitly called for multiple times, something they are, you know, on Twitter, basically fomenting popular consent for going and just ignoring any federal court order

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Again, whenever they actually defy a Supreme Court order, then I'll say something. But at the current time, I don't think that that's happening. I think, well, we've disputed that J.D. quote before, as we did on our last time. Look it up.

I did. We talked about it last time. Show me, because I... He specifically, there's a whole Reason article about this. I mean, look, if we want to do it, we can. I read it last time. How has J.D. Vance raised the specter

of open disregard for court rulings? It's right here. I will send it to our group chat so that we can all discuss it and we can look over the transcript. We can even put it on as a tear sheet. He said this multiple times, Cogger. Now, as he said, quote,

so I think what you can do in the Senate is push the legal boundaries as far as the Supreme Court will let you take it to basically make it possible for democratically accountable people in the executive and the legislature to fire mid-level up to high-level civil fervents like that to me is the meat of the administrative state. podcast appearance which i believe is the same one 2021 fire every

single mid-level it's in the same interview every several civil servant in the administrative state replace them with our people that's what they're doing the chief and he further suggested that if the courts intervene trump should respond by saying the chief justice has made his ruling now let him enforce it very much implying and he's also saying the same justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it. Very much implying. And he's also saying the same shit on Twitter right now. Here's what the reason fact check said. I think if you consider the full podcast, Vance is not actually calling

for the defiance of the Supreme Court. The Andrew Jackson line is almost cliche at this point. It is apocryphal anyway. Jackson almost certainly didn't say it. Now, again, parsing in all of this is almost foolish because let's see what they actually do when they're in power. And let's get back to the meat of what we're talking about. If you think about the 2025 Trump administration, what is the actual goal, as I've been trying to say?

It's about dismantling technocratic neoliberalism and turning back the tide of all institutions in America. That is both how they see it. I think to a certain point, that is what the American people voted for. Now, when we put those two things together, it makes sense about how the whole coalition has come together. And I spent a lot of time

trying to think about this through line because it can seem really inconsistent to have liberals like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard and Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk and Trump and J.D., people completely across the ideological spectrum. If you put all of those people together, what unites them? It is being oppositional to the quote-unquote technocratic neoliberal point of view in almost every way. So with Elon, you think about him as the most unconventional CEO basically of all time, built two companies in spaces that were never supposed to work, both in SpaceX and in cars.

Define the conventional wisdom. For crypto, it's about attacking. This is why they do the CFPB. It's about attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take on the legitimate financial system. Now, you may think that's bad, but that's the impetus. For RFK Jr., it's about what? It's about the establishment of healthcare, vaccines, all of that, anything that thought. For Tulsi Gabbard, this is somebody who literally whose

entire career has basically been trying to be against the security state and others. Now, they all have been compromised in many, many different ways. But the through line of those three, of those things is against these institutions, which are both governmental, non-governmental, academic, and others. That's fine. Go to Congress. You don't get to just run rampant and cut out the pieces you don't like because that's illegal. It is a crime spree. Now, RFK Jr., I think, is a disgusting human being who puts us in danger, and I think it's a horror that he is being confirmed to run HHS. It was done through legal channels. He was part of the, I think he is a big part of the reason Donald Trump got elected.

He has now been confirmed. The Senate is majority Republican. They're going to by and large get with it. Same thing with Tulsi Gabbard. Same thing with all of these people. Right. I don't like it, but I'm not saying it's illegitimate or it's a constitutional crisis. When you just go into the Treasury payment system and are like, I'm going to cut off the pieces I don't like me, one person, Elon Musk, who, you know, I mean, whether it was Donald Trump, even if he was, you know, as the legitimately elected president was the one doing the picking and choosing, that would still be brazenly illegal, unconstitutional assault on the way our entire government is

set up. So these things are very distinct. And, you know, the piece of this, too, that I don't know where you get your confidence from is Trump has done everything Elon has wanted him to do. I mean, Trump is out there issuing executive orders about South African, like, boer resettlement. Which they don't even want, apparently. They don't even want, because they claim they're indigenous, which don't even get me started on that particular rabbit hole.

But this is clearly coming directly from Elon Musk. As I mentioned before, the executive order to dismantle this one particular part of the Department of Labor, which just so happens to be investigating Elon Musk and Tesla. You have the Secretary of the Air Force that Trump has now put into place, just so happens to be the guy who greased the skids for Elon Musk, SpaceX, to get massive contracts, effectively rigged the contracting process to make sure that SpaceX would win. Oh no, he's got him as the Air Force secretary. OK, Trump has completely changed his views on crypto and and is now, you know, totally pro crypto, got his own shit coin.

