Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/27/25: SCOTUS Saves Trump Cuts, Trump Tells Cabinet To Back Elon Or Get Out, Elon Agrees To Jon Stewart Interview

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss SCOTUS saves Trump cuts, Trump tells cabinet to back Elon, Elon agrees to Jon Stewart interview.   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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What do we have, Crystal? Jam-packed show today. We're gonna try to rip through as much news as we possibly can. So last night, around midnight, we got the first Supreme Court weighing in, not really a ruling, but a temporary stay, weighing in on some Doge activities. So break all of that down for you, what it means, what is going to happen next. Also, big cabinet meeting yesterday that Elon Musk was at. Some very interesting things happened there. We'll show you some of the highlights. Sagar really wanted to sound off on the Trump golden visa. So Ryan, Emily covered it yesterday, but we had a bit of a different view. So we wanted to express that as well. Obviously important in the context of sort of like philosophically and what is this country and how do we want to pursue immigration, et cetera. More airplane near

misses, absolutely terrifying. Two coming in a very close succession. We'll show you some really shocking footage from one of those near misses. There's a new Biden book that is going to be coming out. It is the inside story of his decline and the cover-up. Jake Tapper is involved, so that's led a lot of people to ask whether he is the right person to be doing the reporting there, whether he was himself in on part of that cover-up. And Jeff Bezos making it plain that the Washington Post is not going to brook any dissent from the pro-oligarch agenda. So we'll talk to you about that and the fallout that commenced afterwards.

Yeah, there's a lot to say about it. There is. out that commenced afterwards. Yeah, there's a lot to say about it. It's just so hilarious to me the way that how naked, how all of these people are and more. It actually fits well with a guest that CounterPoint's had on yesterday. Really excited to be able to bring this to everybody. They got to sit down with the CFPB's former Rohit Chopra, who was behind the scenes working at the Biden administration. Rohit Chopra previously has not yet responded publicly to a lot of the allegations made against him by Marc Andreessen and by Mark Zuckerberg. We will be exclusively dropping that for our premium subscribers early. So if you want to go ahead and subscribe, you can, but we're going to give you a little teaser

of what that looks like. Let's take a listen. When it comes to debanking, I don't think people should ever lose their account because of their exercising their religion, speech. And I'll tell you, one of the first things I did years ago was to put forth a stronger policy that made it clear when that type of discrimination or debanking ran afoul of the law, guess who sued to block it? Who's that? It was actually the bank lobby and the Chamber of Commerce. So if you want to hear the whole thing early, breakingpoints.com, support the type of journalism that we're able to do here. Thank you very much. But that, well, why don't we get to the mini block, Crystal?

Yeah. So some news, some court news, legal news coming out last night. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts weighing in on whether or not the Trump administration needs to immediately unfreeze these USAID funds. Let's go ahead and put the tariff sheet up on the screen. Headline here from Politico. Chief Justice allows Trump administration to keep foreign aid frozen for now. And this actually applies specifically to foreign aid contracts where the work has already been performed and people are waiting on payments. So it specifically applies to those payments. This is part of a back and forth that's been going on that we've been tracking here

about USAID that has been working its way through the court system. Multiple federal judges have said to the Trump administration, you have to unfreeze this aid. And rather than try to do that, the Trump administration has repeatedly come up with different legal rationales why they believe like, oh, we are complying and we just have now a new different legal theory for why this aid can be frozen. A federal judge yesterday had said, listen, I'm done. You've been playing these games for weeks now. You have until midnight to unfreeze these funds. The Trump administration basically came back and said we literally can't do that. They appealed to the Supreme Court.

This is not any sort of a final decision or final ruling. This is just to preserve the status quo. John Roberts weighing in and saying, okay, we're going to give you some more time and asking for new filings to be put into this case by Friday. So Supreme Court almost certainly ultimately going to weigh in on this, but really significant because like I said, it's the first time the Supreme Court weighed in. And also, of course, we've been tracking this, you know, building crisis of whether or not the Trump administration was going to comply with the court orders that are coming down. Now, so far, like I said, they haven't been in compliance and there have been multiple judges on this case specifically who have said you aren't in compliance. But at this point, they're not just openly defying those court orders.

