Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/2/25: Walz Gets Ousted, Trump Judge Blocks Deportations, Rand Paul Trashes Tariffs & MORE!

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

Krystal, Ryan and Emily discuss Mike Walz ousted, Ukraine minerals deal, judge blocks Trump deportations, Rand Paul slams tariffs, Bannon with Lina Khan, and MORE! If you need any help, please contact http://breakingpoints.locals.com/contact To connect your RSS feed, use this link: https://breakingpoints.locals.com/rssSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Happy Friday, y'all. How's everybody doing this

morning? Doing great. We're on baby walks. Lovely. Good to see you guys. Good to see you guys, too. A bunch of stuff that was breaking right after our show yesterday, a bunch of moves, Mike Waltz out at NSA. And Ryan, I think you have a scoop with regard to some of his last acts in that position, correct? Revealing some of the tech. Yeah, people thought that he was caught using Signal on the day that he was fired for his poor Signal use. But it turns out he was using an Israeli tech firm's version of Signal. Oh, that sounds even better. Because that tech firm kind of makes a copy of everybody's messages so you could keep it.

So it might comply with record-keeping rules in the federal government. But it also means that the Israeli tech firm, which is made up of former Israeli intel officials, would have access to these, you know, potentially would have access to all of these messages sent by our national security team. Is this because people saw the Reuters picture of him in the cabinet meeting? Was he using the app then? That was the Israeli tech firms app. Yeah. And if you look close enough, and we have a story over at DropSight that people can read, if you look close enough at it, it's not the Signal app. It's this Israeli tech firms app. All right. So we'll get into that.

We got more details on the Ukraine minerals deal. Emily and I covered the outlines of it yesterday. I'm curious to get Ryan's take on that and where we are with regard to ending, hopefully, one day the Ukraine-Russia war. We had this also we kind of previewed yesterday, Emily. A Trump-appointed judge has now blocked his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. And we were just saying yesterday that we expected that to come at some point. And then lo and behold, basically, after we finish the show, you get exactly that ruling. We've got also a bunch of stuff that's going to

be in the premium section, including a really interesting clip of Tucker and Matt Walsh and Tucker kind of calling him out with regard to Israel, sort of casually calling him out on that. And a really horrific new development there, drones attacking an aid flotilla that was headed to Gaza. Also, Trump weighing in on virgins because that's something we all wanted. And Mark Zuckerberg wanting all of us to have more robot friends. So things are going good, guys. Things are going good. And maybe questions as well, if we have time for them. Yeah. So we put on a post for premium subscribers. We're going to take a few questions at the end from the comments you guys submitted. So again, we're going to do a bunch of stuff for the free

show, and then we'll have some bonus content for premium subscribers, including those questions. If you guys want to become a premium subscriber, go to breakingpoints.com and appreciate all of you guys for making the show possible. An expansion at this moment of economic uncertainty is a bit of a risk, but you guys make it so that we're able to do it. So shall we go ahead and dive in here, guys? Let's do it. All right. So Mike Waltz out at NSA. He is being given the consolation prize of UN ambassador, which the administration is trying to spin. It's like, oh, that's definitely not a demotion. That's like totally the same level of prestige and import as NSA director. But I'm going to pull up this this element. But first, just guys weigh in on that piece, which is kind of preposterous. Nikki Haley's old job, in other words. I'm going to pull up this element, but first, just guys weigh in on that piece, which is kind of preposterous. Nikki Haley's old job, in other words.

Yeah, J.D. Vance has tried to say you can plausibly make, I think he said you can make a good faith argument that it's a promotion, which is a really funny way of saying, well, if you kind of stretch and squint, you can see how maybe this would look kind of like a promotion. Of course, it's not. The amount of power that you wield as NSA is significantly more than the amount of power you wield as a U.N. ambassador where you're largely a figurehead, an important figurehead. Nonetheless, something to be said for that. But I think it was Trump's way of not completely capitulating to the media firestorm over waltz while also, you know, getting him out of his his tight inner circle. Yeah. Go ahead, Ryan. Right. Yeah. The reporting was all that Trump did not want to look like he was the chaos agent of Trump one. He really regretted, you know, all the people that he fired know the first several even weeks of his administration uh and so he was like i'm not firing this guy under pressure because i don't want to i don't want to do that again so he waited and then sort of didn't fire him just moved him over but did

fire him so yeah well no i mean there's something like from just a last time around you could get someone fired if you were inside the administration with strategic leaks. And it created, just from like a management perspective, an impossible situation because people were constantly, they realized the power of their leaking.

They could sideline people. It was just like straight up hunger games. And so, or probably Game of Thrones. Now it can only be done by Laura Loomer. Yes, now you have- They've consolidated the firing power. Yes. So it's a much more efficient process.

Let me go ahead and play this because we do have video of like, this is, this is really, this is really cruel. We have video of him like getting the news. He's going to board Air Force One. And then someone comes over to him and is like, yeah, you're not going to be on this trip. And then he's like escorted off the tarmac. Let me go ahead and play this for you guys so we can see the moment that it all went down. And Mike Walton, we noticed traveled on Marine One with him. Oh, gosh. That is 2.0. Well, it's a little too early for that. Here we go. That's his figure. He does not get on Air Force One. It's only about a 10 minute flight. So it's

extremely odd to take the helicopter flight and then not actually go on the trip. I was told he was not supposed to go on the trip. And so people raised questions about what this moment meant. So we've been asking White House officials about it and essentially just got to a point where he didn't have a lot of confidence, not of the president, not of his senior staff. And he was told, I was told earlier this week that his time as the national security advisor had come to an end and it was time for him to leave. And now we are told that he will be departing. And so will his.

And that is cold right there. So he took Marine One to Joint Base Andrews. Is that what they're saying? And didn't get on Air Force One. That's brutal. That's mean girls type stuff. one to Joint Base Andrews. Is that what they're saying? And didn't get on Air Force One. That's brutal. That's mean girls type stuff. Also, it's so obnoxious that all of these guys take helicopters to Andrews.

Like, it's like five. It's like right there. Take an Uber, guys. I mean, in fairness, the traffic in D.C. can be really bad. That's true. That's true. Yeah. But he can work from his phone. So what's it, what's it matter? Uh, but yes, to like get turned around on that is,

I mean, you, you sign up to work for Trump, you know, you are most likely it's like life. You're signing up for a brutal end. Uh, it's just going to come a lot faster and it's going to be even more brutal. And you know, what do you get? He got, how many Scaramucci's did he get? Maybe eight, but now he gets to be UN ambassador.

