Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/9/25: China Ups Tariffs, Elon Rages At Navarro, Trump Budget Chaos, Hamas Wants Off Terror List & MORE!

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss China unleashing payback tariffs as Trump doubles down, majority think Republicans are tanking economy, Elon rages at Peter Navarro, freedom caucus revolt over Trump budget, Dem congressman breaks from party ranks on tariffs, Hamas demands off UK terror list, and Naomi Klein busts Trump tariffs.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. Welcome to CounterPoints. Emily, you broke? Liberated. How liberated are you today? I'm not retiring for a while, ever. So

I'm not even going to look. So on a scale of one to 10, you're very liberated. Quite liberated. Like full French Revolution. L-Day. Yeah. I really celebrated L-Day, that's for sure. It's going to be another L-Day today, probably. Yeah, we're taking our Ls. And we're going to talk about this in a moment.

China just announced that it is retaliating against the American tariffs. Donald Trump's plan was he was going to put tariffs on the entire world and then warn them not to retaliate. Yes. He does not. I don't know if he had a plan B. I hope he does because plan A did not work. The world is retaliating. We'll talk a little bit about that. There's full blown warfare inside the Trump administration. Although it's funny because it's like, do David Sachs and Elon Musk, do they count as the administration? In the old days, you knew who the senior government officials were. And if they were out on cable attacking each other, then you had staffer on staffer violence. David Sachs is the crypto czar for the White House. Elon Musk was the co-president and sort of running Doge, but not running Doge, a special government employee.

But is he a government employee? Or has Trump kicked him out? Or is he actually still running things and he's going to fire hundreds of thousands of people over the next several months? It's not totally clear. So does that count as an administration official criticizing another one? I don't even know. Technically, yes.

Because the membrane between what is the administration and what is the oligarch class is just so thin that they just move right in and out of it. Whatever. In any event, Musk thinks Navarro is a moron. We're going to talk more about that. The Supreme Court, a little bit of a victory, sort of, so far, for the Trump administration's effort to keep these probationary employees that they fired from being hired back, except for the ones they need to hire back because they accidentally fired them. Yep, and these people's jobs just keep ping-ponging through the court system.

Utterly absurd, not efficient. And so then, Ryan, you've, well, on Capitol Hill right now, Republicans are actually raging against Donald Trump's budget. His big, one big, beautiful bill. He met with some of them last night and they are still not super pleased. He can only lose three, right? He can only lose three. And Freedom Caucus, at least as of yesterday, was saying he might lose up towards a dozen.

They always say that, but we'll get into it. Yeah, we'll get into that. And then, Ryan, you have a guest for us. Yes, Congressman Deluzio from Pittsburgh, Rust Belt Democrat. He has really been making a lot of Democrats angry by not just completely towing the party line that Trump bad, therefore tariffs bad. And Trump's tariff plan, obviously dumb, therefore all tariffs are dumb. He's trying to find a middle ground where he's saying, no, like actually we do need some industrial policy. And it's got a lot of people mad at him. So this is a refuge

for those kinds of people. Well said. We will talk to him all about that. Drop site scoop as of this morning also. Yes. So Hamas filed with a lawyer in the UK a 100 plus page brief to demand that the UK delist it from its terror designation. And so we're going to go through some of the pleading because it's an absolutely fascinating document, no matter where you stand on the question, because they talk about anti-Semitism. They talk about the role of Zionism in Israel. They talk about what their position is when it comes to a future settlement in the region. And they make a straightforward argument that we do not belong on this terror list and here's why. Yeah, that'll be pretty interesting to go through.

It's an interesting indication of the way that Hamas is increasingly relating to Western institutions in a way that it where it used to be more standoffish and consider all of them to be just enemies. Ryan, you had a really interesting conversation with Naomi Klein. I'm excited for everyone to see, and we'll talk about it a little bit as well, but Ryan sat down with Naomi Klein yesterday, actually, to get... I mean, it's interesting because I think her work was really formative for you back in late 90s, early 2000s, for many, many, many people. Yeah, Naomi Klein was the man back then. And, you know, 90s, we still had a bit of a monoculture.

And so, and she was, I mean, she still is a very big name, obviously, in left spaces and in journalism in general. But in the 90s, she was almost hegemonic when it came to representing the anti-globalization side of the debate over the post-Soviet Union world order. And so it was your idea, and I thought it was a really good one, to get her take on this wild arc from Seattle to Trump. Because you've got some people on the right being like, ha, you guys got what you wanted. Now look. And there was this line that said, one of the chants in Seattle was, another world is possible. Like, well, hey, here's another world. But look, we didn't mean all other worlds are better.

Like, we always acknowledged things could get worse. And it does appear that that was always going to be the better bet. Things getting worse is always the most likely outcome. I had a chance to watch the interview. So it's not an own that that's what's happening. People should, yeah, I had a chance to watch the interview, and it's really, really interesting through that lens. So exciting segment. Stay tuned for that. Let's jump into our—

She couldn't do it this morning. She lives in Canada on the West Coast, so. Right. That's like 6 a.m. for her. That would be absurd. That would be unkind. But globalization, Zoom, prerecorded. Let's jump into the A block.

China is now retaliating. Retaliatory tariffs is at A0. We can put it up on the screen. This was announced last night, early this morning. It's been developing. They've slapped retaliatory tariffs of 84 percent on U.S. goods in response to Trump. Some takeaways just from the CNBC breakdown here. They said this is a rise from 84 percent to 34 percent%. It is starting on April 10th. And we export about $144 billion worth of goods to China. That's as of 2024. So obviously, this is very significant. This is a statement from Treasury Secretary Scott Besant on Wednesday after this announcement. He said, I think it's unfortunate

that the Chinese actually don't want to come and negotiate because they are the worst offenders in the international trading system. They have the most imbalanced economy in the history of the modern world. And I can tell you this escalation is a loser for them. Ryan, you made an interesting point as we were opening up here that this is what Trump said everyone can't do. This is America has the upper hand and you see a little bit of that in Besson's statement that the United States has the upper hand.

And so if you want to retaliate, you're going to get something so much worse that it's probably worth you coming to the table. I think that's probably an argument he's going to find to be a winner with the EU, with Australia, with Japan. I don't know that he probably had high hopes for China, but he probably had some hopes for China. I guess. I don't know. I've kind of given up trying to get into this guy's head at this point. That's a good approach. China has spent the last 20 years building up its manufacturing capacity, its capital markets as well, its supply chains, and its ability to operate distinct from the United States.

Like, we can't live without them currently. They can live without us. We start a trade war with them. At that point, it's like, all right, what's the point of even analyzing any of this? They're just going to whoop us. And they have all the things that we need for our manufacturing capacity. There's an article in one of these cleantech trade publications that talks about how just a few days ago, they added export license requirements to a bunch of things I've never even heard of.

Dysprosium, terbium, tungsten, that one I've heard of, indium, yttrium, a bunch of others. These are the rare earth minerals that they produce, that they export to us For us to use to complete the assembly of Automobiles electric vehicles solar panels what all the things of the modern economy? Like they have that productive capacity to produce it hippies like you prevent us from mining here Hey, we mine it all you want go ahead go for it Any well, no, I mean we don't have it yet from Ukraine. It ahead. Go for it. Any. Well, no, I mean, it's an important... We don't have it yet from Ukraine. It's an important distinction with China.

Ukraine lied. They don't even have a bunch of that stuff. The distinction with China, I think, though, is important. Like, the reason that they just go completely pedal to the metal on a lot of this stuff, including labor costs. I mean, it's one of the, like, most important contrasts is that it's been... I mean, the way that they have built up their industrial capacity is you know the way we built up our industrial capacity wasn't all sunsets and roses was not great what they've done is also really really really not great and is still happening under our noses to some extent right now I've done it like they are they're ready for this and we're not

mm-hmm they're smart we're not. They're smart. We're not. They have the world with them. We've lost the entire world. Smart as in like they have a meritocracy. Like the people who are the most talented at economic policy rise up in the ranks in China. We have Peter Navarro, Elon Musk, and Wharton graduate Donald Trump. Yes. We're not sending our best into this battle.

Speaking of Wharton's finest, Donald Trump last night was at the National Republican Congressional Committee's dinner here in Washington, D.C., and he talked about some of this. Again, this is just from the last, like, 12 hours. So let's take a listen to President Trump. If we follow through on this agenda, we will be rewarded with a phenomenal economy and a massive victory at the ballot box in 2026 because we will have a record of triumph like no president has ever had,

like no Congress has ever had. They will not be able to even touch your seat. Your seat is secure. And we'll pick up 40, 50, or even 60 seats. And we'll have something that's going to be smooth sailing for years to come. If we don't get it done because of stupidity or a couple of people that want to show how great they are, you just have to laugh at them or smile at them or cry right in their face. This is the largest transaction in the history of our country. And

don't let some of these politicians go around saying, you know, because I'm telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are dying to make a deal. Please, please make a deal. I'll please, sir, make a deal. I'll do anything. I'll do anything, sir. Being criticized because the globalists will go after you. For seven decades, American ships have patrolled the seas. American troops have kept the pace and peace.

And American wealth has enriched the globe. But despite all we have given to them, you will not find an American car in Berlin and Tokyo and Seoul and Shanghai. Not a car. Beautiful guys. I didn't want to have any arm wrestling contests with any of them. I can tell you that they're good, strong guys. That's what they want to do. They love to dig coal. That's what they want to do. They don't want to do gidgets and widgets and widgets. They don't want to build cell phones with their hands, their big strong hands, doing a little thing.

Remember when Hillary Clinton went to West Virginia and she had decimated them three weeks before in like some state where they make little tiny circuit boards. Their gidgets and wadgets

and their big strong hands this guy's mentally ill even for trump that was a hell of a riff guy the guy's just he's he's talking about the big strong hands like hours before the tariffs actually went into effect and obviously that's the reality that we've woken up to this morning. We're filming this before markets have opened. It makes me think of all of these, when you read through history and there are periods of time where people had a mad king

and you're like, God, that must have sucked. Like literally a mad king, not like a king where like- He's like riddled with syphilis. You disagree with him on this issue, but this is the king's prerogative at this moment. Like an absolute mad king where he's just nuts. I think this guy's lost it.

This guy's nuts. He's going to win 50 seats? Are you insane? Yes. You are on the cusp of a financial crisis that you have sparked for no reason. You're going to go down as like the worst president in American history if you continue with this. And you're not going to touch us. We're going to win 50 seats. Well, so that's the, I mean, if you continue with this is the, I was going to say million dollar question, but multi-trillion dollar question. She shows no

signs of backing down. So I want to get in all of that after we roll through some of what else happened yesterday, because Jameson Greer was testifying in front of the Senate, and Andrew Ross Sorkin, we'll start with this, is going to be A2, made quite an interesting point on CNBC yesterday that I think we'll probably learn more about like a year or two from now. So let's roll Andrew Ross Sorkin. Given what the government's been doing and this administration's been doing, it would not shock me, and I hate to speculate, if we were to find out that a whole bunch of

people who work in Washington as our elected leaders one way or the other ultimately sold stocks last week or potentially worse than that, shorted the market. Okay. So Ryan, they don't have to disclose this. What is it, 30 days they're supposed to disclose their trades? Washington, yeah. What's, I think, something like that for the executive, yeah. Right, yeah. They're supposed to.

This came out of the Stock Act of 2012. After there were revelations about Nancy Pelosi, they passed this saying that they would disclose their trades within. And John Boehner. John Boehner, within 30 days. And so we have no idea. Oh, and what's his name? Spencer Baucus was the financial services chairman or ranking member on the financial services committee. Came out of the meeting with Bernanke and Hank Paulson in 2007 when they told him, like, hey, this thing is about to go down. He walked out of the meeting and sold his stocks.

And that one in particular rattled the public to a point where they're like, all right, you need to do something about it. And Congress was like, sure, we'll let you know what we're doing after we do it, but we're not going to stop doing it. Yeah. And by the way, if we don't disclose it, it's not that big of a deal. It's fine. We'll tell you later.

Get over it. We'll tell you later. Right. Okay, so that's just something to keep in mind. Obviously, people could be shorting the market. They could be doing all kinds of things. A lot of times, the way that members do this is they say that their wife was trading or their husband was trading or they have a really flimsy excuse and say,

my broker does all of this. It's not a blind trust. I don't even know if members of Congress have the issue here. It's more the White House. People in the White House, potentially. Right. Let's put A3 up on the screen. This is from David Sachs. I think we have this here. Black Monday hoax is over. This is a post from crypto czar David Sachs. And then there was a community note, and I say was because if you go to this tweet, there is no longer this note. Readers added context they thought people might want to know. As of 3.45 Eastern the same day this tweet was written, the S&P is down 2.6% for the day, erasing overnight gains, and down about 6%. So he posted this in the morning?

6% from when the tweet was written. Right. Yeah. And so now if you go to this post, actually he added an additional tweet to the thread. He said, after wrongly predicting a crash yesterday, some people are gloating. This is around 6 p.m. yesterday, because the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.84% today on the real Black Monday. The DJIA plunged by 22.6. People use these terms without having a clue what they mean. He's right about that. And what he's talking about is that throughout the day, there was a bounce and the markets were actually up for a while.

And there was some hope that maybe the countries wouldn't retaliate very quickly and that Trump might revisit this. And it was the same false hope that led them to kind of, you know, run up the market in January and February. And then when it became clear that, no, no, this guy's dug in on this thing and China is going to retaliate, then the market crashed again. 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.

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some genuinely very tough questions from Democrats, no surprise there. But Ryan, some interesting questions from Democrats that we wanted to roll through as well. So let's go, this is questions from Mark Warner, a question from Tom Tillis, obviously a sort of establishment Republican, and then we'll have other clips to get through with Jameson Greer as well. He is the U.S. trade representative. So he's basically the guy in the office who's tasked with managing the U.S.'s trade relationships across the world.

So a hell of a time to be Jameson Greer. He is very much of this kind of new right world, very much on board with this agenda. He's not being like forced to be in this situation. He's a kind of true believer in restructuring these global trade relationships. So let's go ahead and roll A4 here. We already have a free trade agreement. We have a trade surplus. So getting the least bad, why did they get whacked in the first place? We're addressing the $1.2 trillion deficit, the largest in human history that President Biden left us with. We should be running up the score in Australia. Ambassador Greer, answer the question on Australia.

We have a trade surplus with Australia. We have a free trade agreement. Why? They are an incredibly important national security partner. Why were they whacked with a tariff? Senator, despite the agreement, they ban our beef, they ban our pork, they're getting ready to impose measures on our digital companies. With your Greek letter formula, the fact that we have a trade surplus. We have a global tariff on every, we're trying to address the $1.2 trillion deficit that Biden left us with.

I think that answer, sir, you're a much smarter person than that answer. I'm assuming this all got gamed out because it's a novel approach. It needed to be thought out. Whose throat do I get to choke if this proves to be wrong? Well, Senator, you can certainly always talk to me. But are you at the tip of the spear? Well, I'm at the tip of the spear. Some interesting insight into how Republicans are thinking about all of this, which is, who do I get to blame if it all blows up in our face? And that if is huge. And Mark Warner is asking a reasonable question, but he's asking it into a completely unreasonable environment. Like, he, and I don't normally defend Mark Warner, but he's an insane person in an insane asylum. He's like, and so I get why he's yelling.

He's like, guys, you said that if we have a trade deficit with a country, then ipso facto, they have trade barriers against us. And then we're going to screw them. Australia, we have a trade surplus with them. So what is your problem? And it's just talking points. Well, I think that's interesting because if Sager were here, he would be going through the roof because the beef is one of the things that it's insane. We are pushing the beef exports, our hormone-laden beef exports on other countries and expecting them to just take it. But I think there's,

so we have another clip here that actually that'll be helpful too. This is Senate Finance Committee. So same committee that you've been hearing from. Why would we ship a cow all the way to Australia, by the way? What kind of global system is that? Nobody around here needs to eat beef? Our food system is so insane. I mean, we don't have to open up that Pandora's box, but. How heavy a cow is? I don't know. Really heavy. How much could a banana cost, Michael? $10. Here is Senator Bennett talking to Jameson Greer. We can roll this next clip. I understand your position is that the long-term gain is worth the short-term pain, but what is that short-term pain going to look like? So, Senator, I think we can look at,

I think we should look at history and data for this. You know, it's hard to project what's going to happen with prices, but we know in the first term, first Trump term, the president imposed historic tariffs on China on an enormous amount of goods coming from China. And during that time, inflation went down. I know you're smart enough to know that the likelihood is that prices are going to go up for the American people as a result of the tariffs that you put in place. Do you disagree with that? I mean, when you say that in your testimony that you expect the American people will bear the burden, and I'm sure they will bear any burden on some level, But what do you think that burden is actually going to look like?

Well, I think the challenges, frankly, are going to be more for companies that are largely dependent on imports from China and Asia, where they have to adjust their supply chains in a quick set of time. Ryan, you're laughing. I'm just going to toss right to you. Well, that's great news. So these tariffs are only going to be a problem for companies that have global entanglements in their supply chains. That's good. I'm glad to hear that. Let me check which company. Oh, that's all of the companies. That's everyone. That's every company. Okay. Well, I guess we're back to square one with that. On your point, by the way, on Dow Futures, on this China news that we opened with, Dow, Nasdaq, S&P all down about 2%. But here's the good news. As your wealth shrinks every day as a country and as a person,

when you lose 2% every day, you're actually losing just a little bit less in absolute numbers. Okay. So there is really a light at the end of the tunnel. Well, let's put this. And it's a big zero. Well, so as to how long this goes on, let's put this Caitlin Huey Burns post. This is the next element. Yeah, if you have nothing and the Dow crashes 2%, you didn't lose a thing. You will own nothing and you will be happy.

Wow. Genius. Caitlin Huey Burns says she asked Scott Besson on the Hill yesterday whether the tariffs going into effect tomorrow, so they are in effect right now, are set in stone or a negotiating tactic. And Besson replied, quote, they are negotiable, but not a negotiating tactic. There's a lot to get into with that. I kind of, I'm with Besson on this one. I, all the, let me stand up for Besson here. Stand up for Besson. I get what he's saying there.

He's saying, look, all right, the tariff is 15% or it's 85% on Lesotho. Maybe it could be 75. Like the number is negotiable. Yes. But the idea that we are putting forward, that we are going to break the back of the global trading system and create something new in its place, that's not negotiable. That's what he's saying. Yeah. We don't believe him because, like, Trump in that speech was like, they're all begging me for a deal. And, you know, he's going to make some deals. And I think he's eventually going to have to either back off this be forced off of it

Because you can't break the global system. Yes one person. Yeah without Or we just have no system left. I mean you can break the global system, but he's breaking it What I mean is at some point Republicans have to step in I mean they would need 67 votes to override his veto Yeah, but you keep shaving two three percent off every single day. So there's going to that that's going to that pressure is going to build. So here's where people spent too long building up. People spent their entire lives building up what they have there. And I don't think they're going to let this mentally ill guy just take it away. Maybe they will, though. Well, so Politico, I think this

was in Playbook the other day, was talking about how Republican, the incentive for Republicans, this is the implication, I'm paraphrasing it, right now, is they know their voters trust Donald Trump. Republican voters trust Donald Trump. That may chip away, that trust may chip away, but right now, Republican voters trust Donald Trump more than they trust his opponents when it comes to, I mean, his numbers, Harry Antonis pointed this out, we'll get to it. His numbers on the economy are slipping, but Republican voters have confidence in Donald Trump to the extent that it means they trust him more than other people. And so if the choice is Donald Trump or someone who opposes Donald Trump's approach. We'll talk about this polling more in a minute, but here's a good one for it that backs up your point.

YouGov asked, April 2nd will forever be remembered as the day American history was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again. Do you agree or disagree with that following statement regarding tariffs? Republicans by 70 to 14 either strongly or somewhat agree with that. Independence, 51% of independents disagree with that. 41% strongly disagree. Obviously, Democrats are like spitting, did a spit take to that one. And so, you know, overall the country does not agree with that statement, but Republicans still do. Yeah. And so I just think this is important. He's like, I think Trump's tactics, and this is a question we'll have for the, that I'll definitely have for the Congressman later. I think Trump's tactics are completely like bananas. There's no

disagreement on that. I think a lot of voters make the calculus that it's between these banana tactics or the status quo, which is shocking levels of debt and deficit raising under the Biden administration. Look at the chart, just the skyrocketing. It wasn't just Biden, but after COVID, Trump contributed to that as well. It was just crazy levels. And people feel like that contributed to inflation. And they look at the establishment and status quo, and then they look at Donald Trump. And they look at, for example, China's, you know, they look at China, they look at different places in the world, and they say, this is unfair. Trump taps into that, and the response, it's just, it's not

persuasive. The opponents of Donald Trump for a lot of Republican voters, it's not persuasive. And so, I think also there's a genuine question as to whether, and this speaks poorly to our politics, you have Jameson Greer, who I think was a pretty capable defender of a weird process, a bad process that is policy in and of itself. But did you see how the tweet, the Walter Bloomberg tweet, shifted the market the day before yesterday? It was the craziest thing in the world.

Predictable but insane. And I think part of what may happen here, I'm not saying it will happen, but I'm saying there is still a possibility that we see a shift. Trump pulls back probably a month from now. I shouldn't say probably, but let's just say hypothetically a month from now, a few weeks from now, Trump pulls back. There was a shock for a long time. And then markets go back up. And we see companies having, maybe there are significant layoffs. Maybe there are jobs brought back in. That's what we see right now is this push and pull, big Stellantis temporary layoffs, and then the Honda Civic manufacturing coming back to Indiana, for example. And I just, I don't want

to discount the possibility that this is better in the long run than the status quo. I'm not saying it's the possibility. I'm not saying it's the thing that's actually going to happen, but I still think that there's, we have no idea where Trump stops. And I don't think he has any idea where he stops. So that, I mean, I think a lot of voters are probably making that calculus too. I think that's what allows him politically to keep stringing Republicans along with it. But that's not going to last forever. I mean, I think you can get away with that for another two to three weeks, maximum, maximum. Yeah. The problem with Trump's approach here, besides the approach, is the sudden nature of it and the way that it has struck fear in everybody.

So even if he was completely right about the fact that you need to put these blanket tariffs on everybody, including Canada and Australia, which he's not, but let's say he was, doing it the way he did it without getting buy-in from Wall Street, from unions, well, he got some buy-in from some unions, from some members of the Democratic Party, has meant that there's this fear among the public that we're going to have a recession. Yeah. And these are self-fulfilling situations in an economy like ours that is based so heavily on consumer spending and business investment. So if you are a business now, you're not hiring. You're probably laying off and trying to build up your cash reserves to the extent that you can. If you're a consumer, you might actually be out there trying to buy that dishwasher that you've needed before it doubles in price.

But in general, you're not spending money. And in fact, this poll said that one out of five people were considering a quick purchase because of the looming tariffs. And so that could give a little sugar high. It said another one in five were stopping purchases because of them. But the overall economy means people aren't going to spend it. So then now all these businesses that rely on anything going on overseas are going to start getting hit with duties. And in order to pay this tariff, you need cash. You haven't sold your product yet.

This whole thing we've got here relies on cash flow and credit. You can't really throw in a, oh, by the way, you owe an extra 20% right now. And it still will. Whoa, I don't have that. I only have exactly what I need to make it. Everyone's just gasping for air. When these China tariffs, we started talking about are a 50% increase, like 34 to 84% increase. And I'll skip ahead to A10 here and put this element up on the screen. The Wall Street Journal reported on a survey the Chamber of Commerce did, which was

very, very interesting. It said most businesses were still, or many businesses were still planning to keep their financial entanglements with China. Interestingly, this survey also saw many of those companies see China as like the biggest geopolitical risk. And that's the line that Donald Trump is towing between saying, hey, you see China as a risk, so bet on the United States. The problem with that is the tactic here has created uncertainty. Donald Trump sees the uncertainty as his leverage to get people to bet on the US. But that uncertainty is precisely why people are just being risk averse and not taking risks at all. So maybe this retaliatory tariff changes the calculus

for some of those companies in the survey that's obviously taken before. But I mean, it's very, very hard. The possibility that it just laid out is just that. It's a possibility. I think it's a possibility that's not being treated as seriously as it should be in the media. But who's financing that? Like, the major companies are not,

they don't expect Trump's tariffs to be here four years from now. Yeah. So they wouldn't, they would have no reason to build a plant. He hates the CHIPS Act. He hates industrial policy from the top down. It's a huge problem.

