Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/28/25: Signal Gate Burns Israeli Intel, Trump Special Election Panic, RFK Jr. Guts HHS

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Krystal, Ryan, and Emily break down the Friday news with more on Signal Gate burning intelligence assets, Trump world panicking after a Special Election win for Dems, RFK Jr gutting HHS, and more. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.locals.com/support    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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What's been going on in the world? Have you ever heard of Signal? I'm learning. I'm hearing about it more and more, actually. Hearing about it more and more. Ryan and Sagar argued a little bit. Yeah, I actually, to be totally honest with you, I watched every show. I mean, so this is where I realized actually the value of our show, because there was nowhere else that I would have been able to go to like get a rundown of all the stories that we cover and like the particular perspective and whatever.

So I was, I valued it as a consumer this week. It is true. It's like, yeah, that, nobody else is doing that. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, after the first, say, you know, five minutes sometimes, you can move on to the next one, kind of get where we're going. But, yeah, there's nowhere else that really is going to – and also give you that level of depth. The Jefferson Morley one went really great.

You know, he was – I saw him tweeting this morning, Ryan. I don't know if you saw that or maybe it was from yesterday, but I saw it this morning. He was like, you know, I did a bunch of interviews with various right-wing outlets, but the one that really tells the story best is the one that I did with. He specifically shouted out you and breaking points. Cool. Yeah, which was really cool. Barstool Sports called it a must read or a must watch. Oh, really?

That gave it a big boost. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. No, I thought you guys' coverage of the whole Signal Glide thing was like the most, you know, insightful that I could find anywhere. And, of course, we've got a bunch more updates on that one. There's a bunch of kind of really interesting election updates. Elise Stefanik. Is that how you say her last name?

I always sort of screw it up. Oh, I always say it. Yeah. She had her nomination for U.N. ambassador pulled because it seems like they're nervous about losing that seat, which is like a very should be easy to hold for Republican, but apparently is not. And then we've got some moves with regard to RFK Jr. and cutting 10,000 jobs over at HHS, which I wanted to talk about as well. But, Ryan, let's start with this because you kind of called this. So apparently, so when you guys were doing coverage, you were like, you know, with this whole Signalgate thing, very possible that in these messages, they burned some human intel source on the ground. And now we're finding out that that appears to not only be true, but it

was actually at least one Israeli source that they may have burned here. Go ahead and talk a little bit about this and I'll pull it up while you're talking. It's the exchange where Mike Waltz says something completely inscrutable. J.D. Vance says, what? And Mike Waltz says, sorry, typing fast.

We have positive ID that this terrorist or the senior Houthi figure turned away some, you know, some senior figure in the missile program for the Houthis was in the apartment building that the most likely way you get a positive ID on something like that is from a person who was there and who told you, hey, dude is in the building. Because just flying a drone over top of the building is very unlikely to be able to give you that level of intelligence. Like, you need gait analysis and like like they just can't pull that off and they wouldn't and there's like you don't think palantirs figured that out they have not and also there'd be like a seven there'd be like a seven second window where the guy's going from like his car into the building where the drone would have to be perfectly positioned um and even then like

capturing it in anything other than a kind of grainy, like this, this idea that we all have from Mission Impossible, where we're like, computer enhance, like that doesn't boom, all of a sudden, match with everyone in the world, boom, and you're paying and he is like narking out to somebody. In this case, it was to Israel and then Israel's relaying back to the United States. And so that was from reading the signal chat. That was the most obvious. Like explanation that there was a human source that they had there, which means now the Houthis and everybody else, you know, the Iranians, whoever else are trying to figure out, okay, who do we, who do we know who like is in that area that would have had access to this information? You know, there may be people getting tortured,

like as we speak, trying, trying to divine the identity of this person. And so I'm a moron. I have no security clearance. I've never worked in national security. And just looking at the signal chat, I could tell. That we know of. Well, that's right. Yeah, that's right. I would say that, wouldn't I? Good point, Emily. Good point. I would say that. So if I can figure that out, like how can our national security advisor not think, oh, that's actually not something we should expose? Jeffrey Goldberg had already done them a huge favor by not publishing the chat where they all celebrated the collapsing of a building. Right.

By not posting the chat where they talked about having a basically a human source on the ground and they baited him into posting it by calling him a liar like they basically forced hand so he was trying to do them every favor he possibly could he really was and if you're guilty and you're and you know you guilty, you can just go back and read your chats. One of those people, it's four week disappearing messages. They still had the chats. You just go back and look at them and be like, oh, this would actually be really bad for mistake and we're going to move on. Instead, they're like, this guy's a hoax liar who hacked his way onto our signal chat. And there was nothing classified there. Had his contact sucked into Mike Waltz's. And so they forced his hand. Nobody knows. Hate when that happens.

He did not want to post that stuff because he is in line. And we'll talk about this in a second with the objective, which is to bomb the Houthis. Yeah, which is why. He doesn't care if it works, just bomb them. I mean, that's why he's in Mike Waltz's phone. Because they are very much aligned, which is likely how his contact got sucked into Mike Wells' phone. I mean, and also, Emily, it just makes it not that it wasn't already utterly preposterous, but like, obviously, this information was classified. And it's just insulting to all of our intelligences to pretend

that it wasn't. that how much they classify and over classify absolutely everything and you think that the you know location of this israeli human intelligence source is not going to be classified information like this would be some of the most highly sensitive and protected information and it also to me, you know, one of the you guys covered this ably. I mean, fantastically this week. And I don't have any points to make that weren't already made quite adequately by, you know, you guys and Sagar on the show this week. But like even the inclusion of someone like Scott Besson on this show, like why does the

Treasury Secretary need to know about this? And to me, the whole thing just gives like children playing war games basically you know the whole tenor of it the lack of any sort of consideration that this is a civilian building and you know civilians who you've just killed in service of this the lack of any this was the part that's making me crazy is like they're all high-fiving and like you know sending their little emoji celebrations over because the bomb went boom without a single word of consideration whether this policy is actually going to accomplish a single thing the reason being that they know it's not going to so it's

like what are we even doing here what are we doing here Jeffrey Goldberg also I think ends up looking foolish for trying to have like kept this information quiet and then being like, because in his original story, he says something to the extent where he's like, it was too it's too sensitive to release. So I won't. And then after being goaded, it's like, oh, OK, actually, I the Trump administration the permission. They feel like they got the permission to not pressure Mike Waltz to leave. They all were sending press releases about Goldberg then releasing the information. And they're like, well, we can now spin this as fake news, as an attack from Jeffrey Goldberg. But they all had the chat. They knew they were lying. It's stupid. Yeah, I mean, it's stupid.

But it's like from a political perspective, they were like, oh, we can now jump on this. And that's what's kept Mike Waltz in the role because he's that unique figure that is like trusted by the national security establishment, but also has friends in MAGA world. And there aren't many people like that. So he's one of those that's like protect them at all costs if you're in the national security world, because they don't they don't really trust a lot of the other people in those circles but you know i do think if goldberg had immediately released everything which you know as a journalist i think he should have then they would have made the story about like how could you compromise this you know intelligence human source then he'd be on the hook yeah and he would be on the hook. So, I mean, I think that was,

so I think they could have more successfully actually made the story about him if he had gone ahead and released what truly is sensitive national security intelligence information. Speaking of Goldberg, though, I mean, this is so, this is so on the nose. So he gets asked about the actual contents, not the process of using Signal, which I don't want to downplay because obviously, and this is part that I don't think has gotten maybe enough attention. Not that no one said it, but I do think it's important. Like, this is not the only time they're using Signal. Even Pam Bondi just got asked, are you going to keep using Signal? And she's like, yes, basically, we are. And I think this was actually part of Project 2025. The reason to use Signal is because you evade FOIA requirements. So the journalists like Ryan and Ken Klippensee

and whoever else wants to get their hands on like what the hell is actually going on here will never be able to because the messages disappear and they're lost and that's it. So it's an attempt, a systematic attempt to evade scrutiny and the FOIA legal requirements, which I know it's very like Pollyanna at this point to expect any of these people to like care about what the law is. But that part is not, you know, it's not insignificant. But Goldberg is much less comfortable when he's outside of talking about like the failures of the process here and is asked about the actual substance. So you can see here he gets gets asked by NPR about the 53 people that the U.S. killed in Yemen. And they say there's little

talk of the fact that this attack killed 53 people, as we mentioned, including women and children, the civilian toll of these American strikes. Are we bearing the lead here? Goldberg says, well, those, unfortunately, those aren't confirmed numbers. Those are provided by the Houthis and the Houthi health ministry, I guess. So we don't know that for sure. Yeah, I mean, obviously, we're, well, I don't know if we're bearing the lead because obviously huge breaches in national security and safety of information. That's a very, very important story, obviously. And one of the reasons, you know, it's a very important story is that the Republicans themselves consider that to be an important story when it's Hillary Clinton doing the deed. Right. So that's obviously hugely important. But yeah,