So that'll be cool. That's not bad. New York city. You can go to restaurants and it'll be fine. Imagine being Elise Stefanik right now. Oh no, seriously. Who? Okay.

Just so people recall, she was supposed to be UN ambassador. She's in recall, she was supposed to be UN ambassador. She's in Congress. She's supposed to be UN ambassador. But they picked, well, they pulled Matt Gaetz. They were going to make him AG, and then he ends up pulling himself out of contention. But that's one house. Then you've got Mike Waltz is pulled.

And then isn't there one more that they pulled out of the house into the administration? And they basically with Stefanik were like, I'm sorry. I know you're in like our plus 20 district, but we're not all that confident that you're going to be able to, we're going to be able to put a Republican in that seat after you. So you have to stay.

So now she not only has to deal with the, like the sting of, she thought she was going to be UN ambassador, but she's not. But now also the degradation of like them using this as some sort of a consolation prize for Mike Waltz, who was her colleague in the House as well. Like that's that's a rough hand, that one.

And she gave up her leadership post to accept this nomination to be U.N. ambassador. And so now she's back in Congress and it's sort of put them at a loss because they're trying to figure out how to let Elise Stefanik come back into Congress in a leadership post or in a post that makes her feel like she's leadership adjacent. So it's been a really brutal few months for her. She's sacrificed for the cause and is not getting rewarded for it. And then the other piece of this. So Waltz is over to the U.N. And then the person who, at least for now, is replacing him is Marco Rubio, who already is wearing a bunch of different hats.

So he is already obviously secretary of state, now USAID administrator, U.S. archivist. I didn't even I didn't even know this one. Apparently, he's also the head of the U.S. archives and now also national security advisor. So I don't know if he's gonna stay indefinitely as um nsa but that's where who has been filled in right now so you know to the the ideological piece rubio is also a hawk i mean waltz is a hawk that's you know part of why loomer and others wanted him out of there i certainly wanted him out of there as well rubio is not really an improvement though he's reconstructed though emily em, give us the pro Rubio case.

Well, I was going to say Waltz is an unreconstructed neocon who packages himself as a reconstructed neocon, but Rubio is sincerely a reconstructed neocon. Not that he is, to be very clear, does not have the foreign policy of someone like JD Vance or Tucker Carlson. He's still fairly hawkish against China, but he's definitely shifted significantly in very sincere ways. But the question is, do your ambitions also allow you to be co-opted by the unreconstructed neoconservatives who do still work in these high-level positions in the foreign policy establishment, because you also kind of came in with the residue of neoconservatism. So it's not like we're putting Tucker Carlson in these positions, to be very clear. My impression of

Rubio is he's reconstructed as just like a total and complete Trump sycophant. Like whatever Trump's ideology is today, that's what Marco Rubio's ideology is going to be. We saw that on full display at that grotesque North Korea style cabinet meeting this week, which is just I mean, this is one oflicking are off the charts. They have reached grotesque new levels. And, you know, to that point, too, I don't know if you guys saw the news that Trump is planning on throwing himself this giant military parade in D.C. for his birthday. I mean, this is this shit is incredibly disturbing to me, like just disturbing. Isn't it also like the anniversary of the army or something like that? I have to the article back up it's an ap story and it's it happens to fall on his birthday but it's also like the army is that the you can always find something that falls on your birthday every day is a holiday every day is a holiday very true all right let's get to this uh signal

israeli signal um story uh ryan i don't know if you could pull up the drop site thing, but let me first pull up let me pull up this real quick. So here's the image that this is pulled from that cabinet meeting, the North Korea cabinet meeting, where this is Mike Waltz. I mean, you can fully read a text here from the vice president of the United States. You can see Tulsi Gabbard's in there. You can see Witkoff. You can see Rubio. I'm not sure who that other the one above Gabbard is, maybe Emily knows. But in any case, everyone was looking at this and like, Oh, my God, you know, here he is using signal in the middle of the cabinet meeting. And you can read some of the text messages just from the photography. And then this guy points out actually, no, it appears they're using an Israeli firm's

archiver wrapper app called telemessage. Hence the TM signal in the pin pop it appears they're using an Israeli firm's archiver wrapper app called TeleMessage. Hence the TM signal in the PIN pop up means they're attempting to archive to comply with federal records laws. But I'm skeptical of security implications. And then, Ryan, why don't you pick up with your reporting? Yeah. So it popped up because of this thing right here, where it says verify your TM SGNL PIN. I saw that, too. And I was like, that's not this. That's as you, I'm sure you guys noticed too. That's not Signal.

Like, you know, Signal says verify your Signal pin. So this is a firm called TeleMessage. And they have this software called Signal Capture. So Signal is open source, but you need a license to use it. Signal would not confirm that they had given us a license or that they had given this Israeli firm a license. But let me find this quote. We did get a quote from them where they say,

we cannot guarantee the privacy or security properties of unofficial versions of Signal. So this is an unofficial version of signal. Like basically what it's doing is using the signal base. So the messages should be secure, you know, end to end, but then it makes a copy of them and it puts it somewhere and we don't know where we don't, is it, is it putting the copy in some white House server? Is it putting it in some server that this Israeli firm controls but then licenses back to the White House? This was something that was put together solve the problem of transparency and of record keeping because you know under the record keeping act you're required to keep you know official communications between between

members and signal disappears messages so this seems to be the answer to what um caroline levitt was saying was the solution that they were coming up with but But okay, it's a good thing that you would do that. But because they slapped it together so quickly, they just went out and got this Israeli firm. And so the firm is just completely stocked. Its top two officials are former Israeli intelligence officials. And a lot of the engineers and other people who work for it also came out of Israeli intelligence. And the kind

of profile of the people that work there is similar to all of the Israeli spyware and surveillance companies. And I'll just read this part. Tech professionals have moved between companies like TeleMessage and some of the leading Israeli spyware firms. For example, Alon Fala, a technical support manager at TeleMessage until 2021, left the company to join NSO Group, according to his LinkedIn profile. NSO Group is the one that does Pegasus. Pegasus is the no-click penetration software. You don't even have to click on anything and it will get into your, get into your phone. The U S has alternately like is supported and even tried to sanction it at

times because it's so dangerous. Another, another employee joined telemessage last year after a stint at celebrate maker of hardware and software widely used by law enforcement to extract data from smartphones. So. Yeah. are widely used by law enforcement to extract data from smartphones. So, yeah. And the thing with Pegasus is all you need to know is the person's phone number.