So then who's financing these projects? You just had Microsoft, you saw this, announced their billion-dollar three data centers in Ohio. They're pulling out of those. The economic conditions aren't right for it. Not good timing for that. So like who, just theoretically, who would lead this renaissance?

Who's putting their chips in on the U.S. here? Yeah, Greer laid out the case that he thinks plenty of, they're pointing to the Honda Civic and what's the other one that they've pointed to so far? They have a couple of things that happened just in the last week or so, but certainly are offset by Stellantis, by Microsoft, and by some of these other negative effects as well. So it's pretty hard to make the case that there's some objective metric by which it's it's clearly already a roaring win.

Yeah. And if I mean, you know, why why would a company bet on us over China? Given their education system compared to ours, their manufacturing capacity compared to ours, their supply chain access compared to ours, their stability and like leadership compared to ours. Good old stability in leadership compared to ours. Good old authoritarian stability. We're a basket case. We have authoritarianism, but instability. We're rounding people up and throwing them in gulags,

but we can't even get a stable system. What's the point of the gulags? Are you talking about the Salvadoran ones? To make sure we can't criticize Israel. Oh, which gulags are you talking about? There are a couple going on right now. The Salvadoran ones, but also the detention centers all around the U.S.

where students are being rounded up for op-eds and participating in protests. Yeah. Sent to. Camp Shane, one of America's longest- running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait.

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

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

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1.

Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's watch this clip of Harry Enten on CNN reacting to this was going pretty viral

on the right yesterday. I saw it when Charlie Kirk posted it, but let's say this is a let's roll Harry Enten on CNN yesterday. So Trump's approach here, what are we talking about? Trump's approach to presidential power. I think the American people recognize what he's doing here is completely different. We're talking this. Eighty six percent of the American public believes that Trump's approach to presidential power is completely different from past presidents compared to only 14 percent who believe it is in line with precedent. And we're talking about at least 79 percent of Democrats, independents and Republicans. So, again, you can agree or you can disagree with Donald Trump.

But what you can't disagree with is that he's doing things very differently. And this is interesting. So Trump's presidential power is too much, the right amount, too little. Well, 47 percent say too much, but then you get 36 percent who say the right amount. Then you get 17 percent who say too little. So you're essentially dealing with a majority of the American public, 53 percent, who do not say that Trump has too much power. Brian, I think it's funny that some in MAGA world saw that as like a brief glimmer of hope. The Harry Enten thing, which is basically just voters saying, we think the guy is doing things differently. Charlie Kirk pulled out the quote, quote, Trump is not a lame duck. If anything, he's a soaring eagle. But the context of it was Harry Enten basically saying that, yeah, voters are looking at Donald Trump being like, this dude's doing all kinds of different stuff. I mean, I'd have been in that. Which is like,

yes. I would have been in that 87 or 90 percent or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he is. Yeah. He's the first one to ship people to dungeons in El Salvador and then to suggest that he might do it to American citizens, too. That is true. He wants to. He wants to. Bush is like, wow, I could do that. He's like, whoa, that was a possibility? That was on the table. I thought we had to use that Guantanamo thing. We just sent them anywhere?

Here's the difference. I thought we had to do it secretly and send them to the Egyptian dungeons where they torture them but pretend that we didn't do it. But here's the difference. You just do it out loud? George W. Bush now gets lots of press.

His daughter's on a Today Show. And people think very warmly about George W. Bush in Manhattan and these newsrooms. And he could send people to torture sites and black sites. But Donald Trump is actually honest about what he's doing, and so he's hated. And again, Obama. The answer is why not dislike both? Obama not prosecuting the people responsible

for the torture program continues to haunt us. That's a good point. Let's put this poll. As we said it would at the time. Let's put this poll on the screen. This is A9, this is YouGov polling results. Ryan, did you take a look at these? These are some post, quote, Liberation Day polling. 51 to 38 agreement with Republicans are crashing the American economy in real time and driving us

to a recession. And then 51 to 20 agreement with the tariffs are the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history. Those numbers are the combination of strongly and somewhat agree on both. So that's where you get the both 51 numbers and so 51 to 38 and 51 to 20. So I don't find that particularly surprising. Yeah. If you go if you go through this entire poll, you see a public that you see a public where Democrats are like massively against all of this. Independents are hugely against all this by like two to one margins and Republicans are pretty squeamish on it. They, they, they still like Trump, but when you dig into Republican support for what's going on here, it's not that great.

I noticed one here where they said, they asked why Trump was doing this. And one of the theories that they asked people about, they said, the tariffs are a means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief That's a theory. I've seen crystal put out that that this is part and parcel of Trump's consolidation of power mm-hmm that now if Just exactly what they said if if you're Apple if you're and or if you're a small company from Columbus, Ohio. Mm-hmm and You're like look I'm I'm going to go under, then you call your congressman, you call whoever you know who knows Trump, and you plead to the king for mercy. And the king grants you mercy. Or else your whole town goes up in amphetamines. And the independents said by a 46 to 22, you know, the rest are like unsure,

46 to 22. So more than two to one independents are like, yeah, that's why he's doing this. He's consolidating his own power. And it fits with what people understand to be his personality, that he loves to be the guy who's like, you're fired or you're the man. And he loves to keep people in suspense and to have control over them. And I don't think people want their lives being messed with for that reason. Yeah. Well, nobody wants their life. I mean, that's the reason we have the system we have.

You shouldn't be at the whim of a president. I mean, this is congressional power. He's invoking emergency authority to do this. This is Article I power. And that's part of the problem that's probably going to come back to him. This is like just final point, the strange position that people like myself and probably Sagar to some extent find themselves in, which is, and on the left as well. There's something very serious here, and I don't discount the possibility at all. I'm not saying it's a huge possibility.

There's a possibility that there's some good that comes out of this because he can reverse course on a whim. And that's the sort of strange situation that we find ourselves in in the United States, is that he's consolidated emergency authority to do this. And I mean, we just kind of have to wait to see if he blinks and what that, if he does blink, what it looks like and the particulars of it. And we're talking 70 countries that he says are begging to make deals. The amount of power there is just enormous. So it's just, we have no idea. We have no idea what's coming down the next few weeks, which is why we'll be here covering all of it. Maybe. Yeah, that's true. Let's move on to the feud between Peter Navarro and Elon Musk. No promises. If you haven't heard how the feud is escalating between Elon Musk and Peter Navarro,

you are going to want to stay tuned for this because, dare I say, Ryan, it's been a little bit entertaining. Caroline Leavitt at the White House press briefing yesterday weighed in on that rift. Elon Musk is coming from a more libertarian, basically pro-free trade. He said he wanted a free trade zone between the United States and the EU the other day. He has been posting videos of Milton Friedman talking about the many benefits of free trade, libertarian economist Milton Friedman that is. So Peter Navarro, on the other hand, is one of the more vocal protectionists who some people feel is pushing Trump in the direction that he's gone, maybe to the chagrin of advisors like Scott Besant and Howard Letnick, who

probably would prefer a policy that has pauses and all of that built into it and hasn't affected stock markets quite in the same way that it has. So let's roll Caroline Lovett getting asked about that relationship, which is spilling into the public a bit yesterday. There's been some public sparring between Elon Musk and the president's trade advisor, Peter Navarro, on some of these tariffs. Musk actually referred to Navarro today as being, quote, dumber than a sack of bricks.

Are you—or is the administration, the president, all concerned that this is maybe impacting the public's understanding of these tariffs? It might be messing with the message on it. No, look, these are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs. Boys will be boys and we will let their public sparring continue. And you guys should all be very grateful that we have the most transparent administration

in history. And I think it also speaks to the president's willingness to hear from all sides, that he has people at the highest levels of this government in this White House who have very diverse opinions on very diverse issues. But the president takes all opinions in mind, and then he makes the best decision based on the best interests of the American public. Ryan, I don't think that's completely crazy, that it's in some ways beneficial for us in the public to see where Elon Musk actually is on trade and to see how he treats other people in the administration and to see the tension that exists within the administration, not just over the question of trade, but actually over the particular tactics of this approach. I don't know.

I'm curious how Elon Musk would be reacting if, say, Bob Lighthizer had been in charge of this tariff approach. I think there's a sense that maybe with Lighthizer in the administration, obviously he was with the first Trump administration, he was with the Reagan administration, seen as kind of a serious policy type guy who has Trump's ear. Would this rollout have been less chaotic? I don't know. The chaos is also clearly part of the point here.

But would Elon Musk be reacting this way under those circumstances? I don't know. I think maybe he just really hates Peter Navarro. Well, I also think it's the policy. Like, you know, he is like probably the world's greatest moron at this point. He invested all of his energy and, you know, many millions of dollars into electing a guy whose stated policies would destroy his companies. That's quite interesting. And then he then enacted those stated policies and the guy lost his mind. Now he's talking about a free trade deal with Europe

after he has spent the last year savaging all of the neoliberals who would agree with him in making that kind of a free trade deal and propping up far right wing nationalists across Europe. And then being shocked when those lepers eat his face. It's like, you can't be this stupid. And yes, it's nice that we're getting some transparency, but it's also, come on, it's Elon Musk. It's impossible to not know his every thought.

He forces it right in front of your face. Right, it's not an intentional strategy. He's paid so that everybody knows his stupid thoughts. It's not an intentional strategy of transparency. It's not like we are going to finally let the American people in. Now, the consequence of it, I think, is helpful for the American people. But yes, it's not them being like, we are so, we have such pure heart that we are going to let you into the negotiating room.

We asked Elon to do this. So we're going to play a clip now of Peter Navarro talking about Elon Musk. Elon Musk responded to it. And man, does that spiral from there. So let's go ahead and roll this next element. When it comes to tariffs and trade, we all understand in the White House and the American people understand that Elon's a car manufacturer, but he's not a car manufacturer. He's a car assembler in many cases.

If you go to his Texas plant, a good part of the engines that he gets, which in the EV case is the batteries come from Japan and come from China. The electronics come from Taiwan. The tires come. What we want, and the difference is in our thinking and Elon's on this, is that we want the tires made in Akron. We want the transmissions made in Indianapolis. We want the engines made in Flint and Saginaw. And we want the cars manufactured here. It's like this business model where BMW and Mercedes come in to Spartansburg, South Carolina, and have us assemble German engines and Austrian transmissions.

That doesn't work for America. It's bad for our economics. It's bad for our national security. We want them to come here. And with Elon, it's fine. He's a car man. He's a car person. That's what he does. And he wants the cheap foreign parts. And we understand that. But we want him home. We want him home. Peter, do you expect... For our national security, economic security, and everything's good. That absolutely set Elon Musk off. As it should have. Yeah, there's nothing surprising about that

setting Elon Musk off. So Elon Musk responded to a post of that clip and put the little asterisk in his response to someone who posted the clip and said, this is what Peter Navarro said. He put a little asterisk, Peter retardo. Well, I hope Musk is happy he at least gets to say that. He gets to say that. Golden age. And then he also replies, Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false. Tesla has the most American made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks. And then he tagged the account, I find retards. And then he tagged Peter Navarro's account in his response there. That's what set off the Caroline Leavitt exchange. So again, it makes sense that this is

how they're responding to one another. And Peter Navarro is somebody who, there are a lot of people in Trump's orbit who are quite uncomfortable with Elon Musk's aggressive libertarian economic policy, particularly because it's led him to have deep financial entanglements with China. And a lot of people actually just have, you saw this, like you saw this spill into the surface with Steve Bannon over the H1B stuff. A lot of this is like simmering. It doesn't erupt every day, but it's simmering beneath the surface between a lot of true believers in Trump protectionist circles, Trump, like the sort of MAGA industrial policy

realignment circles who have a deep distrust of Elon Musk. And I think that's where you get Peter Navarro asked publicly about Musk, just openly saying, like, Elon's fine. You know, it's all fine. We're glad he's in the administration. But X, Y, and Z, he's just shooting from the hip. And that created this public controversy. Yeah. And consumers of this news program would never kind of mistake me for some Elon Musk fan boy, but he does assemble a lot of the batteries here because he has a big plant in Nevada that makes batteries for, for Tesla. And Navarro does sound like a moron when he starts talking about the difference between an EV car assembler and an EV car manufacturer.

