Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - LA’s Wildfires, Trump’s Bold Agenda, and Historic Sentencing

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov break down the politics fueling Los Angeles’ record-breaking wildfires and the fallout from budget cuts, environmental policies, and political blame games. Then, they dive into Trump’s bold—and polarizing—agenda as he prepares for a second term, from cabinet picks to eye-popping proposals like buying Greenland. Finally, they unpack Trump’s historic sentencing, its impact on his political future, and the fight over Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report.  Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.  Follow Prof G, @profgalloway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter Fairs include beer, wine and snacks and free fast streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation and great Gulf Coast weather.

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Yeah, I'm just not enjoying 20. It's like 2025 got right to work and I just don't like the way it's approaching the world. I think I went back to 2024 and I thought that was kind of a shitty year. I would undo the wildfires if I could. So if we need to go back to 2024 to wipe that off the board, absolutely.

But besides, did something bad happen to you while you have been in America? So if we need to go back to 2024 to wipe that off the board, absolutely. But besides, did something bad happen to you while you have been in America? Oh, no. I'm trying to be funny, Jess. My worst day is better than most people's best day. Get it? Seven-day trial is over. Yeah.

No, I get that. But it could also have something deeply meaningful behind it, like something real happened to you. No, no. It was good. Can me describe my last few days because I'd like to talk about me. So I did a speaking gig at Jeffries, the investment bank. I was in New York, which I always love.

I love my place here. There's no kids here, so there's no shit everywhere. It's like a, I don't know, a Northern European architect with OCD designed it. There's just nothing anywhere and I love it. It's my kind of place of peace. Saw friends, went out, and then I had a speaking gig in Boca and then I went out and got shitty drunk

Friday night, which I hadn't done in a while. And you know what? I need to go back to this kind of semi-functioning alcoholic thing. I really enjoyed myself. You didn't wake up completely destroyed? I did. Yeah, no I did.

I did. We're gonna, I did. I did. We're going to gloss over that. But I stayed at the Faina Hotel, which I love and it's colorful. And then Saturday night I went with my friend Pablo to this new restaurant in South Beach called Sparrow Italia. Super hot, super hot people everywhere. Good food. Hello Miami. $28 drinks. And then Sunday I got on a plane and I went to Houston to speak to the, I think it's called the PMCA, which is like this big immense thing. There was like 5,000 people.

I did well there, except I couldn't help it. I made my crack about the Catholic Church institutionalized being pedophilia, not knowing that a group of like 12 year old boys were coming out and singing after. So that was kind of awkward. And then I got back on a plane, came here last night, took a Xanax, woke up, here I am.

Pretty good weekend, pretty good weekend. Okay, yeah, it does sound like a good weekend. And last week you went super viral from your MSNBC hit, your kleptocracy hit. And I, because you've inspired me to start reading comments or you've inspired me to be a narcissist. So I went and looked at some of your comments. I mean, I don't know. I don't feel that great about me. I saw this very nice comment that you're one of the most important voices in our society today. Scott Galloway embodies a driven successful person who hasn't lost his humanity nor his sense of being

part of a nation with mutual responsibilities to each other." I thought that was really nice. Okay, none of that's true. I just like the attention and I like seeing myself on TV. So TV is not a dying medium? And I really like- If you feel good about it. Well, so first off, thank you. We've become a kleptocracy full stop and I find it just outrageous or upsetting, I would say, that we don't appear to have a lot of strong voices on the left. Voicing what is obviously a move towards Russia, where when one man invests $250 million in the Trump campaign, and his businesses are the same or even shittier, Tesla reported year on year sales declines,

and its net worth is up $140 million because the market, which is a neutral arbiter and is not as politically spun as everything else in our society, because the market, which is a neutral arbiter and is not as politically spun as everything else in our society, says, oh, this is a kleptocracy and the biggest customer in the world is going to start funneling funds towards his companies, regardless of whether they deserve them or not, and engaging in regulatory punishment and capture for him and his enemies, respectively.

Back to you, you also went viral. We're viruses. I think a lot of people feel that about us. You're an Ebola, you're COVID. Today, we're gonna talk about the politics behind LA's raging wildfires, and this is why Jessica went viral. The bold and controversial moves shaping Trump's agenda,

Trump's historic sentencing. All right, let's get right into it. Firefighters are in a make or break phase of their week long fight against the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, with many residents still under evacuation orders. The Palisades fire has already cemented its place as the most destructive in L.A.'s history. On top of that, the political blame game is in full swing. Trump's taking shots at California policies and Gavin Newsom, our governor

Newsom, while governor Newsom, while Karen Bass is under fire for Los Angeles Fire Department budget cuts. Critics are pointing fingers at everything from immigrant care to DEI hires and homelessness spending for the fires. Even Jess got into it with colleagues on Fox News. Let's listen to a clip. But to Greg and Jesse's points about, you know, this is because of DEI or what we need as practical solutions, there is so much bad information swirling around about the main players involved in this, like the fire chief has been called a DEI hire. I take her resume any day.

24-year vet, paramedic, engineer, fire inspector, captain, battalion chief, fire marshal, deputy chief. I don't know. But you're proving my point. No, I'm not proving your point. Yes, you are. You're proving it because DEI makes everybody suspect. That is the problem. Yes, because you told them to be that way.

And you guys paraded it around. So now you put it in people's heads. No, you put it in people's heads. How? I didn't back DEI. You both mentioned it. Anyway. Wait, let me get that. Don't you wish you had my job? DEI makes everyone suspect if they're racist. So I suspect DEI, if and when I use it as a political cudgel to make a point instead

of actually doing fucking anything to help these people. I mean, this fire chief, and I pause, I don't know her name. I read her background. The only thing her background. The only thing her background shows is there might still be remnant racism in the fire department. She didn't get this job sooner. She's out of central fucking casting for this job.

