Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Trump’s Day One Agenda, Syria’s Civil War, and 2025 Predictions

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov dive into Trump’s big promises for day one of his presidency, the end of Assad’s regime in Syria, the heated debate over Biden’s potential preemptive pardons, the razor-thin House majority, and Democratic leadership shakeups. Plus, they give us their predictions for 2025. Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.  Follow Prof G, @profgalloway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Raging Moderates, I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarlov. Jess, are you at home in New York with your lovely children? I am, and we had a big three-year-old birthday bash on Sunday, Frozen themed. I won't sing for you, but it was toddler intense. Wow. To say the least. How was your weekend?

You're wearing a tie. In case people aren't watching this, you're very dressed up. Yeah, my weekend could not have been more different. I went with a group of 40 and 50-somethings to a castle in the Cotswolds where we drank and then got up and about 30 people followed us into the middle of nowhere and loaded our shotguns and we shot at birds and and then the best part was the dogs that came

and collected the birds. Fortunately, I'm not a very good shot. So a lot of birds are around today because I'm not very good at it, but it's a very British thing. It's probably my first, it's called a shoot. And the best part about it was one, I get to go. I got to go with a friend,

my friend John of John and Wendy. He's a super impressive venture capitalist, but he loves shooting and he loves British culture. So he said, I'll take you for your outfit. And I went and I bought this crazy outfit. You get these boots and these things you tie around your boots. I don't even know what it's called. These ridiculous socks that look like leg warmers. Anyways, it was a very kind of Downton Abbey meets murder kind of weekend. So, all right, so before we get into it, I heard Jess, actually, in addition to hosting great parties for three-year-olds, that you went to Donald Trump's Patriot Awards last week,

and it was the first time that you were actually in close proximity to the Donald. Give us your impressions after that, Amit. Yeah, well, it was a vibe. So it's actually Fox's Patriot Awards, and Donald Trump was being honored. So I was there for work. We did a live show. Fox decided that Donald Trump gets a patriot.

That's a shocker. Wow, that must have been. Well, I wanted to blow your mind after you blew the minds of birds. Anyway, the Patriot Awards is something that we do annually and is actually really lovely. It's all about honoring everyday heroes and people who've served the country.

And Donald Trump. I'm sorry, go ahead. He is your president-elect. Just let me get it out and then you do whatever you want. Anyway, this was the first year that Donald Trump wasn't. January 6th writers, were they there? Did they get a collective award? They did not get an award. Thank you for asking. Anyway, this was the first year that Donald Trump wasn't. Did they get a collective award? They did not get an award.

Thank you for asking. Sorry, go ahead. Okay. Are you sure? No, I'm not, but go ahead. Okay, okay, I'm gonna do it. Anyway, so we were out there. We did a live taping of the five, which is always fun.

Meet some people who like me, also got booed a little bit. You did? You got booed? Yeah, well, you know. Like joking? It's like fun. Meet some people who like me. Also got booed a little bit. Which I kind of like, yeah. Well, you know, it's like friendly fire. Like joking, like kind of funny booze? Yeah, like I didn't cry or anything, but it's never nice. And everyone, the rest of the cast is like, come on guys. She's actually even agreeing with us on this one. But I get it.

It's all part of it. And you get to play with the audience a bit. But the Patriot Awards, and it's going for a few years and we've done it in Florida, we've done it, we did in Nashville last year at the Grand Ole Opry, which was amazing. And you meet some pretty incredible people that are doing wonderful things for the country. And you can insert your Donald Trump joke later, but it plays into why this was such

an interesting contrast for me. So the Patriot Awards this time honored, I don't know if you remember the story about an NYPD officer named Jonathan Diller, 31 years old, out on Long Island, routine traffic stop, was shot and killed, he had a one-year-old son, his widow was the opening award recipient and speaker, and she was breathtaking. That this woman did not have a complete meltdown doing this, talking about her husband and his service and loving police officers. And if you remember, there was a big back and forth, like Donald Trump went to see the family and Biden didn't go and it became this kind of touch point in the war over who actually backs the blue.

And she in her speech says how great she thinks Donald Trump is. They had like the UNC frat guys who protected the American flag from the pro-Palestinian protesters on Chapel Hill's campus last spring. These whistleblowers from the Phoenix VA, the ones who actually ended up getting Shinseki, the VA secretary under Obama, fired. Basically they exposed the VA for denying and putting off care for hundreds of veterans who would have lived had they gotten their care on time in this massive cover-up. And so those are the kind of people that are being honored at this.

And you're in this room with a bunch of people who did not vote the same way that I did. And they love these people whose messages over and over again, we love the red, white, and blue, right? Like America is the best place to be, even if we've gone through something terrible, like this poor woman losing her husband. And then a common current through all of it is, and we also love Donald Trump. There is a very good case to be made

that Democrats do not show up well enough for these types of people, that we don't talk about our patriotism enough, that we don't talk about loving cops. Yeah, I agree. That's my point, thank you. Anyway, so all these amazing people who are getting these awards

and giving really captivating speeches, full of Americana, and then Trump comes out. I've, you know, I'm in the front table with a couple people, like who do you sit with? Posts that he loves. Who's the most fun to drink with? Who gets too drunk?

Was Pete Hegseth there? Did he hit on you before like throwing up and passing out? Is he still, does he go to you before throwing up and passing out? Does he go to that stuff? I give up, let's move on. I heard about your cable news cabinet from Pivot though and I didn't make it, which is kind of a bummer. I see you as sort of quiet power.

I see you as like head of fundraising. I'm soft power. Soft power, I can totally see that. Also, if you decide to ever run for Congress or Senate, I'll head your fundraising. Well, you're honestly screwing me over with these conversations because you're making me seem a little. It's all about awareness.

