Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/4/25: Dem Sen Admits USAID CIA Front, Trump Calls Off Tariffs, Temu Screwed From China Tariffs

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Dem Senator admits USAID CIA front, Trump calls off tariffs, Temu screwed from China tariffs.   Matt Stoller: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/  Antony's Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GvkFwpzDhI    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.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. 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. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free,

and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Priscilla? Indeed we do. Many things unfolding in this town, as per usual. The showdown over USAID continues as Elon Musk's hostile takeover of the government also continues. Canada and Mexico tariffs are off, at least temporarily.

China tariffs still on. Sagar and I are going to talk about it. Matt Stiller is also going to join to weigh in on this particular tariff regime as floated. And he is also going to talk to us about some of the movement at National Labor Relations Board, which has effectively been gutted at this point, the Securities Exchange Commission, the CFPB, that's like the anti-scam agency, which also enforcement actions seem to have been gutted there as well. So he'll weigh in on all of that. The DOJ out with a new DEI program, this one to combat anti-Semitism, taking some shots from both left and right, not too happy about this particular direction. And Anthony Lowenstein is

going to join us to talk about his new documentary about the way that weapons systems have been tested in Gaza and Palestine in general, but specifically in Gaza post-October 7th. And he's also going to weigh in on the latest developments with regards to Bibi's visit to the U.S., which is today. He's also already announced he's going to extend his visit. That's right. He's extending it. So we get him in town for a little extra time. There are a lot of open secrets, right? In terms

of admitting where your bread is buttered, in terms of what really all matters. There was an interesting meeting yesterday with Steve Witkoff and with Mike Walsh at Blair House. I am tapping my sources to find out about the laundry crystal. That's all I can think about. I gotta know whether it's true or maybe he's been shamed into stopping it. But all right, let's get to USAID. So Elon Musk's takeover of the government continues. Trump yesterday in the Oval Office was asked a little bit about his thoughts on how all of this is going. Let's take a listen to that.

They're finding tremendous waste, really waste more than anything else I think you could say. Probably fraud and abuse can be added to it. The more standard waste, fraud and abuse. But they're finding tremendous amounts of really bad things, bad spending. Elon can't do and won't do anything without our approval. And we'll give him the approval where appropriate. We're not appropriate. We won't do anything without our approval. And we'll give him the approval where appropriate, where not appropriate, we won't. But he reports in, and he, it's something that he feels very strongly about. And I'm impressed because he's running, obviously,

a big company, has nothing to do with it. There's a conflict that we won't let him get near it. But he does have a good natural instinct. He's got a team of very talented people. The first term, though, USAID was something that you liked in some respects. I love the concept. Yeah, sure. I love the concept, but they turn out to be radical left lunatics. And the concept of it is good, but it's all about the people. What's the act of Congress to do away with USAID?

I don't know. I don't think so. Not when it comes to fraud. If there's fraud, these people are lunatics. And if it comes to fraud, you wouldn't have an act of Congress. And I'm not sure that you would anyway. But we just want to do the right thing. It's something that should have been done a long time ago. So weighing in there specifically on Elon's conflicts of interest and also on the USAID push to effectively dismantle that organization, bring it under the State Department. More on that in just a moment. Democrats are starting to try to make a stand with regard to USAID in particular. You know, the conflict of interest piece is also quite important. Elon obviously has massive conflicts of interest across the entire federal government. Just as one example, we documented yesterday how he and his cronies gain access to the Treasury payment system.

Elon wants to turn Twitter into a payment processor, not to mention that for any tech overlord, having access to all of our data, kind of an important and valuable commodity. I also was just reading that apparently he was influential in the pick that Trump made for the head of the Air Force. And it's a guy who, lo and behold, was very influential in getting SpaceX contracts for Elon. So he is officially, we now know, Sagar, a special government employee. I think Caroline Levitt said that yesterday. There is actually criminal statute, criminal statute that governs the way you have to operate and the way you have to avoid any potential conflicts of interest when you are in that,

you know, special government employee capacity. This is usually people are brought in on sort of like a temporary basis as specific experts in a field. That is the designation that Elon has. So, I mean, it's just wild what's going on. That status is the same one that was used by Ivanka and by Jared because they also didn't draw salaries last time they were in the White House. But as you said, it's actually legally important. I think you sent this Richard Painter, who's a government ethics expert, says a special government employee

still have to abide by conflict of interest laws. And I actually, what I took away the most from the Trump comments is, I think he could see some of the dangers here that are ahead with Elon. Because he's like, well, we'll give him permission whenever we need to. Anything he doesn't need to, we'll give him permission whenever we need to. Anything he doesn't need to, we'll take it away from him. They are saying that it's, quote, read-only access

to the Treasury payments, et cetera. But no, you're absolutely right about that data. I mean, this kind of brings us back to our big debate yesterday, though. And look, I hate to give credit where it is, but mounting a fight about USAID is politically genius in a few ways. Let's put this up there on the screen, for example, where we have members of Congress attempting to enter USAID. This is A3, guys. Yeah, there we go. They've given some speeches around this as well. The thing that I'm kind of like thinking about with all of this, and it gets to what we were talking about yesterday, is at the end of the day, not only are we talking about an agency with 0.7 percent of the federal budget, which is now getting rolled into the State Department, but mounting a fight on USAID, which, again, some of the least popular elements of the federal government, which is foreign aid to other nations, just doesn't seem like the ground for the Democrats where I would want to be. And we're going to play some of the quiet part out loud things about

what USAID is. I thought, you know, the strongest ground that the Democrats or opposition to Trump have had so far is on tariffs, on Medicare, meals on wheels. Obviously, they abandoned all three of those, unfortunately, in the tariff case. We can talk about that in a bit. But the ground of fighting for USAID just doesn't seem like one of those political – to do it, you have to be reading the news and really involved. You have to be like, okay, so Iran has gained access, and they've rolled it onto the State Department. It's like, well, they've kind of already lost it. And then people are like, well, how does it affect my life? It's like, well, some Malawian healthcare program may get cut. And people are like, okay, well, why were we even paying for that in the first place? So I'm just

not sure this is the right move for the Democrats on this one. The Medicare one, the meals on wheels, absolutely. But I mean, I think it's very telling, right? That immediately the Trump administration bucked on that, where picking a fight on USAID, one of the smallest agencies, the only agency smaller than USAID is USTR, the US Trade Representative, 0.7% of the federal budget. Overwhelmingly, if you were to poll this stuff, super unpopular, maybe PEPFAR is the only one where people are like, okay. The rest of it, I mean, we'll talk about the money laundering and the CIA ops and all the other malfeasance and fraud that's run through USAID over the years. I just, I don't think this is it.

Like, I feel like the Dems are searching for something. And this is where they're like, we're mounting our stand here for USAID. I mean, you know, like, are we really weeping tears for four and eight programs? I'm not. I think you make some good points there. But I think that that is intentionally why they went after USAID first. No, I agree. That's what I was saying.

