Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/1/25: Trump Signs Ukraine Mineral Deal, Tesla Searches For New CEO, Rubio Plots Global Gulag, Pritzker Attacks Do Nothing Dems, Tech Ceo Says All Jobs Will Go To AI, Alex Jones Turns On Trump

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Krystal and Emily discuss Trump signing a Ukraine minerals deal, Trump tells kids they'll only get two dolls for Christmas, Tesla searches for new CEO, Rubio plots global gulags, Pritzker rebukes do nothing Dems, tech CEO says AI will replace all jobs except his, Alex Jones turns on Trump.   David Weigel: https://x.com/daveweigel   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 we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Breaking Points. Bunch of stuff going on today, Emily. This is a very full show. Oh, yeah. We kept adding things up until like the time I went to bed last night.

And then afterwards. Yeah, true. Very true. Elon was up. Elon was tweeting. The Tesla board was tweeting. Lots of things were unfolding. Before we get to that, so that I don't forget, Spotify users, I know some of you guys are still having issues getting the video to load. We are talking to Spotify, trying to work it out. We're kind of at the whims of these tech giants, so please bear with us. Sorry for the technical difficulties, but we are doing everything we possibly can to resolve it. Because when it works, it is a great experience on Spotify,

so we're going to keep working on that. All right. In the show today, we have a Ukraine minerals deal. We have the latest with regard to tariffs, including Donald Trump basically going full Grinch mode. No more dolls for little girls. Totally support this. The girls can only have two dolls. He said maybe you'd have 30, but now you only have two. Now you have two. We'll play the video.

Yeah. It's something. It's really something. As we were mentioning, Elon, there was a report from the Wall Street Journal that Tesla is looking for a new CEO. Elon and the Tesla board now disputing that, but obviously that is a remarkable turn of events and Tesla stock has been plummeting in the Trump 2.0 era and their sales have fallen off a cliff because Elon is so toxic, et cetera.

So a lot to get into there. We've got some developments with regard to deportations, including New York Times had a good story about McKellie and this deal that he cut with the Trump administration to house what he was insisting had to be criminals and was apparently reportedly, according to this report, upset at the fact that the people that they sent to him did not have criminal records. There had been nothing adjudicated in the courts, or at least many of them did not. So interesting insights there. Also, one of the pro-Palestine students, foreign students who had been arrested and detained has now been released. And what the judge says about that is also quite extraordinary and

would have huge implications if this is upheld, you know, in higher level courts, huge implications for all of the foreign students who have been detained simply for their speech with regard to Palestine. So that's a really important one. We're going to have Dave Weigel join us to do a little rundown of the early 2020 Dem contenders. J.B. Pritzker, big J.B., out there making moves. Can we call him Meatball J.B.? That's inappropriate. We got to come up with something original. He can't have Ron DeSantis as nickname. Come on, Emily.

It's true. Do better. You're not right. Yeah, you're right. You're right. But he's being, he got asked, Weigel actually asked him an interesting question about like, well, are you an oligarch? And so his answer was pretty interesting in revealing Andy Beshear's down there.

Gretchen Whitmer is out there, but with Donald Trump, apparently. Not the best political instincts I've ever seen. Beshear's on Fox News. Whitmer is giving speeches in front of Trump. Trump's 100-day rally. Things are weird, yep. So lots of different tactics being deployed by these early contenders. I wanted to get the story into the show.

Mark Andreessen made some crazy, I mean, not crazy, perfect comments about AI, where basically he said he thinks AI is going to replace everyone but him. Yeah. Venture capitalists will be the only ones who are not replaced by AI. The valuable people. That's right. Yeah. That's right. People who create wealth. Truly irreplaceable, that industry. No computer could ever. These guys are amazing. And we want to try to get to some comments from Alex Jones, a little critique of Trump alongside Fuentes, who's long been critiquing Trump from the right as a Nazi, Trump not being Nazi enough. So, but anyway, kind of interesting there and fits with

some of the other like little critiques that you've seen come out of MAGA World vis-a-vis Trump. Yeah. I mean, this is a big show. And part of it is because, Crystal, you just had to get Marc Andreessen in there. Couldn't resist. I can't resist that cone hand, what can I say? Looking forward to it. It'll be good. Let's start with the mineral deal in Ukraine.

We can put the first element up on the screen. Breaking news yesterday. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Ukraine-U.S. sign economic deal for minerals. And the journal's subheading there is, The two countries finally reached an agreement after several false starts. You'll remember the mineral deal is what was on the table when Zelensky visited the White House. And the infamous Oval Office meeting transpired just a couple of months ago.

Now they're back at it. They finally got that deal signed, which I think, Crystal, was very predictable that it was ultimately going to happen. The fits and starts felt more like personnel, personal, I should say, not personnel, personal hurdles for Zelensky and Trump to both overcome in order to feel confident that it made sense. I don't even know personal hurdles. More like posturing. Yep. Yep. Yep. Because the reality is there's an incredible quote here from this woman, Heidi Krebo Rediker, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who says this is a win-win deal because, quote, the Graham had actually been presenting as a way to keep the Trump administration invested in Ukraine and committed to Ukraine. the idea being that if you have a bunch of American capitalists, American billionaires who are profiting off of the minerals in Ukraine, that they are de facto then backing up the

Ukrainian government and that, you know, that would act as a deterrent for Russia continuing to fight. And, you know, it would basically create a situation where, you know, some billionaires who are tied to Trump can make a lot of money. And if things go sideways again, America will once again be on the hook for defending Ukraine, whether that's through continued weapons shipments or whether it would ultimately be through, you know, sending soldiers. I don't want to like, you know, I don't want to fearmonger here, but that's effectively the dynamic that's being set up. This would be a long-term engagement in the future of Ukraine, which is why, you know, I don't want to fearmonger here, but that's effectively the dynamic that's being set up. This would be a long-term engagement in the future of Ukraine, which is why, you know,

it's what Zelensky wanted, it's what Lindsey Graham wanted, et cetera. And I, you know, I always thought that the show in the Oval with Zelensky, you and I differed on this, Sagar, and I differ on this as well, but my analysis at the time was that this was a way for Trump to give some red meat to the base because he had this big blow up and he's yelling at Zelensky and all of these sorts of things, which, you know, the base was very happy about because they've turned Zelensky into this villain. You know, they overtly like dislike Ukraine and want Trump to completely break with them. So he gave them that. But in the end, the result is exactly what, you know, what was pitched from the beginning.

Yeah, there's a, the journal says there's a distinction that was previously, so it doesn't require Ukraine to repay past military aid. And that, I suppose, is a pretty significant change, but not dramatic. I mean, it's definitely a new thing, but it also includes, as Wall Street Journal says, the U.S. being able to count new military aid into Ukraine as a contribution to the fund. So it makes sense that they were able to reach this deal at this point. Obviously, it's not the level of security guarantee that Zelensky was fairly insistent on. That's what blew up the original deal, is that Zelensky didn't feel comfortable with a mineral deal as a security guarantee. But it is seen by the White House as, this is how the journal puts it, quote,

a kind of security guarantee for Ukraine. And I suppose that's true because there would be significant U.S. business, there will be significant U.S. business interests on the table in Ukraine for, this is a 10-year deal, but for the foreseeable future. Also, Crystal, pretty interesting question about what exactly exists to be mined. Right. How much actually is there? There was some reporting that Zelensky was kind of overblowing, overselling. Yeah. What is actually there. Now, it also could be possible

that it's not fully known, like it's not fully mapped out what sort of minerals that are there. I was also wondering if the tariff, the trade war has put a little bit of pressure on the Trump administration to get this mineral deal done because China is, of course, cutting off the supply of some of the rare earth minerals that would presumably be, you know, be available within Ukraine. So that may have also provided some of the impetus to get this signed at this point. And I should also say, you know, as we're recording this, we don't actually have all the details. There's a few details in this Wall Street Journal report. There's been a few details that are out there publicly. We saw a previous draft that included not only minerals rights,

but basically that the U.S. would effectively economically colonize Ukraine with control over, you know, half of ports and half of a lot of economic activity in the country in perpetuity above and beyond the minerals rights. But as of yet, we don't know if that is what is entailed in this deal that was ultimately signed or not. So we'll await the details. At as of yet, we don't know if that is what is entailed in this deal that was ultimately signed or not. So we'll await the details. At the same time, Lindsey Graham is in the Senate pushing, you know, an even more aggressive sanctions regime against Russia in an attempt, I guess, to get them to come to the table. They seem to be quite resistant to coming to any sort of deal at this point because they have the upper hand in this war, including bombing Kiev in a way that required Trump to weigh in with his Vladimir stop tweet.

But let's put Lindsey up on the screen here. He's forging ahead, they say, on a plan to impose new sanctions on Russia, steep tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, gas, and uranium as Trump struggles to fulfill his campaign promise to end the war. In terms of the votes, it looks like Lindsey Graham does have the votes in the Senate. Of course, that doesn't guarantee that it would be brought to the floor. You would need John Thune to decide that this needs to be brought to the floor. By the end of the week, Lindsey Graham is predicting the bill will have at least 67 co-sponsors. That would be enough to override even a potential presidential veto. Trump himself has not weighed in on this potential bill that Lindsey Graham is working on. But I mean, we already threw a lot of sanctions at Russia. We threw effectively the

entire sanctions playbook at Russia. And it didn't have no impact. There was an impact, but it was not nearly what economists expected. able to survive and they would be able to withstand that. And I think it also gave China even a bit of a dry run of what this could look like if there was the sort of trade war, the sort of complete economic cutoff that they're facing from us right now. So interesting, you know, not surprising from Lindsey Graham taking even more aggressive hawkish approach, but that's what's on the table now. Well, yeah. And, you know, it's important to actually is a really important story to tack on to the context of signing this deal, because the hopeful, you know, even though this involves colonizing Ukrainian mineral resources,

and by the way, I mean, they do have, apparently they have 20 of 50 critical minerals, minerals that we consider critical. So that's like lithium and graphite, titanium, uranium, to your point, rare earth minerals that could have something to do with, there could be added incentives based on the tariff struggles in the last couple of months from the Trump administration. But they're also incredibly corrupt. This was the entire Republican argument against Burisma and Hunter Biden. And so it's definitely putting the United States into a complete economic mess that has military implications in Ukraine.

But hopefully what this means, at the very least, and it's not nothing, is that we're on a glide path to an actual ceasefire so that the thousands of people who are dying every single day, that those further lives can be safe because these battle lines are probably going to be, whatever ceasefire is eventually reached, it's probably going to look like where the battle lines are right now

in all likelihood. So Lindsey Graham continuing the saber rattle seems super unhelpful to the entire purpose of inking this particular deal. But we'll see where things go. Yeah, indeed. I mean, I think there's a lot of question marks. It's hard to see. It doesn't feel like we're terribly close to a ceasefire at this point, but you never know where we're going to end up. And certainly by signing this minerals deal, you are committing the U.S. to Ukraine for the long term so that a bunch of billionaires can get their stuff and get their rare earth minerals out of the ground and benefit from it. You know, this is another thing the Journal had a story on not long ago, was that

Chevron and Shell have tried to mine in Ukraine, but the corruption in Ukraine has made it extremely difficult for that process to be done in a way that's profitable for them. And so now we're just to mine in Ukraine. But the corruption in Ukraine has made it extremely difficult for that process to be done in a way that's profitable for them. And so now we're just going even fully more into the experiment of trying to extract minerals from Ukraine in an effort

to stop a brutal conflict that would further... I mean, if the United States sees this as a potential security guarantee, that is a really scary thing, actually. Yeah. Right?

Like, we're at the whims of Ukrainian oligarchs. I mean, we'll have more control over them now at this point, although we always had control over them. But that's what's so gross about this, is that it's just American oligarchs mingling their interests with Ukrainian oligarchs and the lives of thousands of people hang in the balance based on not just the military concerns, but also the economic concerns. So it's definitely not the cleanest solution to this war, unfortunately. Unfortunately, Americans don't understand the word oligarchs,

so I don't think they're really going to grasp, be able to grasp what's going on here, Emily. They don't watch enough breaking points. 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.

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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. All right, let's get to the tariffs. We had a big cabinet meeting. It was so grotesque, the level of North Korea propaganda and slavish devotion to the dear leader that was on display. We'll put that aside for the moment. Trump sort of jumped in here, and after the GDP numbers came out and were really bad, the inflation numbers were bad, the employment numbers were really bad, he felt like he needed to say something about the direction that the economy was going in and that something was,

it's all the fault of the last guy. Let's take a listen. You frequently took credit for the stock market highs. You said it was a reflection of how well you were doing in the polls. And then after you were elected, you said the stock market highs were a reflection of how well the transition is going and the American people's confidence in your incoming administration. Now the stock market is not doing so well. And you're saying that's the Biden stock market. Yet you are the president. Can you explain that?

I'm not taking credit or discredit for the stock market. I'm just saying that we inherited a mess, both at the borders. You could look at every single one of the people here, and no matter who it is, they're doing better, and they are far superior to what took place four years before us. When you look at prisoners being allowed to come

into our country at will, just at will, people from mental institutions, gang members, drug dealers, when you look at that, what they've done to our country, and also having to do with finance, look at what happened with inflation. We had the worst inflation probably in the history of our country. They say 48 years, but I would say in the history of our country. So he's not taking credit or discredit, but it is all Biden's fault, which is also what he opened the meeting up with is like, you know, I know you saw some numbers. It's all Biden's fault. Put this up on the screen. This is amazing. People were sharing this two different two different vibes here from from Donald Trump on True Social. So this latest one from April 30th, that would be just this week, this is Biden's stock market, not Trump's.

I didn't take over until January 20th, blah, blah, blah. But back in January of 2024, he said this is the Trump stock market. So when Biden was actually in office, at that point he was saying, oh, the stock market's good. It's because of me. It's because my polls are so good. Everybody assumes I'm coming back. That's why the stock market is doing great. And now that he's actually in office, he's saying, no, actually, this is Biden's stock market.

Just amazing. I mean, he's always had this fixation. Understandably so. I mean, we could debate the value of stock market for the average person's finances. But he's always been obsessed with tracking stock markets in an effort to sort of attach them to himself. I mean, it's been going up, so it's great for him. I mean, it's this sort of real-time indicator that's kind of irresistible, you know? A hundred percent, right. And so it was, that was actually always one of the things I found somewhat amusing to the extent anything was amusing during the liberation day, a couple of

weeks. I mean, honestly, there were many things that were amusing during those couple of weeks, but it was always like, he has been obsessed with his influence on the stock market for this long. How is he going to handle it? It turns out he has a ready made excuse. It's just Biden. Yeah, exactly. Right. So, uh, one person in particular, Dave Portnoy, apparently not buying the, uh, the spin here from Trump. We can put this up on the screen from him. He says, this up on the screen. From him, he says, what's that old expression? Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining. Well, that applies here. The stock market is a direct reflection of Trump's first 100 days in office. It doesn't mean it won't get better and that we don't need to be patient, but this is his market, not Biden's. So Portnoy has been, has said some other things critical. I think he doesn't

like the tariffs. He did originally say something critical about the Trump shit coin before sort of reversing course and being like, this is great. I'm going to get rich off of it, whatever. So anyway, he's high profile. And so anytime he says something critical, it is interesting. This is really the moment from this cabinet meeting and press conference that is so wild to me. So he's getting asked about the price of toys in particular. And, you know, yes, Christmas feels a long way away now. But actually, the retailers who would need to stock up for Christmas, they should be placing those orders right now. And all of that is kind of on hold. So he gets asked a question in this direction. Take a listen to his response. They made a trillion dollars with Biden, a trillion dollars, even a trillion one

with Biden selling this stuff. Much of it we don't need. You know, somebody said, oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. But we're not talking about something that we have to go out of our way. They have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which, not all of it, but much of which we don't need. Many people saying like, OK, you're just the Grinch now. Like that's that's your political move is just like the kids. They don't need toys. What are we talking about here? It's wild that he actually said it right, because that's the underlying. It's you know, this is like sort of Scott Besson coming out and saying the essence of the American dream is not

cheap goods. And that caught a lot of people on the right sort of off guard because it's the conversation that has been percolating in like white paper intellectual circles on the right for the last like five-ish years. But the problem is it's a political disaster because you have to say things. Like, for example, maybe the kids will have two dolls instead of 30. And those two dolls are going to cost more, by the way. Yes. Well, oh my gosh, absolutely. But that's the, I mean, it's true that at this point you could probably get 30 dolls for like $300. And it's kind of insane. I mean, there's definitely a bubble right now in cheap prices, but to actually do what Donald Trump has done with the tariff regime that he's put in place. Two dolls? We're using the dolls as a proxy for toys in general.

That's, I mean, that's not what the American people are used to. It's not what the American people want. And good luck taking that argument to the voters. I mean, I know he doesn't have to get reelected, although we can. Well, he doesn't. We'll see what he has to say about that. But, man, other Republicans do. J.D. Vance might have to run for president at some point.

Yeah. I mean, here is the thing, and I feel like a broken record. If there was some deal on the table, which was, okay, your kids are not going to get $30. They're going to get two. But you're going to be able to afford housing. You're going to be able to get health care. Education is going to be cheaper. It's going to be higher quality. You're going to be able to get health care. Education is going to be cheaper. It's going to be, you know, more, it's going to be higher quality.

You're going to be able to have a better work-life balance. If there was another social contract on the table that had some upside, then we could talk. We could talk, right? We could consider. Maybe that is an improvement over, basically, the American dream is centered around cheap consumer goods. That is the American dream at this point, as has been sold and implemented over decades and decades.

There is no alternative deal on the table. So all that he's advertising here is, my plan is going to make you poorer. You're going to be able to buy fewer things. Those things are going to be more expensive. And there is no compensation for that on the other side. So, and which is why this has been profoundly unpopular.

I mean, of all the things that he has done, many of which, almost all of which, have been profoundly unpopular in this second term, the tariff regime, when you ask people what's his biggest screw-up, it jumps off the page in terms of what they're concerned about. And so I think it would always be difficult to ask people at this point in time in American history to sacrifice in service of some larger goal. I think that would be a difficult sell in general. But there is no larger goal that is being offered or advertised or has any clear-cut path to being achieved. So instead, you're just telling people your kids are going to be unhappy on Christmas and you are going to be poorer and able to afford less stuff than you

can afford now. There's no clarity or light at the end of the tunnel. And I think the other word that we come down on a lot is certainty, because with more certainty, you could understand how companies would be adjusting with employment. They would be adjusting with their plans for the future. One of the interesting parts of the GDP report yesterday, actually, we can, and we did talk about that yesterday, but that's, I think the difficulty both politically and on the substance for the administration going forward is that if you want to make this case that maybe people, you know, won't be getting 30 things on Shein for, you know, three bucks, whatever, and they'll have to buy five things that cost $20 instead. If you want

to make that argument, you have to have a lot to show for the point about this being manufacturing in the U.S., like creating jobs, being built here, revitalizing communities. And obviously, that's a very difficult thing to do within the first month of this. But what we've seen evidence-wise is a whole lot of manufacturers leaving and jobs leaving. And we have not seen deals inked with like serious substantive deals inked with other countries. And so that's where, I mean, that's both the substance and the style being married into one. That's where it's going to get really difficult for them to keep making that case. It reminds me, this rhetoric reminds me of like the degrowth left, you know? Oh, great point. Which is absolutely politically toxic and unpopular.

No, that's such a good point. And there's a reason why when the Green New Deal came out and they screwed up when they sent out the draft and there was like some language in there about cutting back on meat consumption or something like that. And they ran away from it at a million miles per hour because they knew like we are going to be in a completely politically untenable position if we're asking people to give up some of the things that they are accustomed to and that they enjoy and appreciate. And so even though, look, the reality is that factory farming does produce a lot of emissions, there is just a recognition in the sort of like Green New Deal left that some of these things, they're just politically effectively impossible.

And so, yeah, that's to me, and this is, you know, the abundance guys kind of talk about this, how the Trumpian program is this anti-growth very aligned in a certain way, in a certain like ideological way with that degrowth left. And yeah, it's totally politically toxic. So if you are going to sell something like your kids are going to have fewer toys on Christmas day, which again, I think there is some merit to a potential shift in the American social contract. There is a version of this that I would be interested in, but you are not offering anything to compensate for that loss. All your program is, is people are going to be poor. And so, you know, that's why it's thoroughly rejected. I wanted to play, this is kind of interesting. This is this guy, Sean Ray, and he's the founder of the China Market Research Group.

He put on this short video talking about some of the reasons, and we've talked about some of this here, but some of the reasons that he feels that China has the upper hand in terms of this trade war, which is definitely something that the Trump administration, the Scott Bessons of the world would definitely dispute. But let's just take a listen to his analysis here of why he thinks China will ultimately win. China is no longer buying American beef. They're buying beef from Australia. China is no longer buying oil from the United States. They're now buying oil from Canada. China is no longer buying American soybeans. They're now buying soybeans from Brazil. China is no longer buying Boeing airplanes. Shaman Airlines actually just refused to accept a Boeing airplane that had just arrived in China. They're now instead buying Airbuses from France, or they're

expanding Comac, the Chinese indigenous homegrown domestic airplane brand, which they just signed a deal to sell several Comax to Malaysia. So what's happening is the entire world's system is shifting. China can basically buy everything that America sells, except for semiconductors from other countries. The United States can only buy antibiotics, refined rare earth, iPhones, computers from China. I think those are some solid points. I don't know if you saw this, Emily, but even on the semiconductor piece. So Huawei is now testing its newest, most powerful marine for the Wall Street Journal artificial intelligence processor. The company hopes it can replace some of the higher end products of U.S. chip giant NVIDIA. So they've also come a long way in terms of positioning themselves even to replace some of

that, you know, super high end chips technology that previously had been inaccessible to them. And some of that has been, you know, the necessity like of of innovating in the face of the export controls that have been put in place by the Biden administration as well. Yeah. And, you know, this to me also is sort of a case for what Trump is doing because it's so dire. Like the supply chain problems are so bad, but it's a case against what he's doing because he's doing it in a way that makes so little sense. That's right. So it's on the one hand, an argument about how bad the situation is. The other hand one hand, an argument about how bad the situation is. The other hand, it's an argument about how bad the attempt to right the ship, like how bad our attempt to address a bad situation has been.

Yeah. Like there's a there's a good way to do this and an important way to do this and an argument that it should be done. And then there's a way to do it that makes the situation worse. Let's go and put this next piece up on the screen. This is tracking these shipments from China to the U.S. and we're all just kind of waiting for this to like truly and fully hit. CBS has this report, China exports to U.S. plunge as tariffs hit, leading some experts to warn of product shortages. Shipments of goods from China to the U.S. are dropping sharply. The trade war between China and the U.S. has escalated with each nation hiking its import duties. They say that at the port of L.A., which along with the port of Long Beach, receives roughly

40 percent of all imports from Asia. Shipments last week were down 10 percent compared with the same period one year earlier. And they are predicting, the port of L.A. executive director is predicting that in two weeks' time, arrivals are going to drop by 35%. Flexport has even more dire readings. According to their estimates, bookings from China to the U.S. are already down by as much as 60%. So you're already starting to see an extraordinary slowdown here. And look, the large retailers are going to be able to sort of weather the storm and be able to figure it out. That doesn't mean that there aren't going to be some shortages in the Walmarts and Home Depots and Targets and Costcos of the world. But the

people who are really going to get screwed are small and medium business owners, even from the perspective of how much they have to invest in understanding what the new policy regime is every single day. I was also reading this morning, you know, the de minimis exemption for, you know, direct shipping under $800 where you're exempt from the import duties from the tariffs. That is going away. And, you know, that is like, again, that's something that I could imagine supporting. Exactly. Right. But in the context of all of this other, that in and of itself is this massive, profound change that is going to have huge reverberating impacts, not just for the Sheeans and Teemoos of the world, but for lots of small businesses who avail themselves of this de minimis exemption to be able to buy supplies and run their own businesses. And so this is going to be a real hit for them as well. And the fact that every day, seemingly, there's a new policy, things are

shifting, the tariff is changing. Even at the border, the customs officers who have to calculate these things, they don't know what's going on. So they're not applying the correct rates at times as well. Just keeping up with that is impossible to do as a small or medium-sized business. Yeah. And so the Trump administration, this is also very interesting. I was talking to someone who works in Congress last night about this. Larry Kudlow pointed out when he was looking through the GDP report that one of the reasons the numbers may not have been as bad as some people thought it might end up being, even though, so we could talk about it,

it was the projections versus what actually happened. But he said that if you're looking at the increase in factory equipment, that sort of thing, which is always an interesting indicator, 22% growth in business equipment and machinery investment, he says it does not spell recession because of that canary in the coal mine or what could be a canary in the coal mine. He's making this point that Trump and his advisors have been going to the business community and saying the tax bill is going to include 100% write-offs for investment or expenses on business, factory, and building that's retroactive to January 20th. You look at that and you're like, that's kind of an industrial policy

in an incentive structure way, in a way that's like using tax cuts, although they also have their revenue problem in front of them, so that's a different story. But that's their attempt. And you can see how some of those things will help. Being able to write off business factory and building expenses, like that's huge,

100% write off on those things. So you can kind of see how that stuff will help. but it's not enough. And it's not even being packaged by them as industrial policy. You need to get people back into the labor force in some of these communities. You need to make sure that these jobs are good, steady work that competes with service sector work. So, I mean, if their plan is to pass a big tax cut that includes a corporate tax rate hike to, I think Besson wants to take it from 21 to 15 percent. That's the latest news. Again, could that help with reshoring? Yes. But that is, I mean, you're taking a real gamble if you're putting all your eggs in the tax cut basket as your industrial policy.