They are coming up with legal theories for why they think they are justified in continuing to freeze this aid. In addition, as part of this filing, the latest legal theory that they've put in front of the courts is, okay, well, you said we couldn't do this blanket freeze. Now we've gone through line by line and we've decided that we want to freeze some 90%. We want to cancel some 90 percent of these contracts with regard to USAID specifically. So now they say, well, it's not a blanket freeze anymore. We just have gone through and decided that 90 percent of these contracts want to be cut. That in and of itself, Sagar, of course, is very significant because it includes some of the things that had previously actually gotten waivers. So included in that 90% cut is things like PEPFAR

funds for people largely in Africa who have HIV and AIDS. It's going to tie in with some comments that Elon Musk made with regard to the cabinet meeting on Ebola. There's a lot of pieces here, obviously, when you cut something by 90% that come into play. And this is all building up ultimately to that showdown where they want to take a case of the Supreme Court and make the argument that they should be able to unilaterally cut funds as executive branch, even things that have been appropriated by Congress. This is part of that unitary executive theory. This is part of them wanting to deem the Impoundment Control Act unconstitutional so that Congress effectively, in their view, sets what is a ceiling for funding. But then the executive branch can come in and say,

but we don't like that program. We don't like that program. We don't like that program. And effectively consolidates the power of the purse largely within the executive branch. So we're one step closer to that eventual showdown. And I think it's anybody's guess which way the Supreme Court's going to rule. Yes, very good summation, as we said. So it's that this is just a stay. It's a stay that will refer the matter to the Supreme Court, which will allow it to happen before they can make that. I will say there's some interesting, actually, stuff also happening at the same time when the House of Representatives is continuing a resolution to fund the government. Now, theoretically, that continuing resolution would do what? It would continue to fund these

very programs which have been paused by Doge. So there's actually an interim House maneuver which would both fund these, perhaps adding more to how SCOTUS will have to weigh it, with the current Congress actually funding the programs right now. So legally, as I understand that, that will add to some of the argument, obviously, for congressional power over the purse. But it will go to the full Supreme Court. I mean, I said here before, while you said it's definitely anybody's guess, I don't think Roberts would likely rule on behalf of the impoundment clause in the way that the Trump administration wants. The people with the most expansive views of presidential power are Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Alito. Justice Thomas is kind of a wild card in this regard.

Oh, really? I thought he'd be on board. So you would think theoretically, but again, as I understand it, in his very small-c conservative views previously in the way they've been applied from a Federalist Society person I spoke to, he's more of a wild card. And Justice Gorsuch actually would be the number one person. Justice Gorsuch and Amy Barrett both come from a similar, more libertarian school. If you look at some of the past rulings Gorsuch has made in this, it would seem to indicate likely to side with the liberals. So it's not a slam dunk by the Trump administration at all. They're trying to get this as early as possible so that it can obviously inform what their stuff, what actions they can continue to make in the future. So it's interesting. Nonetheless,

and it is the latest thing, as you said, is a relatively routine legal maneuver. We see SCOTUS stays all the time whenever before they want to decide a full movement at the court. And you were talking also about the midnight deadline. It's like, well, you know, in terms of actually be able to comply with a literal midnight deadline with all these crazy governmental systems doesn't seem particularly realistic. So they also want to set up some sort of showdown just on that. Totally. And I think that's an important part of it. I mean, I do think it was probably impossible for them to comply by midnight, which is what they were saying. Like, we really can't do this because the government is not just a switch you can flick on and off. On the other hand, the petitioners would say, you've had like weeks and weeks at this point to get it together and

try to unfreeze these funds. And instead of taking any action in that direction, instead, you've spent your time trying to come up with new legal rationales that would justify you defying this court order. So that's what this came down to. But, you know, you have to keep in mind if you're Chief Justice John Roberts, if you're the Supreme Court, you really want to maintain your legitimacy. So if you're weighing in and saying, no, no, no, I agree, you have to unfreeze these funds by midnight, and you know that that's probably impossible to accomplish, well, then you're already in the situation of a total head-to-head showdown

with the executive branch. And they know that the second that the executive branch, if they were to go down the path of open defiance, then the Supreme Court as an institution is on, let's just say, very shaky ground. So, you know, that's part of the dynamics that play in here is they want to preserve their legitimacy. And if there's a credible threat, which I think there is, that the executive branch is just going to defy orders that they don't like and don't want to comply with, then that puts pressure on them to weigh in on the side of the Trump administration so that they can preserve the appearance of their own power. So that's one of the dynamics that go

in here. And you've made the FDR comparison before. I think there is an apt comparison here because part of why the Supreme Court ultimately decides like, all right, we'll let some of your programs go through that they were previously blocking is because they had threatened to pack the court. They knew that their sort of like power and legitimacy was on the line. And that's part of what applied pressure to them to, you know, go ahead and back what he was doing.

And I think there is a kind of a similar dynamic that could play out here as well. Absolutely. There's a book, I'm totally blanking on the name right now, which I highly recommend. Okay, Supreme Power. That's what it is by Jeff Social. I read it several years ago.