She's so incredibly qualified. And I don't know about, yeah, I merely interrupted you and I want to come back to your clip. But we used to at least wait a few weeks before we turned this into a political rage machine. My favorite was Trump saying that it was because of this Water Reclamation Act where they were diverting water from fire safety to save a fish. And it ends up there's no such act that ever existed. Smeltgate. That's what we call it.

But instead of trying to rally help to the city, some of those powerful people in America to the city, some of those powerful people in America are, and of course Musk had to weigh in and say, DEI equals die. It's just so incredibly, it's like, could they at least wait until the smoke is smoldering a bit here? Anyways, more of your thoughts, Jess. I generally echo those sentiments.

Everybody, at least that I've spoken to and I'm sure in your orbit knows somebody who has been affected by this and it is so frightening. It is so devastating. Understanding the scale of this. I mean, it's the most expensive fire in US history. I think now they think it could be 52 billion. I'm sure that will continue to go up. I mean, we're supposed to get new harsh winds coming in Tuesday and Wednesday. I don't know what happens to the future of those neighborhoods. I don't know what happens to having the Olympics there in 2028. It's completely devastating for a real crown jewel of America, which Los Angeles absolutely is. And I feel heartbroken for

everyone there. My sister is evacuated and they're safe, which is great, and didn't lose their homes, which she has several friends who did, and thinking of everyone there, and searching for ways to be able to be useful and helpful. And the contrast between what you see on the ground, which is real people helping each other, like they've turned the,

I think it's the Santa Anita racetrack is in this, it's this pop-up aid center right now, where you can go and you can get clothes, you can get food, you can be linked up with people that you've been looking for, talk to public officials, et cetera. And then this hellscape of disinformation

that is going on online and in person. And I don't know what the solution to this is, disinformation that is going on online and in person. And I don't know what the solution to this is because unless we find some way to make it profitable to spread good and decent information, people will not stop. And I remember Ariana Huffington years ago, remember when she launched Good News,

I think was the name of it, right? And it was a publication, it was an offshoot of Huffington years ago, remember when she launched Good News, I think was the name of it, right? And it was a publication, it was an offshoot of HuffPost that was just supposed to amplify things that like make you feel good, right? That people want to see that someone was rescued or they love, we love cat videos, right? Like that's what people spend all their time on their social media feeds. And she thought, you know, the clickbait, it's too much and we can't live in a cycle like this. Our mental health is suffering. You know, she was very ahead of's too much. And we can't live in a cycle like this. Our mental health is suffering.

You know, she was very ahead of the curve about needing enough sleep, something that we all know now and still don't do. And we gotta get it back because we're not gonna survive living like this when the people with the most powerful accounts, not only online, but in real life, like the President-elect of the United States of America,

sees no good reason to amplify truth, joy, camaraderie, nationalism, Americana, whatever you wanna call it. The lurch towards divisiveness only will be the undoing of this nation. And you see the contrast between the images of the firefighters coming from all over the country like they did after 9-11. I lived in downtown Manhattan in Tribeca. We had firefighters that were from all over the country that were using our house as a bathroom. We opened it up and we said, you come here and you can stay.

There were meals being served here. We had people from Indiana coming in. We had people from Texas coming in. Same thing in California, the Oregon firefighters coming, the Mexican planes landing right at this moment where Trump is saying, you know, the Gulf of Mexico is the Gulf of America. The Mexicans are showing up to help us.

Even Greg Abbott, who I think is a terrible partisan in Texas, you know, sending the firefighters up there, which Gavin Newsom thanked him for. And then you contrast that with the messaging coming out of these big accounts like the Charlie Kirk's of the world, what Elon Musk is doing. I don't know if you saw this video, but he showed up at a fire command briefing around the Palisades fire and got completely embarrassed by the fire chief who was basically like, what the fuck are you talking about? Right?

He said, well, you know, he's repeating talking points from Twitter or from Axe, I should say. And you've now heard from basically every official under the sun that quote, mother nature owned us. That's what the fire chief who was on 60 Minutes said. It was unstoppable. The head of FEMA says, I think they were very prepared, but you have not seen 100 mile per hour winds that are fueling this fire. And who could look at that video, I'm sure you've seen of the McDonald's, right, with the fire blowing

by the Santa Ana winds is 100 miles per hour and think that if you had an extra hose full of water, when the choppers couldn't even fly for 27 hours, that you were going to be able to solve this problem. No, that doesn't mean that, I'm sure there were mistakes that were made and I'm glad there will be audits of everything and after action reports and Governor Newsom has been speaking about that.

But what can we do to fix this? Mm-hmm. I mean, you're talking about an area that's a desert that is in the midst of this, or in the middle of this meteorological anomaly called the Santa Ana winds, or because of, I don't know if you've ever seen, I think it's called Nazarene,

which is this topographical anomaly in Portugal where these huge waves come, and then there's this gigantic shelf which is this topographical anomaly in Portugal, where these huge waves come, and then there's this gigantic shelf in the form of like a tube that creates these hundred foot waves. That's kind of what Los Angeles is in the sense that it's a desert, it's incredibly dry.