Right. And another thing we learned about, was it Walt or Hegseth? Hegseth, but probably also Walt. Probably. I mean, their numbers were just like freely available online, easily obtainable. So I sort of assumed that the Israelis and probably a bunch of other foreign nations as well already had access to all of these messages because yeah, that Pegasus program

allows you just to be able to get into someone's phone and all you need to know is the phone number, which is terrifying. Although if you have your phone on lockdown mode and if there aren't any new exploits, it's difficult. You know,

Pegasus is Pegasus requires your phone either to like, you have not been updated, you know, since the latest hack. And especially if you have it on lockdown mode, Pegasus can't really get in. And also apparently it costs something like a million dollars a shot. It's extremely expensive.

So like it reminds me of who was a Chris Rock who was saying we don't need gun control. We need bullet control. Like make the bullets cost $20,000 and you're going to reduce crime. And so if it costs a million dollars to fire off a hacking attempt at, say, Hegseth, you're going to be careful about how many times you do that. Whereas if Mike Wallace and Hegseth and all these others who are using Signal just went to the app store and downloaded this Israeli app, boom, they're in. Well, Ryan, do we have an indication of when they did that? Do we know that it happened after Signalgate? Or is it plausible that they were already using this? And are they using both versions of Signal?

Because I'm wondering how contacts work, like the Jeffrey Goldberg thing, how he just gets, quote unquote, sucked in. The reporting is that it came straight from Waltz's contact where Apple Intelligence had saved Goldberg's phone number because his aide sent it. And when he was going to save his aide's number, it sucked in Goldberg's number. So we need to figure out a solution. And so then they're like, okay, well, what kind of app can we get that uses Signal as its base but also makes a copy? And the way that Signal is vulnerable is the exact way that Jeffrey Goldberg got in there user error uh you know user error and the the device itself like because it's end-to-end encrypted you can't get in unless you're in the person's device or they accidentally send you something so what this app does is it creates extra vulnerabilities because it's taking the data the messages that are on mike waltz's phone and copying them onto another device somewhere. Like we don't know where, like some server somewhere. So then now you have two points

of vulnerability where a hacker could get in or an intelligence company could get in. If the intelligence officials have access to that separate, that second server, because they set it up, you know, through the spyware firm the spyware firm or through this Israeli tech firm, then they would just be able to read right into it. And this is really low hanging fruit, but I just want to say you can see in that picture that you guys used in DropSight from Reuters, he has reporters behind him. So he's sitting at the table and he is openly on his signal. He's not like covering the screen. He doesn't have a screen protector. He has a message from the vice president of the

United States up on his screen, including also Marco Rubio. He has a call from Tulsi Gabbard that just came in. But there is a message that you can read from J.D. Vance, something about his counterpart. We don't know where we don't have all of the context, but if you are a reporter sitting behind him, there are a lot of foreign reporters, by the way, that are in the White House press pool. And so it is just is low hanging fruit, but so enormously stupid for him to be at a cabinet meeting with the press directly behind his shoulder. Some of them have long lens cameras. Yeah, of course. But like also they're standing five feet behind you. I cannot wrap my head around the stupidity of what you're saying. Last point on this. If people think that I'm being unfair and suggesting that Israel might actually have the motivation to spy on the United States, there's a paragraph in the story that sums it up well. In 1998, Israel was identified by the National Counterintelligence Center to be on the Department of Energy's sensitive country list. In a 2000 report, NCIC listed Israel as one of the, quote, most active collectors of intelligence against the private sector, unquote. In 2019, the U.S. government determined that Israel had most

likely planted stingray surveillance devices that mimic cell phone towers around the White House. If you remember that scandal intending to spy on President Donald Trump and his top aides, according to a Politico report, Israel denied those allegations. But they're in line with many other stories that we've heard from decades, decades and decades. We know that they have great interest in what we're going to do vis-a-vis Iran. So they have every incentive to know what, you know, Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz and all these other characters are saying to each other in Signal. I mean, to be honest with you, I'm a little surprised that they reacted at all to the revelation that like, hey, using Signal like this is actually illegal because you are not complying with FOIA requirements. I'm actually a little bit shocked that they cared at all about that and weren't just like, yeah, we're just going to keep doing it. We really don't care. Screw you, basically, you know. So get out of here, Spencer. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone,

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Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. Just to go back to the Laura Loomer piece of this, you know, Emily, what do we know about or Ryan, either one of you? What do we know about her involvement? Because we know she went to the White House the other a couple of weeks back and she got some other officials fired, but not Mike Waltz. And also, by the way, it was what his his like chief of staff or his like top aide also was was shown the door here. And Waltz, of course, to be technically correct, being moved over to you and Ambassador.

But anyway, and she had indicated she had some video that was going to be very damaging to Waltz as well. So, I mean, what do we know about her involvement? I did see an Axios report that also said that people just kind of didn't like Waltz like outside of an ideological basis. Like J.D. Vance had pulled him aside on the Greenland trip and was trying to explain to him you have to work better with people. Apparently he treated Susie Wiles poorly, which seems like about the dumbest thing you could possibly do. Doing. Right. So it's about as dumb as using Signal to talk to the vice president in front of reporters. In front of reporters. Right.

An Israeli tech firm version of Signal. I feel like there was a coalescing, a sort of horseshoe between an ideological distaste for Mike Waltz and just a this guy's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's doing and we don't like him and we don't want him around anymore. Yeah. Bear in mind, this is the national security advisor. So he's like can't even protect his own security, let alone the nation's security as national security advisor. But yes, there's reporting that Susie Wiles thought he had been, quote, too big for his britches. And so I assume when the president of the United States is taking meetings with Laura Loomer, who is floating the possibility of some deeply damaging video. The guy has already embarrassed the administration, had the weakest appearance on primetime Fox News that you could possibly conjure. And he was already, he came into the

administration with a massive trust deficit with people that are in the more realist foreign policy circles, the like America First, MAGA foreign policy circles, have always been suspicious of Mike Waltz and definitely of the people he surrounds himself with. So it's not insignificant that Laura Loomer in that White House meeting seems to have named Alex Wong, who was a top advisor to Mike Waltz, who was actually out the door yesterday. Somebody who does have now Laura Loomer is constantly invoking that he's Chinese and invokes his wife's ties to the foreign policy establishment. So that's sort of in the air about, you know, the conversation or it's part of the conversation that's been had about Alex Wong.

