The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1022: Stephanie Ruhle: Only Trump Is Happy

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Manufacturing orders are down, stocks are down, and mortgage rates are up. But Trump and his family are wealthier than they've ever been. He's got his Ponzi-like crypto scheme, his meme coin, and a boatload of big money types showing up at Mar-a-Lago trying to curry favors from him for some cold, hard cash. Meanwhile, Trump is play-acting like he has a strong hand, but he's begging China to make a deal. Plus, the administration is defunding science and our world-renowned medical centers to buy crypto. And the Abrego Garcia kidnapping and imprisonment has touched a nerve in surprising ways. Stephanie Ruhle joins Tim Miller. show notes Chuck Grassley getting grilled at town hall over Abrego Garcia WSJ story on Elon's 'legion of babies,' and their mothers (behind firewall) Mediaite summary of WSJ piece Bluesky post on the fake gold medallions in the Oval Office Bloomberg on United Airlines having two profit scenarios because of the trade war (gifted) *The Bulwark Podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp

Hello and welcome to the Bulletin Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Quick scheduling note, we're digging in again on the economy and Wall Street's fuck around and find out moment on this pod today. Tomorrow we're pivoting to legal issues in Ukraine. If you're looking for Fascism Watch and a little politics talk, it's Wednesday. So Sarah JVL and I break that threat assessment down on the Next Level podcast. Go subscribe to that. But on today's show, she's already making me giggle. She's the host of The 11th Hour on MSNBC. She also is a senior business correspondent for NBC News. She was formerly managing director at Deutsche Bank and she's doing I Dream of Jeannie dance

moves right now. It's Stephanie Ruhl. What is up, girl? Is that right? Hey, hey, hey. Yeah, all of those things are right, but today I'm just psyched to be here with you. Mia Wallace, Pulp Fiction or I Dream of Jeannie. What was the dance move there?

Just a little bit of me this morning. Just find and enjoy wherever we can. Steph was... She has the show, as I mentioned, the 11th hour, which is on 11 PM to midnight, which is a struggle for me. It's on central time, but she's doing it on Eastern time. And, uh, and then she was on the today show. What were you doing giving people? Uh, summer ahead, summer travel tips.

And, you know, it's so funny, even in sort of like the most basic safe place that you're talking, people are looking at the tariff situation, they're looking at the international situation and they're worried and they should be. I saw an article right now that 900,000 fewer Canadians came across the border in March, the end of March last year. So maybe for some people that'll mean more hotel rooms open in hot Canadian travel spots like the UP in Michigan, but I don't know if that's great for the locals.

What's happening on a global scale, as soon as you see people just stopping travel, it's just another window into what I think is the biggest problem here, and it's this crisis of confidence and what we've spent decades and decades and decades building our relationship and our trust around the world, right? Globalization, while it was really tough for parts of this country, for parts of our economy, globalization is also why in large part we as a globe have prospered. And the fact that we're seeing bits of it and chunks of it break down, that's the most worrisome thing.

It is. We're going to break it all down. And she's going to be a little punchy, run like four hours of sleep maybe for Steph. So I want to start here, which is how much difference a fiscal quarter makes, because I re listened to this morning to the podcast we did together where you were bucking me up. I was in a dark place. It was, I think like two days after the inauguration, maybe three.

It's funny to listen to it because it's like the environment is so different from now. Like we were mostly talking about like this vibe shift in the business world and how they're getting on board with Trump and they're like, we have our doubts, but at least we can say pussy again and we're going to get our tax cuts and our regulation cuts and our stock number is going to go up. And we're kind of navigating that and why that was and why it happened. And here we are three months later, we have a total reverse vibe shift. They have fucked around. They found out quicker than anybody, maybe in human history. And I'm wondering what you're hearing with your people.

The absurdity about the vibe shift is this. Wall Street, investors core responsibility is to assess risk. That's what you do in finance. You figure out what is the risk ahead and how do I place a bet? How do I make an investment based on that? And what we saw after the inauguration

was this enthusiasm around a vibe that we're gonna get no a vibe that we're going to get no regulation, that we're going to get tax cuts and yeah, you know, DEI and all that nonsense that was strangling our productivity and profitability. We're going to rip through that. Well that's what they made the priority and they ignored the promises and pledges and point of view that Donald Trump has had for decades and decades. And now we're seeing it play out.

The funniest thing I think we're seeing right now is just this longing, this missing of a Steve Mnuchin, a Gary Cohn, a Jared Kushner, who in the first administration held Donald Trump in. And the thing that concerns me so much right now, Tim, I can tell you, I speak to investors here, abroad, business leaders here and abroad, right now, Tim. I can tell you, I speak to investors here, abroad, business leaders here and abroad. Right now, I cannot find one single smart, serious person, voice of influence, even those who like the general idea of Trump's tariffs, not one single person who is on board or happy with the execution and the rollout of what has happened over the last two weeks

Save two groups. There are two people That are okay with it And those are people that are deep in Trump's inner circle who are convincing themselves If they keep French braiding his hair and telling him he's the greatest master super leader ever Then they'll be able to gently push back on him. They're fancying themselves a Gary Cohn, a Steve Mnuchin, a Jared. Are the two people Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessinger?

Those are the two people. Put that over there. And then the other group of people who are business people who are specifically on the take, who are getting some sort of carve outs, whether it because of an exemption exemption whether they own a private prison Whether they're in crypto where they're in a space where they are making so much money Because of what Trump's doing they're willing to ignore all the rest that he's doing and that is when you say oh that when we

People talk about American oligarchy. That's right there So those two categories of people on the inner circle who believe they can convince them otherwise or those who are personally banking so much money, they're just going to build a moat around their castle and say, damn, the rest of us. You know, it's kind of funny is, again, back in January when we were talking with these masters of the universe that were all around him, Sundar was there and Elon and Tim Cook and Zuckerberg and they were all thinking they were going to get theirs and they're all still fine.

But all their industries, there's some shaky stuff happening. I love how you're like the hot industries now, the people that are feeling good are private prisons and crypto. That's a first world economy. That's really what you want to base a first world economy on, imprisoning people and fake money. Yes, 100%. When you think about what, over the weekend, when we thought suddenly Apple and these other

tech businesses are going to get the exemption, when I talk to other business people, immediately they're like, damn, who are our lobbyists? How do we get to Mar-a-Lago? As confusing as Trump's messaging has been, he's had one consistent message to him. I've got my views, but I'm flexible. Come on down to Mar-a-Lago and maybe we can make a deal. And that's what it is, right?

We even have talked about this before. The $5 million one-on-one meeting you can have with him, the one-on-one candlelight dinner you can go to at Mar-a-Lago, and each of those people in the tech universe are vying to stay closer and closer to him. People have said, why does Jeff Bezos even want to own the Washington Post? He's not interested in it. Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post is the most valuable thing he can do to stay close to Trump, because as much as Trump likes lining his pockets with money, which tons of people are willing to do for him,

he cares so, so much about the press. He cares so, so much about what the Washington Post has to say about him. And Jeff Bezos having any ability or an outsize ability to influence that media outlet, that's a huge value to Trump. And we see Trump is about what is in it. How does this advantage him?

And that's how he makes decisions. That is a hundred percent true about Trump. The thing that is also true about Trump though, is that you can't trust any of the deals. Right? I mean, like Zuckerberg, for example, prime example, I think Thaddeus getting in on the inside. And he put Dana White on his board. They're hanging out at MMA together.

He's in the front row. He's ahead of Marco and the inauguration seating chart and like again three months later JD Vance is like and now we're still into the you know, anti-trust stuff and you thought you got rid of Lina Khan but we're gonna start looking into this stuff. All that's moving forward. And so again, I just wonder these guys, like- These guys, you know what though, Tim? Shame on them. Totally. Especially Wall Street guys.

They knew him. So when we've had to watch Howard Lutnick say, let Trump be the business guy that he is, art of the deal. Yeah, that's what he's doing. And any person who works at any investment bank in New York knows exactly the business guy that he was, right? So he can trust. When he was in business, Jimmy Morgan didn't do business with him. Goldman Sachs didn't do business with him.

Morgan Stanley didn't. My bank, Deutsche Bank, compared to those banks is like the dog track of banks. They were willing to do business with him and find a contractor, find a counterparty. He never stood up to his deals. Never. I remember years ago talking to a hedge fund manager who he did some kind of deal with Trump. I don't remember what it was.

And the day after the deal closed, I remember telling him the story. Trump said to, let's say this guy was making 50 million and Trump was making 10. Trump said, can we reverse those numbers for the New York post? And the guy's like, what? All Trump cared about was the headline. And the other guy was like, uh, yeah, as long as I'm getting the money, as long as you're getting diluted in most of the companies that Trump ran at the end of the day, he was diluted down to only owning 2% and having his name on the door, but he

didn't actually own any of them. It was all about bluster and show. And so now here you have a person, the leader of the free world, negotiating these deals. Just yesterday he said, we want China to make a deal with us. If you're the person with the strong hand, why are you begging the other one to come to the table? And this is what has people so worried. Can they trust what he's saying? For Wall Street, you can actually make a ton of money in volatile markets, right? You can buy and sell no sweat. In a recession, you can bet against the market. But Tim, if you ran any sort of business, how on earth would you plan? Today, United Airlines put forward guidance to

separate lanes. Here's what guidance would look like if we face the tariffs. Here's what it would look like if we won't. Because under what Trump is doing, we actually have a strong stable economy. It's why things have moved so much because they're like, if only he would just get back in the ring, we could be okay. But there's no sign of him doing that. Do you remember the differences in the United thing? Because I think that's another thing that people who do not like watch the finance news, it hasn't sunk in. Like we're coming up on earnings, right?

And so like a lot of big businesses are going to have to do something like that, right? And I think that the like the outlook is going to get really kind of dire here in the next month. Companies are either pulling guidance entirely because they don't know what's ahead or now we're seeing like United, they're giving two outlooks. But think about the last week. Jamie Dimon said, you know, we got a rocky road ahead. Larry Fink said we may already be in a recession.

Goldman has adjusted their GDP outlook to basically zero for 2025. And all of that falls squarely on Donald Trump. And something I would connect this to, you talk about young voters all the time. Think about all the support Donald Trump had, especially from young men. We've seen that support plummet. And you know why? Because yeah, they wanted to end wokeness and they wanted to be the men that they were again until they realized, oh no, the most important thing is the economy.

And suddenly with rates where they are, if I need almost 500 grand for my first home, I don't have money like that. If suddenly all the businesses I want to work at, the graduate degree I want to get, the research job I want to get is gone, suddenly they don't care so much about Trump ending wokeness, half of which wasn't even true, because you're actually seeing our concrete economy, our place in the world as a superpower, start to be in question. Yeah, it's funny you say that right, young man, because I was looking at a, Paul, this kind of just clicked as you said that yesterday for the Gen Z show, FY pod, everybody go check that out. And it was like the 18 to 21 year old

boys are still solid. You know, and like the 22 to 28 year old boys, you've seen the number plummet right since January. And I was kind of trying to think about like why that is and the economy is maybe not the entire element of it. But it is a big part of it. And part of it is like what is trendy in this, like, you know, they do the kind of barstool day trading stuff and the crypto stuff and they expected like big returns, right, to happen. They bought the con, let's just be honest, of Trump and like thought it was all going to hit. Because the idea was no rules, let's let it rip.

Right. But we're getting the opposite because tariffs, especially in the way that he's rolling them out are the most restrictive rules. And when you've got a White House that does not have a unified message, I mean, let's just be honest. You've got Scott Besant saying something different from Howard Lutnick. You've got Trump saying on Sunday, right, whenever he was like, couldn't wait to go by tech stocks.

I'm like, oh my goodness, the exemption parade is coming. Howard Lutnick goes on television and says, oh, those tech exemptions, they're probably going to only last a month. When that happened, my phone was ringing off the hook from guys like, he's, Lutnick's going to get fired, right? He's off the rails. He's not on message. And then two hours later, Trump's like, nobody's off the hook.

And so this has people with their heads just spinning, like pick a lane, bro, and go with it. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Look, I'm not shy about talking about therapy. I love therapy. Who doesn't need a little therapy? Lots happening out there in the world. And it's important to get your mental health right.

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So I will say, I don't have those conversations by design. Right, if I'm speaking to sources, I wanna learn everything I can. And me saying, well, didn't you learn your lesson is a waste of time. Something that I've actually heard in the last two days was something I hadn't thought about, but I'm hearing more and more guys talk about, is Trump's leaning toward authoritarianism. A huge

investor called me just yesterday just based on these rumors that the White House has denied about them potentially having a military parade. You know, if we were to have a military parade and in honor of our president, if that were to happen, that should rock us to our core because that's what Kim Jong-un does. That's what we see in dictatorships. Pair that with ignoring a Supreme Court ruling. Lots of folks out there would say, oh my goodness, just get rid of those illegal immigrants. They're all criminals. If we make a few mistakes, so be it. I'm glad with what

Trump is doing. There's a group of people who say that, but there is a group of surprising people in the investor class who are paying super close attention to this Maryland man who has been detained, who's in an El Salvador prison, and the reason they're so concerned about it is because Trump is openly and brazenly ignoring a Supreme Court ruling. And one of the main reasons that people invest in America and believe in America, a core tenant of American exceptionalism, is that we follow the rule of law. We have three separate but equal branches of government. Congress does their job. We follow the rule of law. We have three separate but equal branches of government.

Congress does their job. We follow the rule of law. We invest in science. We back our universities. When we don't do that, that breaks down the foundation of American exceptionalism. So it was interesting to me, calls that I was surprised to get from investors who were so focused on this idea, could we have a military parade? And is Trump going to continue to ignore a Supreme Court ruling and hide behind this sort of, well, I'd bring them home if it wasn't for the president of El Salvador.

Explain to me on one hand, you're the strongest of the strong men, right? Who thinks you rule the world, but now you're gonna hide behind the president of El Salvador? No one believes that. And it's interesting to me that that has so many in the investor community concerned. That is, it's interesting to me too. My dad mentioned, who's in the investor community,

mentioned to me the Rego Garcia thing last night too. And he's just like, why not just bring it back? Like what is the deal? You know, have just not, just being aware of like Why not just bring it back? What is the deal? Just being aware of what the potential systemic risk is of all this. This just feels like over one guy, a not worthwhile fight to these rational finance type people. It is interesting because there was this poll yesterday that came out about some of the immigration stuff.

If you actually look at the details on it, Trump is still barely over water, depends on what Paul you look at, on his overall immigration policy. But deport undocumented immigrants who have not broken laws in the US except for immigration laws. I would have thought that was maybe a positive.

I don't, not having looked at it, it's minus 18. Like a significant majority of Americans don't think we should deport people who have not committed other crimes besides crossing the border. Because a significant portion of Americans understand the contributions these immigrants make to our country. Right? Let's go to the state of Florida. Donald Trump's adopted home state.

So we're going to mass deport the people who pick our fruits and vegetables. Okay. The people responsible for the produce at your grocery store and in your kitchen. And what are we doing to counter that? Well, we're lowering the regulations in Florida. So children to the age of 14 can now work I think until 9 p.m. at night. Okay? So again we're talking about denting American exceptionalism. We're gonna remove immigrants who came here for a better life, who are willing to take those low-wage intensely laborious jobs. So what?

Our kids can do those jobs? And this goes right back to, if Donald Trump wanted to say- D-tasselin is back, baby. We're gonna be, that's from Iowa people. If Donald Trump wanted to say China is a bad actor in terms of trade, and they are, and if he wanted to get together with our allies,

which we wanted to do at the end of the Obama administration with the Trans-Pacific Partnership and take them on, have at it. Or if you wanted to say, we're really going to tariff them, but this idea that Howard Lutnick had pushed and we're going to start making iPhones here, we don't want that for our kids. We want to invest in education. We want to improve education so our kids can have higher skill jobs, so they're designing the next iPhone, so they're designing the next car, not so they're can have higher skill jobs. So they're designing the next iPhone.

So they're designing the next car. Not so they're assembling every piece of it. It just makes absolutely no sense. Well, I mean, there's some scuttles. Carve out farm workers and then bail out the farmers. So it's just a great policy, a great coherent policy. So we're going to bail out the farmers. We know when Donald Trump first announced the tariffs and wasn't mentioning bailing

out any farmers, he said, this is going to be great for farmers, have fun guys, never realizing that we as a country produce more food than we could ever consume. They need to export. So now we're going to write these giant checks to farmers because we want to save the American farmer. Aren't we supposed to care about debt and deficits? Aren't we supposed to care about government spending? So on the left hand, you have Doge taking a rhinestone bedazzled chainsaw to vital parts

of the government. And now on the other side, we have to write a check to American farmers to make sure they can stay in business because of the tariffs we've imposed. The problem is there's no logical strategy behind any of this. Did you know Fast-Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the US with thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers? They have all the plants your yard needs like fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs and so much more.

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Terms and conditions may apply. I want to do a couple of other economic things with you just on some of the details. Cause you mentioned this in passing, but I think it's worth kind of digging it on. Right now, 30 year mortgages cost seven and a half percent again think it's worth kind of digging it on. Right now, 30-year mortgages cost 7.5% again. It's pretty high. I bet like probably 95% of the listeners here have a lower mortgage rate than that. So getting a new house or refinancing is going to be very hard. Pressure on PAL is coming.

But like there's a lot of signs that that might not even work for the longer term mortgages. So I just want to hear your take on that. So here's why this matters. And people like to gaze off when you talk about bonds. But I'm just going to lay it out just for a second. Normally when the stock market goes down, people rush to bonds. And we say, what are bonds? That's US treasuries.

And a few weeks ago, early tariff talk, when the stock market started to go down, we saw the likes of Scott Bessett and others say, well, this is good, because we are going to see rates go down, and this will help us because we have a huge amount of government debt that is coming due, $6 trillion in June that has to get refinanced. So they had this idea, well, the stock market will go down and we are going to see people rush to buy treasuries. People rush to buy treasuries, that means the price goes up and the yield goes down. What's happening in my opinion is the scariest thing.

Normally stocks go down and you see people rush to buy treasuries, they're not. They're not rushing to buy treasuries because they're not trusting the US dollar. They're not trusting the US. Exactly. They're going for the gold, not Olympic style. They're going for the gold because it's the only trusted asset. So for people who aren't even invested in the markets, you're hazing over, you're right. When those rates go up, that means your credit card is going to cost more to pay, your mortgage, any sort of loan.

So tariffs are going to make everything cost more. And now what it costs you to borrow is going up as well. And that's a perfect storm. And the question will be, will Jay Powell and the Fed have to step in and buy bonds? Which is crazy that they should do that when the economy is so strong. Oh, so that's the solution because lowering the rate wouldn't actually help the 30-year, but buying bonds might. No, it's will the Fed come in and start buying up treasuries because as long as we're talking

trade war, and I promise I won't get that nerdy, one of the problems is some of the largest holders, the people who own the most treasuries are other countries. China is one of the biggest holders of US treasuries and if they decide to dump them or not show up for our next treasury auction, that's what a nasty trade war looks like and they have the ability to do that. They've been quietly buying up and publicly buying up US treasuries for years and years and years and they've got us by the bond balls. Another area that I wanted to focus on is the manufacturing.

Your man, Joe Weisenthal, posted this yesterday. It was a chart that had the new orders for the New York Fed regional manufacturers, and they hit the lowest level in the history of the survey. So investment in manufacturing is way down. That seems to be the opposite of what the stated goal was of the program, but I don't know. What do you make of it? In part because it's ignoring the fact that even if you are in manufacturing, we have

a global supply chain. Okay? So take autos for a second. It's not that we don't build cars here. We do. We efficiently build cars here. Parts of it we build here, parts of it we build in Mexico, some parts of it we build in Canada, or even if you wanted to build a whole new plant, the pieces you need, the parts you need, come from abroad. So this

notion of this manufacturing renaissance that's coming back was completely ill-conceived because there was no strategic planning around it. And that's why you're seeing, yes, even manufacturing get hurt. So I guess the point I was trying to make here is we have interest rates for everybody way up. Inflation is persistent, manufacturing down, stocks down, crypto down. Like, who is even, have they done anything to help anybody? Right?

Like that's like the craziest thing about all of this. Like not only has it been chaos, not only has there been some authoritarian, light authoritarianism, but they're not even keeping the trains running on time. They're not even serving their own people. Like who's happy. Well, I would say Donald Trump is most definitely happy. The Trump family is happy. Donald Trump is wealthier than he's ever been.

When he was actually a businessman in real estate, he inherited a huge New York real estate portfolio where he lost an enormous amount of money. But finally, as president of the United States in 2025, he and his family are wealthier beyond their wildest dreams. And where has he made money? In businesses that many people believe are Ponzi-like. Crypto in his massive crypto exchange and Truth Social, which is a social media platform that doesn't actually make any significant money, but trades at a huge, huge multiple.

Because whether it's Trump's meme coin or his crypto exchange or truth social, the greatest way you can get something from Trump and curry a favor is to give him money. If you ask me what business has been spending the most amount of time down at Mar-a-Lago, it's crypto guys. Right? Right? You're seeing Justin Sun who's being investigated by the government and his company. This is the guy who bought a piece of art.

It was a banana duct tape for six and a half million dollars. He put $75 million into Trump's business and that investigation into him, poof, it went away. Last week, the Department of Justice announced they are going to end prosecuting and investigating crypto as an industry. They are only going to look at it if the crypto is being spent on terrorism or trafficking or real real bad crimes. So Donald Trump himself is making a killing, right? While everybody was spinning panicked over what to do with tariffs, he was at Mar-a-Lago for

the live golf tournament making an enormous amount of money. And so I would compare where we are to Russia in the 1990s as they were breaking down their government and their economy to the studs and privatizing it. That's where we're headed. Yeah. You hit all of my crypto points. I'm obsessed with the crypto stuff. I'm like the guy from Always Sunny in Philadelphia with the yarn on the

wall when it comes to Justin Sun and all these guys. But the only one you didn't mention that I wanted to just bring up really quick was this, the Binance story. These guys, their billionaire CEO, Zhao, I'm not even going to try to pronounce his first name, is also seeking a pardon. He had a guilty plea on anti-money laundering laws. The DOJ is like, we're not going to investigate any of this stuff. Binance is now going in and saying, also, could you not investigate money laundering? And in exchange, they're talking with the Trump family about a, like, I guess taking

a stake in Binance. This is a Wall Street Journal story from earlier in the week. And that is wild. How is that real? That makes me think about Eric Trump, who has repeatedly said, I'm a private businessman. I have nothing to do with the government. What are you kidding me? This is a person who just weeks ago said, you know, buy crypto, it looks cheap when

there was a dip. And then just a couple days later, the White House announces, oh, we may be putting together a crypto reserve. And when I talked to some of the biggest names in finance, something that is just making their heads spin, just think about this. The government is defunding science to buy crypto, right? If that doesn't warn you, if that doesn't concern you and put you in a panic, it should. And this is a business that has no transparency. I remember Eric Trump saying, you know, we learned about crypto We got involved in crypto after January 6 when no one would do business with us

Red flag if no one will do business with you But crypto has its arms open wide and ready to embrace you then there's something up with crypto And I actually know some really smart sophisticated crypto investors who hate What Trump is doing in the crypto space because even though in the short term it's great for them, it delegitimizes it because if you believe in the legitimacy of crypto, what he's doing right now just makes it look like crimes that they've legalized.

Science for crypto trade, I brought to mind one of my favorite quotes that I have bookmarked for the Trump era, which is Marc Andreessen. One of these guys, really smart guy, invented the web browser. I very well read that sometimes smart people can be very unsavvy. He got fully in with Trump and he put this, I think this was a day or two after the election, America is an economic coiled spring. We should be growing at least 4% annually and ideally 6.8% growth has been brutally

suppressed since before I was born. So I hear these guys that thought Trump was going to be this springboard for them to like massive economic prosperity. And what they're doing is slashing all the things that made America, you know, economically unique and powerful and great and investing in scams. And they've turned us into the mattress on the floor of a crack house in three months. It's unbelievable. That spring, the Statue of Liberty is now wrapped and tangled into that spring. And that goes right back to what he's doing with Harvard. Donald Trump and Stephen Miller love this, this fight with Harvard because they want to present this as their war against sort of liberalism and universities

sort of, but, but where it's so misguided and where the American people should understand it, this is not about anti-Semitism and just the notion that like they are taking money from the likes of Harvard and they want you to close your eyes and think that you know there's a professor somewhere smoking a pipe who's panicked that they're going to lose their tenure and they're not going to be able to go on a reading tour this summer. No. If you looked at the humanities budget at Harvard or Yale or any of these schools, it's

a rounding error. When Donald Trump pulls two billion dollars from Harvard and threatens their tax-exempt status, the only thing I want you to think about is Harvard's medical research. The work that they do for decades and decades, I'm gonna get choked up thinking about it, and the millions of lives that it saves, right? Our medical research, the kind of research that the government funds, is the research that private industry won't because there's not going to be a vaccine right away and they can't turn it around and make money off of it. But we've got people that are plagued with terminal diseases and illnesses that you've got our best-in-class world-renowned medical centers researching and studying scientists who devote their lives to it who could work in private industry but

they don't and and so this idea that we're pulling from Harvard it's such an attack on us and and so much misinformation that people don't understand that like these aren't people at the Harvard club or people suddenly at Skull and Bones at Yale, they'll be SOL. No, these are career researchers who are trying to save lives and they're going to be missing out. And by them missing out, we're going to miss out. Yeah. I'm glad you bring it up because I always think in this situation about my friend is a kid that has this very rare disease.

So like three people have a year. It's like three kids have it a year. So it's like the pharma companies are not investing in finding a solution to something like that, you know, because it's just, there's no scale, right? There's not, there's no business interests in it there, you know, and, and really even the big charitable foundations aren't, right? Because they want money from people that, you know what I mean? And so, like, this is the only way to do it.

Yeah, they want wins. I get it. Or charitable foundations are going to give money where they're scaled, where there's lots and lots of people suffering. But for your friend and his or her daughter or son, that's who I fear for. friend and his or her daughter or son, that's who I fear for. Yeah. I was going to bring it to a silly topic next, but I can't do it. So we'll do one more. I'm sorry for that. Okay.

One more. We'll do a transition to the silly topic. I just wanted, I was watching your show last night, so I wanted to, uh, it was tax day yesterday. You can't, I'll tell you on a silly topic. Every time I keep talking about Harvard and their endowment, I have guests, I had a guest last night who said, well endowed. And then of course, like I fell off my chair because then I can't, I'll tell you on a silly topic, every time I keep talking about Harvard and their endowment, I have guests, I had a guest last night who said well endowed. And then of course I fell off my chair because then I can't pay attention anymore. And I'm like,

and I'm like, why? Why? Like, didn't you know I was the host? Couldn't you just say big endowment? Like, why'd you have to say well endowed? Now I'm lost the whole segment. Gurthie endowment. Okay, fine. We're going to silly talk. We'll end with the taxes. Speaking of not well endowed, the shadow president, I don't know if you saw the Wall Street Journal story about Elon Musk and how he wants to have a legion of children. I would recommend people read the whole story, but a couple of highlights. Multiple sources believe the number of children he has is much higher than 14. He has been DMing random ladies on X asking to use their wombs for his children, including

one on the record source. He's tried to create a Mormon polyamorous compound in Austin, but only one of the baby mommas lives there so far. He's cutting alimony to the moms not participating. He cut Twitter engagement to one of the women that wouldn't let him impregnate them. Okay. Here's my take. My take on Elon Musk and remember I mean his father has many many many many children I think his last two are with

his stepdaughter. When I hear about Elon Musk when I read about Elon Musk when I watch him in his his paternity spats on Twitter with his most recent mother of his child you know what I actually think his most recent mother of his child. You know what I actually think about? Democrats. And here's why. Does they're fertile? If Democrats cannot successfully peel any family values voters.

Okay. And I thought of this because a couple of weeks ago, I was speaking to Art Cullen from Iowa and I was asking, what would it take for Iowa to not be a deep red state? And he said nothing. Democrats have lost us forever. You know, we're a family value state, blah, blah, blah. And I've been thinking, you've got a current president who has been married four times, who blah, blah, blah.

We know how he talks about women, all of that. We have a shadow president with at least 13 children and the story that you just laid out cites on a legion of children by many, many, many women. How is it that Democrats can't take this reality and make some sort of inroads with family values voters when the idea of family is inclusion, is to love thy neighbor, is to accept people for exactly who they are and take them in and love them forever. If Democrats cannot successfully peel any portion of family values voters away from a Donald Trump and a shadow Elon Musk and his legion of offspring, then I don't know

what to tell you, Democrats. You need some new strategy. What do you think about that? Yeah. I do think that the Democrats should make a more concerted effort, and I've talked about this before, like, of just trying to peel off some minor percentage of Christian evangelical daily church going or weekly church going voters, just in the same way, like almost in a shameless way, in the same way that Trump did with black voters, right? Because my initial reaction from people, which I think

is right, and then I'm kind of overdue to have Russell Moore back on the pod, we kind of talked about this, is like, man, there's actually some problems in the church. And you know, I was just looking at this tweet from this Republican congressman Riley Moore, who's like doing this snuff selfie from the El Salvador prison. That's the least Christian thing you could possibly do, some Christian, but obviously it has an appeal among these voters. And so some Democrats, when they hear your rant, will say, this is broken, the church is broken, these people aren't gettable, and there's some deep fundamental sickness that's going to take a generation to change. And there may be some truth to that.

You could peel off some. That's what I mean, the black voters. So that's why to me it's more analogous to the black voters. Did Trump win 50% of black voters? No. But did he increase by 8% by doing some gimmicks and some lies, let's be honest. But actually trying by trying, by trying, he peeled off some black voters. It was meaningful and Democrats could learn from that. They could just try.

Lots of people were offended and aghast when Trump, first time, I believe went to a black church in Chicago or Michigan and said, vote for me. What do you have to lose? Look at your situation. Right. And people were offended, but there were some people who said like, yeah, my situation isn't getting any better. Democrats can do the same thing with family values voters. They can do the same thing. Donald Trump, look how well he's done with Latino voters. Given what's happening in terms of illegal deportations, can't Democrats take that one on as well? Not everybody, but how about some? Pete Yeah, I agree. I think that there's a way to peel off some, but it's going to take a really concerted effort to do it. And it's recognizing that you're, you know, it's still

in the aggregate of losing battle. Like you're probably not going to win the Iowa governor race next time. Could you win two of the congressional districts? Maybe. Could you win one? Definitely. You know what I mean? Well, it's worth trying. Yeah, it's worth trying. It was interesting. I'll put it in the show notes. People should watch it. It's kind of hard to hear. I was thinking about playing a clip from it on the show, but since you brought it up, there is a Grassley Town Hall yesterday. Oh my God. I'm so glad you brought this up. Did you see this? Yeah.

I'm so glad you brought this up. Where he is getting really railed. And to be fair, it's hard to know based on a video. Maybe it's the 15 libs in the town that are in the thing that are asking these questions, but they're framing the questions in the right way. Their questions too grassly are very like, what happened to love your neighbor? What happened to feed and home, clothe the stranger? What happened to the Declaration of Independence? Right? Like the questions to him were framed from a very kind of traditionalist American Christian perspective, rather than, you know, like what you might imagine, like

somebody from Brooklyn shouting at him, you know? When I first saw that, I had to listen to it three times. First of all, because I give Chuck Grassley credit for being a 91-year-old who actually is standing up and having a town hall, but I was like, hold on a minute. This is the question he's being asked at an Iowa town hall? I was surprised by it, but it is also a reminder that Iowa has a huge immigrant population because of all the meat processing plants. Yes, no. And this was an issue with Nunes, remember, because Nunes had that farm up in

Northwest Iowa that had undocumented immigrant workers. And then there was that whole community, I'm blanking on the name of that town in Northwest Iowa, that just had a lot of immigrants because they needed it for the farm work. And they went to church and they're just an ingrained part of the community. Storm Lake has a huge amount of immigrants. And I remember Art Cullen saying to me once, and I was like, why? And he said, because if the last place you were living was a Somalian refugee camp, then you don't mind coming here and sweeping pig blood and cutting the hind off a pig every day. Well, a lot of you come from rural.

Like back when I was in Oakland, I did this volunteer thing for asylees coming from Guatemala. Most of them came from rural Guatemala, right? Because it was like that's where they were fleeing. Like there was no money and like the gangs that were doing the drug trade were kind of taking over these communities. They're farm workers. Yeah, right. And so it makes sense that, and the rural, yeah, the farm. Right. And so it makes sense that they would go to a farm part of America, right? So just the idea that those are ungettable voters, I don't believe that's true.

I agree. Not ungettable. Winning the whole state of Iowa is a long, but you never know. You got to be on the field to win, I guess, is the first piece of evidence for it. Let Donald Trump be every person with political aspirations model. Did anyone on planet earth think he was going to be president once, actually twice? No. Nobody.

And so like this idea, it's not worth it. Don't try. Every vote counts. Try. I agree with that. All right. Let's get back to tax day and just close on that because I was interested in your conversation about it last night.

And you know, everybody's got it on their mind right now listening to this, having been stressed doing their, you know, tax filling out their PDFs last night. But I was interested in your conversation because like the gutting of the IRS that Doge has done. Is crazy. Because if we're talking about, we're sitting here saying, we're going to bring money in this country through tariffs. We're going to get rid of all these workers. That's how we're going to improve things.

No, if we just collected our taxes, right, we leave so much money on the floor. And the way we won't do that is if we have employed tax professionals. But instead, we're gutting the IRS. We're having thousands of people opt in for the, you know, the layoffs, the early retirement, which is crazy because if people aren't working at the IRS, they're not going to collect their taxes. And the people they're not going to collect their taxes from are from the wealthiest people, you know, who aren't just making a regular paycheck. You know, the people who can put trusts here, there, and everywhere, they can avoid paying taxes. And if you really wanted to improve the IRS or improve our tax system, what I would love to see is the great minds of Doge, those great tech leaders that surrounded Donald Trump at the

inauguration. I would love for them to come into the government, volunteer their brain power and their effort, and improve our system. The computer system that the IRS works on is called COBOL. It is so old that when there are kinks and problems with it, there aren't even humans alive who know that system to fix it. So you've got the IRS, the most important agency in the government that brings in the tax dollars that we need to service this country working with one hand tied behind their back and now 20 plus percent of them are potentially out the door. This to me is such a grave mistake and

oversight and it shows that is the government, is this administration really looking to tighten up the screws and bring things in? That's not the case mistake and oversight and it shows that is the government, is this administration really looking to tighten up the screws and bring things in? That's not the case given how they're treating the IRS right now. Yeah. It's funny how out of vogue that is coming like 20, like the Obama administration, that's was something they tried to do and this didn't really take that well. It's like bringing these tech, like in technocratic folks to update the way the government does things and it's just like that isn't even in the discussion with all these guys.

Like you have all these Silicon Valley guys coming in. I know it's just ridiculous. That's what's so absurd with like what we now have in this bro-wokeness of like Trump wins and it's like, electric cars, forget them. Big coal, bring it on back. Like who is big coal going to help? Like you want to help West Virginia? Let's bring industry there.

Let's bring new jobs there. Nobody should be looking to bring back the Black Long. All right. I lied. I have one last topic because it's too funny not to mention. I was on Blue Sky. Mark Cuban bullied me into getting on Blue Sky. And here we go.

I got my payoff. This guy, John Keegan. Have you noticed those ornate gold medallions that are now up in the Oval Office? They're kind of the gaudy Trump Tower type things? You know, I've also noticed some members in the administration are wearing these gold buttons that are Trump's face. That's classy. Well, John Keegan found those medallions on Alibaba. They're high-density home decoration polyurethane applique ornament PU foam veneer accessories from a seller in Guangzhou.

So it's lucky they got them in before the tariffs. Listen, that's the forever reminder that every product Donald Trump has ever made has been produced overseas. And this idea, right, If you and I wanted to end this podcast and go walk through the garment district of New York or take a deep look at clothing and home design and furniture manufacturing in the United States, we have some furniture manufacturing, but apparel, home decor, we don't do that here.

And so it's absurd. And the thing is, Trump knows that. His family's know that. Go to any of his homes Go to Mar-a-Lago like if people wanted if they truly wanted to buy from made in the USA We would be there but our president along with the American people made a decision years ago That wasn't a priority for us And that's why the gold medallions in the White House and probably the ones in yours are made overseas

Thanks to the maker of in Guangzhou though for hey go on fancying up our White House and probably the ones in yours are made overseas. Thanks to the maker in Guangzhou though for fancying up our White House. Steph Rule, thank you for your passion. Thanks for coming back on. Thanks for having me. We'll do it again soon. I'll see you on the 11th hour. I don't know, next week or in a week or two. Welcome back from Coachella.

Oh, ugh, it's so great. I'm finally at 100. I had some comments from people that said I was not looking that good the last two days. And you know, people, I don't need that. All right. I, I, you think I don't know that I was looking a little worn out, but I was here. I was grinding. I was podcasting. And that's just part of the deal. When people rail on what I look like, especially like when I go on podcasts, what does she look like? And I'm like, you know what? I was unaware that this was,

that you and I were here competing for Mr. And Miss Universe. But I saw you getting your party on at Coachella. And I just thought, I mean, I just thought it was amazing. Who is your favorite performer? I'm guessing Gaga. Gaga is obviously my favorite of the of the sub performers that maybe people haven't heard of Amare was my favorite. And she is like a gonin R&&B like a little EDM kind of a little rock it's just it's a it's it's very it's very very good I'll play some Amare on the way out for everybody. Well there you go. Well welcome home. Alright thank you Steph we'll see you soon. Thanks for having me. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Peace. See ya. Bye. Bye! We could just fake it This party is basic Friends on the waitlist

Whatever you feel, once you're ready Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, Purple like the colors of the moon Left you in my garden in the nude Pick you take a bite into the fruit Pussy like Bermuda afternoons And I'll waste this but I'm drowning Left me how you found me Fuck my body cold Okay ready? Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch Don't even think about it Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch