Front Burner - U.S. Politics! Elon’s out, tariffs in court, and Trump vs. Harvard

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Alex Shephard, senior editor at The New Republic, is on Front Burner to break down a few of the big developing news stories coming out of the Trump administration in recent weeks.He talks to host Jayme Poisson about Elon Musk’s exit from the White House, U.S. President Trump’s war with Harvard, and where we are right now with the on again, off again tariffs as they get kicked around the courts.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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Find an agent today at Desjardins.com slash business coverage. This is a CBC podcast. This is not the end of Doge, but really the beginning. Hey everybody, it's Jamie. So as ever, lots has been happening in the Trump administration over the past few weeks. We are here today with Alex Shepard, Senior Editor at the New Republic. Hey, Alex, it is always so great to have you on. It's great to be back. So we're going to pick three things today.

I know that we can pick more than three things, but we're going to pick three things. Elon Musk's exit from the Trump White House, Trump's war with Harvard, and we're going to talk about where we are right now with the on-again, off-again tariffs as they get kicked around the courts. Okay, let's get into it. Alex, should we start with Elon Musk and why he has a black eye? Well, it's one of the biggest mysteries in Washington. It's certainly something that I've been talking to staffers and some other folks in democratic circles about.

It's certainly like many things involving Elon is a topic of conversation and gossip. Yeah, I was just walking around with Lillex and I said, go ahead, punch me in the face. And he did. Turns out even a five-year-old punching you in the face actually does. No, it was X that did. X could do it. If you knew X, he could do it. I saw his mom right now. I didn't really feel much at the time, but I think it is notable that he emerged with a Black guy the same day that the New York Times published a pretty massive piece about his extensive drug use on the campaign. And again, you know, the general picture of Musk from people

who work closely with him and just people who have, you know, had to deal with doges, someone who's just been behaving erratically for quite a long time. I mean, first of all, he showed up to this Oval Office send off that we're going to talk about right now with a black guy. And secondly, this New York Times piece that dropped hours before that event in the Oval Office claimed that Musk was taking ketamine so much while working for the administration that he was having bladder problems. Okay, let's talk about that sendoff, which was ostensibly to thank him for his time in the White House and talk about how he's stepping back and

why is he stepping back now? Yeah, I mean he's stepping back because he has to basically. So he is a special government employee. That's a distinction that basically allows somebody to work for the federal government without the kind of you know onerous legal and ethical paperwork that you have to do normally. You can only maintain that distinction for 140 days. If you stay on, then you have to do that kind of these financial disclosures

that Musk does not want to do. So I think there's been a lot of conversation about this, about a Musk-Trump breakup. Democrats have certainly declared victory here. On the right, you're seeing a lot of people, you know, thanking Elon. Well, you know, quietly, a lot of lawmakers are happy to see him take a step back. But the truth of the matter is, is that this was always going to happen this way. And I think that the other thing that is important here is that, you know, Musk

isn't really actually going to go away. I mean, Trump is very clear about that at this presser. Many of the Doge people, Elon, are staying behind too, so they're not leaving. And Elon's really not leaving. He's going to be back and forth, I think. I have a feeling. It's his baby and I think he's going to be doing a lot of things. But Elon's service to Americans... And I think that what you'll see, you know, is not just like Musk going back to Tesla. It's that, you know, you're going to see basically. It's that you're gonna see basically what he's been doing for the last month, right?