All press is good press. Yeah, junior senator from, wait, you grew up in New York, didn't you? New York, yeah. So me and AOC in the ring for it. We're running you for president. Chris and Jill around it. Straight to the top. Chris and Jill around it, no, no, no, no, no. We're running you for president. Chris and Jill around it. Straight to the top.

Chris and Jill around and Charles Schumer, in my opinion, are like weak, weaker and weakest. And I think they absolutely need a young, dynamic, centrist Democrat to primary them. Dara, I've literally got it figured out for you. I've got it figured. Always. That's why I'm here.

If you believe Senator Tarloff has a nice ring to it, then please DM me. I will take your name down. And when we decide, when Charles Schumer turns 140 in 10 years, we can decide to primary him. And when everyone decides to kiss Kirsten Gillibrand while being a thoughtful, nice woman is totally ineffective, then we'll primary her as well. I'm 100% behind this.

Okay, before we go here, before we bust in the news, we wanna remind you to please follow Raging Moderates on your podcast platform of choice. If you want Senator Tarloff and you want daddy to still have the money to go on his shoots and not kill birds, please just subscribe. Please help us out with that follow button.

This week on Friday, we have an interview with Tim Miller from the Bulwark, only on the Raging Moderates feed. A lot of our interviews and our better stuff is only on the Raging Moderates feeds. Be sure to check it out. Okay, in today's episode of Raging Moderates, we're discussing Trump's promises

for the first day of his tenure, Assad flees to Moscow, Assyrian rebels capture Damascus. Biden's preemptive pardons debate. The final house math and leadership shakeups. And finally, our predictions for next year. All right, where should we get to? Let's, over the weekend,

President-elect Trump told NBC's Kristen Welker, he plans immediate action after taking office on January 20th. He vowed to pardon January 6 rioters on day one, extend his first term tax cuts, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and push to end birthright citizenship. Trump also said he'd work towards a solution to protect DREAMers, and he won't impose new restrictions on abortion pills. On pardoning rioters, he claimed.

This is the most disgusting, filthy place. These people are living in hell. Let me just- And I think it's very unfair. But let me- So yeah, most likely I'll do it right. Jess, what did you make of this interview? This felt like actually the kickoff

to the new administration in a certain way. I know we have to get to inauguration, but it's crazy how quickly I feel like things have turned. I don't remember this when Biden won in 2020 that he suddenly became the president. But Donald Trump is like he's at Notre Dame for the reopening. He is meeting with world leaders. He is meeting with Zelensky. You know, it feels like everyone has just kind of shut the door on Biden and is like, hello Trump, whatever that means.

And, you know, choosing to go on Meet the Press, he has been interviewed by Welker before. I think definitely trying to send a mainstream signal, right, to the public. I'm going to be out here in these places that you recognize and you don't have to come and find me on the Andrew Schultz podcast necessarily. But it was classic Trump in that the things that he was promising to do or the things that he said, depending on what your politics are, it fits exactly in the box that you have put him in. So he says, I'm ending birthright citizenship. I'm deporting families together.

That was one of the big ones, which Tom Homan, whose his borders are, had said on 60 Minutes before when he was interviewed. So the idea is like, oh, we don't have to separate families. Even if some of you are legal, you should just all go together and that he's going to jail Liz Cheney.

So if you're diehard MAGA, you like that for obvious reasons. And then if you're more centrist or even a Democrat, you're crapping your pants again, right? And saying this guy is going to do all of these terrible things to the country. And it's just, it's so difficult to pin him down, which I think is why he ended up winning, because he's, he's whatever you want him to be, right? He's a dream politician in that sense, and people have very legitimate arguments

on both sides of the authoritarian coin as to which one he is. And that was my big takeaway. I mean, I want to get into the specifics of some of these things, but what do you think about that? I don't know if you watched it or. I didn't. The weird thing that's happened to me is I have a tendency

to believe that, okay, the wonderful thing about our checks and balances is that there's a certain level of purposeful and transigence where it's very hard to get stupid, sweeping things done. It's also probably really difficult to get really genius, disruptive things done. And that it's just unlikely. I don't think these tariffs are gonna go through

at anywhere near the magnitude. I can't imagine, I would like to think that enough Americans look back on one of the great stains, one of the great stains of our society, and that was interning great Japanese-Americans, citizens who for no other reason than the color of their skin as many of their sons were fighting in the European theater,

that the moment we start housing, hosting, aggregating, concentrating immigrants in anything resembling a camp, that the media and people and citizens in that neighborhood are gonna go ape shit. So I wonder how much of this is really gonna happen. Now, having said that, what I'm also growing into is realizing I never thought,

I was never worried about Roe v. Wade being overturned. I didn't think there was any chance it would ever actually get overturned and I was wrong. So nothing kind of surprises me anymore. And along those lines, in the last two weeks, I've had an iconic morning TV show host and an iconic tech billionaire call me and ask me about London. And I thought, oh, great, you're thinking about moving to London. I moved to London not because of America, because I felt like I needed to leave.

I moved because of America, because America has offered me so much prosperity I moved because of America, because America has offered me so much prosperity and, um, you know, just wonderful opportunity. I have the chance to give my kids an experience to live in Europe. These folks are scared and they're actually thinking about relocating to Europe because they believe there's a non-zero probability they are going to be persecuted. And I was just so flummoxed that these are not reactionary stupid people. These are household names that are incorrigibly successful. My first question is, you're really,

you're seriously really worried, you really think he's going to come for you? And they said, I don't know, but I don't need to live in a country where I don't know. Yeah. The reason why America, in my opinion, across a lot of dimensions, is so successful is you have to have a massive base of innovation to create economic values such that we have the taxes to pay for the best military in the world, and to argue over entitlements,

and to argue over veterans' affairs, over Veterans Affairs and to bail out, you know, banks or COVID stimulus. You know, that that top line number is really important. And to start both of these people create tremendous economic growth. Both of these people, and I'm not being biased, are good people. They're good people. Yeah, I mean, that's the environment you want to create. Where do you think, can you handicap what you think is going to happen post-election? I don't know. I think- That's a difficult question. Yeah.

