The Bulwark Podcast - Jared Moskowitz and Zeke Faux: Scams Galore

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Crypto should be one of the biggest stories out of the Trump administration, but the crypto guys are really good at making it seem more complicated than it is. Bloomberg's Zeke Faux joins Tim to run down the ins-and-outs, and the players—including the Chinese businessman facing SEC charges who swears the $56 million he gave Trump has absolutely nothing, zero, zilch to do with his case. Meanwhile, we're about to find out how much Republicans really care about the deficit with the coming budget, and the Democrats must not cave. Plus, Elon's crappy math, America would not get anything out of Trump's deal with Russia, and Tuesday's violence in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Rep. Jared Moskowitz and Zeke Faux join Tim Miller. show notes Zeke's book, "Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall" Zeke on Chris Hayes's podcast

Hello and welcome to the Bored Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Super pumped to have a reporter today who is focused on something that I am obsessed with. He's the investigative reporter for Bloomberg Business Week and Bloomberg News and author of Number Go Up Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall out now in paperback.

It's Zeke Fox to talk all things crypto. How you doing Zeke? Great. Thanks for having me on Tim. Dude, thanks for doing this. I'm obsessed with this. I'm of the view that the crypto scams will probably be a top three to five story of the Trump years when all is all is said and done.

And I think that a lot of the media outlets don't give this quite as much attention because the demographics of the news consumers don't overlap with crypto world much. A lot of them don't really even understand it. And then a lot of the people in journalists world have such contempt or just culturally are separate from the types of folks that are really into crypto. And so it leads to not getting ignored. and obviously you're not ignoring it but I'm wondering if you kind of agree with my assessment of obviously I would assume you agree that this is undercover since it's your beat but I'm wondering what you think about that about my assessment for why definitely I mean the crypto guys are very good at making it seem like they have a lot of jargon they make it seem like there's some sort of really

complicated and important technology that we're talking about and it makes you think in your back it seem like they have a lot of jargon, they make it seem like there's some sort of really complicated and important technology that we're talking about. And it makes you think in the back of your mind, if you don't know that much about this, like, or even if you do, you're like, it can't possibly be as dumb as it sounds, could it? And the answer is yes. And in fact, it's even dumber. Okay, so I want to do just a little bit of crypto 101 for our listeners that don't follow this stuff. But if this brief crypto 101 lesson isn't enough, you did Chris Hayes' Why Is This Happening pod a couple of weeks ago, and it was like 45 minutes of crypto 101.

It was really good. So I direct people to that if they don't get enough. But at its basic level, there's cryptocurrency, then there's Bitcoin, which is the most famous or whatever, the most renowned, but then there are all these other coins. So you just explain to people how all of these terms interact with each other. So the original idea for Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, was that this would be an alternative to regular currencies like the dollar or the yen. The big innovation was that instead of being tracked by a central counterparty like a bank,

there would be this decentralized network of computers that would keep track of this new currency. Now, that was 15 years ago. Bitcoin is as old as WhatsApp or Uber, and this idea of it becoming an alternative currency is largely dead. No one's really using it for that. But instead, there's been this proliferation of other cryptocurrencies. And at this point, most of them are not meant to be like dollars.

They represent all sorts of different things. So some of them are kind of like stocks where if you buy a share of this, you buy a coin, you're almost like buying a share of some sort of company. Other times it's like a new network like Ethereum or Solana, where it's like a place where people are creating other crypto things. When you buy one of those coins, you're kind of buying into the network and you get a share of its profits. And so that's almost like buying into a crypto bank, kind of, right?

Like it's like it's like investing in a stock for a better an exchange or a bank, essentially. Yeah, some of them are a lot like that. Like Sam Bankman Fried had one that was called FTT. That was basically just stock in his crooked exchange FTX. But at the silliest end, we have, and which is one of the most popular things in crypto right now, are meme coins. And the first one of these was called Dogecoin. And it's also like more than ten years old it was created as kind of a parody of Bitcoin and it was saying we're gonna copy Bitcoin

we're gonna change the name and we're gonna put a picture of a dog on it and It turned out that I don't know if you think this is a funny joke But it turned out enough people did think this was kind of interesting that they started to buy it Unlike a stock or unlike one of these ones where you're buying into a network that generates fees With dogecoin or other meme coins. There's no way for it to ever generate any money You're purely buying it on The idea that somebody else might buy it also for no reason, driving the price up higher. It's kind of like a new form of gambling game. And in the last couple of years,

thousands of these meme coins, maybe even hundreds of thousands of these meme coins have been created. People are just pumping them out and there are all these traders that are kind of, have they've made it a game to chase like the new meme coin And if you get in early the goal is to get in before the masses and then profit when the price spikes and

sell it before inevitably collapses Which is like Basically no different than like wolf of wall street. It's just a modern Jordan Belfort situation, right? Where they're just trying to run up these penny stocks and then sell them. Yeah. I mean, I guess those things had some value maybe, but not really.

Well, true. I think the kind of twist is that, in your classic like pump and dump like Jordan Belfort, more of the people that Belfort, like when he was calling people, he's saying, hey, this stock is hot. They just discovered gold in Bolivia. It's going to go up. And so there was this element of lying about the prospects of this company.

So people were being defrauded that way. In this case, you've got people like Dave Portnoy from Barstool Sports being like, Hey, I just created this dumb coin. It does not do anything. It'll probably collapse eventually. Do you want to buy some for people have sort of organized themselves into this. Kind of pack of degenerate gamblers who move from meme coin to meme coin and try to make money on it.

Okay. All right. Um, one more one-on-one question. And then I want to get into why I wanted to have you on and I think why it's so relevant What's happening at the Trump 2.0? So you mentioned that the kind of wide array of coins or currencies so to speak and how they're how they're doing it There is also you know in addition to Bitcoin Which I guess people aren't really trying to make a currency anymore

But you know El Salvador and they invest in a Bitcoin there. There some people, I guess, that are trying to use Bitcoin to actually trade goods. There's also some state coins that are called stable coins, where they are trying to make them mimic currencies, I guess, in some fashion. Is that fair? Yes. So it's kind of funny, but the cryptocurrencies that have actually found the most widespread use are ones that are backed by dollars. And this is because, uh, in my book number go up, I was really focused on this one called tether. It's the biggest stable coin. It's gotten so large that there's something like $130 billion worth of it outstanding.

The pitch is that a Tether will always be worth a dollar because it's backed by real dollars that Tether, the company keeps in the bank somewhere. Why would you buy a Tether, not a dollar for crime, I guess, because it's not traceable. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly one popular reason. Criminals all around the world are figuring out that this is very handy because you can keep Tether in like an anonymous wallet, and you

could zap an unlimited amount to somebody other side of the world into their anonymous wallet. And unless law enforcement is able to figure out what your secret wallet addresses, they would have no idea compared to like a bank or credit card company that's gonna ask a lot of questions about your transfers. You've got like Russia using it to evade sanctions,

Chinese gangsters in Cambodia are using it to run this massive fraud and human trafficking operation. Also, just crypto traders use it. Basically, whether you're a criminal or you're selling sneakers, you don't want your currency to go up or down 10 percent in a day. The stable coin is more attractive. Got it. Okay. I want to get back to Tyler. I want to ask about that for a reason.

I want to just get into Trump 2.0 and sometimes, you know, I was talking to my husband last night and he's like, you're seeming a little bit like the always sunny guy with the yarn and the wall. But I mean, the amount of connections in Trump 2.0 into crypto world is like pretty staggering. So obviously, you start with the most obvious, which is that Trump launched one of these meme coins of his own

a few days before he was inaugurated. A massive influx of cash comes in. Talk about, you know, what has happened so far with Trump coin. So it's three days before inauguration. He writes on Truth Social. My new official Trump meme is here. It's time to celebrate. And honestly, a lot of people in this meme coin world were waiting for this moment because they knew if Trump ever did launch a meme coin, there'd be a lot of interest and it

would go up a lot. And that becomes kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. So Trump coin shot up as high as $72. On paper, Trump had $57 billion worth of Trump coin at that price. It since crashed, it's down to I think like 17 bucks now. Now it's a bit complicated, but the best estimates are that Trump, by selling this meme coin, made about $100 million because his holdings on paper would be hard to turn into real money without totally crashing the price. But he did make $100 million of totally real money.

That's the estimate of selling this meme coin. So it really beats a new you know, a new Trump hotel or like Trump steaks, Trump vodka. This is like the best way to monetize your celebrity. Yeah, okay. So I wanna go through the people involved in this Trump coin because here's where you get to the yarn. So you've got Steve Witkoff, who is his envoy, I guess,

to negotiations now around the world, this business guy. He was the lead in the hostage trade with Russia recently. Wicuff's kids, his kid rather, is a business partner with Trump's kids on this Trump coin. So he also made some cash out of the coin. Is that right? I believe that actually Witkoff was the business partner on Trump's first cryptocurrency, not the Trump coin. Thank you for clearing that up. Now, I mean, if he didn't get in on Trump coin too, I'm sure he would be mad because

that was like a great money making opportunity right there. But Trump had an earlier cryptocurrency called World Liberty where Witkoff and his son had a big role. Okay. So his crypto business partner is the lead on this negotiation. Maybe just a coincidence that we get in the hostage trade, we get Mark Fogel, an American teacher. We're glad that he's home.

The Russians get Alexander Vinik. He was arrested in 2017 on charges related to the laundering of billions of dollars using virtual currency Bitcoin. So we have a Russian Bitcoin money launderer that is the first person out on their side. Maybe a coincidence, but pretty noteworthy that that was the person that was there on the trade with Witkoff, the crypto business partner. One interesting part of that was this guy, Alexander Vinik, appeared to be just like a crypto criminal who ran an exchange that some people say was even set up to launder the proceeds of hacks.

It's not immediately obvious to me why Russia would want him back or what he had done for Russia. So I was intrigued that he was their side of that trade. In addition, it's also time to kind of our previous conversations about how US is now on the side of the baddies in these world events. Justin Sun, who is the subject of an SEC enforcement action, big investor in the first Trump crypto gambit before the more recent coin. Talk to us about Justin Sun.

So he runs a blockchain called Tron. He's been around for a while and the SEC's case against him is that when he launched Tron and sold its new cryptocurrency, he engaged in manipulative trading and fraud to make the price look like it was going up to help sell it to the public. Now, he denies this, but it's a serious case. Now, Trump's first crypto, World world Liberty was not an immediate success and This was launched last year Around September during the campaign now Justin Sun. He's someone who I don't think would be allowed to donate to Trump's campaign

I'm not sure of his citizenship, but like he doesn't regularly appear in the US, he bought initially $30 million of this World Liberty coin. Part of the reason the deal wasn't successful initially was that the terms of World Liberty are that if you buy the coin, 75% of all the money you put in just goes to the Trumps as a licensing fee. So Sun ended up putting in another 40 million. So that's him giving the Trumps $56 million. But they get a 20% licensing fee.

So they get 20% of 56 million? They got 75% of 75 million. Got it. I mean, probably the biggest payment to a president for anything ever, right? When the Trump coin thing happened, the thing that people who are daily listeners don't know that I keep saying that like they made Spiro Agno resign over like 10 grand and it was bad.

It's like 10 or 20 grand. He was taking paperback money as VP, but it was like pennies compared to the type of money that people are putting in to the various Trump coins. And this guy in particular, and I guess we will watch and what happens with the investigation, we have somebody who's a foreign national giving tens of millions of dollars essentially into Trump's pocket. He's fighting it and he's saying it should be dropped.

Crypto reform and all these cases are kind of on the table, right? And now he's saying, hey, maybe you should really think extra hard about my case. Here's $56 million. Again, I should say he denies that he's trying to influence anything with his purchase. But sure. Who wouldn't deny it? After he made the investment, he was named an advisor to World Liberty. So he's kind of in business with the Trumps now on this crypto.

And just pretty, a couple of weeks after he made the investment, he was at this crypto conference in Abu Dhabi. And at the conference, he was spotted meeting with Steve Witkoff, the envoy, and Eric Trump, who was there to give a speech about how Bitcoin was going to the moon. So it's pretty hard to believe that he would not take an opportunity to mention his case. Yeah. Again, how is like Justin's son not extremely famous? I guess is my question.

This is kind of what I was talking about at the start, because I mean, if this was anything like, in the past, like the Mark Rich pardon, or like these sorts of things, I mean, like the amount of money that was given is nothing compared to what Justin Sun has put in. Yeah, I mean, I obviously think it's pretty interesting. I'm with you.

Anyway, I'm not asking you to be a media critic. You're on this. That was more of a rhetorical question. Okay, we got to keep moving because there's more. Howard Lutnick, our new Commerce Department Secretary. He is also a big investor in Bitcoin. Sun's now run the business and he is related. explain how he's related to Tether, that the stable coin that you were referencing earlier.

So even within the crypto world, Tether's had kind of a dodgy reputation for years. It had to settle a lawsuit with New York's attorney general who had alleged that Tether had lied about the dollars that were backing the coin. And because of this, Tether had a lot of trouble finding anyone to hold this giant pile of money, which is a key part of the business. You need someone who has access

to like the American financial system to hold your money. But Tether was based like nowhere in the world. It's one of those sort of stateless companies and it was having issues with this. So Lutnick who runs like a reputable New York investment bank called Canter Fitzgerald, he stepped up and he offered to hold Tether's money. And without that backing, it would have been a lot harder for Tether to keep growing and

be as successful as it's been. And like we were saying before, this is a cryptocurrency company whose product has become really popular with criminals around the world. So what we've learned since that recently is that Lutnik, as part of agreeing to hold Tether's money, he also was able to purchase a stake in the company, which is a big deal because Tether, it's incredibly profitable. The company has like a 100 employees and it makes more money than BlackRock.

They get made $13 billion last year. This is a company that was dreamed up by a child actor from The Mighty Ducks. Which character from The Mighty Ducks? So not a main character. In the beginning, Gordon Bombay has a flashback and he plays like young Gordon Bombay who misses the penalty shot. Young Gordon Bombay, all right. It's run by this Italian guy who's a former plastic surgeon who has never given an interview. The guy who until recently was the CEO was so elusive that when I started looking into

Tether a couple of years ago, people told me they thought the CEO didn't really exist. I tracked him down and he is real. This is like a very weird company that was really legitimized by Lutnick and Lutnick started vouching for them publicly. He gave an interview to Bloomberg from Davos where he was like, hey, Tether, I've seen their money. They got the money. You can trust them, something like that. And that also was really helpful. So it was kind of controversial at his confirmation hearing. He got asked a lot of questions about his relationship with Tether and what he thinks about

its use for money laundering. And he kind of repeated his defense of the company and said, hey, Tether works with law enforcement. They're against crime. They want to stop it. I've helped them improve their compliance. He just got confirmed. So he'll be the Commerce Secretary. That's our Commerce Secretary. Okay. Elon is also deeply invested in this stuff, was a big pusher of Dogecoin.

Eric Adams, who just got part of this, is mobbed up in crypto world. And so I want to talk about the policy side of this, but is there any other trump 2.0 connections worth mentioning and reason big advisors big pusher of this his crypto czar david sax yeah uh is an investor in solana which is like the network that the meme coins run on so so with these meme coins, right, it seems pretty weird. Like is the government going to do anything about this? Is like a question you might ask. You think it'll be regulated. Like I'm for gambling, for example, I'm pro gambling.

Vegas is a very highly regulated industry. Gambling is a very highly regulated industry. It's like, you want to gamble on meme coins. Okay. But like shouldn't there be regulation? But like the guy who is ostensibly would be in charge of that is now the crypto czar is an investor in the exchange where they trade the meme coins. So probably not a lot of incentives. More or less. And he's come out and said, these are collectibles. These are

digital collectibles, which is code for they should be unregulated. Yeah, like baseball cards instead. So the other things is we have named to the oversight of this is this Brian Quintenz, who worked for Mark Andreessen's VC firm. The firm was the leading backer, one of the leading backers of the crypto pro crypto political action committee. So this guy is going to be now at the CFTC. We got, you know, Fox hen house situation. They've also been pushing for this Bitcoin reserve, situation. They've also been pushing for this Bitcoin reserve where I guess they would put the government, our government would start investing into this. So, you know, talk about any of the policy implications there. Yeah, the Bitcoin reserve is one of the craziest policies that has been put on the table here. And I saw Trump propose this at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville last year.

And I was just shocked that he was repeating so many of the industry's talking points. And yeah, one Republican senator has sort of spelled out some details for this. And she would have the US government spend $100 billion to buy Bitcoin. And as I explained before, people are not using Bitcoin for anything. So the pitch now that Bitcoiners have is that this is digital gold. The idea with the Bitcoin Reserve is that the price of Bitcoin will inevitably go up and therefore the government should get in early and make money by trading it. And the thing to me is that this is a handout

to anybody who already has Bitcoin. No one has any reason to buy Bitcoin. Like it's not used for, you don't need it for anything. The point of Bitcoin now is the price going up. And so at this point, the price is very high. So like you or I buying Bitcoin is not gonna do anything for the price. They need bigger pools of money.

What's the biggest pool of money? The government. Yes. So that's like the Bitcoiners. It's been actually their plan for a couple of years. It seemed very far-fetched, but ever since they got El Salvador on board, a lot of Bitcoiners were like, hey, I think we can get other countries in on this too. And they didn't have much luck until they came across Trump.

Who hasn't done it yet? To be fair. Yeah, sure. But I mean, the fact that they're even talking about it is ludicrous. We had the president of Argentina, Javier Malay, he got in on this scam and there was a cryptocurrency Libra that launched and there was just this massive run up of the coin and like this whole pump and dump rug pull thing, like just happened on super speed. Like it's just happened in a couple of hours, like huge, you can tell me how much money

I actually went into it, but a huge run up and then crash. You know, Malay is like taking no responsibility for this. Tell people what happened in this situation. And then my last question is like to be generous to the authentic Bitcoin advocates, why aren't they madder? I guess would be my point. Like if you actually did think Bitcoin was valuable,

you would think that like prominent people like Trump and Malay just running these obvious like rug pull scams would have those folks upset. But I guess not because potentially they're going to put money in a number will go up. But I don't know. You tell me. Yeah, I think that's right. And some of them are mad. But I think the madness is balanced with this idea that it's a pretty helpful conflict of interest. It's like, wow, Trump might actually follow through on deregulating crypto.

He's doing it himself. He kind of needs to. Right. A lot of them have been complaining about the scams, but I think it's a little self-serving. With Malay, I thought it was interesting. I mean, this wasn't so different than Trump's meme coin. You know, he tweeted about a coin.

It went up, then it went down. People lost money. Other people made some money. Uh, and Malay had said, you know, he said it's not a scam. It's not his coin and there's no crying in the casino. There's no crying in the casino. I'm sorry. I thought it was a currency.

Is it currency or is it a casino or is it a digital asset? I'm, I have a little bit confused. It kind of seems like it changes depending on what is convenient for the talking point at the moment. Yeah. But it's weird, like the opposition's calling for him to be impeached. And this one seems to have been a real scandal, like within crypto world, people seem seem pretty upset about this compared to the kind of muted reaction to Trump having a meme coin which also went up a lot and then down quite a lot. Wild.

Zeke, I think that we're going to have a lot of reason to talk. I really appreciate you coming on. I don't know that it's sunk in with folks just how mobbed up the Trump inner circle is in crypto world. And people obviously have learned about the coin at this point, but with cough and what neck and all that. So I'm sure more will come with us. I look forward to reading your reporting

and we'll be talking again soon. Thanks a lot, Tim. Great talking with you. Up next, Florida Congressman, Jared Moskowitz. Hey, y'all. I've been on the content grind as you have noticed, but I'm getting to the point where if you start having that late afternoon coffee, it prevents me from having a good night's sleep. So I was turning to an alternative that makes you feel a little less jittery, and that is our sponsor, Mudwater. If you're trying to cut those coffee jitters or just want to avoid that 2pm crash, Mudwater

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It's Jared Moskowitz. How you doing, Congressman? What's going on, Tim? How you doing? I'm pumped to have you back. I like this casual look for both of us, by the way. Yeah, we're just hanging. We're just a couple of guys hanging. Yeah.

You know? That's what the people demanded, right? In the election, just bros hanging out in like their t-shirts. They voted against the status quo, so I took my suit off. Okay, great. I'm for it. I like what you've been doing altogether, not just your outfit, but you're on Fox, engaging with Jesse Watters. That's good. You've been, you know, calling these Republicans on their BS on the budget stuff. So I want to get into the tactical, but we do have a couple of news items we got to do first. Yesterday, there's a press conference where Trump explained who he thought was to blame for the Ukraine war. I want to listen to that.

But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed and no city would have been demolished and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way. Pete You shouldn't have started it.

They chose not to do it that way. You might think have started it. They chose not to do it that way. You might think you'd be talking about Putin there, but he is talking about Zelensky, wondering what you thought about that. Well, it's funny. Like you almost like want him to keep going because you feel like the next statement is going to be like, in fact, the deal we had is they were going to keep Ukraine and we were going to give them Gaza. So we were going to expand Ukraine.

Okay. That was the deal we had. And the Palestinian people would have loved it. You know, like you just wanted him to keep going just to see like where, where this was headed. But look, Trump and he's been doing this for a long time is very good at taking someone else's argument and weak point and co-opting it, right. Anything that we, you know, he says it's weaponized government, right.

And then he weaponizes it more, but he gets away with it because the Democrats weaponized it. He's fixing it with more weaponization. And this is the same thing. He's literally taking the argument against Russia and using it against Ukraine. Obviously, this is not productive. It's not where we want the situation to be with Ukraine. I do want the war to come to an end. I do think that's important. I do want the war to come to an end. I do think that's important. I do think Ukraine is probably not going back to the pre-2014 border. I think that's probably the case.

But what they give up to get to a deal after that, I think, has massive repercussions, not just for Europe and our relationships in Europe, but also for China and Taiwan. We know that the Chinese are watching what happens here. And if you look at the European reaction, I mean, they do not seem, they do not seem happy with the developments of the last week, but I then take a step back from that and I want to take my own advice that I've been giving myself, which is I'm not going to react to everything that Trump says, you know, in the moment that he says it. I'm just not, I'm not doing that the next four years, like we did the first four years,

because if we were doing that, then, you know, let's just talk about all of these things. Canada is going to be the 51st state, right? Governor Trudeau, that was kind of funny. I laughed at that one. Governor Trudeau, right? They're going to be the 51st state. That's not going to happen, of course, because if Canada became the 51st state, there would be two Californias. Republicans could never win another election. So that's not going to happen. You know, Panama, we're going to

take the canal, maybe with military force, not taking that off the table. That's not going to happen. We're getting green. We are making the Panamanians take migrants who are not criminals who came to the country like for religious freedom. And there's a New York Times article, he showed an Iranian Christian came to America hoping for religious freedom. And we deported them to Panama as part of our effort to bully them over the canal. So that's a real thing that's

happening. Yeah, no, I, but obviously, the language that Trump was using, okay, none of that's going to happen. We're going to get Greenland. Also, Tim, we're I but obviously the language that Trump was using okay. None of that's gonna happen. We're gonna get Greenland also Tim We're getting Greenland. Okay, you know from our from our Danish friends, you know That's also not gonna happen. And then of course Gaza the Riviera of the Middle East. We're just gonna get it How you gonna get it? Mr. President, you're gonna buy it. No, no, no, we're not gonna buy it First of all, who would be the realtor for that? That would be a great six percent Jared I think probably okay, you're gonna take it you're gonna take it by military force. No, no, no, we're not going to buy it. First of all, who would be the realtor for that? That would be a great 6%. Jared, I think probably.

Okay, you're going to take it by military force? No, no, no troops. Well, how are you going to get it, Mr. President? We're just going to get it. And so, you know, all of this distraction that he's great at that we kind of jump at all over the time, I'm trying to have a different strategy going back to tactics. I'm just trying to have a different strategy

and take a step back and, you know, we'll have a quick response to it. But then just, you know, I'm not going to be at a 10 all the time, I have to have degrees of outrage here. We can't just always be at a 10. Just like everything isn't a constitutional crisis. I hear that a lot nowadays. Oh, that's a constitutional crisis. That's a constitutional crisis. Well, if everything is a constitutional crisis, nothing's a constitutional crisis. That's a constitutional crisis. Well, if everything's a constitutional crisis nothing's a constitutional crisis and eventually if Trump does disregard the Supreme Court and we do have a constitutional crisis

It won't mean anything because we've already said everything else is a constitutional crisis. And so look obviously What Trump is saying now is similar to what he said during the campaign which many people found problematic there seemed to be a pullback of that language when he, in his first couple of weeks as president, but now we're back to trying to curry favor with Putin. I actually believe by the way, this is just my belief. I believe that there won't be a deal anytime soon because I think Trump's going to give Putin kind of everything he kind of wants,

and then Putin's gonna say he wants more, and then that's gonna blow the deal up. Let's just talk about the deal real quick, because I want to get back to tactics, because this was where I was going next. I want to listen to Rubio just really quick, and I want to talk about the substance of what they're proposing here.

Let's listen to Marco. The credible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians, geopolitically, on issues of common interest, and frankly, economically, on issues that hopefully will be good for the world and will also improve our relations in the long term between these two important countries. I don't even really get this deal from the deal making standpoint. Even if you took aside morals or the US values or allies and just said, let's cut a good deal with Russia that's good for us.

What is the deal exactly? What is Russia giving up in this deal? We don't need economic partnership with them. They need sanctions relief from us. It's not like we're getting a lot of Russian products here, that they're a huge market for us. I guess if you're a diamond jeweler in New York or like a really high end real estate person, you might need some Russian.

But like other than that, like, what are we getting out of this deal? Like it seems to me like we're giving Ukraine away from nothing. Just like looking at it from just a deal standpoint. Yeah. I mean, look, I like Marco a lot. I'm happy Marco's the secretary of state, especially in comparison to some of the other picks. Yes.

Remember everything. I mean, what did he say yesterday that would have been different from what? I don't know. Corey Lewandowski would have said a secretary of state. What did he say? Different? Let's not ever get to the point that that, that we test that difference, Tim. Just wondering.

I, I would like to have heard what he said different. That's all. Just when you think the line can't go any further, we continue to move it. So let's not, let's not tempt them, please. Your man, Jesse waters. You know, Marco didn't blink during that statement. Right. And so at the end of the day, there were no specifics there.

Right. But I do think there is something happening with this Gaza stuff and this Ukraine stuff, which is Trump wants to prove to the world that he can solve the most difficult foreign policy things. Biden couldn't solve it. No one could solve it. which is Trump wants to prove to the world that he can solve the most difficult foreign policy things. Biden couldn't solve it. No one could solve it. Only he can solve it.

He wants the Ukrainians to give up a lot of these, as he says, raw earth materials. Right. And apparently he's asked for so much and the Ukrainians have said no, or they've said no to how much he wants. Well, by the way said no or they've said no to how much he wants Well, by the way, as soon as they said no to how much he wants notice the pivot of Trump Okay, you won't give me what I want which is these raw earth materials in exchange for our continued investment. No problem I'll pivot and I'll go full, you know direction of Putin won't even invite you to the meeting. I'll get my secretary. I thought America first was about getting us stuff.

We're not getting shit out of this deal. Like Ukraine is giving up everything. We're creating conflict with our allies. We're adding tariffs to our allies. So that's going to cost us more money. What do these deals get for us? I haven't seen anything that there's an America first deal yet to me. Oh, the slogans, you're throwing out the slogan. I'm just trying to judge him on the metrics that he set for himself.

I don't like that. I'm a neocon. I'm not a real America first realist. But what I'm saying is he's failing on his own metrics, unless America first is just Trump first. I do get that. That's maybe that's all this is about Trump. Well, by the way, the Trump administration has even

stopped posting the metrics of the deportation data, because the data, the data is actually below the deportations of Joe Biden at this moment in time. I saw that. Look, this is no different than we're going to fix egg prices on day one. Egg prices are now the highest they've ever been. This is no different than 24 hours. I can solve the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Right?

Well, we're a little beyond that. Inflation. I'll solve inflation. I'll get interest rates down. Inflation is bumping. Inflation rates are stagnant. And look, this is the hyperbole of the campaign that we saw the first time around. And it works, which is why he does it. People buy it. And then we can distract people with, we're buying Greenland, we're buying Gaza, Canada, Panama, right? And, you know, it's like everybody who watches a car accident, you know, and slows

traffic down, everyone's jumping at these distractions or, you know, when all this other stuff's going on. So look, we have to watch the Ukraine thing. It's obviously very concerning the current trajectory coming out of the United States. Ukraine is going to have to give up something. Right? This idea that they're not going to give up. Russia should probably give up something too.

Russia shouldn't just get stuff. That's I guess my main problem. Russia's going to have to retract from some of their positions. There's no question. Oh yeah. No question about that. And it's also the future. What's the future look like for this region?

But obviously we will have major problems with China. And we'll have major problems with our European allies major problems with our European allies. If we just look like we're kowtowing to Putin. In fact, let me give you a real scenario. Trump proposes a deal. And they say no. What's his repercussion? We're gonna not supply the weapons anymore. Okay, fine. He says I'm not I'm not gonna supply the weapons there And Europe says we'll step up Okay, so now not only did Trump not solve the problem now

He's been cut out from the table because Europe decides to move forward Anyway, and there's no deal and now we have a realussia war, which can affect the US economy in dramatic ways. So he's got to be very, in my opinion, careful on how far he goes to where he pushes Europe into having no choice but to continue the war without us. Let's move on to what I really wanted to talk to you about, which is the budget stuff, because they're in a real pickle on this.

And I liked what you tweeted, I forget, or said on an interview. They're like, basically, I'm for a balanced budget amendment. Let's do it. Let's balance the budget this year and call them on their BS because getting good budget is very challenging, just as one microcosm. Last night, Trump said on Sean Hannity that he doesn't want to touch Medicaid. Today he said, I support the House budget, which cuts Medicaid by like $800 billion or something.

So you've got Chip Roy, I've got here, said every Republican needs to actually step up to honor what they've campaigned on when they say they want to balance the budget and reduce spending. So there's Chip Roy, your colleague. Meanwhile, Trump wants extension of the tax cuts, no tax on tips. The math just doesn't math for them. The question is, how did the Democrats deal with that? I'll cherish your view.

Well, there are lots of things going on with this whole situation. First, let's just start with the math. People know this. We've heard mandate. The American people voted for mandate. We have a mandate. Mandate people voted for mandate. We have a mandate mandate Okay, we get it except in the house. They only have a three-vote majority doesn't really sound like much of a mandate very different from

2016 when I think Trump had like a 25 plus vote Majority 2010 or I need you just go back to any mystery. Yeah, exactly Doesn't sound like much of a mandate in the house. So the numbers are a problem. In fact, the numbers right now, they don't even have the three vote majority because you're missing two members from Florida. They have a one vote majority.

But in April, they'll go back to a three vote majority. Okay. So that's the math. Number one. Number two is you have Doge, right? And Doge is doging, right? It's doing way more than they said it was going to do. They said it was going to audit and, you know, present the findings, give it to

Congress. You know, they're cutting things and firing people and do all of that. And they're saying they're saving all of this money. Let's not dispute that. Let's just say what they say. Well, we do have to dispute just the one thing really quick. The New York Times saying that they said that they cut an $8 billion contract, but they got a zero wrong. It was 8 million. It was only eight million. They thought they got a billion, but it was only 8 million. What's a zero? Okay, so we do have to just do that one fact. But

anyway, besides that, let's not just look, there's lots of stuff we can dispute. But let's just go with let's just go with their argument, right? That they have found all this fraud, waste and abuse. And it's $100 billion. That's what they say. Okay found all this fraud, waste and abuse and it's a hundred billion dollars. That's what they say, okay? Okay, well the government is gonna shut down on March 14th. We're gonna run out of money, okay? And we've been doing a CR.

That's how we've been running our government, just by continuing resolution, which is by the way, how you get this problem. The Republicans have done continuing resolutions for the last two years. Mike Johnson's on the path to do another continuing resolution. That's how you get this problem because you continue programs that shouldn't be continued. Right? And that's how you get waste and abuse.

Okay. Now let's also get to the issue that there are 30 to 40 Republicans that will never vote for a clean CR. Never. And even if Trump calls them and whittles that number down, let's say the best case scenario for them is 15. Okay, we whittled it in half. So this is the same thing we've been talking about for the last two years. They have to come to the Democrats in order to get a CR in order to keep government open.

Well, there's just one problem, Tim. Let's go back to the hundred billions of dollars of fraud, the hundred billion, they say, of fraud, waste and abuse. Well, a clean CR would refund all of that stuff. It would refund it, okay? Because you would continue last year's stuff. Well, we can't do that. You can't tell the American people

we have found all this fraud, waste and abuse, and then tell Congress, but refund it all. Okay. Not only can you not do that because it's fiscally ridiculous, it's also a trap for Democrats. Okay. That they think we're going to walk into where they can be like, they want to keep the government open so bad that we're going to put a clean CR. They're going to refund all that fraud, waste and abuse. And then we're going to come out and be like, can you believe the Democrats? They refunded the condoms to Gaza, which wasn't a thing, but that's what they'll say. And so what I've been out there talking ad nauseam on the floor in an interview saying is, Speaker Johnson now has less than a month to pass the 12

individual appropriations bills. That's how you pass a budget. A promise Speaker Johnson made when he became speaker. They had passed seven of them and then stopped. Why? Because they're fighting amongst themselves. Republicans can't agree amongst themselves. So right now we are on a collision course that the government is gonna shut down on March 14th. And Johnson's gonna come forward with a clean CR,

with California wildfire funding, and he thinks we're just going to go for it. I want to be very clear. I don't want to close the government. Okay? I don't think Democrats should have a close the government as a strategy. I don't think we should do that. Republicans did that many times before, but I don't think we should do that.

But I think we should be intellectually honest with the American people. They have told you they have found all this fraud, waste, and abuse. Fine. Then we can't continue it. We must pass a new budget. Or, Elon, you must be transparent. You must send the list of all of this stuff to Congress so we can attach it to a CR, which would defund all of that stuff for an up or down vote. So these are the choices I think Speaker Johnson has. A clean CR is not a choice for me as an individual. Do you think any of your colleagues would be interested in a clean CR with California fires?

That would seem like a ridiculous thing to vote for, for all the reasons that you laid out, in addition to the fact that the Democrats don't actually get anything about that. They're Republicans in California. You didn't get anything about that deal. That would sound to me like the Trump-Ukraine deal. Well, remember, this goes to how they negotiate, which is, well, if you don't take it, we're going to only send the money with strings attached, right? Which is the stuff they were floating out there for a couple couple weeks. Look, I'm a former emergency management director. I disaster

aid is very important. I understand how important it was. But back in December, when they tied disaster aid to raising the debt ceiling, something that had never happened before, right? Democrats did not vote for that. And eventually, they uncoupled it and we got disaster aid two days later. So the disaster aid for California is going to happen. Okay. It has to happen because if they, if they don't send it to California, then what they're doing is they're breaking the system and it's only a matter of time till disaster aid doesn't go to Texas or Florida, right?

And so if they start that game, it's extremely dangerous. That will come. But I think Democrats need to hold Republicans to their position. And I want to get to the debt. Okay, you know, Doge isn't just about efficiency, government efficiency, fixing computers, making things faster. It's not just about, you know, trying to strengthen the workforce. It's also about saving money. Okay? Well, $100 billion. Look, Tim, if that's true, that's a lot of money. We cannot downplay that that to Americans is a lot of money. But in a 36-

It's probably not true, but if it is true. Let's not go down that rabbit hole. Let's just say their math is math-ing, okay? They found $100 billion. Well, in a $36 trillion debt, $100 billion, right, is not a lot of money in that relative speak. It's a lot of money in general.

It is. But not in $36 trillion debt. So how are we going to get at that debt, which is what Doge wants to do? And that's what the Freedom Caucus has been talking about for a long time, is we got to get at that debt. Well, we're going to have to probably have steep cuts in some departments, okay? And we're probably going to have to close loopholes because you're going to have to raise revenue. Trump did that before, by the way, getting rid of mortgage deduction, right? He's done that.

Or maybe not extend the tax cuts on the highest income people. So let's get there, right? Or not extend the tax cuts, right? But what they've proposed at this moment in time, even with the cuts to Medicaid, right? Based on math, they wanna do a $4.5 trillion tax cut. They wanna cut, I think, a trillion and a half dollars. Well, if that math is correct, it looks like we're adding three trillion to the debt. And they voted today, by the way,

since they put out that budget, Elon voted today sending people a $5,000 Doge check, which would be about another trillion. So, you know, so three or four trillion, depending on depending on whether you're listening to Elon or Mike Johnson. So, you know, we got to hold Republicans to their positions. They care about the debt, then we should add no money to the debt. They care about eliminating money from government, then we should hold them to that position. They say they found all this money, a hundred billion Doge found it, then hold them to that position, no clean CR.

We got to hold them to their positions and we got to watch the wedges that exist within the Republican Party themselves. We got to let them go at each other, which is what we saw the last two years. That will happen. And we're going to find out if they're really only fiscal hawks when Democrats are in control. We're going to find out if they really care about the debt. We're going to find out if Thomas Massey and Chip Roy and 10 or 12 others, if they're willing to hold the line on this.

And we're going to find out really if Doge is serious about going after the debt, if they're serious about going after the debt, which is what Elon always talked about. Elon talked about, we're going off the fiscal cliff, we got to cut our spending, right? He's talked about that. Well, if that is serious, okay, and you're tweeting things like balanced budget, which he has tweeted, which is why I'm coming with that resolution, then at the end of the day, they're either not going to be able to extend the tax cuts, right? Or they're going to figure out how to either balance it with some cuts and raising some

revenue, okay? Or they're going to add to the debt. And then this whole conversation about the debt no longer has any merit whatsoever, ever, ever again. And yes, I know someone's probably thinking, well, Jared, Trump added, you know, he added more to the debt in his four years. And I would say yes, but this time around, they've made the debt the issue. They've made it the issue. So since they've made it the issue, we got to hold them to it.

I agree. So do you have any Republicans yet co signing with you on your resolution? On the balanced budget? Yeah, I think I'll get some Freedom Caucus members. You do? Yeah, I think I'll get some Freedom Caucus members. You do? Yeah, but Johnson's not going to pick it up. He's not going to hear it. That's exciting. I think that it's important that they get on the record on this, though. This is where we are completely aligned. I think that maybe they are coming to realize

how big of a pickle they're in. The only way out of this frankly for them at the end of the day is Trump bullying them all to push through something that is absolutely like fiscally irresponsible in the extreme. And maybe that'll happen. And maybe Chip Roy and all those guys will have to swallow their pride. I don't know. But we'll see. They should be forced to make a judgment call on that. There's three ways out of the situation. One is they can make a deal with us, right? That would be bipartisan and bring responsibility. You know, I think there are enough Democrats that hopefully it's a good deal. Yeah, look, I think there are enough Democrats, you know, looking at the fact that

yes, we need to make government more efficient. Yes, we need to figure out how to curtail our spending. I think the American people voted for that. And I think Democrats recognize that, okay? So they could talk to us. Have they done that yet? They have not, they have not done that. Two, the government could shut down. And when I say they could talk to us,

I don't mean Johnson, because he's not in charge, right? I mean the White House, okay? Yeah, Elon. Correct. Elon hasn't come in front of the committees yet, like they've come to meet with you guys, like where can you get a deal? No, none of that. No, none of that.

Okay, so they could talk to us. Number two is they can shut the government down, right? And you know, the government could shut down, I say indefinitely, just because I don't know how long it would take to reopen, the government could shut down indefinitely and they could try to pressure campaign, you know, their way through it. Or three is the fiscal conservatives, to your point, just disregard everything they've ever stood for for the last couple of decades and give in to adding to the debt. These are the three ways out.

I'm excited to see how that turns out. All right, last thing for you, just because I know something you've been speaking out on I try to not ignore when things like this happen. There was a protest that got kind of violent yesterday in Brooklyn, in Borough Park, protesting residents of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. We continue to see this around the country, and I just want to make sure it's not being ignored. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

Yeah, I mean, look, I could do an hour on this. This is something that's been going on now for probably a solid year, right? We saw it on college campuses, we saw it in streets. One thing that people always talk about is that you can be anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic. And I would say, Tim, I think that is possible. I think you can be anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic. And I would say, Tim, I think that is possible. I think you can be anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic. I think it's possible. It's just not happening, right? I mean, it's theoretically possible, okay?

And so they tell us all the time, oh, Jared, don't conflate our criticism of Israel with being anti-Semitic. And I would say, I'm not conflating it. You're the ones who are conflating it. I mean, why are you protesting in front of a synagogue? Why are you beating up Jewish kids because they're just wearing a Jewish star?

You don't know their position on Israel. You don't know if they support Netanyahu. And so to be clear, everything you're seeing in this country on these college campuses and in the streets is anti-Semitic protests. Not every individual person that's there, but the protests, the genesis of these protests are anti-Semitic. They're going to Jewish delis, right? They see an Orthodox guy on the street. They're accosting them. And every Jewish parent around this country, when they saw the stuff going on in college campuses, knew deep down

that if it wasn't a Jewish student that was being surrounded and assaulted and prevented going from class, but it was another minority group, we know it would not have gotten past lunchtime on the first day. Look, there are a lot of Jewish families in my district, Democrat families, that voted for Donald Trump because of this reason. Okay, Donald Trump only lost my district by a point and a half. And I have a big Jewish population in my district. What did you win by? I won by five. This was a big deal within the Jewish community,

which is about 12% of the voting block here in my district. And that's because Trump had tough language. So we're going to have to see now what happens. Trump talked about, obviously, people here on student visas that are going to these pro-Hamas rallies, deporting them. Trump's talked about getting firm on the universities. And look, these universities who didn't enforce their code of conduct, who took months and months and months to figure out

how do we prevent the assaulting of Jewish students on our campuses and totally failed, right? To watch that hearing last year where the university presidents, right, couldn't explain to with an easy question that now has made Elise Stefanik famous. Okay. This is a big problem in this country. It's why I've been fighting against not just my progressive friends who have been silent. Okay, but also the folks on the right who are allowing all this Nazi speech online, you know, because, you know, in the nature of free speech, you can literally see as we have allowed more Nazis on Twitter or on X, you're seeing the number of anti semit

violent anti semitic attacks rise speech and violence are rising at the same time And so we're at historic levels historic levels of Anti-semitism since World War two and the Jewish community is very worried about where all of this is going Yeah, it's Parkland week here the board I started a another pod FY popular should go subscribe with your boy can't Cameron Caskey who went's Parkland week here at the Bullwork. I started another pod, FY pod. People should go subscribe with your boy Cameron Caskey, who went to Parkland. We talked about this issue yesterday, and antisemitism among youth. And it is, in this case, it really is a both side situation. Like if you just look at the numbers, it actually was like, there was a recent poll where people were asked directly, like, do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Jews? Like, it was an extremely straightforward question.

And among the youngest cohort, the highest group was Trump supporters, but not far below that was Democrats. And the numbers were like 20% higher than I have in front of me, but significantly higher than among our age and up. So it's a real thing. No, the alt-right and the far left, it's like one of the few things they agree on. They get there different ways, by the way. The far left gets there by being anti-Israel, wanting the country to be wiped off the map,

and the far right gets there with pro-Nazi talk. Thanks so much, Congressman. And since you were doing it right on Fox, I'm going to leave people with what they used to call it on the Daily Show, a moment of zen, a moment of zen of you giving it back to Jesse Waters. Thanks for coming on the show. Let's all take a listen to that and we'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the Borg Podcast.

Peace. Why do you guys go out there and sing songs and act crazy and look like you're pro waste fraud and abuse. You know every American now thinks the Democrats are defending waste fraud and abuse. Well look what do you want us to do? Storm the Capitol? I mean that's already been done. That's our job. That's our job.

Leave that to us, Moskovitz. Ask of it's no. Me from her window Oh mama, did you tell Sue I'm a million And I may be trading that crypto Give me the gold Give me that fire Give me that gold Give me that fire Hot Crying on the street, there is a very soothing and outside my school.

My teacher took me two months and told me I was high left than Guggenhielb, bro. Don't be afraid to make, to make money, boy. Don't be afraid to make, to make money, boy. Don't be afraid to make, to make money, boy Don't be afraid to make money, boy Don't be afraid to make money, boy Don't be afraid to make money Straight into my hard drive Give me minutes Straight into my hard drive, baby Non-shifter ruler, put it on the table and go

Watch your chatter Clearly, mom's told to kneel with the RV The next morning, he shouts from his door Don't be afraid to make, to make money, boy Don't be afraid to make, to make money, boy Don't be afraid to make, to make money, boy The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katy Cooper with Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason Breu.