Well, because, I mean, last time with the tax cut, most of them did like share buybacks, you know, to create some manufacturing renaissance. So, and this is the problem when you're trying to, you know, just hope the market does its thing and you're not taking an affirmative, affirmative action to make sure that capital is doing what you want it to do. And, you know, that's his theory is basically you can just sort of like slap some tariffs on and, you know, throw a tax cut at them and they're going to invest and create product lines and do what you want. But no one's going to be investing anything if we're in a recession. Like that's just, you know, everybody's going to pull back. Everybody's already pulling back. And it's important to remember those GDP numbers, which were already

really bad, that's before the tariffs were even announced or introduced. So, you know, that's I think what should be making people really nervous is that we have not yet seen the full economic impact of, quote unquote, Liberation Day. Here's another, you know, not great sign. Dollar General is one of the stocks that has been the best performers of Trump's first 100 days. And actually, the list of the top three performing stocks is quite grim, quite Ryan Grimm. There's Palantir, Dollar General, and Philip Morris. Those are the top three performing stocks of Trump 2.0, Emily. So how does that make you feel?

It's the golden age. Clearly, it's the golden age. I mean, you can smoke your cigs. You can get murdered by an AI robot. And you can go to the Dollar General. And, you know, there's what's not to love? I don't understand. And get your two dolls. Actually, you could probably get 30 at Dollar General now. Today, yes. But, but you know in the future by christmas time that is bleak that is bleak i thought that was pretty depressing yeah no thanks for that good morning one last piece here which you know this is i just thought this was funny we put this up on the screen this is financial times you got to be reading the financial times

honestly um every every good lefty knows you have to read the Financial Times. In any case, this guy, Stephen Marin, who they describe as a Trump top economic advisor, recently met with top bond investors last week in an attempt to sort of calm the waters, like, oh, we've got a plan, and here's what we're doing, and don't worry, we've got it. And I'm pretty sure this is the guy who had penned a report that in the early days of, you know, the new tariff regime, people were pointing to of saying like, look, they have a plan and it's this 40 chess and here's what's going on. The problem is the report didn't match the reality of what Trump was actually doing. But in any case, they say here that they found his presentation,

his comments around tariffs and markets to be, quote, incoherent or incomplete. One of them said Mirren was out of his depth and said he got questions and that's when it all fell apart, said one person familiar with the meeting. When you're with an audience that knows a lot, the talking points are taken apart pretty quickly. So noteworthy there, both in terms of the fact that they felt the need to go to these top bond investors and be like, oh, it's good. We got it. Don't worry. Everything's good. And also that they were extremely not impressed with the presentation, which they described as incoherent. Yeah, well, not sending their best, to paraphrase Donald Trump himself, not sending their best.

Yes. 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. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.

Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the

Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. 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. daughter to steal 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. Let's get to Elon because this was big news. So the Wall Street Journal yesterday put out this report that Tesla is looking at moving on from Elon Musk, that they are actively and have been actively searching for a new CEO. Let's put this up on the screen. So they say Tesla board open search for a CEO to succeed Musk. Let me read you a little bit of this. They say about a month ago with Tesla's stock sinking and some investors irritated about Musk's White House focus, Tesla's board got serious about looking for his successor. Board members reached out to several executive search firms to work on a formal process for finding Tesla's next chief executive. According to people familiar with the discussions, tensions had been mounting at the company. Sales and profits were deteriorating rapidly.

Musk was spending much of his time in Washington. Around that time, Tesla's board met with Musk for an update. Board members told him he needed to spend more time on Tesla, according to people familiar, and he needed to say so publicly. Musk did not push back. So that is what they're saying. I don't know if you have pulled up what Elon's response was. But he and Tesla late last night denied the report, said this is an absolute fiction. It's an absolute lie. I haven't checked in on Tesla stock this morning. But last night after this Wall Street Journal report had come out, it was plummeting even further than it already had been.

And, you know, it wouldn't be a surprise, like any ordinary, any normal company would look at the string of events of, OK, our CEO is not even here. Like he's not even running the company. And his brand is so toxic and specifically toxic to our particular customer base that this is just an utter disaster. But, you know, it's Elon's baby. He's stacked the board with people who are mostly sycophants, including like his brother and one of the Murdochs is on there. And there have been questions about the independence of the board because they are so closely tied to him. So that's why for even this board to be making moves to move on from Elon is really, really, you know, pretty, like pretty shocking. There are also details here that apparently Elon, and I kind of guessed this, that Elon is kind of over running Tesla. He's kind of sick of still being there. He's been

doing Tesla for a long time. Maybe his heart's really in SpaceX at this point and is like Mars delusions. That's been my sense from the outside and from reading reporting about him, the way he's oriented himself with regard to Doge. But in any case, what's their response? So Elon, they're scrambling, by the way, to get all of this as yesterday. The journal published this. When was this, Crystal? It was like later at night. I want to say it was like around the evening. Yes. Oh, okay. Well, it was updated.

That's today. They updated it apparently at 7.45 a.m., probably with a response to Elon. But it was happening in the evening. And so Tesla scrambled to get a response together and posted a statement at 1, I think it was like 1.23 a.m., and said, earlier today, there was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company. This is absolutely false. And this was communicated to the media before the report was published. The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk, and the board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead. Now, what they're narrowly denying here

is that the board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company. You can parse that in different ways. You could say maybe one or two people on the board, not the board itself acting as a collective, had flirted with the idea and maybe talked to a couple of people that they know in these business circles.

That's how it is. You're at a dinner and you're like, hey, would you potentially, you know, be able to help us with a recruitment search at Tesla? And then that person goes to the media. The Journal has had the, I would say, deepest reporting on Elon Musk. And this is what's really irking Musk heads right now is that the Journal is the one that had this story because they're already furious with the way the journal is the one that had this story because they're already furious with the way the journal is reporting on Musk. Musk quote tweets,

this is all happening literally at 1.30 in the morning, the Tesla statement and says, all caps, it is in all caps, extremely bad breach of ethics that the Wall Street Journal would publish a deliberately false article and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors. Now, I will say, if Tesla told the journal beforehand that, if they gave this statement to the journal beforehand, basically saying that the board had not contacted recruitment firms, then the journal should have printed that. But I also don't believe that the journal just wouldn't print that because it doesn't really poke a hole in their reporting. I mean, it's a denial from a company, but everyone knows that companies will issue narrow, carefully worded

denials in situations like this when you have robust sourcing in a major newspaper. So I sort of feel like they would have put that in there if they had it, no matter what. It's not a super persuasive denial of everything that they're reporting here. So, I mean, it's not a great look for Musk, but it does make sense with all of his moves over the course of the last month. Crystal, you and I have talked about how that Wisconsin election felt like a turning point in MAGA world when it came to Musk. And it seemed as though, you know, I think you and I had said this all along, the quiet quitting of Musk would be the way that this goes rather than like a big kinetic explosion. It was always going to be sort of a conscious uncoupling

that eventually it just becomes untenable. And because the relationship between Trump and Musk is so important to both of them, because for Trump, it's, I mean, that's the money for the magnification of the Republican Party going forward via America PAC. And for Musk, well, obviously, this is the president of the United States. He oversees five major companies. So it makes sense. But it also, I think, makes sense with the disintegration or Musk's decision to take all of these steps back, that this is what was happening behind closed doors with his prized company.

Obviously, he loves Starlink and Boring and SpaceX. SpaceX is probably his favorite. Who knows? But this is Tesla. Like this is his this is his baby. This is his what he's been known for most of his career. So you understand why it would be sort of a blow. Yeah, well, and that is exemplified by the fact that, you know, we got Trump to do that like Tesla sale in the parking lot of the White House and the Pam Bondi is announcing that like, if you harbor ill feeling towards Tesla, you're basically terrorists and whatever. Like it also, though, I mean, it is astonishing because the way that Musk being so cozy with Trump would hurt their sales to what has previously been mostly like an affluent, liberal California customer base. That is so incredibly predictable.

And the stock really rose once Trump got elected because everyone's like, oh, well, Elon is secondhand to the king and he's going to be able to get all these perks. True. But you still have to be able to sell cars. And not only here, but around the world, Tesla sales really plummeted. I mean, really plummeted. Cybertruck has been one of the greatest, you know, automotive flops in history, truly. Even Tesla dealerships are not even accepting Cybertrucks as trade-ins. That's how little appetite there is for this very expensive and poorly created vehicle, which has become this incredibly, like, political symbol that for many people

reads as extremely toxic. And so if you're going to buy this really expensive thing, you also have to expect you're going to get, like, flicked off and people are going to give you dirty looks and whatever. Most people just don't want to deal with that, right? So in any case, not to mention, it's not really a vehicle that makes any sense anywhere except for America. So you're limiting

your market to begin with. Then you've got the trade war, which is bad for everybody, but bad for Tesla. As Elon says, by the way. Elon has said that. Yeah, and Elon talked about that on the investor call. And a lot of Tesla's hopeful growth was in China. China now also with BYD has, I mean, they've just out-innovated Tesla as well. Like their product is better than Tesla or the other EV makers here in America. So there's all sorts of issues, but the biggest one is Elon himself. So like I said, to get rid of him is the most rational thing you could possibly do. But given that the board is so closely tied to him, you know, I always thought it was kind of unlikely. So even the fact that even if it's not the whole board, but a few board members are

reaching out to these executive search firms or whatever is really quite something. We can put B4 up on the screen of the Tesla stock, which just shows you the, you know, the surge after Trump's elected and then the dramatic crash. He's gained back a little bit. You know, like I said, I haven't checked in with it today. The last piece we have here, just a sign of his failure here in Washington as well, and the quiet quitting, as Emily put it. He was at this cabinet meeting yesterday. Not a member of the cabinet. And not a member of the cabinet. So, you know, whatever, that he's there to begin with. But he's not even the head of Doge, according to Trump administration in court. But, you know, previously at the first cabinet meeting, he was standing up. He was holding court. Everyone was doing some of their obsequiousness

that they normally direct to Trump. They were doing that with Elon as well. Now he's getting this sort of like, you know, the sort of like pity clap. It's more like what he's getting from Trump or like the pat. You want to go to your car, buddy. You know, you could stay. But I know you want to get back to working on your cars, don't you? Right. So let's go ahead and take a listen to B2 and, you know, how things are going for Elon with regards to the Trump administration.

But you have been treated unfairly. But the vast majority of people in this country really respect and appreciate you. And this whole room can say that very strongly. You've really been a tremendous help. You opened up a lot of eyes as to what could be done. And we just want to thank you very much. And, you know, you're invited to stay as long as you want. At some point, I guess, he wants to get back home to his cars.

So what were the vibes of that for you, Emily? It feels like a send-off. Doesn't that feel like when, you know, one member of, like, the, you know, drama club at high school is about to graduate. Like one member of the basketball team is about to graduate. Yeah. You did a great job. You know, you didn't start every game, but you were always there.

You had the heart. You had what it took. You'll always, we'll always remember you. Didn't it feel like that? You were a critical part of this team. Yeah, you will always be a part of this team. It had those vibes a little bit. Absolutely.

It's funny you went to the sports thing, too, because I was also thinking about, you know, when, like, after one of my kids plays a game. And, like, it's not their best game. And you're like, you did good. Like, you did good. You know? Yes. Look, it's not always going to be your day. It's fine.

But you were good. You did your best. But you were good. Yeah. Not saying you weren't good. You were good. But you were good. Yeah. Not saying you weren't good. You were good. Great form. Yeah, no, it does feel like that.

And Trump at one point said. This is a learning experience. You know. Trump at one point said, you know, Elon, you know you're invited to stay as long as you want, which is 100% what you say when you're like evicting someone. Right. Like politely evicting someone. Just like a family member's been couch surfing for a while and they got the hint. And Elon has been literally like couch surfing in some federal government office building.

So apparently. And they got the hint, right? Like this person got the hint. They realized that like you're a little tired of, you know, the couch surfing and they're leaving. You're like, you know, you're invited to stay as long as you want. That was basically. That's how you do it in Wisconsin, right?

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Like you can stay forever. But I know you have things you want to do. You want to get back to your cars. Not here. Yeah. But I mean, it's also like he's actually not invited to stay as long as he wants unless

he divests from like to be to be clear, he's only allowed to stay for 180 days based on the special government employee distinction. So, he's only allowed to stay for 180 days based on the special government employee distinction. So technically he's not invited. Yes. But, you know. Which, as we've discussed before, you know they're a stickler for the rules and regulations in this administration.

Oh, you know, 181 days? Absolutely not. Unacceptable. That's the red line. No way. No way, Elon. Clock is ticking. It felt like a little send-off.

Yeah. So anyway, that's what's going on with Elon. Clock is ticking. It felt like a little send-off. Yeah. So anyway, that's what's going on with Elon as best we know. 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.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. 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. 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. But there were also some comments made at this meeting from Marco Rubio with regard to deportation. So let's get to that. So Marco Rubio saying that they are exploring other countries outside of El Salvador to ship deportees to. Let's take a listen.

And I say this unapologetically. We are actively searching for other countries to take people from third countries. So we are actively, not just El Salvador. We are working with other countries to say, we want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries. We do that as a favor to us.