It's called Supreme Power, Franklin Roosevelt versus Supreme Court, which goes into this. I should probably reread it for some of these before the decision comes down. But if anybody's interested, that will give you some parallels. Camp Shane, one of America's longest runningrunning weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye.

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and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So extraordinary cabinet meeting. I guess that's one way to put it. Everybody else is in suits. Elon's in a dark MAGA hat wearing an overcoat and a t-shirt.

Okay, yeah, got it. That's definitely how we dress inside of the White House. Don't ask me why. Well, the most interesting part was Trump basically settled the Elon question with his cabinet, which is who has the authority over this email and compliance. And previously, I really thought that that email was a very important jump off point because I was like, oh, the cabinet's really asserting itself here as the executive. They're the people who have been Senate confirmed to run these government departments. But here is what Trump had to say.

He said, if you're against Elon, we'll throw them out of here. Let's take a listen. I just wanted to ask you that President Trump put out a truth social today saying that everybody in the cabinet was happy with you. I just wondered if that's if you had heard otherwise and if you had heard anything about members of the cabinet who weren't happy with the way things were going and if so what are you doing to address those any dissatisfaction? Let the cabinet speak just for a second. Is anybody unhappy with the amount?

If you are, well throw them out of here. Is anybody out there? We have a lot of respect for Elon and that he's doing this. And some disagree a little bit, but I will tell you, for the most part, I think everyone's not only happy, they're thrilled. OK. All right. I mean, settle the question. There you go. Okay. All right. I mean, settle the question. There you go. You have got there, Trump basically endorsing it 100%. He said, well, if anybody disagrees with it, get out of here. Elon also expanded.

This is more in terms of the relationship. This is why it's important. During the meeting where he expanded on why he decided to send that email in the first place. And as Trump had said previously, it was at his own urging. Here's what Elon had to say. Like last week, the president encouraged me via True Social and also via phone call to be more aggressive. And I was like, OK, you know, yes, sir, Mr. President, we'll do that. The president's commander in chief. I do what the president asks. So, and I said, can we send out an email to everyone just saying what did you get done last week?

The president said yes, so it did that. And, you know, we got a partial response. We're gonna send another email. Our goal is not to be capricious or unfair. It's, we wanna give people every opportunity to send an email. And the email could simply be, what I'm working on is too sensitive or classified to describe. Like, literally, that would be sufficient.

You know, I think this is just common sense. And what is your target number for how many workers, employees, you're looking to cut total? We wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well. But if the job is not essential or they're not doing the job well, they obviously should not be on the public payroll. So I just think it's important to say Trump has settled the Elon question. It's like, all right, this is what the future conceivably looks like now. And he is in control in terms of his ability to send these emails and whatnot.

And I will fully admit I had no idea that this would ever be the dynamic. And I would never have predicted that Donald Trump would allow this kind of subsuming of his own presidency over this. If I were a cabinet official, I would be furious, obviously, because this is like, you know, I got confirmed by the Senate. You know, my shit is all out there. I have to comply with all of these laws and sell stock and all these other like ethics things that you're allowed to do. Like, meanwhile, you know, somebody can just Bigfoot and come on in here. But I do think at a certain point, we just have to be like, all right, this is what Trump wants. Like, it's no longer some sort of secondary project. Like, Trump fully, he's had the information. It's February 27th.

It's 37 days into Donald Trump's presidency. The fights and all of that have happened. And he has settled the question now that he wants Elon to at least be in charge of all of this, all of these cuts and basically of setting the guidance for federal agencies. And so he can bear the consequences of that now. Donald Trump has made it clear that this is not some sort of fall guy or any of that. He's either endorsed some of the positions and or is basically saying he's the person who's in charge. And in a sense, that seems to be the point of that whole cabinet show.

When I covered the White House last time, Trump famously would have the cameras. He would bring them in here and force his cabinet officials to be like, Mr. President, you're the greatest president to ever serve in the history of mankind. And I do feel like this was the purpose of this entire gathering, especially to try and publicly be like, if anybody here has a problem, you know, go ahead and get out of here. So yeah, there we go. Yeah. And also, on camera. Yeah, exactly. Oh, no, of course, we love Elon, we do whatever. So yeah, I mean, that's what's wild, is you're right. In the first administration, these gatherings of the cabinet secretaries about Trump were about licking the boots of Trump. This one was about licking the boots of Elon. So yeah, I mean, I don't think anyone could have predicted that. I mean,

I saw the dynamic developing pretty quickly. I think the first real indication was over the H-1B fight, where Trump really had to decide, are you going to back Elon in an issue that he said he's going to go to war over? Or are you going to stick with, you know, the previous incarnation in your MAGA base and some of your longtime supporters, etc.? He came down very clearly. You know, he didn't equivocate. He came down very clearly on the side of Elon. And at every juncture, he has handed power over to Elon Musk. And I don't think that there's any doubt that that trend is going to continue for the foreseeable future. Our friend Jeff Stein over at The Washington Post, who is doing fantastic reporting, he's also going to make an appearance in the Jeff Bezos blog because he went in there as well.