No. You can say I don't know. I mean, I don't know an exact number. I do know, which we've talked about a few times, that what Trump cares about most is economic prosperity because that's what he knows he'll be remembered for, either good or bad. And frankly, it's what got him across the line in the 2024 election that people had a favorable view

of what the economy looked like when he was president. And I'm curious as to what you think about, I get it, the fear mongering that is rooted in some very genuine policy chops on people like Stephen Miller or Tom Homan, et cetera, that are founded in xenophobia, as far as I'm concerned. All of that is very- I think it sounded him bullying when they were in the eighth grade, but I agree with

you. Definitely Stephen Miller. I don't know about Homan. He seems like he was always a bully. But there are a lot of immigrants and successful immigrants and well-educated immigrants that are very big supporters of the president. I mean, I was looking at the pictures of JD Vance from Thanksgiving. He's married to Usha Vance, whose parents are Indian immigrants. He's with her family for Thanksgiving. He's a mixed family. And I would assume a lot of people in that group are big fans of Donald Trump. Donald Trump is out there saying,

I'm going to cut regulations like you've never seen before. He saved $200 billion and cut regulations in the first term. He wants to go even further. I know there are a lot of people who run businesses that are excited about that, who feel like, yeah, you can be successful here, but you can be even more successful if we get rid of some more of this red tape. Now, I'm concerned about certain pieces of quote unquote red tape that we need, like climate protections and things like that. But there are going to be a lot of people who think that this is actually a good place to be doing business with Donald Trump in the White House versus a more regulatory-minded

Democrat. It's a great point. And on the issue of immigration, we have someone who's worked with us for a long time, who's incredibly talented. And English is her fifth language, and yet she's arguably our most talented copywriter, editor, just, and around immigration while, she's very progressive, while immigration, I'm, she hasn't stated explicitly, but I know she, I'm fairly confident saying she doesn't want people rounded up, but she says, look, I waited in line to get here,

and it took me seven years, and I did it legally, and so many of these, so many people in America, you know, seemed to feel that we should just have open borders. I was like, which is it? Can I come? Can my parents come now? You know, which is it? I waited in line. And what's interesting we saw in this election is a lot of recent immigrants are the most, uh, pro Trump's immigration policies that they feel like it's just absolutely gotten out of control.

It's gonna be, I'm just sort of fascinated to see how the dynamics of what is effectively sort of a semi lame duck president, he's especially lame duck after 2026, and push back on economic policies should inflation take up. And also, is he, as he has a negotiating tactic, and push back on economic policies should inflation take up. And also is he, is he has a negotiating tactic starting really high saying, okay, tariffs of 100% and then going down to 20.

And the thing that scares me about saying, I'm never gonna deny people access to their abortion pills. Well, okay, but if you keep appointing conservatives to the Supreme Court, it's going to be the law of the land. Yeah, that's definitely a concern and there is no one at the top levels of the administration even with these appointments that I can look to and feel secure about something like that. I mean they just they all feel like power, power, power people. Let's take a quick break. Stay with us.

Okay. So what, what's next here? Let's go to something a little bit more fun. Let's go light Syria. Let's talk to, let's talk about Assad. So the Assad family's 50year rule over Syria came to an end following a swift rebel offensive. President Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow with his family where they were granted asylum. President Biden called the regime's fall a historic opportunity for Syria to rebuild while warning of risks ahead.

Rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jalani, speaking in Damascus, hailed the victory as one for the entire Islamic nation and pledged protection for minorities under the new leadership by his HDS group. I think this, quite frankly, is the most under-covered story in the world right now. Well, it was definitely under-covered for the first 12 days.

And then Syria fell on the 13th day. And everyone was like, oh, hey, there's something going on here. I felt I got chills watching some of this, especially the footage of the prisoners being freed from, I don't want to mispronounce, the Sednaya prison, that huge complex in Damascus. But this guy, Jelani, who's the head of HTS, which is the main rebel group. So there's an amalgamation of rebels that have come together to do this, seems like with some pretty heavy help from Turkey, but he is the figurehead of everything at this

moment. He seems to be quite charismatic. He's former al-Qaeda, which is interesting. And he's been imprisoned before and has had changed from, I guess, a jihadist to a Syrian nationalist, though they are, they're very heavy Islamists, as many siss that I put into one sentence. But I have enjoyed, I guess, what he has had to say so far. You know, he's ordered that all of the borders be opened and that anyone who was displaced, you know, there are 14 million Syrians who have been displaced over the last 13 years. And they're flying the Free Syria flag at the embassy. I was watching it up in Sweden.

There are 200,000 refugees that they've taken over the years. He's said that there's amnesty for all Syrian soldiers and conscripts, like no questions asked. You want to come back and be with us, you can be with us. I don't know if this will hold, but he's also commanded his troops that they cannot interfere with women's clothing at all. So we'll see how that holds up. But it is fascinating geopolitically. I mean, if Ukraine hadn't taken Russia apart to this level and if Israel hadn't hurt Iran and Hezbollah to the level that they have in the last couple of months, this would never have been possible because Syria just, Assad couldn't do it without Russia and Iran anymore. And that seems to be why this happened.