I think that covering what's going on in Yemen, the Arab and Iran backed terrorist organization, the Houthis that are that are firing missiles at Israel and disrupting global shipping and occupy half of Yemen and all kinds of other things in the U.S., you know, and the Trump administration criticizing the Biden's response and Europe wants Trump to do more. I mean, yeah, there's a huge story in Yemen, but Yemen is, as you know, is one of the more inaccessible places for Western journalists. So maybe this becomes like a substitute for a discussion of Yemen. I don't know. Ryan, your response to that very eloquent explanation.

I mean, we have a journalist in Sana'a, Shoaib al-Masih. It's not inaccessible. People can go there. What isn't inaccessible is Gaza. Western journalists are completely banned from there for Jeffrey Goldberg to call what the Houthis and occupying power when he like recoils at the term occupation for Israel's occupation is also wild. But yeah, the whole thing shows like how blind he is on this entire question. Like it never occurred to him that the blockade it's just it's just going to blow

some things up and it doesn't occur to him that all of these f-18s and all these tomahawks can fly at this poor country in the middle of the night but the claim that they might kill 53 people is you know a preposterous claim made by the houthi-run health ministry. Yeah, and that language is— What do you think missiles do and what do you think bombs do when they land in the middle of the night? On an apartment building that collapsed because, yeah, he's, you know, seeing his girlfriend there or whatever. And I mean, I also like the Houthi-led health ministry. It's the exact same language that they use to discredit the Palestinian civilian death toll in Gaza. It's the Hamas-led health ministry. It can never just be like, here's how many people were killed. Emily,

another aspect, I'm genuinely curious what you guys think of this, is like, Trump hovers over this signal chat, but like, in a very bizarre way, like, you know, J.D. Vance is trying to make this very milquetoast argument about like, oh, we're doing too much for the Europeans. I'm not sure Trump realizes how this is dissonant from his messaging with regard to Europe. But it seems like they're all sort of freelancing and doing what they want without actually having Trump, you know, total buy-in, or they're sort of like projecting onto Trump what they think that he should be thinking.

And we've had now this series of questions aimed at Trump where he'll at least claim, maybe he's just pretending that he's like, oh, this is the first I've heard of this. This is the first I've heard of that. I don't even know what's going on there. I don't know. It just feels to me more and more

like he really is more checked out of his own presidency, except on the things like terrorists, you know, the things that he's like directly interested in. But he's outsourced so much of his presidency to Elon Musk. And then in this chat group, it also felt like he was sort of, you know, removed from what I think would be an important part of his Middle Eastern policy here. Well, that's one of the things that I think resonated or one of the reasons I think this signal chat resonated so much is that it's the weird, very familiar, I think, like rhythm if for anybody who works in an office of people who are trying to collaborate on a job and are like in different places and don't have time for like a full meeting

together except applied to life and death foreign policy. It's a very strange thing. And it sounds like you're reading it without having all of the context from the inside. It sounds like Hegseth and Waltz somehow secured buy-in from Trump and are just executing the policy. And J.D. Vance is saying, well, when the president gave the green light, I don't think we fully fleshed out the implications of this decision. And it is true that the lead has been buried this entire week. I interviewed Christian Parenti yesterday, and he was talking about how this is a significant departure from the foreign policy that Donald Trump ran on. This is a war that he explicitly

came out against. And here you see very casually in a group chat that war being perpetuated with his blessing, but not with his direct involvement, instead with the direct involvement of Stephen Miller, Susie Wiles, and then a sort of limp thumbs up from J.D. Vance, who buckles when he realizes that it's going to be a big thing if he wants to be like the stick in the mud or to actually obstruct this process. So it's very, very strange to try and figure out what role Trump exactly played in this debate, if there was a debate at all, because it does seem like J.D. Vance is implying in his point that there hasn't been a significant conversation, that the president doesn't fully realize his side of the argument. And that's

very strange. Yeah. Yeah. The debate gets ended by Stephen Miller, who comes in and as deputy chief of staff, like he is the guy who on behalf of the principal in any office, including the presidency, you know, would have the authority to like ended the debate by saying, Hey, guys, ever glad to hear everybody's input. I've heard from the boss. The boss says this is the judgment call. Like that is that's how these offices go. He didn't quite say that, though. Oops, that's Jordan Sheridan's live stream just started. So he didn't quite say that. He said, my understanding from our conversation with him basically was that this is a green light. And then everybody's like, OK, well, let's go.

It reminded me of there's this and producer Griffin, who's listening in here, would would remember this story. There's this like scene early in Lennon's tyranny where he like. Crosses off a few names on a list in a meeting. Oh, yeah. Because they were done, you know, this story because they were done talking about them. Yes. And like he moves the papers over here i think beret or whoever his hit man at the time was like collects these papers and he sees these like names crossed off that night

rounds them up and executes them and the next day lennon's like where what happened where are these people he's like you told me to kill them he's's like, no, bro. Like, I was just like doodling on the paper. Oh, my God. Which is why you need some processes in place when you're going to kill people. It can't be Stephen Miller divining what Trump might have been saying in a meeting. Like, Trump needs to like be told directly, like, hey, here are the plans, like choose one of them, press the button, sign here, like do this. So it's very clear. You guys all have all seen Trump speak for 40 years. He's not that clear. Right. People can read into what he's saying, what they want to hear. Yeah. So to then kill people based on that. Based on that.

It's like Soviet level insane. I can imagine like if this was a leaked chat from the Biden administration and you got Sullivan and Blinken and whoever else, you know, random members. We think Joe Harris, you know, like I think he's misunderstanding this. No, I think this is what he really wants. I mean, you know, that would the way that would be interpreted. And I think justly so is like this guy is not really the president. Like, you know, these are the people who are actually making the decisions. They don't even they can't even really tell what he thinks and don't really care what he thinks. Ultimately, they're like making their own calls in this very ad hoc signal chat group, which to your point, Emily, you know, Tulsi Gabbard gets asked about, hey, where were you when this she's like, I don't really remember, which me throw an emoji so they know that I'm like paying attention to what's going on here. And we're talking about collapsing an apartment

building with 50 civilians in it or however many people were ultimately killed. And so that's the part of it about it that to me is so just it's just deeply disturbing. And then, Ryan, you were pointing out this like the just insanity of them all being oh great job jd van says oh excellent that's when some like you know fist pound emojis come in or whatever once they found out they collapsed this apartment building it's like you know you accomplish nothing other than death and destroy you're like patting yourselves on the back for this policy that it's the same policy as the Biden administration, which we already know doesn't work. Like we already know what does work, which is the ceasefire, which you guys just greenlit

Israel to end and go back to total siege and complete bombardment. So that's the part that too, it's like, you know, these people have lost their minds, actually, like to live in this delusion, like you deserve congratulations for this in any sort of way is the part that I just keep coming back to as being completely and utterly insane. Not to mention just the, you know, full normalizing of there's no like, oh, well, how many civilians are there? Nothing. It's just and I do think this is partly a Gaza effect where murdering civilians, not that we haven't murdered plenty of civilians in the past, etc. I'm not trying to whitewash the war on terror and how everything went in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. But there's not even a thought of what is the collateral damage here. the Osama bin Laden raid, how they took a riskier maneuver in order to avoid

civilian collateral damage because those were things that were at least considered at the time for a vastly higher level target than whoever this dude, you know, that they allegedly killed was.