Because the problem that a lot of unions and the UAW, for instance, has with the transition from the kind of cars they've been making for 100 years to the EVs is that they're so much easier to assemble. Like an EV, it's like a battery and some, and some wheels and then a really, you know, advanced software system wrapped around it. And then some, you know, panels that fall off as soon as you've drive the car off the lot. But it, he keeps kind of reverting back to language about that, that, that, that fits better with the old Detroit. Like we we're going to do the transmission. Yeah. Like an EV, technically, I guess it has a transmission, but it's like a one-speed transmission.

It's like, that's it. You press the gas and it goes. It doesn't have the quote-unquote engine of an EV, which is just the battery and it goes. So, yeah, more on his fare, I think, in this point. I think Musk is right there. A lot of Musk's Chinese production is for the Chinese market and for other markets. Yeah, yeah. Like Tesla is a global brand. And the other American auto companies should maybe try to figure out why that is. It's not that he, to your point, it's not that he doesn't

import materials. It's that he does it less than others. Right. And he needs Chinese rare earths and other, you know, he needs other elements of the Chinese supply chain, but not necessarily the ones that Navarro was talking about here. So this is the last element, B5. This is also what I mean by we're not bringing our best against the Chinese in these negotiations. These are morons, all of them. These two, you can just see there's something. This is what happens internally in every presidential meeting. It's like the long-running bit here in D.C. about how actually Washington is Veep.

It's not West Wing. It's not House of Cards. It is Veep. It's completely true. It's cliche at this point. But this is the type of stuff that happens internally all the time. Now we can put the next element up on the screen. Caroline Levitt told Damon Javers yesterday, we are the most transparent administration in history expressing our disagreements in public. Again, this is- Whatever. I love it.

Whatever. That's basically, I mean, that is the best possible response, right? They're not even trying to spin it and saying everyone is united here, this is a totally—a White House where everybody's on the same page, we're running like a well-oiled machine. And the reason I think is important, which is fundamentally this is Donald Trump's policy. I don't think Scott Besset knows or Howard Lutnick knows where Donald Trump wants to stop with any of this. I don't think they know. I don't think Jameson Greer knows what Donald Trump wants to see in negotiations with Australia

and what that means, how long that means he'll continue. You know, they might know that he wants them to address non-tariff barriers. Great. I don't think they know when he's willing to say that's enough. We have struck a deal with Australia and we will, you know, completely come to the table, finalize this thing and tariffs are off or tariffs are much lower than they were. Tariff increases much lower than it was. I think that's what this reflects at the end of the day is like they can't be on the same

page because there's one person whose opinion on all of this matters and he plays it close to the vest. And he's doing that because he thinks it's his leverage But at the same time, you know, they have no idea like that's what that means at the end of the day Is that it's just this is we were talking about this earlier. It's what Donald Trump decides and he's We speaking of not being transparent like we actually don't really know because he hasn't said yeah where this stops Yeah, and in the end, this is a rare moment where it doesn't matter. Like the propaganda doesn't matter. The messaging doesn't matter.

The infighting, the ex-fighting. None of that really matters. What matters, because the public is not going to experience this refracted through the media. They're going to experience it. And this stuff is either going to work or it's not going to work. And if it doesn't work, it does not matter what they say about it.

And if it works, people will be very happy. So far, not working. And that's all that's going to matter. Like if we get a financial crisis and a recession out of this, it really isn't going to matter how the White House messaged it and whether they were on the same page, whether their fights were internal and leaking or playing out on Twitter. Won't matter. You lost your job.

You don't care. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fat phobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and

totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator

to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

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

when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's move on to this big decision from the Supreme Court yesterday. We can put C1 up on the screen. The Supreme Court, this is the CNN

headline, Supreme Court backs Trump for now on fired probationary federal employees. We'll read a bit from CNN's reporting. They say, Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to keep several thousand probationary federal employees. It is attempting to fire off the payroll while lower courts weigh whether the downsizing efforts are legal. The latest in a series of wins for the White House at the conservative high court. And so that's referencing, obviously, the decision the day

before that Amy Coney Barrett dissented from, but the rest of the conservative justices agreed on. And the argument they made was that the unions don't have standing to sue here. Oh, in yesterday's decision. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. So it's not that they didn't rule on the merits of the case. They said, which to me, how can a union not have standing? Like, what is the point of a union if not to be the representative of the workers in a lawsuit like this?

But whatever. That's where the Republican court is. The unions don't have standing in a case that involves all the firing of all of these workers. But also, one kind of funny quibble I would have with the payroll, the point about whether they're on the payroll. These firings involved first putting people on these long administrative leaves, then giving them severance. And then once that's wrapped up, then they're on unemployment benefits. So if you think you, taxpayer, are saving money, you're not. It's just that these people are not working.

You're still paying them. By the end of this, the process of firing these people could which by anybody's definition is waste, fraud, and abuse. Not untrue, although is it waste? Imagine if I came to you and I was like, I found a government agency that is actively and purposely spending billions of dollars to get people to not work on your behalf. You'd be like, wow, that's a scandal. It's called doge. It's called doggy. It's called doggy.

So the question is whether it's waste, fraud, and abuse that justifies the end of, it's the means of waste, fraud, and abuse to justify the end of eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. For Musk and these oligarchs, that is a feature. Like these people not working, if they are regulating them, if they're enforcing laws on companies, that is a feature for them, not a bug. They don't want these people at the EPA telling you, oh, by the way, you can't do this thing to this river. Yeah. So this is more from the CNN article. They say,

labor unions and other groups had challenged the OPM, so Office of Personal Management's, rule in the firings, which affected thousands of employees and sent shockwaves through various federal agencies, some of which later rehired the workers. U.S. District Judge William Alsup, nominated by Bill Clinton, ordered the administration to immediately offer over 16,000 probationary employees their jobs back. Each agency had and still has discretion to hire and fire its own employees. Here, the agencies were directed by OPM to fire all probationary employees, and they executed that directive to staunch the irreparable harms to organizational plaintiffs caused by OPM unlawfully slashing other agency staff required immediately reinstating those employees.

And so what the Supreme Court said here is that the unions didn't have standing to make that case to the point you were making earlier, Ryan. So what this means is thousands of probationary employees. By the way, the probationary employees have been a subject of controversy among people supportive of Doge because the probationary employees oftentimes are people that maybe recently got a raise and so are on probationary status in this new position. And so they might be some of the best and brightest. Second of all, they're new employees in many cases who are just coming in to the administrative state and haven't been molded by the decades of bureaucratic procedure and processes and ideology, just the ideology of the bureaucracy in and of itself. And so if you're Doge, you might look at probationary employees and say,

these are the people to keep. These are the better people to keep. So even within Doge circles, the fate of these probationary employees is a question in and of itself. But right now what they're trying to prove, and they're excited to keep proving through the courts, is that they can do this because that is the unitary executive theory that Trump is and Russ Vogt and others are borrowing from Richard Nixon and saying this is the president's administration. It is under the will of the president. The president can do what he wants, and he can do it through the process that he wants. That's the point that they're trying to make through the courts right now. And what it means in practical terms for these employees is that their jobs, it's like incredible whiplash.

I know a lot of people don't have sympathy for bureaucrats in Washington. It's not a particularly sympathetic group of people in the aggregate. When you dive into some of these individual cases, you're like, oh my gosh, that's what this person is doing. That sounds very important. Like VA work, for example. Some work at the VA. Like, oh, maybe we should keep that person. But in the aggregate, not the most sympathetic group of people. But nevertheless, their livelihoods are just pinging through the courts right now. Yeah. Not ideal. Not ideal. Ryan, let's move on to Capitol Hill, where a mutiny, to quote Politico, is brewing. And that's actually the correct terminology here. There really is a mutiny brewing on Capitol Hill at the moment over Trump's one big, beautiful bill. They want this passed

before Easter, which gives them, House Republicans, Republican leadership on Capitol Hill in the House and Senate, 48 hours to get this through the House of Representatives before the House leaves for a two-week recess. Right now, this is—we could put D1 up on the screen. The state of affairs is pretty bad for Trump. So this is the chairman of the Freedom Caucus yesterday before going into a meeting with Trump saying, he's just not going to change my mind. And actually, I correct myself, Andy Harris did not go to the meeting. Other people went to the meeting.

Andy Harris said, he's not going to change my mind, so I'm not even going to meet with Donald Trump over this bill. And there's a new Politico article out this morning from Meredith Lee Hill about that mutiny where they—this is actually really well said in the lead of the piece. It says, first they caved on the speaker election. Then last month they fell in line on a budget vote and again on divisive government funding bill. But now it seems House conservatives are ready to make a stand. Dozens of House Republicans are undecided or outright opposed to rubber stamping a Senate-approved budget blueprint

for the GOP's domestic policy mega bill. And an all-out whip effort from Johnson, Mike Johnson, and his leadership team has only produced modest gains. If Johnson and Trump can't flip most of those members, in the next 48 hours, lawmakers will start to board flights for a two-week recess, denying the president a show of legislative progress as financial markets wobble over his tariffs. And that's exactly the question here. Trump wants this bill passed because they think it's something that can—and I'm curious for your take on this, Ryan—steady the markets a little bit.

That can, you know, be something that shows if you get the corporate tax rate permanent, helps with reshoring, etc. And that's why they want this right now. They want it before Easter, two-week recess within 48 hours. And what we're starting to see is both establishment pushback on Trump. We posted that clip of Tom Tillis yesterday saying, whose scalp can I have to Jameson Greer, USTR. So you see Republicans who are actually uncomfortable with the tariffs from a sort of libertarian perspective and now Republicans who are uncomfortable with the way Trump is handling the budget from almost a libertarian perspective but on the populist side. Yeah, and so this is the – this is more of the reconciliation process, right? This is where they're writing the underlying reconciliation bill, which is only kind of the guideline then for the next bill that they,

where they end up, where they fill in the details about what the tax rates would be and what the different policies would be. So, which makes it a little easier for Trump to say, look, just vote yes on this. And then I promise you, when we do the final bill, I'll make sure that I take care of your demands here on the tax rates and on the spending cuts. And what Andy Harris is saying, I don't trust the president to be able to do that. Not that I don't trust the president, but I don't think that he has the power, really, to go forward and do that, especially as he's floating that he's going to raise taxes on the rich. Whereas the Freedom Caucus generally wants him to either keep the taxes on the richest saying or cut them. And so, but the Freedom Caucus, I'm curious why you think this is different.

I'm just so used to the Freedom Caucus. I mean, I have a theory for why this could be different, but I'm curious for yours. I'm just so used to the Freedom Caucus talking this huge game. And then the night before the vote, they're promising that this time they're really going to hang together. And this is against Trump. Against Boehner, they've got a spine.

McCarthy. Against McCarthy, they've got a spine. Against Trump, they have always just talked the talk, and then when it comes time to walk the walk, they get just enough no votes that it still passes. So why, I have a theory, but I'm curious for why you think this is different. Well, my theory is that they feel like they've been taken for chomps for the last, roughly, the last year. But they say that every time. Because they are chomps.

Well, I'd say that they would say that every time over the course of the last year. Whereas before, I mean, when you're in opposition, you know, it's easier. But whereas before, they feel like they were being, they were able to make more significant concessions, whereas because of the Trump factor, they have acquiesced and said, we trust Trump. There's this new thing where conservative media used to be like, conservative media itself, not like Fox News, but, you know, the ecosystem of alternative conservative media used to be like—conservative media itself, not like Fox News, but, you know, the ecosystem of alternative conservative media used to be very in favor of the Freedom Caucus and still is for the most part. But when Trump is on the other side of the Freedom Caucus, a lot of that media will side

with Trump, right? You know, you get the Breitbarts of the world or the Bannons of the world will get on board with Trump and say, this is Trump's plan. We're going along with Trump. This is the point that Trump is making. But at this point, that's gone on so long that the Freedom Caucus is like, hey, we cannot pass this budget resolution without spending cuts that offset what's going on.

This is a quote to the Hill from Eric Burleson, who's a Freedom Caucus member, who called Trump's budget bill, quote, financially immoral. They're not quibbling with the bill. They see it as being really significantly messed up. And that's where—so this is Lloyd Smucker, quote, we've got to, that's a hell of a name, we've got to reduce spending to put the country on a better path. Fiscally, yeah. I think the disagreement is some of us really believe that the resolution is an important foundation on which to build a good bill. And so we want to ensure that some of the principles that all of us agree to are included.

Man, good luck. That's all I can say. Yeah. My theory for why they might hold the line here is that the stakes aren't that high. If you don't pass this reconciliation instruction now, you can still do it in two weeks. There's not going to be a government shutdown. Like there's, there's no, Trump wants it, but it's, as my kids say, or I would say to my kids, it's a want, not a need. So he doesn't need it. And so if he doesn't need it, it's like, what leverage does he have? And also I think Trump is going to find out something about the law of political capital in Washington that there's only so much you can do to your own approval rating and to the hopes and the feelings of the American public. Like, if they turn and they're like, we think we're headed for a recession and this all sucks.

Yeah. You don't have as much power when you call up Andy Harris and are like, I really need you here. Yeah. It's like, well, you know what? Maybe you shouldn't have like wrecked the country in three months. It's completely true that, you know, one of the people leading this current resistance from Trump's right flank is Chip Roy. And Chip Roy and Trump have had many differences and trade barbs and sort of it's baked into their relationship. But Chip Roy is a leader in Freedom Caucus circles. He's somebody even in like conservative media that people look to as kind of a weathervane, you know, to see what the conservative take is or the kind of hardcore conservative take is on a given situation on Capitol Hill. And he's being

really adamant right now. And I think, Ryan, part of the reason is while there is support for industrial policy and protectionism, even from people who would have previously in the Tea Party era been very skeptical of that, there's some support for restructuring our trade relationships.

There's not support for this indefinite testing of the market and of these major companies' bottom lines because to a certain extent, it gets away from populism. We've talked about this the entire show, but at a certain extent, it doesn't become populist. It becomes oligarchical. So I think that's right now probably factoring in, and this is I think the point you're making, it's probably factoring into why there's a sort of reinvigorated wave of frustration among folks in Freedom Caucus circles. Like, hey, we have to codify these spending cuts. These spending cuts can't just, we're cutting all these taxes. Great. we have to codify these spending cuts. These spending cuts can't just, we're cutting all these taxes, great.

If we don't codify these spending cuts now, when are we ever going to do that? So, yeah. Freedom Caucus might wind up with some of the same bad luck that the Democratic populists wound up with, which is that the moment that they had neoliberalism on the run,

and they've got the American Rescue Plan, and they've got the child tax credit, and they've got all of this kind of industrial spending. The exact moment that they're notching win after win after win, the economy is coming back from a pandemic. You've got all these corporations jacking up prices, you've got supply chains collapsing, and you've got these price increases. So it was the most difficult political environment to push a lot of new federal spending, even popular federal spending, into the economy and into the public. And a lot of it was rolled back as a result. And people were very angry then when it was rolled back. Now, just as the Freedom Caucus is getting the ability to really slash spending in a serious way, they might be doing it into the teeth of a fierce recession,

which is the absolute last time the public wants to hear about austerity. It's just unfair. The world isn't fair. The world is not fair. Life lessons from Ryan Grin. Ryan Grin, I just said. I was trying to say Ryan Grim on counterpoints, and it turned out to be Ryan Grin counterpoints. So either way, I think it works great. Let's move on to this interview set up with Congressman DeLucio, who has taken some arrows in a really interesting way for his criticism of Donald Trump while also supporting... Just the idea that maybe some tariffs are okay. Maybe a little bit.

Yeah. All right. Stick around for that. Camp Sheen, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of

mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. and subscribe today. of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator

to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. All right, to talk more about these tariffs and the Democratic response, joined by Pittsburgh Democratic Congressman Chris DiLuzio. Congressman, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me on. So you found yourself kind of at the center of this controversy as somebody who actually cares about industrial policy and manufacturing. All of a sudden, the entire world is focused on this. You wrote a piece in The New York Times that got a lot of attention fairly recently and also had a

post go kind of viral on the interwebs where you made the case that, okay, Trump's tariffs are wrong, but here's where tariff policy and industrial policy can play a role. And man, I was stunned to see how many Democrats were furious about that. They're like, how dare you? All we should be saying is that Trump bad. So we want to get into that in a moment. But I wanted to start with Caroline Levitt completely reshored all of our iPhone production, an iPhone would cost something like $29,000. I don't know what kind of deal you get from your carrier that makes it a little bit cheaper.

Maybe you can get that down to $25,000 with the right bargaining in the Verizon store. But let's roll Ms. Leavitt here. I want to get some of your response to this. Does the president endorse something that Howard Letnick said on television this weekend, which was that the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, that that kind of thing is going to be moving to the U.S.? Is that how the president envisions manufacturing shifting? And if so, how long would that take, roughly? The president wants to increase manufacturing jobs here in the United States of America,

but he's also looking at advanced technologies. He's also looking at AI and emerging fields that are growing around the world that the United States needs to be a leader in as well. So there's an array of diverse jobs, more traditional manufacturing jobs, as you discussed, but also jobs in advanced technologies. The president is looking at all of those. He wants them to come back home. But iPhones specifically, is that something that he thinks is the kind of technology that can move to the U.S.? Absolutely. He believes we have the labor, we have the workforce, we have the resources to do it. And as you know, Apple has invested $500 billion here in the United States.

So if Apple didn't think the United States could do it, they probably wouldn't have put up that big chunk of change. So is this talk of $3,000 or $30,000 iPhones, is this fear-mongering to push back against a decent industrial policy? Or is this something that needs to be taken into consideration? Where do you come down on these questions of cost versus the ability to make a living? Ryan, your question gets to the heart of this, which is why the president's across-the-board blanket approach has been terrible. You cannot use this one tool of tariffs, throw them on everybody, and expect you're going to magically have manufacturing in this country.

You've got to look where there are trade sheets and be tough on enforcing them, and that's communist China around things like steel, for instance. You've got to have the industrial policy. You've got to incentivize manufacturing in this country. You need real policy from Washington to do it, especially when you've got sectors and companies here that have to compete with foreign competition that's being propped up by their governments. This is not some equal playing field. I come back to the fundamental problem of what Trump did. Throwing tariffs on everybody, friend and foe alike, does not work. You got to be specific to

the sector. You got to have industrial policy with it. And we're seeing the cost of this right now, and the way markets have responded, the way workers are responding. This isn't it. And that doesn't mean that you should ignore when a country like China breaks the rules. Tough enforcement includes things like targeted tariffs. I don't think people are comfortable with, say, slave labor making goods that get imported to this country. But that is so far afield from what Donald Trump just did. We can't turn a blind eye to getting industrial policy right in this country. And if I were to channel a sentiment, I think some of the voters in your district who are still with Donald Trump, I don't know how many it is, but I presume some people just knowing the

Republican electorate will probably say to you, Congressman, well, if it's not Donald Trump, then what is it? Is it Kamala Harris? Is it, you know, is my alternative some, you know, moderate Republican? Nobody else wants to take on these problems quite like Donald Trump. And this gets to the point that Ryan was making when we were speaking earlier that this is, I mean, you're almost an outlier in your own party. And it has to be sort of tough to convince other Democrats that there's a nuance that's important to talk about right now. We were talking before

we went to air that you were on the front page of Politico in an article that's headlined Democrats find Trump's haphazard tariffs are uniting them on trade. But there's a quote in that piece from Charlotte Clymer that says Democrats are pretty uniform if not entirely—this is from you, you say Democrats are pretty uniform if not entirely uniform in making the case that what's happening right now is really dangerous. Charlotte Clymer says trying to offer nuance on Trump's disastrous terrorist policy in this moment is like telling someone with alcohol poisoning, you know, red wine in moderation

is actually good for heart health. It's missing the point. It's bad messaging. Can I just get you to respond to that? Because I think there are probably a lot of Trump fans in your own district who say, well, what is my option? What's the alternative? You know, maybe this is crazy, but the alternative seems crazy to me too. Well, I think you get to the heart of whether saying the other guy is bad is just enough. I don't think it's good policy. I don't think it's good politics, right?

We now have Donald Trump in a second term in the presidency and Democrats have lost the House and the Senate. I don't think us saying the other guy is bad, which we should say, and I am saying, as a guy from the Rust Belt, trade policy right now is reckless and dangerous. We should say that. We got to tell the American people what the heck we're going to do if they trust us to govern in two years and four years. There is never a bad time to say what you're doing to protect

your people when they're getting hurt and what you will do if you're trusted to govern. And I don't shy away from that ever. To that point, let's put up E3, which is your New York Times article. This ran about a month ago. You could see this coming at a time. I'm a Rust Belt Democrat from a swing district. Anti-tariff absolutism is a mistake. And then let's put up E4.

Let's play this SOT, which is what got the likes of Charlotte Clymer and others just absolutely livid. It's about a it's about a minute. And let's let's roll that here. Chris Deluzio here from western Pennsylvania, proud son of the Rust Belt. I think a wrong for decades consensus in Washington on free trade's been a race to the bottom. It's hollowed out our industrial power, cost us good jobs. The president's tariff announcement, though, and his trade strategy has been chaotic. It's been inconsistent.

We should not treat our economic allies like Canada the same as trade cheats like communist China. I do not want to see corporations use the cover of these tariffs to now price gouge families. Tariffs are a powerful tool. They can be used strategically or they can be misused. They've got to be used in sectors that make sense. They've got to be paired with real, meaningful industrial policies, pro-worker policies. I'm talking about tax incentives to juice American manufacturing, get those supply chains back home, to go after corporate price gouging and stock buybacks and better protections for workers to have the freedom to form and join a union. We've got to get a better trade approach in this country, and we've got to put workers and American families at the heart of it.

For me, from the left, it was kind of depressing to see something that seemed to me to be fairly straightforward and sensical treated as some type of capitulation to Trump. Like you listen to that and you're like, yeah, that all makes sense. Was that viral response, do you think, not real life and isolated on the Internet? Does that represent a significant faction within the Democratic Party that is genuinely still, you know, dug dug in on you know, pure free trade and against any industrial policy How have your colleagues responded to this versus how it was received by the kind of blue sky public? Yeah, I mean look I'll say from where I sit in western Pennsylvania and communities like mine across say the Rust Belt People want us to have more

manufacturing jobs. They want us to have a better trade policy. And overwhelmingly, they think what Donald Trump just did is not it. It is a mistake. And I think we can chew gum and walk at the same time. We got to be able to criticize the other guy and say also what we think and believe. And I don't know who the heck thinks it is smart policy or politics to tell people that, what, we shouldn't have manufacturing jobs in America, that we should turn a blind eye to exploited workers and environmental pollution that we all pay for. That's not the answer. And we even saw President Biden, I think correctly, respond to trade cheats and breaking the rules in China around steel, for instance, to do strategic

targeted tariffs there, pair it with some incentives here at home. That is so far afield from what Donald Trump just did. And yet, I think you finally see some Democrats saying, OK, what he did was wrong. Here's what we think the Democratic Party ought to do to revitalize American manufacturing. And I serve on the Armed Services Committee. There's a lot of time spent over there worrying about our defense industrial base. If you don't have an industrial base in this country, you are not ever going to be able to mobilize in the way you had to in, say, the Second World War. God forbid we're in something like that again. You have to have an industrial base in this country for a lot of reasons,

and national security is a big part of it. How optimistic are you that Democrats are, let's say, there's a concern that a lot of people have that because of the way that Donald Trump has approached this, tariff is now going to become a culture war word, that people are going to kind of polarize in elite spaces even further than they already were against tariffs, period. And I guess, are you optimistic? Joe Biden had an industrial policy. He kept Trump's first-term China tariffs. But that feels almost like a relic of the past of the Democratic Party. And I'm curious if you think that's true, especially as Democrats have sort of, to paraphrase this Politico article, unified against the Trump tariffs. Is there a risk that Democrats just sort of become not just anti-tariffs, but disinterested in industrial policy, disinterested in balancing some of these genuinely problematic relationships? I hope not. We still have to make

stuff in America. And, you know, we can't just be focused on the past. We got to make stuff that we can compete and that we need in the economy of tomorrow. I think it'd be a mistake for Democrats to walk away from caring about manufacturing jobs. I don't sense that either. I think it's fine to criticize the president. I criticize the president here. But I think there are a lot of us, most of us, many of us who want to have strong manufacturing jobs and have that industrial policy with labor alongside at the heart of putting those policies together. That's the Democratic Party coalition that I know that is rock solid in Western Pennsylvania and places like it. And it's

where we go in the future to win. How is this going to end? Do you have any, for people who are scared watching this, are you in touch with the White House at all? What does Democratic leadership think about this? Where do we go from here? Wall Street seems to think he's going to back down. I don't think so. I don't think, you say the White House, but I don't think there's one view there of what the heck they're doing. I mean, that's the other problem here.