But anyway, he's reporting major changes coming to the federal government led by Musk's Doge. Most significant move to dismiss federal workers now underway. This is the big one. Agencies must submit plans to significantly reduce staff size by March 13th. Social Security Administration under instruction to cut staff in half. GSA says terminations there are imminent. The Labor Department is eyeing gutting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission office by 90%. Oh, you mean the office that Elon Musk and his companies have run afoul of? How interesting. They're going to be gutted by 90%. Mass lease

cancellations of federal buildings underway, which is also interesting because everyone's been recalled to the office, but now they're not going to have any office. They already don't actually have enough office space for everybody to be in the office. 100 IRS leases to be nixed per records helps make sense, Jeff says, of why Musk and Trump wanted a unified front today with cabinet secretaries. And, you know, I also just want to reflect a little bit on the optics here, which you referenced a little bit with, you know, everybody else is forced to be in their formal attire. Everybody, including Trump, seated at the table. And there's Elon standing in the sort of commanding position and really kind of running the flow of this meeting,

wearing whatever the hell he wants to wear, and his own branded dark MAGA hat, which is not the original red Make America Great Again hat. He has created his own brand, his own following. And I, you know, both of these individuals, Elon and Trump, their main genius really is around branding and symbolism. Like they think about what this imagery means. And so I think all of those pieces are very intentional. And Elon is the person in the government more than anyone, including Donald Trump, who holds the power and is making the decisions right now. And you're absolutely right, Sagar. Like if you're one of these cabinet secretaries who this is your shot and you get to run the show and you went through the Senate confirmation, you did all this and now you get in there and some 20 something year old doge kid

actually has more power in your agency than you do because they're, you know, Musk's apparatchik. That is a wild situation. And so at the beginning of the week, there was a real question. Are they going to stand for this? Are they going to dissent? Are they going to revolt over this? And yesterday we got the definitive answer, and that is no. They're going to do what Elon Musk wants them to do. You know, and that's my thing now with Donald Trump and all of this. I thought maybe, you know, this is one of those times where you're going to try and set somebody else to absorb this. But when you definitively endorse it

and then order your people to comply, and listen, that's your prerogative. You're the democratically elected leader. Okay. You know, to build a little bit on your optics, for anybody who's never been in that room, if you ever get the chance, you go on an Oval Office tour, one of the very first things they're going to point out is in the cabinet room is that the president's chair is bigger than everybody else because nobody's ever supposed to be taller or bigger than the president. Okay.

Interesting, right? In terms of who gets to stand and to speak, look, am I reading too much into it? Not necessarily. It's more just why are you allowing this to happen? Like, this is your people who are branding and so-called marketing experts. And I have no choice but to just say like, yeah, he believes it. This is something that he wants. And now Trump will have to bear the consequences of that.

So Elon also spoke a little bit about, quote, mistakes that have been made over at Doge. Let's take a listen. And I should say, also, we will make mistakes. We won't be perfect. But when we make a mistake, we'll fix it very quickly. So for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly

was Ebola, Ebola prevention. I think we all want Ebola prevention. So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately and there was no interruption. But we do need to move quickly if we're to achieve a trillion-dollar deficit reduction in financial year 2026. It requires saving $4 billion per day every day from now through the end of September. But we can do it and we will do it. So there you go. In terms of the numbers that have also, this is part of why I'm also starting

to get very annoyed is, listen, you can doge all you want. If Congress continues to fund it, then, I mean, even if the government is not, quote, spending the money immediately, like at least it's being printed and or held or whatever in escrow by the government for the future. It's not like it's actually changed the stuff there. And also, as I understand it, the current way that the tax bill and all that is shaking out is we're looking at some $4.5 trillion increase in the overall debt limit for what the cap that's being allowed. This is openly acknowledged. Like, I just want people to understand that. It's not only a few hundred more billion in the continuing resolution.

It's an extra hundred billion to be spent over at the Pentagon on top of a major tax cut. I mean, we've talked here to a blue in the face about the Pentagon and how if you ever really want to cut spending, like it all exists right there. We can easily change procurement systems and all that. We could spend, we could literally save hundreds of billions and all of that if we want to.