Which is like still kind of a lot of pro-Trump, pro-MAGA political operative stuff. It's not as intense as it was in February and March. And at the same time, Doge is still ticking. The Doge team will only grow stronger over time. The Doge influence will only grow stronger. time. The Doge influence will only grow stronger. It's likened to a sort of Buddhism. It's like a way of life. So it is permeating throughout the government. And again, like we're only just starting to understand the effects of things like the shuttering of the United States Agency for International Development. So there's one study that said that 1,500 babies have been born HIV positive every day

since Trump's inauguration because Musk cut off their mother's medication. Already up to 300,000 people might have died because of this aid being cut off. The impact of that isn't going to shift. Do you think that he and Trump have as good of a relationship as is put out there in the public? Because what really did strike me was just how effusive Trump was towards Elon on Friday. Today it's about a man named Elon. And he's one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced. He stepped forward to put his very great talents into the service of our nation and we appreciate it. And just how

extremely flattering he was. And what do you make of that? Yeah so I think people have always misunderstood this relationship because they looked at Steve Bannon, right? So Steve Bannon was the kind of, you know, spengali of the Trump first term, and they had this huge falling out because Trump thought that Bannon was, you know, getting too big for his britches and taking too much credit, and people always thought that this was going to happen with Musk, and it hasn't. And it hasn't happened for one simple reason, which is that Elon Musk is extremely rich.

He's richer than Trump, and Trump respects his wealth. And he thinks that, you know, that makes him an important person and having an important person backing him. And also Musk is very abusive about Trump. Right. So that I think is one of the issues. The other thing here is, you know, the big change between Trump's first term and Trump's second term is that Trump was really kind of on an island his first term. He's even isolated among you know

the Republican Party which was still kind of slowly morphing into what it is now but he's governing this time almost like a kind of you know European style coalition government and I think Musk represents a kind of you know both the sort of tech Silicon Valley tech mindset but also a sort of you know, both the sort of tech, Silicon Valley tech mindset, but also a sort of, you know, old style small C, we're going to slash government spending type. And Trump does not care about any of this stuff. He doesn't care about USAID. He doesn't care about, you know, the Consumer Financial Protection Board.

So Musk, you know, taking on a lot of this stuff, you know, he's just doing parts of government that Trump isn't interested in anyways. And, you know, I think when he has on the handful of occasions to be stepped over his lane, in particular, on issues of immigration, that's, I think, where there's a little more friction. Yeah, I mean, I thought it was interesting to hear Elon talk about how he was disappointed with Trump's spending bill that they're trying to pass right now. Which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and it reminds the work that

the Doge team is doing. One of the things that that bill does among many, many things, including cutting Medicaid for a lot of people. Although I imagine Elon isn't unhappy about the trillion-dollar tax cuts that largely benefit rich Americans. But I mean, it is interesting to see them diverge and still maintain this relationship. It's just kind of unusual for Trump, right? Yeah, certainly.

And I think that Musk gets away with criticizing Trump more than almost any other figure does. And again, I think a lot of it stems from his wealth. But I think I kind of read the big, beautiful bill criticism slightly differently. And I think that inside the White House, I think that there was grumbling about it, but in general, this is Musk creating a narrative for himself, essentially. He had promised to cut a trillion dollars

in discretionary spending. And the actual number, I think it's probably gonna be- I think it's 175 billion, right? That's what I have here in my notes. Yes, so the actual number is, I think even's probably going to be... I think it's $175 billion, right? That's what I have here in my notes. Yes. So the actual number is... I think even that's contested. And there are two. You could also say, like, a lot of the stuff that's cut, right? That money has to be spent somewhere else.

Musk wants to have a narrative that, like, he did succeed in doing this. It was just sort of, you know, stolen from him by, you know, rhinos and a sort of, you know, Republican party that is not actually committed to cutting spending. So yeah, I think that that's one way of reading it. The other thing that I did think was interesting about that, though, is that it represented this idea of like the MAGA movement as a coalition, right? And that part of that coalition is this sort of more hard-right Tea Party style, you know,

we want to cut welfare spending, we want to cut defense spending. And I think that the budget bill itself kind of represents, you know, you see, you see what actually is important to Trump, right? We should say too, it's just a absolutely transformative bill. And, you know, the reason it cuts there, the reason that increases the deficit isn't just that it increases, uh, defense spending, but also that, you know, it's cutting Medicaid to pay for a the largest corporate tax cut in American history. I've heard a lot of experts talk about how it is a direct transfer essentially from the poor to to the rich.