And it's just, it's grotesque to see. Like the value of human life has just been utterly discarded here. Yeah, today they would just drop a nuke on a bod a bod. That's right. And be like, we think we killed him. Yeah, that's that's exactly right.

That's exactly right. It's found emoji American flag. Victory. Victory is ours. Always. Yeah. Always relevant. But Ryan, when you were pulling up that Intercept article you wrote about Biden and the Houthis, it just I was thinking the Trump administration campaigned on being sort of different from the forever wars, neoconservative foreign policy establishment.

And what we see in this incident is how dangerous. Funniest headline of all time. Yeah. Are they stopping the Houthis? are they going to continue yes which is very trumpian honestly you could hear trump saying that right oh yeah oh yeah uh but it's just a like war by drone is we've slipped into this era of war by drone um i think so obama but uh there's nothing different about the Trump policy. There's nothing different about the way that Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz are approaching war by drone. It's as casual. And it's like, I don't know, I think that's what they campaigned against. I think that's what brought, you know, this like strange coalition of people together. And it's just

slipping into the same routine. Well, and the Hegsteth point is an important one, because we were sold, oh, he is a different guy than the one who was out there making his career on cheerleading for the Iraq war, the guy who was cheerleading the Ukraine war, you know, the guy who came around to opposing the Iraq war, like, I don't know, five years ago after Hillary Clinton, everybody else had already changed their minds. He was still like, go Iraq war. So we had been sold that he'd had this total ideological remake. Well, it's very easy to oppose a war after that war has become profoundly unpopular, either among the broader public or

with the Ukraine war among the Republican base. It's a much different thing to in real time when it's difficult, when it's unpopular, say, no, I don't think that this serves, you know, from their perspective, like America first. I don't think this serves American interests. What are we doing here? This is not what we campaigned on, et cetera. And to me, what comes out in this chat is that like the skepticism of his evolution is quite warranted. This is still the guy who is totally ready to, you know, drop a bomb or go to war or whatever is the sort of like, you know, popular thing in the moment. He is not the one who is going to be planning a flag and making the difficult case because, you know, again, I think J.D. Vance's argument here was sort of silly and like besides the point and whatever. But he should have had an ally in that

chat in Pete Hegseth saying, you know, J.D. makes some good points and here's some other things to consider, et cetera. Instead, it's the total opposite. J.D. quickly realizes, like, I'm the only one here who has any qualms about it. So I'm just going to immediately capitulate and stand down. And Tulsi and Joe Kent. Correct. There should have been four people in there. And maybe Witkoff. I mean, maybe.

Witkoff, yeah. He was, like, traveling and checked out. He was in Moscow. Yeah. Ryan, I think we talked about this on Wednesday, but it's interesting in the chat how Pete He's in Moscow. Strange. I guess it is just strange to see people who have talked a lot of talk then come into the administration and in a very early test fall into old habits. It shows the power of the war machine, the momentum of the momentum of the war machine. It's like two parties now would be the Democrats who like, you know, feel guilty about dropping the bombs and are doing it for humanitarian purposes. And then MAGA, who's dropping the bombs, but is angry that they

have to do it for Europe. Those are the choices. Yes. Choose wisely, America. Yes. So let's just quickly touch on the politics of this, which is, you know, I mean, it's all of the insane things that have happened in this administration, you know, and doge and tariffs and inflation, all everything. Right. And this seems to be the scandal that has, like, really broken through for whatever reason. Harry Anton did a bit on some of the polling around this. So let's go ahead and take a listen to what he had to say about it. There's a lot of interest in this story, all right? Google searches this week versus last week for these topics. For the Atlantic, how many people are searching for the Atlantic? Up 900%. The highest on record since Google searches began. They started tracking them back in 2004. How about for Signal?

Of course, the app on which this all occurred, up over 1,000%. Again, the highest on record. It has gone up through the roof on these two particular topics. Whether or not people ultimately end up caring and it changes their minds about the administration, that's one thing. But the interest at this particular point

is absolutely there. People are interested in this story. Right. Beyond the interest, their take on it, you don't read that in the Google search, but there is interest. Absolutely. Absolutely. Trump's cabinet. Obviously, many of them are on this group chat.

Many of them are facing a lot of scrutiny and questions right now. Trump's cabinet to this point before this was already on somewhat, I don't know, we call it thin ice. Yeah. The American people. Absolutely. I mean, here we go. All right. Disappointed with the administration appointments of these different presidents. You might notice only one of these presidents, only one of these terms that were a majority disappointed. Look at this in 2025, 52% were already disappointed with Donald Trump's picks for his administration. That is the first time you get a majority.

Back in 2017, it was only 44% for Donald Trump. Before that, you see 16, 17, 14. Joe Biden's picks were not, in fact, pulled, but less than 40% disapproved in separate Pew polling. So the bottom line is, even going into this, there was already a lot of skepticism about Donald Trump's picks for his cabinet, for his appointments. There's no doubt in my mind that this number will almost certainly take a little bit upwards because we already were dealing with a public that was quite skeptical. This story can only make things worse, Kate. So there you go. I mean, the interest in this has been really high. And I do think it gets to what Emily was saying about how, in a sense, it's kind of a relatable scandal. But then with this like bizarrely dystopian, like, you know, it just makes you realize like, oh, these people are not really they're not doing some sophisticated, like brilliant analysis.

It's not really thought through. There's no like gaming this out. They're approaching this the same way that I approach like planning my kid the snacks for for my kid's soccer game or whatever. Like what the hell is going on here? And accidentally adding people to the chat. And Emily, I missed you on the show yesterday because I mentioned that Andy Cohen made a joke about Signalgate on Watch What Happens Live on Wednesday night with no context because he knew no context was needed. Everybody watching Bravo is deeply familiar with what's going on. And that's how you can measure full absorption into the public. Jeffrey Goldberg did what some of the most,

the shrewdest housewives do at a reunion and printed out the text messages. That's essentially what Jeffrey Goldberg did a reunion and printed out the text messages that's essentially what jeffrey goldberg did was it was on receipts receipts text messages screenshots timeline screenshots yeah so yeah he he maybe jeffrey goldberg watches maybe he that's where he took his cue from when they were trying to get to the bottom of lucy lucy apple juice the puppy um and beverly hills and they printed out the text messages and brought them to the bottom of Lucy Lucy apple juice the puppy um and Beverly Hills and they printed out the text messages and brought them to the reunion we're very off track now you're completely losing me at this point but I'm sure more of much of the audience knows what you're talking about

hold on hold on I've got it for you here let me let me share this there it is receipts proof i'm glad you did that right that was perfect oh wait that was perfect um yeah so i don't know it's just the other thing that the last thing I'll say about it is like they have handled it in the worst possible way. You know, if they had done if they had just been like, yeah, we fucked up. Next question.

You know, like then this would be over because there's nothing interesting to a reporter after you've sort of like admitted it. Then everybody just moves on there's nothing more to like get you on like oh you said you didn't know jeffrey goldberg here's a picture of you like jeffrey goldberg now has like i'm sure he could come out with all sorts of other proof that they knew each other etc and so it just like it keeps them going it keeps the story alive and if i fully think that even though this is a totally insane thing to happen, Jeffrey Goldberg to Ryan's point was trying to protect them as best he could. He did not want to release these things. If you had just been like, we screwed up. Wez should have should resign and be forced out. Like, it's such a big fuck up that if that happened, I think it would be done over and everybody would have moved on by now. But because they keep insisting on making these ridiculous, oh, they got sucked into my phone. And no, actually, like somehow Goldberg hacked in and oh, we are nothing was classified. And oh, they weren't war plans, they were attack plans, whatever. Like, it just, of course, people are going to keep digging and catching you in the brazen lies and insults to all of our intelligences here. Mike Waltz, I think what the reporting suggests is that Waltz did not offer to resign. And Trump is kind of on the fence and is frustrated about it.