I will say, I mean, on the popularity of this, I still have no idea. I think it's now obvious that there is a like blue MAGA backlash against this. The resistance is activated and it exists. And I don't think anybody can say that's deniable. What's open question to me is a similar question of Democrats and Obamacare back in 2009. Will this be depressing to overall Republican turnout? Will it be one of those things where Republicans are tacitly okay with it, but they're not enthusiastic about coming out? Or will they actively turn against it? And that's one of those very open questions. I also wonder about the independence and all this, you know, attitudes

around government, institutional trust still remain very, very low. Maybe this will change their mind. I'm still not sure. I still think, of course, the economy will be the number one determined, you know, factor out of all of this. But part of the issue is that at the very same time that all of this is happening, consumer sentiment is starting to tick down. Go take a look at the S&P 500 and others and some of the reasons why, even though Nvidia beat its earnings yesterday, while you're still seeing some shaky results in the overall stock market, people are pretty worried about tariffs and about the economy. And without a big plan that kind of sells it to the American people, you kind of just get this chaotic feeling where feeling about the economy and savings and all that is bad.

The fundamentals remain horrible, obviously, as we talk about here all the time, for cost of living, and you could end up in a really bad situation. Well, and it becomes increasingly clear it's a pro-oligarch agenda. I mean, when you're doing massive $4 trillion tax cut for the rich, you know, we'll see whether they do any of the populist no tax on tips or whatever. But even if they do, compared to the size of the $4 trillion that is going to the wealthiest, it's peanuts. So you've got that. You've got massive cuts to Medicaid, which you're talking some 70 to 80 million people, many seniors. I don't know if people realize this.

Many seniors who are in long-term care, it's Medicaid that pays for that. Millions of births in this country paid for by Medicaid. Many rural hospitals are utterly dependent on this program. I saw a stat yesterday about the number of hospitals, rural hospitals in Alabama alone that would close were in the double digits. So huge cuts to social safety net programs, massive giveaway to the rich, the richest man on the planet running the government to his own benefit. And I just always think it's important as we go through all of these individual developments of he said this and he did that, and here's where they're cutting now, and the Social Security administration is being hacked by 50 percent. I think it's really important to zoom out and try

to understand what the big picture is. As Sagar says, this isn't about cutting spending. We know that because of the bill that just passed the House with every Republican supporting it, save for Thomas Massey and Donald Trump behind it, okay, which would massively increase the debt and the deficit. This is about Elon's ideology and personal goals. Number one, I think, you know, as best I can tell, he wants to suck up as much data from the federal government to feed his own AI to try to win that competition. Number two, he wants to use the federal government as his own personal piggy bank for his goal of getting to Mars and making humans an interplanetary species. Number three, I think Sagar was right the other day, he wants to be a trillionaire. And so the plan here, which has been laid out by, you know,

Curtis Yarvin and discussed by J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel's behind it, and Mark Andreessen as well, is to have Elon be the CEO dictator of the country and Trump to be the chairman of the board. And I don't think we've ever seen a clearer image of exactly that dynamic as we saw in this cabinet meeting this week. That's exactly the dynamic that was playing out there, where it's really Elon making the decisions. And yes, Trump gets to have some sign-off and gets to be involved. But Elon is really the one who has taken charge. And of course, if you are taking the power of the purse from Congress, if you are completely consolidating power within the executive branch, if you are flirting with—I mean, now they are defying court orders, but they're not in technical open defiance of court orders. But if you're flirting with that, all of those things are unconstitutional. All of that is illegal and unconstitutional.

Now, how this is all going to play out in the court system, how the Supreme Court is going to respond when their own legitimacy is on the line, that also remains to be seen. But I also, just before we move on to the next thought, I have to also clarify that Elon with this Ebola thing, it's not even true that they turned the funds back on. Yes, those funds are frozen, as are almost all the funds, actually, probably literally all the funds coming out of USAID, again, in defiance of court order, in defiance of even the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had put out some waivers for things like PEPFAR, and Doge came in over his head. This is a dynamic Ryan was talking about yesterday, and it's still frozen. So it's not even the, you know, agency heads that have control here, literally, is Elon Musk and Doge, etc. But Ebola prevention has not actually been turned back on. And of course, this is not the only time when they've accidentally fired something that was really or frozen something that was

absolutely critical. There was the people who were watching bird flu that they had to scramble and rehire. There was the nuclear safety guy that they had to scramble and rehire. There were some transportation safety people. There were some FDA people, all of these big mistakes that if you saw them unfolding in any other part of government, Elon would be calling for these people. Look at how incompetent they are. Look at how poorly they're doing in their job. They would be fired immediately. But no, in fact, Ebola prevention aid has not been restored. It continues to be frozen, as is almost everything in USAID.

Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on

Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes 1, 2, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. The only thing I would quibble with there is I think that Elon's agenda is not nearly as aligned as you may think with Curtis Yarvin and or Peter Thiel slash J.D. Vance. I think all of these are a little bit more distinct. Elon is like a power in and of itself

who probably likes the idea of the so-called dictator. But if you really think about the CEO dictator model that Yarvin and others had put out, it's a lot more rooted in like actual small d democratic legitimacy and being like a popular figure who takes strong control of the government, not dismantling the government itself. Much more like— I don't think that's true. I mean, because Yarvin talked about the rage, like retire all government employees. Let me explain it.

So rage is not a Javier Millet style thing. Rage is about deplacing the current regime by putting in a new regime. I don't think Elon wants a new regime. Right. That's kind of the point that I'm trying to explain. As in Steve Bannon, one of the reasons Steve Bannon is against the administrative state is because he thinks that the administrative state, as it's currently constituted, is against the MAGA ideal. But Steve Bannon would not be against the idea of a MAGA administrative state. Neither, I cannot speak for the JD or any of these other people. I don't think so, just in terms of the stuff that they have said previously about

government. I don't even think Yarvin would necessarily disagree with what I'm saying. I do think that Elon is against an administrative state, period, and is much more in line with the privatized nature of where things are currently headed. And so that's where you can come at the same problem, attack vector, and say, we need to get rid of the current government employees. But then from there is the divergence point. And this is what Steve Bannon ultimately correctly sees, is he sees this as an attempt to basically privatize out all of these things so that you can have no regulatory regime as opposed to, I would say, people probably more like Curtis and JD or other figures who would swim in these waters who would say, no, we actually need our own government mechanism to enforce our abilities and or control over

the broader market. So that's why I think it's still important to say why Elon is really his own strain of whatever the hell is going on. I think that's probably true. I think he's less like a true believer in the dark enlightenment and the neo-reactionary movement and more finds it to be a very useful construct. Yeah, exactly. For his own power grab.

Yeah, I think that's true. But I mean, in the end, whether he's like a true believer or whether he's just using that ideology for his own ends, the outcome is basically the same. And you're right, Elon doesn't want there to be. He is, I think it's closest to say he's an anarcho-capitalist. He believes that every function of the government should effectively be privatized. And that relates more to this other related idea of network states where they want to have these, you know, many states.

And they're already like, you know, there already are some of these cities that are set up this way that are basically private corporations. And they are completely privatized. And when Elon says he thinks every single federal government worker should be out of the public sector and into what he describes as more productive private sector jobs, what you're describing is an anarcho-capitalist ideology, which is distinct from, you know, a Russ vote, I think you would put more in the libertarian category. He's a complicated one, too. Libertarians want a small state, but they still think like, oh, we should have a military and a police force and a court system to enforce private property rights. Anarcho-capitalists truly believe in privatizing literally everything, including security forces.

And Elon appears to be much more in that camp. And as the richest man on the planet, even though he himself was the recipient of massive government aid, Washington Post did a great report on this, at critical times, like Tesla and SpaceX probably would not even exist today were it not for loans and subsidies and the government ignoring him, missing milestones at SpaceX and a massive, almost $500 million loan that came into Tesla under the Obama administration at an absolutely critical time. So even though he personally has been a massive beneficiary of government support, he wants to, number one, make sure his competitors don't benefit from that same support. Number two, that the government is not powerful enough, that none of these regulatory agencies are powerful enough to rein in his power. And that's, and number three, to be able to have access personally and have the U.S. taxpayer backstop his own net worth and fund his own ambitions. So if, you know, these ideas that are floating out there that have become very popular,

like the neo-reactionary movement, the Curtis Yarvin CEO dictator with the chairman of the board thing, whether it's that, whether it's the network state idea, whatever is out there in the ether that he can grab onto to pursue his own personal ideological interest goals. And, you know, one other thing, and I'm sorry I'm going on here, but I think it's important for understanding his ideology as well, is he also is a believer in simulation theory. Like, I think it's, and I think that's- Is he? Is Elon a simulation theory guy? I believe he is. That might be the lowest IQ thing that he does. I think that part of how he sees himself is that we all, including the President of the United

States, including all those cabinet secretaries, we are quote unquote NPCs, non-playable characters. And he is ready player one. He is the hero of this story. He is the only acting person with agency who is acting and creating this grand adventure of humanity. And if you internalize that, that that's the way he thinks of himself. I think his actions and his willingness, again, to do whatever, whether it's he doesn't care about the kids in Africa with HIV, doesn't care about the thousands of veterans who've already been fired. He doesn't care, certainly doesn't care about the laws or the Constitution or whatever. He is the ready player one who is going to save humanity by bringing us to Mars, and anything is justified in pursuit of that quest. Yeah, well, it does remind me that the movie is also very good. Let's continue here,

shall we? Let's put the next one up on the screen. This one is about Medicare, and we're going to go ahead and play. That was just reaffirming what you were saying about Ebola. Let's get to the Medicare part because this is also important for what the future of Doge and all of that will look like in terms of whether they're actually going to be even able to achieve any cuts. Let's take a listen. The bill that passed last night aims to cut $2 trillion. Can you guarantee that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security will not be touched? Yeah, I mean, I have said it so many times, you shouldn't be asking me that question. Okay, this will not be read my lips. It won't be read my lips anymore. We're not going to touch it.

Now, we are going to look for fraud. I'm sure you're okay with that, like people that shouldn't be on, people that are illegal aliens and others, criminals in many cases. And that's with Social Security. We have a lot of people. You see that immediately when you see people that are 200 years old that are being sent checks for Social Security. All right. So there we go. Trump continues to say that he will not cut Medicare. As we said, the problem is that the current spending bill aims to cut two trillion dollars. It's going to be a difficult one. I mean, I was talking with a tax expert just yesterday, and we were like, okay, so how do we even get to $4.5 trillion if we're doing no tax on tips, no Social Security?

We're also raising the SALT cap up to 20%, which is not even what the New York delegation and all those other people want. And you extend all of it. It doesn't pencil. Like, period. And I'm not even talking about Medicare or Medicaid. That's leaving all that stuff untouched. So either they're lying or they're going to have to cut something else.

I'm going to probably bet on lying. Speaker Johnson yesterday was on TV and was asked specifically about this. He says, yes, we won't cut Medicare or touch Medicare literally at all, but you know, we'll see. As I predicted- Medicaid is the one that's really on the talking block. Sorry, Medicaid. Well, Johnson is out there saying we're going to do work requirements. Yes, if you're, you know, a single mom or whatever, it'll be there for you. But if you are able-bodied, you're going to be kicked off. I mean, they are talking about significant Medicaid cuts. And the numbers just, I mean, the numbers just don't add up to make that level of cuts with adding money to the defense

budget, by the way. And most of the federal government is military spending, healthcare spending, Social Security. And the bucket that they have targeted in particular for massive cuts is Medicaid. Now, when I hear Trump saying that in that particular soundbite, what I hear is him giving himself some wiggle room of, no, we're not going to cut benefits. Oh, but we're going to root out fraud. And I think that's going to be the fig leaf of, you know, we're not cutting, really cutting benefits to people who deserve it, but they're still kicking millions of people off of Medicaid that they decide are undeserving or they decide are, quote unquote, fraudulent. Because, you know, that's certainly the direction that things are headed in right now. Honestly, though, that's going to be a much more difficult fight, right? Because welfare reform,

whatever you think of it, was very popular in 1996. So work requirements in general from the polling and all that I've seen are extremely popular. That would be an interesting way for them to square the circle, but I'm not yet sure. There was all these politics back in the day called dole politics. Absolutely fascinating if people want to go back and look. Let's just look in terms of any potential blowback and what all this is. Let's put this up there from NBC News, guys. This is A6. Some House Republicans are currently hitting the brakes on town halls after some of the blowback over the Trump cuts to try and avoid some of those scenes that we've seen previously. And Crystal, you have one from your own district, which you're going to set up and tell us about.

This is the district I actually ran for Congress in. They've since redistricted it. So I'm not technically don't live in this district anymore, but this is Republican Congressman Rob Whitman. He's really tried to position himself. He's a real kind of like backbencher, tries not to say too much, tries not to really rock the boat, et cetera,

but just goes along with the party line. He had, it wasn't even him. One of his staffers had some remote town hall, and it was flooded with, ultimately, there were some 100 constituents there. This is a very mostly rural part of Virginia. It's quite Republican. He usually gets reelected pretty easily, pretty handily, etc. And they were quite upset that he wasn't there and demanding him to show up and answer their questions. Let's take a listen. — Whitman! Where's Rob Whitman? Where's Rob Whitman? Where's Rob Whitman? Where's Rob Whitman? Where's Rob Whit— — So flooding in even when he's not going to be there. And I predicted that they would just stop doing town halls. And I think that is certainly what's going to ultimately happen here because

I think some of the early ones, these were Republicans in super red districts that thought they would be safe. But obviously, even in very red districts, you still have Democrats, right? You still have in almost every district in the country, you still have a pretty significant number of Democrats who can show up. And, you know, I have no doubt, like there's been a lot of Republicans, oh, well, these are just astroturfed and they're just, you know, I have no doubt like there's been a lot of Republican, oh, well, these are just astroturfed and they're just, you know, being organized to show up. I don't doubt that that's the case, that MoveOn and Indivisible and these other organizations and even just the local Democratic Party organizations are organizing people to go to these town halls. But that was the same case during the Tea Party era. And there was a lot of Democratic cope at that time as well about the way this was funded by the Koch network, et cetera, et cetera. That was all true. But you have to have people who

are upset and energized enough to listen when you send out your email blast saying, show up at this town hall. And it takes extraordinary times for people to break out of whatever their normal routine is and show up at a congressional town hall to yell at their member of Congress. So I wouldn't dismiss it just because, yeah, of course it's organized and there's, you know, involvement from these activist groups. There still is a reflection here of genuine base energy. And when you're talking about a midterm election in particular, that ends up really, really mattering. And that's certainly what we saw in the Tea Party era. Look, obviously they're being funded and or organized. It's like, okay, welcome to politics.

That's how it all works. By that definition, the entire Trump campaign, half of which was privatized by Elon, was privately, you know, was organized, right, to get out and vote. Okay, well, he's still won, right? So are we going to say that it was fake? Obviously not, right? This is one of those where you're exactly right. Back in the day, it was such a democratic talking point. I can't even still remember. I can still remember. They were like, the Tea Party was fake. It was all funded by the Koch brothers. I actually, I went to college here at that time, and I just remember all of the protesters flooding in from across the country. Did somebody pay for their transportation by busing or whatever? Yeah, maybe. Did that mean that they were any less activated and or organized whenever they went home to get people to vote for them?

Absolutely not. These people were diehard. They would have paid for it if they could have or they would have been at home cheering it on on TV. So just so people understand, like, just because you fund something and bring people here and try and bring it in, does not make it fake per se. It's still a reflection of something. So I would very much caution Republicans from trying to get themselves out of like, oh, the big money groups are paying for it. I'm like, yeah, well, that's what they always do. But you've got to have something to activate, you know, to be able, you have to have somebody there to be ready to

organize. You can't just, you know, create it out of very thin air. So caution there for Republicans definitely could continue to be a problem. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin,

it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment

and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone,

I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21 Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Turning now to Elon Musk and a potential interview situation coming up, which I think all of us would like to see. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Elon, responding to a video claiming

that he should go on Jon Stewart's show, replied saying, I will do it if the show airs unedited. Daily Show quote tweeted and said, at Elon Musk, we would be delighted. So that could be very interesting. He did add one more condition after this. What was that? He was like, oh, and it has to stream also on X. Which feels to me

like he's kind of trying to get out of it. He's trying to throw up enough barriers. Because from a copyright perspective, that would be probably really difficult.

We're dealing with Comedy Central here, which is like archaic and stupid. The way that they handle their copyright stuff. So maybe that could be the way that he'll get out of it. Let's discuss that after, though, we see how Jon Stewart's been

talking about Elon lately. Let's take a listen. And 10 is all of them, right? It would be embarrassing if it was a small drop in the bucket and that the American people didn't expect that we should negotiate for all their f***ing drugs because we've already paid for them with our subsidies. Come on! It's fine! So he got so mad he literally busted a cup in his own hands. It was a good segment. It was one of his better ones, actually. I think John's back in form.

I feel like he— He's meeting the moment. I obviously became a fan of the mainstream media, but directly take like a very hard line against Bush and Cheney and a lot of the other bullshit claims. And he was really good in the Obama years too by basically countering not only like Tea Party idiocy from time to time, but he would give it to Obama and Nancy Pelosi and them just as much. And so I do feel like he's really made for this moment kind of to just ridicule everything. It makes sense, you know, that he had to come back for right now. Yeah. segment was focused on like, hey, if you want to cut, here's a bunch of places you actually could

like tax subsidies for the rich and oil and gas companies or the defense budget. Here's, you know, like all kinds of places where if you're actually serious about this, let's do it. And it was very effective, which is why I think Elon felt the need to jump in and, you know, pretend like he's going to do this interview, which I don't think is going to happen. But we'll see. Somebody on Twitter was saying this might be another, like, you know, how Elon was. Yeah, Elon and Mark Zuckerberg were supposedly going to fight. And then, of course, that never came to fruition. If he does, I mean, I would absolutely love to see it. Jon Stewart is a great interviewer.

You know, underrated interviewer. That was one of the best parts of his Apple show was all these people would sit down with him. It was all this Jon Stewart, you know, the VA secretary or whatever. And he would just rake them across the coals or Janet Yellen. I mean, all these high level people. And he comes in prepared and serious and is a very smart person and was able to do a very effective job. So I think it would be I think it would be very interesting and quite a I think it would be

quite good head-to-head combat for us to all watch which is why I don't really think that EVE 1 is going to go forward with it. All right. Well, we will see. Shall we? It'll be exciting. I know a lot of cops.

They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company. The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen.

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