Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/26/25: Market Panic Amid Trump Fed Firing, India Defiant On Russian Oil, Trump Approves China Student Visas, Dem Voter Crisis

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Krystal and Saagar market panic as Trump fires fed, India defiant on Russian oil, Trump approves China student visas, Dem voter registration crisis.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Indeed, we do. Lots of breaking news to get to this morning. So first and foremost, most is Fed independence over Trump has fired one of the members of the Federal Reserve Board. So we'll take a look at all of that and how markets are. reacting. At the same time, we also have some economic news from India. Basically, they are saying screw you to our attempt to cajole them into not consuming Russian oil. So very consequential as well. Dave Weigel is going to join us from Minneapolis to break down the Dems-DNC summer meeting and see how they are grappling with their existential crisis. You don't want to miss that one. Kilmart Obrego-Garcia was released that he was re-arrested. He's now threatened with

deportation to Uganda, ongoing court battle. Break all of that down for you. is expressing regret after they murdered a number of journalists and also aid workers after an attack on a double-tap attack on a hospital. And the free press, Barry Weiss's free press, very upset with us, so I have to get into that. Yeah, we'll tell you why. We'll tell you why. Sorry, Barry. Sometimes we have to tell the truth about your bullshit valuation. Appreciate that. Speaking of that, by the way, thank you very much to everybody who's been signing up for the show, breakingpoints.com, if you're able to support us. We've got monthly and yearly memberships and of course we're doing our AMA live for our premium subscribers today. I'm told that

everything technically should be working out. So before I speak too soon, I hope that that's the case. Anyways, as you can see, we're always on top of it. If you can't afford it, no worries. Please just go ahead and hit subscribe to this video on YouTube, if that's where you're watching Rumble wherever. And if you're listening to this on a podcast, please go ahead and leave us a five-star review and then send an episode to a friend. One of your favorites doesn't have to be this one in particular. It really helps us grow. So with all of that, as Crystal said, let's get to the Federal Reserve. Some late breaking news last night, late for me, at least. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Donald Trump issuing a new letter to Dr. Lisa Cook, a member of the Board

of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve, he says, quote, in light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter, that cannot, and I do not have such confidence in your integrity. At a minimum, the conduct of your issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence and financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator. I think we can safely say Trump is using a pretext of alleged mortgage fraud by Dr. Cook as to fire her from the Federal Reserve. So I'm not even going to get into the Federal Reserve, like the mortgage stuff, because honestly, even they know that it's not the real cause for firing. This is about the Fed. Now, let's explain here about the Board of Governors for the Federal

Reserve. Trump has had a longstanding feud with Jerome Powell over their refusal to lower interest rates. Powell did say recently in his meeting that he would consider a rate cut coming up in the future, which sent the stock market up some 2%. But that is not even close to the liking of Donald Trump. Now, previously, a member of the Federal Reserve Board had actually resigned, which allowed Trump to fill that seat. One of the reasons why Trump in particular wants to get rid of Cook is that she was one of the more controlling votes on backing Jerome Powell's strategy, whereas if she is gone, that would actually give Trump not control per se, but people who share his views on the Federal Reserve Board, which would influence a direction of the overall interest rate cut.

So there has been a lot of market reaction to this. Federal Reserve, we'll talk about this in a bit, but the Federal Reserve amongst the markets and amongst the economists is the sacrosanct institution. You can't touch it. You can't even say anything about it. And that explains some of the market movement now as a result. Let's go and put this up here on the screen, for example, immediately after the announcement, you saw this large dip in the United States dollar.

We can put the Wall Street Journal story up here on the screen. It's actually quite interesting the way they put it. They say, quote, uncharted waters. Trump's attempt to take charge here of the Fed. The intention to fire him could give sway over the central bank's rate-setting power. So again, let's just hammer home. That is what this entire fight is all about. Now, Dr. Cook has actually responded to this and has said that she has not been fired, that she will be contesting this in court.

This will all come down to the Supreme Court most likely over Trump's ability to influence the Fed. It is actually very complicated. There was a recent Supreme Court reeling about the quasi-legal status of the Federal Reserve, where the president does not have the unilateral authority to remove somebody just because he doesn't like what. what they're doing, but does have the authority to remove somebody, quote, for cause, hence the mortgage fraud or whatever. Maybe it is true. I don't know. But my point is just that's the reason.

Now, this is a more open for discussion type of thing where I think there are a lot of actually very interesting views of spent all morning kind of engaging with them about the role of the Federal Reserve itself. And there, as I said, on Wall Street and amongst a conventional economist, like, Federal Reserve Independence is sacrosanct. It's not supposed to be democratic. I personally have a very, very different view of that. I think the current worry, even amongst people who share my view, is that this will just

be Trumpian to its most extent, which could result in financial disaster. And I'm not writing that off at all. So anyway, that's where I find myself. That's the thing is like, this is a Trumpian power grab, like consistent with the taking the stake in Intel and with the tariffs and with, you know, the crackdown and do you. You see, you know, this is Trump consolidating even more power. And so while even with pushing, even if he's able to push Dr. Cook off of the board, he still won't technically gain, like, control with his people on the board.

What is he doing? He's setting an example, right? Everybody knows that this mortgage fraud thing is bullshit. Whether or not it's true, it's bullshit. It doesn't pertain to her job whatsoever. By the way, Donald Trump of everybody knows a little thing or two about mortgage fraud. Wait, I thought I just got making. Right? It just got vacated in the state of New York. He's been vindicated. Right. I've just had. He's been vindicated. I mean, this is the guy who, like, routinely bragged about, lying about how much various assets were worth in order to obtain the loan. He won't. I don't concern myself with the value of Marlago personally. But in any case. In any case, as you said, I think we can all acknowledge this as a pretext. And every other member of the Fed Board of Governors is going to know this is a pretext and know that they themselves are also vulnerable if they don't just shut up and do what Trump wants.

I mean, it's the same thing when we talked to Shahid yesterday, who got fired from the State Department. And he said the same thing. You know, this was about, yes, getting me out, but it was also about sending a message to everyone else in the building. So I think that through that lens of Trump's authoritarian instincts and constant desire to accumulate more and more power for himself, that is the lens through which we should view these actions. Let me talk a little bit about the court piece that you referenced. Yeah. Dr. Cook is saying, I'm not going anywhere because you. you didn't legally fire me. And I think she has a pretty strong legal case to make their even given the makeup of

this Supreme Court and their willingness to accept a lot of arguments from the Trump administration. They had issued a previous ruling. It had to do with the different agents. I don't remember for this in NLRB or the CFPB, but it had to do with another one where it was like, okay, well, can Trump just come in and get rid of someone just because he feels like it? Or it was a similarly structured sort of independent, quasi-independent agency, or do they have to go through a process? Does there have to be caused? Does they have to go through Congress,

et cetera? And they sided with the Trump administration on that firing. But in their justification, they put in this sort of like carve out, like, yeah, but the Fed is different for reasons. So that's why a lot of people are looking at this and thinking that it is possible that the Supreme Court comes in and says you can't actually do this. And also, you know, when they say, okay, you can fire someone on the Fed Board of Governors for cause. That cause is supposed to be relevant to their job, not some like paperwork error on a mortgage application. So that's the sort of like, that's the legal piece.