But Waltz didn't offer to resign. And it seems like Waltz does not want to take an L. And that's where the disastrous response probably starts and ends, because he then goes on Laura Ingraham, looking pretty confident, feeling like he can handle this. grills him because what she's concerned about is what a lot of people in MAGA world are concerned about who don't trust Mike Waltz and never have truly fully trusted Mike Waltz. They trust him more than they trust Mike Pompeo and those types. But they're like, well, why do you have this number in your phone? And he has no good explanation for that. There could be terrible explanations, by the way, from a MAGA perspective. Maybe he's trying to shut down stories. Maybe Jeffrey Goldberg. There's all kinds of reasons that he could have Jeffrey Goldberg's number in his phone, but he doesn't have a good answer for it. And so because of that, he couldn't be honest. And you can't get away with lying over and over again or trying to evade the truth over and

over again without looking foolish. And he's ended up looking completely foolish. He got caught. And the administration now has this albatross of Mike Waltz, even though the neocons are right. It was Pete Hegseth who then started throwing all of this classified information into the chats. It wasn't just Mike Waltz. And yet, by the way, the other point to make to this is nobody cared that Pete Hegseth was sharing the classified information. Right. Like if this was shocking to everybody and something they'd never seen before, other people would be like, hey, let's hold. But no, it's like it's hard to actually even blame Hegseth because everyone was clearly accustomed to this and normalized to it. It wasn't it didn't seem to shock anybody or surprise anybody. They probably have been doing this many other times that we just haven't seen. So, yeah, that's exactly right. No heads are going

to end up rolling. But I mean, maybe maybe Waltz is forced to resign. His credibility internally has been damaged beyond repair. He will never be fully trusted by any like most people inside the administration. Again, he looks stupid to a lot of people who have a hard time taking your national security advisor seriously if he can't even keep a group chat locked down. There was some DHS staffer who had accidentally included a reporter on some information about ICE raids and was immediately punished, put on administrative leave, future in doubt at DHS, like immediate consequences for what is ultimately a much lower level fuck up than this fuck up. And, you know, this is something so, you know, my dad worked as a civilian scientist on a naval base for most of his career, and he was a lifelong conservative, but now he hates Donald Trump. But one of the things that really bothered him about Trump was the cavalier, the, you know, the abuse of like classified material,

having him in his boxes, because my dad had had to follow these incredibly strict process and procedure of how you handle this classified information. And to see the complete disregard of that from people who are at the top of the food chain there, he just that that thing really got to him. And you see that some of the reaction New York Times had a story with some of the like airmen who would be on these types of missions who have to follow like they can't even talk to each other about what they're going to do. So to see these plans being sent out across Signal to this very broad list, even putting aside Jeffrey Goldberg on there, even that was like, what? Like, this is how you operate? This is insane. Like any of us would be complete, you know, discharged, like it would be a major issue for us if this is the way that we operated. So I mean, I think that's another

another facet of the story. But in any case, we can go ahead and move on to some of the political news stories that are interesting right now, including, Emily, you're making a trek up to Wisconsin to cover this state Supreme Court seat. So give us a little bit of rundown of what's going on in this race and why this has become such a lightning rod. Yeah, here, let's pull up this article because, interestingly, Elon Musk has been involved both on the sort of aggressive side, like on the offense and on the defense. Democrats have made this race. So the way the Wisconsin Supreme Court works is that they're not partisans. They're sort of conservative or liberal. But Democrats, you know, everybody knows the liberal. Yeah. So we can't call her like the Democrat judge

or the Republican judge. But basically, we can. We can. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we basically can. So here I'm opening up this article because just what we learned is Elon Musk is now getting even more involved than he already was in this election. Democrats have tried to actually make this a referendum. My New York Times is not loading here. One second, everyone here. I got you. I can pull it up. I've also actually got the Elon tweet that he put out that I can pull up here with.

He's going to the state and is is going to do another of his million dollar giveaways. He says on Sunday night, I'll give a talk in Wisconsin. Entrance is limited to those who vote in the Supreme Court election. I'll also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote. This is super important. Again, as I said before, not that anyone really cares that things are legal or not when done by the richest man on the planet at this point. But this is pretty brazenly election fraud, like based on the code, both in Wisconsin and federally. Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce someone to vote or register to vote. It's illegal to give, lend or promise anything of value to influence voting behavior.

They cap incentives at one dollar. And so, you know, a million dollars, a little bit beyond that limit. But, you know, this is just, again, a very similar playbook to what he used, especially in the state of Pennsylvania in the presidential race. And, you know, it's like goes without saying, if George Soros was doing this on behalf of the Democrats, I think Republicans would probably have a little bit of an issue with it. But it's Elon Musk. So, you know, here we go. Well, yeah. And so this race is Brad Schimel, who is a very well-known kind of establishment conservative figure in Wisconsin. And it comes out of those years where Wisconsin has this very robust conservative movement internally because of

the Scott Walker momentum. And you have Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan and Sean Duffy and Ron Johnson coming out of that, like really the 2010s. And Brad Schimel is very much of that crowd. He is up against Susan Crawford, the liberal justice. This is for control of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Tesla does have business in front of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin, like actively has business in front of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin. And so if you're wondering why $20 million is pouring into this race, it's genuinely like an interesting question. You know, right now, everyone wants to make it a referendum on Elon Musk. So you can understand even from an ego perspective, why Elon Musk would say it's a bad look for, you know, I asked my parents and they were like, yep, these ads are Elon

focused on the state Supreme Court race. So that's why Elon Musk, even more than this one Tesla case may be interested, is that he could end up looking like a real albatross, like a real electoral albatross for Republicans heading into the midterms, because the entire country is watching this election as like an early test case as to his brand and how it could potentially motivate Democratic Party voters. So $20 million has flowed in here. And it's just like for a state Supreme Court election, we're not even talking about a partisan Republican versus partisan Democrat national race. We're not even talking about a partisan Republican versus partisan Democrat national race. It's not even a congressional seat. It's the state Supreme Court. And so for this much attention and money to come into it is like pretty significant. And you can

see why even beyond Tesla, Elon Musk is concerned and trying maybe even to lower expectations already. Well, Elon, I mean, he, by putting so many millions into the race, put himself at the center of the race, especially given the fact that and made it into a sort of referendum on him. I mean, it's possible that the ads would have been about him at least tangentially, even if he hadn't weighed in. But, you know, by dumping those millions, he has effectively made it a referendum around Elon Musk, Doge, how you feel about the direction of the federal government with him, you know, running the show. And the particular lawsuit

that you were referring to, Emily, it's about, you know, Tesla is unique because all of their dealerships, they're not individually owned. They're corporate. They're all corporate. And there's laws in certain states, including Wisconsin, that basically ban that structure. And so that's the interest, the business interest that he has. And then as Ryan, I'm sure can explain and elaborate on, there's a whole bunch of ideological partisan interest here in terms of drawing districts and then also ruling on things like, you know, pro-choice, pro-life issues, labor law, et cetera, that just, you know, fits into the whole ideological Trump-Elon Musk package. Yeah, those are the key things. And the money is interesting because while obviously a candidate would have rather have more money than the candidate who has less money, the Democrat is going to have a lot of money.

Right, Emily? I mean, you're going to see plenty of ads from the Democrats. So there's sort of like a threshold situation where if you have no money and somebody else has a ton, the person with a ton is going to win 100% of the time. But if somebody has a ton of money and you have like a half ton, you're in the ballgame. And sometimes that money on the ton side can backfire as people's mailboxes get completely filled with like these glossy mailers. And in rural areas, you have to pay to throw those out. That was like a huge problem in Maine, you know, where they spent like $30 million each on these on like glossy mailers. And you're just forcing all these rural people to then pay extra money to take them to the dump.