But what are your initial thoughts? I agree a lot of the initial complexion and body language is very positive, but this is sort of a pro-ball bringing together a group of people from some very bad organizations. So there is some risk here and the Israelis sense that risk and they've actually been intensely bombing and attacking military sites and munitions caches inside of Syria thinking, we don't know anything about these people and we don't want them to have access to these weapons. There's no getting around it. Bashar al-Assad, that regime, him and his father, a murderous regime, I think somewhere between

half a million and a million Syrians have been killed, gas attacks on their own people. Now, you know, the world didn't seem to be that outraged by it because it wasn't Jews killing these people, but that's another talk show. But the thing that strikes me about this is that we have such a self-hate for America. We are so remiss, and I believe at the hands of an America

where they see the top 1% doing better than them, at the hands of platforms that have been weaponized by bad actors that wanna divide us and get us to hate each other. We don't recognize that America and the West are winning geopolitically. And that is Bashar al-Assad, who does not share our values, immediately when she got real turned to Russia.

But here's the problem. Russia is like, sorry, boss, we got our own issues because unbeknownst to me, where I thought I was gonna roll into Kiev in about seven days, the West, backing the incredible Ukrainian army is killing about 1,500 of my people a day. I've lost half a million people. I just don't have the time, the resources or the energy to come in and back you up." And then he turned to his other friend,

Iran. And Iran's like, well, I don't know if you've heard, but in addition to you, our proxies, including Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas are not doing that well. And our air defenses have been taken down and we're a lot less popular amongst the Iranian people than Hamas is among the Palestinian people. Sorry boss, we can't show up. So when you think about really bad people, Assad, Putin, the Islamic regime and Iran, the West being unified around their support of Ukraine,

we're winning. And it bums me out that people don't high five the West and our alliance and our commitment to American values, our support of Israel, which has kicked such serious ass over the last, since October the 7th, over the last 14 months doing our dirty work for us, taking more people off the most wanted terrorist list in six weeks than we've managed in the last 25 years, totally defanging this quiet, supposedly sleeping giant of Hezbollah with the most precise anti-terrorist action in history, going into Syria and making sure

they don't have weapons in case these guys, you know, aren't as warm and cuddly as they're pretending to be right now. But basically, Iran, Russia, and Syria, this triumvirate, oh, and North Korea is sending people into a meat grinder now in Russia. This is an enormous, this is essentially, this is an indicator that our good cholesterol has never been higher and our bad cholesterol has never been lower globally. You know, we are geopolitically, the good guys are winning here and the bad guys are just getting increasingly fucked.

They are having Putin, the Islamic regime and Assad are having really bad days a lot. And it strikes me that we never take time to recognize how talented our security apparatus is, how resolute and thoughtful and committed we've been around joining forces to support Ukraine. So I'm both excited about it possibly, but I'm also disappointed about it, possibly,

but I'm also disappointed that we don't take more of a victory lap for the West and also recognize that Israel, in my opinion, is essentially destabilizing the world for bad people and stabilizing the Middle East, in my view, over the medium and long term, the Middle East is gonna be a much less dangerous place. It's one of those things that's so difficult to understand. Do you know what Bashar al-Assad, you know, he was,

he and his wife were educated in the United Kingdom. Do you know what he was educated as? No. He's an ophthalmologist. I mean, it's such an interesting study in how people descend into hell, right? This guy was helping people see again. This guy was doing cataract surgery.

And then, you know, fast forward 15, 20 years later, or not even know if it's that long, he's gassing his own people. But his dad was always doing this. I mean, that was a, that was a facade. I mean, I'm glad that some people can see better because of him. But Assad was raised in this. I mean, his family's been in power for 50 years. His wife and I from when I lived in London, there are a lot more people floating around there who know these people. And I heard similar, oh, she's lovely.

Give her a chance. No fucking thank you. You knew what you were marrying into at the very least. But it is, I don't know, I'm all for people getting great educations, of course. But I do hate that we share institutions with some of the world's most evil. That really does burn me.

And this is one of those examples. There were debates constantly at LSE about this, about what money they would be taking from the Middle East and who was going to get to go. Remember about Bin Laden's kids that went to Harvard. I don't think everyone should be punished for what their parents did. You may not go into the family business as it were, but Assad surely did. And on the Israel front, I totally agree with you. I think the issue about us taking a step back and having, spending more time reflecting on how well the West is doing or that these are good moments for Western values, that is not computing for the average American citizen.

And I think a lot of it is due to the cost of all of this, that they're being hit constantly with a barrage of information around, you can't get X thing for your kids, but we're sending another billion dollars for people you've never met in your life or that you feel completely disconnected to. And that became such a key plank of Trump's candidacy, where he was just like, America

first means that your kid should get a good education and shouldn't have a classroom full of kids who are from another place and are here illegally, or that that money that we're sending abroad should be going to you first. And I understand for someone who is not living as much of a charmed life as we are, how that is persuasive. It also made me think back to the red line with Obama about Assad and that as much joy as I was feeling, that maybe this would be a real positive future for the people of Syria who have endured

more than my mind can even process. I'm thinking, how did we let this continue? What we saw the videos of the mass graves, we knew he was gassing his own people. We had a red line. Huge stain on Obama's legacy. Totally. And it does seem like that has been one of the kind of

lessons or big thread lines in the aftermath of the election. A lot of people think Putin went into Ukraine. I mean, these red lines, when they no longer became lines, a lot of people would argue that we were no longer... Right. That he went to Crimea because we don't stand tall about this. Yeah. We gave him a green light. The thing that disappoints me, I think it's a politically advantageous and somewhat short-term minded expedient way of political opportunism. You've never met anyone in Ukraine. Do you really really care your son's not doing well,

do you really care about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine when a 12 pack of bounty is $30. What frustrates me more, I respect the fact they play that political opportunism, what frustrates me is that we don't have a Democrat who can punch back and say, okay, that's the same argument that was made to FDR and it kept us out of the war too long in 39.