I have no idea what the validity of all of the accusations against him are, but his pedigree is from the foreign policy establishment. And that's exactly why people have not always trusted Mike Waltz. And Ryan, you actually might even know more about the loomer of it all. She said she would come on the show next week, so we can ask her then. But yeah, she was She was hitting Alex Wong with really not even veiled, going after his Chinese ethnicity and saying he had secret links to the CCP. And you're like, I don't know. It was a little much. So we can ask her about that next week.

Looking forward to it. But yes, she came in. It's like how I suspect you have secret links to the IRA. Exactly. I've always said that. It's like how I suspect you have secret links to the IRA. Exactly. I've always said that. That's why we have them here. To Loomer's credit, she came in to the Oval Office with Mike Waltz present and ripped him to shreds, like in front of him. And now he's fired.

Like, tip of the hat to Loomer for that. I mean, remember during the campaign, Susie Wiles had Loomer kicked off the campaign plane before she had been with Trump before the first debate. And then after that, Susie Wiles said, you cannot be around this woman anymore. So when you have the partnership between Loomer and Susie Wiles, if they come together to, you know, to get you out of there, then I think you're probably, you're probably done. That's an unstoppable combination, I'm going to guess. What if she strategically brought Loomer back in to oust Wiles? I think there's no question. There's no question. That is exactly what happened.

You do not F with Susie Wiles. Amazing. Like, are you crazy? Like, yeah, she absolutely ushered him in, ushered her in, and was like, go to town, Laura. They said he treated her like she was a staffer to him. And which also, I mean, to me, just like- I'll show you what a staffer does. A staffer books 30 minutes in the Oval with Laura Loomer.

Yeah. Like, we'll see how this goes for you. Yes. We'll just see how this goes for you. I wanted to get to this Ukraine minerals deal that has now been signed. We now have more details than yesterday when Emily and I were talking about it.

Plus I wanted to get Ryan's reaction to this. So you guys remember this minerals deal was sort of Zelensky had this idea. Lindsey Graham had this idea. And there were some Trump aligned billionaires who also had this idea of basically a way to pitch a transactional relationship to Trump vis-a-vis Ukraine that would keep him invested in the conflict. And this deal was subject to, you know, this was what Zelensky had come to the U.S. for before when they had that big blow up in the Oval Office. And now some of the details here have changed. It's actually become much more favorable towards Ukraine. It's still basically like, you know, a lot of economic exploitation, but it's not quite as exploitative as the original

deal had been. And so we've got a thread here from Michael Tracy, who read all the details and has a breakdown here. He says the Texas minerals deal that was signed yesterday is substantially different from earlier drafts. For one, it says that future U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, not past assistance, will constitute capital contributions to newly established joint investment fund. This can now be presented as the U.S. in some sense getting, quote unquote, paid for continuing to arm Ukraine, which could be a useful political argument for continuing to arm Ukraine, but with a more profitable deal. He goes on, the agreement contemplates that Ukraine could or will receive reparations for the invasion from Russia. This may come as news to Russia. Yeah, good luck with that

one. Compared to past drafts, U.S. ownership of Ukraine's physical infrastructure appears to have been watered down with legalese, but the U.S. receives 50 percent of the revenues from a large variety of natural resources, including oil and natural gas. The agreement is purported to strengthen the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Ukraine and establish a long-term strategic alignment between the U.S. and Ukraine, including support for, quote, Ukraine's security. And that was kind of the idea here is that by having U.S. investment in Ukrainian minerals and U.S. capitalists profiting off of Ukrainian minerals, that would serve as a sort of like de facto security guarantee for Ukraine because we wouldn't want the Russians messing with our capitalist stuff. One oddity

would be people who castigate Ukraine for corruption and denounce the Biden family for profiting from Ukraine related graft, cheering this sweeping economic and security integration between the U.S. and Ukraine without regard for whatever graft it's likely to induce, a point that our own Emily Jashinsky made yesterday as well. So, Ryan, you know, what is your reaction to to this development and the signing of this Ukrainian minerals deal? What it means for this war going forward? Right. Yeah, it's their hold my beer moment. Like, what's this like penny ante $50,000 a month retainer corruption you're doing with this energy company?

You know, just extort and exploit the entire country. Just take oil and gas. Let's do lithium. I noticed on the screen there that Big Balls is trending. I don't like what what is Big Balls still doing? I thought Doge was was wrapping things up, but they did some interview

with Jesse Waters, I think, yesterday. So that's probably oh, my goodness. OK, I mean, every every country is claiming to have these rare earths. And the real problem is the is the refinement ability.

Can you get them out and can you turn them into the products that are then needed? And that's the real problem. The rare earths are not actually that rare. So, yeah, this seems like just a gimmick to try to... Which Lindsey Graham said publicly it was a gimmick. He rolled out this map and he said, look, I know you're not into the war. You don't like all the killing, but look at this map. This is all money underneath the ground here.

Wouldn't this be amazing if we could just have all this money? We're getting ripped off. We're giving them all this for nothing. Biden's an idiot. You can be a genius and have all these things. And he took it hook, line and sinker. Well, I was going to say, there's reporting that Chevron and Shell have tried to do big business. Like lots of like they have really tried to make money in Ukraine in recent years.

And the corruption has been a significant impediment to that. And if it's too corrupt for Chevron and Shell to be able to feel comfortable making money, you can see the just enormous rat's nest that the United States has just injected itself in. Now, one of the significant differences that's worth mentioning, of course, between Hunter Biden and general Ukrainian-American corruption here is that this is in the service of hopefully putting us on a glide path to ending the slaughter. But isn't the attempt here to keep the slaughter going?

Kind of. To indefinitely. It does feel to me like something that makes it much more, and I think Tracy just made this point, it doesn't come up with a long-term solution to the conflict. If anything, it feels like it's going into slow burn territory. That's like the stated goal of it. Yeah. in relationship. I had a quote in the show yesterday from somebody from the Council on Foreign Relations where they're basically like, you know, our investment in their geology is the is a de facto security guarantee. And that's that's the idea. I mean, that's why Zelensky immediately, you know, being a savvy political operator, as soon as Biden loses, he switches

the language from preserving democracy and we're in this fight against authoritarianism, whatever, switches it to let's make a deal. And he had allies from Lindsey Graham, who also Emily and I covered yesterday, is now out with some big like let's sanction Russia somehow even harder than we were before, which appears to have very likely a veto-proof majority in the Senate. We'll see if it comes up for a vote or not. But that is the idea, is effectively this would enable Ukraine to continue receiving weapons just in exchange for selling the country's geology out from under the people of the country. And it's also interesting to me, and I'm curious what both of you guys think about this, that the terms of the deal have gotten much more favorable towards Ukraine since that Oval Office blowout meeting when a lot of the reaction was like, oh, Trump's done with Zelensky and it's over for him and they're going to cut off communications altogether and he's screwed, et cetera. And in the meantime, from that interaction to now, actually, he won some significant concessions. They don't have to give up all their port infrastructure. The previous deal was basically like, we're taking half your country and that's it. End of story.