I got a lot of questions, too, about who is who the whales are that are involved there, because it's also very possible a deal was made of basically like we will make you wealthy on the level that we are, and you're going to stay out of jail. Elon's going to help you win, and we're going to get to do what we want to do. We're going to run the government the way we see fit. You know, all of these like agency hands that people are so excited, RFK and Tulsi and whatever people I think are terrible people, but whatever, they're, like I said, legitimate. These people are irrelevant now. Like, they don't matter. What matters is what Elon decides, whether you, you know, whether your agency is going to stay or go, how much budget you're going to have, how many, you know, how

much enforcement you're going to have, whether your agency happened to tick him off and try to regulate him. Like, from his perspective, from Elon's perspective, and I do think Elon is running the show at this point, there is no sign that Trump has resisted him on anything. H1B is another example where Trump completely changed his orientation to be like, yes, I want you to have your indentured servant workforce to whatever extent you possibly do. The reason Elon, I think, and I think you might agree with this part, Elon has cast himself in the role as the hero and savior of humanity. He truly believes he is the most brilliant person on the planet, that he alone can rescue us from whatever ails us, whatever ails the country, whatever ails

the world. You know, he has these fantasies about colonizing Mars and whatever. And so he has almost this sort of the like effective altruist mindset of like, since I've decided these are the existential threats to humanity, me alone, I've decided it justifies anything to get to those ends, right? It's the definition of the ends justify the means. So if, you know, kids with AIDS in Africa have to die, or if the Democratic Republic of America has to come to an end, and laws have to be broken, and I mean, that's the least of it. He doesn't care. Anything justifies the ends that he has decided on as himself again cast in this role as hero and savior of the universe. And so that, to me, very systematically is what he is from Trump. And I see J.D. Vance very much echoing, you know, and trying to bolster the arguments that Elon is making in this. I don't think that you're wrong on a lot of the track that you just laid out. The question

is, again, where it arrives in terms of genuine impact. So you could look at it the way you just did. And I think that's, I think it's totally legitimate. I think that's the way a lot of people who are reading the news, who are elite Democrats and others who are feeling about this because they can understand the stakes, the process, et cetera. The problem that I think is that, look, if we're actually talking about payments at the Treasury Department, they didn't cut off a single payment, right? How do you know? Well, I mean, I think we would know at this point, wouldn't we? How do you know? I mean, I'm fairly certain we would know. There's also reporting that they were changing code in the back end to facilitate the ability to cut off payments and also reportedly to make it more difficult to track. But I think that's a pretty distinct difference than actual – that's a very distinct difference, in my opinion, than actually cutting it off. Again, USAID. USAID workers are not coming to work. The budget's

still appropriated, as far as I understand it. The payments and all that, at least some have gone through. No, payments are not going through. No, no, no. It hasn't gone through to certain programs, which they say that they don't agree with, but not all, quote, payments have been shut down. Pretty much all payments, including PEPFAR, which was specifically supposed to be exempted. But if you only have, you know, 100, 200 workers at USAID, nothing is going out. Well, that's a different process argument. Nothing is going out. But it actually still gets to the end result here, which is that is, quote, unquote,

is the Department of Education, if it gets shut down, but all funds continue to go to the states, is that a bad outcome that most people will feel? I don't think so. I have deep skepticism as to whether people will care at all, whether some Department of Education bureaucrat has a job if their state funding still continues to come through. But how is the state funding going to come through if there are no employees to issue it, Sagar?

Well, I mean— That's not the way things work. How many do you need? I mean, and this is the genuine question that gets to kind of the way that Elon has run Twitter. I'm not even disagreeing that Elon doesn't have a completely separate agenda. I don't know for sure whether your analysis of whether Trump has completely deferred to him is entirely correct because he still is playing small ball in a certain way. And this is part of why, again, I want to step back. And if you look at the way that Doge was originally sold, and actually, if you look at Vivek Ramaswamy's

decision not to join Doge, you can maybe give him some political credit. Because what's the thing he identified, which was the bad way that he was going down this road? The way that he was going down the road, according to Vivek, is that he believed that the way that they were going down was from this technical approach as opposed to a legalistic and more Project 2025 attempt to dismantle the government, one which was like a carefully laid plan. He specifically appears to have dissented from Elon whenever it came to this approach. To the who? Well, I mean, you could call it that, I'm sure. I know that that's what many people would like to believe. I think it's a bit of a fanciful term here currently,

but that's fine. We can all use the rhetoric that we decide. But my point that it comes back to is we're talking about 0.7% of the federal budget. Even when we look at the Department of Education, these are completely, these are rounding errors. They told us they were going to cut, what was it, $5 trillion from the federal budget. I believe Elon has now revised his federal spending to, if we can cut 5% to 10%, which is already, by the way,