You have to give them credit for being smart. Yes. I mean, first, I think there may be also a personal element here because USAID was also involved in pushing for the end of apartheid. So there may be some personal South African hurt feelings there. Not a joke. Is that true? Yeah, that's true. Well, blame Reagan, right? from specific laws that were passed that give it statutory authority as its own independent agency, if you can get away with that, then you can get away with anything. And we already know that,

you know, Elon and Trump have both projected Department of Education is next. And, you know, that'll be a more difficult fight because people like their kids being educated. And there's a lot of funding that goes for, you know, for poor kids and for kids with special needs and for school lunches and things like that that come from the federal government. But if you've already been able to dismantle one agency without a fight, then guess what? You are going to be able to do everything you want to do. And so, you know, we'll get to the rest of the elements here in just a second, but I do think it's useful to kind of zoom out and ask yourself, what is Elon's project here?

And we've talked about this before. Elon's ideology is not the same as what Trump ran on in, you know, 2016 at his sort of populist peak. Elon is a fan of Javier Millay. Elon is an anarcho-capitalist. Elon is a fan of Curtis Yarvin, who thinks that we should have literal techno-feudalism. I know this sounds crazy, but Elon is a dramatic, he is an hardened ideological actor. So what does it mean if you're an anarcho-capitalist, if you believe in this like techno-feudalist project. I mean, he thinks he should basically run as a CEO the, you know, the country, the government, the world, really. I think that is his, I know it sounds crazy, but that is his project. And you can listen to the way he talks about these things. I mean, his grand plans to like, you know, have a civilization on Mars and all of these sorts of things. So if that's your ideology and that's

your goal, what you want to do is completely take apart the federal government. And you hear this not just in Elon's rhetoric, you also hear echoed now in Trump's rhetoric, who talks about how his goal is for all federal government employees to be private sector employees. That's anarcho-capitalism. That means even the parts of the state that you like, the pieces that deliver for grandma and Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all of that, he wants to take and ask to. Elon has told friends that his entire metric is just how much I can cut. Not how much of the, you know, the fat and the fraud and the abuse and the parts that everybody would be like, okay, fine, yes, cut that piece. He measures his success by just how much of the federal government can he take and acts to. Now, do I think that he is going to be able to realize his anarcho-capitalist, no state whatsoever dream? No. I think at some point, the state is going to reassert themselves.

You know, Trump still has control of the military, for example. At any point, he could get sick of Elon and say, all right, we're done, you're out, goodbye. But do I think a lot of damage could be done in the meantime? Yes, absolutely. And I also, and this is where, you know, I want to come back a little bit to what we were saying yesterday and perhaps make a more persuasive argument about what I mean when I say people didn't vote for this. I'm not saying they didn't vote for like, you know, cutting some waste, fraud, abuse, et cetera, et cetera.

But the Trumpist ideology, which is really like the Steve Bannon, like that's the OG MAGA ideology. That was what was sold to people. And this is not that, right? This is not the political project that you're, this is not populist, right? This isn't the political project you've been engaged in. This is something else entirely. Trump seems to have bought into it and seems to have given Elon for now the keys to the kingdom to do whatever he wants up to and including dismantling entire federal government agencies, accessing whatever classified information he wants to, accessing

your social security numbers and private data, accessing the system, the treasury payment system, which controls all of the money that goes out from the federal government. So if you imagine, like, you know, it's like if Fort Knox actually held all of the, like, taxpayer dollars and gold and whatever, the richest man on the planet who has incredible conflicts of interest and a really radical ideology now has keys to that, you know, theoretical Fort Knox. That's where we are right now. And that's why I find it so deeply, deeply disturbing and why even though this is, you're right about USAID not being the best ground for Democrats to fight on, why I think they feel like, all right, well, we got to do something here.

I get where they're coming from. This is part of the problem. And this is where honesty is important. Not even Steve Bannon would tell you that he's in control of the federal government, right? The Bannonist 2016 vision was almost immediately- Clarify. Not even Steve Bannon would say that who- That his ideology in that 2016 vision, right? I mean, what does he actively do? No, he sees Elon as a threat. He knows. But part of the problem for a lot of the people who share my beliefs is let's look at the track record. Trump in 2017 to 2021 governs effectively as like a cultural right warrior with George W. Bush flavor.

Yeah. Well, he comes 40,000 votes away from winning the presidency. Then over the interim four years assembles a coalition, effectively, of people who hate Biden. And within that, there's not a lot being sold there except for no more illegal immigration. The rest of it is really up for grabs. And so part of the new coalition, quote unquote, of the people who signed up for Trump, I do think it does include some. Now, look, I hope that some of it is for the stuff that I've said here, but I have to be honest.

I mean, tariffs are overwhelmingly unpopular. We're going to talk about that. People like cheap shit. They don't care if their TikTok comes from China or whatever. They want to live like a pretty basic life, and they don't really want to think much about bigger things. Now, I think it's incumbent on the feds and on leaders like Trump and J.D. to make their case as to why they're important,

but, you know, it's tough in a country like this where debt and all that is very, very high. Where I do think that, you know, the doge of the USAID, the Department of Education, there is a feeling within the intellectual and I think within the suburban right of things have gotten out of control. Now, I think with USA U.S. idea, it's actually literally not disputable that the agency has been involved in insane fraud, CIA coups, basically a front for State Department for soft power, you know, and all that, if you want to call it. Funneling money is money laundering to NGOs. But even, you know, you're talking about the Department of Education. So you're not wrong. People support Head Start.

People support, you know, federal dollars coming into schools. I don't think the majority of schools are funded you're not wrong. People support Head Start. People support federal dollars coming into schools. I don't think the majority of schools are funded by the feds. I think it's like 20-something percent, right? It depends on the individual school district. Correct. Yes. And poor school districts benefit from more on federal funding. So they would be the ones that would be more impacted. Overall, it's about 10 percent of funding that comes from the federal government. But where does the MAGA-DOGE instinct to say, screw the DOE? It's not just libertarian right. It's, well, let's be honest.

It's about a lot of DEI or trans, you know, what was it, Title IX, I think that's what it's called, that went through in terms of gender, pronouns. That's where the instinct has now come from is like these institutions have been used for good purposes but turned against us. So we're going to dismantle them. And if it does stick to that, as long as the dollars keep flowing, will people really notice at the end of the day? My instinct is probably not. And it's probably going to be popular. I mean, and if you sold it to me that way, and you're like, look, we're going to get rid of this gender DEI stuff and all these bureaucrats, nobody really knows what they do, and the dollars and the checks keep getting cut to all the states. I'm like, well, okay. You need some administrators. That's where the instinct comes from. Now, I get what you're saying, and I think you're right. If they actually impact FAA, NOAA, the oceanic, the people who track the hurricanes, I always use that example because who's against that? The guy who flies into the middle of a hurricane is like, it's category 4.5 now. It's

awesome. It's a cool job. Or Coast Guard. There's a million different little things even that are non-DOD. They're actually pretty popular. That's why they start with USAID. Now, I think Doge in practice is going to look a lot like this, is USAID total is 0.7. Let's say they cut 5% of the, you know, 0.7% of the federal budget. It's like, okay, we're going to declare victory. This actually kind of gets to the tariff conversation we're going to have in a little bit about, well, what really changed here, you know, in terms of what we want. But vibe-wise, that's really important for both the media and for people to feel as if these parts of the federal government are getting pared back as long as their essential services go to them. And so that's why I think it is a big mistake and I feel rudderless and almost religious the way that the Democrats are reacting here to USAID. I mean, you and I both know a key tenant of neoliberalism are functions like USAID and others. They're literally admitting this stuff

out loud. A normal person at home goes, what? I don't care about Malawian health care. I actually think that that is true because I looked up some of the polling on this, and some 60% of Americans want the U.S. to be a global leader in health. The PEPFAR program in terms of, you know, like dealing with AIDS and HIV globally has been a tremendous success, the George W. Bush program, et cetera, et cetera, tremendously popular. Dealing with malaria, I mean, USAID helped to combat Ebola. So yes, is it a, I mean, the whole project of USAID is soft power protection. That is what it is.