This one is still, again, very exploitative. Don't get me wrong, but it's not as bad as the first one. And then the really significant concession is, you recall Trump was really adamant about we want to get paid back for what we've already given you, what we've already shipped. And this agreement says no. I mean, that was always like sort of a preposterous demand. But this agreement says, no, you know, this is just going to be on a moving forward basis. So what do you guys make of that of that shift in the agreement and Zelensky seemingly getting some significant concessions here. I think there are a couple of things behind it. First, Trump is now over his 100-day mark and has not secured a ceasefire in a conflict. He said he could end on day one as president. He understands how significant for his voters foreign policy is in a way that the media often doesn't

understand. I mean, he has a lot of support in areas that are super war-weary because they don't, like, they're very, very, very cautious of entanglements that might end up with U.S. boots on the ground. And it's a personal sensitive issue for a lot of the places where he gets support from. And I think he understands that about his own voters in a way the media doesn't understand that about his own voters. So I think on the one hand, he's very aware of how weak it makes him look if he's not able to secure an end to the or secure a ceasefire, because you guys are right. I mean, I don't think this is an end to the conflict over the Donbass or over Crimea by any means. An end, hopefully a step towards an end to the daily slaughter. We will see. That is to be determined. But on the other hand, I also think Donald Trump really is, and I'm trying to say this without sounding insulting, but he really is as simple as you think.

He wants to look strong. He wants to look like he has made deals. And he wants to look like people have come crawling back to him. And as soon as people realize that, I mean, we talk a lot about the difference between Claudia Scheinbaum and Justin Trudeau and maybe now Mark Carney. But as soon as people realize that there is a very simple way to deal with Donald Trump, they can get gains. And I think Zelensky was sufficiently sort of chastened by even Lindsey Graham freaking

out after that Oval Office meeting that he realized he went on Ben Shapiro's show. He was talking to the press about how much he loves the United States. And they had that little conversation at the Vatican, literally in the Basilica. And so I think Donald Trump, on the one hand, is getting more eager, even more eager to look like he has a political win on his hands and he's getting closer to ceasefire. And then on the other hand, I feel like he thinks that he looks strong because Zelensky has come back to him to get the deal. Now, whether or not that's true, because the deal is now even more sweet for Ukraine is a different question. But I think that's what Donald Trump saw what he wanted to see from Zelensky, and it made him comfortable moving forward. The whole thing just seems kind of fake to me, like in the sense that it's going to be overtaken by events.

It's like Ukraine is, as Trump very correctly said in the Oval Office, doesn't have any cards to play. Yet now Trump is like spending all his time playing cards with them. What are you doing? You take their chips? They don't have any chips. Like Russia's taking their chips. So it feels like a total distraction from the reality on the ground. Let me go ahead and play this last piece for you guys.

This was Scott Bessant. It's another, Michael Tracy pulled this clip. And this is Scott Bessant saying, basically, we're fully and completely on the same page. There's no daylight between us and Ukraine at this point. Let's take a listen to that. It's good for America. It's good for Ukraine.

I believe also good for Europe in a lot of ways. And tell us the details of that. Sean, it's a great deal. Thanks for having me on tonight. And look, this is President Trump's deal that he's done trade deals, tax deals. And now we've got this Ukrainian-American economic partnership deal, and it's win-win. It is a way to show that there's no daylight between Ukraine and U.S. as President Trump presses to end this horrible war. He wants both sides to come to the table now by showing that the U.S. has an economic interest in Ukraine. It's a signal

to the Russian leadership. It's also a signal to the American people that we have a chance to participate, get some of the funding and the weapons, compensation for those, and be partners with the success of the Ukraine people, bring American know-how, best practices to the rebuilt Ukraine. But the rebuilding can't stop until this war ends. And President Trump is committed to that. So what do you guys make of that? And I do think, you know, I mean, a lot of the Republican base that is animated by the Ukraine war, they have come to just outright hate Zelensky, outright, you know, have distaste for Ukraine. And so I think this is this is a very different approach and tactic, certainly, than what they were expecting. What they were expecting was more like what the Oval Office blow up, like the MAGA right freaking love that they ate it up. Right. They thought it was great. You know, have right freaking loved that. They ate it up, right?

They thought it was great. You know, have you ever said thank you once, et cetera, et cetera. And now here you are back to this deal that really doesn't look all that different from the Biden administration's approach of just sort of like maintaining a status quo and continuing to ship weapons

and letting this thing drag on in perpetuity. Well, I think, I mean, in a non-great way that this actually is sort of a security guarantee. And that's kind of the quiet part. That's why they hate it. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, the Biden administration didn't actually even really go that far. I get what they're doing, right?

That it's sort of they're trying to have it both ways, that it doesn't look like a security guarantee. And then it is a security guarantee. Like they're using it intentionally as sort of a Rorschach test. Like if Ukraine wants it to be a security guarantee, it is. But in like pragmatic terms, it obviously could very much function as a security guarantee. It's not NATO membership. But what does this mean for how many Americans will regularly be on the ground? And we don't really know what that's going to look like in a way that I think is quite concerning. But what was important from Trump's perspective, I really think it was making it look like Zelensky kissed the ring and came back to the table for a similar deal. So I don't know. I think that's a really good point, Crystal. What is MAGA thinking now? I think maybe

the best thing, the best way that they're spinning it is this was a big win for Trump. He had Zelensky come crawling back, but it's not clear that that's actually what happened. To me, it flows from the same error that Trump made with tariffs. Like he has, he's identified, he's correctly identified a problem in both cases. And then he, in his mind, has identified a solution when it comes to manufacturing the working class, his solution is I'm going to do big, beautiful tariffs. When it comes to this war is bad, he's going to just end the war.