That was the same argument that, you know, Parliament made to Churchill about staying out of, you know, we don't, he could have cut a deal with Hitler and saved, you know, the Britain, at least in the short term. When fascists or murderous autocrats invade Europe, it usually doesn't end well when we just let them. And then to go straight to the numbers, and that is, I would have gone on offense.

There are few investments that have shown a greater ROI than our and Europe's greater investment than the US's in the support of the Ukrainian army. We're talking about 60 to $80 billion. I think it's maybe over a hundred now, but when you look at, we spent $800 billion a year on our military and in exchange, if someone had come to us and said, you know what?

I'm going to take out a third to almost half of Russia's kinetic power. I'm going to delegitimize their army. I'm going to take out a half a million troops. I'm going to make it less likely that China invades to Taiwan because they see what a small motivated, technically sophisticated, uh, defense force can do.

Would you pay $80 billion for that? We would hit that bid all day long. This was instead of apologizing and talking in broad sweeping strokes, they should have said, folks, if we had been offered the ability, Russia's our enemy, Russia wreaks havoc, Russia takes oil prices up purposely, Russia creates instability, greater likelihood of war.

For $80 billion, we're going to pull the mask off this clown. We're going to, we're going to absolutely decimate the reputation and we're going to take out a third to half of their kinetic. And Americans won't die for it. And that's an important point. And not a single American boot on the ground. Yeah. Okay.

For training, but not dying. Yes. For seven, our federal budget is $7 trillion, so I need about 1% for 1%. I need a penny to go into this. Yeah, I need a penny on the dollar to do this. This is the best investment America has made in the last 10 years. But no one says it like that. And the way that the- Well, not until the new junior senator from New York.

Hey now. There you go. There you go. And her friend who shoots birds. And the way that the- Well, not until the new junior senator from New York. Hey now. There you go. And her friend who shoots birds. No one conveys it in those terms because we are always into the soaring rhetoric, right? About protecting democracy. And people like to hear,

we took out X amount of terrorists. Like that's what they wanna hear in all of this. Or Vladimir Putin is flipping out because he has lost control of these 10 areas. Right? And this is what their economy looks like. And I don't want to say that there aren't any Democrats that communicate well about these things. I think especially the folks who are veterans that know exactly what this fight means are good about it, like the Jason Crows of the world. But you know who I think does a pretty decent job? Cocaine Mitch. I listened to Mitch McConnell talk

about why we need to continue to send money to Ukraine and to Israel. And you can tell that that man deeply feels this. And I know that a lot of Republicans, especially the MAGA wing, detest him probably for having this level of clarity. Okay. Let's take a quick break. Stay with us. Welcome back. Since Hunter Biden's pardon, there's been chatter about whether Biden should issue preemptive pardons for other people that Trump has openly targeted, including Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney. Political reports, there's a heated internal debate in the White House, but Biden hasn't weighed in yet. Supporters including Brendan Boyle say Trump's move to put Cash Patel in charge of the FBI

shows this isn't just hypothetical. Schiff ironically is urging Biden not to do it, saying it would look defensive and unnecessary. Jess, pardons, what are your thoughts? Do you think that doing this preemptively is a smart move or a bad precedent? It could be both at the same time, but the problem is there's no crime. Like they haven't been charged with anything. I mean, there's no crime.

Like they haven't been charged with anything. I mean, there's even the debate within the Democratic Party. I don't know if you saw Bill Clinton was being interviewed. And it came up about Hunter's pardon and how he had pardoned his half brother, I think, or stepbrother. And he said, but he served time. There's a big difference between even just getting convicted

and then getting a pardon, which is what had happened with Hunter, but let alone someone who hasn't even been convicted of anything. And it scares me for these people. I think the fact that Cash Patel has an enemies list in his book, Government Gangsters, and I'm sure has been adding to it on a nightly basis, like mirror, mirror on the wall, who else should I put in jail? But what are you going to do? Just say for crimes that they may have committed within the last five years and that they may commit

in the next 20 years? I don't understand. I think Adam Schiff is completely correct. And then Jim Clyburn in the same interview where he's talking about the pardons for the January 6 folks from the committee, not the January 6 folks from the committee, not the January 6 rioters, said that Biden should pardon Trump. And that it was, you know, clean the slate, I think was the term that he used. And I cannot think of anything that would

enrage Democrats more than Biden pardoning Trump. Yeah, I don't think that's gonna happen. It used to, my understanding is it used to be, let's review some of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice because if you have a big system that, unfortunately gets it wrong as anytime you routinize anything, this is an opportunity that the president has sole discretion over to just kind of, as is an opportunity that the president has sole discretion over

to just kind of, as you said, clean the slate. And I wonder who started this mess. And I go to, was it Clinton when he pardoned one of his donors? I mean, pretty soon there's gonna be an implicit number on pardons. The head of the head of fundraising is gonna say, well, I can't continue doing it, I can't put this in email.

But generally speaking, I think a donation of 10 million or more might might get you a pardon for you and your family should something happen to you over the next four years. It just seems like we're just we're becoming that nation. Well, there was at least there was rumor reporting that that those were conversations going on in the first Trump administration. And then I imagine with him not even thinking about running again, I mean, who knows what he's going to be thinking about.

But let's just say that he knows that he has to leave after the next four years. There's sky's the limit on the kind of salacious pardon activity that will be going on. But Congressman Steve Cohen, who's from Tennessee, has proposed a constitutional amendment to limit presidential pardon power, and he's never once had a Republican co-signer. The people are out there, you know, pants on fire, like losing their minds about what Biden did. I mean, this is something that gets abused on both sides, and they should really look at limiting it.