Well, if it was just that, I think it'd be fine. But here's the thing, though, is like a couple pieces just to get to the actual substance with regard to USAID. I mean, first of all, you've got a lot of people

on Twitter who didn't know what USAID was three days ago who suddenly are convinced that it's nothing but CIA. That's all politics. That's number one. Number two, I think the notion that subsuming USAID under the State Department is going to make it less nefarious is kind of preposterous. Number three, listen, there is also just a key principle here of Congress is, if you don't like USAID, if you don't like what they're doing,

that's fine. Have that debate. We have elected representatives. Republicans have control of the House and the Senate. So you have to go through those channels in order to dismantle a congressionally authorized independent agency. That is what the Constitution says. So not to mention, as I said before, I think you really have to keep in mind what the broader project is here from Elon. And Trump really has nothing to do with it at this point. I think it's pretty clear at every juncture

when Trump could have reined Elon in and said, you know, he backs him on H-1Bs, he backs him here, he gives him the Air Force Secretary he wants, I don't think Trump really cares that much outside of the areas of his interest, tariffs and whatever else. Tariffs and immigration. Turning off the water, turning on the water in California, you know, his performative stuff. Like, those are the things he cares about. Everything else, I don't think he really gives a shit. You know, Elon's feeding him talking points about South African farmers now. So you know who is in real control. Elon's project is not just about South African farmers now. So you know who is in real control.

Elon's project is not just about USAID. It's not just about the Department of Education. It's about dismantling as much of the federal government as he possibly can. And so the USAID thing, it's a trial balloon. What can we get away with? And that is the way that everyone needs to understand what's going on. So regardless of how you feel about USAID, I've got my own issues with it. You know, I'm happy to see the imperial project being sort of pulled back in this sort of way, but I'm also not a fool to think that that's really what's going on when you are talking

about an administration that is openly actually embracing an old school imperial mentality a la William McKinley. Let's buy Greenland. Let's invade Panama. Let's try to make Canada the 51st state. Let's go to war with Mexico. I'm not enough of a fool to think that they're actually intentionally rolling back empire. Elon wants to make it so that the federal government is not strong enough, is not stronger than him, right? That's the bottom line. He wants to be able to do everything that he wants to do. He wants to be able to profit as much as he can off of your taxpayer dollars. And that is the broader project that is at work. I don't disagree with a word that you just said. I think what I get to, again, is trying to analyze how it will look like in practice and to the voter.

And that's why I come back to this Democratic thing. I think another problem, though, where you're talking about institutions, there's so many norms and other things that have not only been blown up by Trump, but over the years, what I have seen more is—we talked about this a little bit yesterday, right, with norms. For example, I mean, how many times have I listened to David Sirota and others criticize Biden for not legalizing weed on day one, for not canceling all student debt? I mean, but there's a legal purpose to do that. Okay, but Crystal, they don't care about Congress whenever it's about something they want to do. When Obama wants to legalize millions of illegal immigrants literally overnight and create an amnesty illegal program called DACA. Oh, everybody's fine with it then, right? So there is a lot of hypocrisy here in terms of like which principles and which norms. I'm sorry, you've got to admit, this is way above and beyond like overruling the parliamentarian or something. It's about principle.

No, no, no. I agree. I think we're living through the most extraordinary takeover of the federal government since the 100 days over FDR. And if we look back to that time period, and I know many of the people who have read the same books that I have, is what did FDR learn? FDR said, I don't give a shit about Congress and I don't give a shit about the Supreme Court. Civilian Conservation Corps, WPA, we are going to throw everything at the wall. And actually, the people who pared it back became way less popular. People hated the Supreme Court.

But those things did pass through Congress. No, but actually, many of them either were passed through Congress or were created artificially by his program. I mean, many of the criticisms of the Republicans of FDR in that time period rhyme exactly here. Like, hey, what about the power of the purse? And he's like, I'm a king. I just got elected with this and this. Not the same, but the spirit is. The thing is, is that if you look back at that time period, the population overwhelmingly backed aggressive federal executive action. I think what's happening here is, I mean, Yarvin himself is a student of FDR, probably more so than anybody else in that project. And what they understood is that at a popular level, by doing this, they were basically able to win 90, almost 80 percent of what they wanted to and that the norms and all of that were fake all along.

So, first of all, I don't accept the equivalence between what is being done here and, like, the lawlessness that is being executed here and the total disregard for the Constitution versus FDR. But in addition, just to make the point on the popular piece, which I don't think is important because it matters in terms of how people are going to react to this. You know, FDR was like creating jobs and health care programs and things that were delivering for people materially. This is the opposite of that. This is destroying things that people currently enjoy and take for granted from the federal government. That's the program.

That's the project. So, again, in theory, in the abstract, do people support cutting the federal government? Of course. Sure. Of course. Do they support rolling back free school lunch for poor kids? No. Probably 85% of the country would say no to that. Do they support rolling back Pell Grants, also under the Department of Education? No, they do not support that. Do they support rolling back

federal funding for poor districts or any school district? I mean, one of the cautionary tales I think that people should look at is back during the teacher strike wave, which hit red states. Red states in particular, rural red areas, take public education very seriously. And I think you're right that there is, you know, there was a reaction against like this sense, oh, my God, my kids are being indoctrinated, blah, blah, blah. But if you go after people's school districts in those towns, those are institutions of small town America. You will have a fight on your hands. So with USAID, I do think, you know, I don't think it's as popular as you do. But I do think it is the most low-hanging fruit, which is exactly why they went after it first. But if you think that this project doesn't have in its sights things that

you or you or anyone out there appreciates and enjoys and takes for granted, oh, food safety, hurricane tracking, planes not crashing into each other and falling out of the sky, Medicare, Social Security, you're a fool. So the question is, when will this be reined in? How far does it go? 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. 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. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States.

Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself. And I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast.

From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together.

How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll go ahead and play since we've been teasing it for like 18 minutes now.