And the further away from America, the better. So they can't come back across the border. I'm not apologetic about it. We are doing that. The president was elected to keep America safe and to get rid of a bunch of perverts and pedophiles and child rapists out of our country. So searching for other countries, you know, no details there about what countries or whether they would also be shipped just to those countries or to prisons as they have been in El Salvador, this, you know, place that people are never let in out of and they're indefinitely. And it's interesting, Emily, because it comes as

there's this new New York Times investigation into the deal that the Trump administration made with Bukele, who called what does he call himself, like the coolest dictator in the world or something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The cool dictator. The cool dictator. So anyway, we could put this is C5, guys, if we could skip ahead to C5 and put this up on the screen. So it turns out, you know, they have this sort of contractual relationship where the Trump administration is paying some amount, 12 million is one of the dollar amounts I heard, floated of money to Bacalli to house these Venezuelans who have been, you know, who were summarily deported with no due

process whatsoever under the pretense that they were alien enemies and they were the worst of the worst and they were Trender Aragua gang members. So in any case, Bacalli had apparently agreed to house only what he called, quote, convicted criminals in the prison. However, many of the Venezuelan men that had been labeled gang members and terrorists by the U.S. government had not been tried in court. Mr. Bichelli was willing to let the U.S. use his prisons with conditions, he told Rubio and Mauricio Claver Caroni, I don't know, oh, Mr. Trump's Latin American envoy. He did not want to bring in non-criminal migrants. He could not convince Salvadorans that he was prioritizing their national interests if he turned their country

into a dumping ground for U.S. deportees from other countries, he explained to Mr. Trump's aides. But he did agree to take in violent criminals, no matter their nationality, for a fee, which would help to subsidize the country's prison system. So because the Trump administration shipped off, the vast majority of the people they shipped out had zero criminal records. According to the New York Times, even McKellie was like, this is a problem. This is not what we agreed to. Now he, of course, has gone along with it. It's very possible this leak to the New York Times is a bit of ass covering for himself, especially as he's found all of these Democratic senators and members of Congress flying down to El Salvador saying, hey, this guy has no gang affiliation. They shipped him here indefinitely because of some mom and dad

tattoo or an autism awareness tattoo. Or in the case of Kilmer and Gregor Garcia, they admit that they messed up and shouldn't have sent him here. Like, you need to do something. So it's creating domestic political problems for Bukele. So it could have been that that leads to this leak to the New York Times of this is not really what we agreed to. And the last thing, Emily, I'll say before I get your reaction is in the initial three plane loads that were sent, and you guys remember this dramatic situation with the judge saying you've got to turn those planes around. They don't do it. And a third plane actually departs. They claim not under Alien Enemies Act, but in any case departs even after that order is issued. On those planes, there were a number of women. This is an all-male facility. And so those women, Bacalli

said, we're not taking these women. So they sent the women back. In addition, there were also some high-level MS-13 members that were in our criminal justice system facing, you know, charges and punishment that Bacalli wanted back. And Ryan did the first report on this over a drop site that Bacalli wanted back because he, as part of his crackdown, has also been cutting deals with MS-13 either for, hey, you guys can do your thing over there, but not in this neighborhood where the tourists are. Hey, I'll make sure some of your people get a little bit better prison conditions, et cetera. So that was another part of the deal. And sorry, I keep going on and saying one last thing. Also, we had talked before about this dude who the Trump administration did a big press conference about. This is the East Coast head of MS-13.

We are going to charge him. He is going to prison. We are so proud of ourselves. Now, quietly, all of those charges have been dropped. And he is just being deported through regular channels before there can be any scrutiny into what the hell happened there. Now, it's possible they just didn't have the goods on this guy. And they just made up some bullshit. And he was not the MS-13, like, East Coast head, and when it came to trying to

prove this in court, it was not going to work out, so they just quietly tried to save face. Or it could be this is one of the dudes who is part of this dealing with Bukele. Well, yeah. I mean, think about that for a second. This is the invocation of the—there's a lot of juicy stuff in this New York Times story, but the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is predicated on this idea that the Venezuelan government is directing Trende Aragua to invade the United States. Which is a very flimsy premise. It's preposterous. It's a very flimsy premise that was intentionally concocted by people in the Trump administration to be able to get around the regular channels of due process. Stephen Miller said that openly, that it was part of

the plan because they know mass deportations with the regular due process, that is the clear implication of what Stephen Miller has said. Regular deportations, you can't do at the level of, quote, unquote, mass deportations if you go through those channels without dramatically boosting the immigration judge system, which then can kind of— And they're cutting the immigration judge system, by the way. There are problems with that because it can become a carrot if you can start hearing cases really quickly. It did become in the Biden administration an incentive for many people to keep trying. But the Trump administration can deal with that pretty easily by remain in Mexico

policies. If that is their problem with it, they could deal with it in other ways. But the idea that the East Coast kingpin of MS-13 needs to be sent back, that they have charges, that they do a big, splashy press conference. Pam Bondi did a huge, high-profile press conference to tout the arrest of this man and the charges against this man. I think the charges were dropped within a month. It might have even been less than that. And they didn't just send him to El Salvador. They literally dropped these charges, this big case that they were touting against him. And that gets to a quote, which, by the way, is, again, a follow-up on the drop site reporting, which was way ahead of the story. CNN then had a piece that came out earlier this week as well.

This is from Douglas Farah in The New York Times, an El Salvador expert who, between 2018 and 2022, collaborated with the Justice Department Vulcan task force, which targeted MS-13. He says, quote, what Bukele is desperate for is to get these guys back in El Salvador before they talk in U.S. court. So I'm reading these leaks from State, which also included that big CNN piece earlier this week. It looks like some of this is probably coming from Buckele world. And I would take all of the sincerity of that. I would take all of that with a grain of salt. it sounds to me like most of this is coming from State Department world, that there's ass covering happening in State Department world saying we were uncomfortable with the answers to Bukhali's questions about whether these were actually MS-13 members. So now the question becomes, and this has actually always been the question to some

extent, on what level does the Alien Enemies Act allow you to deport people if there's tenuous or if there's very thin evidence of their alleged involvement in this invasion, right? So Stephen Miller thinks that you can just get rid of every foreign national in that area, but if your intelligence is telling you that this invocation of the Alien Enemies Act in and of itself is a flimsy, the premise to that doesn't work. Does that become a legal problem for the administration? And let me just say, Stephen Miller isn't sweating that. Stephen Miller, he does not see this as a significant blow to his process that there

are constitutional questions being raised, or to his project, I should say, because their plan was to throw everything at the wall and see what would stick, knowing that some of it would not, because they want to do mass deportations. And if you want to do mass deportations, they're correct. That is going to be very difficult. And if the American people voted for that, there's going to be a lot standing in the way of your effort to achieve that end. But he knows that some of this stuff is going to get hung up in the courts. And his allies in the administration know that. That's the point of doing this strategy where you're just, like, and there's actually some quotes in this piece about how he was like, don't worry.

Said don't worry about the law, something like that. Yeah, right. Like, you have to go fast. And so they're worried that they're not going to be able to do, quote, mass deportations. But what they're not worried about is, you know, being accused of like flouting the Constitution. They think that the Constitution isn't set up to deal with this problem of mass immigration under Biden. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they just, they don't care about the constitution. They don't care about the legality. They don't care about due process. They don't care if they mistakenly send someone there, you know, and, and know that it's a mistake.

They'll just say like, he deserves to be there. I don't care. And part of the strategy is, and this is something we talked about from the beginning of this administration too, is the more horrific and the more cruel the images and the stories that come out, the more they're hoping that people will quote unquote self-deport. Because there isn't, now the Republican budget has a lot more resources for ICE and a lot more resources for the private prison contractor to set up additional detention centers, etc. But, you know, there are not the resources to have this, you know, the mass deportation scale that a Stephen Miller would love to see. And so I know it's this cliche, the cruelty is the point, but that they will

actually themselves admit that. It's true. And so that's how he's looking. I mean, Stephen Miller is he is truly an ideological racist. Like he has a political program. I don't think he cares whether it's popular or not. He has a thing he wants to do and he does not care what's going to stand in his way of doing that. And I think Trump has outsourced his entire immigration policy to Stephen Miller. You guys talked about him actually believing MS-13 was literally tattooed on Kilmar Arbogast's knuckles when it was the most obvious Photoshop in history. I think Stephen Miller just told him that this is real and he just believes it. I think Stephen Miller told him that the Supreme Court decision went 9-0 their way, even though that is the polar opposite of what happened. And he just believes it. I mean, that's what he seemed to say in the Oval Office.

So this has been completely outsourced to Stephen Miller. But, you know, it did expose that there's a little bit of a potential pressure point that Chris Van Hollen and, you know, the other Democrats who flew down to El Salvador, that they were kind of pushing on, which is that El Salvador, Bukele has his own domestic political situation. Yes, he's very popular there, but that can always change. Yeah. So he has his own domestic political situation to think about.

And he also has to think about, like, Republicans, it's not going to be President Trump forever. Yep. And so if you have made your country enemy number one of Democrats and they're set to take power. Who may control Congress. They're going to probably control Congress in, you know, less than two years. Which gives them investigatory powers. Very possible.

Yes, that's right. And very possible that they take back the White House in 2028. You start to get a little nervous about where all of this is going. And I do think we are ultimately headed to this invocation of the Alien Enemies Act being deemed, like, unsupportable. Yes. Because on so many levels- And it should be. It's not an invasion.

We're not at war. Venezuela is not working with Trinidad and Tobago. The way that it's been implemented, these judges are human beings, are going to look at this and be like, this is outrageous what the administration is doing. And so I think it is likely that their invocation is going to get struck down. They're already being blocked in a number of jurisdictions across the country from continuing these deportations under this provision. But, you know, and that comes back to Marco Rubio saying, well, we're looking at other countries where we could do the same thing. Glenn has made this point that, well, and that's

the Kilmer-Obrego-Garcia case. They actually could have, if they had gotten an agreement from Mexico, for example, they could have deported him at any moment, basically. They just couldn't deport him to El Salvador based on all of this. Miller argues that because of the Alien Enemies Act, they still could. But that's not clear-cut. And even conservative attorneys like Andy McCarthy and Waylon have gone back on that. The administration itself argued in court that it was a mistake. They admitted it was a mistake. And then they fired that guy from the DOJ.

Yeah, but there were multiple court filings, and this is their position in court is that it was a mistake. And then they fired him. They admitted it was a mistake. And then they fired that guy from the DOJ. Yeah, but I mean, there were multiple court filings. And this is their position in court, is that it was a mistake. Completely agree. Stephen Miller would, but Stephen Miller comes down and says, like, we could do what we want. Like, get out of here, DOJ. Like, even the Trump DOJ. Like, you guys, you know, why would you ever admit an error? You're harming the project of mass deportation by admitting we can't do this because this is what we have to do.

We have to be pushing these lines and these boundaries in order to end up with mass deportation. And honestly, like if we take this in a like seriously, because there is a chunk of the American people that looks at the mass immigration during the Biden administration. And from my perspective, like talking to some of these people, it's so, the lives that they live may be better than what they had in Venezuela. I mean, one of these migrants was protesting Maduro. And that's why Republicans have often supported the asylum policies that we have, is protesting Maduro. They end up having to live these precarious existences in the United States, hiding, you know, Abrego Garcia was pulled over for driving erratically with an expired license. I mean, a reason that you try to avoid going to the government in some of those,

like, renewing licenses or whatever is because you're in fear of being deported. It's not a great existence, even if it's better than Venezuela or El Salvador. And our process right now sucks. It keeps people in these situations for, like, 10-plus years. He'd come into this country, what, 2012, Abrego Garcia? I think that's right, yeah. And it just sort of been living in the shadows. And it's not good for anybody. And there needs to be a solution to this. And the solution is always going to involve horrible mistakes and heart-wrenching examples of people who end up getting deported who had lives here,

the administration needs to deal with that. They need to realize that you're not going to be able to just flout the Constitution, use things like Alien Enemies Act. All that's going to end up doing is creating less public support for what you're doing in the first place. And it's going to take time away from what you could be doing, which is building up a system to actually deal with the literal millions of people who are here living these precarious existences, which just isn't a good situation for anybody.