And I was listening to a really interesting conversation. Preet Bharara and Joyce Vance have a podcast. And they were talking about it, the Hunter pardon. And they were on opposite sides of it. Preet was against it. Joyce Vance was for it, laying out their cases. But Preet Bihara said, which I thought good on you, he said, if you are in the same position as Hunter,

committed a similar crime, been convicted of it, getting sentenced, reach out to me and let me defend you. Like come to me and I'm gonna try to help you get a pardon. I shouldn't say defend you, they had already been defended. But he's like, I will go to the president and say, there are actually a whole host of people who are in the same position as your son that are deserving of pardons by this logic.

And my guess is that they're not, if those people come forward, are not going to be given the same treatment. Again, we both think that we would have done the same thing for our children, but it's a very ugly road that we are traveling on. Okay, let's move on, Jess, let's move on. Let's talk about what's happening in the House with Adam Gray's narrow win in California. We're looking at a razor thin, wafer thin margin of 217 to 215 Republican majority. If Democrats stick together,

they'd only need one Republican to flip for a tie, which in the House means the vote fails. But even with that slim margin, Republicans still get the gavel, control committees, and set the agenda. Meanwhile, Democrats are shaking things up, bumping older ranking members for younger, more telegenic folks. Jamie Raskin just ousted Jerry Nadler on Judiciary, apparently with Pelosi's support. On oversight, AOC has hinted she might go for Raskin's old spot.

Jess, what do you make of these leadership shakeups? So first I wanna say that the narrative, if you would like to revisit the initial conversations about the election where you said we got shellacked, might need a little bit of a revision. So in the end, well, I don't know, Democrats came. On the presidential, no, no, on the presidential. No, but the mood in totality was Democrats got their asses

completely kicked and we ended up picking up two house seats and one very, very competitive races and held a lot of really important Senate seats. It could have been much worse. I mean, they were expecting that we were gonna lose Nevada, that we're gonna lose Wisconsin. Pennsylvania was a big pickup with McCormick. Anyway, it was not as bad as people make it out to be.

In terms of the new chairs of the big committee, I think it's time for these things to happen. And these folks- Oh, you think? Well, I don't like to, you know, I'm a traditional gal. And I think that when people have served honorably and done these incredible things for the country, it's very hard for me to get to the point where I want to say, Nancy, you take a seat, right?

You shouldn't be doing this anymore. And I know she stepped back from being speaker, but she still holds her seat. And there are still a lot of young Democrats that want to run for Congress in San Francisco. Jim Clyburn is still there. Steny Hoyer is still there. And while they might not be as powerful as they were before, this is rarefied air that they're breathing, right? There are only, what is it, 435 of them? And I think the transition to a new generation

is bigger than they are allowing to happen right now. That said, it's great to see Jamie Raskin doing this, though he's in his 60s, this is not a kid. The AOC thing, I think, will be fascinating if it is what happens. And she's clearly positioning herself for at least statewide election, maybe national if she's going to run for president. But if you noticed at the DNC,

and we were both very taken with her speech, great speech, one of the top ones from the convention, at least for me. She struck every note properly. She manages the economic populism, I think, better than anybody. She's clearly moderated on a lot of stuff. But in interviews since then, she talks about upstate New York all the time. She was giving an interview with someone she mentioned Buffalo twice. I'm like, have you even ever been to Buffalo? So clearly she's thinking about what does AOC look like beyond the Bronx and Queens, right? Like what does AOC up north look like and wants to make sure that

she is palatable to those people and getting a committee chair and getting to show off in those ways will be one route to potentially getting a Senate seat. So what do you think about the new, the new gen, next gen? I think Chern is good. I think these people are way too old. We have the, we have the oldest legislative body, I believe in the world outside of Iran. I mean, it's just insane that we, our leaderships become a cross between the Walking Dead and the Golden Girls. I don't, this must be the most amazing job in the world because they never seem to wanna leave

unless it's feet first. I would love mandatory retirement age. I just think in the US, Morse corporations are used to be 65. And because of gerrymandering and fundraising and Citizens United, these fossils keep getting reelected. And I love a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

The fact that we let a convicted felon, a convicted rapist, an insurrectionist regain the white house means they should clean house. How did we let this happen? This was the way I see it. And Charles Schumer versus Mitch McConnell. Senator McConnell has played Senator Schumer like a fucking fiddle. And is older, but he's still got it in terms of his chess game. You show that you brought up Speaker Pelosi. Speaker Pelosi has some of that Machiavellian

you know, Riz. She deserves it. By the way, she's going to make it nearly impossible for anyone to launch a campaign in her district, and then she's going to decide to coronate her daughter, who by the way, was born when Castro declared martial law. That's how old Speaker Pelosi is. So she's not, I'll be curious what happens in San Francisco. That'll be an interesting race, but we need a new set of leadership and voices.

And for God's sakes, some of these people just need to get a gold fucking watch and leave, or at least bring in, I mean, AOC's policies to me, she's not my cup of tea from a policy standpoint. She's a leader and she's telegenic and she represents youth and she can speak to what it's like to be a waitress and how important tips are and what it's like to work for a living

and what it's like to be a young woman in America. I mean, a young, you know, non-white woman in America. She's fantastic. She's a fantastic representative for, for the Democratic Party. Raskin, yeah, early 60s, fine. That dude, he was so quick on his feet. I might be being unfair, yeah. He is so quick. Oh yeah, he's amazing.