But yeah, the reason why people are freaking out is because a lot of, a lot of analysts look at this is basically this is the end of Fed independence because of the coercion that you're using in this regard. Jerome Powell's term is going to be up in another year. So he's going to have his Fed chair. He's going to have a board of governors that is going to be more amenable to him. He's going to have used his power to discipline them. And so he will effectively be able to do whatever he wants, whether that's in the country's

interest, the world's interest, you know, capital's interest, his interest, et cetera. Well, I'll tell you, I mean, look, I understand your concerns. I still think degrading the principle is a good thing. For example, if anyone has never read it, I highly recommend. Jonathan Alter, he's a very neoliberal guy, but he wrote a book about Jimmy Carter. It's probably the best Carter biography I've ever read. What I was struck by is that Alter worships Jimmy Carter for having the wherewithal to appoint Volker as his Federal Reserve Chair who basically destroyed the economy and it caused a recession in 1980. And look, I don't

think the economy is the only reason Carter lost, but I think it's a big reason why. And reading that, I'm like, wait, Carter was an idiot. I'm like, this is a disastrous idea. By the way, I don't even think the whole vocor thing that everyone looks out on it is a good idea. I don't even think that's basically even true. Agreed. He can put that all the time. He basically crushed labor permanently. That's what I'm saying. Like, if you go back and you look at it, you're like, wait, this was a disaster. So my point is that this is all in the context of the quote, independent Fed. Is the independent Fed doing a good job? I would say no. And I think there are a lot of people who think that. I mean, even if you look at the way that we've done

and had inflation over the last four years, we've had supply-side inflation, and the only response we've had is crushed the demand side, which has been, in my opinion, devastating for a lot of households on top of the overall housing skew, which is happening right now, for mortgage rates. So, yeah, I'm like, oh, we're going to go after the Fed. Great. I mean, I think the Fed should have a lot more Democratic control. Now, I'm going to say that is definitely going to cause some little blips, all right? I'll admit that. And this is my point where I want the liberals who are anti-Trump to grapple with is the smart set of the people I'm reading. People like Adam twos and other are like, yes, we are now entering the realm of democratic control of the Fed. And that Dr. Cook

and Jerome Powell and all these those, they come from that Volcker-style school with their theories about how the Fed should operate. I think that has been genuinely disastrous for. for the American people, hasn't been so disastrous for Wall Street or for American industry, but the people themselves have suffered as a result of this policy. So I like to think of it here where I think there's great risk with Trump trying to take control. I will fully acknowledge that. And we'll talk about Erdogan and all of that in the future. And I already know the economists listening is ripping their hair out.

But, I mean, you have to acknowledge that at a very basic level, monetarism and debates over monetary policy were fundamental to the American Republic for almost a century. And we lost that after the independent Fed was established. We need to go back. I mean, remember the William Jennings' Brian's speech, I used to have a poster of him back. Here, mankind shall not be crucified upon a cross of gold. Silver, this was central. Farmers at an individual level understood the medium of exchange.

The greenback itself was deeply controversial. People argued about this because they understood that the exchange and the value of money was directly impacting them in their goods. And now we have moved that off to this, you know, temple here in Washington. So I say, let's go back to it so we can actually debate. People should be more well-versed, not only just in the policy, gold standard, whatever, we can all argue about it. But the point has to be more fundamental as to not let it in the hands of the, quote, experts. Because, you know, people say there's a lot of risk with Trump. I agree.

I'm totally being real. But there's also a risk to the current strategy. The risk is every single day these interest rates stay at 6, 7%, somebody's not buying a house, putting off family formation, destroying, I mean, the home builders. The interest rates right now are crushing the economy. And yeah, you can look at GDP and everything else. It's all fake, especially when we consider that the vast majority of the only reason that we even have decent enough GDP numbers is because these AI companies are spending, you know, all goblodes

of money trying to create all these data centers. So that's like my big picture view out of all of this. We can always acknowledge that Trump can screw it all up. And if anything, he might negatively polarize the idea of Democratic control. Very bossful. Very possible. But I'm willing to have the fight. I think it's important.

I can't stand these experts on CNBC and other. And you're like, oh my God, the free market and all this. It's this is bullshit. Hello, it's Danielle Fischel, writer strong, and Wilfredel from PodMeets World. And we're bringing you Viva Las Conte. That's right. We are back in Las Vegas, the city of sin, and giving the people what they want. A full week of Y2K content. Wait, we're back in Vegas?

Tell me why. Well, for the Backstreet Boys residency at Sphere, of course. We sat down with Kevin Richardson and A.J. McLean just minutes before they took the stage, and our very own Wilfredel basically became the newest member of the band. Boy band, please. Plus, the man who has the longest running comedy show on the strip joins us and gets his props. It's carrot top, baby. And finally, we all L-O-V-E-Hur, Ashley Simpson-Ross, joins us to talk about her upcoming sold-out Vegas

residency. It's a full week of nostalgic interviews you don't want to miss. Listen to PodMeets World on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Afea and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right? In terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief.

But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying,

don't miss Session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Noah. I'm 13. And as you might have seen from the news, I got a podcast, and I explain those fake headlines like your uncle would, like your cousin would if he actually did the research.

Honestly, adults don't ask the right questions. Now you know with Noah DeBarroso is a show about influence. Who's got it, how they use it, and what it means for the rest of you. It's not the news. It's what the news should be if someone Gen Z or Gen Alpha made it. And I'm watching everything. The majority of the youth, 18 through 24, say they trust. trust Republicans more than Democrats to front the economy.

You kidding. Politics is wild and I'm definitely not here to payment, but I'm here to make sense of it. Just what's happening, why it matters, and what it means for us. Bring your brain. Listen to Now You Know with Noah DeBarrasca on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Part of the reason why the Fed is taking the course that it is is because Trump's economic policy has put them in a complete and total bind where we are now heading towards stagflation, which is basically impossible for the Fed to be able to deal with because it goes

like, okay, you lift interest rates then, you know, to get inflation under control, then you screw the economy in the labor market. You lower interest rates to juice GDP, juice the labor market, and you end up with potential hyperinflation. So, you know, I don't want to like, I don't want to let Trump off the hook for the disastrous economic policy that he's saying. Yeah, the disaster's economic policy that he's pursued that has led to an impossible policy landscape for the Fed in order to, you know, so I don't think it's crazy that Jerome Powell has said, you know, I'm just kind of hold steady for now, given the uncertainty in the economic landscape. The other thing is we also have to acknowledge we put up the, you know, the dollar falling off a cliff. This, there is going to be very likely significant short term pain if analysts continue. to assess that this is going to be like the end of Fed independence. The dollar dropping means that it is more expensive for you to pay for imports. That's what it means, and we import a whole lot of stuff.

At the same time, we don't have a chart for this. At the same time, the interest rate, the yield on treasury bonds is going up. What does that mean? That means things like your mortgage are going to be even more expensive than they already are. So the short-term fallout of this move is going to be devastating. at a time when Americans already have lost confidence in Trump's business acumen. And I think that this is one of the most significant blows to Trump's brand and his image is that people have

lost faith in his economic stewardship. So I don't think that, you know, I don't know how much people are going to vote based on like this sort of technical was the Fed Independent and who got fired and whatever. But if you were looking for a moment when people have confidence and saying, oh, just hand it to Trump, put it in Trump's hands. We elected him because we trust. him because he's a good businessman. This is certainly not that moment. Look, I again, I accept that. I would disagree a little bit on the tariff part just because a lot of the inflation is not yet shown up. That's mostly because some of the tariffs appear to be fake in terms of the way that they're being set up. I mean, even on the dollar. So yeah, it's point zero, it's fell by 0.03%.