We had an unbelievable drought in the winter, and you'd think, well, winter should be good for fires, but it's not because it creates high and low pressure systems colliding which creates a massive vacuum of the wind coming into the low pressure system and then it runs through mountains and it creates this exceptionally dry kind of voluminous massive velocity wind that can take any ember and move it across hundreds of yards in seconds. And California actually has a very robust

fire response system, one of the most robust in the nation, if not the most robust in the nation. And they had something like 12,000 people working or fighting against it. I mean, the bottom line is LA probably just shouldn't be there and it's so populated in terms of a city deciding to string itself in this area, where there's earthquakes, where there's droughts, where there's superfires. Nine of 10 of the biggest superfires in the last hundred years, by the way, have been

in the last decade. And one of the things that frustrates me a little bit about the left is that we like to think of ourselves as better than them, so we don't engage in this conspiracy theory to hit back and say, oh, it't engage in this conspiracy theory to hit back and say, oh, it's because of Republicans' inability to prepare for the obvious and ignore science around climate change. We don't go there, because the reality is,

we really don't know. We're going to need scientists to look at what happened here before they start leveling political accusations. But they may immediately go to the politicization. I heard about Musk and the fact that he's so dominant. It reflects our idolatry of money. This reflects how politically polarized we've been. It also, the thing that really struck me about this,

and I found it really frustrating. I went to UCLA. I have a lot of friends in LA. I didn't wanna bother them with constant, like, how are you doing? So I was trying to get information. And the first thing when I said UCLA, you know, UCLA evacuation question mark,

well, the first thing that came up was this TikTok from this kid saying it's the University of California of people who don't care and that the evacuation order should have been issued already. And I sort of immediately went to it. And it's some fucking sophomore with a TikTok account. And that's what comes up first in my news, my news search. And I do have a tough time trying to triangulate in on accurate information. And I've been relying on two things. I've been relying on Anderson Cooper, who I think does his level best to talk about stuff in a balanced way. CNN, no doubt, has

a left-leaning bias, but I do find that they do try to seek the truth without fear or favor, which at the end of the day is the media's job. I'm going to Jessica Yellen's News Not Noise. And unfortunately, because Jessica lives in Los Angeles, she had to take a couple days off to manage probably her own evacuation and her own dog. And unfortunately, because Jessica lives in Los Angeles, she had to take a couple of days off to manage probably her own evacuation and her own dog. And I wanna move to the virtue signaling part of the program and what you can do. This rabbi, Steven Leeder, who I follow,

said something really powerful. I think it was on threads. He said, don't ask people how you can help. He said, people are embarrassed. People don't wanna come up with ideas. They're in a state of panic. They don't wanna people how you can help. He said, people are embarrassed, people don't wanna come up with ideas, they're in a state of panic, they don't wanna tax you, they don't wanna feel like victims. He said, you should just help, bring food,

come over and take their dogs, or whatever it is, or call them and say, you know, here's a picture of your bedroom, we live in Newport, come here right now. And so I went to Jessica's site and she has a subscription for a hundred bucks a month and I bought 50 of them. And I'm in a position of privilege

and anyone who knows me knows I like to talk about my success, my, you know, full masculinity through my economic success. Any fucking GoFundMe, I'm doing. How can you help? You move to action, you know? I mean, checking in on people's fine, but instead of asking if they need help, just help. Don't ask. You know, just immediately reach

out and start helping. I was even thinking I was in Houston, I thought, should I go to LA? And I thought, no, I'm just a liability. I can't fight fires. I don't know what the fuck I would do there. It has gotten so bad in terms of an inability to find accurate information and our most powerful people, their willingness to immediately move to the politicization, that it's just very discouraging in a situation like this. I remember even in Hurricane Katrina, you know, Democrats and Republicans said, all right, let's get down there and let's see what we can do to help. And there was a blame game against Bush around this.

Once kind of it became pretty obvious the guy running the whole rescue operation, remember him Brownie was a total fucking incompetent, but it wasn't, at least they took a beat. You know, at least they took a moment. Any thoughts on how this can get better or what we can do to make sure this isn't such a shit show the next time this comes around?

Well, I want to say first about disasters that happened in an era like the Bush era, which we thought was pretty bad partisan wise, at least where we turned out in thinking that these wars were an enormous mistake. And people, until Bush started doing oil paintings and belly tapping, Barack Obama thought he was the devil. And now that we live in this era, we all have rose colored glasses about him. But I felt in the 2000s, certainly 9-11, Katrina, et cetera, that people actually cared about

their fellow Americans, no matter their partisan affiliation. And I think that that has shifted for a lot of people, that this has become blood sport, not just something that you do every two or four years when you show up and vote, and that we have common call, more unites us than separates us. And I think for probably the average American, that's still the case. But for the people with the loudest megaphones,

that is not the case. And they are playing to our worst angels, is that how you say it? Like they're playing to the worst parts of us, right? And when that's happening from the leadership level down, it is very hard to upend that kind of system. And I saw, you know, Gavin Newsom set up a new site that's has the facts on it, right? Right. And he's having to obviously it's his rapid response team is constantly online, you know, quote tweeting things saying, no, that's not

true. Go to this to see it. You know, stuff about funding cuts to the budget that weren't true, you know, doubling the size of the firefighting army, having these C-130s. I think they're the only state that's able to use them for firefighting, all of that. So using these official channels. But the problem is, is that official channels don't matter to millions of people. They think that the government is the one

who predominantly lies to you. And I had this interaction with a good friend of mine on The Five, Kennedy, who was MTV VJ, is now with us at Fox. She's a libertarian. She has a house in- MTV VJ now on Fox. that actually fits, that checks out. Anyways, I'm sure she's lovely.

She is lovely, you would very much enjoy her. She has a house in the Palisades, it is still standing but uninhabitable. Obviously this has been very emotional for her. She was on air when we first showed the footage of the fact that her kid's preschool had burned down and she was talking about the tiles that the little kids make that they keep. You know, every student that comes through has a tile on this wall. And it's, you know, we both have kids. I can't imagine what that

could feel like. But I said, I was reading an official declaration about the fire hydrants and that the hydrants were all full, technically, but because of pressure issues, that's why they couldn't, there was no water up the hill, right? This was part of one of the theories of how LA had failed its people. And again, let's wait for the audits of everything and see what really happened. But she said, I don't believe that. And I said, well, then I can't do anything about that. So if I'm reading an official government document or I'm reading the budget items from the LA firefighting budget

and talking about the 17 million that apparently went missing, like, what do you do about that? And this will take a complete reboot of the way we teach young people about civics, about government, about the role that government plays in our lives. And the parties are so divided in what benefit we think public servants can play in our lives. You know, the people who are scared if they're knocking on the door and the people who think

they're here to help us. And that I worry, especially in moving into an era where these kinds of events are going to be happening unfortunately more and more often. I feel like we, you know, it was hurricane season, but we are just every month, right? There's just something catastrophic that's happening. And we do not occupy the same space whatsoever in how we think about this and what responsibility we think the government has in taking care of us and what they are driven by, that they are driven either by public service

or personal vanity. And I don't know how you overcome something like that. Yeah, and this is like, I mean, the devastation of the scale of the fire is really dramatic. The fire has now burned an area, a landmass, that is greater than San Francisco or Boston, just to give you a sense of scale for it.