And so that does not engender good feelings toward those people. And then a guy like Musk, who is not the most attractive character to some, can then motivate the opposition to come out and vote. So there's a limit to what money can do. Well, and that's, I think, a really, really important point, because one of the things that's tested in this election, probably in the Florida election, which I know we're going

to talk about in a second as well, David Shore's analysis that went mega viral last week about how low propensity voters, if they had turned out at even higher levels, would have given the election, the victory margin for Trump a boost. Like he actually and that's the opposite. Democrats used to always say if we turned out, that was the whole like rock the vote philosophy is that if we can turn out as many low propensity voters as possible, we will win because low propensity voters tend to be on our side. A.K.A. working class voters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so now it's interesting that in a midterm cycle, the low propensity voters are like the types of people who would come out that Elon Musk desperately needs to like draw out. And in all likelihood, this is not going to have the same level of turnout as the presidential election

in Wisconsin or in Florida for Mike Waltz's seat. And so what this is testing is kind of that theory of the case, is if low propensity voters are truly like, are they really with Musk? If you don't get a lot of turnout, what does that mean? I think that there are open questions that we'll get some answers to in analyzing the turnout on Tuesday. Yeah. And I just add up the polymarket odds. They were at 90 percent that the liberal was going to win. Now they've fallen to 83 percent since Musk made his announcement that he's going to the state and doing his million dollar giveaway, et cetera, et cetera. So I guess he's managed to shift the odds a little bit in his favor, at least according

to Polly Market. But, you know, look, Democrats are very energized. Like you see it, you know, every town hall, you've got all these people showing up. You've got all these Tesla protests across the country. You've got, you know, them flooding their Senate and congressional representatives with calls and messages. And, you know, it's high, high level of energy, anger, concern, and not a lot of channels to direct that at this point. So, you know, when you have these either off year or special election situations like this is the moment not just for people in that state, but for people around the country like, oh, my God, here's a thing that I can do. And especially since Elon is profoundly unpopular, you know, Trump is unpopular at this point, but Elon is way more unpopular. He has made them are unpopular, too, which is interesting. Like,

that's what like what's one of the more interesting things here is like this is Democrats opportunity to test out a new brand strategy, you know, because they're also like that's why Wisconsin is not a red state. I'm still surprised that Trump won Wisconsin. Obviously, I haven't lived there in a while, but it's not a red state. And it's very, very, very, very close. So it's a test of Democrats brand when Trump is sort of out of the picture and now you're making it about Musk, potentially the future of the right. Sorry. No, that's a great point. Yeah. And Elon has really made himself central to this story.

A couple other political stories. I mean, this is kind of wild. So Elise Stefanik had been nominated to be U.N. ambassador. And now Trump has decided that he is going to ask her to pull to pull out of that process. And, you know, the reading of this, which I think is correct, is they're concerned. She was a she's a congressional representative in New York. They're concerned that they may lose this seat in the special election to replace her. So he says, as we advance our America First agenda, it's essential we maintain every Republican seat in Congress must be unified to accomplish our election to replace her. So he says, as we advance our America First agendas, essentially,

we maintain every Republican seat in Congress must be unified to accomplish our mission. Elise Stefanik has been a vital part of our efforts from the very beginning. I've asked Elise as one of my biggest allies to remain in Congress to help me deliver historic tax cuts, great jobs, record economic growth, secure border, etc, etc. So I mean, the TLDR here is just like, they're afraid they're going to lose the seat. And obviously, Republicans have this very slim margin. They've already taken Mike Waltz out as well. And apparently there's even a little bit of concern. We'll get to that about lose about losing his seat, which he just won by, I believe the number is 38 points. So, Emily, talk to us about this Elise Stefanik's nomination being pulled, because it does seem like, you know, they're hitting the panic button here a little bit, at least with regards to these special elections, which, again, when you have low turnout elections, you have a Democratic base that now consists more of high propensity voters and they're super energized.

You've got a kind of recipe for disaster on the Republican side. Well, and you want to pass a fairly controversial agenda through Congress. So it's actually pretty hard to keep the coalition together. They learned that lesson with Thomas Massey and discovering that he was simply not going to budge just because the party needed him to. He's like, I'm not gonna be a team player if the team is doing something that I think is disastrous and have been on the record for years saying I think is disastrous. So if you're not offsetting tax cuts, and if you're throwing all kinds of stuff into the reconciliation, you know, as a party, you can see where for Republicans, it makes sense. And

you can see if you're Republican leadership, that's their job is to keep the team on the same page. But it's going to be tough to keep everybody on the same page, and they can't lose many votes. So Elise Stefanik went on Hannity, which was being guest hosted by Kayleigh McEnany last night, and basically confirmed your reading of this, Crystal, that it's exactly because they're concerned. They're dancing around that, obviously. But they're saying, basically, we just can't take the risk. We can't take the risk. It's too much of a risk. But it's a seriously tight margin. There's so little room for error, and there's so much opportunity for error that they're definitely panicking. No question about it.

Was it Lisa Murkowski that said like, they're just figured this out now? Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. She's like, you just realize this now. Elise Stefanik, this is according to Grok. She won with 60 to 62% of the vote

last time in this district. So she had like a 36% margin that she won by. Like, this is not, shouldn't be close, which is why they felt confident putting her in there. Like, like oh surely we'll be able to win this seat back and so to have to pull the fire alarm on a district that is this red is you know it's a very significant indicator of where the sort of energy is especially like i said in these sort of like special elections

did you pull up the murkowski thing? Yeah. There was also some concern among Republicans that the Democrats wouldn't hold the election in time and would hold it open longer than they're supposed to, which would leave them a half a vote. You know, it's half a vote rather than a vote loss, basically. loss basically uh ohio's mike dewine did that to democrats back in 2018 when marcia fudge stepped down um then became hud secretary like they kept that was the nina turner chantal brown race they kept that seat empty for like 18 months or something insane they did that to detroit um several years ago as well when John Conyers died, basically left Detroit without a congressman for like two years. So I think Republicans were like,

what if they do to us what we do to them? Yeah, could be some of that. Could be too. This also relates to this. So they've got to fill down in Florida, Mike Waltz's seat. And Axios got their hands on an internal poll of the race to replace him. And this again is a seat, I mean, this is a red district. Waltz won it by 30 plus points. I think Trump won it by 30 points. This should be a layup. And they have a recent survey by Tony Fabrizio, who was a chief strategist for Trump, had the Republican down by three points after leading by 12 in February, according to a person familiar with the data. One thing that's kind of funny about I mean, that's wild, first of all, that Democrats would even have any kind of a prayer in this race. Now, they go on to say both Republicans and Democrats still expect fine, who apparently I didn't really wasn't really familiar with him. He's apparently like a controversial figure in Florida, kind of like bombastic and does all kinds of like

wild and crazy things, whatever. Anyway, apparently both sides sort of still expect him to win. But the fact that it's close is, again, like huge, huge alarms going off because of this. In fact, one of the people they quote says, you know, if the Democrat can even come within 10 to 15 points, that would be in a real red flag for Republicans about the energy that is going against them here. And it was sort of funny. I don't know if this is what happened. But in the original reporting of this, Axios had said had flipped the numbers, had said that fine, the Republican was only up by three. In reality, the poll actually has him down by three. But I think that result was just like so unbelievable that they were like, that can't be like you meant the Republicans up by three, right? Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe the poll will turn out to be inaccurate, but you can see for Republicans where they're not doing town halls anymore because people are motivated enough to come out and show up, meaning those are the types

of people who are motivated enough to canvas and to make phone banking calls and like do that sort of work. If your grassroots activists are motivated, then, you know, that's significant. And that makes a difference. We're not saying that it's like everyone is super angry and, you know, the regular voters are just flooding to the town halls. There's some of that, but it matters even if it's just the activist grassroots base. And that's definitely what's happening. And those are the people who make the calls and knock on the doors and send the small checks. So you can see the combination of curious polling in a close district that shouldn't really be that close, you know, or in a district that looks close, that shouldn't be that close. And what they're

seeing on the ground, you can see why that would be making them quite nervous. I wanted to play one of Josh Wheel. That's a Democrat in the race. One of his ads. I mean, I think mostly this is just reflective of like national dynamics. But I also thought it was interesting to see how he's making the pitch here in this red district and what he thinks, you know, is landing with voters and causing them to move to his side so let me go ahead and pull this up this message randy fine a violent corrupt politician so radical and dangerous he supports the effort to cut 880 billion for medicaid devastating disabled children and those in nursing homes fine is so unhinged and anti-American. He supports the idea that Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.

He wants to cut $700 billion stealing from your retirement. Randy Fine, unhinged, un-American. So the unhinged, a reference to some of his antics, but then really drilling down, Ryan, on the Medicaid and then backing this idea that Elon Musk has been promoting that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. And with communist like iconography behind it. Oh, I didn't even know that. Yeah. Wasn't it like. Yeah, that's what it looked like.

Ryan's like, hell yeah. He clocked out right away. How dare you smear him with that. Yeah. Elon Musk is the one who called it the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. Elon Musk is going after Social Security as we speak, shutting down offices, calling it rife with fraud. Yesterday he said, shock, 40% of the calls that come into Social Security offices are scams. I guess Elon Musk doesn't have a phone because if he did, he would realize that more than 40% of all calls that come into your phone are scams.

If you're getting a call, it's probably a scam. Why would the social security office be different? So, okay, therefore we should like cut the spending on the administration of social security because we're getting so many fraud calls. So yes, I think you're going to see Democrats running against Elon Musk and against what he's doing to Medicaid and to social security. Republicans think, aha, we're going to cut Medicaid. It's just poor people. The reference to nursing homes was brilliant. That's how basically everybody pays for nursing homes. And that matters not just to the people in the nursing homes, but it matters almost even more to the children,

the adult kids of the people in nursing homes on American. You love to see it. Emily, I think this also comes before they have even passed these Medicaid cuts. Right. And you referenced a you know that how this agenda is very controversial. You know, I mean, the Medicaid cuts part of is not particularly controversial, really, among Republicans, but certainly controversial. It's not even controversial among the public. It's just like a blanket opposed by and large by the public. But, you know, they're running this ad before that even occurs. Imagine the sort of grist for the mill after those cuts are actually codified and the impacts become real rather than theoretical.

Well, and it could become controversial just with the influence of Steve Bannon. And Steve Bannon is like extremely opposed politically. And I think it's for him become ideological, too, because I think he's so deeply upset with what's happened with the tech takeover. So that could, I mean, genuinely put a lot of pressure on some of the guys who are having to take a vote for what is going to be billed as, quote, reform and not a cut. Many such many such cases, as they say. But that's another like test here is whether Republicans can. They're very, very, and this is actually interesting, they're very high on selling cuts right now, right?

They think now is the time that Republicans can actually sell cuts. They've never really been able to do that before. So it feels like they have generational momentum to talk about slashing and burning because nobody has the political will other than Donald Trump and Elon Musk to actually say this is what we're doing. So does that, I mean, do they overplay their hand to the point where the benefits start getting touched and you're not able to sell it as reform, which is what Republicans always try to sell it as, Medicare and whatever. They try to say this is just, we're reforming the system, we're cutting out fraud. But if everyone sees like, well, that's interesting, because as we're about to talk about in a second, you just fired 10,000 people from HHS. You just cut these DEI grants. You cut X, Y and Z. It seems like you're actually just cutting. So you're telling me that this is just plain reform. That's a hard thing to do. Right. I mean, with the Social Security, it's like becoming really clear, right? Cutting Social Security Administration, it's not making things better. It's making things worse. It's making so that fewer people are able to access the benefits that they're entitled to with that

program. And I will we can go ahead. Like you said, Emily, this does dovetail well with the next story, which is RFK Jr. just announced that he's planning 10,000 cuts over at HHS. So this is Wall Street Journal, they say. And he announced this in a video on X. Changes would reshape the nation's health agencies, close regional offices. He said he would ask 10,000 full-time employees spread across agencies tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more. The cuts are in addition to roughly 10,000 employees who already chose to leave the department through voluntary separation officers office offers since Trump took office, according

to the department. Together, the cuts would eliminate about one quarter of a workforce that would shrink to 62,000. And they have a quote here from RFK Jr. He says, we're going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core function. And I guess that's the part that is highly questionable, I guess we'll say, to say the least. Because, you know, if you're slashing, these are agencies like the FDA is already truly understaffed, like in terms of being able to get regulatory approvals through, to be able to make sure that our food supply is safe, you know, something that Maha should be

really interested in. There are already too few inspectors to be able to really adequately do the job. And so now you're talking about slashing that funding and, you know, any sort of new drug approvals, medical device approvals, any sort of access issues you have with regard to Medicaid, this is all being slashed on the chopping block. And Ryan, to believe that it's not going to have the same impact that it's having in Social Security, where already wait times are astronomical and field offices have lines out the door and they're trying to cut telephone service and all these sorts of things like we've seen the way they operate it's just very difficult to buy at this point

right and for for for what advantage there you're not going to see a reduction in the deficit as a result of this you're not going to see interest rates come down. Like the way you would actually reduce the deficit is, you know, through, you know, congressional action where you increase revenues and reduce spending. Instead, they're probably going to have

the lowest revenues in a very, very long time because they're slashing away at the IRS. And they're going to, they're going to hit the debt ceiling a lot faster. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, yeah, that's a tax cut that hits that, you know, for corporations, you know, particularly for corporations and the very rich who can afford the best accountants, like they're going to push the envelope on,

on the legality of what they, of tax breaks, assuming that they can fend off or not get audited. The working people are going to pay the same or actually more because the IRS, it's much easier for the IRS to come after regular people than it is for them to come after rich people because of the way that our enforcement is designed. That's exactly right.

Yeah, because rich people can fight back. Poor people can't. So firing 10,000 HHS people, it makes up for like one billionaire that is going to rip off the IRS as a result of these cuts. The average cost of fighting an audit is like $1,200. It's really high. And they don't allow you to use a credit card statement. You have to have the actual physical receipts.

And it's like a regular person up against the IRS is effed. I mean, I actually think there's probably an argument that there's bloat that can be cut from places like HHS and done responsibly and in a way that actually makes the organization way, way more efficient. I guess it's just a matter of trusting the process, as they say. And I don't think a lot of people have trust in the process right now. Well, not to mention, I pulled this article, like there's already problems because they've already 10,000 people have already been sort of like pushed toward the exit and decided to take the fork in the road or whatever offer. And already, they are struggling to meet these, you know, mandated deadlines for how fast product reviews are supposed to go through with regard to medical devices and some new tobacco products, apparently. And some of the new people that they had brought

in, according to this article, had sort of these technical skills with regard to evaluating some new e-cigarettes, are doing age verification. And so some of the people who are kind of at the leading edge of regulating these things, they were in the probationary period, so they are out. But this also includes reviews on medical devices, et cetera. And so, you know, this is before we get the mass cuts that Kennedy is planning here, the additional 10,000 mass cuts that he's planning. And we also know that they had to scramble and rehire a bunch of people that they had fired over medical devices was one piece. Another piece was we have this massive bird flu epidemic that has been spreading like wildfire. And some of the people that were tracking that were fired. And then they're, oh, my God, maybe we need those people. Let's bring them back. So, you know, how many more instances of that are there going to be and how many instances where they don't realize these people were important, they don't get rehired and they're effectively playing with fire here, Ryan,

that you could have some completely disastrous situation that falls directly into their lap. And while they're trying to root out waste, fraud and abuse, they're probably engaged in one of the most wasteful government practices in the history of the government. Like they are they've taken tens of thousands of people and put them on administrative leave first for a very long time before firing them. So that means that the taxpayers are doing nothing. Yeah, I'm not working. The rest of the people are then scrambling to develop these new plans to lay off more people going forward. They're spending a non-trivial amount of their time doing their five bullets, which adds extra bureaucratic paperwork.

If you work for the federal government, you do too much bureaucracy already, too much filling in five buckets, whatever. Right. Like that's the problem with the federal government. Layering another one on top of that, you know, just creates and then and then they're meeting about these reorganization plans. And then, like you said, they're going back and then rehiring people who they who they fired hastily. And that's before we get to the IRS, which, of course, is, you know, every dollar you cut there is as many dollars that you're that you're not getting getting in. And so, you know, Doge is really, you know, producing an enormous amount of waste, fraud and abuse. Well, I mean, this is one of the tough things i don't know if you guys saw the clip that's going around of ezra klein explaining like a very bureaucratic process for i think it was for broadband uh to john stewart and john

stewart's just losing his mind it's like a 14-step process and it is laughable and infuriating and that's like genuinely one of the tough things about all of this is that there is there's a desperate need to actually like reform the American bureaucracy. And on the right, it's like, who else is going to do this? I mean, nobody else ever wants to do this because there are a lot of special interests that protect every layer of the American bureaucracy and influence every layer of the American bureaucracy. It's lobbyists. It's unions. And this does happen. There are a lot of special interests that have made our process the way that it is. And it sucks. And it's like, is this moved here in 2012 and this giant grocery store closed then. And they said they were going to replace it with like condos at the top and then, you know, 172 condos or whatever, whatever the number is. So it is a problem. But just going in and like firing half of the NOAA scientists is not the solution. In fact, if you want to deal with that problem, you need to both cut some of the, you know, regulations that are unnecessary and timely and build government capacity. Like,

I mean, that's the FDA example is a perfect one. Like they didn't get rid of any of the regulations. You just now have fewer regulators to actually go through that process. And so now your medical device approval process is going to take longer, which is why I don't even want to tolerate this discussion of, oh, this is about efficiency. It's not about efficiency. There is zero evidence that they care about, quote unquote, efficiency. In fact, they fired the people or forced out the people who were at the digital service thing that they took over who were actually working on efficiency. Ask the Social Security recipients who now cannot get someone on the phone or have to wait hours and hours or have to go into a field office that is being closed whether their process is now more efficient. Right. It's not whatsoever. Yeah, Social Security has wildly, way less fraud than any private payment platform.

There's nothing comparable to Social Security, but a multi-billion dollar payment platforms or other Social Security-like organizations around the world. Our Social Security is way better than that. And part of that is because we have this social security inspector general's office that is well-staffed and takes it deeply seriously because they know if anybody ever misses a check, this country will burn. And so they are deeply dedicated to making sure checks go out at the right time and they go to the right people. In fact, one of the things they've gotten criticized for is being too aggressive. If somebody dies and they get like two months worth of checks after that, Social Security will pretty relentlessly go after the estate to get the like $5,000 back. And the family is like, come on, man,

what are you doing? Relax. And Congress even was like, guys, relax a little bit. Give a 30-day grace after they die. Social Security is like, no, we want absolutely zero fraud. What has Musk done? He's tried to fire 20% of the IG's office aimed that has so successfully made this a pretty fraud-free program and instead pretended that it's rife with fraud. He said that there were millions of people getting checks who were 200 years old. They looked into it and they found that there, I think, were 201 people who were dead who were still getting checks out of hundreds of millions of people who've gotten Social Security over the last almost 100 years. And so when you're cutting the IGs, whose job it is to cut out fraud, and who have successfully Done so. You're not serious about cutting out fraud. It's not the goal.

Like that is not the goal. There are a number of different goals. One of them is to destroy government capacity to regulate big business. They've dropped a quarter of all enforcement cases, gutted the CFPB, totally defenestrated the SEC, gutted the IRS so they can't collect taxes of billionaires, et cetera.

Like that's one goal. Another goal is just like an ideological anti-government project. So if government doesn't work, then that justifies more cuts to government. Another goal is being able to make available more cash for tax cuts and subsidies for people like Elon Musk. Another goal is for him to be able to have direct control over agencies that have tried to regulate his businesses or investigated his businesses or to be able to gobble up any sort of contracts or subsidies, screw over his competitors, etc. Those are the goals. Efficiency is not a goal. Efficiency is the packaging, but it has nothing to do with the project that they are

actually engaged at if you look at not what they say, but what they are actually doing and the impact that it's having on government. I mean, you know, to just take it back real quick to the abundance discourse here. They killed this project that was ready to go or had already run, you know, the details of this, these EV chargers that were already like being installed. Like this was, you know, building out in an abundant style way. And they're like, the Trump administration took EV chargers that were in on federal land and in federal buildings that were already installed and ripped them out. Took just took them out, spent money to destroy infrastructure that was already created yeah so they don't like evs or whatever if the idea is like i mean the abundance idea which i have issues with putting this at the center of democratic discourse whatever but to be fair

to them their idea is like we need to make it easier to build that is not what's going on here they're making it easier for robber barons to steal from the public purse and get away with crimes that they're making it easier to do but to actually like build down infrastructure or some sort of like capacity or government ability to respond to a challenge and no that is the polar opposite of what is going on here i get it meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile somebody shared yeah china's like by 2030 they're gonna have some fusion fission nuclear reactor yeah our no was writing about that yeah that would be like you know i mean that china is just like we'd like to pretend that like oh we still got the edge but they're like nipping at our heels i mean they're just

kicking our ass at this point right it's It's not close. The real AI arms race is probably going to be between different companies in China. The real EV arms race is between different companies in China. I do think it's like it's one of the things that it's frustrating. And I don't like when people on the right just completely enjoy the left wandering through the wilderness, because if we had a healthy political climate, your options wouldn't be the Biden administration's insane 14 step that defends this process and Elon Musk, who doesn't give a damn about whether the ends go to the right means. So it's, you know, everything sucks. I got one last one to put up here that just, you know, I think demonstrates the kind of short term, like penny wisefoolish approach here. And maybe you have a different view, Emily, but U.S. is ending money for this vaccine fund to help get kids inoculated

around the world. And, you know, in the grand scheme of the federal budget, this is like literally pennies, but has massive impact on millions and millions of people. It says the Trump administration tends to terminate the U.S. financial support for Gavi, the organization that's helped purchase critical vaccines for kids in developing countries, saving millions of lives over the past quarter century, and to significantly scale back support for efforts to combat malaria, one of the biggest killers globally. And it's just like, I don't know, I look at this, Ryan, I'm like, do we think we don't also live in this world? Like, do we think that none of this has any,

like, did we not just live through a pandemic and see very clearly how the things that happen on the other side of the world, lo and behold, can have an impact on us too. And so it seems to me both just like cruel and foolish and will have zero impact whatsoever on our debt and our deficit if that was indeed any sort of real priority for them. Yeah. And the compromise here has always been that the world will allow us

to continue with this draconian patent system that takes very easily producible medicines and vaccines and makes them unaffordable for half or more of the world. And in exchange, we will provide very affordable access for not half the world, but the poorest of the poor. So that's sort of the balancing act. Like we over here in the United States will get to get, we being the pharmaceutical companies, and New Jersey, we'll get to get very rich. And we'll make sure that as a product of that, we're not killing hundreds of millions of people from preventable illnesses. And some people will die of preventable illnesses, but it won't be hundreds of millions. It'll just be maybe hundreds of thousands. And we'll call that charity and foreign aid. And what it is, of course, is propping up our unequal system that keeps us rich and keeps them

poor. So we're now ripping that up. And so we're telling the world that the deal is we are going to get fabulously rich. We're going to artificially keep the price of these medicines and vaccines at such extraordinary levels and at the barrel of a gun that hundreds of millions of people could die. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds, like enormous numbers of people could die from these very treatable illnesses. And pretend that that won't come over here and hurt the United States. That's this is even a separate question. And we're daring the world to not revolt against that. And we're doing it while Russia and China are both becoming more influential around the world. And so I would say that we cut that bargain for a reason. Like our elites cut that bargain for a reason. We thought it was beneficial to keeping inequality alive and well around the world and keeping us rich.

Our elites did not cut that bargain because they're soft-hearted. I don't know the goodness of their hearts. Yeah. Right. So, okay. Now you're going to rip that up. See how it goes for us. Yep. I mean, I think, I do have a slightly different perspective on this. I think this will be a gap. There are already private, like Mark Cuban is already trying to make up the difference with private funding for a lot of these programs that the United States used as foreign policy tools, but were actually, they would call it charitable, but were actually using and deploying selectively as foreign policy tools in a way that wasn't actually all that charitable probably did some really wonderful things. It clearly did some really wonderful things and still does do some really wonderful things, but was being deployed in a sort of cynical and selective way for the sake of the American empire.

And so I do expect that, you know, American charity will probably make up the gap. And the COVID example to me is actually an interesting one because we framed our wonderful grant to the Wuhan laboratory as being the name of academic pursuits and research. Yep, exactly. And so, I mean, this stuff doesn't bother me quite as much, assuming that there are already people in place who will make up the difference. But I also see it as... I think more likely, you know, Russia, China, India. That too. India makes a ton of generics.

We'll just be like, you know what? We don't respect this copyright system of yours anymore. You made these drugs. We're stealing the copyright. Well, it's also like... You are pirates. You are scoundrels. F off.

We're just... We're stealing it. We're going to make them ourselves. And we're going to sell them for pennies around Africa. And we're going to sell them in exchange for nickel and cobalt and other rare earths. And you all can just go sit and spin, you know, since and we're also going to buy stuff from Canada because you've like pissed off Canada for God knows why. Yeah, it's decades of like emotional blackmail from the imperialists that have built up and people in the third world are caught in the middle. And it's like the American people are like, well, this is cynical and selective. And so much of it is done under the surface. And then the people in the third world are the ones who continue to get

screwed because of the American political process. To me, it's another instance of like taking a system that's bad in the ways that you guys both lay out and just making it worse. So it's like, oh, we're going to keep our patents. We're going to keep, you know, we're going to keep blackmailing you in this way. And now you're just like, instead of us making this deal where now these kids will be saved and have vaccines and not die from easily preventable diseases. Now they're just going to die and we're going to get rich. So that's, you know, seems to me the theme of a lot of what the Trump administration has done and the way that they've sold it, because they can point to these things that are like, oh, you know, I mean, they wouldn't.

I don't think they'd explain it the way Ryan did, because they don't care about that. Like they're in favor of the profits and the patents and the exploitation and all of that. But they can certainly point to the way that USAID has been cynically weaponized on behalf of empire while also building their own imperial projects and threatening Greenland and Canada and planning a war with Mexico and bombing the Houthis and all these sorts of things.

Yeah, totally. Anything else you guys are taking a look at today before we wrap here? No, I just wanted to say, I spoke to two different groups of students this week and it's insane how, like, it's just cool. They come up to you, like, they're the OG hipsters of Breaking Point.

So they'll be like, we've been watching since Rising. Wow. We feel like, you know. Since they were in middle school, yeah. I feel like everybody always says, like, oh, we've been watching guys from Rise. Surely not everybody has been watching us since Rising, but I do feel like they love to claim that, which is cool. No, it's cool.

It's cool to be around college students who have kind of grown up with the show and just wanted to shout out all those guys because we appreciate them and appreciate them watching. Did you get any vibes from them, Emily, about like the campus crackdown stuff and the arrests that are happening? Yeah, you know, it was interesting because I feel like the pendulum is sort of swinging. Whereas like conservative students 10 years ago, I graduated college 10 years ago. It was like it was hard to talk on campuses and like be comfortable and all of that. And I sort of feel like the kids on the left are the ones that are really experiencing that now. They used to be sort of in control of the crackdown and now they are sort of losing that because there's so much focus on Gaza.

And that's one issue that they just, it's hard to speak freely. Well, yeah. I mean, people are literally being disappeared and arrested, kidnapped off the street by masked officers, unidentified officers of the state for, you know, with no arrest warrant or charges or anything. So, yeah, I would say that would have a chilling effect. Anything you're looking at, Ryan, before we wrap? No, just, you know, the world's falling apart. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I don't know apart. Yeah. That's all. Cool.

I know a lot of people have been asking about Walker. People may have noticed he posted on today, his family is now contemplating going back to pet food. He's already malnourished

was he able to get um you know the treatment that he needed for his oh my god no and you know we've we've got doctors at the hospitals that we're in touch with calling around all the pharmacies there's there's nothing there's nothing in god it's been since march 2nd since anything was allowed to get in and when you have you, you know, almost 2 million people just, you know, consuming food and medicine, you know, I think they're a week or two away. The UN said they're a week or two away from running out of, you know, cooking oil and food basically even for their charitable kitchens. It's quite bleak um yeah it's uh and i don't i don't know where the end is in sight we rasha abu jalal one of our reporters um in gaza wrote a piece yesterday um that people should read it's not it's not that long but it's it's it's good and

it's poignant and it really gets to the here actually i have it right here really gets really really put it really puts you there um so people can just google it i saw this yeah go find that piece it's just just wild um i can't imagine as a mom even just not just but not being able to provide your kids with enough to eat. Right. Like just imagining the pain of that, let alone everything else that, you know, is the torture these people are being put through. Like even that to me is overwhelmingly unimaginable. So, and I mean, you know, I watched your coverage of your colleague

who was assassinated and his sense that his theory that, you know, if the world just knew what was going on, surely they wouldn't let this happen and how his, you know, his connection to that hope was increasingly fading. And it's hard to see it any other way because we can all see what's happening. Like we have, you know, we've seen it every day.

And now it feels like I think with the Trump administration and now the, you know, the Israel destroying the ceasefire and being greenlit by the Trump administration, etc. Like, what hope is there? I don't know. I genuinely don't know, because it just feels like everybody's sort of given up on being able to do anything different. And, you know, now Trump's floated this say, let's ethnic cleanse it. And the Israelis are like, cool, let's do it. That's been our fever dream for a long time. We're going to put together an agency to develop a plan. And that's what's going to happen. We're going to go back to bombing and starving cleans it. And the Israelis are like, cool, let's do it. That's been our fever dream for a long time. We're going to put together an agency to develop a plan and that's what's going to happen. We're going to go back to bombing and starving, et cetera. And the world is just

like, you know, it's just a shrug and it cheapens. I mean, the immediate is of course the horror that Palestinians are being put through, but it truly does cheapen human life everywhere. It really does. You know, I mean, that I mentioned that in the Yemen bombing, like civilians in an apartment building, it's not even a consideration, not even a consider, not a mention, not a care, not a concern. And again, I'm not like trying to be Pollyanna about the U.S. war machine and the number of civilians that we've killed, et cetera. But it's just like, this is just normal operating procedure now to collapse an entire apartment building in order to get one, like not that special military target. Ultimately.

Yeah. Yeah. The next week or two is going to be really critical as, as supplies, you know, fully dwindle. Like this can't go on. Something has to give on something has to give something has to give yeah well ryan um thank you so much for filling in for me this week and always as always my pleasure extraordinary reporting um you and saga are great together

it was fun to fun to watch from the outside and um you know thanks to emily she had to run to another thing this morning but um always great catching up with her and hearing her thoughts on things. And hope you guys have a fantastic weekend. I will be back. Normal shows, all that stuff next week. So I will see you then. See you soon. ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories shaping the black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7

because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What up, y'all? This your main man Memphis Bleak right here, host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month, so what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule. The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge.

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