It's not like devastating. It's not like full blown. Probably because she said that she's going to fight it. It could be. I wouldn't dispute the bond market part. That's definitely possible. We're Yeah, sure, how that's all going to work. And yes, you know, the institutional investors, markets, Bank of Japan, all these other people, they absolutely could force Trump's hand. I'm not going to put any of that out. But, you know, I just have to come back to looking at the way that they talk about both the Fed and worship at its altar without ever acknowledging all of the downside.

Yes, Trump, I think, is a very imperfect messenger in all of us. And everyone's comparing it to Erdogan. And, you know, that's fine. We can do that. Let's put A5, please, up on the screen, for example. This was about inflation in Turkey, and, you know, the person who put this chart together is like, what happens when a strong man with idiosyncope preference for low interest rates undermines a central bank and appoints loyalists?

This is Justin Wolfers, who's a liberal economy. This is the conventional view. And again, I think that's fair because it's Trump. But I do think that the actual question should still remain there. And, you know, to your point, nobody in the world is going to. going to vote on, okay, not nobody. They'll all be academic departments. Well, they'll vote on the economy. That's what I was going to say. I don't know that they'll go to the Fed. That's my thing about Volker. People didn't necessarily vote about Dick Carter appointing Volker. But when the interest

rate was, I think, what was it, 19, 20 percent at one point, they were like, yeah, fuck this. I'm not dealing with this. And like you said, whenever organized labor and all those people literally got destroyed. And we had a full-blown recession from 1980, what is it, until 1982, I want to say. Yeah, They were not very happy about it. And that's kind of my point, but more broadly, is, you know, people who kind of follow and look at all this stuff for a living are deeply familiar with the inner workings of the Board of Governors. But every single one of us deals with this every single day. I mean, every person who doesn't get a raise because of the borrowing cost is too high from their company, every company that decides not to invest more in infrastructure or whatever because, you know, again, the interest rates are high. Every person who doesn't buy a house, every person who wants to move, but is locked into a low end.

interest rate. All of us are experiencing the Federal Reserve for what it is. And so at a basic level, I do think making it, quote, democratic and impacted by overall democratic politics is important. Otherwise, we'll get Volckered again. That's basically what Powell and then wanted to do. You know, they didn't go as extreme, but they, close enough. I mean, went from zero to seven. Like, it was a genuine shock for a generation that lived with 10 years of zero interest rates. I don't know that this robots are argument, but I mean, Volker himself was a democratic expression since it was, that was Jimmy Carter getting the policy that he wanted. I guess. I mean, but part of the problem, kind of. So my point, though, is that if you read the

book, when Carter interviews him, Volker's like, I'm going to have to do some things which are going to make you very unpopular. They're going to, you know, do this, this and Carter's like, well, is it the right thing to do? And he's like, yes, sir, it's the right thing to do. He's like, let's do it then. I don't think it's the right thing to do, first of all. But second, is politically incredibly foolish? But if you would ask the American people, is that how you want to deal with inflation, I think most of them would have said no. So, like, my point more broadly. It's not like we're putting the Fed chair to a democratic mass vote. We're putting it in the hands of whoever the president is. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that is what happened with Carter.

He decided, I'm democratically elected. I believe this isn't the best interest of the country, even though it's going to cause all sorts of pain, even though it's likely to screw over labor and farmers and all these different groups. So, I mean, that was probably the, sort of most directly democratic influence on the Fed chair that we've had. And in my opinion, it was a disaster forward. I don't, I kind of see how you're getting there. I would actually kind of flip it because what he decided was that even though he knew, literally knew that it was going to be democratically unpopular, he decided to do it because he trusted the economic establishment. And I'm saying, let's do the opposite. We actually shouldn't do that. Right.

I mean, in a similar way that I don't have confidence in Jimmy Carter to, um, to, To, you know, make those decisions, I also don't have confidence in Donald Trump. To be, like, looking out for the best interests of the American public or handling this in any sort of a fashion that, you know, reflects what people would actually want or what would be beneficial, et cetera. I mean, I fully admit that, for me, this is complicated because I agree with the points you make about the Fed being subjected to the Democratic will. You know, I think that's sort of like a fundamental populist principle, frankly. And the idea that it has to be, oh, you guys just don't understand. It has to be handled by this country. It's like, no, we do understand.

You know, I really reject that. In the same respect, I see the way that this is just like another Trumpian power grab with the president who I think is, you know, an authoritarian fascist that I have zero trust for. So, I mean, look, that's fine. Then you can continue to vote. You expressed yourself in the election. So did I.

So did many others. And we got, oh, what? We got the 1%, you know, popular vote. You can vote again if you want to. And then we'll see how that works out. The problem that I'm seeing for a lot of these Democrats is they're like, no, we must stand with the sacrosanct Fed. And I'm like, yeah, that's why you guys are a bunch of losers, okay?

Because you're going to come into office and you're going to pull a Carter again. And you're going to be like, oh, well, the experts told us this is what we're going to do. And then Trump or somebody else are going to beat your ass again in the election. I think more likely, I mean, we'll see what the economic fallout is. That's what the vulnerability is for Trump. Not the, you know, mechanics of Fed independence, but do people feel like things are getting better or do people feel like things are getting worse? And I think there is a decent chance that in the short term, this sets individual Americans back economically and makes the landscape even tougher for them. Possible. But in six months, if the interest rate gets dropped ahead of the election, which, you know, if I were a politician was the first thing I'm going to do. I'm going to slash that interest rate by half leading up to the midterms.

Boom. It's going to mean boom times all over Wall Street in the housing market and everywhere. Pretty much everyone I think would be happy. So, you know, people have short memories as well, especially if you do it right before the election, which, again, I still can't believe Carter was dumb enough to do this in August of 79 before the November 1980 election. It boggles the mind. But again, you're assuming that an interest rate cut would not come with corresponding inflation. And we know the way that inflation, I mean, inflation destroyed not just the Biden administration, but destroyed incumbent administrations around the world. Definitely. I mean, again, the reason I don't think it would is because I still think a lot

of it is supply side. Even the inflation today, the vast majority of his supply side. What's the coffee cup I'm drinking is roughly up by like 50%. Why is that? Is it because of monetary Bingo, because it's because of a tariff policy and because of a devastating storm in Brazil. That's it. So it's a supply side factor and or government policy factor. The Trump government can, you know, can do that. But there's not a fundamental like reason, at least in my opinion, why, you know, there is, quote, so much inflation. Or if you look at all the categories which have experienced the vast majority of inflation. Most of it is policy and supply side-driven.

Anyway, we'll keep that in mind. Hello, it's Danielle Fischel. Writer Strong. And Will Ferdell from Podmeet's World. And we're bringing you Viva Las Content. That's right. We are back in Las Vegas, the city of Sin, and giving the people what they want.

A full week of Y2K content. Wait, we're back in Vegas? Tell me why. Well, for the Backstreet Boys residency at Sphere, of course. We sat down with Kevin Richardson and A.J. McLean just minutes before they took the stage and our very own Wilfredel basically became the newest member of the band. Boy band, please. Plus, the man who has the longest running comedy show on the strip joins us and gets his props. It's carrot top, baby.

And finally, we all L-O-V-E-Hur, Ashley Simpson-Ross, joins us to talk about her upcoming sold-out Vegas residency. It's a full week of nostalgic interviews you don't want to make. Listen to PodMeets World on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Ophia and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, your spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair, right?

That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role hairstylist play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Noah. I'm 13.