I'm really good at economics. I think it's going to be fascinating. Some of the biggest insurance companies did the math, and they canceled the insurance policies. They said, look, and to be fair, California had instituted, I believe, some price caps on the escalation of premiums. So these companies who have an obligation,

their shareholders said, on a risk-adjusted basis, we just can't, we can't do business here. And so there's, I think, a California or a state-sponsored or state-backed insurance program, which is a... That's like Woolly, I think is the name of it sponsored or state backed insurance program, which is if. That's like Woolly, I think is the name of it or something. Which is essentially outsourcing kind of this risk to California taxpayers, such that you can keep prices high. I mean, there's a decent argument

that insurance should be allowed to be priced to its natural level, which will decrease the prices of houses. I live in a house in Florida that's probably prone to hurricanes or maybe the sea level's rising. which will decrease the prices of houses. I live in a house in Florida that's probably, you know, prone to hurricanes or maybe the sea level's rising. And I believe I should have to pay insurance rates that reflect that. And if the price of my house

or the value of my house goes down, that's fine. But having, keeping my, you know, house price elevated back on the backs of taxpayers because insurance companies have decided to vacate, I don't think it makes any sense. What will also be interesting is what happens to the economy, because I did a little bit of research here and I thought, will this be the straw that breaks the camel's back and kind of escalates the flight from California to states like Texas and Nevada from people who think it's just become a bad consumer product, where it's both expensive and bad. They pay some of the highest taxes in the world.

You know, housing prices are crazy. And because of the stress on many industries, especially in L.A., where production, the entertainment industry is down 40% year on year, well, a lot of people just say, that's it. Give me my check for my house that's been burnt down and we're out. What the data shows, though, is that most people typically don't leave after a disaster.

And in California, despite all of the noise about people exiting the state, when they move, they usually move to another city in California. And you're going to see so much capital pour into Los Angeles. Housing prices, I would imagine, will escalate in the short term because of the destruction and housing stock or available housing stock. But will escalate in the short term because of the destruction in housing stock or available housing stock. But I wonder if over the long term, you see kind of an economic boomlet or just a boom because of all the money and building that's going to go

into Los Angeles. And then to just start to get off our heels and onto our toes, is this an opportunity for Los Angeles? I was with, ironically, accidentally, a member of the International Olympic Committee yesterday at this talk. And he was saying, you know, we want to figure this out, because immediately he went to, well,

will they be able to have the Olympics in 2028? And I would imagine they'll diversify to some other venues in San Diego or San Francisco. But I do think this kind of stuff does bring out the best in regular citizens, all those videos of people handling pets. The other thing, just to shout out to our fantastic fire people and government services,

this was a fire that made the Chicago Fire look like a barbecue. And then my masculine energy moment. Have you seen all these aerial vehicles dropping retardants? Jesus, what bad asses in these retrofitted DC-10s swooping in 10 feet above the ground to drop flame retardants. It's something out of, I don't know, a better version. It's something out of, I don't know, a better version. It's something out of kind of one of these World War II movies.

I just find it. Well, you realize also how undeied all of this actually is. Right, for the way the narrative is about people. Sounds good, who can help? Right, and it's also all of these, I guess, beta males, is that the right term for it? Sitting keyboard warriors saying, if I was out there, I could do this, right? Or, you know, I would have walked right up to so and so.

And I don't want to let us escape some criticism. I was very disturbed by Mayor Karen Bass's tarmac interview where she couldn't even Mayor Karen Bass's tarmac interview where she couldn't even Summon kind words or soothing words for the people of Los Angeles when she arrived back from Ghana And it seems quite clear that it was a massive mistake for her to have gone on this trip if there was Well, she said she wouldn't leave. Yeah, and she said no campaign. She's I think so too And it'll be interesting to some of its fair some of its unfair, but she's out. I think so too. I think she's done. And it'll be interesting to. Some of it's fair, some of it's unfair, but she's done. Some things are just too bad to survive, no matter what you did in those circumstances.

And I think that Governor Newsom, we'll see again how it all shakes out. He is certainly sounding to be the competent on top of it all, one, in all of this. I think he comes out of this, so winner would be my guess. It will be interesting to see in all of this. I think he comes out of this, a winner would be my guess. It will be interesting to see how all of this is run, especially looking ahead to the next president.

Him in that jacket and those jeans. Being turned on and saying that he's gonna come out a winner are different things. I totally get it. I'm literally, I'm watching him and I'm like, what did he say? He's just, I'm like, I see his lips moving. Do you, it's just the hair, right? Everything's so perfect. I'm literally like, it did he say? He's just, I'm like, I see his lips moving. But I just feel like I'm in a pitulacy.

It's just the hair, right? Everything's so perfect. I'm literally like, it's so hot there. Shouldn't you take off your shirt? The winds, Scott, there are big winds there. Can I link to a comment you just made and say something boring? Yes, please.

