The Bulwark Podcast - Sam Stein and Adrian Carrasquillo: We Are in a Simulation

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Emotionally-stunted video game boys, who are also government contractors and/or quasi government officials, are fighting on Twitter, a POTUS who went all the way to SCOTUS to get immunity for presidents now would like the last president investigated, and America's premiere scientific research institution, the NIH, can't tell us about the bird flu—a widespread and potentially deadly virus that could mutate into a human pandemic. Meanwhile, the assault on immigration has stepped up, with raids now permitted at churches and schools. And DHS is targeting anyone who can be deported, regardless of whether or not they're a security threat.  Adrian Carrasquillo and Sam Stein join Tim Miller. show notes https://x.com/arelisrhdz/status/1881397640849678362

Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Today we have a two part episode that wades into the splash radius from Monday's executive order Bukanki covering DEI, NIH, hiring freezes and immigration. And first up, the right man for that job. It's managing editor at the Bullwork. You may have seen our two-man comedy routine on YouTube and we're bringing it to the audio podcast it's my newish work husband Sam Stein how you doing Sam? Oh man wow I didn't realize we had hit that point in our relationship. We hit it yesterday when we were bickering it was not a compliment to call you my work husband.

It means that there's a love and bicker relationship that we are building. I feel touched. Good. And honored to be in a second time. Mike Johnson. Not physically touched, emotionally touched. Well, we have a lot of pressure today because I'm here at 30 Rock in the Hotel California that I can never leave since I can't go home to snowy New Orleans until they figure out how to de-ice the runway.

We have Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley sitting over my shoulder here. And so they will be keeping an eye out for us. That's like us. They're like us. Yeah. Are you Bryant or Jane? I guess I've got to be Jane. Yeah, clearly. That's unfortunate. You've got the pearls. I love Jane though. She was kind of an icon.

All right. Of course. Well, let's get to business. We're gonna start, unfortunately, with Donald Trump. I gave all of you listeners a 72-hour respite from his voice, but the respite is over. Here he is last night with Sean Hannity on what he thought about the January 6th pardons.

Some of those people were the police, true, but they were very minor incidents, okay? You know, they get built up by that couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time. Nobody watches them. They were very minor incidents. I mean, my favorite part of that was Sean Hannity got mad that he was watching CNN. Yeah, so say Hannity, nobody watches then. Very minor injuries.

You know, it's like too trite at this point to do the, like imagine if Barack Obama talked about the very minor injuries that cops suffered at the hands of a, you know, I don't know, violent mob of Black Panthers or something. But anyway. The new Black Panther Party? That's an old one, yeah. Will there be any punishment for that? This is just whatever at this point.

To me, it's, it's, we're at this point where it's like, I'm not like surprised. He said this stuff, you know, I don't, I even think he probably believes some of it. He's like convinced himself of it. Of course, these are not minor injuries. I mean, officers, you know, committed suicide after what happened. Uh, it was an incredible trauma, physical and emotional. We talked to one who was talking about seven straight hours of just being bombarded, uh, worse than anything he had dealt with when he was serving overseas.

And it's like to trivialize that of course is outrageous, but then at the same time, it's just, that's Trump, right? Like it's all self-serving. It's all designed to rewrite history. You know, they say to the Victor go the spoils and you get to write the history. And I think that's what he's doing here. And Hanny's kind of funny. Hanny's I think Hanny's more interesting here, but not because he was mocking CNN's audience, but, uh, there's another part where they were talking about, um,

I think Trump was like, you know, they were just there to protest the vote and they have the right to protest the vote. And Hannity kind of sheepishly realizes that this is ridiculous to say something like that. He's like, well, you know, they don't really have the right to like storm the Capitol, right? It's like, and he's just gotta be like, Whoa, I think he took it too far. So I mean, our man, Sergeant Canell sent you, right? He texted you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was like, feet. Sergeant Canell sent me pictures and you look at his feet and his hands and they're, you know, battered, they're inflamed, they're bruised, they're stitched up. You know, he's had pictures where the arrow, the red arrow is pointing at him. Imagine going through that for seven straight hours where you just have wave after wave of people coming at you with projectiles and flag poles and beams and they're just throwing them at you and you're just like in what he called combat for seven straight hours. And to be like, ah, well, you know, just minor stuff that Jake Tapper is, you know, trying to take advantage of and make into a sob story.

It's like, come on, dude, piece of shit. Did Trump think Trump's ever been punched or punched anybody? He guess he was in WWE. That's not real obviously, but you know, who cares? Like who gives a shit if he's been punched or not? Even if you've never been punched. Yeah. But even if you've never been punched. Yeah, but even if you've never been

punched during a fight, like, it doesn't take much to realize that that's not you know, what happened on January six is bullshit. And you should never have that happen. It's not minor. Guess there was some ear injury. He's been shot. Let's be clear about that. He has been shot. Yeah. I'm just saying, I just compare it to what Sergeant Cannell went through. It was a graze. He also had some issues with President Biden and you'll be you'll be surprised that his revenge against President

Biden is not going to be governing well. Let's listen. He pardoned everybody, but he didn't pardon himself. And remember this, those people that he pardoned are now mandated because they got a pardon to testify and they can't take the Fed. Should Congress investigate that? I think we'll let Congress decide. Would you want the Attorney General to investigate it? You know I was always against that with presidents and Hillary Clinton. I could have had Hillary Clinton a big number done on her. Have you changed your mind? I didn't want to well I went through four years of hell by this scum that we had to deal with. I went through four years of hell. I spent millions of dollars in legal fees and I won but I did it the hard way. It's

really hard to say that they shouldn't have to go through it all. So it is very hard to say that. Yeah, I remember like two minutes ago when Pam Bondi was going through a confirmation hearing over in the Senate and people were like, Pam, what are you going to do if the president directs you to do something inappropriately? She's like, that's a hypothetical. Donald Trump would never do that. Would never.

Here he is on Fox two days later saying, yeah, I think that the attorney general should look into former president Biden, apparently. Apparently. You know, it's ironic because it was his lawyers who successfully argued to the Supreme court that you get broad immunity while acting as president from these types of things. So I think Biden probably will be in the clear. They also didn't try to impeach Biden.

James Comer didn't, didn't really work out, but like, you know what I mean? Again, I try to distinguish between what's real and what's not. And I'm trying to like, be true to the idea that we should react to what's real and what's not. Obviously this is not yet real, but it could be real. And it would look ridiculous, just as Joe Biden's pardons look ridiculous. In terms of spending money that he had to spend on legal fees. Yes, he did. Trump did have to spend a lot on legal fees. He also basically raised a lot of

that money from donors. And then he like sold some fucking shit cryptocurrency and made, you know, 20 times that. The mega Americans paid. Right. Mega Americans paid his legal fees. Right. Regular the forgotten man that was not invited to the inauguration. They all gave to the pack who then covered the legal fees. So he didn't really spend that much money.

And then of course he made like 30 billion, whatever the fuck it is on meme coins. And, uh, you know, maybe that's what Biden should do honestly, or any of these, like people who are going to be in drag net, like launch some shitty meme coins to raise some cash for the lawyers. I don't think that anybody's going to buy Joe Biden's meme coin. A Biden meme coin? I don't know. Maybe a couple of blue MAGA influencers. Is Jojo from Jers still on the Biden train?

I don't know. I don't think that that's going to be a very good selling meme coin. Back to the drawing board on Biden fundraising ideas for his legal fees. Wait, what is he talking about? Let's not go back to drawing board. Let's think of some other ideas. Biden should sell guitars or Bibles. I think that he's going to outsource this to somebody else.

I don't know that there's a huge groundswell of people wanting to throw him cash right now. Because of the presidential immunity, you are correct that probably not a lot here. And because of the fact that Biden didn't break any laws. So, you know, I don't think that he should be quaking in his night shoes in Rehoboth Beach. But also the idea that this hasn't been investigated before, I mean, he's going to talk about what the business dealings that Hunter had in Ukraine and China. It's like this has been, you know, subject of an immense amount of scrutiny. I mean, Trump basically tried to, you know, get Zelensky to look into it by withholding

aid, right? Like this is all this stuff has been litigated. So are we just going to do this for the next four years? Probably. Probably. But here's what worries me though, is Trump specifically mentions that Biden gave preemptive pardons to people and that that will kind of implies that what's some off the hook Right in this answer

There's a longer answer that he goes deeper into this and Hannity eventually tries to interrupt and say My producers want me to talk about the economy and Trump's like I don't care about that. I'm gonna keep ranting about this But I'm try fine. It seems that Trump was not focused on the preemptive pardons. There's another category of people though. I think about the Cassidy Hutchinsons of the world, people that were in there that testified to the January 6th committee who were not included in the preemptive pardons, who there is personal animus towards. This sounded like a man that wanted other people to go through hell. I guess this is my point.

This sounded like a man who wanted other people to go through hell. I guess this is my point. This sounded like a man who wanted other people to go through the supposed hell that he went through and I find it hard to believe that they won't put a couple of people through hell listening to that answer. Yes. To that question, I agree. And I don't think it's just Trump who feels this way. I think anyone who was brought in before the January 6th committee aides to Trump, lower level staffers who were subpoenaed, whose

records were accessed. You talk to them, I have, they feel like they were subject to a politically oriented prosecution and that they didn't deserve to have all their records, all their time, all their legal fees taken over by the committee. And so they want to exact a bit of revenge. And I think yesterday, the big news yesterday, wasn't whatever Trump said to Hannity. It was Mike Johnson basically giving the go-ahead for this new select committee to investigate what proceeded January 6 and what came after January 6, which is basically just Barry Latimerk

is going to basically take Cassidy Hutchinson, anyone else who was involved January 6th committee and testify before it, make that come up, make them give records, make them sit for testimony, make them come to hearings, and that's a real burden. It's a real stress, and it costs money. You have to, you can't just do it. You can't just be like, oh, okay, I'm going to go through. You hire a lawyer to prepare for that stuff. It costs money, and it's tit for tat. It is. Right. And they're going to try to find ways that they

supposedly perjured themselves, like look for anything to go after them for. And I think that's something that's very alarming. So we'll continue to monitor that. I want to play one more bit from Trump. This was him talking about California. There is this, even among some like quasi normal people in the anti-anti world, there's like this sense like Trump really did have some points about that he was on this with the fires, with the raking and the water coming down from the North. Yeah, I've seen that. Honestly, not even MAGA people,

there have been people that are like, you know, you gotta hand it to Trump on this one. I don't think you have to hand it to Trump on this one. He kind of expanded on what he wants to do with regards to the fires in this interview. Let's listen. I don't think we should give California anything until they let water flow down into their… Just from the north to the south.

This is a political thing. I don't know what it is. You know, they talk about the delta smelt. It's a little tiny fish like this. They say it's an endangered species. Well, how is it endangered? No wonder it's endangered. It's not getting any water. How do you… If you have a fish and you're stopping the water, isn't that going to hurt the fish yet? I'm glad we can use the R word again. We had Elizabeth Lyle on this podcast. There are definitely things that California did with forest management that was wrong. Like this is not the issue. Like water coming from the north to the south, the smell to not having enough water. Like this is, this is not, not the issue.

Yeah. But you should, you should be honest, Tim, that you are a big fan of the Delta smelt and you're incredibly biased in this. I do want to protect the smelt. I do want to protect the smelt. You won't shut up about the smelt, your favorite fish. No, it's madness. But this is insane though.

Again, he's threatening and you got into a little tiff with some people about this, about what you, with regards to- I love this one, because after the fire started breaking out, it was very clear that this was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was going to say, I was Reluctant to give California aid because he believes it's a blue state that voted against him They don't deserve it and people were like, oh how dare you dare you point that out in this moment?

You know he that that's ridiculous and now here we are where he's refusing to give California aid unless they do Some weird water policy that he thinks would have potentially prevented this it's absurd obviously because one We don't condition aid. Never have. This would be new policy. And it's easy to see how this can get into a bad place fairly quickly for a lot of red states down the road. Two, anyone who you talk to said the issue is not the fact that water is not flowing more from the north to the south.

It's a combination of climate issues and the inability to like, you know, stop a massive expanding fire when there's 80 mile per hour winds. You know, if he was right, it is insane to go on Fox News and say, we're not going to give them aid. Yes, they can manage fires better. But when you have 80 to 100 mile per hour winds in completely dry conditions, a manageable fire quickly becomes an unmanageable fire and nothing that California could have done at that point. There's nothing

they could have done at that point. And so, you know, then the choice becomes, do you want to give them the help they need to recover or not? And it seems like he doesn't. Yeah, and nor did the Speaker of the House also. So I think this is going to be something that is going to end up becoming a massive fight that we're going to be monitoring. There were 200 executive orders and so I kind of getting to the splooge of all of it has been sort of challenging over the course of a few days.

But like we're starting to, you know, we're starting to clean it up and kind of get a clearer picture here. So I want to walk through a couple of them. There's a DEI executive order like ending DEI across the government and an email went out from Russ Voes OMB. He's not confirmed. Maybe the nominated director of the OMB had some influence on this. I can't say for sure. Thank you for clarifying that, Sam. So this email went out to federal government employees asking them to snitch on anyone doing secret DEI or CIFR wokeness. I want to read from this email a little bit. Dear agency employees, we're taking steps to close all agency DEIA

offices. I guess it's like LGBTQ plus, they keep adding new letters, but they're ending all DEIA related contracts in accordance to the executive order. The email extends, these programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars and resulted in shameful discrimination. We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language. If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5th to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA plus or similar

ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances to DEIAtruth at OPM.gov within 10 days. That is fucking insane. That is fucking insane. That is an insane email to send. They want people snitching. What can you say? It's like, very evidence. First of all, the A is accessibility. I know that because I just looked it up,

trying to find the USDA's page on this and then I clicked it and lo and behold, I got a 403 error code because they've taken down all DEIA content. And yeah, they want people to snitch. I guess I've been a little bit surprised. Maybe I shouldn't have been at how like Monomaniacally focused they are on DEI stuff. I mean it is like they are like passionately trying to rid every Semblance of this from the government It's probably like the most consistent thing that I've noticed over the past two or

three days that they've been in office is they just really want to go hard on DEI. I'd like to know a little bit more about what's the coded DEI? What is a diversity word that does not quite use the name of affinity groups, I guess? I don't know. I kind of have a rant about this DEI thing, if you'll indulge me, Sam. But no, hold on, let's stay with that. Like if you heard your colleagues say something like, you know, let's include Johnny on lunch. Is that worse? Snitching?

Is that the end? Do you get in trouble? He used the word include. I don't know. It's like, it's tough. I got it. It's like we're looking for diverse perspectives. Like we're looking for a different... Whoa, whoa. Watch out. Like, you know what I mean? Or if the job description lists very different types of attributes that you're looking for,

and some of those attributes code towards various races. I don't know. It seems very fraught, to say the least, as far as the snitching is concerned. I don't think it probably creates a very healthy workplace environment. We have a great workplace environment at the Bulwark, so I know how that goes. It's not by telling your colleagues to snitch on each other if they get a little too woke. Here's my DEI thing. On three podcasts this week, I've done a throat clearing about how I find a lot of DEI pamphlets

and resolutions and trainings dumb, and I do. And Robin D'Angelo's book was really stupid. That said though, the pendulum has swung so far to me, and it is wild to think that we're at a point now in 2025 where it's like the government should not have any interest in making sure that people from different diverse perspectives are involved in these jobs because, you know, we've already ended racism. And to have the representatives of that government be like a group where the inside circle has more white South African males than non-white women.

The Republican Senate majority leaders race included, I think, four people named John. Yeah, a lot of Johns. Four white guys named John, right? And behind Trump, they had all the richest people in the world. Got a shout out Sundar was there. Besides that, it was all white guys. Sundar is also a man. I think he's still identifying as male. So, you know, I should also say while some of the trainings are dumb, it does feel like we still have a little bit of work that we can do. And it's probably not too harmful to have a couple

of positions in government where they're trying to say, hey, you know, I don't know, maybe in law enforcement, we should have more people from marginalized communities, maybe in this, right? I mean, like, it seems on its face, like that the Trump people would be the representatives of we have ended at racism is a little galling, I guess. Of course. I mean, their point is that it's all about merit. And it's all about merit. That's why we got to put a drunk weekend Fox and friend host in charge of the military. Merit only. This is a merit based show.

Speaking of merit, imagine if, I want to get to Tulsi in a second, but like imagine if Tulsi had never been red pilled and she just stayed as kind of like a lefty Bernie type in Congress and did a lot of MSNBC. And then, you know, Bernie got elected and made her secretary of defense. Like the DEI conversation around her would be, you know, like, there is, how could this person get this job?

They're so unqualified. How could you put a Hawaiian woman in there just because she has the spirit of Aloha? Like, it is crazy that the stupidest Americans could put together an organization full of mostly South African and D-rate white men and be like, we've solved this. We've solved this. We're in a post-racial society. It's even worse than that because- How could it be worse than that?

Well, because you said it was just government, but the actual executive order, if you read it, is they told contractors, private companies that you can't do DEI anymore. If you contract with the government and you have DEI in your pamphlets or on your website, you're in trouble. So it's like the government is enforcing this vision on private companies too. This is the first actual job creation idea I've seen from the administration because Deloitte has so much DEI material on their website. They're going to have to hire in a full team of technical experts to come in to scrub everything. They are creating some new words.

Hold on. There's a good story there. And maybe it's replaced by AI but like there's got to be some engineer somewhere who was profiles like alright I got this new tool that I'm gonna plug in It's gonna do a thorough scrub of our company's website, you know any word diversity is off. We're gonna replace it Like what's the synonym? Yeah, there's got to be there's definitely a new cottage industry of people who are like consulting people about how to just not Look like you're you know, celebrating diversity. It was also a no pride flag Uh initiative. Yeah, only one flag only one flag Only this is what this is what we voted for. I mean, I guess three flags. There's the thin blue line

There's the trump flag right confederate any maga flag american No other flags, all right, um, we have some other serious American flag. Of course. No, they're flags. All right. We have some other serious business on these EO. This is serious. Oh no, this was all serious. I mean, the flag jokes, maybe we're not that serious. We had another executive order. I received a couple of emails from listeners flagging the shrapnel from the EO regarding

the National Institute of Health. Trump issued an executive order that stopped all external communications, NIH, which might seem like, what is that? Is that just press releases? Well, here are a couple of things. One is something called study sections, which are the official proceedings to review new grant applications for funding. This effectively holds up all research that the US government does, pediatric cancer, Alzheimer's, anything, because you have to have external communications with whatever, doctors and experts to kind of review what types of grants for new research should

be done. So we basically had a freeze on all scientific research in the federal government, which is great. It also includes alerts about things like bird flu, right? This is why your egg prices are going up because there's another avian flu outbreak, but right now the government can't put out alerts about various areas where we've seen outbreaks. Is that that big a deal?

What could go wrong? I'd rather not know if my eggs are going to kill me. Take a chance. Maybe it's like a word of mouth thing. Hey, don't eat the eggs. Just don't eat those eggs. We're going back to the before times, where you just to hear rumors through secret channels. We can have like an underground bird flu railroad going.

An underground egg exchange. These eggs are fine. Don't worry about these eggs. I also think that, um, and this is, I guess, 90 days, whatever she could say. Okay. Well, whatever. But RFK, your boy, we've got his nomination next Wednesday. We'll be live streaming that on the block YouTube so everybody can check that out. Um, but he has said that he wanted to end all research being done by the federal government

across I don't have the quote in front of me but I wanted to end it on infectious diseases all infectious disease yeah he wanted to look at like you know chronic diseases and things like that but like I mean in the totality and I've done a bit of prior reporting in this world because I kind of like obsessed over it for a little while many years ago. But look, the NIH is the premier scientific research institution in the world, right? It's $40 billion budget. It's done immeasurable good and produced incredible breakthroughs across a host of fields. It is the gold standard. And various presidents over the years have lauded the work it's done. George W. Bush was a huge NIH guy.

Obama, big. Biden, he was, you know, he wanted to do the whole brain cancer mouchant. How'd that turn out? Well, they made real progress, honestly, but obviously they need to do more. I anticipate that this is a momentary issue here, but I think the larger issue here is what we should focus on, which is they're going to create a climate, whether it's this, whether it's RFK coming on board, whether it's Doge looking for serious budget cuts, in which the young scientists in our country who many of whom are

here looking for a pathway to just stay here, they will look elsewhere. They'll just look elsewhere, because there's too much uncertainty. And in scientific biomedical research, you need certainty, you need five to 10 year funding windows, you need to know that the government's going to be there to communicate with you, and not change course, you need to know the government's not going to pull your grants, because Elon like, you know, read something on, you know, from catcher two, about like some like shrimp on treadmills and shit. And they're

like, Oh, let's pull it. You know, like you need certainty. And so my hunch is that we're just gonna see what is in essence a huge brain drain. And people who would normally stay here and produce studies through the academic system, to the universities are just gonna look to, you know, South Korea, to China, to Canada, to Israel,

to other places where they will say, hey, cool, come on. We will take your work, we will take your expertise and we will build off of the breakthroughs that you produce and we'll get screwed for that. Well, I think that's probably gonna be good news for MAGA because they're like, look, we're gonna get rid of all these smarties and like those jobs gonna open up jobs

for like the turning point USA campus chairman at LSU. Like they might now get to go work at NIH. I know you're being a little tongue in cheek, but like, yeah, I actually think they might think that. And also like the other thing is like there was an announcement from the White House two days ago with Larry Ellison was like talking about, you know, AI is going to like, you know, produce these amazing MNRA, RNA vaccines that are personalized and can cure your cancer. It's like, wait a second.

I thought MAGA was super opposed to vaccines, but maybe AI will just solve all these issues and make the NIH totally obsolete. Let's hope, right? I'm optimistic about AI in medical spaces. I'm pretty pessimistic about the American government's health research regime going forward. So we'll see how all that turns out. We don't do schadenfreude to hear, obviously, when people experience the consequences of their vote, but we do want to inform when things happen.

One of the other EOs I want to flag is there's just a cross government hiring freeze. This is again, who knows whether Russ Vogt actually wrote this EO. He hasn't been confirmed yet to run the OMB, but it's certainly in line with his mission to cut down the government and to not bring in subject matter experts, to only bring in political hacks and to get rid of people through attrition. So there's been across the board hiring phrases, a few carve out exceptions, national security, border security, of course. This is already affecting people. There was a tweet I saw from a guy named John Basham. Attention please help at POTUS Trump and at

Senator Ted Cruz. My wife is a nurse and was recently hired by the VA. Our home is packed up. We have a new home. We've spent thousands to move our family to Waco. Following Trump's hiring freeze, EOVA rescinded her job offer. My wife is in tears and inconsolable. My family is devastated." That is unfortunate.

It's a pretty devastating story. I should note that John Basham has on his feed that he's a very big mega supporter. So there you go. That shit happens, man. It's all fun and games until it actually happens. And you're seeing already reports VA issues at the VA because they can't bring in new people to help.

You're going to obviously see, we just talked about it with the NIH. You're going to just see it across the board, except for the border. We're going to surge at the border and we'll have that. This is the thing. The government actually does stuff and people always are talking about how stupid the government is and wasteful, but that's because they don't know that the government's doing stuff that they don't recognize. And so when your eggs have, you know, deadly viruses or salmonella, and suddenly you can't eat those, you know, omelets that you love because they don't have health inspectors, like yeah, that's because the government does stuff and it's going to be a rude awakening

for a lot of folks. So yeah, so we're only three days in and who knows how the policies will shake out, but just as a quick scorecard. How are you feeling by the way, three days in, three days, how are you actually feeling? I'm feeling better than I was on Monday. I was in a really dark place on Monday. Yeah. Kind of contemplating my life choices in a very serious way.

The tone of your YouTubes were... Bleak. Bleak. I was doing a personal inventory of the worst days of my life and trying to figure out where it fit. It was just even doing that. Just even doing that kind of inventory is not really a great sign. Doesn't sound healthy, Tim. Geez. Yeah, it was good though. Yeah, it was it was useful for me to kind of

process. I do want to do a scorecard though for the final three days because we've got skyrocketing egg prices, who knows, maybe temporary. We've had quite a few people, it seems like, lose their job because of the executive orders. We have some substantive job losses. We don't have any EOs really seeming like that focus on economic gains. We've had some crypto, some gains in crypto. If you're investing in crypto, you're looking good.

Other than that, more guns. I guess more criminals have purchased guns. We had the shaman said that he was excited that he could go buy guns. We've released cop beaters. We have criminals purchasing more guns. We have higher beaters. We have criminals purchasing more guns. We have higher egg prices. We have MAGA Americans that wanted to work for the VA losing their job. That's our scorecard so far.

We'll see how it turns out. We'll continue to monitor. We mentioned the Director of National Intelligence from Aloha who is sitting next to the CEO of a Chinese spy app at the inauguration, which seems a little bit, I think it was kind of keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer type situation, but I don't think so. Semaphore is reporting Tulsi Gavrid's bid to become Trump's director of national intelligence on shaky ground, Republican lawmakers raising private concerns, Trump now urging her she has to get more aggressive. Republicans are hesitant about her past statements that some

have read as too warm towards Vladimir Putin, you don't say. And former Syrian regime leader Bashar al-Assad. The disappointing part of this report from our friends at 704 was that the Gabbard confirmation was set in contrast to Cash Patel, who apparently has been impressing Republican senators with his children's books about the insurrection. I don't know. Any thoughts on that? We got cash and RFK are set for next Wednesday hearings. I don't know if we have a date for Tulsi yet, but any thoughts on the remaining noms? Tulsi's date uncertain so far. And yes, I have a lot of thoughts because this is the subject of today's press pass. I wrote with protocol. So I was at a briefing with a what I, we have to refer to as a GOP member of Congress. So conditions briefing last week on Friday and

the member went through the list of, or there was pressed on the list of the controversial nominees. And, you know, it's like RFK junior and he was like, well, you know, should be fine because we got a lot of pro lifers who are going to be surrounding him. So I think he's going to be fun cash for towel. It's like, well, you know, he said some problematic things in the past, but he'll be fine because everyone thinks he's, you know, he'll get beyond that. And then they were like Tulsi. And he was like, she's got work to do. And I, that sort of like really jumped out at me.

Like it was totally different tone and demeanor with respect to Tulsi can compared to the other two. You know, the issues are plentiful, right? It's like, it's not just Bashar al-Sad and Putin and all that stuff. I mean, I was like, well, I got to figure out like what's in the record books. I went through like the archives of her, of her house website and looked at like the foreign policy section. I mean, she's an outfit for this Republican Congress, even though they are

totally made by Trump, but she was very, you know, she's critical of any aid to Saudi Arabia after the Kachogi assassination. She has encouraged the pardons of Snowden. She's encouraged the pardon of Assan. She's somewhat supportive of the BDS movement. She's been somewhat critical of Israel for how it's treated the Palestinians. Things that not every Republican member of Congress is on board with. You combine that with the fact that she was you know, she was very recently Democrat.

And honestly, someone mentioned this to me that she's a woman. I think that's not a great recipe for her. I did talk to one very plugged in GOP lobbyist about this and they made the point that I think is valid, which is they think she'll get through because the establishment type Republican senators know that John Thune would be in real trouble with Trump if she didn't get through. And so they want to throw Thune a bone and keep him in his place because they can't... Thune's about as good as it gets.

You got to have somebody like John Thune in there. You want to know if somebody can trust it as a backbone who, when he was asked about the Capitol police that protect him getting mauled by supporters being pardoned, he said, well, sometimes shit happens, essentially, with the Senate Majority. So it's important you have him in there because he'll respect the interests of the establishment. The other thing that jumped out at me when you sent a memo about that briefing with the GOP lawmaker was that there still remains like kind of a delusion among certain types of GOP lawmakers, let's say, that Donald Trump isn't like really going to do anything that he says.

Yeah, that was the gist. You got that from the movies. Like, ah, it's going to be all right. It's just like all of the challenging things. Like, what about the nasty deportation? What about this? Like, well, you know, on that thing. And it's like on the other stuff, the tax cuts are going to happen. So anyway, I was intrigued that that delusion still persists. All right. I have to get you on the final topic, which is Sam Altman versus Elon Musk. There was an announcement, Trump went out and announced, Sam Altman and Elon Musk, Sam Altman runs OpenAI, people don't know. There's a long personal rivalry, I don't know, probably related to some micro-dosing party they were at in Silicon Valley at some

point. I actually don't know the backstory on why Sam and Elon don't like each other. But Sam said that OpenAI was going to be contributing 500 million to investing in the country for some AI project. Elon replies to the announcement with like, bullshit. Shocking. It's like, bullshit. Not going gonna happen. And so I'm like, okay, so he's undermining Trump's own rollout on this. And then there becomes like-

I've never seen anything like that happen. Ever. It was incredible. A senior official at the government, and he's a government official at this point, being like, that's what the president made us today is just bullshit. What the fuck? It's insane. We'll see how long that lasts with Elon and Trump. Uh, but I was actually more interested by Altman's response. So Altman's going to just, just skew it on X by all of the mega people. Yeah.

He's going back to all his old never Trump or tweets. He was, he was a JD Vance, Tim Miller type, you know, back in 2016, you know, I'm the only one still standing. So Sam sends this tweet That I have to read to you Watching at POTUS Trump more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him I wish I had done more of my own thinking I definitely fell in the NPC trap I'm not gonna agree with him on everything, but I think it'll be incredible for the country

trap. I'm not going to agree with him on everything, but I think it'll be incredible for the country. Like, this is the man running the largest AI operation. Like this is the person we're entrusting our AI future to somebody who's like either so stupid or so gullible or so shameless that he was like, I just had to watch Donald Trump a little more closely before I forget it. And I realized, like he was criticizing him through 2022. It's like, what has he seen in the last year? And then that he's using this, like, online, like,

if you don't know what an NPC is, like, a mega, like, poster, Reddit poster thing, where they, like, make fun of people who just go along with the conventional wisdom on everything, and they say that, like, you're, like, a non-player character in a video game. Like, who talks like this? Like, Sam Altman is tweeting like he is a median intelligent like never Trump returned mega internet personality. I just this whole suck

up routine is pretty scary. Another tweet that he sent today, which I thought which was he had me laughing. He and this was obviously directed towards Elon was just one more mean tweet and then maybe you'll love yourself. Like these guys are like out here in the open just embracing these like weird psycho dramas and the fragility of their collective egos is remarkable. I mean you are worth so much money. You have been asked to have so much responsibility for like literally the future of society and you're out there being like tweeting at each other and being like, you know Stop being mean and and I was so stupid and I should have known more about Trump and done my research

It's just like go to fucking work Go build your AI like get off the fucking Twitter and do work Like everyone else, okay Like they tweet more than me and my job is to tweet somewhat and follow this stuff like what the hell go do work and stop doing this shit and if you have problems with Elon call him up we don't need to see this whole thing play out over X I'm tired of it I can't believe these emotionally stunted video game boys are running our future, but

it also makes me think we are in a simulation now because it probably is an emotionally stunted video game boy like Sam Altman that is like laughing at us in the sky right now because like, how could this be real? It's possible. It's possible that we're in a Westworld type thing, but it's like, at some point you just, you got to like, you got to like think to yourself, but it's like, at some point you just, you've got to like, you got to like think to yourself, how did these people, and maybe, maybe that's the way that I thought about this philosophical, like, do you have to be built like this in

order to be this successful? Like, do you have to be this online and this strivey and this emotionally insecure to like build this type of wealth or, or, or is it working the other way where you become the successful and you feel constantly an edge and hurt and that you have to like lash out at all your critics and weird cryptic posts. Like Elon was on this morning making like totally bananas and not really particularly funny Nazi jokes.

It's like, dude, go do doge, go do rockets. Do anything other than tweet. We don't need this anymore. Or we get deported, I don't know. Could be part of our new immigration regime. We're having some new stricter rules, so we might have to review your documentation. Sam Stein, thank you so much.

It's been a pleasure. We can discuss existential matters about the existence of our society on another day. Everybody follow us on YouTube if you so much. It's been a pleasure. We can discuss existential matters about the existence of our society on another day. Everybody follow us on YouTube if you haven't. Me and Sam do funny little bits from time to time. Can't wait for the RFK hearing. We'll be live for that. Up next, our newest bulwarker, Adrian Carrasquilla. All right. And we're back with the newest bull worker. He's the author of our new newsletter, huddled masses, which is going to be covering the

Trump deportation regime or whatever emerges from that. He's reported on politics and Latino issues for over a decade, including at Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Politico, and The Guardian. It's Adrian Carrasquilla. Welcome to the pod, man. Tim, thanks so much for having me. I was ranting with Sarah and JVL on the next level yesterday about how sometimes in our biz and the political commentary biz, there is a tendency to like, after you learn what happened

about something, the next question is like, will this matter? Will people care about this? And I am going to try very hard to resist that temptation, at least over the next year, because who the fuck knows is partly the answer. And there's not another election for 22 months. I mean, not another broad national election. And so immigration is one example of this where I think that people are going to fall into a trap of, well, Donald Trump had a mandate on immigration and people like this, so whatever.

And I think that is just totally the wrong way to look at this. And the implications of what happens in this area, I think, are about as great as in anywhere, besides maybe the federal government stuff we just talked about with Sam. But I don't know. So I want to go with you. I want to break through all of the executive orders one at a time with you. But the broadest picture, what is your sense for the mood about how much of this is saber rattling, how much is going to be real, and the extent of the mood about how much of this is saber rattling how much is is gonna be real and

And the extent of the impact I think that we wrote even before Trump became president that there were multiple parts here. There is a PR campaign There is a like we're putting a new coat of paint on the deportations that were happening before You know ice released a report in the end of December at the Joe Biden's last, you know, ICE report, basically, they got 81,000 criminals last year. So the United States was already getting criminals. You get to put a new coat of paint, you get to have the bully pulpit and you get to say, Oh my God, look, Tom Homan saying, we're getting so many criminals. So that's one part. These executive orders that we're going to talk

about, they really do look to transform immigration in America, to the extent that Trump can do it. Yes, laws need to be passed by Congress, but the first Trump administration already took a hatchet to the trunk of legal immigration, asylum, and things like that. Now they are just continuing, and now they understand the levers of government better. This really is an assault on the immigration system They are breaking down a lot of pieces of it Which we'll get into at the border and so no it really is a new day and they have put in a lot of

Things that are going to cause strife Not just for people who've come here, but you know There's directives that they can now go into schools and hospitals and churches So this is going to be very challenging and it's going to be very difficult for a lot of people. Let's talk to the EOs. I think the one that we've gotten to since Monday on this pod is the Birthright Citizenship Executive Order, which is just preposterous on its face. I did a reading of the 14th Amendment, I think, I believe on Tuesday's pod. It's about as

clear as you can get, you know, as far as the sum you want changed, you're going to have to change the constitution. We'll see if our wise and noble Supreme Court agrees with the plain letter of the law, I guess, over the next couple of months. But outside of birthright citizenship, let's take through what some of the other EOs have been. Yeah. So he declared a national emergency at the border, which unlocks for him the ability to bring troops.

He says the Secretary of Defense is going to send troops. So already it's 1,500 troops that are headed to the border, with the likelihood that they could go up as high as 10,000 troops. We could break that down if you wanted to. The fact that three days ago, the New York Times had a story about how basically the border was quiet at the end of Biden's term, but they've declared an invasion and they say that we're sending troops to the border, so we're sending troops to the border. Part of that is the military sealing the border and putting more barriers

around the border. So that's the first couple. On the emergency side, what was the pretense for the emergency because he did this the last term, but the pretense was COVID. You're right. You're right. And you bring up a great point, which is that in the past, they were using pretenses. There's this disease so no one can come. It's just explicit now.

He's calling it an invasion. This is the same language that Greg Abbott and Ken Paxson used in Texas, which a lot of people felt inspired the shooter in El Paso, the Walmart, who said, you know, there's an invasion, so I'm driving 10 hours to kill Mexicans and Latinos. I mean, so it's fully US policy that there's an invasion at the border right now, and that's where the national emergency comes in. So what do the groups you talked to on this one, I mean, is there legal vulnerability here or is there a sense that like the president has a wide birth to kind of declare emergencies at their whim?

Yeah, look, I mean, I think from from the national emergency, the invasion and what that what that could unlock legally, to things like which we'll get into using the alien enemiesemies Act to go after cartels and gangs that are he is now designated terrorist organizations. These are laws that have been on the books. The Alien Enemies Act has been on the books in 1798, which says that another country is doing an armed invasion of our country. So yeah, there's concerns that US citizens could get caught up if you're Venezuelan and the gang that they're going after is Venezuelan.

So yeah, there are so many of those concerns. I think the groups, when I first talked to them, were sort of shell shocked. They knew this was coming, but you're sifting through even the legal groups and then are trying to figure out which they're going to go after first. So the emergency, the border, broads right citizenship. What else? Yeah. One of them is just the military sealing the borders and putting up barriers and things

like that, designating criminal cartels as global terrorists. That's part of it. They're also suspending refugee resettlement for four months until such time as further injury of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States. So that doesn't look like that's going to come back anytime soon. I know they were canceling flights of people from Afghanistan, 1,660 people from Afghanistan. Their flights were clear. They were on the way. As people say, no one gets more vetting than refugees. It can sometimes take years and he's just unilaterally canceling these flights. Those

are a couple of the other ones. The Afghan refugee thing is so sick. I can imagine being one of these people, like the work to get out of the country, the horror there to go to another country, to be waiting to come, to have your flight ready. It's just like it's a total nightmare. Is your sense on the refugee things that they're going to reduce that number to zero? Refugees. I think that's the sense.

They said that they want to revisit that in 90 days and see if it's in the best interest of the US, and that just seems like they're clearly going to say that it's not in the best interest of the US. Yeah, great. Huddle Mass is a good name for the newsletter. You can see it's kind of right on the nose there. What about in the interior? Did any of the EOs affect people that are here on visas or anything such as that? Some of the people who were here legally, they are causing sort of headaches for them. One of the things that I found really interesting was on, I don't know if you know about the

CBP One app, it was this app that people always talk about law and order and coming into the border orderly, in an orderly fashion. And that's something that the Biden administration created where they said, we're gonna have this app. You sign up, if you come in without using this app, you're done, you're gone. But if you use this app, you can sign up for an appointment. And this great Washington Post reporter,

I don't know, at least Hernandez, she had video of migrants crying because their appointments were being canceled. And so this is a piece where people say, wait, you're the law and order president. and as she had video of migrants crying because their appointments were being canceled. And so this is a piece where people say, wait, you're the law and order president. People say get in line and do it the right way. This was people getting in line and doing it the right way. This is where I say it's sort of an assault from all these different parts because there's

so many pieces here when it comes to the orders. Yeah. That video was actually what I was referencing at the top when I was talking about on the next level, something I was like, I don't know if this will matter to swing voters in the midterms, and I don't really care. Like it was just, it was a horrific, you know, just a human anecdote with the link and the show notes people missed it of just somebody that had waited, had decided that they're going to go do this the right way.

They were three hours away from their appointment. They shut down the app. And just totally brutal. I want to talk about one other thing before we get into kind of what's next and implications. In addition to the executive orders, we had the Lake and Riley Act. Lake and Riley was the young woman that was killed by an undocumented immigrant that became kind of a flashpoint during the campaign. A lot of Democrats worked with Republicans on this, in part, I think, because on the face of it, it was kind of pitched in a sort of common sense way, which is like, criminal,

illegal migrants should be punished or deported. It was just, if you commit a crime, in addition to being in the country illegally, that person should not be given leniency. But the act had a bunch of other stuff in it, as is often the case. They stuffed these things through. One of the unintended consequences I saw was that, it was this litigiousness. It makes it easier to sue on immigration grounds if you're in the states. And Steve Bannon was pushing, like now, red state governors are going to be able to sue the feds if they feel like they're being forced to take H-1B visas or immigrants that are

here in various legal ways. So talk to us about what exactly the elements are of that bill and what the implications might be. So fascinating because I think there was something about doing it at the beginning of the year where it did seem a little bit like the sort of the groups in the advocacy world were caught a little flat-footed. There's been a lot of reporting. People felt that maybe some of the Democrats hadn't read the bill.

I mean, to your point, state attorney general can sue if they feel that the federal government's not doing something, biting correctly on immigration. Federal government is the one that runs immigration. Now you're empowering the Ken Paxons of the world to find issue with anything and to launch all these lawsuits. On top of that, I think that there is so much in the political space. You mentioned the word criminal and people say, oh no, absolutely, criminals should be out, Americans and politicians.

But this is as simple as somebody shoplifting now can be detained, can have their due process rights taken away. ICE has already said this is gonna cost billions and they're focused on criminals and now they're gonna get shoplifters or they're gonna get people with nonviolent smaller crimes. So, you know, it's not surprising that the Republicans pushed this. It is more surprising that a lot of Democrats went along with it and that there's parts

in there that really seem to be sort of undercover and emerged after advocacy and everyone stepped up and said, wait, what are you doing? How are you voting for this? You mentioned that Ken Paxton, the attorney general in Texas, the ability to sue the feds. One thing I think a lot of commentators are missing about what is coming in the immigration regime is that it is going to push a lot of power down to states and jurisdictions and let them loose to do enforcement as aggressively as they want. I think that while it might be the strategic idea of the Trump poobahs, like we're going

to do raids in Chicago and in blue states to make blue politicians look bad, all these red state governors and constitutional sheriffs and attorney generals are going to feel political pressure to butch up and demonstrate that they're tough on illegal immigration too, and that they're going to have crackdowns in their states. And I just, I think about that in Louisiana. I think that there's going to be a lot of issues happening in local jurisdictions that people haven't really kind of wrapped their head around yet. I don't know what you think about that.

I think before Trump became president, we saw it from readers. We saw it from people who were Trump supporters that said, it's not going to be this bad, stop fear mongering. This is not what's going to happen. We don't believe that he's going to do all this stuff. Well, a lot of these things are happening. In December, for example, a Missouri legislator said, let's do $1,000 bounties on undocumented immigrants. You turn in immigrants, you get do thousand dollar bounties on undocumented immigrants. You turn in

immigrants, you get a thousand bucks each, you know? And so people hear that and they're like, oh, come on, that's not going to pass. It's crazy. To your point, Democrats have really lost the enforcement battle. That's a little preview of my next newsletter. So a Democrat was telling me, you want alligators with lasers on their heads? Like, like at this point, Democrats are sort of giving up on the enforcement piece, which again, only has Republicans saying, licking their lips, saying, how much further can we go in these states? And so yeah, it's going to be, I don't think people are prepared for what exactly is going to happen here.

You know, the Democrats do have to be strategic here, right? I don't have to be strategic on this podcast. I can talk about whatever the fuck I want, the Democrats do have to be strategic here, right? I don't have to be strategic on this podcast. I can talk about whatever the fuck I want, but the Democrats have to be kind of like pick their battles. Like what is winnable? What is going to be politically salient? What doesn't make them look like they're on the side of violent criminal migrants or whatever? You're saying that they're kind of just going to let the Republicans have what they want

as far as border enforcement is concerned. Where are they starting to look to actually try to pick fights and limit the scope of this? A source yesterday was telling me that the law and order piece is an area where they can say, wait, Trump said he was going to come in and bring law and order. He's canceling things like the CBP One app that actually brings some order to this process. You know, what's going on with birthright citizenship is very much an area that is fertile ground for Democrats where you can say, this is not right.

This is in the US Constitution. The executive can't edit the Constitution like it's a Wikipedia page. This is not happening. So those are some areas where they can fight back. I was thinking of this frame of sort of like where enforcement, they're giving up so much on enforcement. It's like, yeah, you can have a border wall, but leave immigrants in the interior of the fuck alone.

I think that there's going to be fights on you're trying to tear apart families. You're trying to go after small businesses. There used to be migrants, immigrants who would be able to claim, let's say, sanctuary in a church. Right? Why are they able to do that? ICE is not going to a church to drag you out. Well, now there was a directive literally under the cover of night the other day that DHS is now, there's a memo where basically you can go into churches, you can go into

hospitals, you can go into schools, and they told ICE to use common sense. So I had a great legal source telling me that ICE offices are like police precincts. They're very individual. They very kind of do their own thing. They very famously don't listen to memos and directives, by the way. This is one where now they can just do what they want. If somebody maybe heads into a church, maybe they can go in and drag them out. There's a lot of fear around schools and things like that. So I think that's the slippery slope for Republicans

in the Trump administration. Are you doing things like this, which I think will play into the Democrats' hands? You're right, they can't oppose Trump on everything, but this is an area that I think it could be problematic for Republicans. Yeah, well, the Christian party, it's like, yeah, we're gonna start going into churches

to deport people. It's just kind of, that is right out of the New Testament. If you just sort of read between the lines is exactly what Jesus was advocating for. One last thing on enforcement, and this is going to be me editorializing, I'm wondering if you have any reporting on this from what happens on the Hill. I'm worried a little bit to your point that Democrats in their rush to, you know, want to seem tough on border security and to concede Republicans on border security, that they are going to bail Republicans out of a couple of budget pickles because they don't want to be seen as blocking immigration enforcement. You can already see this in the Hill.

There's some conversations happening where Republicans might cut a deal, wanna cut a deal where they can increase the debt limit and keep the government open in exchange for border security. I just think it would be a massive mistake for the Democrats to go along with that. And I'm worried that they are. So I don't know if you've had any conversations

with folks in the Hill or advocacy groups and how they're kind of thinking about the coming budget fight. It's a great question because I did see that reporting yesterday as well, that they're considering some like huge, you know, deal on all these fronts. I did talk to a senior Democrat yesterday though,

who said, we're not gonna be bailing them out anymore. If Republicans can't govern, Democrats shouldn't come in to help them out with all the problems that they're having with their own side. So I do think that that's one piece that's interesting and something to watch. I don't know for sure. I know people are talking about this big deal,

but there's definitely Democrats who don't want to do that. All right, thanks so much, Nuis Bullwerker. Excited to have you on board. Adrian Carrasquilla will continue to be talking, unfortunately, because I think there'll be a lot of news on this front. So, we'll look forward to having you back soon, and we'll be back tomorrow for another edition

of the Bull Work Podcast with our buddy, David French. See you all then. Peace. Pedro lives out of the wheelchair hotel. He looks out a window with our glass. The walls are made of cardboard Newspapers on his feet and his father beats him cause he's too tired to bed He's got nine brothers and sisters

They're brought up on their knees It's hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs Pedro dreams of being older And killing the old man But that's a slim chance He's going to the boulevard He's gonna end up on the dirty boulevard He's going out to the dirty boulevard

He's going down to the dirty boulevard This room costs two thousand dollars a month, you can believe it man, it's true. Somewhere a landlord's laughing till he wets his pants. No one dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything. They dream of dealing on the dirty boulevard. Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I'll piss on them. That's what the Statue of Bigotry says. Your poor huddled masses, let's club them to death. Get it over with and just dump them on the boulevard. Get them out on the dirty boulevard. Going out to the dirty boulevard.

They're going down on the dirty boulevard. Going out. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU.

The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU.

The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by KDU. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.