And as you might have seen from the news, I got a podcast. And I explain those fake headlines like your uncle would. Like your cousin would if he actually did the research. Honestly, adults don't ask the right questions. Now you know with Noah de Barroso is a show about influence. Who's got it, how they use it, and what it means for the rest of it. It's not the news

It's what the news should be if someone Gen Z or Gen Alpha made it When I'm watching everything Sheesh The majority of the youth 18 through 24 Say they trust Republicans More than Democrats

to front the economy You kidding Politics is wild And I'm definitely not here to pay it But I'm here to make sense of it Just what's happening Why it matters and what it means For us

Bring your brain Listen to Now You Know with Noah de Barossa on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Let's go to India, shall we? We've been wanting to cover this story for a while, and just give everybody an update, you know. So Trump officially has written into the federal record that tariffs on India will go into effect tomorrow, 50% import duties on all goods from India because they continue to buy oil from Russia. So, of course, the conventional view was, oh my God, India, they can't stand this. They're going to, they're going

to buckle immediately. Yeah, not happening. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Here's the latest from New Delhi, quote, India will buy oil from wherever it gets the best deal, according to their envoy from Russia. They say they will continue to protect the interests of their 1.4 billion people, according to their ambassador for Russia. They disregarded the economic leverage from the United States. New Delhi media has turned dramatically against the Trump administration. They're literally burning Trump in effigy, which will show you perhaps in a little bit. But more broadly, Peter Navarro, the entire administration, has decided that India, who is the second largest purchaser of Russian oil, not China, is apparently the villain here

for reasons that remain completely mystifying. They at the same time want to end the war in Ukraine, but at the other side of their mouth are pursuing the neoconservative fever dream of punishing other countries and strategically important countries for buying Russian oil. So, okay, I guess that makes a lot of sense. Here's Peter Navarro, the trade guru, going off on India, which, by the way, this interview has gone massively viral in India from what I have seen. Let's take a listen. There's a general perception that somehow India needs Russian oil to basically power its domestic

economy, but that's just wrong. What's going on is the Russian refiners got in bed with the Indian refiners. Russia offers these refiners a steep discount on the crude, and they partner with the Indian refiners, and then they sell the refined products at premium prices to Africa, Asia, and Europe, and that funds the war machine. What that means is that we wind up having to pay more. Europe has to pay more for defense. The U.S. have to send Ukraine more. And it's because of the Indian profiteering.

Think about what India is doing to the United States, right? It steals our jobs. It slows down our growth with their unfair trade practices. Okay. So we take a hit there. And then when it gets into this profiteering scheme with Russia to send oil to basically the Kremlin laundromat for the crude oil, basically it forces U.S. taxpayers to pay more to help Ukraine in the wars.

India needs to stand up here for the world, for democracy. It's the biggest democracy in the world by the amount of people. and it's basically in bed with the Russians. And that's not conducive to peace. If India tomorrow stop buying Russian oil, that would go a long way towards getting Putin to the ultimate yes that we need. They don't create a lot of jobs.

They just profiteers. So that's wrong, as is the high tariffs and non-tariff barriers and insurgents. I mean, look, they can keep doing what they're doing, but Donald Trump is going to keep doing what he's doing, and that's going to mean the high tariffs to stop them from selling Russian oil, buying Russian oil, and high tariffs to get their trade bearers down. Yeah, might as well have voted for Joe Biden.

You know, I mean, India's got to stand it. Why? Who gives a shit if the oil comes from a democracy or not? Yeah, all of our oils coming from a democracy, Crystal? Were you aware of that? I had no idea that we only bought oil from democracies, okay? There's another question. she asked him like, okay, but India said they're not going to do this.

And he gives, I mean, he just sort of like changes the subject. But it reminds very much of, it recalls very much when Biden was asked this question about the policy vis-a-vis the Houthis. And he was like, is it going to work? No. Is it going to continue? Yes. And this is basically what Navarro was like.

He was like, well, India's going to do what they're going to do. But here's what we want them to do. It's like, okay, but they're not going to do that. So now you're just putting tariffs on this country. damaging your relationship, like trashing your relationship with them, turning in a country that was previously pretty pro-American, against America altogether, and by the way, I mean, those tariffs that you're loving on India

are going to have impacts, again, on American consumers, all to do what, accomplish literally nothing? Yeah, exactly. It's the point. Oh, and how is that, how is the maximum pressure going, by the way? Are we closer to peace? Yeah, no. Can we go in and put B4 up here on the screen?

Shocker. Lavrov says, no plan for a Putin Zelensky meeting. In fact, he basically was like, Zelensky is illegitimate. We're not even sure if we really need to meet with him. So, yeah, we're actually a lot closer after the Putin summit. And this is all because, you know, Trump has basically embraced this neocon framing on India specifically, not China, just so we're all aware. The actual geopolitical adversary, the one that buys most of the Russian oil, nope, completely is actually getting a free pass. They're Chinese negotiators on the way over here. Sure, the tariffs and the trade duties remain, but there's so many exclusions. He's talking nothing

but nicely about China. It's like the opposite of how you would want to conduct this. And by the way, again, this is presumes that the war in Ukraine is such a fundamental interest that the United States should tariff one of its top 10 trading partners, 50% higher than any of the duty than any other country to make it to try and bring about peace in Ukraine. Oh, and by the way, that's not even working. Like, you know, at every single step of the logic, chain, it all falls apart. This is the same problem with the entire administration strategy right now. They go tough on Japan, on Korea, and India, soft on China. You should flip it. Those three are the ones that you want on your side if you want to, quote, isolate China and or pivot to

Asia. You want great trading relationships all around the Asia Pacific, making sure that these are rock-solid, happy U.S. allies or strategic partners, and then you use your leverage on the Chinese government to try and extract some benefit. Instead, we're quite literally doing the opposite. I mean, Trump, just yesterday, I'm loving this, too. The immigration restriction crowd is going wild because Trump said yesterday that part of his deal with the Chinese is he's going to allow 600,000 Chinese students to come and study in the United States. Let's take a listen to that. President Xi would like me to come to China. It's a very important relationship.

As you know, we're taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs and different things. It's a very important relationship. We're going to get along good with China. I hear so many stories about we're not going to allow their students. We're going to allow their students to come in. We're going to allow, it's very important, 600,000 students. It's very important. But we're going to get along with China. But it's a different relationship that we have now with China.

China. It's a much better relationship economically than it was before. With Biden, what he allowed that, I mean, they just took him to the cleaners. So, yeah, okay, six hundred. The administration, which is America first, wants, and is attacking the universities for not being pro-Israel enough, is now going to be overrun by Chinese. I support it. I'm sure you do, but that's not what other people want to do. Right now there's roughly 300,000 Chinese students in the country. So this would be a doubling of the number that. are here. And it comes on the heels up. He says this thing in that clip, which is funny to me, he's like, somebody said, we're not going to let him in. It's like, that was Marco Rubio,

your Secretary of State, who said we're going to be, you know, screening all the visas. We're not going to let, you know, anyone who has any ties, the Chinese Communist Party, blah, blah, blah. And so Trump's like, no, we're going to let, we're going to double the number that come in. The defense that was given of this, too, by HACID, I want to say, maybe it was Lennick, I can't remember. Anyway, one of them was basically like, well, if you don't let the Chinese students in, then the, like, bottom tier of schools in the country is basically going to fail. Yeah, good. It was their analysis.