But I don't see basically any movement in that direction. Glenn has made this point that actually it's not that hard to go through the court system if you focus on it. It's not that hard to bring him back here, try him. Yeah, well, they were already,

the State Department was coming up with plans to bring him back because this is not the first time that someone has been mistakenly deported. Yes. And you just go,

oh, this is terrible. I'm sorry. We're going to get you back and like follow the, they were already working on those plans. And then, you know, whoever in the Trump administration came over the top and were like, no, yeah, we made a mistake. We don't care. He's going to stay. And again, this is not just

deportation, just deportation. This is you are locked in a prison for life. Your wife, your family, your lawyers, like you have no access to anyone except a brief meeting with Chris Van Hollen. You are cut off from the entire world, potentially forever, sentenced to life in prison in a foreign prison. Now, Kilmar Abraga Garcia has been moved to a different facility. But for the rest of these guys in Seacott, this place is known for torture and human rights abuse. And there are rules against that, that we abide by in the U.S. as well. Yeah, a shorter rendition. That's exactly right. You cannot ship someone off and then be like, oh, well, you know, the Egyptian government or whoever, they're going to do what they're going to do and it's not our fault. Like, if you know the conditions that the people are

being sent to, then you are still responsible for those conditions. So in any case, you're absolutely right in the way that, I mean, if you look at the way public opinion has dramatically shifted already with regard to how they feel about immigration, certainly how they feel about Trump's handling of immigration, how they feel about Kilmer and Breyer Garcia and all of this, it has been a dramatic, dramatic flip. And it's what we saw in the first term as well, where the public had never been more pro-immigrant than they were during Trump's first term in office. And then that swung back wildly during the Biden administration, which is why I think Stephen Miller, like how often do we hear them claiming a mandate,

a mandate, a mandate? Well, they're misinterpreting. First of all, I mean, the question of whether if you win 49% of the vote, you have a mandate is another question. But they're misinterpreting that mandate as something that it isn't. And I don't even know if it's an accidental misinterpretation. I think it's probably a willful misinterpretation because Stephen Miller knows that this is a very slim window. And again, if you're doing the math as him, that is correct. This is a very slim window in order to do mass deportations because House Democrats are going to take back over, public support is going to shift, so they're trying really hard

to just put their foot on the accelerator. But, you know, to go back to Glenn's point, like, Democrats passed the frickin' Lake and Riley Act with Republicans. If you wanted to expedite the system, hire more immigration judges, and have this aggressive approach, I don't support it, but they could have done it.

Democrats were willing to vote for basically whatever on immigration at the beginning of this term. You have your budgeting process and you're willing to move all sorts of monies around with Doge. If you wanted to do this in some sort of even approaching lawful way, that path was available. But that would not have entailed the level of horror that Stephen Miller wants this process to entail so that they can trigger the, you know, self-deportations that they see as being critical to this. So, you know, the Guantanamo Bay, that was the same reason that they were sending immigrants also to Guantanamo Bay and I think are continuing to do so even though there had been some reports that a number of those immigrants had been removed.

Using military planes, this is way more expensive than the private ICE flights that they normally use. But again, it's to generate this spectacle. The ASMR, like deportation, like discuss like incredibly disturbing to be videos that they put out. Of course, you know, I'm going down to Seacott. It's all about a spectacle of horror. And, um, you know, so he, he has no interest in going through like, uh, any sort of approaching lawful process to effectuate this outcome because it wouldn't achieve his aims, um, ultimately. And so that's why he's pursued, very specifically him, has pursued this particular path. I want to get to some really good news in the fight against the crackdown on pro-Palestine. Students who have been arrested

for things like writing op-eds or for, in the case of Mahmoud Khalil for being a negotiating a negotiator on the Columbia campus protests. One of the people who had really attracted a lot of attention is Mohsen Madawi. He has now been actually released from prison, from detention while his case was adjudicated. Let's take a let's take a look at him walking out because this is quite extraordinary. You can see him walking out here to cheers. I believe this was in Vermont where this was all unfolding. And he also spoke and his message to this cheering crowd here. You can see lots of Palestine flags,

free Mosul Madawi now, calling for due process, et cetera. His message coming out was, I am not afraid of Donald Trump. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. What did they do to me? They arrested me. What's the reason?

Because I raised my voice and they said no to war, yes to peace. Because I said enough is enough to President Trump and his cabinet. I am not afraid of you. The judge in making this decision also made some extraordinary statements, which would have huge implications, not just for Madawi, but also for many of the other students who've been arrested and detained and, you know, are being threatened with deportation for their advocacy for Palestine. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Jeffrey Crawford, the judge in Wednesday's ruling, wrote that those who know Madawi describe him as a peaceful figure who seeks consensus in a

highly charged political environment. But Crawford added, even if he were a firebrand, his conduct is protected by the First Amendment. The court is aware he has offended his political opponents, apparently given rise to concerns of the State Department. He is an obstacle to American foreign policy. Just think about how preposterous that is. Such conduct is insufficient to support a finding that he is in any way a danger, as we use that term in the context of detention and release. Legal residents not charged with crimes or misconduct are being arrested and threatened with deportation for stating their views on the political issues of the day, Crawford said, citing the Red Scare and McCarthy-era targeting of people for their political views. The wheel of history has come around again,

but as before, these times of excess will pass. So we'll see if this ruling stands. We'll see if there are other judges who make similar decisions. But the fact that Madawi at least was able to get this win and you have one judge, federal judge, saying, listen, you can't just deport someone because you don't like their opinion on a political issue is a very significant development here. The justification for this deportation order via the State Department is very problematic, similar to the Mahmoud Khalil situation, in that they cite, this is a Rubio memo, anti-Semitism, basically. And they say, this is from the, it's the Immigration and Nationality Act, I think it's

1952, is what Rubio has been citing. And that's what's, we were talking about this with Stephen Miller earlier and the Alien Enemies Act. I think they're right now testing the fundamental constitutionality of the State Department and the Secretary of State being able to revoke visas on the idea that somebody is a threat to the United States national security. And then you take that second layer, in this case, of saying that somebody's alleged anti-Semitism is a threat to national security is a very, like, they're testing the constitutionality of that, and I think

rightfully so. Did you see the government, I'm reading from NBC News right now, they included two exhibits in their filing which have been filed under seal. One of the exhibits, this has been going sort of viral on X, and I don't know what to think of it, which NBC News has reviewed, is a 2015 report from the Windsor Police Department in Vermont, where a gun shop owner told officers that Madawi supposedly told the owner that he used to build machine guns to, quote, kill Jews while he was in Palestine. In his declaration, Madawi said that he recalled visiting a gun shop in Windsor, Vermont, but that he is, quote, absolutely certain that I never expressed the words the report falsely attributes to me in that was a thing.

We would know about it. So I imagine there's more to come from this gun shop owner as this case goes on. But a very strange, I just feel like that's a very strange part of the story or subplot in the story, because I guess if this is about anti-Semitism to the point in the Rubio memo, if he said that he killed Jews while he was in Palestine, then I suppose you can prove that he's anti-Semitic.

But even then, you have to prove the anti-Semitism is a harm to U.S. foreign policy. And again, that would augment that argument. But quite an interesting situation where you have, what is he, he's Buddhist? Yeah, I think so. It's very weird. Well, and if you listen to him on 60 Minutes, like he's very clear about, I see the justice for Israelis and Palestinians

and freedom for them as being linked and I abhor anti-Semitism. He's been very consistent on that. I mean, listen, I have no idea. It's weird. I haven't seen or heard anything about this like gun shop situation. I will say that, look, even if you say something that is horrible like that, you still shouldn't be able to deport someone just for their speech.

I mean, that's basically the judge's point is like, there's no evidence that he is a firebrand. All the evidence is that he's, you know, this very like peace loving, like consensus building type. But even if he was, you still can't just deport someone because you don't like what they have to say. Well, they're just like, at least you don't like what you imagine is in their heart with regard to this group of people or that group of people. It makes their, their justification here is what is the, like, they don't have, whether that justification, I should say, is legitimate, is, remains the question, even if he said that. Like, their justification for deporting him, like, they would have to find, again, like, you can try people. You can actually go through another

process, but the point is just doing as many things as quickly as possible in order to sort of flood the zone. And from there, yeah. Yeah, and to use this issue as a cudgel, you know, both in their war against lefties generally, in their war against universities. Like, this is the issue that they don't care about anti-Semitism. They're using this issue as a cudgel to effectuate others. Well, I think, I mean, I think there's a part of the sort of conservative movement that has very much been conditioned that this is the most, like, this is the tip of the spear on campus issues. So if you get rid of the alleged anti-Semites, then you've just removed the tip of the spear. And I think some people genuinely do believe in this. I think a lot of

people don't. And it's almost like half and half. Yeah. I'm referring specifically to Donald Trump. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Donald Trump does not give a shit about anti-Semitism. I don't think he's super concerned about this, but he knows that, again, like Miriam Adelson is. And I'm sure Marco Rubio probably is. So that's how it's... But again, I think we've talked about this recently. It's turning kind of the online, some of the online right people off. And some of them, it's like, okay,

so you've turned off Candace Owens, but I guess she has a big audience. Yeah, well, we'll get to the Alex Jones, Nick Fuentes. Oh, yes, that's right. We have that coming up. It's a good preview for our last block. All right, let's go ahead and get to some of these 2020 Democratic contenders and the way they're positioning themselves.

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who have been making some potential 2020 moves, so we wanted to make sure and give you a little speed run through all of them with Dave Weigel of Semaphore, who is always out on the campaign trail and knows these folks and talks to these folks and can give us some of the inside knowledge here. So great to see you, Dave.

Good to be here. Thank you. So let's start with Pritzker, who is governor of Illinois, who I mean, it looks like he wants to run. Yes. Fair to say. He was in New Hampshire. I don't think his plane got diverted. I think he wanted to be in New Hampshire. Indeed. So he said a lot of things that a lot of Democrats were like, oh, OK, JB, we see what you're bringing to the table. This line in particular caught a lot of attention. So let's go ahead and play that. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption, but I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.

They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box. And I did see some Republican meltdown over the whole, he's calling for violence because he said they should never know peace, etc. But even that, I think, sort of plays to his benefit because Democrats love to see Republicans sort of like melting down and getting triggered over something that a Democratic candidate says and them standing up for themselves and not just backing down in the face of that. We're racist profile too, right, Dave? Oh,

absolutely. And I was at that event in that room before he was talking, there was a montage of protests that had happened in New Hampshire on the screen. Maggie Hassan was talking about the protests. It was a, you can see from the, from the hair of people getting up, it was an older crowd of democratic donors, but these are the people showing up at Tesla takedown stuff. So he was, first of all, right, right in the sweet spot of where Democrats want to be. Yes, right now, resist, resist Trump with everything you have and not just Trump, but resist kicking college students out of the country because they wrote the wrong essay, that sort of thing. So he's with that second part of it. So all of us in the room, reporters knew that that line would land at some level. But that was perfect for him because the next day he was at UIC in

Chicago, the university with students talking about Trump's challenges to university endowments over protests on campus. And he got asked about it. Stephen Miller, the Illinois Republican Party, both said he was calling for violence. And you can see, I don't need to defend him that much, you can see he talks about the ballot box. He is saying, make sure that you're showing up and yelling at Republicans, which is not the same as blowing things up or doing, and he is in a good position. He leaned on it. Another part of the, sorry, interviews with people, not the speech, he mentions he's Jewish. He has funded a Holocaust museum. He does not, he is, like Josh Shapiro, he is a Jewish liberal who He does not. He is like Josh Shapiro.

He is a Jewish liberal who is critical of something Israel is doing and has used that clout to say don't go after students who are critics of Israel. There are other questions to answer, like is it a genocide, et cetera. But that's one where Democrats want to be. Two, very good for baiting Republicans who are attacking him. And that is how you get attention. You can get bad attention from that, but that is how you get attention from having Republicans be so annoyed at you that they're attacking you and condemning you. Yeah, and so you've covered him longer than a lot of people paid attention to him. So do you have a sense right now of what lane

he thinks he's taking up in potential 2028 primary? It's so early, and it's so silly to even think about that because we don't know what the competition will be and that determines kind of what lane people go in. But as of right now, what sense do you have of what kind of candidate he thinks he is? He's a billionaire, arguably oligarch. I think you asked him about that. I asked him when Bernie Sanders talks about the oligarchy, is he talking about you? We can put D5 up on the screen while Dave's talking because we pulled your answer here, but go ahead. Yeah, yeah. And he gave an answer, which is that, no, when people talk about the oligarchy, they're talking about people who were taking over the government and giving favors themselves,

and that's not me. I'm about, and I had asked him a separate question about, he's very in favor of progressive income taxes, where the administration's trying to replace those, not really, but they're saying they're trying to replace income taxes with the tariff, and he was against that. And so he is running as a sort of, he didn't say class trader, but sort of as a class trader. I've been very successful. I'm a billionaire. I want to take the government, reorient the resource to you. That is progressive. And with some work done early on to say, but I'm, yes, I'm a billionaire. I'm not like those others. And there are other questions, like we're two years from him announcing, maybe will he spend his own money like he has in Illinois,

because that has irritated progressives, him spending, I think, $350 million between all his campaigns of his own money. And if you're worth it, you're a billionaire. It's hard to get poor again. Right. The investments compound. He keeps spending it. That does not sit well with Democrats. They had Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer do that in the last open primary. And it did alienate them. I think it'll alienate them even more the way their mood is going to be in 2028. But he's running as a progressive saying, I'm not like those other rich people. I would use my status to redistribute income to, not income, redistribute wealth to everybody else. And then starting from there, what's that mean? Medicare for all? He's not a Bernie candidate, but he is a progressive candidate. Interesting. And he also had some

criticism. By the way, I actually think he should affirmatively come out and say, I'm a class traitor and can cast himself in the role. I mean, FDR was the prototypical class traitor. And I think he could potentially get away with it. The self-funding thing is a problem, both in terms of the optics, but also in terms of the reality of that means that you don't feel like you need to solicit funds from a grassroots base, so you don't need to be responsive to them. So it actually can end up being a problem for candidates politically just because they are a little bit removed from where the base of the party is. But I mean, so far he seems to be kind of squarely in line and finger on the pulse much more so than some other candidates of where the Democratic base is.

One of the other things that he said that you were mentioning to us is he is also critical of Democrats, Democratic leadership that has been, you know, seen as being, and I think legitimately so, rather cowardly in the face of Trump this time around. So, you know, talk about how that relates to how he's positioning himself. Yes. He attacked do-nothing Democrats. He didn't name them. And if you're reading between the lines, it was hard to say who exactly he was talking about, except mostly James Carville types, pundits who have been saying vaguely that the party is seen as too left-wing. It

needs to change somehow without explaining what that means. So he wasn't saying, like Bernie might, that this is because of rich donors who want the party to move in one direction or because of Citizens United. He's not saying that. It was more generally, there are people in our party who get scared of fighting and I'm not scared of fighting and we're going to change that. And this has been complicated because the Biden record on policy, on what bills were prioritized, was pretty progressive. Bernie had a big role in getting some stuff he wanted through, and that's kind of been forgotten. No Democrat is saying, I'm going to return to what Biden was doing, or that Biden set this up by being too far to the right. And again, the Gaza issue was very complicated.

It wasn't part of that. But what is his criticism of Democrats? It's been pretty easy for progressives to say this. The guys who are saying, let's wait and fight Trump later. Let's not pick every fight. Let's not fight about El Salvador and Garcia. That's who he's criticizing. So it's not quite an economic argument yet.

It is that there are people out there who attitudinally get worried and don't want to give a comment or don't have a quote. Here's me, Jamie Pritzker. I will jump out and immediately be in front of a camera condemning something that might pull badly. That was the key. And because I think that fight might be over for Democrats for now. But the Garcia thing, it was a lot of anonymous Democrats saying, please, let's not talk about this. It was I saw Hakeem Jeffries this week is already denying these saying don't go to El Salvador. But that's what he's talking about, that attitude. Are you bold enough to just jump in? And frankly, like Trump was in 2015 with Republicans, are you ready to say something that everyone in the media is going to

say is a bad idea? That's what he was kind of saying to Democrats. Interesting. Yeah. So let's roll Pete Buttigieg a little bit, a clip of his appearance on the Flagrant podcast. One of the most powerful podcast appearances actually Donald Trump did in the 2024 cycle was on that show. So let's take a look at Pete handling that appearance pretty well. This is D2. I want everyday life to be better. That's what they want too. You get up in the morning. Yeah. But importantly, like all the controversies are over what that's like. Like, I want you to be able to get up in the morning and the first thing you do is, is you, you commute to work. And, uh, and by the way, if you're on an EV, I want that to be affordable for you. Or if

you're on public transit, not to get back into the subway situation, but I want you to have good public transit to get to where you're going. And then when you get to that job, I want you to be paid well. And if you're about to have a kid, I want you to know that you're going to have parental leave when you have that kid. And if you don't want to have a kid, I want you to have the right to choose whatever kid, which means access to birth control and abortion and those things that give you the freedom to decide on that. And if you already have a kid, when you pick them up at school, I want that school to be good, not having its funding slashed while they set fire to the Department of Education. And then when you get home, I want you to be in a neighborhood that is safe and where you can breathe the air because we didn't let them get rid of the Clean Air Act. And you don't have to think for one moment about whether the air you

breathe or the water you drink is clean and clear, which actually takes a lot because it means the government has to constrain those actors that would make you unfree by polluting the air and polluting the water. And then when you go to bed, I want you to know that your family's going to be fine, even if it's family like mine, despite there being some Supreme Court justice who wants to obliterate your family because it doesn't match his interpretation of his religion. Like, that's the life I want everybody to be able to live. Yeah, I think. And I think we can deliver that. Cut that.

That's fine. Sort of abundance adjacent at that point. True. So, Dave, if people are listening to this, they missed that Pete's sort of grown an everyman beard, which is kind of interesting and going on a bro podcast. How did this appearance, did you get a sense of how Democrats reacted to this appearance? And maybe from your perspective as someone who's covered this, what it says about Buttigieg's plans for the future? Possibly. I did hear Democrats say more, how can, who else can do this? Not just we're ready to give the nomination to this guy,

but who else can talk like this? Who else can articulate like this? Because you mentioned abundance. Yeah, actually in abundance, the first chapter begins like that. It's a very effective rhetorical tactic to say, imagine your life minute by minute or hour by hour if we get our way. It's sort of like that meme of, like, you know, the city looking glorious. And, you know, like this, if Pete Buttigieg gets elected, this is what the world will be like. Oh, yeah. The original Green New Deal pitch was like that. Imagine you wake up and you take public transit and then you have it. And so that was what I heard. Not jealousy. How do we copy

this? But who else can do that? Can Shapiro do that? That's how they saw it in terms of the next presidential candidate. In terms of rhetoric and going back to why they lost last time, they do think that there is a calcified Democratic consultant class, I'm really not shocking you by saying this, that is very scared of taking a risk and saying something that might be hard to defend in a debate that wants to use phrases like opportunity economy, a phrase that you only mention anymore if you're trying to say how bad it was. It's like a Koch brothers phrase. Right. Yeah, it was giving Mitt Romney. What's the soundbite? And that's what he was doing that they think other Democrats should do is how do you actually make this a memorable story that stays in somebody's head and not a

talking point because they hear a talking point. And even liberation, when you think of a concise phrase that probably sounded good in a focus group, the next time you think of it, it's being made fun of generally. And that was what their last nominee did a lot of. To an extent, Obama had, sorry, Biden had stock phrases that he'd repeat. When he was younger and he was better, he was very good at talking about being at home at night with your kids and thinking about your bills and waking up and wondering how you're going to afford your family. That's very basic politics. And that's part of this discourse is how come we have so few people who are good at the basic politics at that level? They have of congress who are pretty good at it but then they've got a different discussion the seniority issue where they have old democrats who can't do it very well anymore and that's what

they it wasn't let's give him the nomination he's our savior it is uh how do we get andy basheer in that conversation because they're democrats who just don't or who i'm not saying he can't do this but democrats have learned a bad way of talking. And it's only dawning on them now. This is a bad, unconvincing way of talking. Yeah. And I mean, it's a it's also a sort of subtle rebuke of the Kamala Harris, like how safe they were and how afraid she was. And, you know, the Joe Rogan not going on there, whoever's fault that was, whatever. But she has always been a politician that is very carefully managed and very nervous about doing interviews with people she doesn't

know and not knowing how it's going to go. And look, Pete, I'm a well-established Pete hater, but I will say, I will say he did turn out to be a pretty effective regulator in the Biden administration. And you put him on Fox News, you put him in a setting like that, like the man has skills. So I definitely, you know, I think he could, I certainly think he could be a contender. He's got a lot of name recognition, a lot of goodwill with the Democratic base. So I think he could be well positioned. The other person you just mentioned there is Andy Beshear, who's the governor of Kentucky, who is, I think, still the most popular Democratic governor in the country, even though he's governor of Kentucky, a state that is, you know, very Trump-friendly and very Republican.

And, you know, Andy Beshear is not a firebrand. He very much tries to stay in the lane of, like, I'm creating jobs. He ran, you know, coming out of the teacher strike wave against cuts to teachers' pensions and assault on education. And, you know, there's a lot of sort of backstory there of how his political formation. But I have to say, and you've covered him a lot too, he's never impressed me on a charisma front. He's one who I would say, he's good when he's studied his lines and he's got his little Kentucky-style jabs ready to go. He's one that I feel like has gotten better. And he impressed me. It was just on Fox News and he's got his little Kentucky-style jabs ready to go,

he's one that I feel like has gotten better. And he impressed me. He was just on Fox News and sparring with the host there, and I thought he was pretty nimble and handled himself pretty well. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Andy Beshear. In the country to build plants, we're going to hear announcements on that this afternoon. I guess all I'm saying is,

isn't it worth kind of giving some of this a try since he did win all of the swing states across the country, which I know he points out quite often? But I guess the question is the things that that voters were looking for and that got him elected, writing our trade situation, fixing the border. Doesn't it make sense to have at least a grace period for this American president to see if some of this will work? I believe that Donald Trump isn't president because he talked about trade policies. He's president because he talked about making it easier. This idea that we can reshore immediately when factories take three to five years to build. And even when they're being built, why not begin the process? Why not begin the process? In a significant way. Yeah. And our projects are being paused and they're being stalled because even when you're building that new factory, you do have to import certain goods. So I think you

just have facts about how this is hitting the economy. And listen, I'm not trying to root against the president. I'm not trying to do this because I'm a Democratic governor and he's a Republican president. I'm doing it because I can support any administration that helps our people. But it's my job to speak out when the policies hurt our people. So what do you think of his prospects and how he's positioned himself? He is someone you hear you heard a lot of in the conversation. And he is more cautious. The important thing with the Peter review was that it was long heard a lot of in the conversation. And he is more cautious. The important thing with the Peter view is that it was long and a lot of Democratic staffers don't let their bosses go on and talk for that much, that much of a conversation, because you saw this actually with Tim Walz yesterday.

You give a hour long conversation. Five seconds gets clipped on Twitter and that's all people talk about. They're worried about that. And Bashir, by the way, I guess I'm spoiling it. But yeah, Bashir is better at the, I've got 10 minutes to make my case and soundbites and very good at relating to things in Kentucky because they've had a very successful economy over the last, he's been governor six years, and can get into the weeds more than a host does, more than Trump does. Trump is very, very blasé when he talks about unshoring, or Peter Navarro is, and just slowing people down and saying this is not going to work because of, let me tell you this process.

He's been doing that when he's running in Kentucky. He would get very specific about here is how I brought this business here. Here is how many people employ. I'm here with the ribbon cutting. That is a different kind of politics that, frankly, Joe Biden did a lot of. Here I am and here is how IRA is working. But Joe Biden was so bad at articulating it for just charisma at that point and articulation reasons. That was a little redundant.

But you know what I mean. Biden would give a speech about that and all people would focus on is how he shuffled out to it. And Bashir does the Biden thing of saying here is how this actually works. Here is how it's seriously with like a little more youth and a little more of a pap ability to go back and forth in the interviewer. But that's not the exact skill the Democrats are looking for in the moment when they're trying to rebut Trump and say, no, we do have an economic agenda. That's part of it is can we can we explain why? Because I would not to be Tom Friedman, but I've been in cabs where people love Trump and they say, I love the terrorists because he's going to bring factories back. And that is something Democrats need to respond to because they have their own bring factories back plan. It was what Biden was doing,

but we just said Biden didn't convince anyone he was doing it. Yeah. I think the economy is going to, in a sense, provide its own response. It's almost like Democratic messaging proof. Yeah. Okay. So let's actually put D6 up. This is a voiceover. You can see Gretchen Whitmer speaking of retail politics. Gretchen Whitmer greeting President Trump as he arrived in Michigan for his rally, his 100-day rally. And it only got more uncomfortable from there because we have, this is D6B, Donald Trump basically calling the Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, to the microphone while he was speaking to a group, a military group on, this was Tuesday, so let's roll D6B. Well, I hadn't planned to speak, but on behalf of all the military men and women who serve

our country and serve so honorably on behalf of the state of Michigan, I am really damn happy we're here to celebrate this recapitalization at Selfridge. It's crucial for the Michigan economy. It's crucial for the men and women here, for our homeland security and our future. So thank you. I'm so, so grateful that this announcement was made today and I appreciate all the work. Thank you. So again, if you were listening to that, you probably picked up on how awkward it was. Watching it is even more uncomfortable because at one point she, as she's saying how thankful she is, she turns to look at Donald Trump as though she's about to say, I'm grateful to President Trump,

realizes that she should just say, I'm grateful this event is happening. And that's what comes out of her mouth. I'm grateful that this is a thing that's happening. I'm grateful for the United States of America. Like that's what was going on in her mind. You'm grateful that this is a thing that's happening. I'm grateful for the United States of America. Like that's what was going on in her mind. You could just see the wheels turning. But Dave, Gretchen Whitmer also had that incident in the Oval Office not too long ago where she was photographed covering her face with a binder, very conspicuously looking like she was intentionally trying to cover her face on this. So Kentucky is a redder state than Michigan.

This is a very interesting, I think, dichotomy or contrast when you're looking at the way Bashir is handling the second Trump administration and Whitmer is handling the second Trump administration. What do you make of her efforts to walk the fine Trump line, especially in the midst of the tariff upending, the tariff war upending Michigan's economy. It hasn't gone well for her as a prospective presidential candidate.

In New Hampshire at this dinner that Pritzker was at, this fundraising dinner, just talking to people beforehand, people brought that up as the first thing they knew about Whitmer was these Democrats. And these are plugged-in Democrats who have seen Whitmer campaign in the state before for other people, and they have an open mind, but they already, that

already was a strike against her. Why was it? It just was that it made her, it made her look weak and that not, not that every campaign is 2020, but I heard this so much when people were looking for somebody who could run against Trump. They, they really hated how it looked like Hillary Clinton was dominated by Trump in the town hall debate. This is very superficial stuff, but I heard that again and again. And just the fact that she didn't look like she could stand up to Trump in the Oval Office, this is a little bit different setting. That came up for her as a presidential candidate. For her as somebody in Michigan trying to keep Democrats in power in the midterms, this, I think, actually makes a lot of sense. She's doing stuff that other Democrats would politically have trouble doing. I think she

has leaned into the fact that Trump sees her as a potential presidential candidate, and it is every time that she's there making a deal with him, he gets to humiliate her. What she wants is something she can come back and let, you know, Jocelyn Benson or the other candidates run on. For her, for what the Democrats want to hear, though, Democrats who are most active right now were very sincere that they thought in 2024 democracy was at risk. They think right now democracy is at risk. And if they see a Democrat making nice at all with Trump, they're against it. Like Janet Mills got, she's not running for anything else. Janet Mills in Maine got like the reason there was so much of a discussion about her was because when she did not have decorum when Trump was calling her out, she responded.

She responded to him and then he punished her state for it. Is it good for Maine that he is punishing her state? Probably not. And so I'm not trying to separate these two conversations, but Whitmer is doing what Democrats do not want a governor to do. It might help her party. And if that's whatmer's doing what Democrats do not want a governor to do. It might help her party. And if that's what she's doing, she's not running for president. She's trying to put her party in a good position. That'll pay off for Democrats.

It'd be easier for them to win Michigan if they control secretary, state president, sorry, governor in 2028 than if they don't. Do you think she wants to run? Less and less. I think so. She's done the things you would do, which is pack. She's toured around the country. She wrote a book. But it's not,

I wouldn't say any female Democrat looks at their aftermath and says they won't nominate a woman next time. I do think that is part of the conversation, part of the conversation Democrats had. I heard it when I was at the Fighting Oligarchy rallies with Bernie and AOC

because I was looking to talk to people when I was at the rallies who were not die with Bernie and AOC, because I was looking to talk to people when I was at the rallies who were not diehard fans. They looked like they hadn't shown up, and indeed they hadn't shown up at a Bernie rally. And I found people who were Biden, Warren, or whatever voters. And that was the first thing they said about AOC. I love her, but a woman can't win. And I do think that is part of, that's in the air right now with Democrats. Is she now saying, I'm never going to run for president? Maybe not, but I think it's, it's, it's clearly less in her, uh, front of vision than it is for Pritzker or Shapiro who every Democrat tells them that they, uh, they have potential. They run for president with Whitmer. She is, she is wounded by what happened in 2024. Yeah.

Um, so the last one we have here on our list is Governor Tim Walz, of course, was the vice presidential pick who, you know, Republicans absolutely hate this guy. I think he's a total flop, disaster, terrible choice for the ticket. Democrats, including myself, still have a lot of affection for him, think that he has talent, think that certainly the agenda in Minnesota is something that, you know, he should be proud of and something Democrats should have leaned into more. So he referred to this clip earlier. He recently he's been doing a lot. And one of the things that he asserted recently is that, you know, he was brought onto the ticket to basically be able to code switch and talk to white men. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. I knew I was on the ticket.

I would argue because we did a lot of amazing progressive things in Minnesota that improved people's lives. But I also was on the ticket, quite honestly, you know, because I could code talk to white guys watching football, fixing their truck, doing that, that I could put them at ease. I was the permission structure to say, look, you can do this and vote for this. So what did you make of that clip and its import? I hope politicians don't stop being honest because that clip has not played well. He was doing what some politicians do, which is he's read about what happened in the campaign. He's been repeating back some of what he's heard since then. The word permission structure, term permission structure, very good poli-sci term. I use it all the time. The usual rule for candidates or governors is

don't use that jargon. The poli-sci jargon. Or say code talk. Or code talk. But I think he was responding, it was a Harvard IOP audience. And he was in that, he was, honestly, that's a sign that he's not thinking, what's my next step for president? Because he's just very bluntly answering these questions. And I talked to him on some of the, one of the town hall stops he did, as he's been going to these districts and having events. And he's not being very strategic. Here is our plan. It's a combination of he will vent a little bit about why – not vent, self-analyze why they lost, which is not – he's not doing here is what we did wrong and how I figured it out.

It's a bit like Gavin Newsom. I don't know how we got it wrong. They have a similar discourse about the last campaign, which is, I'm still figuring this out, folks. You tell me what went wrong. And he mentioned the record in Minnesota a little bit. That is a difference that's already emerging. Pritzker will talk about the progressive record in Illinois. But Scheer can't because Republicans run the legislature in Kentucky.

His record is much more about job creation and stopping some things Republicans wanted to do or vetoing it, not stopping it like some of the trans legislation. Yeah. And that's kind of the difference in this field is that Shapiro and and right now, because of the split in Michigan, Whitmer and Bashir are talking about working with Republicans. Pritzker is talking about fighting, fighting, fighting Republicans and winning for Democrats. And specifically, what's the policy I've done? That is already a difference because it's not going to be a very senator heavy field, I don't think, in 2028. It is going to be people who had this experience governing different skill level. You're not surrounded by Washington reporters all day. This has been a problem even for Walls, who did have struggled a little bit when he was at a higher level of competition and interview.

But that's already a difference you're seeing is who can talk about what they what they did versus who can talk about how they fight Republicans. That is an anomaly, as Tim Wall saying to a friendly audience. Yeah, here is how the campaign thought about it. And the final part, say on that, you do hear no one is as we get further from that campaign, Democrats are more comfortable blaming the very consultant-heavy thinking, the very risk-averse thinking that they engaged in. And they're not naming people saying this strategist is bad, this one's terrible. They are saying that campaign was very thrown together and phony and, when Biden was the ticket, dishonest about how good Biden was on the stump and we can't do that again. And that is how you start to get there by awkward phrases like code talk. I appreciate that as a reporter that you're starting to say the party had a very Lego-like view of the electorate, that we need to add some things together, and that is wrong.

So I think it's sophisticated what he's saying. Will it help him in a poll next week? It will not. But that's not where his head at. And is it your sense that AOC is building up for a run? I wouldn't have ever thought that. I always thought that it made more sense for her to run for Senate. Not that I'm giving her advice. But because what she is doing now is because she's polling well in these very early polls, because people are talking about her,

she has the ability to do what Sanders did in two campaigns, which is drive the conversation to progressive policy. Because if there's no one like that, you saw this in 2024 with Biden. If there's not a primary, then you are not having a policy discussion. You're responding to Republicans. You're not having a discussion inside the party. You're responding to op-eds by James Carville or something. Yeah. So for that role, and Pritzker's not doing all of that, but she hasn't really done that.

This is the paradox of AOC right now. As she's gotten more popular, she is not saying, and here is a bold new Green New Deal proposal that I have that I want us to talk about. She is attacking Trump. So I think if she sees a way to change the party that would make sense for her to run for president, what she's doing, it's week by week how she's responding. But we saw yesterday Lee Zeldin saying the Green New Deal is dead. And as one of the Sherpas of the Green New Deal in the Congress, AOC wasn't responding to that.

She was talking about whether she'd be on oversight and if that's a good role for her to have to fight Trump. It is. She's very interested in Democrats being credible and people looking at them as a party that actually fights the super rich, et cetera. So if she sees a way to do that for his presidential campaign, sure. But she's not doing that right now. And that's been interesting to me because getting into the discourse, change the discourse, if you're not Donald Trump, is pretty tricky. She can do it. And she hasn't really been doing it. Right. Very interesting. Dave, thank you so much. Great to see you. Thank you. Yeah, a pleasure. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot

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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

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. Mark Andreessen made comments on a new edition of The Ben and Mark Show about which particular professions might be best equipped to handle the incoming onslaught of job loss from generative artificial intelligence. And, you know, Crystal, it's pretty convenient what he landed on. So let's take a look at this clip. Let's roll the first element here. So the great VCs have a success record of getting, I don't know, two out of 10 or something of the great companies of the decade. Right. And so, you know, if it was a science, you could eventually have somebody who just like dials in and gets eight out of 10. But in the real world, it's not like that.

You know, it's just it's you're in the fluke business. And so there's there's this and there's a there's an intangibility to it. There's a taste aspect, the human relationship aspect, the psychology. By the way, a lot of it is psychological analysis. Like, who are these people? How do they react under pressure? How do you keep them from falling apart? How do you, you know, how do you keep them going crazy? How do you keep from going crazy yourself? You know, you end up being a psychologist half the time.

And so, like, it is possible. I don't want to be definitive, but, like, it's possible that that is quite literally timeless. And when, you know, when the AIs are doing everything else, like, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing. Crystal's absolutely losing it when you get this on camera. It's very convenient. It's very convenient that VCs will be those who emerge unscathed from the onslaught of job loss from AI, Crystal. And you're again, not wrong, right? That there is some element of like subjectivity involved in venture capitalism that you can't replace with machines. And it's just, there are also a lot of other professions that we think we can replace

with machines that actually we probably can't fully replace with machines. But it's sort of amusing that Andreessen sees venture capitalism as the one that will probably be spared because it's simply too valuable. See, I think it's the total opposite. Like, I think VCs would be one of the easiest things to replace with robots. Oh, right, right, right. Because the thing is, like, if you humans, you know, if you have a relationship with a person and by the way, a lot of these VCs, the way they invest is basically like, oh, I know this person from another.

It's very relationship and network based, which makes you inherently very biased in that process. So I think this is one of the areas that is, you know, that is ripe to be taken over by robots who can just like crunch the numbers. What is the business done and be able to much more effectively decide which ones are likely to succeed and which ones are not. Well, this is why I think it's funny, because that's generally my perspective on generative AI, is that there are things that can be done without human involvement that you can mostly outsource to these machines. But I just use the word mostly because I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea, whether it's

a VC or journalism, that's self-interested, of course. But, you know, all kinds of different jobs. I think what we do here is timeless. It's timeless. I don't think you can replace it. Irreplaceable. I think pretty much everything else you can replace, but not us. Yeah, that's—we did make a—I say we.

I did make an image for our group chat of a baby sogger and glasses and a tiny suit yesterday. So there are some things that they can do that they get right. The machines can do really good work, Crystal. But in all seriousness, I think the human touch is important to way more professions than a lot of people who are super bullish on AI realize. And so I'm actually sympathetic to the point that venture capitalism has a human element that's important, just like I'm sympathetic to most jobs having a human element that's important. Because even if it's true, it is true that VC is probably one of those areas that you could do so much of it with generative AI. I don't think any of these careers should have the or many of these careers should actually have a lot of this outsourced without the, a significant chunk of the human element remaining. I don't even think that's good for efficiency, to be honest, if we define efficiency as also providing for the common

good in an efficient way. So it's sort of a funny, like, two sides of the coin, or, you know, it's almost like Catch-22 with Andreessen's point there, because I do, like, yes, like, damned if you do, damned if you don't. But thank you for, you know, saying that you as a person who is helping orchestrate this mass transformation of the labor force will be protected or should be protected. Right. Because you're just that smart. Because he recognizes his own humanity, even as he doesn't recognize anyone else's humanity. Exactly. And how essential that could be to, you know, society, the world, et cetera. Because it's also not like,

you know, okay, these guys will say out in the open, our goal is to effectively replace all human labor. Yep. And we'll talk openly about how it's going to require a complete change

of the social contract. And, but, you know, but they're just forging ahead without actually laying any of the groundwork for this purported massive change and destruction of the requirement for any human labor and upending of the social contract, etc. They're just pushing forward with no brakes on whatsoever. By the way, I mean, there is something really very not only anti-human, but Naomi Klein makes this makes this case that it's like also anti-creation because you are feeding into these AI machines all of these like, you know, resources that the world, the planet, the, you know, the beings that live on this planet, not just humans, need to be able to thrive in order to create our own replacements. This sort of like mere world replacement for all of us. But in any case, not replacement for him because he is essential and could never be replaced by these machines. An essential worker.

Yeah, he's an essential worker. I want to actually skip forward to E3 because Derek Thompson wrote a piece tracking the employment data for college graduates. And there are some potential signs there that AI is already starting to hit in terms of eliminating the need for some college graduates. So he says something alarming is happening to the job market. And some of the data that he relies on here is the same that we've been looking at, at how much the, how many college grads are applying to law school.

Now, we read that as a recession indicator of like, you know, if you are graduating from college and things are not looking too great with the whole trade war situation, you're like, you know what? Let me postpone my entry

into the job force by going into law school and, you know, see how things are in a few years, see if things have gotten better. But he is tracking what he, what is called the grad gap, the total employment minus recent grad unemployment. So how much do you benefit from having a college degree? And basically that metric has fallen off a cliff in terms of job prospects for new college graduates. And one of the theoretical possibilities for why that is the case is that, you know, instead of hiring 20 graduates, maybe you get two and chat GPT.

Because a lot of what new college graduates do going into white-collar jobs is this sort of like, you know, spreadsheet jockeying and pulling data and doing like the grunt work analysis for more senior people at whatever company that you're at. And that is the sort of thing that you could easily see ChatGPT or Grok or whatever helping to provide that initial research and analysis. So, you know, it's not clear that that's what's going on here, but it is very possible that we're already seeing in the data the way that AI is going to impact the labor force. Yeah, and the law school, we talked about this yesterday, the law school applications being up is quite, that's a stark indicator of what people are encountering.

And it's graduation month right now, so we're going to get a whole flood of, I think, anecdotal reports and probably data, too, about where people are landing in such an uncertain environment. And, you know, we remember as millennials how the recession changed that generation, like that changed our generation, completely shaped our generation, shaped our politics and our culture. And we could be looking at another really sort of crucible type moment for Gen Z. Yeah, no doubt about it. Yeah. He says today's college graduates are entering an economy that is relatively worse for young college grads than any month on record going back four decades. So even worse than the environment that millennials graduated into during the financial crisis.

And when there's uncertainty, and yeah, when there's uncertainty at the level that there is now, you're not adding, right? You're sort of risk averse and you're staying with what you have. And so it's just incredibly tough right now. So it was already actually pretty hard based on how the labor force has changed and based on what people are actually studying in college. But this is really

difficult. One other piece of this that we just wanted to mention, which just is pretty wild, put the second element here up on the screen. So apparently in California, AI bots are now stealing millions of dollars in federal financial aid. They basically use AI to mass enroll in community colleges and then, you know, pocket this, like the Pell Grant aid. And then, you know, and that makes it unavailable for actual students. They call them, the scammers are known as Pell Runners, and they disappear after they collect their $7,400 federal grant. This is with regard to California community colleges in particular. But, you know, this is a pretty widespread scam that's going on right now.

As early as 2021, the chancellor's office in California estimated that 20% of the applications they were receiving were fraudulent, now increasingly sophisticated AI tools have made the problem worse. Recent data suggests around 34% of California community college applicants are fake. Despite California allocating over $150 million since 2022 towards cybersecurity to help authenticate students and combat fraud at community colleges, scammers have successfully stolen more financial aid with each passing year. So shocking. Cool. Yep.

This is the future. The brave new world. Yes, indeed. Indeed. Should we talk about Alex Jones? Why not? Your fave. Let's do it.

So Alex Jones recently in conversation with Nick Fuentes, who is a Nazi and has been criticizing Fuentes has been like criticizing Trump for a while now. Oh yeah. So in any case, Alex Jones also waded into some of the waters of like beginning to a little bit timidly criticize some of what Trump's up to. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. You have very high priority, 1500 people with a legal right to be here. They're being expedited. Their removal is being expedited for no reason other than they criticize the fact that, you know,

we're supporting this foreign war. So I think- Oh, here's where I'm at though. In general, I see the whole, a lot of the populist conservative space spending half their time on this. And I just, I mean, I think it's way more dangerous. Trump's saying we're looking to deporting citizens to El Salvador. Now that's unconstitutional and that is really bad. I agree with that. Then again, though, I don't think that's a real policy. That hasn't happened.

What is really happening. They're talking about using the Enemy Combatant Act to do it for regular crime. It's, I don't, I think that's one of those throwaway comments. Do you think it's him trolling? I think they're flooding the zone with poo, like Bannon said. I don't know if you'd swear on the show, but they're flooding the zone with a bunch of nonsense. With bullshit. So kind of interesting. It feels to me like there's a little bit of like a shell game going on here with Alex Jones, where he is uncomfortable with like the reason Fuentes and people aligned with him object to the, you know, detentions of Mosan

Dawi and others who have been critical of Israel is because they are actual anti-Semites. Yeah. And they actually hate Jews. And so they end up in the right position of like, we should stand against this and you should be able to criticize Israel. But they do so for, you know, actually abhorrent reasons. And Alex Jones doesn't really want to get cross eyes wise with that. No. So but so what he says is like, oh, we're spending too much time talking about this thing when what I'm really concerned about is the threat to deport U.S. citizens to El Salvador. And, you know, Fuentes comes out, it's not really happening yet, but this is really happening. But in any case, kind of an interesting dynamic playing out there on the fringes of the right.

Yeah, and Alex Jones posted a video last night where it's sort of summarized. It says, in this important breakdown, Alex Jones explains that his criticism of Trump on a few issues comes from a place of deep respect and love designed to support Trump and his overall pro-human agenda. As an example, Trump's 51st state ongoing joke about Canada just handed the World Economic Forum even greater control than they had under Trudeau, which back check, yes, absolutely, because Mark Carney, central banker, is now in charge of Canada and he likely would not have been if Donald Trump hadn't done this ongoing 51st state joke about Canada. And so that's interesting because it's Alex Jones even like taking issue with the style of Trumpism. On the Israel stuff, yeah, that like sort of hand-holding emoji, like that's how I'm seeing it with the actual anti-Semites and the civil libertarians. And it's not the civil libertarians actively trying to hold hands with the literal neo-Nazis. It's more the neo-Nazis grabbing the hands of the civil

libertarians and being like, look, we're in this together now. And Alex Jones is trying to be like, yeah, no, we're not. But it's hard because there are serious civil liberty concerns on the table that I was thinking about this this morning. I mean, one of the, I think it was a huge wake-up call for the right where they were holding hands with the civil libertarians in 2017, 2018, when people like Carter Page were being unlawfully spied on by our intelligence community, by the FBI, when they didn't take all the steps they needed to secure their FISA warrant and they lied on the fight, all of that stuff. It's like all of that has just been thrown out the window. And that's something that the Alex Jones universe was furious about,

was the FBI fudging the rules and ways they did to spy on Muslims during the Bush administration, the Obama administration. I mean, it was all out there for everyone to see. And now it's like, just full steam ahead. Don't worry about any of this stuff. Yeah, we'll get back to a place that we trust Trump. Exactly. Exactly. And Alex Jones, to your point, is someone who's very much like trusting of Donald Trump. So it's very interesting. I think that you're not wrong. Like this criticism of him is from him is very interesting. I mean, the other dynamic that's playing out here is, like, there's a reason

Alex Jones wants to have Nick Fuentes on his show, because Nick Fuentes is popular with some portion, probably a significant portion, of Alex Jones' audience, which makes sense, because Alex Jones is a conspiracy theorist. That's his whole shit. And the ultimate, like, timeless conspiracy theory is that

the Jews control everything. Yeah. And so Nick Fuentes is sort of, like, out-conspiracizing, is that a word? Alex Jones. Yeah. Which is why he's too nervous to actually say like, you can't like stop fixating and saying Jews control everything and just being like an out-and-out anti-Semite. Yeah.

Because that would be very unpopular with the audience base that he's created and with his brand positioning as like the ultimate conspiracy theorist. So instead he has to couch it in just like, well, I think you're fixating on that a little too much. Well, so Fuentes is a sort of, he's Catholic. And Alex Jones, I'll say, as an evangelical, there are a lot of like evangelical Christians

who have now, after COVID, fallen into at least being like Alex Jones curious, if not like big Alex Jones supporters, but Alex Jones curious. That's also a group of people that is very pro-Israel. Oh, yeah. And very averse to anti-Semitism. And so from like a very sensitive to claims of anti-Semitism. And so I think Alex Jones is in this interesting place where, I mean, you and I both remember like in the mid-aughts, Alex Jones was way more popular with people on the left

because of a lot of 9-11 stuff. He was like in those spaces. That's when he and Rogan get to be friends. Exactly. Yeah. And so he has such a strange coalition of people who follow him. I think he feels pressure, not just in substance, but like actually in being able to maintain the project that he's overseeing, he sees himself

overseeing, as he feels some pressure to try and like say the emperor has no clothes when it comes to Fuentes and to try to undercut Nick Fuentes or just be seen in debate with Nick Fuentes so that it takes power away from Nick Fuentes. When you're making Alex Jones look moderate and reasonable, that's a wild place to be. I do also think that we can talk about whatever Alex Jones' motivations are for this. He seems quite different. Even some of his followers are criticizing him for seeming different in recent days. Yes, tell me more about that because I can't claim to be like a regular viewer or particularly in touch with his audience base. No, I don't. I'm not a regular

viewer either, but he has been a more regular presence in some conservative circles. Like he goes on Tucker's show. And I think, again, like we can criticize his motivations for this, but I think he definitely was changed by his experience in court with the Sandy Hook stuff. When there was a consequence. When there was a consequence. For his outlandish accusations. And even if that consequence is sort of disproportionate, which I'm not even going to start debating, that's definitely Tucker's take on it. But even if that's true, he seems like,

you know, again, maybe he's doing it for the wrong reasons, to paraphrase everyone on The Bachelor, but he seems like he's more careful and cautious. His followers, not all of them, but there's like a subsect. It's like Fuentes' world, which is why he wants to debate. This is the moment when Alex Jones truly became president. Yes, this is it. It's finally arrived. But Flint's world does criticize him for being, I'm sure they call him a Zionist, and I'm sure they say that he's been co-opted by the vast Zionist conspiracy just like Donald Trump. And I think that's where he feels pressure to debate Flint and push back

and try to put some guardrails up at least on that. But, yeah, I mean, Alex Jones is in an interesting place right now. Some of his people think he's not hardcore enough anymore. He definitely- Lost his edge. He has some guardrails, obviously, because of the court situation and to your point- Don't you also think, though, that because there are so many wild conspiracies, it's hard for him to keep up? And not just with Fuentes, but also with, like, the, you know, all the QAnon stuff and whatever.

Like, he used to be the only game in town for this kind of content. And now he's got a lot of competitors, and they're pretty fierce in terms of, like, the, you know, remember back in the campaign, they thought that the Democrats made the hurricane. Like, you know, like, he used to be really kind of have a corner on that market. And now there's a lot of competition in the campaign, they thought that the Democrats made the hurricane. Like, you know, like he used to be really kind of have a corner on that market. And now there's a lot of competition in the space. But a lot of those people still sort of, I don't want to say revere, but a lot of those people still pick up on Alex Jones's cues and follow him and will like, you know, be deferential, respectful of Alex Jones, the sort of like the figurehead of that movement, which a lot of people feel like was vindicated around the time

of COVID. And that's one of those things where it's like, he has been correct about certain conspiracies and it gives him this power. The funny thing now is that like, you know, all the things they said about the World Economic Forum, they want you to like have no things and eat bugs and whatever. It's like now Trump is like, you can only have two dolls. Yes. Trump is like welcoming like Scott Besant, who comes from Soros world, into the fold. And Besant is now the architect, the man who's seen as like the trusted figure of Trump's entire economic policy. So it's a very odd time. The internal politics of this are very odd. The Tucker, the recent Tucker interview with Alex Jones is quite interesting because it's Tucker marveling at the fact that Alex Jones predicted 9-11, which people dispute. He made some comments before 9-11 that I think were genuinely pretty prescient.

Yeah, they're pretty prescient. But Tucker basically saying, like, you were right about this ever since the government has tried to silence you. So this is where the power comes from of being prescient on a couple of different things. So he does have more competition now from the media that he helped democratize, right? Infowars really was the only game in town, and some even weirder blogs. But now you can say this stuff on X, and you can say this stuff on X and you can say this stuff on Rumble. So everyone's sort of in the game. It's been democratized to the point where it does have a harder time sort of holding conspiracy worlds together.

This is why I love talking to you. Oh, I'm not even that deep. Like, you should talk to some of my friends, like Sagar, my friend. You should talk to some of them. Like, they'll be able to give you a much more granular reading of the internal dynamics. We might need to do that. We should do that, actually, because I'm not even that deep. People would listen to me and be like, okay, yes, but you're missing the nuance. Like, Flint is actually blah, blah, blah. I'm like,

oh, gosh. I try to stay out of it, but we should get one of them on. Yeah, I like that. That'll be fun. All right, guys. So that is the show for today. We have our Friday show tomorrow. It looks like, so baby has not come as of 1024 a.m. on Thursday. But I do think Sagar is now out for his paternity leave just to be there for his wife and make sure that they are ready to go. So we are wishing him well. So you guys are going to see, you know, different hosts. Oh, it's exciting.

I'll go ahead. So on Monday, actually, Glenn Greenwald is going to co-host with me for a portion of the show, which would be super fun, which I'm looking forward to. So we are going to bring in some sort of like guest outside hosts, but also we'll be, you know, you and me and Ryan, and we'll be mixing up the hosting duties all around to, um, to cover for Sagar while he is on maternity leave, which is something we're going to continue into the future as well because that has, I think you guys have received that really, like everybody seems to be enjoying the different dynamics. We're enjoying the different dynamics. It's fun to get to host with all of the co-hosts here.

And so, yeah, that's what's going on. So we'll see you guys Friday, and then I will see you on Monday with Glenn Greenwald. Have a great day, guys. I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, author of the most banned book in America. On my podcast, Fighting Words, I sit down with voices that spark resistance and inspire change. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like,

no, you're not what you tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. Fighting Words is where courage meets conversation. Listen on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. He was furious. He was out of his mind. And he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees.

You can now binge all 10 episodes of Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.