The Democrats finally showed up. I don't know what they've been up to, but not a whole lot. But they finally showed up at the USAID building to protest the fact that it has been shuttered. I'll give you some more of the details here in just a minute about the employees have been told not to their government security apps and from their communications, etc. So Democrats showed up there to make a stand, not always in the most effective way. Let's take a listen to how that went down. USAID fights terrorist groups all across this world, making sure that we address the underlying causes for a retreat to terrorism. USAID chases China all around the world, making sure that China doesn't monopolize contracts for critical minerals and port infrastructure all around the world. It supports freedom fighters everywhere in this world. We are witnessing a constitutional crisis.

We talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on day one, and here we are. This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like. And Elon, if you want to run A.I.D., get nominated by Trump and go to the Senate and good luck in getting confirmed. Yes, yes. Elon Musk, you didn't create U.S. aid. The United States Congress did for the American people. And just like Elon Musk did not create U.S. aid,

he doesn't have the power to destroy it. And who's going to stop him? We are. We're going to stop him. Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury, but you don't control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does that. So the funniest one there, of course, Chris Murphy at the beginning.

That is the quiet part out loud. Yeah, I'm like, hey, Chris. Supports freedom fighters. We're not supposed to say that. Fights terrorists. Which freedom fighters? What was that? Yeah.

But, I mean, this is the first thing that they've really showed up to. I mean, somewhat the Medicaid portal's being shut down. Yeah, but it was over so quickly. But, yeah, that's right. But, you know, they pushed back there, and I think there was a Republican push back there, too, behind the scenes, no doubt about it, that helped get that, you know, flipped on a dime. But they are finally trying to show up for this and, yeah, not making the best arguments. But I think a lot of Democratic-based voters will be happy to see at least they're doing something where so far they've been just like asleep. I think you might be right.

I don't know. I mean, when I look at that, I just see a supreme lack of political talent across the board. I thought Ilhan's comments there were probably the best. Right. The problem, again, is that you always have to be able to connect rhetoric to actual action, telling people like, I mean, what did we really learn from the campaign against Trump? I learned a lot from the 2024 campaign. But really what it was is like, you can warn all day long. And if people don't like the status quo, they do not care about a lot of this. They need to feel it for real. And for right now, you know, that's what

I was saying. It's kind of genius to start with USAID, a program that, you know, only people in Washington care about, mostly because it's paying a lot of their salaries. But also, it's just one of those where if you explain it to a normal person, you made a compelling case about Pell grants and all of that. You know, if you're Doge, what do you do? Or if Trump, really, let's put Doge because they probably would cut it. But if you're Trump, you're like, don't touch Pell Grant scholarship. Don't touch federal stuff. Fire all the, you know, career bureaucrats or whatever that are working on anything Title IX or X or whatever related. And, you know, will anybody really notice? Probably not. And like, that's kind of what it gets to. In the FDR thing, what's

fascinating about this is this is a reverse FDR. It's a dismantling of as opposed to a building of. But in a sense, what's happened in both cases is that the crisis of 1933 was this idea that the government was not there to address all of these problems. Whereas the crisis of, I guess, 2024 in the minds of many Americans was that the government itself has created many of these problems. Or at least intellectualized the way that in practice, if we are to blame, we're talking about cultural issues or even, you know, immigration literally just result of direct government policy. It's about a rolling back of like a regime slash a government. So I think this is nothing ever is, you know, 100% one-to-one, but analogy wise, it's the only thing I can really think of.

Maybe the John F. Kennedy first 100 days. I hope we don't find ourselves in a similar international crisis, although I am worried about it. But that's kind of my mental model for how I'm thinking about it. And there is a big question mark that remains around how people will popularly receive a lot of this. I don't take a lot of these polls at face value. They've kind of been all over the place. I saw one yesterday. I saw Trump at 52%.

I saw the same tracking poll you're talking about. I'm curious to see the Virginia election, that gubernatorial election, which is always off here in terms of what does it mean for enthused Democrats? Well, we already had a little test run in Iowa. That's true. There was a, what, 21-point swing. But, you know, that's the first indication that we've gotten that even as the Democratic Party has been asleep, the Democratic base voters in that district in Iowa really showed up.

I mean, it was like a 20 plus point swing in the direction of a Democrat for them to win. There was another special election in a Democratic blue district in Minnesota, I want to say, that also shifted even more. It was like the Republican got like 8% of the vote or something preposterous like that, whereas previously they were getting, I don't know, 20% of the vote. I'm making up these numbers, but that's approximately what it is. So you're right. That will be the first really indication and test case. But I think where there's a huge vulnerability here that Democrats can exploit if they're willing to, you know, not do their whole,

good billionaires, bad billionaires shtick, But nobody wants the government run by an unelected billionaire. I mean, you pull that, it's dramatically, dramatically unpopular. And especially when it's so clear that he's running it for his own ideology and self-interested reasons. Like, I think the reaction against, you know, you're right in a sense, Sagar. I think if I were advising the Democratic Party, I would have focused more on the Treasury takeover and some of those things, which are way more, you know, to me are like the core of what's really frightening about what is being done here. And it's also I think there's a bunch of lawsuits filed already against Elon and his acolytes and like the violation of privacy laws and other laws that have likely occurred here, not to mention the violation of just like separation of powers. And by the way, Elon, you weren't elected to anything that are going to go forward. But, you know, you're in this situation where it's like the courts are slow.

So even if they issue an injunction, that's going to take some time. And then there's a question like, are they going to listen? I don't know. I kind of doubt it, given how they've operated thus far, where it's just like, we want to do it, so we're going to do it ultimately. You know, I mean, Elon is already clearly, if he's a special government employee, he's already clearly violated like the criminal statute with regard to conflicts of interest. And it doesn't seem to really matter. So that's why I think this is, you know, can accurately be described as a constitutional crisis and beyond because they are clearly violating the Constitution, the separation of power, the power of the purse, et cetera. And the system is just totally unable to deal with it, to catch up, to handle the speed that this is all unfolding at, which has shocked everyone, I think, including, according to the reporting,

people in the Trump White House who are like, what the hell is going on here? And they're not read in on it either. Well, I think that's where the big Democratic check will come into, is let's say we do start going after Pell Grants or whatever. Trump's going to be like, yeah, I'm not dealing with all that. I still think there is an existential risk, actually, to Elon of getting Steve Bannon. Remember the whole sloppy Steve saga of 2017?

If he causes a genuine political crisis for the Trump White House, which is eminently possible, he will have his ass out of there in no time. Well, and I think Bannon is correct to understand. Bannon's ideology is not my ideology, although there are more shared elements. There's a lot of overlap. There's more overlap between my ideology and Bannon's than I have no overlap with Elon Musk's ideology of just like burn down the whole federal government and let the corporate overlords rule everything like god kings. That is the polar opposite of my ideology. Bannon is right to see this as an existential threat to his own project and ideology. And I think this will come up more when we talk about, I mean, tariffs somewhat, but even more so the gutting of the National Labor Relations Board, the gutting of the SEC, the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Because, you know, Bannon likes Lena Kahn. He thinks corporate power should be checked. That's the polar opposite of what Elon thinks. And so here you are, if you're a part of the populist right project, you got your J.D. Vance in there. You've got your guy Trump, who has at least said some of the right things and done some of the right things in the past. You like this is your moment. And now you got this billionaire who's just hijacked the whole thing and is running as fast as he can in the total opposite direction with no one, with no one putting a check into place. So I think this is, you know, obviously none of this is like, I find this all to be horrifying and I'm struggling to like wrap

my head around how bad things could actually get. But if you are also on the populist right, I think you should also perceive this as an existential threat to your project, which has its best moment of potential success right now and is evaporating before our eyes. I think they do, but I also think they know who the king is at the moment. You're going to have to wait for a while to be able to strike. For an opening. Because, I mean, look, nobody else paid a quarter bill to get Trump elected. Trump takes that pretty seriously. So do a lot of the people in the government, right? I mean, Trump is not idealized. That's the thing is he never gave a shit about any of this.

Well, look, and I've always been pretty honest about it. I know you see that. But I don't think many people do. And there's also, look, there's an element of political realism for a lot of this. We're like, yeah, look, as long as we get mass deportation, maybe we can live with some of this. That's kind of the thinking and the talk that I've heard from others. But I think there will be some big fights ahead. Another thing I was thinking about yesterday, even though it feels like eternity, it's been two weeks. And it's one of those where in the long cycle of all of these presidencies,, Biden did not go negative until October 2021.

That was nine months, right, where he basically was in a positive territory. Yeah. Although when someone asked me five years from now, what do you remember about the Biden presidency? I'd be like, oh, people hated him. But the truth is, it's like the first nine months was kind of a honeymoon period. Well, and you know why people liked? Because they did a lot of federal government action to materially benefit people. I mean, that was the most popular stuff that he did was at the beginning when checks were going out and there was a huge COVID relief program.

That's when he was most popular. And then the two things that killed him, first Afghanistan, which I hate to admit, but that's the reality. It's obvious. And he never recovered from that. And then the two things that killed him, first Afghanistan, which I hate to admit, but that's the reality. It's obvious. And he never recovered from that. And then inflation. Inflation murdered him. And that was, you know, and that was it. So, I mean, that's the complete polar opposite direction of what's being done here. That was a building up of government. I mean, I wouldn't call it FDR, but it was a break from the neoliberal era. It was, you know, an expansion of the social safety net. You know, Trump did the same thing in his, which is not going to happen. They don't think that programs that benefit Americans should be cut. And, you know, and I think it is telling, that's why they do start with USAID, because you can also fit it into this framework of, oh, that's, you know, we're making it America first.

And then once you accomplish that, then you can move on to the things that are more politically difficult and where there may be more popular pushback. Just to put a bow on it. I don't think that there's ever a mandate to strip the federal government of all agency. I would equate it to if you ever worked in a company and there's a bunch of HR people who have a ton of power but who don't do anything who everybody hates. I would see it as the mandate is to strip that away, whether it's reality or not, the feeling as if they're doing nothing and they're actually making operations here more difficult. In practice, that's what I think basically will materialize, as opposed to cutting any critical function. Now, I'm not going to lie. You know, this whole

move fast and break things ideology very much could move in the other direction. I mean, it nearly bankrupted Tesla. We've seen what it did, too. But it didn't work. I mean, this is the problem. The Peter Thiel quote comes to mind. It's like, look, financially, should you ever bet against him? Probably not. I mean, the government is not a business, though. I mean, that's the thing is if well, first of all, I mean, if you look at the management of Twitter, it's been a catastrophe, both in terms of the functioning of the product and the profitability of the product, et cetera. You know, it's been that has been a total and complete disaster. But also, and we've talked about this before that I know you agree with part of this, like the way you run a business and the consequences of a business cutting too

deeply and, you know, having an off quarter in terms of their earnings or whatever, profoundly different than cutting too deeply at the federal government and people die or kids don't have their head start or checks don't go out or the government defaults. Like those are the sorts of things that that's the way Elon operates, right? He comes in, he cuts massively, like not, oh, in this area, we have a little fat, no blanket across the board. He causes a near catastrophe and then tries to rebuild from the ashes. Like, that's the way he operates. That's the way he's operating the federal government.

And I know there's this instinct of like, oh, we should run the government like a business. The government should not be run like a business, because businesses, it's all just about profit for the shareholders. The government is about providing critical, at times, life-saving programs and resources to the population. Not to mention, of course, what overarches all of this and why everyone should be disturbed by it is like, if you happen to like Elon, substitute George Soros or Bill Gates or whatever billionaire you don't like, we shouldn't have an unelected billionaire appointing himself king and just operating carte

blanche, cutting whatever programs he happens not to like, whatever agencies he happens not to like, or has like a personal grievance with or whatever. That is the end of the project that we have known as America for the past several hundred years. Like that is, that is the end of that. If we end up in a situation where one unelected billionaire can just appoint himself King and operate with impunity. And, uh, let's just, uh, last piece here, we can put the last element guys up on the screen and then we can transition to talking about tariffs a little bit, which does fit in with all of this as well. But there have been, I think now, four different lawsuits that have been filed.

This one was filed by, I know, AFL-CIO, SEIU, and a couple other groups together. They're specifically going after Doge's access to the Treasury Department's payment system. They say that it violates the Privacy Act of 1974 and other IRS statutes. As I said, I think there are three other lawsuits, at least, that have been filed in federal courts at this point. So we'll see. I think the next couple pieces are, what do the courts do? How does Elon and how did Trump, how do they react to any negative court decisions? And then the other piece, just to flag, which Matt Iglesias actually flagged on Twitter, is there's a big funding fight.

We're about to hit the debt ceiling in mid-March. And, you know, now you've got Elon in charge of the Treasury payment system or access to the Treasury. You need only access, according to the White House. I don't actually know what that means. Yeah. But anyway, access to the Treasury payment system and whatever else he wants access to. How Democrats are thinking that that's going to be a place where they can exert some pressure and try to rein in what's happening here. How does that fight go down? Do they just say, oh, no, we're just going to pay the things we want to pay and that support our, you know, ideological ends and not pay the things that don't?

To be fair, that is basically what the Obama administration and them did. With the extraordinary measures? Yeah, that's what extraordinary measures are. So, I mean, at a certain point, Trump does run the government, like he is the president of the United States. So in a shutdown, you can decide what you want to pay for or not. I don't disagree. I'm not saying it's good or anything, but, and you're right, we should prepare people for that. It's absolutely a question mark. Yeah, so that. The next piece is, okay, what happens to the courts? How do they respond to the courts? And what happens with the debt ceiling showdown? 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.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice.

These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024.

VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing

other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, let's get to tariffs. A dizzying day yesterday in Washington as the news rolled in. Are the tariffs on? Are they off? What's happening? Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Trump's Truth Social. I just spoke with President Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico. It was a friendly conversation. She agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican soldiers on the border, separating Mexico and the United States. These soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal migrants into our country. We further agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one-month period during which we'll have negotiations headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. I look forward to participating in those negotiations.