He's fantastic. We need some gangsters to go in there and go toe to toe with these people. My favorite is, and I think we talked about a long time, you mentioned his name, the congressman from Florida, who tried- Oh, Moskowitz? Yeah, who moved to impeach Biden on that ridiculous panel

because he realized none of them had any desire to do it or had any, this panel was nothing but an attempt to feed Fox with more fodder for their evening programs and was wasting the time and taxpayers' money. Anyways, they are just much, they're just better than us, quite frankly. The Democratic Party suffers from something I suffered from my entire professional life.

And that is the ability to discern the difference between being right and being effective. And we'd rather be right and get our asses kicked than effective. And we'd rather be right and get our asses kicked than effective. And we absolutely need to take this crisis as an opportunity to have a dramatic shift in leadership. Anyways, that's my rant. Go ahead.

It wasn't really even a rant. I liked it. And I just want to add to it, connecting it back to our conversation about what's going on in Syria. And it's been a lot of good days for the West, but we haven't been able to communicate it. I do think that hearing about the U.S. on the world stage from younger communicators, many of whom have served, will be a great benefit to the party and to the country in general,

like Elisa Slotkin, who just won the Michigan Senate seat, Mikey Sherrill, who's running for governor in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia. Having a younger, more relatable face to people telling you about why it is so important to support our troops, Western values, these fights against dictators and totalitarians, I think will be much more resonant with people than hearing about it from relics of the past. Senator Gallegos, Representative Moulton out of Massachusetts, Senator Duckworth. I think

people in uniform deserve a hard look at their views. I mean, the most patriotic people in America are the ones, anyone with kids knows loyalty and affection is a function of your investment. So your kids could end up being jerks, you're still irrationally passionate about their wellbeing because you have so much invested in them. And wouldn't you know it, the most loyal and patriotic Americans

are the ones who've invested the most, specifically our veterans. And what's, the most loyal and patriotic Americans are the ones who've invested the most, specifically our veterans. And what's so upsetting is the least patriotic are the ones who've received the most but haven't invested a lot. I call them tech bros. But these are the people who are the most blessed and yet don't want to acknowledge their blessings and shitpost America. Anyways, I do hope that we have a new cast of leadership.

All right, Jess, anything else on your mind before we go? Oh wait, we're supposed to do predictions. Hold on, hold on. Producers are freaking out. That's on my mind because it's in our script. It's in our script, okay. So before we wrap, this is our last regular episode of the year, so let's talk 20, 25 predictions

that's shaping up to be a big year with talk of tax cuts, entitlement reform, and immigration changes. Jess, what do you think is on the horizon? Well, politically speaking, I do want to talk about Taylor and Travis actually getting engaged or publicly engaged. But politics wise, I do think at least on the small level that Trump is going to make good on the main planks of his campaign. So I think that there will be some immigration crackdown. And I really hope

that blue city mayors and officials will play ball with ICE to turn over criminals so that we can avoid a deportation force the way that Tom Homan fantasizes about it. I saw Michelle Wu, who is the mayor of Boston, talking about an absolute blanket no to cooperating with ICE and protecting all Bostonians. Illegal criminals are not Bostonians. You should play ball with them to do that. Mayor Adams has already said that he will. Then again, he also wants a pardon.

But I'm sure we are going to have some level of immigration change. It'll be interesting to see what he does in terms of executive orders on the border, probably keeping in place a lot of what Biden has put in over the last year and in cooperation with President Scheinbaum of Mexico. I agree with you, small tariffs probably coming,

not this huge 100%, 60% that he's been talking about. Tax cuts, restoring the Trump tax cuts, probably through reconciliation. The kind of question marks for me are around what Doge can really do if you're not going to go after the Pentagon and Medicare and Social Security. They're talking about, quote, small entitlements, things

like food stamps, which are not that small to a lot of people, but means testing as much stuff as possible. And then what could make it into a huge reconciliation bill? I was listening to Larry Kudlow, who was in the first Trump administration. Now he's a Fox Business host. Not going back to the administration even though Trump wanted him.

And he says that we are definitely going to have a big reconciliation bill that'll probably be next September. And I'm curious to see what's going in there. But I know that those tax cuts are a huge priority, especially when you look at who got them over the finish line, the billionaires that are smacking their lips

at the thought of another round of it. So those are my predictions. I like it. Yeah? The Taylor and Travis part or the Doge part? But the thing they're going, I don't know if you heard this, the thing they're, first off,

my understanding is they are looking at the military. So for, I didn't, I knew this, but I didn't know it. The military has five air forces. Do we need five air forces? They, my sense is they are in fact actually willing to address the military. The question I have around, whenever I hear means testing, I'm like,

okay, let's start with social security. And I realize that social security is technically an off balance. She- Yeah, we pay for it, but it's still a tax on young people who are less wealthy than they've ever been relative to their seniors. And yet I don't understand why there wouldn't be a tax

on wealthy seniors that creates social security for young people, but that's another talk show. But I wonder if we're ever gonna have a serious conversation around me and Stessing Social Security or pushing the age back given the fact that we're all living so goddamn long. But my sense is they don't wanna talk about that. Have you heard them talk about entitlements at all?

Yeah, a lot. And they've said that, quote unquote, everything's on the table. Medicare, social security, not an entitlement, right? You've paid in. I take your point, obviously, about it being a tax on young people are never gonna get to enjoy it.

There would be, if you want to see civil war, take away Medicare and social security. So I don't think that's happening, but I do see civil war, take away Medicare and social security. So I don't think that's happening, but I do think- Oh, I love Medicare. Yeah. What I don't, let me go this idea. And Medicaid, frankly, which I mean, states are expanding, even Republican states,

at a rapid pace and seeing incredible feedback from it. And we talked about it, wasn't the program that your dad is using, a Medicaid program? Yes, the home healthcare. Yeah. Yeah, I don't, what I don't understand. So they're gonna go SNAP, food benefits. It doesn't sound like anyone's talking

about the child tax credit, which was one of the things they said they were gonna do. It's just a lot of cuts, versus helping people out to cut child poverty in half. But. So my my idea has always been one of them around health care is lower Medicaid eligibility by year every year for the next 44 years until basically you do you basically get away with the private.

So 100 percent people love people love Medicaid. I mean, we didn't talk about the UnitedHealthcare issue. Oh my God, yeah. That's going to spawn a very, or already has, a very interesting conversation around the fact that 40% of Americans have some sort of medical debt related to dental or traditional medical debt that impacts them and their families. And so, I think that's going to be a very interesting conversation that 40% of Americans have some sort of medical debt related to dental or traditional medical debt that impacts them and their family. I think that's been actually the tsunami we didn't see coming

in terms of political discourse. Any thoughts? Yeah, well, I would love to. We don't have time. But I was really disturbed to see the glorification of this murder and then people doxing other healthcare CEOs. And I understand we need tremendous reform. And some of these stories are absolutely harrowing. And I realize how lucky I am to have the healthcare problems that I do. Like, because I have some, right? I'm getting bills

constantly for stuff. Giving birth is still expensive, even when you have platinum insurance and all of that. But obviously nothing compares to kids getting their chemo rejected and whatever people have to go through on a monthly basis with these people. But I thought it brought out some of the worst sides of the American populace looking at the reaction to that. What about you? Michael O'Brien Over on PIVOT, Kara and I were both saying, you know, this is the wrong way to go about having a conversation and we're horrified by it. And I got a lot of feedback. It sort of resonated and said,

spoken like someone who's overinsured or can afford health insurance. And some of the memes were just so puncturing, right? Like empathy is outside my coverage. And the reality is which, and this in no way justifies murder, but which health insurance company has the greatest percentage of rejected claims? You guessed it, UnitedHealthcare. By a large part, it was like 20% more.

And the reality is when you look at how a lot of these insurance companies have increased earnings over the last five or 10 years, it's coming with algorithms and legal justification for identifying who is less likely to push back and rejecting claims. And it just goes, for me, it goes to the same place. I never used to think this, but I look at the UK system and the NHS has real issues, mostly around underfunding right now, because they're not able to add a quarter of a trillion dollars in four minutes post an earnings call in video. But I like the idea of national, or, you know,

nationalized healthcare for the 80 or 90% that wanna use it and then having a private layer on top for people who want better service. The bottom line is this is just an industry where the profit motive begins to turn healthcare into sick care and you're going to have the same thing in any capitalist environment that is not perfectly regulated as this is not.

You have regulatory capture among corporations and the top 10 percent who can afford it have the best health care in the world. And the bottom 90 are being squeezed economically. And the amount of despair and anxiety the U.S. health care system is causing people at some point, we've got to realize that regulatory capture around our food supply system, tremendous stress and anxiety around, oh, the bad news is your wife has lung cancer. The worst news is you're gonna go bankrupt. At what point does our healthcare system, you know, are they, at some point for the bottom 50%,

if not the bottom 90%, at some point do we have to realize they're the problem. They literally are the problem. They're creating more anxiety, obesity, high blood pressure, deaths of despair. We're gonna lose 45,000 people to suicide. I'd like to know how many of those people would cite financial strain, specifically medical debt, which is now the number one cause of bankruptcy in America. How much death by suicide is that cause? So my prediction, I have two predictions,

one's a domestic one. I think the debate and the resurfacing of regulatory capture and the for-profit US model around US healthcare that has resulted in us paying $13,000 per individual versus 65 to 8,500 for other G7 countries with shorter life expectancy, more anxiety and more obesity, it just isn't working. That's going to be the debate and the big discussion we weren't expecting at this moment. And then on a geopolitical level, I think we're going to see a revolution in

Iran. I think Hamas had 70% support of Palestinians. The ruling party in Iran does not have nearly that support. It has a minority of people who support it. It's actually, Iran's actually a very young country. And there are a lot of people, I think, who are waiting to see weakness, which they have observed over the last couple weeks with the fall of Assad and all of the Iranian proxies having kind of their, being kneecapped. I think it's gonna give a lot of Assad and all of the Iranian proxies having kind of their being kneecapped.

I think it's going to give a lot of license and backbone. I bet there's a lot of entities in Iran right now who are thinking, is this our moment? I think we're going to see a revolution or a rebellion similar to what we've seen in Syria and Iran in 2025? Yeah, I didn't realize we were doing global ones, but I like that one. And I'm just curious. Oh my God, I feel ashamed. I feel ashamed.

No, I just, no, I like it. It's good. I think it's really good. I'm just curious with all of this, like where Israel fits in and whether a new Iranian regime, if such a thing happens, where they are in terms of relations with Israel,

because the big accomplishment from the first Trump administration for me was the Abraham Accords. And I hope that we see further normalization of relations with Israel. As- The kingdom will go first, I think. Well, yeah.

Jared's already on the WhatsApp about that, so. Oh, is that right? I don't know. I just think it's crazy that he made $2 billion off of Saudi and was WhatsApping about it. Yeah, he raised 2 billion. It's not fair to say he's made it so far. We'll see.

But he's raised- Why are you defending Jared Kushner all the time? He was my student. I don't care. You probably had a lot of students. He was my student. All right, fine. Jared and Ivanka, they're super nice.

They're super nice. And his brother, the brother Josh Kushner, is a total gangster. He's a great PC. I know. Carly Claus is hot. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Come on.

That counts for a lot. And they're liberals. There you go. All right. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and David Toledo. Our technical director is Drew Burroughs.

You can find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday. That's right, what a thrill. Raging Moderates. Never mentioned that before. Can't bring that up enough. Raging Moderates on its own feed. Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts.