Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Trump’s Iran Crisis Just Took a Dangerous Turn as Markets Brace for Impact

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

In the wake of Game 4 of the NBA Finals, which saw the New York Knicks mount the largest comeback in Finals history to win the game, Jessica Tarlov gives Scott Galloway an update on Knicks fever from the streets of New York City. Then, Scott and Jessica talk about how the fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is showing signs of collapse after yet another round of attacks. President Trump is now threatening to hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT.”  At the same time, Americans are feeling the economic impact at home. Inflation rose 4.2% in May — the highest monthly increase in three years — and that’s on top of gas prices and summer travel costs surging as the Iran conflict drags on.  Scott and Jessica also discuss what is poised to be the biggest IPO in history as SpaceX prepares to go public — potentially creating thousands of new millionaires overnight. But is this IPO actually just a way to leave retail investors holding the bag? Plus: Bill Gates testifies about Jeffrey Epstein before Congress — but behind closed doors —  as new reporting reveals the panic over the Epstein files release inside Trump’s White House, and the pressures the administration felt from the MAGA base. The Trump administration also proposes new restrictions tied to mail-in voting and the U.S. Postal Service, setting up another massive legal and political fight ahead of the midterms. Finally, they discuss the World Cup — which begins this week at venues across North America, including in the U.S., where tensions have already arisen between the many international visitors to the country, and the Trump administration’s hardline approach to foreigners. Will the U.S. do a worse job than Russia did? KNICKS IN FIVE! For ad-free episodes, exclusive livestreams, and to connect with Scott, Jessica, and the Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000. And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch Pet Insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to 90% of vet bills. You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada.

All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save. Right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. How many third-party vendors does your company use? 20, 200? Thanks to AI, someone on your team probably added three more this week. And your security lead has no idea.

Traditional third-party risk management can't keep up. Vanta gives you continuous coverage across every vendor. So you actually know what's in your stack and what to do about it. AI on, risk off. Vanta.com slash TPRM. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?

Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you?

Try O-D-O-F-R-Frey at O-D-O-D-O-O-D-C.com. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarlov. Just talk to us about New York right now. I realize I missed my opportunity to introduce myself as Jessica Brunson. which maybe in some other life I would be married to jail it

or Jessica and Anobi that doesn't sound as good it was insane multiple times so down 29 biggest comeback in NBA finals history for out at a bar nearby

I'm like I should just go home and relieve the babysitter you know like is it worth that extra $50 to sit here and just be amillated so fucking worth it double the pay unbelievable I'm sure you've seen the highlights

Yeah, incredible. It was just the energy. The streets are crazy. Mom Johnny put the game on all of those public charging stations, which I think is so smart across the city. Amon Shumpert in the streets wearing his Nick's jersey, not his Cavs jersey, who actually won the finals with. I don't know. It's just, it's insanely awesome. I don't know if it's Nixon 5.

I am very hopeful about it being Nixon 5, but the vibes, the people. Vives are real good over here. I have a cool video of the bar that I was in for the last minute or so. Does it even speak to you this kind of sports? Is it like won you over? No, it reminds me of I've been in Europe during World Cup. And if, you know, France is in World Cup anywhere you go in France, every bar is packed and it creates an electricity. And it just feels like a nice moment for New York. If anybody wants to see a breakdown of Jess's view of New York, please tune into our new show called The Week, where we pull together the biggest stories from across all of our pods. It's only 20 minutes every Friday on the Prop G. Pod feed. All right. Let's get into it. Trump is vowing to hit Iran very hard tonight. Okay. And I'm going to take my son's phone away. That's literally he had this wish for his 80th. birthday. Let's watch a clip. That's my second question.

Besides peace in the Middle East, why do you wish yourself for your birthday? For my birthday? Well, I'll go a step bigger. Peace for the world. Peace for the world. Middle East, yes. Peace for the whole world. Yeah. Let's hit him hard. Peace for the world, Jess. What do you think?