Like he kept, he never expounded upon why he was going to be able to do that. All he would say is that if he, if he, if the election hadn't been stolen from him, the invasion never would have happened. And when I get in, the war is going to end. So that was his plan A, but without any, you know, sketch behind it. And when that didn't work, now he's just flailing. And like I said before, has a plan to even more aggressively sanction Russia because that's definitely totally worked so far. Yeah, that's what we need. A few more sanctions. Last point on this. This is just like, you know, the Michael Tracy Ukraine segment, but I forgot it was actually him that did this interview with Bannon. I'm not going to play it,

but I'll just pull it up. You remember he asked Bannon about this proposed minerals deal and Bannon being kind of the emblem of the MAGA nationalist America first, right? His reaction was walk the fuck away. He warns that the US needs to stop entangling itself with, quote, that cursed part of the world to get a flavor of how, you know, the, this person who certainly is in a lot of ways, a leader of the MAGA right, how he feels about this direction. Now, do I think he'll be like super critical of it now that Trump has inked it and it's done? I don't know. I won't hold my breath, but that was his reaction initially. Yeah. That's a great point. I forgot about that. That was at CPAC. And we'll see how Bannon reacts now. Be interesting. Yeah, indeed. We can ask Laura Loomer too next week, Ryan, right?

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All right, let's get to the latest on the Alien Enemies Act. So this is pretty extraordinary. We now have a Trump-appointed judge who has barred the administration from removing migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, saying that his invocation of that law in the context of Trinidad and Tobago was illegal. So this isn't saying, like, you know, you did it wrong with this and this person in particular. You can't deport that particular person. This is saying, no, no, no. On the merits, your invocation of this law was illegal. So everyone who has been deported under this invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, according to this, again, Trump appointed judge, that was all done, you know, under illegal auspices.

And if you read I read through the relevant portions of this of this ruling and it's exact. It says exactly what you would think that it would say, which is basically like we're not at war. We're not at war with Venezuela. This is not an invasion. Venezuela is not behind Trend or Aragua. It just goes to the merits of alien enemies. The act has been used three times. It's really historically the meaning of what war and invasion is has been really clear. And what you're doing here doesn't meet any of that standards, any of those standards. So here is a portion. They say, as to that question, the historical record renders clear

the president's invocation of the AEA through the proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute's terms. As a result, the court concludes that as a matter of law, the executive branch cannot rely on the AEA. And then he goes on from here. This is Kyle Cheney, which is Politico's court reporter. Just now, Judge Rodriguez also denied an effort by the trump administration to hurriedly deport today one of those aea targets daniel zacharias matos under other immigration authorities he wants briefing on the matter needs to consider jurisdiction um and a trump appointed judge says the president's use of the aea was unlawful because there's no evidence trying to irragua as harmful as the gang is, is literally invading the U.S. as the law requires. So, Emily, let me get your reaction to this, because I thought that this would come at some

point, but I was sort of wondering, like, when are we going to get to actually determining whether the use of this law at all, not just in these individual habeas petitions, but whether this use of this law at all is legal? And it seems that we have arrived, I fully expect, appeal, I fully expect this to probably end up before the Supreme Court. But the fact it's a Trump-appointed judge is certainly not a good sign for the administration. No. But actually, we talked about this yesterday. This is not something that they were not expecting. Like that was double negative. Like they were expecting all of this.

They knew that this would happen. And that's why they assumed that this was likely to happen. And that's why they're trying to go with a flood the zone, throw everything at the wall, see what sticks legal strategy and to do as much of it as quickly as they possibly can, because they're very consciously concocting, or they already did. They spent the last four years concocting these sort of novel legal theories in order to get people out of the country as fast as possible to keep up with the pace of how many people came into the country under the Biden presidency, which is a lot, according to the

New York Times, some 8 million net. And some people think it's higher. But anyway, all that is to say, they are sort of aware that they were skating on thin ice with us. And I mean, it would be great to see a judge find the entire Alien Enemies Act unconstitutional. That's like the ideal situation. But they sort of knew that they were stretching. It was kind of like, ah, look what we can do. We can say that Trendyaragua is an invasion, a galaxy brain. And that's one way that we can just get everyone the hell out of here. So it's definitely a setback because that was one of the ways they would be able to get as many people as they possibly could out really quickly. And obviously, that wasn't going as well as they probably hoped, but they also kind of knew that this was going to be

a problem. It just gives them an opportunity, I guess, to rage on judges. But this is a Trump appointed judge, so it's a little harder in that case. Yeah. I don't understand, Emily, why they don't just go to Congress. And if they don't like the laws that are on the books and they think the political wind is at their back when it comes to mass deportations why don't they just get steven miller and these others you know lawyers that he's got to draft legislation and send it to congress and change change the laws is it really the parliamentarian like are we back to the parliamentarian because they can't do it without 60 votes like well parliamentarians shouldn't even need to be a problem in this case they can write up new legislation um it doesn't

have it would need 60 votes unless they can yeah you could do it through reconciliation but you probably have to ignore the ruling of the parliamentarian which they've already basically said that they plan to do for other things as well so why not just like what is what are they so afraid of when it comes to writing new laws? Well, I don't know what they would do. And honestly, I'm trying to think of what type of law that they could come up with, because what they really could do. And Glenn Greenwald, who's guest hosting on Monday, made this point recently is that you actually can do these things pretty quickly in immigration courts. You probably need a lot more immigration judges. You'd probably need to beef that up significantly.

But we have a lot of unemployed lawyers. Well, that's right. But that's what I was just going to say is I think maybe they don't trust that process, that they are sort of concerned that putting more people through that legal process means a lot of people will just be given like permanent status, permanent legal status or be on the glide path to citizenship. They're also concerned that and this one I do think is a real concern is that it becomes a carrot. It becomes a draw for people to come in if you can get processed really quickly. But I think that's I think it's the opposite, because the reason it's a draw right now is because, you know, you can come in and it's going to take years for your asylum claim to be adjudicated i mean that's the loophole that you know that listen i think i personally am in support of a large number of legal migrants into this country but that's

that's the real problem if you want to expedite um the deportation of people who are here you have to allow them to adjudicate their claims and yes, go through a process. And quite on the contrary, they've been firing immigration judges. So going in exactly the opposite direction, another round of firing hits immigration courts in Massachusetts, California, Louisiana, even as the Trump administration continues its efforts of downsizing the government, but also increasing immigration related arrests. At least eight immigration judges received notices. They be put on leave. Their employment be terminated on April 22nd. So, you know, I

personally think that there's some other things going on here. I mean, number one, as we talked about yesterday, Emily, like Stephen Miller explicitly as part of his ideology, he wants there to be a display of outrageous cruelty in hopes that that will cause people to self-deport. And so shipping people off either to Guantanamo Bay, which they also do, or to this torture dungeon for life. Yeah, that's going to scare the shit out of a lot of immigrants, especially in that sense. Yeah. Especially when you learn like, oh, actually, these aren't the quote unquote worst of the worst. This is a makeup artist with mom and dad tattoos and a soccer player who has an autism awareness tattoo like the vast majority

of people have no criminal record. So you you start if you're here, even if you did everything right, because we also know that, you know, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, he was removed, even though there was an order saying you cannot remove him to this particular country. We know that others who had come in via the CBP one app followed the procedure, we're showing up for their hearings, we're doing everything right. So none of that serves as a protection. That's exactly the message that Stephen Miller wants to send is that your entire life, like we can casually destroy your entire life and not just deport you, but we can send you and sentence you for life to this horrific, you know, this horrific place where the, the Kelly and his people say the only way you come out is in a casket. So I think that's part of it.

I think the other part of it is that their narrative on immigration. And this is really one of the innovations of the Trump anti-immigrant approach, at least in, you know, with regard to the U.S. context, is instead of primarily talking about a challenge with immigration being about jobs or being about housing or economic issues, he talks about it almost exclusively as being about criminals, that these are all criminals and they're, you know, they're coming in and they're raping our women and they're, you know, murdering people. And that's why the Lake and Riley Act is the first thing they pass through Congress. And so if you go through a legal process, it is going to become quite apparent that overwhelmingly they are not criminals. You know, yes, there are criminals in the undocumented population, lower number than the native born population. And so you cannot keep up the farce of this is a

group of horrible, you know, savages who are destroying our country and, you know, are the worst of the worst and they're terrible people. And they let out the from the insane asylums, as he always says, you cannot maintain that farce if you're actually going through some process and people have to interact with who these humans actually are and the reasons they came and, you know, the way they've been conducting themselves since they were here as well. So to me, that's the reason why they really have no interest in actually changing the law and going through some sort of semblance of a legal and constitutional process, because they want the cruelty and they also want to avoid the scrutiny of, hey, you know, these are like people who often are good community members and paying taxes and trying to do everything right. Brian, did you want to jump in? Okay. Yeah. No, I was just going to say, I think part of it is the cruelty. Yes, I agree with that. And I think

that's your point on the tactics is also right. The more that you send people through immigration judges, the more it becomes obvious that people who have much more sympathetic cases. Now, they might be ones that I disagree with, but for the broader public, they're much more sympathetic than MS-13 members or Trend Day Aragua members being booted out because people, when they look around, realize in their daily lives that there are a whole lot of people who have been here for a very long time. And even five years is a long time. You build a Kilmar Abrago Garcia's been here since 2012. He's got kids. That's the case with many, many people married to U.S. citizens. And it's politically much, even if there are a whole lot of people in the country who are like, I don't care, get them out. It's politically with the broader public,

a much more difficult case to make. There's no question about that. Yeah. I think the broader public, Ryan, was really sold on mass deportation from this idea of it's largely this is a largely criminal group. And we can already see as the broader public is interacting with the actual details of who these humans are and the way the administration is approaching all of this, the numbers have shifted already quite dramatically. And so you can only imagine if you had a legal process playing out and you were able to access more of these human details, that it would not be, you know, the public would not maintain the same level of support for mass deportation as they did when they were theoretically thinking of like, oh, it's going to be the criminals and the the mainstream media i think undermined itself by like ignoring uh that when you know when turn de aragua took over basically took over that

apartment complex in like colorado springs or wherever it was and it didn't get you know didn't get any attention um and then the and then the the right-wing media was able to like say no look this is actually happening. And then it raises questions in people's minds. Like, is there a lot more of this happening that we're not being told about? And I think the brutal increase in housing probably was strung together in people's mind with hostility to mass migration. Like, all these people came in, and now housing prices are out of control, which I understand like why you would intuitively kind of make, make that link when, you know,

in fact, you actually need, you know, labor to build the housing that we need. Like the problem is we're not building enough housing for a growing population, but certainly if there's more people, then just supply and demand is going to put some pressure on housing prices. So I, you know, I think you, like you saw in Europe, you can't really disconnect some of people's frustrations that they're going to then take out on the immigrant population. Especially when the Democratic Party just got scared and were like, yeah, they're right. We actually are going to be even tougher on the border. And so you have both parties basically pushing

the same narrative of this is an invasion. This is the number one problem. These are bad people. We need to, you know, Kamala Harris up there. I'm the only one who's prosecuted transnational gangs, etc. And so, yeah, if both parties seemingly agree that, you know, these

are criminals and they need to make it, then it must be true. And so, you know, who are you going to trust more to deal with that problem, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? I don't think there's any doubt that if you are looking for who's going to be, you know, toughest and most aggressive in dealing with this problem that both parties have now come to agree is, you know, is through a shared frame. Of course, you're going to go in Donald Trump's direction with that one. But yeah, the last point I'll make is I think that all contributed to it. I just think it's the simplest answer in the situation, which is that we hadn't seen immigration happen at a rate as fast as the as it was during Biden since Ellis Island. And I think that's just like it just sort of a shock to the system that made people, you know, change from what they thought under the first

administration when there was a thaw. And we shut it down after Ellis Island for like 40 years. Yeah. Yeah, true. All right. I wanted to get both you guys reaction to an interesting horseshoe moment here. Let me I don't know that much about it. So I'm gonna let you guys kind of set this up. But David Dayen was tweeting about this. Some good news. Jim Jordan and the GOP judiciary had a surprising change of heart, cut a dangerous proposal to shift the FTC antitrust capacity to the DOJ. Big win.

Great to see Representative Jayapal and Becca. Is her last name Balin? I think take a strong stand. And David Dayen said bad people with terrible political instincts tried to make a thing. And Alina Khan taking a picture with Steve Bannon for short-term political advantage. Bannon was who pounded Jordan into submission on this proposal. That picture might have saved a federal agency. Ryan, give us what's going on here.

Yeah, Becca Balin was my state senator when I lived in Vermont. She's now the congresswoman for the entire state of Vermont. So we have a story coming on this. It drops the news that I'm kind of sitting on. It's my fault. I haven't moved it. But basically, Jim Jordan, you know, who has been playing this and Emily can talk more about this, playing this double game for many years where, you know, he bashes big tech on a cultural level and talks about how it's awful that they're trying to censor conservative speech. And meanwhile, he hires a bunch of people from law firms that work for big tech or direct from big tech and his people go then work for big tech. He takes a ton of money from big tech.

They've taken, well, this will be in our story, but, you know, enormous amounts of trips paid for by big tech. His top tech aide left his office and then went to work for Melissa Holyoak, who is the most pro big tech FTC commissioner. And so, you know, he's been there. He's been the big tech's like best ally. And as chair of the Judiciary Committee, despite what he says publicly to his MAGA base. And he put legislation out that would basically strip the FTC of all of its antitrust enforcement power. A huge shot. And that swing was so big that he fell out of his shoes and it allowed it

finally allowed bannon and others to say look we've been telling you that this guy is actually a toady for big tech now now look how obvious it is he's he's stripping the ftc of all of its antitrust of power you know jordan was saying oh it'll go to doj and it'll be better because of that and the reason a lot of people don't buy that is like here you've got steve bannon with the powerful and beloved ftc chair lena khan and so it reminds me oh yeah like ftc does good things and now here's jim jordan trying to take away his power while it's actively going after, you know, still going after big tech. So I think Jordan has kind of been exposed by this. And antitrust, conservative antitrust event last night on the Hill. And what's the problem is there aren't as many like hardcore antitrust, conservative antitrust, like intellects, because they haven't

been groomed over the course of decades to see the world through this like neo-Brandeisian lens, which is much more common on the left for obvious reasons, because it's an embrace of government power. But that's slowly, slowly changing. So what we're just seeing is kind of a power struggle tug of war, because those people have a very powerful ally in Steve Bannon. But they also have powerful allies like in MAGA world more broadly, which is, again, it's not to say that they've won the party. Not even close. The Jim Jordans are still much more common. Big tech used to give tons of money to conservatives. It used to be a very natural marriage. They were always at CPAC having massive parties because they were the free market's success.

So it's changing very slowly, but it's still an uphill battle. There's no question about it. I would just say it wouldn't have only been Bannon who was in uproar about it. He's a powerful ally, but people like Mike Davis, Article 3 Project, they would have been firing off on this too. And he was. Mike Davis appeared on Bannon's podcast and ripped Jordan over it with a funny pun where he said, Jim Jordan loves to go to the mat for big tech. The guy. See what you did there, Mike? The wrestler. You guys get it.

We should reveal to the audience that Emily actually changed our group chat picture to be that picture of Stephen. It's so good. And you know what? I shouldn't say this, but I have my glossy photo paper for my printer. And I have been thinking of just secretly putting a framed picture of that behind us on the set. But I keep forgetting to do it. Oh, yeah, we need that. That's a great idea.

It's such a funny picture. This is like kind of related, actually. But there's been pushback led by Rand Paul to the Trump tariffs on the right as well. And this is an interesting comment from him. So he met with Trump's trade rep. Is that Navarro that he's talking about? He said, it reminded me of a meeting on industrial policy in the Soviet Union, where you have to be nice to the czar, because if you're nice to the czar, they'll bequeath upon you exceptions to the iron fist. And I mean, that, to me is like the whole point of these tariffs, by and large, is that it does consolidate that kind of power with the executive. But there was also

some preposterous, you know, pathetic situation that unfolded in the Senate where Rand Paul was trying to push their resolution that would have, you know, reclaimed power to levy tariffs, which is supposed to be with Congress anyway. And was it Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democrat who's like in Korea right now, so didn't get back in time for the vote. And then the vote failed. 49-49, they weren't able to get, you know, one more vote. Our strongest anti-corruption soldier, Sheldon Whitehouse. Yeah. In any case, I thought it was interesting Rand Paul, you know, specifically, like, obviously this is right in his ideological wheelhouse. And this is a bridge too far for him to go. My sense is that, so it was with Jameson Greer, I think is who he met, so the USTR.

Oh, okay. And I think they are- What's Navarro's official title? I don't know. Just like White House- He's my senior advisor or something. Senior crank. What is his pen, Ron?

What's the fake name? Oh, yeah. What's his pen? Ron? What's the fake name? Oh, yeah. What's his official title? What is his name? Yeah, somebody has to tell us in the comments. He's got a fake advisor that he pretends he has. Ron Vera, isn't that it? I think that's it.

Yeah. First of all, this is great news for you guys that the power is being consolidated in a dear leader, communist type system. I think this is something that you guys will enjoy. AOC is going to do a great job. Perhaps better than Comrade Navarro. But no, I think Greer is in a situation himself where his tariff policy, because everyone remembers the famous moment where he found out that Trump had instituted the pause while he was testifying. I think where Rand Paul is interpreting this from Greer is that Greer is interpreting this from his own boss, which is, I'm the freaking boss. And so if you're Jameson Greer and you have to be the intermediary between Congress, which is supposed to have this power, which is why you also have Rand Paul making the

weirdest horseshoe in the opposite direction ever with like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and Chuck Schumer. It's sort of amusing to see that happen. But you also then have Greer having to communicate the policy is just whatever Trump says the policy is, because that is ultimately what the policy is. good luck that's sounds like fun yeah well and we've already seen that right like you know the people who are giving money to the inauguration and paying to go down to mar-a-lago and the nvidia guy had you know what paid how many millions to get dinner with him and then they get their car bound etc so um and apparently actually gretchen whitmer humiliating herself and ending up in these photo shoots with Trump has paid some benefits for her getting some of the auto tariffs rolled back.

And that Sean Payne also being sort of favorable on the auto tariffs, I think, has also given him an in to get some of these exemptions and rollbacks on the auto tariffs as well. So, yeah, that is that is definitely the system that we have right now. You have to go and plead your case to the king if you're going to have any chance of survival. And of course, you know, to go back to the monopoly point, who's going to be able to do that? It's going to be the big companies. If you're a small or medium sized business, you're not going to have that access. You're not going to have the money to obtain that access. You're not going to have the lobbyists to be able to plead your case. You're not even going to have, if you're a small business, you're not even going to have the wherewithal to be able to follow the day-to-day changes

in the tariff and regulatory regime, which that in and of itself puts you at risk because you are struggling to be able to comply with whatever the dictate is of the day. So I do think one of the impacts of these tariffs is going to be a you know, a further consolidation among the big players at the expense of small and medium-sized businesses who do not have the flexibility to adapt or the access to be able to get their car bounce. And the irony, of course, is that the small and medium-sized businesses are much more American, much more patriotic to an extent because they live here. And have been an important Republican base. I mean, that's like sort of the backbone of the Republican Party.

Yes, it has been, yes, since the 50s or whatever, yes, even before that. And the big companies are multinational corporations with no real allegiance to the United States. So I don't know what they think they're doing. Yeah, no, that's all. That was all well said. All right. I wanted to get you guys reaction to this kind of extraordinary moment with Tucker Carlson and Matt Walsh here. All right, guys.

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