Mexico confirmed this news. Claudia Scheinbaum, let's go and put that on the screen, actually broke the news first. Justin Trudeau similarly said, I just had a good call with President Trump. Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan, reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology, and personnel, enhanced coordination, nearly 10,000 frontline soldiers. Our personnel are and will be working on protecting the border. In addition, Canada is making commitments to appoint a fentanyl czar. We will list cartels as terrorists, ensure 24-7 eyes on the border,

launch a Canada-U.S. joint strike force to combat organized crime, fentanyl, and money laundering. I have also signed a new intelligence directive that we will be backing with $200 million. Proposed tariffs will be paused for at least 30 days while we work together. So there's been— Everyone knows, once your point is our problem, it's basically done. It's a big question as to what happened here, whether this was the plan all along. Many people are pointing out the fact that much of this actually existed already. So, for example, put B3 up on the screen.

Joe Biden, under the Biden administration, Mexico had apparently sent some 15,000 troops to the border. It's unclear whether there's going to be an additional 10,000 here, bringing the total to 25,000. Similarly, in Canada, it appeared that some of these initiatives are already on the books on January 13th before Trump even took office. So I don't know. I mean, whether this is symbolic or not in terms of the Trump demands, I mean, the fundamental difference, I guess, comes down to both the leverage, the power used, and the interim 30-day period, as in, well, if we don't like the results, then we're going to change things. So fundamentally, that's what I would say the overall difference is. But the tariffs are off for now, for the next 30 days. S&P 500, as of this morning, let's see, it is up by 0.14%, even with the China

tariffs. So the markets were a little,% even with the China tariffs. Yeah. The markets were a little, I mean, they were a little royal. They actually didn't expect as bad. They didn't react as badly as I thought. I think they kind of assumed this is what was going to happen. I was going to say, so what if there is the rational market hypothesis that they were correct, that the tariffs itself were never going to happen? Maybe we should reconsider that, right? I mean, I'm just, I guess, still a little confused about what these tariffs are supposed to be about in the first place, because the way I understood it, and the way you, I think, accurately explained it yesterday, is like, well, they're really about economics, but you have to

put this bullshit layer of it's about fentanyl on top, even though no fentanyl comes from Canada, basically. It's a very small percentage, right? One percent. But then all the quote unquote concessions, even if we grant that they're concessions, are about fentanyl. They're not about economics. And Trump previously had been saying, you know, the only way Canada can fly is if they become the 51st state or if our trade deficit becomes zero and is balanced down. But then, you know, what he gets in exchange for this is, oh, we're going to appoint a fentanyl czar and keep the troops on the border that are already there. So, you know, we're about to talk about the popularity of tariffs, which is something that you've been talking about. And I actually think that a tariff regime could be popular, even if it did require, you know, some pain as Trump floated that there would be as a

result of these things. But just as, you know, we're about to talk to Matt Stoller about this. We already recorded the conversation. That's why I'm previewing this. But, you know, just as Biden failed to enlist people in the, like, antitrust project and the, you know, National Labor Relations Board and the CFPB, there has to be a story that people understand of why they're sacrificing, why they're experiencing this pain. And right now, there is no real, it's all over the place. It makes no sense. Why Canada? Why are you putting higher tariffs in theory on Canada than you are on China? Like, what has Canada done wrong? So, you know, I think that's part of the thing here is if you want to make this about bringing back American manufacturing jobs, re-industrializing the industrial Midwest,

I think there's a chance that you could enlist the American people in that project. But number one, I don't think that most of these tariffs accomplish that project. But number one, I don't think that most of these tariffs accomplish that goal. And number two, I think the story about them is deeply confused, contradictory. Tariffs are a tool. I mean, look, in principle, I'm like, great, you know, 25,000 more troops at the border. Great. Having leverage over our allies of Canada and Mexico, very questionable. But it's one of those where, like you said, look, I believe in the story. I believe in tariffs. I believe in bringing back a lot of this manufacturing. And so if this is all it takes in order to basically get you to call them off, I don't know. I mean, is it going to be a fundamental difference? Maybe. You know,

I guess it's an open question as to that. I think the reason I was excited about them, the reason I liked the idea of even threatening, is I fundamentally believe in using American assistance, power, and the economy to achieve ends that are good for our people. Now, the American people have voted for Donald J. Trump on a message of immigration, threatening the Mexican economy, which is 80% exports to the United States if they don't help us out more on that, is in principle a thing I think is fantastic. I think it's good to be able to get them to either send troops there and to have a one-month cliff falling over their head

where it's like, hey guys, the guillotine's gonna fall if you don't get your act together. All I totally support. But the problem is, is that with this, the way that it currently is, it runs the risk of what you're saying, of not falling into this broader national project. Now, the China that it currently is, it runs the risk of what you're saying, of not falling into this broader national project. Now, the China tariffs, for example, luckily, at least in my opinion, have gone into place.

And I hope, and we're about to talk, as you said with Stoller, about the de minimis exception and more of which I truly am praying and hoping that they close it just because of the impact it's had on our overall economy. But when there's not, there lacks explanation, when there lacks coherent vision, that's when you risk blowback. And in the event that these tariffs ever do go into power, we perhaps could see that. So we had a, do you want to speak for Harry Anton? One more thing and then we'll get Harry Anton. There is also a risk here that I think we already see playing out. And maybe, you know, honestly, from my ideological perspective, it's kind of a silver lining. But because all of this, you know, I'm going to threaten Colombia, I'm going to threaten Mexico, I'm going to threaten Canada for some reason, because this is all being

done. And even after, you know, Canada had already announced this $1.3 billion package and enforced in anticipation of Trump coming in to try to please him in advance. Mexico had done a very similar thing with Claudia Scheinbaum, massively increasing the number of raids, the amount of fentanyl that was being seized at the border dropped to some of the lowest levels in years. So they felt like, okay, we're doing the things he wants us to do. And still they end up in this situation of, you know, being bullied and threatened and, you know, shoved into crisis and all of this sort of stuff. So you already see European leaders talking to the Financial Times, for example, saying, you know, we no longer see really China as the greatest risk to us. We

actually think that it's these guys over here. And maybe we need to form a sort of anti-American alliance because individually we have no chance. And Trump is floating tariffs against the EU, as you know, as well. Which I hope they go into place. And so, you know, that's the other piece is you are sort of aligning, forcing the world's hand, accelerating a shift that was already happening. Now, from my perspective, that may not be the worst thing in the world. But if you're interested in American power and empire, this is definitely counter to, you know, to that particular political project. I actually don't agree. I'll tell you why. Okay, Mexico, what are you going to do? 80% of your economy or exports rely on us.

You ain't going nowhere. Okay, who are you going to sell to? Canada, geography matters. 74% of your exports come into the United States. They were floating, oh, maybe we should join the European Union. Yeah, good luck. Same thing in terms of the Europeans. Oh, maybe we'll rely on China. Oh, China's going to give you their nuclear umbrella and they're going to protect you from all of your problems

so that you guys can have universal health care, but you don't actually defend yourselves in this giant social welfare state. So let's get real, too, about how long. It's taken 75 years of integration for the European Union and for the European economies in the United States. It's taken 200 years now of Canada and Mexico. They are going nowhere. Maybe Africa, India, China, South Korea, Japan, those are the countries I would worry much more about. But these people, nothing. I mean, no matter what, they will be heavily reliant. And they're effectively client states.