a massive retraction from where he originally was. Much of this is almost an attempt, like at the political level, to initiate what I think is the response that they're getting from the Democrats, but at a fundamental level is not really altering the entire United States federal government. Like nobody in the country is feeling, except the people who work here in DC, and that's where all the protests are hilariously, is because it's the bureaucrats, the employees that work for these agencies, cares about USAID. Nobody cares about a mid-level Department of Education person. It gets back to my point here about the dismantling of these institutions, of these make-work programs, of these NGOs and others. If you want to attack the center of gravity of what liberalism is, liberalism is about the worship of elites and institutions at fundamental,

at an operational level. That is what the Elon, Curtis Yarvin, and Trump attack really brings its full circle. Yeah, it's about having a dictator. You're right. I mean, that's, yeah, it's attack on institutions, dismantling them, and installing Elon as a CEO dictator. Well, I think that, again, I think that's Elon's plan. I think that is Elon's plan. And he's effectuating it. Yes. Like he's putting it into place. So, I mean, you're right about, you know, is he going to, the amount of, the point is not, in spite of what Elon says, the point is not a government efficiency. The point is not shrinking the federal budget and deficit, blah, blah, blah. The point is consolidation of power in the hands of Elon Musk.

That's the point. That's Elon. You're right. Yes. Yeah. And Elon has been given carte blanche. Yeah, but it's also February 10th. It's been 20 days in the Trump administration.

By Trump and J.D. Vance. And also, you know, it's not true, by the way, that just the protests are only in D.C. There have been protests elsewhere, but also senators say they're getting 1,600 calls a minute right now, freaked out about what's going on. That is as opposed to the typical 40 calls per minute. So it's not, you know, to say, oh, it's only federal government employees that care about this. That's just factually not true. Okay, but it gets to my neurotic liberal point about people who are obsessed with the news who are the ones who are the most freaked out.

Okay, but people should be paying attention. That's not a bad thing for people to be paying attention to the news. We base our whole business on people paying attention to the news, okay? I'm happy to have you all here, but as I've tried to tell you all many, many times, if you read the news every day,

you are very out of step with the general public. I've deeply reconciled myself to that. I mean, think about the way that Americans experience the world. They're like, oh, they're shutting down the USAID. Okay, didn't even know what that was. But you keep going back to USAID. I hate the Department of Education. They're going, okay, USAID, you're wrong about Department of Education.

The public school system, especially in rural America. You're talking about funding. You're not separate from the actual Department of Education. Yes. And having a Department of, like, if you're going to get the funding, you have to have some sort of bureaucracy in order to issue the Pell Grants and the special education funding and the Title I fund. All of these things have to go through some sort of bureaucracy. And it's called the Department of Education. They're in the social security systems. They're in the National Oceanic, the like hurricane watch weather systems. They're in the Medicare systems. Elon is out there reposting Mike Lee about how Social Security is

a scam and you should just have a, you know, private market-based retirement account. That's like all of these things are on the table. He's already moved way beyond USAID. We're going to talk in a little bit about him dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which means that you are much more likely to get scammed. Like this is an agency that was set up after the financial crisis to try to curb some of the excesses of banks, Wall Street, and other types of scammers. It has been very successful, too, by the way. It has returned some $21 billion to consumers. That is gone now as well, the National Labor Relations Board, your ability to organize.

So to be like, oh, it's just the USAID, it's already gone way beyond that. That's already like, you know, that's already old news. We're talking about way down, way down the line in terms of the things that he is targeting. I just want to get through these couple of tweets that we have and then we can move on to the polling because I do think that's the next logical place to go and some of we've already previewed. So we've got Tom Cotton, who is also, you know, attacking the judge here. Outrageous Obama judge Paul Engelmeyer didn't just bar Elon Musk and Doge from Treasury systems, barred the Secretary of the Treasury himself. Again, I didn't read it that way, but I admit the language is kind of ambiguous. Without citing a single law, that's a

lie, or even allowing the Trump admin to appear in court, the Trump administration is going to have their chance to make their case. This outlaw should be reversed immediately and Engelmeyer should be forbidden by higher courts from ever hearing another case against the Trump administration. We can put the next piece up on the screen. So Mike Lee says about this court ruling, this has the feel of a coup, not a military coup, but a judicial one to which Elon replies, yes.an also reposted a longer post that was calling specifically for ignoring the decisions of the federal judges. And then the last piece here is there was reporting about, there was a contractor from Booz Allen Hamilton who wrote a report saying that, describing the Doge incursion to Treasury as a, quote, insider threat. So, you know, significant threat risk based on what they understood to be happening.

The Booz Allen Hamilton now have said, oh, no, no, no, we didn't mean it. We fired that person, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, people who are looking at this, many of them find it to be a great case. It's one guy in Booz Allen. I'm not taking it all that seriously. So, okay. Thank you for your opinion, sir. Have you ever thought about going voiceover?

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