And our allies and our adversaries alike see that. And even you talk to business leaders, they don't know how the heck to plan investment if they want to bring manufacturing back when they've got the trade environment changing day to day. You need certainty to even make the kind of investments you'd want to grow American manufacturing. So this is all so reckless and nuts and is divorced from any real meaningful industrial policy or strategy that you would actually need to supercharge the kind of jobs we want in this country.

All right. Well, thank you so much. And I say this as a guy from the Rust Belt from West Pennsylvania who wants to see these jobs grow. It's just nuts. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I that's how I feel, too. It's like you're given a bad name to the entire idea of trying to do this. As you're kind of finding out, the next person that comes forward with ideas about how to revitalize American manufacturing, people are going to be like, that's cool, but are you going to make it so I can't retire again? Because that wasn't fun. So, sucks. Anyway, thanks for joining us thank you congressman camp shane one of america's longest running weight loss camps for kids promised extraordinary

results campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left in a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait.

Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country

begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time,

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

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hamas, through attorneys in the United Kingdom, has filed suit to have its terror listing delisted.

We can put this first element up on the screen. This is reported in Dropsite News by Jeremy Scahill this morning. It's a more than 100-page legal filing that includes several components, one of which we want to just go through here because it is kind of a historic and kind of fascinating document. One of the founders letter along with it in which he makes the case for why Hamas should not actually be listed as a terror group. The basis for the case is Hamas has never, this is the argument that they make, Hamas has never engaged in any attacks outside of what they call historic Palestine. They specifically note that despite the UK's role in facilitating the ongoing genocide, they have never and will never attack Britain in any way. They said if a British citizen signs up for the IDF

and comes into Gaza, then they're fair game. But otherwise, they, unlike some other Palestinian factions, have never engaged in any terrorism or militant action outside of what they would call historic Palestine or the Zionist entity or whatever. They also have, and we want to go into detail of this because I think it's really interesting, they also talk about free speech, the threat that Zionism poses to free speech in the West. They talk about anti-Semitism. And not only do they decry the scourge of anti-Semitism. And not only do they decry the scourge of anti-Semitism, they argue, kind of echoing arguments that you hear on this program, that conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, conflating anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel, waters down the definition of

anti-Semitism and actually makes it more likely that you're going to see more anti-Semitism. Hamas specifically praises Jewish students who have participated in protests around the world and in the U.S. and even praises Jewish Israelis who have protested against the slaughter of civilians. And I don't think any Hamas official has ever done that before, ever praised an Israeli citizen who was a Jewish Israeli citizen. Like, I think that's a, they think that is a first. They also talk about what they would see as, quote unquote, national liberation. They're, they do not, in this document, they do not recognize Israel, say they will never recognize Israel, say that the only solution long term is complete liberation. Meaning no Israel.

No Israel. That, that is, that's their political line. The very next line, and we can get into this, the very next line says, however, and you know, they always say, ignore everything that comes before the but. So Hamas's but is, but we are willing to accept a long-term truce that is basically a two-state solution along 1967 lines. And the reason they call it a long-term truce is that it allows them to maintain their pride of not having to say that they are willing to recognize Israel and accept a two-state solution while still accepting it as an objective reality. Because they would be saying, well, this is just a long-term truce. Of course, that's all anything is in this world, is a long-term truce. That's all you get. And then after this long-term truce, there would be negotiations that you then enter into that yields an actual two-state solution, an actual recognition.

But they're not going to do that preemptively. And they think that Arafat doing that preemptively, recognizing Israel without getting recognition of a Palestinian state, was a mistake that led to the current situation, that endless occupation. I can read some parts from this, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts in general on this, the notion of, even the notion of Hamas engaging with attorneys, can't pay them because they'd be under sanctions if they got paid, so that'd be pro bono,

but engaging with the West in this way suggests kind of a shift in strategy. I mean, it seems clearly to suggest a shift in strategy and one that perhaps could be attributed to the West, especially the United States, shifting perspective on Israel. It's not to say the West is embracing Hamas, although some of the Israel backers would certainly say that's what's happening. It gets equated. Anti-Zionism gets equated, conflated intentionally with support for Hamas. But because people are increasingly skeptical of fully backing Israel, not just on the kind of far left, but we see in opinion polls that creeping more and more into the kind of mainstream public perspective, especially here in the United States. I actually

am very curious for your perspective on this, Ryan, if that seems to be something that's juicing Hamas's, I guess, approach to negotiating with the West. They feel as though now they're in a position where Israel's narrative has slipped a bit, for better or worse, in the West. And they can now come in and operate like a state. Yeah. Is that kind of? Yeah, I think. And I think they have been heartened to see the amount of support from the global public, from so many countries joining South Africa's ICJ case, for instance.

So support not for Hamas, though, because what you just said, people would say you're saying Hamas is heartened by the support for Hamas. The support for resistance against Israel. Yeah. And a lot of them equate that to some support for Hamas. Because, like, Hamas argues— Hamas equates that with support for Hamas. Yes.

Even though many of the people who are backing—or who are opposing Israel would say— Doesn't mean we support Hamas. Hey. And Hamas makes—Hamas actually addresses that in this legal filing or at least in this side letter. What they say is, look, a lot of, what they say is we understand people are against the genocide. People are against what Israel is doing. And we are the ones that are fighting against that. Like literally fighting against it.

So therefore you've got to give us some credit for doing that. But the discussion of anti-Semitism is truly fascinating. So let's roll through some of this. And you can put that first element back up on the screen. For some reason, they say, they write, or he writes, we reject any allegations that we are anti-Semitic or that we target Jewish people. And this is a fascinating line. He says, I appreciate that there is a level of controversy surrounding some of the wording of our founding charter. The founding charter includes explicit anti-Semitism. Yes. So he explains that or argues, this was drafted without consultation with the senior leadership who were either in prison or in exile at the time.

Hamas has published a series of other documents since then, culminating in our document of general principles and policies of 2017, all of which expressly distinguish between Jews and Zionists. I have incorporated parts of that policy within this witness statement as continuing to reflect the positions of the movement. So that is as close as you're going to get, I think, to an apology for the language that, the anti-Semitic language that was in the original charter documents. And then they, so then he goes on to say explicitly, our struggle is not against Jewish people because of their religion, but against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jewish people with their own colonial project and illegal entity. We acknowledge and appreciate the solidarity shown to our people and our struggle by many Jewish people around the world, including within, quote, Israel, whose stance against

Zionism exposes the dangerous lies that conflates Judaism with Zionism. And that's the line that I was saying. I was talking to Jeremy about this this morning, and he was saying he thinks that that's kind of an unprecedented statement from a member of Hamas, a founding member of Hamas even, to say, we acknowledge and appreciate the solidarity shown to our people by many Jewish people, including within Israel. I mean, they put Israel in quotes because that's what they do because they don't recognize it officially. But that is a significant step. So they go on. We are particularly appalled, and this is the part that I said sounds like they're watching this program. We are particularly appalled by the weaponization of anti-Semitism

to attempt to silence those standing against apartheid, occupation, and genocide. The Zionist entity and its supporters have completely undermined the struggle against genuine anti-Semitism by manipulating the term to protect the Zionist entity from criticism and censure. Over the past year, Zionists have accused numerous officials and institutions of being anti-Semitic, including the UN Special Rapporteur, the UN General Secretary, UNRWA, the ICJ, the ICC, the government of South Africa, the Irish Dowsage, Simon Harris, and the president of Ireland, Michael Higgins. In the process, Zionists have debased and degraded the important definition of anti-Semitism until it means almost nothing. Zionists, many of them not Jewish,

have deliberately fashioned an utterly warped definition of anti-Semitism, and they consciously wield it to shield Zionism and Israel from entirely legitimate criticism. At a time when actual anti-Semitism is on the rise, this shameless crying wolf is a staggeringly irresponsible and dangerous policy to pursue. It diminishes our ability to combat anti-Semitism when and where it does actually arise. Where's the lie? I mean there's plenty of genuine anti-semitism. And that is Hamas's point, which is fascinating. Hamas is calling out its own... the rise... no no no Hamas is saying anti-semitism is on the rise genuine anti-semitism is on the rise Yeah, and this conflation of Zionism and anti anti-semitism is fueling it right which is true

And their argument is going to be that they are now the bulwark They are they are they are arguing the tip of the spear more than the idea fighting anti-semitism Yes, I Mean that's I feel like the you know They are doing more than the ADL to combat anti-Semitism. I mean, that's, I feel like the, you know, the galaxy brain meme where it's like the game of 4D chess. But if you step back, like, why is Hamas, like, Hamas's argument is our problem is with the Zionists. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I'm just skeptical that it's actually representative of Hamas leadership's views. It sounds like tactically it's – I think tactically it's very clever.

I'm just genuinely skeptical that – that charter was changed what in 2017 2018 but well 2017 is when it was codified um there like he was saying there were many steps taken in that direction right to move away from that anti-semitic language that was that was inserted in the beginning yeah i mean we could talk about it the there is a non-insignificant portion of people who are in the Gaza Strip who aren't even in Hamas who have, I would say, like deep bigotry. And it doesn't—I'm not saying it doesn't exist on the other side, but have deep bigotry towards Jews. And so I suppose I think it's both substantively important and interesting that they're making this tactical shift. I also think I'm skeptical of how genuinely that represents their position. And so they spell this.

They go further into the history here and make the point, which historically is an accurate point that there has been far, far more anti-Semitism in Europe, and if you include Russia and Europe, than in the Middle East over the years. Like that's just been the case. So here they write, The Palestinian people have always stood against oppression and justice and the committing of massacres against civilians regardless of who commit them. Based on our religious and moral values, we clearly stated our rejection

to what the Jews were exposed to by Nazi Germany. Hamas is of the view that the, quote, Jewish problem, anti-Semitism, and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage. The Arab and Islamic environment was an example of coexistence, cultural interaction, and religious freedoms. The current conflict is caused by the Zionist aggressive behavior and its alliance with the Western colonial powers. Therefore, we reject the exploitation of the Jewish suffering in Europe to justify the oppression against our people in Palestine. The Zionist movement, which was able, with the help of Western powers, to

occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settler colonialism. That form has already been defeated and eradicated from much of the world and must similarly be defeated and eradicated from Palestine. So that's an argument you hear a lot, that obviously Nazi Germany was a European, that this was, that was Europe. And you'll often hear people say, what did Palestine have to do with that? Why did Palestine pay for the genuine sins of Europe, which flowed out of their history of anti-Semitism? The Ottoman Empire, compared to Europe,

far, far better place for Jewish people Jews were fleeing anti-Semitism in Europe to the Ottoman Empire and being recruited to go there no I mean there's something interesting

to the point I was making this was back in 2019 a Hamas official when did Spain really kick off its real anti-semitic purge when the Muslims left the this Hamas official back in 2019 Fati Hamad had said all of you seven million Palestinians abroad enough of the warming up you have Jews everywhere and we must attack every Jew on the go and say that again one again? Say that again.

This is a 2019 quote from a Hamas official, Fati Hamad, who said, all of you 7 million Palestinians abroad, enough of the warming up. You have Jews everywhere. We must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughtering and killing, if God permits, enough of the warming up. Well, back in 2019, so before October 7th, obviously, he walked that back. The point that you're making, he was clearly under pressure from Hamas's political leadership. Yeah, what are you doing? Right. And he's- But it's not our policy. And he said in a statement that was posted on Hamas's website, Hamas's consistent adopted

policy of limiting its resistance to the Zionist occupation that usurps Palestine's land and defiles its holy sites. He said that's what he supports. Now, limiting its resistance to the Zionist occupation that usurps Palestine's land. And this is both the point you're making and I think the point that I'm making, which is it's not new for Hamas to start trending in this direction, but this represents a significant tactical shift. On the other hand, my point is just that I don't think you go from point A to point B if you're Fati Hamad because you've suddenly had a change of heart and don't think Palestinians everywhere should kill Jews everywhere. I think you do that because you're

under political pressure. And so all I'm saying is that I am skeptical that this represents some type of genuine dissolution of bigotry among the ranks across the board. Let's say there is anti-Semitism and hatred in the hearts of some members of Hamas, which I don't doubt for a second. The question is whether that as a policy is suppressed or whether it is encouraged. Right. No, I agree. Yeah, I think that's a good question. Like in the U.S., for instance,

there are all kinds of ugly sentiments that some American people have, whether the government and a political movement is celebrating those and pouring gasoline on them versus whether they're telling you through education and through messaging and through modeling good behavior are saying, no, that's not actually how we as Americans are going to treat immigrants or whoever. Cultural norms. Yeah. Just let's do the British part for a second. Marzouk writes, the British government's decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of

its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid occupation, ethnic cleansing in Palestine for over a century. Hamas does not and never has posed a threat to Britain despite the latter's ongoing complicity in the genocide of our people, it is perhaps out of colonial guilt that Britain fears that one day those it oppresses will strike back against the sponsors of the Zionist entity. Britain should have no such fear, unquote. Like, look, guys, we're like our beef. And they're like, look, our beef is not with you. It's so I mean, I think from like a realist perspective, there's a there's an argument for dealing with Hamas as a state entity that makes negotiating. And we saw this with actually Steve Witkoff and Witkoff got a ton of flack for for actually stepping in when the Biden administration's negotiations with Hamas had stalled for a long time. So you can't talk to Hamas. You can't deal with Hamas. You can't negotiate with Hamas.

And Witkoff came in and actually yielded results to have direct negotiations. I mean, he was going through Qatar, obviously, but to have more direct negotiations with Hamas Does that put? the world on a better track to some lasting peace, I think as You know uncomfortable as it is for the West It's it probably does and while we're while we're talking about uncomfortable things. Let's let's do let's do another one here They have a section on prisoners. So I want people to hear this, whether they agree with it or not. It is a tragic reality that almost every Palestinian household has a family member being detained in an Israeli prison.

They forgot to put the quotes around Israeli there. Guess they just recognized Israel, look at that. Since 1967, over 800,000 Palestinians, including children, have been incarcerated by the Zionist military. The thousands of Palestinian political prisoners or hostages currently languishing in Zionist prisons where they are routinely tortured, raped, and mistreated include hundreds of women and children, many of whom are subject

to administrative detention which can be renewed indefinitely. That is true. The release of the Palestinian prisoners is a consensus position. This is where it gets uncomfortable for Western ears. The release of the Palestinian prisoners is a consensus position among Palestinians with strong support from all sectors of society. Where appeals to the international community to release our prisoners have fallen on deaf ears, our experience has demonstrated that the most effective method of liberating our prisoners is through the prisoner exchange process. So in case that needs translation for anybody, they are explaining to the public and to the British government here why they take hostages. That there are thousands of Palestinian prisoners rotting

away in administrative detention, facing, according to human rights groups, torture, sexual assault in a systematic way. The world public has been unable to get them out, so they're going to take them. What they're saying, what they have found is the most successful way to get them out is to take hostages and then exchange the hostages. And that's true. That has been, and that was the real goal of October 7th, was to take a lot of hostages. Right. And then exchange them for the thousands of prisoners.

They're saying the root cause of their hostage taking is your hostage taking. That's the argument that they're making here. Like I said, that's not going to be a comfortable one for Westerners. No. No, no, no.

But it's... That's what people mean when they say history didn't start on October 7th. Well, it's also the problem with just putting everybody into this or crush Hamas, you have to actually understand Hamas. You can't just dismiss how they see their intentions and motivations. It's not to say those intentions and motivations are right. It's just to say it's actually useful to understand their intentions and motivations. Yeah. A couple other pieces.

They try to take credit for the Great March of Return. This was the 2018 nonviolent civil society-led demonstrations that every Friday would kind of march to the fence and picnic, and it was kind of celebratory. And it was the kind of nonviolent resistance that defenders of Israel have always said, this is what the Palestinians should do. This is what we would respect. This is like Gandhi. This is like MLK.

Do that and we'll give you your liberation. Instead, they gave them bullets in their knees and created an entire generation of crippled people in Palestine. Hamas initially kind of resisted the Great March of Return, but because it was so popular in Gaza, eventually endorsed it. The way they cover it here is they say Hamas has a history of both armed and unarmed resistance. The latter was manifested in its support and facilitation of initiatives like the Great March of Return and Hamas's involvement in parliamentary elections. Unfortunately, such initiatives were only met with further military assaults by the Zionist entity and genocidal sanctions imposed by the Western world. I think we can finish with, let's touch on their writing of October 7th, because this is also at the center of obviously

everything. This is why 18 months later it's still being flattened. So he writes, on the morning of October 7th, Qassam brigades executed a military maneuver targeting the Gaza division of Israel's southern command. So very clearly situating it as a military effort, not directed at civilians. That's the point he's trying to make there. Much has been said and written about the operation, but there has been little coverage in the English-speaking world about the intended nature of the operation as articulated by the movement itself in its various written statements and interviews over the past 17 months. I've prepared a separate witness statement focusing on the operation. suffice to say here that the instructions given

to our elite forces, our NUKPA, were to kill and capture Zionist soldiers and not to target women, children, and the elderly. To the extent that any individual crimes were allegedly committed by our soldiers, we have internal mechanisms for investigating and disciplining them. Unlike the Zionist entity, we take justice and accountability very seriously, and to that extent, we remain, as always, prepared to cooperate with any international investigations and inquiries into the operation, even if Israel refuses to do so. As we know, hundreds of civilians were killed, particularly those attending the festival, as well as people who were in the kibbutzim. So this is their effort to say that that was not their policy, that they regret it, and that they're open to investigations. I don't know what investigations they have.

They're sort of claiming here that they would have carried out some internal investigations and found people who committed these war crimes and brought them to justice. I haven't seen any evidence that that has happened. It doesn't mean it hasn't, has or hasn't, but I haven't seen any evidence. A lot of those soldiers would have been killed, like never actually made it back to Gaza to face that alleged inquiry. But anyway, how do you read that writing of October 7th? I mean, I don't find it surprising. It's all, this is the report here overall

is just, I think, indicative of something changing. And it's not entirely surprising, but it does seem new. I don't know. It's something new, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's something new. Yeah. It's, it's, it's trying to meet, it's right. It's trying to acknowledge it. Actually it is what it is. They use the word alleged, but what they're doing is acknowledging that war crimes were committed and that there should be an investigation, um, into those, into those war crimes. The fact that the rave was happening there has changed history in such a profound way. And we've been working on an investigation

that we'll have out soon at Dropsite, I hope, about why that rave was given an extra night. Like, do you know the story here? Yes. It was not supposed to even be there on Saturday. Yeah. And by Friday, there were all sorts of intel warnings that something was happening. Mm-hmm.

And they applied for an extra night, and they're like a mile from the fence and were granted it. Yeah. What were they doing there in the first place when there's like so much area in the desert where they could be Yeah, like what? If if they had not been there the number of civilian casualties would have been met many hundreds less and number of passages Many you know significantly less

It's that does not forgive or excuse the decision by the militants there to tear us there, to kill innocent people. We're just there celebrating. It doesn't forgive that for a second. Last piece, just so I can, because I went over this, but I'll just read it. This is their proposed 67 solution. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances, and the pressures, and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and

complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. So there is the piece that defenders of Israel say, see, I told you. All they want is the eradication of Israel, complete, total genocide of Israel. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, and this is where their compromise comes, when they say they're not compromising, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital along the ceasefire line of the 4th of June 1967 with the return of the refugees and the displace to their homes from which they were expelled to be a formula of national consensus. Hamas has on numerous occasions for over two decades

proposed a hudna or long-term truce on this basis. Its goodwill has been abused by the Zionists who have assassinated members of its leadership to undermine such efforts. So that's a reference to there have been internal, there are internal fight schisms within Hamas over this question. There are people who support this. Basically, what is a two-state endgame within Hamas? And then there are those who do not. And Israel has systematically assassinated all of the ones who are in the moderate camp

in order to elevate the extremist camp and then to point to the extremists as the reason that you need to do um you need to do endless war and notice how what they call they don't say they support it what they say they consider it a formula of national consensus like they're really being pulled to it yeah kind of being forced all right they're like they're like we understand that palestinian national consensus is that this would be an acceptable outcome. And we're not going to get in the way of that. So anyway. Well, the rest of the Arab world matters.

And the right of return, that's like, Israelis will also say, well, they're calling for the return of hostages to their homes, which makes it impossible. Because you'd have to uproot people who are currently in their homes. But that's where you negotiate. What is that? What do you do with that right? You have that right, but can that right then be assigned to a different home? You're not going to actually physically remove people from their homes like settlers do in the West Bank on a regular basis.

More great reporting from Dropsite, Ryan. Thank you. Yeah, interesting stuff. That's for sure. Truly. Speaking of very interesting stuff, let's move on to your interview with Naomi Klein. Maybe you can set this up because you two had a great conversation. She was name-checked in a Compact Magazine Substack article by Jeff Schoenberger, who's a really interesting writer and was reflecting on his own memories of what the left was like at the end of the 90s and in the early aughts when the No Logo movement that Naomi Klein obviously gave name to, but was inspired by and then became a part of through the work of No Logo, he was

reflecting and saying, this was a real push against globalization. And I went back and watched a documentary that Naomi Klein did. I think she tells you in this interview that it was back in 2000, where there's a clip of her talking about globalization's impact. Much of the documentary is focused on globalization's impact on sweatshop laborers, and that'll be very familiar to people who remember these days. But a lot of it also was focused on what had happened to American workers.

And there was this slice of the interview, about a minute long, where she sounded, back in 2000, a lot of the same notes that people on the right are sounding now in defense of Trump's tariff policy overall, if not the particular tactics, but of the policy. Right. Yeah. And credit to you for suggesting this interview. We wanted to have her on the show this morning, but she lives on the West Coast of Canada. So it's like way too early for that. So I interviewed her yesterday afternoon. Let's roll some of that. 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

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and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. All right, joining us now to talk more about this global collapse of the new world order or whatever we want to call it uh is they call it a great reset right the great reset this is this is the great reset uh is none other than uh naomi klein who relevant to this uh this conversation is the author of uh many uh books but in particular no logo published in 1999 which kind of drew inspiration from and also provided inspiration to the burgeoning anti-globalization movement at the time. I don't know if I told you this. I got my kind of radical political awakening from that and from Seattle.