But in any case, I mean, my own personal view is that in addition to the extraordinary exorbitant privilege that we get from the dollar being the global reserve currency, the other major advantage that the U.S. has long had is that the top students from around the world want to come here. And oftentimes, after they study here and get their degree, oftentimes they stay. And so we benefit from this, you know, global ability to attract some of the top students and top minds from around the world. And President Trump apparently feels the same in embracing that saga. Here's the thing. You've got to square that with what you just said, which is that if the 10 to 15% of the bottom tier universities are going to fall out because they can't get Chinese students,

then those are not the best and the brightest. Because they're going to the bottom tier. No, no, but that's not what he. He actually argued the Chinese students are going to the top students and it's the Americans who will get pushed down. This is an important thing because it's actually true because the Chinese graduate students and others are the ones who pay full freight and actually make it so that it is disadvantaged for most of the people who are American citizens to go. No, no, no, no, no, quite the opposite. I mean, because they're paying full freight, that's what helps to subsidize the tuition

for a lot of Americans. That is the cope, what it actually does. No, it's not true because what has happened is that tuition has, if that were true, then tuition would go down. Instead, the tuition has gone sky high, quadrupling. Yeah, but that's because of separate reasons. No, but it's not. Because what happens is that they know the Chinese will pay everything,

and they also know the U.S. government will backstop their student loans. And on top of that, more broadly, this is more of a question of competition and who these slots should go to. Over 50% of the graduate students in most of these places are foreign. Why? They don't want to give them to Americans because they might have to give them scholarship, financial aid and everything. Much easier to admit somebody from China, India, anywhere else in the world because they're pay full freight.

It's massively profitable to the university. none, almost none of it goes down to the student. If it were true that the money charge... Then they should do some affirmative action for white people, Sager. No, not white people. This is an affirmative action for white people. This is affirmative action for the U.S. citizen. I mean, I don't think that's even affirmative action.

What, American students are getting, you know, easy privilege at Shanghai University? There's no evidence that foreign students are, you know, getting some sort of affirmative action or some sort of benefit. They do benefit schools because they pay full freight, but, you know, that actually benefits Americans because it helps to lower tuition overall. But your presumption is that there are other, then why is tuition as high as it is? That doesn't make any sense. Of course it does. Because these are run like businesses rather than academic institutions.

So if you're concerned about the price of tuition, then you should support, as I do, free public college for all. I think that's a terrible idea because it would just. way to provide more equitable access to college education for everyone who wants. And so that the University of Michigan can build more lazy rivers for everybody. That's a great idea. I thought that's the only reason that the tuition was going up was because the foreign students. Now it's the DEI administrators and the lazy rivers. My point is that the high tuition cost, these Chinese, Indians and all these other people are paying subsidizes, yes them, as well as making sure that

the tuition goes up. Most of it does not go. Most of it doesn't go to. Most of it doesn't go to to the student. If you're paying $50,000 a year to go to college and then the next year or 10 years later goes up to $75,000, then it would square the circle that the tuition should go down if more of the foreign students are coming. The opposite has happened. Tuition has universally gone up. Free public college or whatever at the current rate would subsidize the massive some 40 to 50% increase in the overall number of administrators. It's a disaster. That's where you have to use government policy to keep prices reasonable. And right now, it's just left to the market. It's a laissez-faire capitalist system. That's why tuition is constantly jacked up. And that's, it has really nothing

to do with foreign students coming in. It has to do with what they can get away with. And that's where we are right now. But in any case, overall, this comes down to our very different view of the benefits of immigration to the country. I think that, you know, studies prove that immigrants tend to be a net benefit to the country. I think having foreign students who are the top of their class who want to be able to come here and go to our institutions and then contribute to our society. I think that's a positive thing. And I'm glad to see that if that were broadly, again, okay, maybe that's true with the 300,000, although I don't even think that's true. So doubling the amount is supposed to make it better. Look, this is also the

presumption that our universities are like some great places. And that is true at the highest of the highest levels. And sometimes at the public level. But, you know, really what Lutnik gave the game away is that a lot of these places are just money-making printing machines that are not actually giving any real benefit. 10 to 15% cut would probably be a good thing, just broadly because they're putting so many people in debt and not actually delivering any economic benefit. If anything, you should siphon much of that away to a trade school or something economically viable, valuable, to the person who's actually going to participate in education. But, I mean, this gets to the whole idea of like why we even have 45%. The foreign student thing, though, I mean, again, we should debate and look at it

more because there is a ton of evidence. There is actually increased the cost, not only for the overall U.S. student, but, and again, this is very important, is that it is actually making it more competitive for actual citizens, also because of the transfer from H-1B, where they drive down the overall wage, especially in the engineering category. This is, like, look, I know the left response is like, okay, fine, let's do some wage, whatever, but like at a basic level, it is broadly true right now that the current foreign student pipeline, especially to Silicon Valley and engineering, is driving down wage and making it less competitive for the actual citizens who are also graduates.

Now we're talking about something different than college. But those two things are directionally true. But only because of the way that the policy is set up, the way that H-1Bs are effectively like an indentured servitude with something that you know that I oppose. Yes. That's the nature of the post-college landscape. That's something different than what we're talking about with regard to university admissions. So listen, you believe in merit if these, you know, American citizens should be able to

compete with the best and brightest in the world. No, they shouldn't because. So our tax, so we should allow the best in the brightest of the whole world to have to compete against our citizens. This is preposterous. The university, the American university system is set up for the American. You know how much, how much? No, it's actually not. No, it actually should.

Well, okay. And why do I as a taxpayer have to subsidize the University of Virginia? But don't take any of my money. You just said they come in and they pay full freight. So you're not subsidizing them. No. The reality is we benefit tremendously from attracting the best minds from around. the world. That has been one of the biggest benefits that we have had as a society. And so,

you know, for President Trump to embrace that, I think is a beautiful thing. Okay. I think that's great. Then if the universe, I'll tell you this, if universities want to be purely based on merit for citizens and everyone else, don't take a dime more of my tax dollars every single time that I have to pay for the state of Virginia or anywhere else where you people live. Otherwise, if you're going to take our money, then yeah, actually, your education is supposed to work for us. This is kind of like the public school thing. Oh, public school's supposed to work for everybody? The support that you give as a taxpayer in Virginia, that does primarily support. That's why in-state tuition is so much lower than even out-of-state tuition, let alone what foreign students pay. No, I totally

agree with that. But you were saying, you were saying that we should be open for that we should have to compete against the whole world. I think it's the opposite. And it makes it much worse. And you want to talk about the reasons why tuition has gone up, part of why tuition has gone up so much. Part of the story is the fact that there is actually less tax revenue that's going to support public educational institutions. This comes from Ronald Reagan, pulled a bunch of the support from the California system. That has happened across the board. It certainly happened in the state of Virginia. And so that has been part of the trend, too, is pushing the burden onto students rather than it being something that societally we invest in and see as an asset for the country that

we want to support. It's part of it. The other part is that we backstop student loans and that we let these universities fleece the student and the taxpayer for their, you know, lazy rivers and their nice, fancy new doors and their cafeterias with all their bullshit in it. We should have free public college education, in my opinion. But to, you know, to just end the policy of, quote-unquote, backstopping student loans without any sort of reform is not going to solve anything. It's just going to make things even more difficult for college students. Oh, that I wouldn't disagree on it.

I mean, look, I think these university endowments should be taxed to hell. The vast majority of that benefits should go to student loan forgiveness. And then from there, we can build from a different story. But the current system, which I think this would just, you know, make them, make these people even more filthy rich over at these universities. I think it's a bad idea. And, you know, I'm hopeful that actually the policy will get reversed, although not entirely helpful, because Trump decides to punish India instead of China and Japan and South Korea and all these other people, which again, just doesn't make any sense. Same with the Philippines, Brazil, all of these countries. We're literally uniting, you know, half of these BRICS nations together, even though they were all squabbling

before. So, great policy. Yeah, that was what, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, you guys should watch that interview recently. He made such a good point. He was so, I guess, shocked, not really disgusting because he supports BRICS as I do too. So we was sort of like tacitly endorsing the Trump administration moves with regard to India, which have just helped to coalesce Bricks into a more cohesive and aligned unit so congratulations what a joke thank you mr president okay let's get to the democrats dave wigel standing by hello it's daniel official writer strong and wilfridell from podmeet's world and we're bringing you viva las content that's right we are back in las vegas the city of sin and giving the people what they want a full week of y2k content wait we're back in Vegas tell me why

Well, for the Backstreet Boys residency at Sphere, of course. We sat down with Kevin Richardson and A.J. McLean just minutes before they took the stage, and our very own Wilfredel basically became the newest member of the band. Boy band, please. Plus, the man who has the longest running comedy show on the strip joins us and gets his props. It's carrot top, baby. And finally, we all L-O-V-E-Hur, Ashley Simpson-Ross, joins us to talk about her upcoming sold out Vegas residency.

It's a full week of nostalgic interviews you don't want to miss. Listen to PodMeets World on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford. And in session 421 of Therapy for Black Girls, I sit down with Dr. Afea and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are. your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled.

We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session four. 18 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Noah. I'm 13. And as you might have seen from the news, I got a podcast. And I explain those fake headlines like your uncle would. Like your cousin would if he actually did the research. Honestly, adults don't ask the right questions. Now you know with Noah de Barrasso is a show about influence.

Who's got it, how they use it, and what it means for the rest of you. It's not the news. It's what the news should be if someone Gen Z or Gen Alpha made it. And I'm watching everything. The majority of the youth, 18 through 24, say they trust Republicans more than Democrats from the economy. You kidding. Politics is wild and I'm definitely not here to pay it, but I'm here to make sense of it. Just what's happening, why it matters, and what it means for us.

us. Bring your brain. Listen to Now You Know with Noah de Barossa on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Joining us now is Dave Weigel. He's a politics reporter for Semaphore. But for our purposes, he is with the DNC at their current meeting where they are evaluating how to deal with Trump eras. We wanted to check in with Dave. Good to see you, man. Thanks for joining us. It's good to be here. Thanks, guys. All right. So, Dave, you've put out a number of videos and some analysis here from the DNC chair, Ken Martin about how Democrats are trying to, quote, meet the moment. Let's take a lesson. I'm sick and tired of this Democratic Party bringing a pencil to a knife fight. We cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore. We've got to stand up and fight. We're not going to have a hand tied behind our back anymore. Let's grow a damn spot and get into this fight, Democrats. Americans are hungry for leaders. They're hungry. for candidates who are on the side of working people, there's hungry for leaders who give a

damn about their circumstances and they're hungry for a government that gives people freedom, not fascism. To every American who is hungry for that kind of government, I invite you to join us. Democrats, Republicans, independents, I invite you to join us. Together we will fight with every fiber of our being against Trump in his power hungry circus. Talking about fighting, Dave, but what is the mood inside of the building there? You've got to that rhetorically, but you've got some reporting from on the ground. That captured it pretty well. It is a grim mood. It is not a resolved to lose mood. It is not a the party cannot come back. But that word fascism that Martin used, every speaker used

that. That was how Keith Ellison was talking. That was how Tim Walls, the governor of Minnesota, gave a speech there. That was how he was talking. And there was a lot of cheering for California and the gerrymander gambit that Gavin Newsom is running. But the overall context of that is that the party is going to lose the country maybe for good if it does not do something. What is the something that they need to do? That is a tougher question. There's not really, the DNC is not always a place for it. But there's not an analysis of we've gone too far in this direction. We need to abandon this idea. For example, there was a really compelling meeting of the LGBTQ caucus at the party. And Martin came by and said, we're not going to give an inch on

this. We're not going to give an inch on trans issues. Do not worry that when we say we're going to do whatever it takes to win, we're going to abandon anybody. So it's a little, I wouldn't say, confused the mood here. It is a confidence that Democrats are right in the country will come around to them eventually, and not really a reckoning with, was there anything we've done so wrong that people have abandoned us? And Frank, the part of this is nobody here, and I don't think they will even in 2028 wants to talk about Joe Biden or say that it was a mistake to follow him to the hill. Nobody's talking about Gaza. It's not really a self-examination. It is the party needs to make it clear that we're serious about fighting fascism and the other details are less important.

People can come into our coalition when they realize how big the stakes are. Well, and it seems like we're not going to abandon anyone except if you support Palestine, judging by the reception that Zoran Mamdani has received and also the candidate who's name I'm blanking on for Minnesota, for Minneapolis. mayor, which is, you know, more relevant, given that that's the location of the DNC meeting. And, you know, you've got Ken Martin there talking about fighting. I know he is backing a sort of watered down resolution with regard to Palestine. Do you talk a little bit about how Gaza factors into all of this?

Because I'm not sure I've ever seen an issue where the Democratic base and Democratic electeds and elites are further apart. No, you can pick a poll. And if the question is just, should the United States stop sending money and weapons to Israel until the end of the conflict were to stop the conflict, overwhelmingly popular with Democrats. And you pinpointed it. That's not something that Democrats are talking about very openly here. They have a resolution will vote on today that Martin supports that is basically calling for it into the conflict, release the hostages, but not a policy change on Gaza. There's another resolution from a smaller group of DNC members.

I haven't polled every member, but the expectations that will not pass. And that is, to your point, elucidating what Democrats want, which is a recognition of a Palestinian state that's not as popular, but that's mostly popular Democrats, and ending arms to Israel until the war ends. That resolution will probably get defeated. I'll be there and I'll see what happens. But the expectations is the party is still not going to change direction on Gaza. And they're not saying that we're worried about donors, we're worried about being called anti-Semites. It's very complicated. Part of it is frustration that there were protesters getting up and making life difficult for Kamala Harris when she was trying to win the election. Again, it all comes back to the Democrats' self-analysis that they need to save the country from a dictatorship. And anything that's complicating for them is it needs to be, people need to get over it, basically. I'm not trying to explain every single thought here in Democrats, because there is a diversity of opinion in those rooms. But you're having people with different gossip opinions. like Barbara Lee get on stage, and they're not talking about it. You can imagine a different party and different set of circumstances and say, okay, this seems to be a gaping vulnerability

for our party. We can't defend it anymore. Let's talk about it. They don't, they want to have one resolution that pushes that issue off the table and then hopefully in 2026 people aren't thinking about it. You know, I mean, you mentioned the age thing. And it reminds me, you know, of the Democratic autopsy story that came out about how they want to ignore that. And then all of the things that Kamala did during the case. It's like, so what are we, what are you going to write an autopsy about? I mean, that's one of the things that seems so central to this fundamental question, Dave. And it also gets to Democratic approval. We actually have a CNN segment where they've been diving more into the Democratic brand. I want to get your reaction to that segment in the context of

what you see in the room. See two guys. Let's go ahead and play it. Let's look at the key four swing states that, in fact, do keep track of registration by party. Look, the Republican Party is in their best position at this point of the cycle since at least 2005 in all four of these key battleground states. We go out to the southwest, Arizona. How about Nevada? Republicans haven't done this well since 2005. Oh, my goodness gracious, at this point in a cycle. North Carolina, I couldn't find a point at which Republicans were doing better at this point in a cycle. It's at least this century. It probably goes way back in the last century. And Pennsylvania, very similar, Republicans doing better at this point than at any point.

at any point this century, at least as far as I could find. As the Republican Party gains in party registration compared to this point back in 2017 during the Trump First Administration in Arizona, you got a Republican gain of three points. Okay, how about Nevada? Up the hill we go, even though we're sticking in the southwest, a gain of six points. How about again, we come to the East Coast, North Carolina, a gain of eight points for the Republicans.

And in the Keystone State, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, again, we're talking about a gain of eight points. My goodness gracious for Republicans, they are converting old former Democrats to their side of the ledger as well as picking up new voters, registering new voters, and it absolutely paid off for them back in the 2024 election. What's the grappling in the building with that, Dave? This voter registration data just seems existential for them. It does. Yeah, there's not a lot of grappling with that. Before I got here, there was a reception for members on Sunday. I got here Monday morning.

On Sunday, there was a reception that the AFAL CEO had helped with. friend Brittany Shepard of ABC News tried to ask but registration and was cut off. She just would get answered the question by the AFLCEO. They didn't want the discussion to go into that. The couple things are happening. One is that older Democrats, and this is people who were Democrats at this point, they're very old from the New Deal, Democrats from the 1960s, older African-American Democrats always register to the party. They're simply dying. If you look at Northeast Ohio is a good example, Jared Brown runs in 2018 and 2020. more people turn out to vote across the state in those elections, but he loses votes in

to North East Ohio. And you look at the data, that's just there are not many people moving in and Democrats have passed away. Younger voters, to the point we were just discussing, the party's brand is associated with a number of things that are toxic to them, including Gaza. And so I was talking to some of the younger Democratic Party chairs last night, and even in places where they're gaining when there's an election, they can turn people out, they can win a special election, they're having that issue that people under 30, when they go to register, maybe they go to the DMB for the first time to do it or they're on campus their approach, the Democratic Party has a terrible brand. They want to be an independent. They don't want

to be a MAGA Republican, but they want to, they don't want to associate themselves with this party. So that, the optimistic take true Democrat is that is solvable. The less optimistic take is how if you're not confronting that issue. And they don't, they like one thing they'll also say a lot, this conference or meeting and elsewhere is we can't wait for some savior to come to and make the party competitive again. We can't wait for another Obama because that did solve a lot of problem. Obama was so appealing to younger people that they fixed that for years. There isn't an alternative. It is that we are going to be the anti-fascist party. We're going to be a fighting party of the resistance. And that is not very enticing to younger people who, look, they might,

be souring on Trump that they actually have in a lot of polls. But the offer of the Democrats is pretty lame. Right. Well, we also don't know who it's appealing to because they haven't really done it. So, you know, I mean, Newsom is, you know, Newsom is starting to get in the mix and doing his memes and all of that stuff. And he's gaining credibility, at least with the Democratic base and certainly gaining prominence in terms of the national conversation. But, you know, I mean, Keem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have been utterly pathetic in terms of their response. And at this point, there's some of them as prominent leaders of the party. The other thing is, I, you know, I feel like a broken record continuing to go back to this. But you have this almost like

manna from heaven in Zoran Mamdani who comes out of nowhere, genuinely excites people. You know, you had thousands of people turn out New York City for his freaking scavenger hunt over the weekend. He has very high approval rating. Look, I get it. New York City is different than the rest of the country. But with the very groups that Democrats have been failing and losing ground with young men, Latinos, working class, et cetera, Zoron is doing extraordinarily well. And rather than looking at that and saying, oh, my God, okay, what is he doing? How can we support him? How can we make him emblematic of the Democratic Party? They've done everything they can to trash him and bash him and like sort of low-key back this scandal-ridden wildly unpopular Andrew Cuomo, even though he

dramatically lost the Democratic primary. Yeah, and if you have reason Schumer were not here, I think they probably would get a good reception from D&C members, given who makes that up. But not much of a reckoning with that. It is more frustration that young people don't see the threat of Trump than, and we've given them something inspiring that they should be celebrating. There was a mention, as Sager mentioned, the autopsy. So there is an autopsy that they're working on of the party, and it might have come out at this conference, this meeting. It's going to be delayed to later in the year. The thing we, all of us who cover this and talk to people who were talking to the DNC is that's just the Democratic Party has this constellation of groups,

of consultants that are outside the party that are not helpful at all. And there is this desire for more of a concentration inside a coherent Democratic Party structure. But yeah, that's less entrepreneurial. That doesn't, that suggests there. might be a problem, for example, when DSA gets very organized, when they support the candidate like Zahman Dani, and you've got New York Post and Fox News headlines about DSA's platform and Democrats having to answer for it. There really is this, I wouldn't say Trump envy, but Trump's command of the Republican Party answers every question, voters, about what Republicans stand for, and some of them are contradictory, and some of them are things he promises

and can't pull off. But there is a Republican Party brand built around. Donald Trump, it is popular enough to win elections in most of the country. What is their alternative? They're very worried about entrepreneurial left-wing politics coming up and making it harder to reach those voters they lost. And that's some of the, some of this is who did we lose? It is unclear. How many of those voters did we lose?

We're young people who bolted over Gaza. How many are older people who think the party is two left-wing? How much of this is about the backlash to protest? because that's another theme. That was in our discussion yesterday at the main meeting is how Democrats can talk about crime in the context of Trump moving the military into D.C. It was a left-wing criminal dust reform group that had the presentation. It was a little, I had one post about it. We should talk less about top of crime more about strong and safety. There was a little more to it than that part of it was this worry that, look, if crime goes down because of the military crowded streets, that'd be kind of hard to scam. to scale across the country. Maybe Americans wouldn't even want it. But Republicans would take credit for crime doing down and we don't have a crime message. Everything comes back to we don't have a message. And why don't they have a message? It's not because consultants, again, they don't like them. It's because they, what are the first principles of the party? The closest they've come to an argument is

Martin likes to quote Paul Wellstone, the late Senator from Minnesota, and say, when we do better, we all do better, which doesn't answer a lot of those questions. Yes. When we're doing economically better is somebody who does that include our tax dollars going to bombs to kill people we don't know yeah there is a lot of dodging of the of the problems of the of the party so it's you're asking good questions because this is this meeting is not okay here's a 10 point blame we come up with this fixes this is a meeting for a party that thinks we can win the midterms we can fix these problems but TBD we're not quite sure how to fix them yeah i mean it's funny because there's a lot of thought about the potential existential crisis that the Republicans could face whenever Trump ultimately

is out of the picture because they are so centered around him, the Democrats will face their own existential crisis because they are also similarly just, you know, centered around Trump and sort of polarizing and messaging against him rather than having those first principles. There's one more, you know, existential threat here on the horizon for Democrats on the near horizon for Democrats who could put C1 up on the screen. you know, it's the way the population trends are moving with people moving out of New York in particular and some of the other sort of quote unquote blue wall states and into states like Florida and Texas as well as Utah and Idaho, you are going to have a very different likely

in 2030. You're going to have a very different electoral college, which means it's no longer possible for a Democratic presidential candidate to win with the, you know, with the blue wall states as it is now. So, you know, what do you make of those potential shifts and what it means for Democrats? I read through this whole article and the strategists were like, maybe we can win Arkansas. It's like, really? Okay, good luck with that. That seems like it's a, you know, pretty far reach. And I don't know. What do you think of this dynamic for Democrats and how dire is that situation? They're not panicked about that because the party has become more competitive in Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia. And the Biden map,

if you won the Biden states again in 2032 with these census projections, yes, you would win the presidency. There's more worry about how you're competitive in the Senate ever again, because that map, if you lose every Senate seat outside those states, you can't get the Senate. So that's not loomed as much of a threat as even the voter registration piece. We were talking about. The party can't imagine being competitive in those places. I talked to the North Carolina chair yesterday, and her focus is being competitive, having a good 2028 flipping the state Supreme Court, it's doable. That's one of the states where people are still moving in into growing cities and suburbs and their Republican vote is balanced out a little bit. So they're not, I'll say

another thing Democrats learned from the Obama experience is they looked at a map and looked at demography and thought, okay, well, this is our destiny. We can hold and build this maybe for 40 years. couldn't. They dealt with a Trump challenge to the party that blew up their demographic plans. And part of that was non-white voters moving towards Trump, which they thought was impossible. And so that's not, this is more, I guess more questions for reporters to answer over years and I've already answered this this week is, okay, what changes in America that they get more white voters or they reverse their decline with Latino voters or they get more black voters? they do not know yet, but they stop thinking that there is an inexorable chart that moves up

or down in these states because the idea of an Ohio that was totally uncompetitive for them after Barack Obama won it twice, even after the quote unquote were on call, they had an idea that, okay, Robbins have maxed out with white voters, and as long as we get non-white voters, we can win. Totally true. Had they held on to non-white voters, Kamala Harris, I'd say by Obama levels, Kamala would win the election. So what do they do? And that's the thing. The answers are not very compelling. The answers are we need to fight more. We need to talk to more people. It's not we need to compromise on this. It's not we need to abandon this position. You're seeing more experimentation by candidates. And the Platner in Maine is from Maine,

Dan Osborne in Nebraska. What they have in common is that they are not identity politics candidates. They're not expecting some sort of shift of the electorate that just gets more democratic. They're saying, look, a lot of people hate us, and they hate corporate power, and we need to be credible on that. And credibility means not being one of these Democrats who is part of the problem, not saying, because that's the dialectic. It's not so much, it's Trump and anti-Trump, but it's also a party of Trump and a party of defending the pre-Trump professional managerial classes order. Defending, I live in a neighborhood where people have, we love our federal worker science.

And I'm not impuging that. I'm saying that the democratic version of the country, vision of the country is, we had a couple years ago with some tweaks. So what is an alternative that's more popular in these states that have gone far to the right, even when the economy is pretty good. Look at unemployment in North Dakota. It's not been terrible. People are not saying we want the party that gives us more jobs.

What is it the party needs to change? That's what I think. It's a party meeting. I'm not talking myself out of being here. But the change is going to come from the Iran Donnies and from the Dan Osbournes and from the candidates who say, I have nothing to do with these guys. I do not want to support the system that I grew up in. And I'm going to blow it up and do something different.

So important. And that might be independence. That might be some progressive independents who are not Democrats. And the Democratic Party will make peace with that as it's done with Bernie Sanders. It's done with other independents. Absolutely. I do want your take. Last thing here on Gavin Newsome.

Let's go ahead and put C.5 up here on the screen. Newsom has found himself center online. A lot of love here talking about the Patriot Shop. He sold some $100,000 in like MAGA Newsom style merch. What is the feeling in the Democratic meeting? around Newsom, is there, are they enjoying the tweets, like the online energy, does it fit and square with some of the questions you're asking? I'm just curious how the Democratic Party elite think about this. Oh, they love it. Yeah. Now, there is a appreciation that Newsom is

trying something different and that he also is not bound up in that we Democrats are better than this. We don't post like that. We don't make these memes. We, uh, there, I'm probably more sympathetic to the anti-AI people who don't like making memes of politicians with bodies they don't have riding lions and stuff. However, if they exist and people are organically making about Gavin Newsom, that's great. And that gets back to the Democrats are just kind of waiting for some energy to come from elsewhere organically that they didn't have anything to do with and see why that worked. So a lot of appreciation. Newsom, the biggest applause lines, and there's one general meeting wherever was in the room. So not everything's getting a plaza meter. But they were

for Newsom in California and they were for defending trans rights and LGBT rights. And they were for opposing military occupation in D.C. But the Newsom stuff especially. And that is what people might laugh at the way Martin phrases this, but that is the sense. So one of the other themes of the conference is, you know, this is a couple months after the assassination, Melissa Hortman, the former former speaker of the Minnesota House. And the way that Martin pays tribute to her is that when she won, they won a trifecta, and she said, quote, let's fucking go. And they passed everything Progresses wanted to do with one vote margin, even though Republicans didn't want to pass some of it. That's the attitude is we need to learn from these Republicans to just be

audacious, people, do what we want to do. And that includes pissing people off. And Democrats are not maybe attitudinally that good at pissing people off because they just don't think like Magger Republicans, they don't like to be told that something was offensive. But when they see what people are doing around Newsom, they say, well, all right, that doesn't come naturally to all of us. But he is fighting. People are excited. I think if he wins in the California Supreme Court and gets to have this measure on the ballot, it's going to help. Not forget his presidential prospects, but it'll help them even more in saying we don't need to worry about whether this idea we have is defensible to Republicans. We just need to do it, roll over them.

and be fighters. And that's the final thing I'll say about it. Another theme that they're saying for every Democrat in every room is that we can't look weak. That's where the defense of LGBT rights and immigrants comes from is, look, yes, we know the polling might be bad from time to time. But when people see Democrats wring their hands and look weak and appealed in some other authority, they don't want to vote for us. What does that mean? What does that mean for the Democratic Party? Again, that sounds more like a Zoran description, somebody who's not afraid to say things that'll piss off the media that covers him. But they can see that it works for people. It's just not coming naturally to the party of Barack Obama,

Michelle Obama, and Joe Biden, whose whole message, you know, for his campaign and his presidency was getting back to normal. They're not saying, sorry Joe Biden, we're writing you out of history, we're erasing you from the photo, but they're quietly saying, that's never going to work again. We can't be the party. We can't be the party that appeals to tradition and appeals to norms and thinks it's gross if you put up AI meme photos. Wow. A decade later, a decade too late, They're finally learning that. I mean, and to your point, it's one thing to say it and intellectually understand it, you're talking about a group of people who were selected for very different qualities,

who got to their positions, you know, whether it was through support from a broad donor base or whatever, or the leadership was comfortable with them, because they don't, they know how to phrase things to not piss anyone off. A lot of the new MAGA types, you know, come to problems because they're able to stoke controversy on, line and, you know, be that, like that influencer who's constantly in a firestorm. So it's going to be a difficult transition for them, I think. Dave, always appreciate your reporting. Thank you so much. Appreciate it, man. No, thanks, guys. Great questions. I appreciate it. Pod Meets World. We are back in Las Vegas and giving the people what they want, a full week of

Y2K content. Tell me why. Well, for the Backstreet Boys residency at Sphere, of course. We joke and say this is our second marriage, but it takes a lot of communication. Plus, it's carrot top, baby. And finally, Ashley Simpson Ross joins us to talk about her upcoming sold-out Vegas residency. Listen to Pod Meets World on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or we're you get your podcasts. How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage serious. One in ten kids vapes serious,

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