Okay, great. Doesn't sound nice. You said that there'll be opportunity, right, for Los Angeles out of this in terms of the rebuild and something that I found really interesting or the boring, the nerdy side of me found really interesting was one of the things that Governor Newsom did was sign all these executive actions to cut red tape in terms of the rebuilding process and like the enforcement of the CEQA and the California Coastal Commission, etc. And that stuck out to me as a pragmatic person,

as like an opportunity for Democrats to take a step back and say, we obviously know that some of these regulations are so burdensome that we stand in the way of people and businesses getting back on their feet. And there's been a lot of hay made of the fact that Rick Caruso, the property developer who ran for mayor against Karen Bass in 2022, you know, he had all of these properties in the palisades that were protected by private firefighters, which a lot of people didn't know was the thing that you could do, but they didn't burn down. And a lot of that has to do with when they were built and the fact that they weren't subject

to these outdated regulations that kept a lot of homes and businesses in more precarious positions. And I'm hopeful that this will be a signal to the sane world to say, we can't live like this, right? Like it is not 1960 anymore. I understand we wanna to preserve the integrity of the place. We want, you know, people to maintain their views and we want things to look beautiful. And who doesn't love a Spanish Villa that looks like its original conception?

Yeah. But you are going to die if we keep it this way. And that stuck out to me as a big opportunity out of this to have a, you to have a cleaner, faster, more economical process to a rebuild and also a path forward to meet people where they are. Because no matter your politics, everyone is frustrated by how hard it is to get things done. I'm hopeful that a lot good is gonna come out of this.

The property destruction is obviously devastating, but there was a fairly scant loss of life. And I think we might be better for this in terms of looking at things like climate safety, fire safety, housing permitting, a reinvestment in Los Angeles. So I think we're going to see silver linings everywhere here. That's my deal. We're gonna be right back. Stay with us. Welcome back. Let's dive into the week in politics. Biden's wrapping up his final days in office and Trump is gearing up to take charge. He's already making waves debating with House and Senate Republicans about how to fast track his agenda. And in true

Trump fashion, he's grabbing headlines with bold proposals, buying Greenland, reclaiming the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. Yeah, makes total sense. His goal, outmaneuvering China and Russia and trade shipping and military strategy. At the same time, confirmation hearings are kicking off for Trump's cabinet picks. Pete Hegseth for defense, Kristi Noem for Homeland Security, and Marco Rubio for state, and Pam Bondi as attorney general.

Jess, what do you make of Trump's push to expand US territory? Is there any chance it could happen or is this more of a distraction? I think it's somewhere in the middle from a distraction and it could happen. It's always interesting to see conservatives or other Republicans commenting on these kinds of things

when they let it slip. Like, obviously, this isn't going to happen in the way that he is saying it. But there might be a kernel of truth in what he's talking about. And we're going to try to get to that point. Like James Langford was on Meet the Press and said, the US is not going to invade another country. That's not who we are. The president speaks very boldly on a lot of things. We've seen this over how he's done in negotiations, whether it be for real estate, et cetera. But you do see, especially on the Greenland front,

an interesting change in posture, I guess, moving from obviously he's not going to come and take over Greenland, but maybe we could have some more US troops there, which it seems like the Danish government isn't totally opposed to. So that feels like one of those kind of compromise positions, right, where Trump will get to say, I won and it was worth sending Don Jr. out there with a film crew and some snowshoes and for the Danes to be able to continue living as they do and maintain a good relationship with us.

I think there's going to be so much culture shock for the international community as Trump properly takes office. I mean, they've obviously had this first few months where, I mean, he essentially did become president, right? Right after the election and Mar-a-Lago became the summer White House again. But it will be different, right, when he is showing up at these meetings and they're having to do, you know, their one-on-ones with him or in the groups and we'll have more of those strange photos from G7 meetings where he's kind of standing there in the corner in a huff like this. And people are thinking, all right, we have four years to get through this,

but we also need to understand that Donald Trump has fundamentally changed the way the Republican Party is going to work essentially in perpetuity. A normie Republican is not coming back, even if JD Vance isn't the guy in 2028 who runs and you would assume that he is going to be since he's vice president, even if you get a kind of more standard Republican, the magnification of the party is complete and there is no return and you will have to deal with the fact that there are going to be

comments and people who are thinking things like Canada should become the 51st state or that we should rename the Gulf of Mexico. And these leaders are really going to have to decide how they want to deal with it. I mean, Trudeau, he won't be around. He feels as though he's gotten past the annexation idea and wants to really focus on the implications of the tariffs for Americans. He's like, that's what I need to message on, right? That if you put 25% tariffs on us,

we're going to have retaliatory tariffs and it's going to be bad for you. And then like Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico has taken a very offensive tone. And I like, as she said, basically, I'm happy to be in negotiations, but we will not be a subordinate. We are a sovereign nation, and we are not interested

in dealing with someone who's going to talk about, you know, renaming us in whatever fashion they so choose. So that's what I'm most interested in it, rather than the real implications of whether he's going to be able to pull any of this off. Though, I don't understand, if Canada becomes the 51st state, Democrats never lose, right?

I mean, you're getting a huge influx of a bunch of liberals. I mean, even their conservatives are liberals. I think it's pretty easy what's gonna happen here. Absent fucking, literally nothing. I've struggled my whole career with the difference between being right and being effective. And I was saying this on our other podcast, Pivot, Kara is interested in assembling a group to buy the Washington Post. And she has the skills, she has the contacts, she's actually on speed dial with a bunch of people who have the

money to do it. But she's gone about it wrong. And that is, if you want to get a deal done, you call people, you call the owner, you call the people who actually get to decide whether to do a deal, and you express interest. You don't make them look stupid. Because from that point on, the deal's just not going to happen. You don't go public and try and shame them into a deal. And the idea that the Danish are going to decide, yeah, we'll do a deal with Trump over Greenland because they're big and bad and scary. First off, the Panama Canal is just a dumb idea.