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now at national.ballet.ca. Sponsored by IG Private Wealth Management. Let's talk about two big fights that are happening in the courts, right? Two big fronts for the Trump administration that have essentially collided with the courts recently. The first is obviously tariffs. Last week, two federal courts blocked much of Trump's Liberation Day tariffs. Basically, they invalidated all the tariffs the administration put on that were rooted in this emergency law that is meant to address unusual and extraordinary threats during a national emergency. The court's basically saying like, this is not what the law is for.

And this includes the emergency fentanyl tariffs that the administration has placed on Canada. I'll just note the court did not address some of the industry specific tariffs like autos, steel, and aluminum, all of which do affect Canada. And Alex, what is the latest here from a court's perspective? Basically, the court said what is obviously true, which is that you can't just go and just say everything, you know, all the toys in China, everything else that is coming from China gets a 90% tariff, right? That there needs to be a clear rationale spelled out and that obviously, you know, the administration had failed to do that. That it's, you know, as is the case in its, you know, use of 18th century law to try to deport Venezuelans that, you know, that they're using a bad faith legal argument in terms of fentanyl

to make to apply this. So, you know, this in some ways is the story of every of Trump's entire political career is that the kind of rat You know a huge reckless thing happens and then the court slowly sort of wind it back and chip away at it You know and that I think is what's gonna happen here. You're seeing As is the case of a lot of the immigration stuff the administration really ramping up its Its attacks on the court. There are signs that there's a break with Leonard Leo's Federalist Society, the most influential right-wing network of lawyers has completely remade the courts. And I think that there's just a lot of frustration there, but I don't entirely know what they're

going to do about it. You could see essentially them now just trying to use section two through two to apply more sector-based tariffs here. But in general, I think that they're just kind of, they're out of road, but Trump still gotta use the tariffs that he has to apply pressure to China, right? That's the most important thing here. And again, also, to continue this kind

of hot, cold strategy that he's done so far where he kind of floats a tariff for a long time, the market crashes, and then everyone's jubilant when he backs off. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, right, he threatened the 50% tariffs on the EU and then backed off. And all of this has kind of earned him this acronym, this moniker TACO. Just for someone who hasn't heard of it yet, just maybe you could explain, explain it to me. Yeah. It's a Trump always chickens out.

I kick out. Chicken out. Oh, isn't that nice? Chicken out. I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from 145 percent that I set down to a hundred and then down to another number and I see there Is the story that basically said that this is it's been going around sort of? Wall Street circles Trump knows about he's been asked about it. He was kind of angry, you know, it responded angrily

We were basically going cold turkey with China We were doing no cold turkey with China. We were doing no business because of the tariff, because it was so high. But I knew that. But don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question. And I think there's some concern that this will make him

less likely to pull back on these sort of tariff threats. But I just think that that's not going to happen. Like this is just the way that he operates, right? He tweets something that is, you know, incendiary and then, you know, ultimately like the bond market and the stock market, mostly the bond market, you know, it causes him to pull back. He's got a lot of rich friends who convince him to not do this. He remains certain that tariffs are not just economically transformative, but they have

almost magical properties in his mind. But there's no real sign that he has the sort of gall to sort of apply them worldwide. Again, the one very notable exception here is China. And I think that that's the area where our understanding of even of taco is kind of wrong and that like, you know, people celebrate him pulling back in a lot of other ways. But the tariffs on China remain high. And, you know, that's the area in which I think you're going to start to see. Yeah. Yeah, like a real fight. Look, I know an appeals court right now is letting the tariffs stay in place while the appeals process continues, which is pretty common. That's what would happen here too.

But this thing is headed to the Supreme Court, right? Like everybody thinks that that's where it's going. But my understanding is that even if Trump lost at the Supreme Court on these kind of liberation days, emergency law tariffs that, like, there are so many other routes the administration could take. Is that fair? Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, again, this is one could assume, right, it's always hard to guess

precisely where the conservative majority on the Supreme Court will land. But you know, one could could generally assume that they would uphold this kind of ruling. But again, the president's ability to impose these tariffs remains extensive. And Congress has shown no real interest in regulating it. The Democrats are making a lot of noise about it. You have a handful of more libertarian minded Republicans, free market guys like Rand Paul who will make some noise about it but you know for Congress to step in it would just require a sea change right and Mike Johnson the Speaker of the House has showed no interest in kicking any fight with the White House let alone

you know the other thing to understand about Trump is you really only care about two things, right, which are, which is immigration and tariffs. And there's just no reason to believe that, you know, wall Republicans have power that they'll do anything to stop it. And again, you know, even Democrats probably retake the House in 2027. You know, they will make a lot of noise about this this and it's not going to make a difference because they won't have the votes in the Senate. So I think we're just stuck in this situation, you know, even if he's restrained somewhat, what we're going to see is just the president continuing to use various legal authorities to impose tariffs on countries that he doesn't like for whatever reason he decides to do it. Alex, I just want to loop back to something you said earlier because I don't know a ton about it,

but I do think it's interesting, right? Is the Federalist Society in that break? And I just wonder if you could, as briefly as possible, just kind of tell me what you meant when you said that. Yeah, so the Federalist Society is the preeminent right-wing Republican legal association. They supply judges, basically. They have big lists of judges. All of Trump's Supreme Court picks have come from these lists. They have absolutely remade the American legal system and, by extension, the American government over the last few decades.

And now, because some Federalist Society judges have ruled against the administration on both tariffs and immigration, you're seeing Stephen Miller in particular, the most powerful person in the White House post-Iran, say essentially that the administration will no longer pick these judges because for this reason. And I think that that's notable because the way that Trump worked the first time around was that the right-wing establishment quickly made peace and realized that they could mostly get what they wanted. The big accomplishment of Trump's first term was this gigantic tax cut that they're trying to extend now. That's a long-standing Republican priority. And now you're seeing the administration basically say, we're not doing that stuff anymore, right? We're doing the

stuff we want. You know, if you want this other topic, which is this fight between the administration and Harvard. This is a full frontal attack on the administration last week. I don't even know if I have all the stuff here, but the administration threatened to redirect $3 billion in funding to vocational schools. Then they sent a letter to federal agencies telling them to review $100 million in contracts. This was in addition to them freezing more than $3 billion in research grants and suspending foreign students from enrolling, which has been blocked by a judge for the time being. We've talked about why the administration may be doing this on the show before.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem says it's about Harvard being an anti-Semitic place. She's talked about how the school uses, quote, racist DEI policies. She's talked about how this should be a warning to all universities and academic institutions. But just talk to me about what a lot of people think this administration is really trying to accomplish here when it comes to higher learning in the US. And maybe you could set this in a larger context for me, because this is not some completely new gripe or complaint that they have.

Yeah, this is one of the oldest sort of new rights, whatever you want to call it, gripes that there is. Essentially, the contemporary Republican Party formed in opposition to student protests in 1968, right? Like Ronald Reagan's rise to prominence was calling out students at UC Berkeley in the mid-1960s. And for a lot of conservative Republicans, not higher education, but specifically elite institutions of higher education, are laboratories that are producing Marxists, right? And they're unmaking America. They firmly believe that, you know, places like Columbia, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania

are indoctrinating America's youth, that they're, you know, forming the new ranks of the Democratic Party, that they're pushing, you know, the country into socialism. Trump has spoken with a lot of venom about Harvard. Part of the problem with Harvard is that there are about 31%, almost 31% of foreigners coming to Harvard. We give them billions of dollars, which is ridiculous,

but they refuse to tell us who the people are. We want a list of those foreign students, and we'll find out whether or not they're okay. Many will be okay, I assume, and I assume with Harvard many will be bad. And then the other thing is they're very anti-semitic. Everybody knows they're anti-semitic. But Trump is not historically cared about this, but for a lot of big donors, a lot of people in this administration, you know, remaking higher education is one of the most important things that they can do. And I think it's not just that what they want to do with Harvard, you know, isn't quite

destroy it, although that's what they're doing. You know, I think the indication of DEI is kind of notable here because what they want to do is essentially have DEI, but for Republicans, right? They want to force Harvard to become a laboratory for, you know, the Make America Great Again movement or, you know small-city conservatives. And they're, I think, largely succeeding right now. There's a story about how universities have been quietly negotiating with the administration

to try to avoid this kind of fight that Harvard's in right now. And again, I think Harvard standing up is one of the, it's hard to, it feels weird praising Harvard, but it's like one of the more notable instances of sort of courage and resistance here. At graduation today, Harvard president Alan Garber getting a standing ovation when he praised graduates

from around the world. Around the world, just as it should be. While just across town, a federal judge extended her order, blocking the Trump administration from revoking all foreign student visas at the university. But it is only a small win for Harvard. But it's risky, right? It's not popular with a lot of donors. And again, we are less than six months into a four-year term here. The idea that they can somehow wait this out, I think, is pretty extraordinary.

And again, they're going to be doing it without foreign students who usually pay full tuition and provide a lot of overhead spending for these institutions. And an endowment is not exactly something that you can just dip into. It's not a rainy day fund. Just explain that to me a little bit more because I'm not sure everybody really understands how these endowments work because you hear Harvard has a what, $53 billion endowment and you're like, well, maybe they'll be okay. But just tell me a little bit more about how that actually works.

Most of these are very long-term investments or there aren't things like real estate, you know, or, you know, they're, they're just held up. Um, you can't just sort of dip in. I mean, I'm sure that you probably could, but that's not the way that they've ever worked and the way that most administrations, uh, sort of operate is one, they get money from donors, which is, are obviously heavily politicized right now, given the fight that Harvard's in. And then also, of course, there's tuition money, right?

And a lot of, I mean, I'm sure Harvard has a lot of normal, not normal, sorry, I'm sure Harvard has a lot of American students that are playing full tuition. But for a lot of colleges and universities, you know, one reason why they like foreign students is that they tend to pay full tuition. So it's like a cash flow. I mean, it sounds crass to say, but it is a cash flow problem as much as it is a cultural and educational problem. Yeah. I know you mentioned that Harvard is fighting back. They're also using the courts as one of their main tools. They're suing the administration to prevent cutting $2.2 billion right now. I know that you're talking to a lot of people about this.

Are they surprised by how aggressive some of these moves are? What are they saying to you? Yeah. I mean, I think that everyone was pretty shocked. by how aggressive some of these moves are? What are they saying to you? Yeah, I think that everyone was pretty shocked. The Columbia situation was predictable, in part, just because it had been so important politically for so many people that are close to Trump. But Harvard, I think, was pretty shocking,

because the foreign student visa threat and then obviously the funding stuff, these are existential threats essentially. And it was just not anticipated this way. And I think again, the big reason why Trump is animated about this, or at least the theory that keeps being presented to me when I talk to people is that they fought back, right? That Trump's entire approach to politics is that he likes people who are nice to him, and if you push back, then he'll keep fighting forever. And so they're stuck in this kind of doom loop right now. But I don't think anyone anticipated this, just because I think the prevailing theory was like,

okay, they're going to go and crush Columbia over you know these alleged anti-semitic incidents and then you know everyone will just kind of you know dust off their hands and move on but that's not how this administration is playing out at all like they are fighting to remake institutions that the sort of right-wing Republican establishment has long believed are laboratories of leftism, Marxism, you know, etc. Oh, man, lots going on. Alex, I think this is probably a good place for us to leave it today. But thank you, as always, for coming on, and we'll have to have you back on real soon. I would love to come back. Alright, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you tomorrow.