And then I ended up going, Seattle was end of 1999. I was in college on the East Coast, so I was not about to go to Seattle. But I did go to, they called it A16. Yes, it was IMF World Bank in Washington, D.C., yeah. April 2020, this like two or three day protest. One day was beautiful. Another day it was like 40 degrees and raining. And I remember just getting drenched the entire day. And then they finish it off by pepper spraying everybody, tear gassing. Were you at the, did and I was writing about it, but I couldn't convince anyone to send me because at that point, you couldn't convince sort of mainstream editors that there was a possible story to be told because the movement had yet to sort of burst onto the introduction of that movement to the world. And they understand, OK, OK, there is something going on here. And Iization politics. And this is a reference to, you know, obviously this famous, I guess it was a tweet on October 11th attacks, the energy around the anti globalization movement really moved into anti war politics, trying to stop the looming invasion of Iraq unsuccessfully, trying to stop that and obviously failed to do so and didn't really bubble back until 2010. And so now here we are more than 25 years later. And the biggest wrecking

ball that's brought to the system of global free trade is brought by Donald Trump and brought in a way that is, I don't want to put any words in your mouth. So I'm just curious, what's been your reaction to seeing the arc from Seattle to Trump? I have to say that quite a few of the think pieces, I'll put that in air quotes a little bit, including the one that you just put up there, are based on a bunch of really wrong assumptions about what that movement was in the first place. Not to say that there weren't protectionist elements to it. It was always a kind of an awkward coalition of more nationalist trade unions and internationalist human rights activists, environmentalists. You know, the slogan in

Seattle was Teamsters and Turtles Together Again, which was a reference to the fact that there was this coalition between big unions like the Teamsters that were more interested in just protecting American jobs and environmentalists who were looking at how environmental deregulation or a race to the bottom was impacting, in this case, turtles who are being caught up in fishing nets. The point is, we spent a ton of time back in the day actively correcting the record that we were not opposed to trade. We were opposed to the phrase we used at the time was corporate rule. You know, and there were huge teach-ins in Seattle and Washington that were all about the fact that this thing that was just calling itself, you know, this kind of anodyne, you know, free trade was not free, that it was a wish list for multinational corporations, overwhelmingly U.S. corporations,

to just maximize their profits. And we are very, very far into that successful revolution. What we were naming at the time was that what this particular set of trade rules that were all about deregulation and pushing privatization and economic austerity would deliver would be a race to the bottom globally on labor, on environmental standards. And, you know, I think anybody who thinks that Trump represents an end to corporate rule and, you know, no, he is the fulfillment of it. Musk is the fulfillment of it. And definitely there are rifts inside their strange and awkward coalition about exactly how to go about this. But I would say the race to the bottom has been successful. And I think the reason why there is even the prospect of reassuring some production in the United States is because unions have been so successfully weakened over these 30 years.

Because they're counting on a huge amount of automation. So they're not planning on paying any workers for most of this onshore production. And they've been saying this openly, right? Like, oh, we're going to be bringing like the iPhone assembly jobs back. But it's not going to be humans who are going to be assembling them, right? And the other piece of this, and it's kind of driving me mad that people aren't connecting the dots, is where Doge fits in with all of this, right? Because here is Musk and the boys who are decimating the regulatory state. So if there is, to an extent that there will be some onshoring under this new regime, like bringing jobs back to the US, it's going to be precisely under the conditions of that race to the bottom that we were trying to stop in the first place, right? So this is not an end to neoliberalism. In many ways, it's its sort of logical culmination. And yeah, we tried to stop it. So, you know, sue us. We did try. Yeah.

And so my colleague, Emily, who couldn't join us for this, found this clip from many years ago. Maybe you can tell us when exactly this was. I wanted to get your – I'll play this for you, the much younger Naomi Klein. Oh, God. And then get your reaction to it now, how you would say it now. But the significance for a company like Nike is that building these kind of utopian branded world costs much more than just advertising a product. So you often hear companies openly saying that we have made a choice, we have decided to build our brand. But that choice has consequences. And one of the consequences is that

when that decision is made, it is often accompanied by a decision to sell off factories and to embrace the Nike model, the company that owns all this intellectual property but doesn't own any factories. When a company decides to embrace this model, that obviously immediately affects their workforces in North America and Europe. People who had steady unionized jobs, were paid enough to support a family, lose those jobs. Cutting 6,000 jobs. Now unemployed. Lost another 42,000 jobs. Cutting 11,500 jobs.

Other jobs from factories across the South to plants overseas, where labor is cheaper. The communities that were built around a factory that depended on these factories are often gutted. And the jobs that often come to replace these manufacturing jobs are these new economy jobs that are often service sector jobs. I would guess that you still agree with that analysis. When was that from, by the way, do you think? at the time was described as companies closing factories in one location and opening factories in another location. So what I was articulating in that clip, and it remains true in most sectors, there are some sectors that never fully embrace this model, but I'll just put an asterisk there. But this idea that really owning your own factories is kind of a loser's game, right?

That if you're smart, you keep it to continue to own their assembly plants, right? But everything that they could outsource to this web of contractors where you'd have some plausible deniability, they did. And that remains true. And this is, you know, one of the people who really represents this very, very powerfully is Donald Trump, right? I mean, he is a quintessential sort of hollow brand that particularly after The Apprentice realized that he could make more money not opening his own hotels and buildings, but leasing out the Trump brand to whoever wanted to slap it onto their development and so on. And so when you talk about U.S. companies bringing the jobs home, it's completely anachronistic to how most of these companies actually function. They don't want to own the kinds of factories at the level that they used to because it's much, much more profitable to outsource all of that to a web of contractors.

So some of them will come to the U.S., but they'll still continue to use the leverage of being able to pit different contractors and subcontractors against each other for who can deliver the pieces of the assembly line at the lowest price. None of that is changing. So let's say that the Trump administration watched that clip and said, wow, this author really diagnosed the problem well. Come on in, like, tell us how we can fix this for American workers. And we can, like, what should they be doing if they were actually serious about... That assumes that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have any interest in actually and genuinely helping American workers. If they wanted to do that, you know, the surest way that they would do that is support labor rights instead of trying to

undercut them or destroy the NLRB, you know, fight unionization in your own plants as Elon Musk has done. So, you know, I think that this is really the cover story for their use, you know, and I think unfortunately we've got a lot of labor leaders who are willing to play along with it. And, you know, maybe there will be some marginal gains. But that remains to be seen. I think it's a very big gamble for big unions like the UAW to support this tariff regime.

And I think the global impact of this, you know, I'm talking to you from Canada. And, you know, the way we, you know, many of us understand the impact of these terrorists is like, this is not the U.S. returning to protectionism. As Trump says again and again, it's about leverage, right? If you listen to what he's actually saying, he's saying Canada is being unfair. Why are they being unfair? Because they're not letting our banks in. You know, they're not, you know, and the U.S. health care sector desperately wants in. So there are a few protections that remained in place under the neoliberal trading regime. And I think that there's a calculation now, and there is an agreement across the board among U.S. corporations, that now the U.S. has the leverage to get even more,

right, to knock down the remaining barriers. So, you know, I don't believe he really is a protectionist in the way that he wants to market himself to U.S. manufacturing workers for whom he represents a kind of a, you know, I've called it toxic nostalgia in the past, like this idea that you're going to return to some, you know, manufacturing heyday that has this idea that you're going to return to some, you know, manufacturing heyday that has passed and it isn't going to happen. And, you know, where I think you really see the lie of it is around AI because, you know, some of his, like the centerpiece of the biggest investments that he has announced so far as president

have been with the big tech companies around massive data centers that are unleashing technologies that will decimate American jobs. So this idea that he would bring me in to figure out how to help American workers is absurd. I reject the premise. I think he's a marketer, and part of how he's marketing himself is as a champion of American workers who he has screwed his entire life. Last question for you. One thing you've been really good at throughout your writing career has been seeing where things are going next, seeing around the corner that others couldn't quite see around. Do you still have that vision? And do you see, like, where do you see this going?

Like, where is the United States headed? Where is this world system headed? Yeah. Well, I mean, this is where I think that these articles, these, you know, these takes around, okay, this really is, this is what the left always wanted, the end of neoliberalism, as opposed to understanding that this is a new stage of deregulated capitalism, are really dangerous. Because where I see it going in here, this is not like some prophetic power. This is like actually listening to Peter Thiel, to Elon Musk, to the people who are underwriting

the Trump administration, who if you listen to what they say and also where they have put their money and what they're doing, what you see is they no longer believe in the nation state at all. You know, they're excited about things like Freedom City. They're excited about places like Prospera in Honduras, where they managed to create like a sort of a corporate city statestate, they're very excited by the possibilities of what AI can accomplish, you know, in this kind of corporate secessionist movement. And so I think this really is a fulfillment of the corporate rule dream beyond the nation-state. So they still see a role for the nation state at this phase but i think

beyond it they want to shed they want to shed it um so yeah i think that's where we're headed and i think acting as if this has been a like a wish fulfillment for the left is is it really dangerous distraction from no logo to no state next all Once again, you can find leftists who will make that same argument. This is not what they meant. Right. Yes, it's not what we meant. That's not the withering that we meant. Naomi Klein, thank you so much for joining me.

Very much appreciate it. And good luck in Canada. Sorry that we're all of a sudden enemies. That's all right. I don't quite know how that happened. We're going to gang up on you with the rest of the world. All right. Take care.

All right. I'd say it. Bye. All right, Emily, what did you think? You know, this is what's interesting. It's sort of like you're faced with either she's completely right about Elon Musk and Trump is such an interesting point or such an interesting case study in this like incredible argument she makes about the brandification of American companies that they've, Nike, for example, owns intellectual property and then has other factories that they buy from. But it's the Nike IP that Nike is based around. It's not, it's not making Nike. It's buying from people who make Nike and then it's branding it with the IP. Trump truly is that. Trump stakes. I mean, just unbelievable how Donald Trump, but that's what's so almost Shakespearean about this is that Trump as that man, the man who is her case in point is also now the person who is pissing off all of the multinational corporations, all of the investors. He is the one who is giving the middle finger that I think people who were

lobbing Molotov cocktails at the WTO or in Seattle in 1999, that is what, if it were coming from one of them or Bernie Sanders, he'd be like, I am watching this burn and it's feeling great. Now, that might not be a substantive critique of Naomi. I just, I thought it was really interesting to hear her reflect on that. And it is so Shakespearean that Donald Trump is the guy who represents everything she was arguing exists, rightfully arguing exists. But on the other hand, I think there's something to be said for, like, Trump may embody all of those bad things, but the alternative, there's no alternative. There's Bernie, but other than that, like, Bernie doesn't control the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has said no to Bernie over and over again.

And Republicans did that. They said no to their populists over and over again, and they got Trump. And now it's like, who, if it's not him, who? And if it's not, the only way you get it with Trump is this insane process. And I just don't think the jury's fully out on whether or not what Trump does. I'm not saying it's a big possibility. I've said this all show. But there is a possibility that he does actually restructure global trade in a way that's that's what restructure

global trade in a way that is ultimately productive not saying it's a 90% chance but there's a chance and maybe I'm maybe I'm too hopeful and the the analogy I was thinking of and I'm not saying that Trump is Hitler but like let's say in the 1920s Rosa Luxemburg is out there and the German communists and socialists are out there saying like, look, another world is possible. We want to get rid of it and replace it with something different. And then the National Socialists end up winning and replacing it with something different. You wouldn't be like, oh, well, I guess you're happy then, right? You got something different.

It's like, no, it's worse. It can always be worse. It's my point. Yeah. And just because you were against something doesn't mean you're necessarily for the thing that replaces that thing. I think that was a really good point to hear from both you and Naomi. I do agree with this. And I'm probably, I don't want to ascribe this to her because I don't know if it's necessarily true.

But I do think that there's sometimes just this, because Trump is such a polarizing and bizarre figure, sometimes there's just this barrier. It's like a, I don't know, a cultural barrier that people on the left are still like really icked out about ever transgressing and ever saying we wanted radical politics and here's the radical politics of Donald Trump. It's like when Susan Sarandon, one of my favorite moments, longtime viewers of the show will know, was talking to Chris Hayes and got, you know, just massive viral attention for saying that she, that maybe by not voting for Hillary, if Trump wins,

he will bring the revolution sooner. And Chris Hayes was like, you mean in a, in a Leninist way? It's just, yeah. Sometimes it's just, to me, some of these leftist politics are so, and I think fascinatingly radical. I feel like that's the world that you were steeped in. And it's like the Schellenberger headline that you talked about, what did y'all think post-nobelism meant? Vibes, papers, essays? It's pretty funny. I'll give them that. It is. It is. I'll give them that. That was a great interview. I'm really like, I thought it was fascinating. I was really appreciative that she sat down and you did such a great job. Thank you, Naomi.

We really appreciate it. And thank you for the idea. Oh, yeah, anytime. I'm full of ideas. There you go. All right, so we'll be back, I assume, on Friday. We'll be down another 10% by then. We'll see. Headed towards zero.

Ryan's the one who's community noting David Sachs just every hour. He's correcting him. Good luck out there, people. Yeah, thanks for tuning in, and we will see you back here with Crystal. Maybe Sagar. Maybe we can pull Sagar into one of our Friday sessions. He's very busy right now, but maybe we can pull him in someday. He's still in time conflict, but maybe we can get him this Friday.

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