It's a small business. It's a $5 billion business. It's politically stable., it's a small business. It's a $5 billion business. It's politically stable. We would get no incremental advantage by owning it that we get now. It's better to lease this thing than to own it. It's not a big business. It's not a, it's only a strategic value

if someone were stupid enough to start arresting ships or not allowing them safe passage, which no one has any intention of doing. Everyone has mutual interests here from the Chinese to the US to keep letting people go through the Panama Canal. There's no reason to do this. There's no incremental value to taking the Panama Canal back. Greenland, on the other hand, has real strategic importance. It has rare earth minerals. But we get to use all of those things right now. And the thought that we're gonna bully of sovereign Northern European nation

into selling us Greenland, they don't need the money. And so, and they actually have a more healthy, homogenous society. This is almost a gift to their incumbent party because it's created an enemy where there wasn't one and they can just stand up and show the middle finger. What are we gonna do? Like deploy the US Navy

to Greenland? This is just another example of Trump has figured out, and he's smart to do this, how to dominate the news and the media cycle, even if it's a ridiculous notion. So I don't think anything is going to happen here. This is just an opportunity for Claudia Scheinbaum, and I don't know who is the equivalent person in Denmark

to say, you're an idiot. No, we're not going to do this. And the renaming of the Gulf to the Gulf of expensive eggs when circling back to the fire, a lot of his policies could play a pretty significant negative role in the rebuilding of LA specifically. Construction is a magnet for immigrants

and undocumented workers. And while we like to, or the Republican administration wants to paint undocumented workers as these criminals, one of the realities for why we have allowed allowed illegal immigration to get to a point where it is out of control, I will acknowledge that and we need to do something about it. And I actually believe that deporting criminals who are here illegally, I'm down with that. But what we don't want to acknowledge is that not only is immigration the secret sauce of

the United States economic growth, but in many ways illegal immigration is because they kind of flow in as a flexible workforce where there's work and then they flow out. They actually absorb fewer until recently social services and they pay their taxes. So they pay taxes, but they don't call the fire department or the police department or ask for social services or stick around for social security because they're worried about being deported. And when you have 12,000 houses that need to be rebuilt, you are going to need a massive inflow of construction workers.

There is no way our domestic resources and domestic workers are going to be able to accomplish that. In addition, if he really goes through with anything resembling this level of tariffs on Mexico or China, you're gonna see the cost of rebuilding these homes explode everything from a washing machine to the garage door, where either the parts or the entire thing

is assembled in China or Mexico. All of a sudden, you're gonna see reconstruction or rebuilding costs of 10, 30, 40%. So you're gonna see a massive increase in labor if you can find people to build your home. And then the costs are gonna explode. And both of these are going to be pretty easily reverse engineered into what I feel

are very short-term, jingoist, kind of non-economic policies. Yeah. Well, I mean, we were talking about this last week about humanizing the deficit for people. And this is the way to get right to that. This is cost of living in your face and silly policy that's going to make it worse for the average American. And I have been keeping track of the major promises that Trump made during the campaign and where we stand on those things. And four central goals or promises

that he sold the American public that he was going to get done, they're already admitting aren't going to happen. So from all of the cuts that they were going to make, I mean, Musk is admitting now that they won't be able to do the two trillion in cuts, right? Like that's something that we already knew and that Doge didn't have this kind of power, but that's one of them. JD Vance did his first big interview over the weekend. He was on Fox News Sunday.

He gives a great interview. I got to say, that guy, so smooth. But he is talking about prices for Americans. And he says, we're going to stabilize prices for Americans. That wasn't what you guys promised us. You promised us that on day one, prices were going to fall. Guess that's not happening. Tom Homan, apparently, the border czar, is privately telling GOPers that they won't be

able to deport everybody. That was the tough talk of the campaign, but the reality is that you have to have more modest goals and you should focus on people who are violent felons. We agree with all of that, but you still talked about a deportation force. And then ending the war in Ukraine, right? Where he said, I'm the one with the line to Putin, I can get this done right away on day one. And the special envoy for Ukraine has said,

we'll see what happens in the first 100 days. So those are four key planks, right? Of the Trump Vance platform and why everybody got on board with this motley crew of people in the new Trump administration, from the Vivek Brahmaswamis to the Elon Musk's to the Tom Homans, the Tulsi Gabbards, Cash Patel, whoever it is. And I think that we are in for such an incredibly rude awakening. I saw Jamie Dimon was interviewed on CBS Sunday morning

and he said he's cautiously pessimistic about what's to happen, though he did, I think at one point say we're gonna have this massive recession that didn't come under Biden. But people are going to start pricing that in to what they think is gonna happen going forward. I'm sure the market is going to continue to respond in that way.

And if you lump on 25% tariffs or even 10% tariffs with our top trading partners and make it so that we can't get any decent pricing on everything from, you know, lumber to the people that we need to be able to make our country run, it's going to be complete chaos over the next two to four years. Yeah, I feel as if Donald Trump today has been the luckiest person in the world. And I find that luck is perfectly asymmetric, that if you're around long enough, you have just as much good luck as bad luck. And with respect to the economy, we've had a 15-year bull market run.

I think the S&P trades at a P of like 31 or 32. 50% of the total market cap globally is now represented by US stocks, which is a historic high. And typically about 5% of institutional capital goes into emerging markets. Or excuse me, 9%. It's about 5%. Now all the flows of capital have been into the US. And I think one event, whether it's inflation

starting to spike again or a big company announcing that reducing their investment in AI that's just not showing the return they'd hoped for, I think you could see the markets just absolutely throw up. And it just feels like it's time. Markets are cyclical. And I'm even, you know, I mean, it's impossible to time the markets,

but I can do math and US stocks are just so expensive. But I think his first year, I think this guy, and nobody controls the markets. We overestimate or over credit presidents for the markets, wins or losses and give them too much blame for when they're not strong. But this guy has been jumping from lily pad to lily pad. And I think he's gonna miss one in the next 12 or 24 months.