I mean, that's what it is. The problem is that they don't like that. I mean, I like reminding them of some of that, especially whenever it comes to the border. And the border alone is certainly justification for hitting them with tariffs or threatening tariffs if we want to. I would like, though, to see a return to some of what we talked about previously yesterday about manufacturing and about the fact that NAFTA itself had decimated a huge part of our manufacturing sector. The way that these automakers currently operate where a single part will cross like 40 or 50 times the Canadian and

Mexican border. It'll cross three separate borders like multiple times before it ever even makes its way into a car. And then, oh, it's called American-made. There's still a lot of deficits in the USMCA. So I had thought it was an opening on USMCA. And I mean, I guess it certainly could be in terms of setting the ground for what that looks like. But for right now, seems to be wrapped up. Yeah. I don't really know what else to say.

Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens a month from now. There you go. When we go back to this, when we see this rodeo play on again. By the way, I should mention there were people floating also that, I mean, you got a bunch of billionaire, like, I mean, the treasury secretary is a billionaire hedge fund guy, George Soros buddy, and wondering if there is also some profiting going on over these manufactured market drops and recoveries. Oh, you're talking about the Soros finance, like a Forex trade.

That's actually pretty interesting. I wonder if anybody – can people flag any trades? Because these are all public. Right. If you're the Treasury Secretary and you know what Trump's basic plan is here, well, you're in a position to profit off that knowledge. Well, it wouldn't even be him per se at but at this point with all the guidelines or whatever, but maybe people who used to work for him. If we keep going through this cycle,

it may be something to keep in mind for the future. Here's the problem. You're going to encourage a bunch of retail traders to start doing Forex and trying to recreate the shorting of the British. I am not encouraging anyone to do anything. So be careful. I'm just telling you what others are floating online

and something to keep an eye on. You might be encouraging me to be like, well, maybe there's some money to be made here. You know, start making some phone calls. No, I'm not going to go to prison. All right, let's get to Harry Enten who broke down some of the polling about how people actually feel about tariffs.

Let's take a listen. Trump's tariffs on Canada, China, Mexico. Look at this, just 38% support. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to figure out that 51% opposed is larger than the 38% support. Look, Trump has done some fairly popular things in his first few weeks in office. This is not one of them. No, no, no.

Horrible, horrible, horrible, to quote Charles Barkley, the American folks are opposed to these tariffs when you ask it specifically like this about the three countries, or if you ask it more vaguely about tariffs overall, they simply put, do not like it, Mr. Rubin. It's interesting, even with China in the question, people say that they are opposed to tariffs. The majority here, and there's not a majority on a lot of things these days.

The two big focuses for Trump in the polling are immigration and the economy. Tariffs ain't it, my dear friend. Tariffs ain't it. Trump should focus on tariffs. In November of 2024, when Ipsos asked it, it was 1%. Look at what happened in December of 2024. It doubled.

It doubled, but to only 2%. When you double to only 2%, you know that the American people don't want Trump's focus to be here. They don't like it. They don't want his focus to be there. They want it to be on other issues. You know, Trump has done a lot of things that are unpopular in the past,

but the poll numbers haven't moved. That may be the case here, but I'm a little skeptical of that. Why? Take a look at weekly Google searches for terrorists. Look how much higher they are versus a year ago. They're up 2,400%. That reaches a 21-year high.

You know folks are paying attention when there are more Google searches for that than for Taylor Swift, who almost always is in the top of Google search. So we caught people's attention, but not necessarily in a good way. Yeah. OK. We'll see. What do you what do you make of that? Just going back to what I was saying before, I just looked it up. The original China tariffs that he put on in his first administration were initially somewhat underwater and they became more popular. Absolutely. And they became majority, you know, in favor, which is why also you see the Democrats have dropped

at a similar position. Biden continues that and does industrial policy. And I think it fits with what we were saying. Like people understand, okay, a lot of our jobs, you know, a lot of these industrial factory towns, a lot of the jobs left and are now in China. And so it was a very easily comprehensible story around this is why we're doing this. Now, you can still disagree with them. I don't think they, you know, they didn't do much in terms of accomplishing their goal of reshoring. They needed to be paired with industrial policy. There were issues there, but people understood the story of what it was about. And I think we're even willing to, you know, have a more expensive washing machine or whatever.

Not only that, you know, all of the doom and gloom was fake. You know, we had hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs. I think the S&P 500 was up by like 25%. Yeah. Now they did have to like basically bail out the farmers because of the retaliatory tariffs. So it's not like there was no impact. What's the government for? But the federal government addressed the problem. Right, exactly. But it is interesting to me that there does seem to be some, I mean, there's almost like a nuanced view of tariffs among the American public where, tariffed more than China and it's just across the board

and why should avocados have a tariff, then yeah, you're not gonna have people like lining up to pay more at the grocery store or more for their cars or whatever. There you go. Well, we'll see how it all comes into practice. For the next 30 days, we all have a stay. Okay, let's get to Matt Stoller.

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. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day.

It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant,

and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal,

and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now is Matt Stoller. He is the author of The Big Newsletter. Great friend of the show. It's good to see you, Sarah. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So you just wrote this. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. What did Trump just do on the tariffs? It's very relevant, obviously, this morning, now that we no longer have China tariffs,

we don't have Canada tariffs, but we do have, or sorry, Canada tariffs or Mexico, but we do have China. And I was like, wait, did- Yeah, no, no, no. I know. I was wondering that too. Like, I got to look at Twitter. China is here, at least for now. We've got 10% tariffs on China, but there's some big question marks of exactly what's in it. This is obviously falls within something, an issue area that you care a lot about. Can you explain a bit to the audience and some of the importance of this? Yeah. I mean, so I wore a jacket with plaid to convey authority

because this is going to be like very sort of technical. I'm going to do my best. Sure. So the situation is changing really quickly. So we don't 100% know, but we'll know in a few days maybe. So there's this, so he put 10% tariffs on stuff that's coming in from China, right? And that is, you know, there's a lot of industrial machinery and various other things coming in. But what is interesting, I think particularly interesting, and I think what a lot of, we were just talking about this off camera, there's a loophole that is maybe more important than just the raw amount that he put on. And that loophole is called the de minimis exemption to trade and, or de minimis loophole. Under $800, right? When you bring something in, an individual does not have to have, does not have to pay duties or tariffs or have that inspected. So this was set up, if you've ever been abroad and you come back and you bought a

sweater or whatever, when you're on the plane and you fill out, they're like, do you buy anything? Was it worth more than a certain amount of money? You don't have to get that inspected. You don't have to know the tariff codes. They don't treat you like a commercial importer. That's what de minimis is. It's intended to let tourists bring in a few things here or there. The problem is in the 1990s, or the dynamic is in the 1990s, what they said is this

can be used not just for tourists, but for e-commerce, right? And they said, if you are an individual buying through, say, like an Amazon or something like that, and they ship you something from China, that can come in, and it's less than $800, that can come in under the de minimis rules. No inspections, no duties, no tariffs, and it can come in through what's called informal entry. So it doesn't have to have a licensed customs broker. It doesn't have to be bonded. Now, there are about a billion, maybe more than a billion packages coming in every year. I think the number is 1.4 billion, but who's counting? from China every year under the de minimis loophole. So this is the basis of the business model of Timu, of Shane, of Fast

Fashion, and of Amazon, right? More than 50% of third-party sellers, which is the majority of their sales, come directly from Chinese sellers, right? So this is kind of crazy, right? So if you're a bicycle producer in this country, you have to compete with bikes coming in duty-free, no tariffs, no inspections, so on and so forth. And that is true kind of across the board. Now, what this tariff executive order did is they said that de minimis exemption or that de minimis loophole is gone, sort of, right? So they say you now have to pay tariffs on everything, whether it's, you know, $20 or $20,000, okay? But what they haven't been clear on is whether they're going to force the de minimis stuff, stuff that's less than $800, to come in through a more formalized entry, right?

Are they going to make you, are they going to make them put like Amazon or Timo or Shane, are they going to have to use a licensed customs broker of, you know, bonds? And if they do, like, it doesn't make sense to let you buy a $3 t-shirt and then you have to do, you know, you have to get a licensed customs broker to handle that individual package. It makes more sense to, you know, bring in 20,000 t-shirts or 100,000 t-shirts, bring them into US warehouse, and then do fulfillment from there. And so it's not clear what they're doing with the actual process, but a tariff on a $3 t-shirt doesn't matter at 10%. Who cares, right? Especially because they're tariffing the wholesale price. So they're more likely tariffing a dollar, right, or $0.30, not the $3. So a 10% tariff on $0.30 is $0.03, who cares?

But if they're saying, all right, you have to change your whole, it's just going to be much more expensive to bring in an individual item, it doesn't matter for a bicycle that's $500. It doesn't really matter for a piece of industrial machinery. It does matter for a t-shirt or a small Pez dispenser or something like that. iPhone cord. Right. And there are different versions of that floating around, and we don't actually know what they're going to come down and say because there are big logistical challenges if you get rid of the de minimis.

The tariff, just charging the tariff is not that big a deal, but the logistical question, formal versus informal entry. So I hope I haven't been too technically— No, but I think this is important because this is originally what I want to talk about is that these businesses, I mean, we've got the Super Bowl coming up, right? Do you remember how many Temu commercials were in our last Super Bowl? Shopped like a billionaire, right? Yeah, these things have become massive companies. And yeah, anyway, that's why I wanted to talk to you about this. You focus on competition, and there's definitely a competition tie-in here.

How does this disadvantage small and medium-sized retailers over, you know, gives Amazon and Timu and these big players a huge leg up? Well, I mean, so it's like if you are making a product here, right, you have to comply with all environmental laws. You can't use slave labor. There's like a bunch of stuff you can't, ostensibly can't do, right? And if you are, you know, we don't have jurisdiction in China or other countries. And, but so the way we handle that is through the customs procedure, right? So, you know, you're not allowed to bring in goods and products where they are using certain techniques like human trafficking or whatever, if they don't do any inspections, right, or if they don't do, you know, they are not charging

tariffs, even if there's a tariff on the books, but they're not charging it, then you can bring all those goods in without any, you know, like there's no, there's no, you know, we were just, you were just mentioning the, the nicotine. I didn't actually know about that, but like that was a good example, right? Where you're competing against companies that don't have to adhere to the same standards that you do in this country. And that's, that's just unfair, right? So a lot of like the bicycle manufacturers are one of the coalition groups or bike stores. They're one of the groups that actually it's not just manufacturers, it's stores too, right? Because if you're importing a bike from China, right? If you import it directly to an end consumer,

it's cheaper than if you bring it to a store and sell it to, because the store is going to bring in, you know, a hundred bikes. So they don't get access to the de minimis duty-free, tariff-free. So it actually just changes the retail environment in the US and harms the little guy in all sorts of different ways. The other part of it that I think is kind of crazy is that you have a billion-plus packages coming in. So that's like 4 million packages every day.

And there's a ton of fentanyl in these packages, right? They're going uninspected and it's brought here by our own post office, right? So there's a lot of conversations about, oh, there's all this fentanyl coming in from Mexico, right? That's what a lot of Republicans like to talk about and Democrats too, but mostly it's a Republican thing. But really what's happening is, I mean, it's not to say there isn't fentanyl coming in from Mexico, but one of the things they say is, well, we haven't seized

any fentanyl coming in from these packages in China. And so we know it's coming, we're seizing a lot from Mexico. It's like, well, that's because no one's looking, right? But when they start to look and they have started to do some pilot programs, they're finding a ton of fentanyl coming in through these packages know, these packages. And so it's a really good idea to actually just start bringing them in through normal customs procedures so that we can apply the same techniques that we use to inspect everything else for this. Really important. How does, you know, we all watched the inauguration. Jeff Bezos was, you know, Trump's new buddy.

His wife also was quite notably there. A lot of people had a lot to say about her. You know, how does his influence tie into all of this? Well, it's interesting because this has implications. So the tariffs have implications for Apple as well because they didn't put an exemption in for the iPhone. Right. Which, you know, I was just listening to CNBC and they were talking about how this is gonna take 3% of Apple's profits, right? Because they are, you know, what do they do?

They absorb the extra tariff, do they raise prices and annoy Trump? Like what are they, do they change their supply chains? Someone's gotta pay. And this is, I think, a much bigger deal for Amazon than Apple, but it's a big deal for Apple. It's also actually weirdly a big deal for Meta because, you know, the fast fashion Chinese groups were spending billions of dollars on advertising.

So this is the one where maybe like Google and Microsoft are not actually like super affected by it. But the other three are. And I think it says that these companies have some levels of influence on Trump, particularly on, you know, when they're negotiating with foreign countries. If he feels that those foreign countries are trying to regulate American companies, he will fight for that. But he's not, it doesn't look like he's doing explicit favors for these companies yet.

And I'll say one other piece, and this is not about trade, but yesterday there was an argument having to do with a case against Google, an antitrust case against Google brought by Epic Games. So not a government case, but the antitrust division, because the government can intervene in private cases if they think the state has an interest. The government actually had a lawyer there and argued for, you know, basically Google was in the wrong. And, you know, that is an indication that this antitrust, the antitrust division could have said,

you're not doing that anymore, right? Like they've been telling regulators and enforcers all over the government, we're totally changing things. They haven't done that with the antitrust division in big tech. So this is a small hint of that. So this is really, it's like,

I don't know what to think because I see a lot of, I don't trust Trump. I mean, candid, I'm a Democrat. I'm very skeptical. I see a lot of corporate favoritism. You guys talk about it. But some of these areas, like big tech's not getting exactly what they want. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. 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. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States.

Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.