I mean, sure. He's going to say that he did it anyway. I mean, we could be in like eight wars, and he'd be like, no, no, no, I don't. know what you're talking about. These are just love taps all across the globe. I'm getting a little more confused as to what is going on here. So my understanding from some of my colleagues who are well sourced within the administration is that basically we had sent a proposal to the Iranians about two weeks ago that, you know, comes down to no dust, no dollars, that the, you know, enriched uranium has to get out. They have to give up aims of any nuclear weapon, even down the road, and that's the only way that any assets will be unfrozen. And for two weeks, basically, the Iranians

ghosted us, or the terms that they used. Obviously, they were, you know, placing stuff strategically in the press, et cetera, but no one was sitting at the table in Pakistan making any meaningful moves. Then they started getting aggressive, right? They fired at Israel for the first time since it started the ceasefire in April. Israel's tapping back. We're getting involved. And then I guess they sent a signal that was like, no, we're actually not going for it. We're not even just like not showing up to the negotiation. Like we're not going to go for it. So Trump's like, well, we've got to go back in. And then last night, they're firing at the Gulf states and Jordan. And I get it that it's never a smooth process and that, you know, a hostile power would definitely want to be causing damage and

keeping us on our toes and diplomacy can go on while conflict is also happening. But it's just too hard to believe any of this at this point. And Trump, I think at core, has no appetite for the kinds of escalations that he's threatening. He's doing it on true social again. He called into Fox and friends this morning, you know, talking about, oh, first of all, did you know that he would have gotten us out of Vietnam in three to four months? Oh, that's a grand. Yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. The Civil War would have never started. Well, ultimate peacemaker, especially on racial issues. But this idea now that they're going to take Carg Island and have complete control of the oil and their infrastructure, a former Trump official Keith Kellogg was on this morning. And he said,

tell the rest of the world, you won't get any oil, we control the oil, we were the oil barons, and it'll be just like Venezuela. How does that work? Well, in addition, typically speaking, you're not doing your servicemen and service women any favors by indicating or highlighting or laying out your plans for military action. And if you look at the best presidents, the most effective presidents in history, like, we didn't tell the not. sees we were going to hit them hard the day before D-Day. I mean, it just, first off, these threats are just not credible. And in addition, even if they were credible and he was planning to hit Iran hard tonight or go after Karg Island, okay, do you really want to send those signals and help them prepare to take out more of our troops and put our

troops in harm's way? We'll see what happens. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some symbolic strikes. But it all kind of goes back to what Lincoln said. You can't lose a war with public support. You can't win a war without it. He does not have public support. And the IRGC knows it. And so they have time on their side every day that goes by, more threats, more of them ignoring the threats.

Some people have said the money is really important to them. I think they're going to, I mean, this is just, If America is not willing to, and I hate to say this, provide the president with more cloud cover to make additional sacrifices and be a little bit more steadfast, then we are. We're the biggest tiger in the world, but we're a paper tiger, and he's already signally wants out. They don't, they're not dumb. He's not only playing with a weak hand. He's playing with his cards turned over. They know exactly what leverage he has and doesn't have.

And he might have some leverage through frozen assets and I think it's the UAE. But they're not afraid to see their own civilian infrastructure bomb. They're not afraid to see deaths of their own citizens, whereas he has no public support back at home. And, you know, we get very upset when anything happens to our troops, which I understand. But it's like, my kids have literally stopped. They, like, almost roll their eyes when I threatened to take their phone away. And then I realized this is how they get on the subway is with their phone. This is how they order their dad Thai food when I'm home alone with them because I'm an incompetent and can't cook.

This is how they get their grades. This is how they socialize. So these threats are just totally empty threats. I don't know, what are your thoughts? Yeah, yes. But I think he hit them hard last night and they just went after more of our partners. So, yeah, they can play. that game for a long time. I mean, they've shown an ability to rebuild and rearm a lot better than

we certainly thought that they could. And watching kind of in real time supporters of the president and of the war realized that the first few weeks of this were seemingly not the military success that they were billed as, whether that's because they just had more than we knew that they did, or they have rebuilt at such an incredibly fast clip that we did have a very effective first few weeks and they can suddenly be back into fighting shape is really demoralizing, right? Because that's what everyone was resting on.

And we have had a few of these in-and-out situations like what happened at Fordo last summer, right, where everybody, no matter how you voted, was enthusiastic about that, right? And it was an incredible scene of American power with the B-52 bombers, right? And the Israeli intelligence was perfect and our intelligence was perfect. And it was like 48 hours.

And everyone looks like Top Gun. And this looks like a complete mess at this point. And not only that, people don't care and they're not even paying attention. You rate the importance of these things. Right. And it's not even as if people are trying to amp it up to be top of it. They're like, we're going to lose viewers. if we lead with this. So we've got to talk about, you know, Grand Platner's Tone Koff and like whatever's going on at Delaney Hall or any number of other things before we say we're still, you know, at a stalemate, essentially with the Iranians. And President Trump has said once again that it's bridge and power plant day. Like, give me a break. No one cares. Yeah, something that does seem to be capturing our attention and is getting a decent amount of news is an impact of the war in Iran. And that's,

that inflation here at home has risen substantially. The Consumer Price Index, or CPI was at 4.2% on May, the largest gain in three years. This comes just at the start of the summer travel months where Americans planning vacations are paying more. Here's Trump's viewpoint. You can serve, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning. Could that be a... No, I love it. The numbers were great.

You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, you know, I don't know. can say it now, something you didn't know. You know we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil. Nobody knows it. You know who doesn't know about it?

Iran until right now. That's why oil's $85 a barrel. I mean, you take a look. Remember when I did this, I said, look, the one bad thing will be we hit the best economy we've ever hit. And I said to my people, I had Scott, I had Howard, I had Pete, I had all of them. We had just hit the highest stock market.

in history. Highest 401 case in history. Everything was going well. And I said, I hate to do this to you guys, but Iran's going to have a nuclear weapon very soon. We have to go and attack. So we hit him with the B2 bombers. So I want to talk about the inflation part.

Is that true? Well, first of all, I think oil, what is it, $96 a barrel? Not $85 a barrel, but... Yeah, I think it's close to 86. But anyways... Oh, it is? Actually, Jess, you were more right than I was. it's at $92, $92.

Yeah. Well, okay, so his numbers are off. What's new? Yeah. But is that true that we've been under the cover of night taking out dozens of barrels? I don't know what that means. I don't know either. I felt like, how is this any different than your drunk senile uncle at Thanksgiving?

Well, mine is liberal, so that's what's different about it. All right. Yeah. I don't know. I didn't understand what is what does he mean by taking out? Well, I think he's saying that we're, we've turned them into Venezuela and they don't even know it. But the blockade is in place like our, we have, they don't have radar, I guess, if that's actually true that we totally decimated it. But it doesn't feel like anything that they say about what we totally decimated it is true.

But like, someone would be reporting on that, right? Like this idea that he's just breaking that news. and all the people whose jobs it is to monitor the Strait of Hormuz didn't notice that there were U.S. tankers, you know, stocked to the tilts, hiltz, tilts, whatever. Stock to the brim with Iranian oil are coming out. Yeah, I don't, I don't absolutely don't get that at all. And the thing about this inflation print, first off, 4.2% doesn't sound like a lot. And I think people think, okay, 4.2%, that's nothing that's lower than my mortgage. my credit card is 18%.

But what you've got to keep in mind is that is compounding, and that is, if you have a kid born today, and before you know it, they're in college, and trust me, it goes really fast. 18 years feels like a long time, it's not. If their tuition at Northwestern is $68,000,

if inflation goes up 4.2% a year, that's not unbearable, but it's the compounding. That means when your kid goes to college, it would cost $136,000. And that's assuming that tuition goes up at the same pace as inflation, which it doesn't. It means that the average car goes from being $48,000 to nearly $100,000. $4.2% a year is not sustainable.

That is really serious inflation for a mature economy. In addition, it's the first time in several years that inflation is outpacing wage growth. In sum, when your prices go up faster than your wages, it's simple. Your quality of life goes down. And also, we're now looking at more than a 50% chance, according to Cal Street, that by the end of the year, we actually raise rates. So this is, you know, this is a, this inflation print was a really bad one for him. And anyone with any basic knowledge of economics knows that there's nothing good about this. Can I just add quickly before we jump?

I just want to say, obviously, if you listen to the entirety of what he said there, it was more than just, I love inflation. you know, because we've heard him say crazy things before, like affordability is a hoax, etc. Right. But the American people have completely cut themselves off from what this president says and does. And they are living fully in their own experience, which does, you know, happens no matter who is in office when economic conditions get that bad. But I was struck the Emerson released a poll this morning. Trump's approval at 39 percent. so not at Sarah Longwell's Bush level at 32, but the Democrats are up 10 on the generic ballot.

And there have now been several high-quality polls showing Democrats at 10-plus on the generic ballot, which would be that blue tsunami if that came to fruition. I still think the Senate is obviously going to be incredibly tight. And, you know, we have to think about the implications of gerrymandering and where the courts have stepped in, which has been on behalf of the Republicans and where the courts have said, like, absolutely not. And that has hurt us enormously. But Dems plus 10 on a generic ballot is a really big deal if that actually comes to fruition. And think about how much higher that could even be if we had a great platform, right? That was a positive affirmation of our view of how we're going to govern this country with a set of policies that people could glom on to it to not just say Donald Trump told us he was going to fix this on day one. And he doesn't give an F.

But if we were actually like, oh, here are our top three policies that are going to make your quality of life better. That is my Thursday plea, again, for some policies. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-F-Free at O-D-O-D-O-O-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-C. Support for this show comes from fetch pet insurance. Do you have a pet?

Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000. And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch pet insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to 90%

of vet bills. You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada. All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. When you finally

find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything. So people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. In other news, it looks as if we're on the precipice of what is going to be kind of a pretty big deal in the markets, and that is the SpaceX IPO. SpaceX is expected, I think, to price denied and begin trading tomorrow. We record this on Thursday. And the reason why I think this is significant is that I believe that the fix is in,

if you will, and that is what's unusual about this, and it's the boring stuff that moves the needle. NASDAQ 100 has bypassed or circumvented traditional rules we have to trade for at least a year, and they're going to include SpaceX in their indices. Now, what does that mean? It means that several hundred billion dollars or maybe even several trillion dollars worth of index funds are going to be mandated or automatically start buying shares of SpaceX. And this sounds sort of innocuous, but if you think of an IPO as the demand is the volume of water being thrust through a hose and supply, the smaller amount of supply, the tighter or the narrower the circumference of the nozzle, what you have here is a company that's going to have about $100 billion in float, about $100 billion in shares out there.

But based on the exceptional large valuation of two, maybe $3 trillion after the first trade, if the total NASDAQ 100 is $50 trillion, that means that these indexes, funds will have to go by somewhere between 4 and 6 percent or allocate 4 and 6 percent of their total assets under management to buy SpaceX shares. And by my calculations, that means there's going to be an additional $30 to $50 billion of demand for these shares that traditionally wouldn't be there automatically on a small, a relatively small flow. They're only taking 5 percent of their company public, which, by the way, used to be a disqualifier to be in the NASDAQ 100. So what we're about to see tomorrow is what I would call the largest transfer of wealth from retail investors to principles of a company since crypto.

We are going to see the mother-of-all manufactured prices tomorrow because the IPO is essentially the price that closes out that day as a signal about the health of the company. In this case, it's just a signal of what I think is a fix. And that as I believe that Elon Musk has said to the president, if you lean on the president, if you lean on the company, Paul Atkins to waive the NASDAQ 100 rule and create all that additional demand for me right out of the gates. It's going to say the stock goes up 20 or 30 percent more than it would naturally. His stake, I think, is worth something like $600 billion. That's $120 billion in additional wealth for the man because of the waiver of this rule.

Why wouldn't he spend one or two billion of that on midterm elections? I mean, I just think it's so obvious. I think we don't do a good job of connecting the dots. We know we have a corrupt president. We know we have officials, senior officials, who are totally under the sum and we'll do whatever Trump wants. And we know we have a vested interest for Elon Musk

to not only gain more wealth, but he's willing to use his wealth to get people elected. In sum, we're about to see Elon Musk make even more extraordinary expenditures on getting Republicans elected in the midterms as a function of his increased wealth, as a function of manufactured, scarcity as a function of a corrupt administration that will lean on the SEC to do something

that they've never done before. So that was an uplifting tale. I'm really excited for him to write kids books. I should write kids books. Stick to your day job. This is my day job. But the fix is in. I was interesting because you guys in the live show, the markets live show in New York,

you were talking about the SpaceX IPO with Garamucci. And you were saying, don't buy SpaceX. He was pro buying. SpaceX and said that he was invested in it. A lot of, I don't want to call them normal people, but, you know, not Elon Musk type people are going to become millionaires overnight. Yeah, so overnight. Four thousand people probably average age, late 30s, are about to become millionaires. Which is a big deal, right? What do you think that this does or IPOs like this due to the kind of the wealth creation and kind of economic inequality conversation that's going on in the country

and is really beneath the surface of basically every election that we have at this point, whether it's electing a Republican or a Democrat. Well, let me be clear. One of America's advantages is our capital formation. SpaceX will raise $100 billion in this IPO. The entire UK stock market last year raised two. So this is in many ways a very strong, signal for America and capital formation. It's great that 4,000 people probably in their 30s,

or average age in their 30s, are going to become millionaires. That's a good thing. Theoretically, the fact that retail investors can buy into these companies is great. But effectively, when you used to buy into an IPO, you were buying into the future. Now that companies are saying private longer because institutional investors want to capture all the juice, the question is, are you buying for the future or have you already paid for? it. And that is when a company goes out a hundred times valuation, you know, I think it's pretty safe to say all the juice has been squeezed here, or I believe that. So there's some very good things about retail investors having access to these companies. They don't usually when they're

private. A wealth generator like SpaceX and Tesla and Musk has created a lot of wealth for a lot of other people, that's a good thing. A lot of people will take money and start venture firms and start other firms and buy San Francisco real estate. Rent and San Francisco. Rent and San Francisco. Francisco last month was up 24% pending luxury sales in the U.S. They're up 4% in San Francisco. They're up 48%. So economic growth, capital formation are wonderful things. Elizabeth Warren would have you believe that this is going to wreck, you know, seniors retirement funds because they're forced to buy into this vis-a-vis index funds, and this company is dramatically overvalued. That's a little bit of catastrophizing, but I do think there's something to be said of letting a company's

stock price settle before it's automatically put into 401K as an IRAs, because this price tomorrow, what this closes at, will probably not reflect the value of the underlying companies. It's not until, say, 12 months out when lockups have expired and they've had a couple earnings reports. And that's how it used to be. It used to be the companies had to trade for 12 months such that the pricing settled, if you will, because right now the bankers and Elon and all these weird lockup provisions, if they give shares to Robin Hood, there's some talk about if you buy the shares, you can't sell them. All they are doing right now is trying to create manufactured scarcity and a signal that's not necessarily reflective of the value, but to just top off this word

salad, yeah, economic growth and people making money and the ecosystems it creates is a really positive thing. That's also, I might add, a uniquely American thing. So there's definitely some upside to all of this, absolutely. Okay, great. But yes, the rich keep getting richer if that's what you're asking. That was mostly what I was asking, but I liked the explainer that came along with it. Well, just, and of course I didn't answer the question you asked. The people who've made the most money here have already made their money,

and it's mostly institutional investors and VCs and the people who got in early. So the company, as of tomorrow, it's going to be worth $2 trillion. That value creation has been captured by a small number of people, Whereas when Google went public at 80 billion and grew to $4 trillion, a lot of retail investors got to participate in that value creation who are no longer getting to participate in that unless I don't see something here in this company becomes worth more than all of China and all of Europe. We all have to drink water. And staying hydrated is one of the simplest ways to feel your best. But come on. How is your relationship with water really?

Are you getting enough from it? Is it satisfying you? Or is drinking it becoming a chore? Here's a tip to spice things up. Hint water. With delectable flavors like watermelon, Georgia peach, even lemon zest freeze, hint is water that will make you desire water.

No sugar, no sweeteners, no calories. It just goes to show. Sometimes the right hydration partner changes everything. Try Hint. Available at drinkhint.com and in stores nationwide. AI is moving fast across the enterprise. But without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models,

different teams using AI in completely different ways. Service now turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. What it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do. So you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenav.com. Support for this show comes from CoreWeave.

Everywhere you look, AI is expanding what we thought was possible, and at the center of it all is CoreWeave. Medical research and diagnosis, education, complex visual effects for movies, science and technology breakthroughs, CoreWeave powers AI pioneers around the world with purpose-built tech, building what's never been built before. CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI. Ready for anything? Ready for AI.

To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to coreweave.com slash ready for anything. All right. Now shifting from markets to Washington, Bill Gates testified yesterday behind close doors about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein saying he made a grave error in judgment in meeting with him at the same. same time, new reporting from the New York Times says the Epstein files have become a major crisis inside the Trump White House with officials debating whether to release more documents and how to handle pressure from their own base. Jess, what, if anything, did we learn new here? How serious is this? I mean, the Bill Gates stuff, not at all. I guess it's just, you know, a few hours of ritual humiliation for these guys and everyone made a grave error in judgment,

and nobody knew, right, even though there were all the signs in the world, plus the fact that he was a registered sex offender. But I do think that the Epstein story, so this was an excerpt from Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman's book that comes out towards the end of the month, regime change about this meeting on July 17th of last year where they were having essentially in all hands on how to handle the Epstein files. And there was a real dichotomy between how kind of the older members of the administration thought about handling it versus like a Jady Vance and Stephen Chung, who are more terminally online. And, you know, we're talking about what is an absurd idea, like a Tucker Carlson interviewing Galeen Maxwell. But they really,

they knew it was an enormous problem. Trump had already tried to, you know, put his thumb on the scales, you know, threatening everyone over at the Wall Street Journal, you know, when they're going to publish the birthday book and stuff like that. But for me, I, well, two things. One, I'm excited for the book and Jonathan Swan is going to co-host Raging Moderates the week it comes out when you are off. So that's exciting. Number two, who is leaking at this level of detail? Because it feels like it's more than one person, right, to get it from all of these different vantage points. And if Trump hates anything, well, he hates germs.

And then he hates leaking. Right. Like this is the thing that he feels is the most offensive. The being part of Trump world is just a loyalty test, pure and simple. So when the Times and these reporters can publish an account that's basically like, then the clock struck 202 and Todd Blanche wiped a beat of sweat off of his forehead and, you know, Pam Bondi this and Susie Wiles that. Like, what's he going to, is he going to go around with like a machete hunting people in the administration?

because, I mean, they must be sweating the entire book, right? It comes out in a couple of weeks. Like, think about that. That's just one excerpt. And there's a lot in the book as well about the war in Iran. They were the ones that had all the information about Beebe's visit to the White House where he showed them, you know, the PowerPoint essentially saying, like, we've got to go in and do this and kick the war off. And that was supposed to be a top secret classified meeting. So who are the leakers?

My sense is who isn't a leaker right now. I think everyone is like either wants to be president or wants to save their ass. My sense is everyone's dropping a dime here. Just a brief comment on the whole Gates situation. I think he, his PR team, his comm team are genius. I don't think it's any accident when negotiating with a special committee or whoever it is that hauled them in front of them. The one, he did it behind closed doors and two, he did it on the week of the Knicks and SpaceX. in Iran, because this is a very busy, what do you want, as little news on this as possible.

And I'm sure his team very definitely negotiated the dates, that it would be closed doors, no cameras. Yeah, like you said, though, it's just another public, another semi-public flogging. But I think his PR team, his comms team, was very strategic in making sure that this is going to, this is going to come and go pretty quickly. So another major fight is brewing over voting. the Trump administration proposed what could prevent the U.S. Postal Service from delivering mail-in ballots and states that haven't submitted their voter rolls to the U.S.PS. Jess, remind us, who does this affect and who benefits politically and why is this becoming such a major legal battle? Well, it affects all of us, and there are Republicans that are very enthusiastic about mail in voting, including Donald Trump himself, who votes by mail.

But you wouldn't know that. Listening to him and the wild conspiracy theory is Republican-run states like Utah for and. instance, very reliant on mail-in ballots. It's another attempt to kick liberals off the voter rules and to federalize elections, which used to be an asthma to Republicans. I remember when this first started bubbling up, Mitch McConnell's former legal counselor, chief of staff, wrote a scathing op-ed about what a betrayal of Republican values this is, but, I mean, add it to the list, right? At this point, this rule seeks to comply with an executive order that, Trump signed in the spring. Unprecedented role for the federal government in this.

There's a big lawsuit against it. 23 Democratic-led states in the district of Columbia are suing. But it's a really big deal. And there's a question as to whether the Postal Service actually has the funds to execute this. So they need to build essentially a portal that the states could upload the voter rolls to. That takes time. That takes money. Trump has said, of course, I'll give you all the money.

He'll take it from the tariff pot. maybe and transfer it over. But people are going to start voting on a proverbial basis very quickly, right? It's just, you know, less than six months away to the election. But it's another signal of where all of this is going. And you can easily see a world where there is a militarization of this country in advance of the elections where there are, you know, ice agents on the streets where American citizens who have been inactive, which still shouldn't have lost their right to vote are disenfranchised, and there have been a number of lawsuits about this. I mean, Mark Elias, who leads for the Democrats on basically all of these cases, is incredible to listen to

about it. Like in Arizona, for instance, Republicans had to fight against themselves, essentially, because they were going to take a bunch of older Republican voters off the rolls because they hadn't turned up in the last, you know, one or two elections. So it's a really big deal. And, you know, there are going to be a lot of nitpecky rules in it, you know, like the way the stamp has to be a fix, the way that your ballot is done, et cetera. And it just comes out to they just want to make it harder and harder for Americans to be able to vote. That's the Save America Act, too. Yeah, it really is.

It really, I mean, it's like, it just keeps going on and on and on. And, yeah, it's striking that a story like this would have gotten so much attention or what's striking is how little attention it gets. I know. I found it just like scrolling around on Twitter and sent it to our producer. It's not even on our radar at all. What's more important than our ability to safely and freely vote? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's right up there. But let's talk about something much more important, the World Cup. The tournament kicked off this week with games across North America, but there's already a surprising problem. MTC. It's around 180,000 tickets are still available on resale platforms. Jess, any thoughts here? Do we just not have enough football fans? Well, we're sending some of them home, right? We're denying visas. We're searching people. Where Aaron brought up yesterday when we did the raging perspective.

Is this the Somali referee? Well, the Somali referee, but that a lot of Moroccans have been denied visas. And I didn't realize this, but Morocco was the first country to recognize us as sovereign from England. I did not know that. That Aaron Parnas, boy, genius. You know, I've gone to a World Cup. We talked about this. I won in Russia.

I had an amazing time. You know, watched an authoritarian country, turn on the charm, and make sure everyone could get where they were going. There were an arrest. You know, they wanted to run smoothly like they did with the Sochi Olympics as well. That's right. And we're just totally bombing. I get why people, especially if you're a little bit darker, right, don't want to. to come to this country when you, every headline that you see is about, you know, somebody getting

picked up for anything from writing an op-ed that's critical of the Israeli government to, you know, goons on the street. But you're going, right? I guess I could probably get tickets. This will be my fourth World Cup. I also wasn't the one in Russian. I couldn't get over to a beautiful city of St. Petersburg was. Isn't it amazing? I was every European capital smushed together. I took my 10-year-old son at the time, and I remember thinking that, you know, people are worried about safety. I'm like, this is the safest place in the world. There's no way that anyone, that Putin's going to allow anybody to do anything slightly off-kilter here. Like, what's interesting, so FIFA in these global sports organizations are some of the most corrupt organizations in history because they operate in this sort of this Nether, Netherlands, there's real no governing body. And because everyone assumes that sports and academics are noble, we let the end.

NC2A, pay themselves a lot of money and pay coaches $4 million while the kids on the floor were making nothing until recently. And the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, and FIFA are even more brazen in terms of bribery, and essentially just being, in my view, corrupt. Now, their decision to double and triple the prices, it may even be quadruple what it was in Qatar, is a strategic decision that, so traditionally what they've done is they've priced, they've had a certain number of tickets that are more about time you're willing to wait in line. If you're a super fan, by the way, I was in Morocco in the last World Cup when they made the quarterfinals, and it made the Knicks celebration look like a garden party.

So what they do is they allow hardcore fans a certain number of tickets and price them what you call, I don't say fairly, but probably below market. And it adds to the vibe. The hardcore fans bring in electricity. Now, traditionally, the fans are just a prop for where you make the real money, and that is TV. 70, 80, 90% of the revenues comes from TV rights. So it made sense to have these out-of-control fans

and create a vibe that came through on your screen at home. What FIF has decided this year is they don't want ticket brokers or they don't want hardcore fans that kind of psychic income awarded. What they want to do is they want to monetize everything to the highest level possible. And they're doing what's called dynamic pricing, similar to what airlines do. And it's why you pay $3,000 for the same seat. The guy next to you paid $700 for because you bought it the number.

before and they clearly sense of you're desperate. Now, it's not illegal. My guess is they'll end up selling those tickets. They'll just cut the price. But what you're talking about is more serious, and that is just sending just the wrong signal. You know, these gatherings are supposed to be a global gathering where we get together and forget, at least for a moment, are disagreements, geopolitical concerns, and just come together for the beauty of sport. And us harassing people at the border in refusing people's visas, you know, under the auspices of already our tourism is off 8 million visitors this year. It yet again is another example of not only what a terrible business person this administration

is or the president is, but what a terrible brand manager they are. This is an opportunity. World Cup in Russia made you like Russia or dislike them less. When I went to World Cup and Qatar, there are huge issues around Qatar, you know, 14, billion dollars in international funding of universities. Four has come from Qatar. We need to ask, why are they doing that? But you can't help but be impressed by what they did and feel a certain level of goodwill. This is an enormous opportunity. We spend a great deal of time and money trying to host these things and to squander this goodwill right out of the gates. Again, at a very basic

business level, it's just really stupid brand management. It makes us look bad and erodes our soft power and our goodwill around the world. Anyways, Go Team England. Yeah. Well, I don't know about the Go Team England part. It was exciting watching the U.S. men's team watching the Knicks game just to bring it full circle back to the Knicks. It has been cool also to see the teams that are in very random locations, how much the locals are excited to have them. Like the Algerians in Kansas, I think it is. I love that. Isn't that great? Yeah, it is. And like how thrilled. the Americans are about it and watching foreigners discover some of our most delicious, but also going to kill you with the level of calories and cholesterol and all of it.

And they're like, oh, my God, I can eat like this, at least for a couple of weeks, like, you know, messy chowing down. Yeah. What is this you call Waffle House? What is this thing? What is this thing? No, but like better stuff, you know. Anyway. There you go.

All right, let's leave it there. Let's let people in. Thanks, Jess. Have a good rest of the week. You too. See you later. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-Doo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOO.com. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-F-Free at O-D-O-D-O-O-D-com. Support for this show comes from Harvey A.I. The future of law is agentic. not just tools that assist, but AI agents that navigate complex matters. That's why Harvey created agents that can do the work from end to end.

They build a plan, pull from secure data sources, run subagents in parallel, and draft the work product ready for your review. So you delegate the work and on the judgment. Trusted by more than 60% of the AMLA 100 and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey AI tailored for law. Learn more at harvey.aI.