Real quick, Jess, how do you think these hearings are going to play out? I think some of them are going to be a total walk in the park. I think everyone knows the folks that will be welcomed in with open arms, and we'll get some decent democratic support. The whole foreign policy apparatus, you know, Marco Rubio, Mike Walt, Pam Bondi, I think there are concerns about her, especially she kind of played around with the election denialism

and she's obviously a very strong partisan and in Team Trump from the beginning, but I imagine that she gets through. It's interesting to me that for all of this time that has elapsed from when we first started talking about these nominations, it's still the same names where I think people don't know if there are secret no votes in all of this. So for Pete Hegseth at defense, continues to be stories that come out, not just about his personal behavior, but about his views and how he would manage these three million people at the Pentagon. Cash Patel has real concerns for people. RFK Jr. is interesting because everybody, even very strong Republicans,

have been pushing him about the vaccine skepticism. And you know, he's found artful ways to dodge around how he talks about it. You know, I'm just for vaccine safety. It's like, bro, you're on enough tape saying that you don't think we should have, you know, mandatory vaccines for kids in school and what the implications of that is going to be. So I think that that's still up in the air. I imagine the other health officials

like your pal, Dr. Oz, will get through, the Surgeon General, et cetera. So I think, and Tulsi Gabbard, and she continues to be, it's interesting, the ones that people are the most quiet about, part of me thinks have to have the biggest objections, right? And we haven't been talking a lot about the post-Assad world in Syria since it fell in 13 days.

But I know that people, whether you're a traditional Republican hawk or not, are very concerned about having someone who has been on the side of Assad and Putin in such an important role as DNI. So I still don't know about those, but I think he's probably going to have a lot of success with the less controversial picks. You know, someone like a Kristi Noem where you think like, well, what business does she

have having that job? No one's going to care, I think, because they have to pick your battles with this. And if your battle is Cash Patel, you don't have time to talk about why Kristi Noem isn't qualified. Someone like Sean Duffy getting through a transportation, which I think is fine, or Doug Burgum coming in at agriculture. Yeah, just a quick reminder on vaccines.

Rick Perry, who is governor of Texas, made HP vaccination for, I believe it was for kids, or was it just girls? Anyways, he made it mandatory, and now that these kids are coming of age, there's a statistically significant decline in HPV-related cancers. These things are a gift from God.

I think if you were to say, if you were to get people from both sides of the aisle who actually understand science and say, what has been the greatest innovation in history, near the top of the list would be vaccines. I think it's so funny. I'm so, I mean, I find the whole vaccine or anti-vax thing from R.F.K. Junior disqualifying. I'm gonna ignore his character for a moment. The thing that's so troubling is he's so good on some issues. I mean, I don't know if you've seen him talk

about our food supply or. Obama wanted him for EPA. He was in consideration. It's gonna make for a very interesting confirmation. His will be the most interesting. They're gonna be great TV, which we know is what Trump and co likes best. Yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be really interesting.

Okay, we have one more quick break, stay with us. Welcome back, before we wrap, Trump has made history again, becoming the first former and soon to be sitting president sentenced after a felony conviction. In the hush money case, Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The judge, Juan Mershon, handed down a symbolic ruling, no jail time, no fines, and no probation. Trump, now a convicted felon, dismissed it as a political witch hunt while prosecutors argued he's shown no remorse. At the same time, Special Counsel Jack Smith resigned

from the Justice Department amid a battle over releasing his report on Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents. Jess, what does this mean for Trump's political future and public trust in our institutions? Yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see. I mean, the battle over whether the DOJ reports that Jack Smith put together actually get released will be ongoing. I imagine it will get to SCOTUS at some point. And it should be noted that Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Roberts joined the liberal justices to allow the sentencing to go forward on Friday in the Hush Money case. And you've seen the freakout

online from luminaries such as Cat Turd, that Amy Coney Barrett is a traitor, Steve Bannon's turned on her, et cetera. They really have no tolerance whatsoever for even one little scribble outside of the lines of total Trumpism. But so Jack Smith has these two reports that have been filed. One of them is about the documents case. And because there are two co-defendants in that, and that that case could continue to go forward, for instance, if Judge Cannon's ruling on dismissing it doesn't hold. She got it taken away, obviously, for Trump. And now Smith has dropped that.

But it could move forward. So that report is not going to come out, because you don't want to tamper with a, quote unquote, ongoing investigation. But then there's the report about election interference and the DC case. And that's the one that I think Trump especially doesn't want to come out.

As he moves into Trump 2.0 and gets to pardoning some of the Jan Sixers, et cetera. And if that does get to the Supreme Court, it'll be really interesting to see what Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Roberts do when it comes to that. It makes sense he didn't get a sentence or anything really happened to him. The guy just won the election. It's not practical. I think it would have made a few uber partisans feel vindicated in some way. But basically everyone who's been an honest broker in all of this has said that the hush

money case was the weakest case in all of this. And now most liberals, including people like Adam Schiff, have admitted that Merrick Garland has been a big disappointment in that he waited a couple years to- Terrible attorney general. Correct. Terrible.

Yeah, he might've been a great Supreme Court justice if he had been able to get his hearing from Mitch McConnell, but obviously this guy did not have what it takes to meet the moment. And that will, I think, be a big part of Biden's legacy, certainly Merrick Garland's legacy, and all of this. And there will be a lot of people who don't know the strength of the case that they had, don't know all of the details, don't know really what played out, because this, he didn't appoint Jack Smith,

right away, right after January, Biden comes in January 20th, January 21st. Hey, we need somebody, right? To be looking into this. And I hope for history's sake, that that report does get out into the ether and that it is at least something that people, if they so choose, can refer to and can look back at because thank God that the institutions held.

Thank God that Mike Pence had the courage. Thank God that we got out of that day. And I'm not here to say it was as bad as, you know, 9-11 or Pearl Harbor or Sonny Hoss and even put it in the category with the Holocaust, which offended me to no end. But January 6th was obviously bad. And you now have JD Vance in his interview.

He said that violent January 6ers will not be pardoned. People who are just walking around aimlessly will get pardoned, which I think is probably where you should end up in all of this. But I think that he's going to, for people who support him, be able to effectively rewrite this as if January 6 was somewhere around a day of love or something that is really inconsequential

and history is long. And so I hope that this report will at least be part of history. So for those who care to know about what happened and how intricate the plan was and what role the president-elect played in all of it, that it'll be available. What do you make of it?

I'm just excited about referring to President Trump as photos, a felon of the United States. I think that's where we should. That's cute. Yeah, I should credit the comedian. I forget her name. I came up with that on threads. And anytime he and Steve Bannon are on Air Force One,

we've got to call it Con Air. I mean, there's got to be a silver lining. We've got to have some fun with this. Basically everyone that flies around with him, right? But to your point, we are Democrats, America, Ireland just couldn't have fucked up any worse. And that is insurrection, election interference,

mishandling of secure or confidential defense documents. These are all issues that deserve legal scrutiny. Hush money to a porn star? All that did was give the Republicans a legitimate claim that Democrats had weaponized the government and the deep state and the DOJ against their political opponents. So we didn't get our shit together or Mer we didn't get our shit together,

or Merritt didn't get a shit together for the real stuff, but managed to figure out a way to create a legitimate political concern on behalf of the right. It just could not have handled this any more poorly. And some people would argue, well, he's not, Alvin Bragg doesn't report to him. But in terms of, and this goes back to the notion

this guy gets a jump from a lily pad to lily pad, while from an ego standpoint, he doesn't like being called a convicted felon, I believe the mishandling and the cadence and the way that these legal cases played out played a big role in his reelection. I don't think anyone could have strategically thought of the chestnut checkers move of, all right,

here's four cases. Let's pick the one and move forward with it that looks like the deep state and the most politicized and make that the one that goes the furthest the fastest such that it emasculates the other three. It just played out so incredibly poorly for, in my opinion, it created the ultimate miscarriage and justice and accrued or created political benefits.

It also revealed a level of partisanship from our public servants here in New York that is just gross. Like, that you have Tish James and Alvin Bragg on tape saying, we're going to get him no matter what. That's ugly. And you don't want that no matter what the crime is or alleged crime that's been committed, let alone for it to be this case, which was obviously the weakest of all of them. And, you know, Fonny Willis also created

a big problem for us in Georgia, I do think. And that's, there are people who've been held accountable in Georgia for good reason for what went on there. And now he walks around like, you know, I have a fake conviction from the stupidest case and you'll never see or hear of the rest of it at all. But you got planned for the rest of the week, Jess Tarloff. What is Jess go up to? I'm gonna go to work. So, 2 and a half, five o'clock.

You are at work. I'm gonna go to other work. What is this? I'm gonna go to more stressful work, like one on four work. This is just, this is a good hang, which I enjoy. I don't think I have anything that, oh, I'm gonna go to the Knicks game tonight

with a high school friend who I had lost touch with. And she texted me and said, and we both played basketball together in high school. She said, shot in the dark, I have tickets to the next. Would you like to go with me? And I said, yes. And so we're gonna have a rekindling, I feel, and get to watch Jalen Branson, which I'm excited about.

We need to double click on that. You were a high school athlete, you played basketball. And I played tennis in college. Yeah, I played tennis and basketball in division three. Not, you know, I was not bound. You're a college athlete, that's very impressive. Or I was. Were you a power forward?

What was your position in basketball? Yes, technically a power forward, but I would do the tip. So I was, I've been 5'11 since like seventh grade. You were the center? Well, for the tip. Okay, let me guess, that was not, that was not the most competitive league in wherever. I imagine you're going to some Tony Prep school.

We're called the Ivy League. Sign each other. The New York City Ivy League, but. Where'd you go to high school? Let's lean into your white privilege. Where did you go to high school? I went to a school called Dalton. You look so self-conscious right now.

I went to Dalton. You look like the four when you get in their face. You went to Dalton. I did. Good for you. Yeah, but I mean, it's for another time, and I'm sure this topic will come up, but it was a very interesting journey

through high school athletics. My dad, who was a lawyer, threatened a Title IX lawsuit against my high school because they wouldn't let the girls get the prime time slot so no parents could attend right if your game is at four o'clock parents work, they can't come and It made us very much personas non grata at school, but it was an interesting lesson Your parents are those parents my dad my mom was like hiding in the corner So we have the 730 game and still no one would come because no one wanted to watch the girls.

There were more parents there. He really met well, but it was an interesting lesson in standing up for yourself that my dad imparted upon us as a very young age. And when parents have too much time. Yes, he did have a flexible work schedule. And you played tennis in college. Did you get a scholarship?

No, I didn't. I was lucky my parents paid for college, but I got to play and it was great. So you went to Dalton and played basketball then tennis. I went to university high school, which now is got the distinction of having more homeless kids than any LA to ST school. And I got cut from the baseball team.

So we have almost nothing in common. How did we end up here? I actually think about that a lot. How did we end up here? How did we end up here? Do your boys play competitive sports? My boys have just the right amount of athletic ability. And that is very little.

And they have enough to play sports at their schools. They both play football, better known as soccer. We're talking European. Unwash my asses here in the US. And they can play which is a ton of fun but there's absolutely no illusions that they're ever gonna you know use that on their college apps or or play professionally. Whereas for brief moment, I thought I might be an athlete, and I tried out for a couple of teams that used to lay and got cut and ended up on the crew team. But anyways, have a great time with the Knicks next game.

Actually, Jess, why don't you read us out? All right. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. Our producers are David Toledo and Chinenye Onike. Our technical director is Drew Burrows. You can find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday. That's right, Raging Moderates on its own feed. Please follow us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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