The Bulwark Podcast - Sam Stein and Talmon Smith: Brain Drain

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

The resignations of senior leaders at the CDC is a calamity. People with decades of expertise in infectious disease are leaving the agency because the new director—who Trump just appointed—refused to get on board with RFK's anti-vax crusade, including limiting access to Covid boosters. And Wednesday's violence in Minneapolis may be a sign that the FBI should be keeping its eye on the threats from domestic terror instead of arresting day laborers at Home Depot. Meanwhile, Trump's threat to the Fed's independence could pose a real risk to the stability of the U.S. Plus, more on the shifting attitudes about Israel among Dems, the latest attack on Kyiv is another reminder of how much Putin is mocking Trump, and remembering Katrina 20 years later. Sam Stein and the NYT's Talmon Smith join Tim Miller. show notes Thursday's "Morning Shots" Tim, Sam, and Will Sommer on a MAGA brawl, the “Bulwark Take” Tim mentioned Bulwark Live in DC and NYC at https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bulwark-events. Toronto is SOLD OUT

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We have a double-header today. I had Talman Smith, who's a New Orleanian, who writes about economics on to talk about the purges of the Fed, the attempted purge, police a cook at the Fed. But there's been so much news. So much dark news, I like to bring on, I like to bring on this guest for comedic news. But in this case, we're going to find his sensitive side.

It's the managing editor of the bulwark, Sam Stein. How you doing, man? I'm good, man. How are you? I am well, all things considered. We got a bunch of news we've got to get to. So yesterday, a shooter opened fire during morning mass at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, killed two children, injured 17 others. The shooter is identified as a 23-year-old.

likely trans or trans-identifying person, Robin Westman, who killed themselves. They left behind a trail of insane conspiracy, theory, addled videos, and writings don't really map on any ideological spectrum. I know you did a video on this yesterday, but just kind of after 24 hours, just wondering what your reactions are, or if you have anything new to say about this American Groundhog Day tragedy. I mean, that's it. It's that it's a, it's Groundhog Day. It's so, it's so customary in our social fabric at this point that its lack of extraordinaryness is like the defining feature for me. I mean, I've been through this so many times, journalistically now, that I remember the first time, or one of the first times that, you know, you kind of hustle in the newsroom,

it's shocking, you get into order, and you write on it, and then you try to think of, you know, how to process it. And now it's just, it processes itself. I guess the thing that's, you know, different for me is my kids are now of age where they are going through the process of, you know, preparing for things like this at their own schools. And that obviously takes it to a different personal level. Yeah, that kid, you know, that kid saying, we did the shooting, we've done these drills in the classroom. No, we did what we've never done in a church. It's just like so gutting. I don't know.

I'm kind of against the drills. That and the way the kid talked about it, which was it was so methodical, so routine. almost like this was not a big deal. It was almost like he was describing like a basketball shooting drill. And you're like, I man, this is just part of their life. The other thing that stood out, and I think Andrew Eager did a good job tackling this morning for morning shots, is just I hate this. I really hate how right in the immediate aftermath of these things, it's so typical. But everyone's just sort of like looking for little chestnuts of news or bio or something from the manifesto that can just allow.

them to say, oh, this shooter was a Republican, or this shooter was a Democrat, or this shooter took some, you know, medication that, you know, trans kids take, or this shooter, you know, read some sort of, you know, anti-Muslim propaganda. And it's like the natural instinct to try to use this to further your political agenda, I find it sickening. I find it really grotesque, and I can't deal with it. I forget which this challenge, touch, you know, know i forget which school shooting i wrote about this after but i think it's like maybe the prime example of kind of the darkening of this of this human spirit in the country that we all have and i have it so i like it is this is not a finger pointing thing there seems to be like this

natural instinct inside you that immediately goes to i hope it was the other guys that did this one you know it's awful like we have to re-deprogram ourselves from all of that and like it starts by acknowledging it. And it doesn't mean that you don't, you know, want to look at potentially underlying issues and trends and, like, you know, and if you're at DHS, you know, Elizabeth Newman, who's a friend of mine, this was her job at DHS, like, looking at trends and trying to figure out domestic terror and other thing. You know, sure, this is not to let people off the hook for their ideological extremism if they have it. But it's just like, as a culture, it just is a sign of a broken culture. Oh, totally. Totally. And I think you had a really good tweet, which means

you probably outsourced it to someone else. But it was about how, like, they were looking into, you know, trends in trans violence. And you're like, well, you know, in Japan. So what was it? Like in Japan, there was one. So this guy, here's what happened. This chart was going around.

And I saw it like three times before I tweeted it, which was like these right wing guys putting up this chart about like, it was like an analysis of the percentage of a community that had committed a mass shooting, a shooting with more than four deaths or something. And it was like, you know, point. 0.07% of trans people have done it, but 0.05% of Asian men have done it, and 0.04% of white men or whatever. I don't have them in front of me. But it's like, and it was just looking at the last 10 years of data. And my point was like, in Japan, they've had one mass shooting in the last 10 years of data. In America, we're like trying to slice and dice the statistics to see if a group that we hate is more complicit in these than another group. And I feel like it kind of is missing the point. You think, yeah, and it's just like, there is one underlying feature through all of this. Easy access to guns.

Easy access to guns. And it's just like, I'm at the place now where it's like, you want to, you know, fortify schools, cool. This guy shot through the window. Hannity was doing this thing last night about how all we need metal detectors at every door. He didn't even go in the fucking door of the church. He didn't go in the door. Didn't go in the door, dude. You got to, I mean, fortify the, I don't even care.

Let them fortify the schools. Arm the priests. Arm the nuns. whatever you want to do, but if it doesn't take into account easy access to firearms by deranged people, then it's pointless. And go holistic, do whatever you want, but it has to take that into account. And I don't know, I'm so, I'm so burnt out about this stuff, and I find it's so depressing. And I honestly do, you know, you try to compartmentalize it, but then you send your kid off to school and you're like, you know, in the back of your mind, you're just sort of like,

don't want to get that call. Don't want to get that call. And it goes away and you go through the day. But I feel it. I do. All right. So maybe this is me not listening to Don't Advice Kit, but I do have one crazy hot take about this that appealed to me.

And so I want you to take me off the, off the, you know, I don't want to be, I don't want to be an inverse hand out of here. So talk me off the ledge if I need to be talked off the ledge. Fellow YouTuber Destin wrote this. Crazy that this guy was literally talking. about his plans to shoot up this church for a month on the open internet. But Cash and Bondi are too busy going after imaginary MS-13 Home Depot workers, if only they were doing their jobs instead. Now, I want to say, I don't, like the exact specifics of that claim that they, that Cash and Bondi could

have stopped this. I don't want to endorse. But this guy was posting on this thing called Skibbidi Farms, which is, I'm not going down that, Kiwi Farms. You don't want to know about this. So if you're a boomer, you don't want to know about this. But it's essentially. an updated 4cham. But the point is not wrong at the broad sense. Sure. Like we have a risk here in this country that like we have we have totally deemphasized like this government has totally deemphasized interest in looking at domestic terror and the FBI is now, you know, we're reorienting that towards, you know, all immigration stuff, immigration only. And we're firing people with expertise if they said a mean thing about Donald Trump and maybe any individual case

can't be blamed on that, but at scale, it feels bad, it feels wrong, and I don't know, shouldn't that be something they have to answer for? Yeah, I suppose. I mean, like any law enforcement agency, it's, you know, much of what you do is prioritization of resources and what you think is, you know, the most important threat. And they've obviously torqued it in a direction towards immigration. Chinman, just like in the Bush era, was towards terrorism, right? And like, that being said, and I just, you know, gun violence is so pervasive that even if you were to put all your resources

towards preventing it, I'm not sure, I mean, you obviously make progress, but like, people have to understand, this was the second shooting in as many days in Minneapolis at a Catholic school. There was a shooting the day before outside of Catholic school in Minneapolis. But I don't know. If you were serious, let's just play this out, though. If you were. If you were actually serious about this, and serious about law and order and protecting the streets and all this stuff, I don't know.

We have fucking AI. We've had Palantir has access to the entire government now. If we have AI tools now, if somebody posts on Skibbitty Farms, I'm going to shoot up a church. Shouldn't they at least get a call from somebody? That's what red flag laws are for. And they have worked and there's evidence that they do work.

And you would like to think that we would try to, extrapolate on that success and adopt it more nationally. And I'm all supportive for that. Ultimately, there's always going to be nut jobs who fall through the cracks. And the real common denominator through all this is not necessarily personality or gender or religion or anything like that. It's easy access to firearms. It's easy access to firearms.

It's easy access to firearms. And until we grapple with that, you're going to have these instances. But yes, of course, you're right. Like, you should be focusing, and our law enforcement should be focusing on clearly trouble people who are posting on these forms. Like, that's an obvious place to look. I'm sorry, I do have to push back on you, though, because the Secretary of Health and Human Services was on Fox News this morning. And we're not going to play this audio because we have a different audio of him later. And people can only listen to this man's voice.

We can only take so much. It's an audio. This is an audio medium, as I send you in Slack. And he is the most unappealing voice I've ever heard, I think. And so having to hear it more than once in a podcast is torture, so we won't do it. But essentially what happens is Brian Kill Me, just trying to blame this on trans people, obviously. Teed it right up for the guy. And so, yes, RFK, if he's going to investigate that, I don't know what RFK's role is really as HHS Secretary.

But, okay, RFK doesn't really address it, but he kind of does by saying, no, actually what we're really going to look into is SSRIs, antidepressants, things of this nature. And we think that that is the problem here. What a quack. I think like 10% of the country is on SSRIs. Are there SSRIs in Japan? I don't know. Can we look into that? Have they made it?

Is anyone in Japan on SSRIs? The country is forbidden. No, this is so ridiculous. The thing was, we're not playing the clip, but it was, you know, Fox News literally just like begging him to just go off on trans kids. And he's just like, actually. Sorry, that's my Bobby. It just went off for SSRIs because that's what he came. because he's a lunatic who believes that antidepressants are causing people to be violent.

And I'm sure he has some, like, crazed study that he's going to point to and be like, you know, the monocondrial challenges that our people are facing. And I can't even deal with it. Let's not shoot our load on the mitochondrial challenges before we get to it. Oh, sorry. Did I get ahead of it? All right. You got a little bit ahead of us.

I'll get back. I mean, it's okay. Mitochondrial challenges, let's be fair, are kind of implicit. it in everything that's happening in our society. So you can bring it up on any topic. Hey, y'all, I warned you. I warned you our Toronto show

has sold out. The Canadians love Sam Stein so much that, you know, there are lines around the block to get tickets to it. But the good news is we still have tickets left for our live shows in Washington, D.C. and in New York coming up in early October. So go get those tickets now at the bulwark.com

slash events. I'm missing LSU versus South Carolina for you guys. I'm going to be in New York for that. And so assuming that's an afternoon game, I might have a couple of bourbons in me by the time we get on stage on Saturday night. So that one could be a rowdy one. So if you're looking for an excuse to get to the Big Apple, go see a show Friday night, come see us Saturday night. Could be a fun little weekend. Go get tickets. Like I said, the borgorg.com slash events. The borgic.com slash event. See you all soon. So the other news that you have been on your book little news on this yesterday and

our colleague Jonathan Cohn has a great, a great summary of this in the Morning Shots newsletter. This one of people should sign up for if they haven't got, if they're not getting it at the bork.com. But the CDC, I don't know if we're calling this a, it's a little bit of a purge and a little bit of a self-deportation and it's it's craziness. But at the top of the Center for Disease Control. just total what lunacy and what would you call it chaos i don't even know how to describe it what would you describe it if like the top you know four or five officials at an agency just were like you know what we're done and then like mass resignation like that the good news is

that the cdc is not really that big a deal and they don't really matter them no this is a calamity uh people who have decades of subject matter expertise in infectious disease and other critical health issues, just yesterday all were like, we are resigning. And the backstory, as far as we understand, is that the CDC director, who's only been on the job for a couple of weeks, was essentially told by Kennedy, you need to, like, get on board with my anti-vax crusade because he's been restricting COVID vaccine, booster vaccines, as well as preparing to, we expect in the month ahead, say that autism is caused by vaccinations. So you got to get on board or you're gone.

And I want you to fire these people anyway. And she said no. And then these people resigned in protest anyway. Now, the scariest thing for me came as we were reporting it out. I was talking to a source of mine who knows some of the people who resign. And this person was like, you know, they had told me that they were going to stick around at the CDC, and I'm going to read this, to protect science until they were, quote, asked to do something that could hurt people, end quote. So the implication is that they believed they were asked to do something that would hurt people, and at that point they resigned. We're at a place where our trusted public health officials, just think about this, our trusted public health officials, people who have worked on these issues more critically and aggressively than anyone else in our country, where they believe that our leadership is actively hurting the population.

And wrapping your head around that is really hard, but I think that's where we're at. And tying it to the first story, like, you can't kind of disintang all this stuff. It's just, it's worth mentioning that it was, what, two weeks ago, August 12th, maybe August 11th, a couple weeks ago. Yeah. A man fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition at the CDC. Five hundred. And he said part of it was over the fact that he expressed distrust of the COVID-19 vaccine. So you have, like, quacks at the top, forcing scientists and experts to put out information.

they know is or they think is harmful and so you have experts leaving the government and then you have quacks outside trying to intimidate threaten you know these folks well who would want to work like honestly honestly like who why would you want to work there well and it's not like this is a lucrative you know position well that's what cone conne and i were talking about this last night i was like well who's going to take these jobs now right like so you have people who are running like what are some of the jobs of the people that so like I think, okay, just to go through it, though, the one that I know most was run by a guy named Dimitri Daskalakis, and I'm not going to get his actual title right, but essentially he was the point person for two big issues, monkeypox and COVID. Appreciate his work on monkeypox. That was important for my community.

Yeah. Look, I don't want to get monkeypox. You weren't really at risk. How many Charlie XX songs can you name? If it's less than three, I don't think you're at any risk of monkey pox. But continue. I appreciate that. Anyway, so that's one. And then there was others. There's Dr. Dan Juerrigan, who has been a zoonotic infectious disease expert. He's been there for decades.

The other person was Jen Layden. I'm unfamiliar with, she was at the Office of Public Health Data. And then there was Deborah Howary, who was the chief medical officer there. Seems like an important job. Yeah, kind of significant. These are big, big positions. And they're going to be okay. Like, they'll find work.

They'll be fine. They're going to continue to operate in this field. I have no doubt about it. But if you are a scientist with any credibility, like, why the hell would you go into the CDC at this point? There's just no real reason to do it, right? Like you would be forced to, you know, defend quackery. I have an idea of why you might go. Let's say you've been walking through the airport and you've been looking at the

children and you think and you see a problem and I don't want to play an audio about what that that problem might be and I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like I'm looking at kids as I walk through the airports today as I walk down the street and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges with inflammation you can tell from their faces from their body movements and from their their lack of social connection and I know that that's not how our children are supposed to look. What the fuck is this guy talking about? He's in the airport.

He sees a child. He's like, you have a lack of social connection. You have too much mitochondrial DNA. Like you're in, you have inflammation. But you're not a fucking doctor. What the fuck are you talking about?

He doesn't know anything. This person, we're sticking with this person at the head of HHS and we're losing the people. that were, you know, running the COVID and monkeypox programs? We're going to trust the mitochondrial guy who self-diagnosed somebody at O'Hare because he saw a seven-year-old

who's eating some ice cream and he thought he looked like who was socially disconnected and inflamed. I just have this vision of Bobby sitting there at the Einstein bagels staring out of like eight-year-old kid being like, he's moving funny. His mitochondrial's all off. You know, like,

Why is he not talking to another eight-year-old? Stop talking about other people's kids, too. I know, right? If you have just a story where he's in L.A., what's the path? Everybody goes walking on in L.A., Katie's going to kill me. The producer's guy, I can't think of the name. Anyway, whatever that hiking path is, everybody walks on in L.A. And he goes up to the mom with the baby and the baby Bjorn, and he's like, don't vaccinate

that child. It's like, stop talking about other people's children. You cannot, you know, make any determinations about their health status based on a glance. No, it's inherently weird. What is he talking about? He also, Runyon Canyon. He also, this is a man who said in a deposition, I believe that he's a brain worm. I just want to remind people of that. What does the brainworm do to your mitochondrial? Yeah, I was going to wonder, is there, is the brainworm help the mitochondrial? Or does it hurt? Can Bobby get on that? On the serious note, I mean, it's all very serious, but like, this guy is

so dogmatic about his worldview. And like, he's, full of it and he's just now setting the tone for our entire country's health system and it's really scary. Have you come around to my, this is, now I need to make it about you and me. Have you come around to my belief that he's the number one danger cabinet member or are you still on the fence here? Well, I'm still on the fence. I think we put a lot of risks out. Come on. He's going. He's going up the chart. He's going up the chart. Okay. He's definitely going up the list. I under, I underestimated it. I'll give you that. That's a win I'll give you. Thank you. But, you know, I will see, we'll see where things go with the DOJ.

Oh, yeah. We just need a couple. We need an outbreak. Oh, yeah. You're really thrilled by the performance of the DOD and the Justice Department heads so far. I want one win here. Give me one win. How about Nutlick? Okay. I'm looking here. I googled mitochondrial diseases, like some symptoms. Can you see it by just scanning a child's face? well a couple of things is muscle weakness and low muscle tone so i just i see bobby looking at the nine-year-olds walking through and be like can we get this guy can we get this guy down to golds let's let's get this kid down to golds he's got to do a couple of shoulder presses before his mitochondrial when you

look at bobby's when you look at bobby do you think that's a guy with good mitochondrial no he's got muscle tone yeah his shape is weird oh my god okay there are other is happening. A friend of the show, Stan Voyager over to AI, posted this yesterday. I thought this was very insightful. He writes, the Deputy Treasury Secretary, the CDC director, and the

Defense Intelligence Agency director, all got fired suddenly this week, and I think only the most committed news consumers noticed. That's a true statement, but it also kind of barely scratches the surface. I mean, a Fed board governor, the head of the BLS, the chief of staff

of the Air Force, like 31 one Intel officials, including one CIA agent that Tulsi accidentally outed by including on the list of fired? Well, they lost their clearance, but yeah. Oh, yeah, you're right. They lost their clearance. Well, isn't that not firing? Can you maintain your job?

Is it an Intel agency? I think they get a paycheck, but they aren't doing their job. And then you had the FEMA officials who wrote the open letter being like, we are so severely understaffed that there's good. Yeah, it's awful. What do you want me to say? Readers of the Morning Shots newsletter noticed. It is, I don't really know what to do about.

that but it is and it's just kind of one of the things where it's just like it's important sometimes to step back it's like this would be i had obama put some hack in charge of some you know whatever cat and like one of the top people resigned to protest like that's like the leading news story of the night you know for a couple days until something else happens right till there's a shooting or something but well it's just like the fail government's going to fail on a profound level on multiple fronts right like i mean i found it just a sort of small irony here but like like the National Guard cleaning up Washington, D.C. this week and picking up trash and all the custod work. They're doing it because the National Park Service has been gutted. Like there's

little ways in which this stuff matters. And there's big ways in which the stuff matters. And God forbid, like some pandemic happens in the next, you know, six months. God forbid, what are we going to do with the CDC that's completely gutted? Like, that's going to be really problematic for obvious reasons. I think die is what people are going to do. I do a little kind of foreign policy kind of dem party talk here. If we get to the dumb stuff, one other news item since I think massive that I think a lot of places are just bored with covering because it's just like another day in Ukraine. But today, I guess, in Ukraine, during the day in the afternoon, Russia targeted central Kiev with 32 missiles

and about 600 drones. Death toll, as we're taping, is at least 18 people, including four children. The British consulate is wrecked. This is two weeks after we rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska. This is just a monumental, like, disaster for this administration strategy towards Russia, which was obvious for anyone who listens to us, but it's worth saying plainly. I mean, just how did it go? I'm trying to remember the sequence of it.

supposed to, Trump had unveiled that he was going to come down harder on Putin. There's going to be sanctions. And Putin says, you know what? It's like, 90 days. Oh, yeah, yeah. Let's delay it. And then Putin's like, oh, let's meet. And then he meets.

And then suddenly the sanctions are off the table. In fact, now it's on Ukraine to come to the table. And it was so predictable. It's so predictable. And we're just going to, are we going to continue the cycle again? Is Trump going to feign discuss with Putin? Or should we just skip that step? I mean, because that's what's happening.

Yeah. In some ways, it's even more humiliating for him, I think. I think, you would think, for anybody who pays attention and cares about this, because, like, at some level, what we were worried about when he first came in, we being people who care about Ukraine, was that he was just going to say, take his ball and go home, you know, and just be like, this is not our problem, you know, kind of Homer Simpson into the bushes on this thing and whatever Europe, you figured it out. And, like, that hasn't really had, right? Like, we continue to, like, sell weapons to Europe that gives it to Ukraine and stuff. And, like, we're still kind of doing these negotiations and all that. So, but to what end, right? It's like, I mean, You know, Putin is just, like, he's just basically saying, fuck you, you know. Like, ha, ha, he's laughing in his face. Putin's laughing in his face. Like, we met, you know, and you talked about how we were going to get a, we were going to skip the ceasefire, move straight to peace deal.

There's no plans for even a meeting about a peace deal. And meanwhile, Putin's killing children in Kiev. Yeah. I mean, they're supposed to meet within hours. And then days and now weeks. Now there's no plans for another meeting, trilateral meeting. And, you know, then we roll out the literal red carpet. and then Putin tells him that mail-in voting is fraudulent.

So we got that. It looks ridiculous. It looks weak. I mean, obviously, I think we're, I'm personally glad that we're not completely abandoning Ukraine, but this current stasis is terrible. Unless Trump does a totally unexpected 180 and decides to actually come down a little bit tougher on Russia, for real. I don't see where we go from here. Like, what's the next step?

Are we just going to continue in this limbo? I think we might know what the next step is. I want to give the counter view from the administration. Could we please play Trump's lead negotiator on the Russia-Ukraine situation? Oh, God. And there's only one thing I wish for that that noble committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single-finest candidate since the Nobel Peace, this Nobel Award, was ever talked about to receive that reward.

beyond your success is game-changing out in the world today. And I hope everybody one day wakes up and realizes that. Amen. That's Steve Wickkoff, the Outerboro Real Estate man, who's been negotiating all this. What do you think the four dead children in Kiev today think about the application for the Nobel? The Noble, excuse me. I'm sure they could give two shits. I do, I will note, I make Andrew Eager say the,

these things to me about my editing skills. My only wish is that you could get five Pulitzer's for the way you've edited this mullet. There's actually, they've taken this, this obsequiousness to a different level. The, I don't know if you saw this, the ambassador nominee for Poland's put out some statement the other day where he's like, you know what? He's too good for the Nobel Peace Prize. He's like, he doesn't deserve, he doesn't.

Just an ornament. I like, it's just an ornament. It's like, have you met Donald Trump? Does anybody like ornaments more than Donald Trump? Have you seen the Oval recently? There's gold ornaments everywhere. Donald Trump would give all of Ukraine to Russia in a second if he could have that ornament. One second.

You wouldn't even think about it. He does have the – he's got a World Cup trophy and he's got that gold thing from – what's his face? Tim Cook. He'd like – he'd like so sense. He'd throw in Lithuania. Just like, give me an ornament and I'll hand it over. Let's talk about the Democrats.

response. I had Jake Sullivan on yesterday was Biden's national security advisor. I was, I don't know, there's really much to say about the Ukraine stuff. I kind of, you know, gave him the neocon business a little bit about maybe we should have done a no-fly zone. But I thought his answers on all that were, I disagreed with him a little bit on the Ukraine stuff. They were understandable. I can at least understand the perspective that, you know, we don't want to be in a shooting war with Russia. Yeah. You know, some of us, some of us, 80s children are still a little chomping at the bit for that, actually, but I understand his perspective. I was interested more. A lot of the commenters were interested in our exchange about his old boss's age. I think we can set that aside. I think the most

actually relevant part of the discussion was about Israel and how somebody who was really the, I mean, that B-point person, McGirk maybe or some others, but A-point person for the Biden strategy in Israel now saying that the dynamics have changed enough that he's actively telling Democratic politicians that it is defensible to have a position they should no longer provide weapons to Israel. Well, yeah, I mean, he was really, I think it's fair to say he was the point person. He's a little late to the party, I would argue, and I think he's getting criticized for that. I think the fact is that the people in the Biden administration increasingly look back at how they handled that conflict and feel, you know, bits of regret, honestly, that they didn't try to

leverage U.S. weaponry in a more effective way. And I think they also really hate Bibi. They really hate Bibi. And I think one of the things that you heard of real anger is either yesterday or two days ago where Bibi was out there and being like, you know, October 7th never would have happened if Donald Trump was president. I mean, that just really, really agitated them because they bent over backwards for the guy. They really did. They gave him almost everything he wanted, except for nothing, honestly. They got in kind of a sour spot on it, which is something I brought up.

Exactly. And I think they're upset about that, but, you know, not to their credit. They should have recognized that this was always where it was going to end up. And I find it interesting to see the evolution, but it's also tragic, right? Like, how many deaths could have been prevented if they had recognized that sooner? Who knows? I think that his point that, you know, that the environment is different now than it was when you have Hamas, having just committed the worst terrorist attack in decades, and then you have Hezbollah on your other border. You have Iran, right? Like, they've had success in the campaign against Hezbollah and Iran, and that success should have led them to a place where this could be, where you could have a more humanitarian response in Gaza because you have stability and that's the opposite has happened, right? And I think that that is a defensive point he's making. mostly I just think that

his point about forward looking about how like if Israel doesn't change its government the U.S. should change their posture towards them. It's been a really notable sea change among Democrats in a month. Oh my God. To me it's like the writing is on the wall about this good, bad, or otherwise

for 2027 about that's where things are going. And I think that's, you know, to change focus a tiny bit, but if you're Net and Yahoo, if you're an Israeli politician, I mean, you have to recognize that you are in, I mean, you have a very short window here right like if democrats were ever to retake power and who knows if there's ever going to be elections again there'll be elections but you know who knows if they're

going to be whatever a future democratic party's not going to have similar relations like the biden administration towards the israeli government just will never happen again unless it's a different government unless it's a totally different government yeah but israeli domestic politics are all kinds of fucked up and i think um i think there's genuine anger destruction trust and a sea change is one way to describe it. I mean, it is a monumental shift. And I think for Jake Sullivan, who is just like the ultimate establishment foreign policy type of the Democratic Party to say, yeah, we're out a place where you can condition weaponry to Israel. And that would have been unthinkable, unthinkable two or three years ago.

That's like, you know, that was a 10% proposition within Democratic politics. And now you have the Bernie Sanders resolution and it's got like something close to 30 or so co-sponsors. My other big reaction, Jacob just wanted to say, and I appreciate him coming on, was he had a very aggressive posture towards China, and I know that we have some Democrats who listen to this. I just think that that's a winner for Democrats. I'm not saying that they should, you know, be Cold War, Ronald Reagan, what Tim Miller would really want, saber rattling against China, but just... How many people do you want to bomb, Tim? I don't want to bomb China. I want to make the point that Trump has strengthened China and make it explicitly.

And I don't feel like it gets made that explicitly all that much. And Jake made it made it very explicitly. And I think that even if people, regular people, don't care that much about, like, the details of China policy, they do, like, the vibes of it. Like, it is, it is one area where the Democrats could conceivably take back some, like, alpha vibes from Trump and be like, Trump has been weak. And Trump has, has given all these gifts to China. And it's hurting our country. And I think that that's a worthwhile vein to explore. Completely agree.

Completely agree. And you can just make the, I mean, it's like backward and micro, right? It's like China's eating our lunch. Trump has lost the air, raised them. Trump has pushed every other country into China's arms because of his tariffs. I think I saw some graphic about, you know, trade with Africa where it's just like a complete, you know, Chinese exports to Africa are shooting through the roof because of the tariffs. And then you can make it on the micro level, which is, and Will Summer has gone. his false flag coming up on this.

But it's like, it's causing a real uproar in the MAGA movement, which is this pledge to give 600,000 student visas to Chinese students. I mean, they're freaking out. Laura Ingraham is like having. That's a little crazy. I'm like as liberal on immigration as that comes. And it's like 600,000 Chinese student visas. It feels like a lot.

And their argument for it is so, it's almost hard to fathom that this is the best they came up with. But like, I think their argument for it is like, Well, we need them in the Ivy League because if all the Americans went up to the Ivy leagues, then the lesser academic institutions would not have enough students to operate. So it's like basically, if you boil down to, they're saying we need to bring in these Chinese students to keep the American students at the lesser colleges. If you need more students in the Ivy League, maybe we shouldn't be deporting people over op-eds and scaring them about their green cards.

I don't have a better thing to think about than just giving the Chinese impunity. Well, final topic, Dems, butch up on that a little bit. I liked that. And Trump's, I mean, I think it's a big opportunity. There's one final thing about maybe a sign of concern. I just want about whether Democrats are going to butch up on that. Sam, is your friend of mine, Dave Weigel,

it's covering the DNC meeting. We covered this at length on the next level. If you want to listen to that, but I did not get into, we missed one key element. Oh, God. Which is that they released a fight. song. I saw this.

It goes, D-E-M-S, we rise. Stronger, together, blue skies. Lift your voice. We are bold and true. Onward, Democrats. We shine blue. I looked in their faces

when they were writing that, and I detected some mitochondrial challenges. Yeah. It's not exactly like playing neck in Tiger Stadium, I wouldn't say. All right. Wait, wait, just let me make one quick point. Go ahead.

They have one job or two. Raise money, build a party. Like, stop making songs. Win elections. Stop making songs. Raise money. Register voters are getting your ass kicked. Yeah.

Shit on Donald Trump. That's it. That's it. Simplify the mission. Let's talk nuts. I don't care about like, you know, land, you know, being usurped. I don't care about five songs. Just do those three things.

Like, how hard can this be? That's Sam Stein. He's our managing editor. Up next, we've got Talman Smith to do some econ and some Fed Talk. It'll be good. Stick around for that. All right, welcome back. He's an economics reporter in the business section of the New York Times. He's currently on book leave for a forthcoming clout and capital. which I'm looking forward to. He's born and raised. I just found out

is hanging out right here at his parents' house in New Orleans, Louisiana. It's Talman Smith. Hey, Tal, what's up, man? Hey, what's up, Tim? Glad to be here. And yeah, like you were saying,

it's a shame we didn't do this in the studio. I think we found out too late that we were in the same place, but next time. Well, I'm in my Kingpin t-shirt. We can do a beer of Kingpin next weekend and figure it out. And we'll drop a beer.

And figure it out. And since you're out your folks, as you can let them know, I think you have another distinction. I think this is the first sibling duo to have been on the Bullwark podcast. Oh, that's cool. I don't know.

Your brother Clinton, like a year or two ago about his book, a poem. So a big moment for your mother. I'm sure she's very, very proud. I wanted to grab you after the Lisa Cook News earlier this week and just do some Fed talk, you know, what's happening with the economy broadly. Maybe a little Katrina anniversary stuff at the end. Just at the top, per listener, it's like at Econ 101. And on the one hand, it's like, obviously it's a big deal if anybody, you know,

in a significant position as being targeted by the president and his minions based on, like, spurious allocations and getting pushed out extra illegally, you know, from a job that should be independent. But, like, really don't, I get it. Like, why is the Fed Board of Governors important? Like, what matters about this? The Fed Board of Governors is the heart of the Federal Open Market Committee, the FOMC, which is the voting body of the Federal Reserve, which controls interest rates, the money supply, helps regulate the banks, and has a mandate from Congress since about the 1970s to explicitly keep inflation stable and to also try to maximize full employment as well as financial market stability. What the Board of Governors is

is a firm seven-person committee that sits at the heart of the FOMC and therefore has a lot of power over interest rates that banks and that we all experience as households and consumers. The New York Federal Reserve, because New York is special in all things, also has a seat the president of the New York Fed. And then there's a rotating cast of the 11, I believe, regional Fed presidents who are dispersed throughout the country at regional federal reserve banks, but they're rotating and only four of them at a time sit there. So the Fed Board of Governors is this sort of central firmament in the institution. And that's why, you know, they're also appointed for 14-year staggered terms in order to protect them from political volatility. And so Trump and his, you call the minions, I'll call

folks in his administration, right? You know, so my editors don't get mad at me. They are being really aggressive in an unprecedented way in trying to fire Ms. Cook for cause because regardless of the details. Traditionally, the head of the federal housing finance agency, you know, does not have oversight over hiring, firing of the Board of Governors, I think. Right. And apparently, I didn't know about this. You know, I was talking with some folks that really spend a lot of their life and spend their careers focusing on, you know, good governance and malfeasance. Nobody that I've spoken to really would have expected FHFA being involved in digging into

the mortgage documents of powerful people throughout the government. You would have expected, if you were going to weaponize the government in this way, you would expect it to maybe come from the IRS. So, I mean, it's just, it's weird to use a euphemism there in several ways. Yeah. So what is, what are like the risks? I guess like dumb talk to us, right? It's like, okay. Well, the Fed Board of governors losing independence, Trump pushed out people he doesn't like putting in, who knows, maybe potentially hacks. Like, let's talk about a worst case scenario. You don't exactly know who he would replace who he'd replace her with. But let's assume it'd be a loyalist, like kind of like he's done.

other parts of the government. Like, what are the risks associated with that, you know, just specifically on the economic side, like beyond the broader kind of autocracy discussion? Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you say dumb talk. And like, I think that's a, it's a half-joking tip to what I think is far too common, which is this idea that econ and the world of, you know, high finance are these things that are just, you know, it's hieroglyphics that nobody could possibly understand them. But, I mean, the way that they function and the way that they find or lose stability is very similar to other institutions in our life and society. And so to hop into it, we can just go into the very recent pass where we've seen the

upsides of Fed independence, of the Fed Board of Governors being to operate independently. We saw inflation in the very recent pass hit the high single digits. And yet when you look at market-based measures of inflation expectations, which are everything in financial markets and in public finance, because it essentially determines the price unyield, the interest rates on bonds, which then determine borrowing costs for everything. Yeah, houses, cars. Exactly. Houses, cars, the whole should bang credit cards.

Because inflation expectations through these market measures that people actually vote on with their feet, with their money and their client's money, did not really budge. And they went up a bit, you know, I think in 2022 it got into the high to. So basically expecting over a certain time period, whether we're talking five years or 10 years. inflation expectations on an annual basis got up to the high 2%, but then they, maybe a bit over 3, but then they pretty quickly came back down. Why? Well, in part because even though there are plenty of people in financial markets around the world and there are plenty people in financial markets in America that had no love for Joe Biden or his regulatory

policies or what Lena Kahn was doing or this, that or the other, or they oversimilarate the economy. The idea was, come what may, we have people appointed about both Democrats and Republicans that are insulated from politics at the Fed, that is calling balls and strikes. And that, undeniably, is a linchpin of our system. And it is, you know, actively under threat by people who are actively loyalists. Stephen Myron, he is a Harvard-trained economist who, over the past few years, has become very Trumpy in a way that has surprised and certainly upset some of the more, I don't even want to say moderate, but just like traditionalists in the priesthood of economics. And he, along with sort of actively helping Trump not tell the truth

about certain things like tariff policy, he's also become more powerful and more trusted within Trump's orbit. And Trump is now trying to get him onto the Fed, onto the board of governors. And so this is not an empty threat. It's an active threat because it is very hard to believe that if Trump said jump, Myron at this point wouldn't say how high when it comes to interest rate policy and potentially even things like using the Fed balance sheet for that administration's own political goals. So let's talk about like practical risks here. You know, so let's say this goes through. Obviously Lisa Cook is challenging this. So her lawsuit was filed a couple hours ago. I was just kind of scanning it, targeting Trump. He's able to replace her. Maybe he fires

Powell catastrophizes me a little bit. Like, what are the potential negative impacts or it affect regular people? And we saw, you know, on this news, the dollar tanked initially and then kind of rebounded some, like what are, what are some things to be worried about? Yeah. So let's start with the muddle through and then we can get to worst case scenario, which like is not, it's not like a meteor hitting the earth sort of probabilities. Like I think a worst case scenario is not that far.

effect. But let's start with the muddle through, which tends to be what the giant $30 trillion American economy does, is muddled through, even when annoying things happen, even when there's inequality, even when there's all sorts of things to complain about. So one thing that might happen is that there are other people that have been in the Federal Reserve system that have had to step down because, in their own words, they felt like they became a distraction from the FOMC's work. that usually had more to do with, you know, allegations of insider trading, you know, yada, yada. Part of the reason I feel like markets have not freaked out as much as some feared is this

idea of like, well, you know, Trump just seems to not like this woman and has a bone to pick with her. And, well, she does seem to have maybe, again, maybe done something sketchy with her mortgage applications. And it's just one board member, you know, patrons and control with. that they got, you know, there's this very well-respected, relatively doveish Fedhead, Waller, who may be next in line to be chair after Powell. So there are a lot of people betting on him bringing stability when Powell's term is up

in spring of next year. So there's just this, like, maybe frog and boiling water or maybe accurate idea that, okay, well, like Trump has a bone to pick with somebody else in government. He does something a little outside bounds or outside the usual bounds, but, you know, we keep all chugging and we watch for invidia earnings and we track, you know, terrorists for inflation risk and let's all move along here. Don't pay attention to the Trump show. So there's a possibility that those folks are right. Here's the worst case scenario. The Fed has a meeting in September, mid-September, to decide on rate policy. Right now, I think markets are betting slightly in favor of the Fed. of a rate cut because even though inflation is picking up a bit in large part due to tariffs, the labor market's also slowing down quite a bit. So just on the merits, like there are outside of the Trumpiness, you know, like chabiganda, there are reasons for uncertainty there.

Economic slowing. The fact that the economy is getting worse is a case for Trump getting what he wants into kind of a weird way. Yeah, yeah, which is weirdly a replay of like the 2018 situation where Powell was a new Fed chair and Trump was violating norms. in that case. And then, like, weirdly enough, the merits actually made sense that the Fed did cut rates on the merits, but it's funny how that might happen again.

So let's get back to Cook. So maybe she decides to show up for work because like she has said and her lawyers have said, no, you cannot do this. You can't fire me by tweet. And okay, well, then let's say Trump sends the US Marshals to remove her. That's not necessarily unimaginable.

And then, what do the courts do because that's so soon, right? It's August 28th when we're talking. Is this going to be resolved? Are we going to have a court injunction or a ruling of some sort by mid-September? We don't know. And then let's say there is a ruling that we're it's, it's, you know, forgive me, I'm not a lawyer. Maybe the word is it's stayed. Like, uh, yeah. So, um, she's able to at least for now be in the role. But then Trump says, I don't care about that lower court. You know, I have my pals on the Supreme court. And no, we're still going to either try to remove her from her office or block her from her office or even just a truth social that says, hey, Lisa Cook, if you, if you dare come into your office at the Fed at the Eccles building in Washington, you know, I will try to see to it that you don't get in. That's a real constitutional limbo with also kind of violent, adjacent implications, right?

There's also like a step down from that. That's like, I'm not sending in the U.S. Marshals, but it's just like, you showed up to this. Let's say she shows up and they don't lower the rate. It's, you know, because like you said, it's a close call. And he's like, okay, fuck it. No, foul's fired too. You know what I mean? Like, that's another.

Yeah, yeah. We are not very far off from even further escalation. And I would not downplay the stakes. Okay, so play game out. The bullwork love, we love catastrophizing here. So game out, you know, unfortunately, it's come to fruition a few too many times. So we've got to play it out now. So that happens, one, some version of the worst case scenario happens.

Yeah. What do we see as economic impact? I mentioned earlier, like when this happened, like the dollar tanked initially, but then kind of rebounded, you know, the market's been pretty resilient. The bond market looks a little spooked, right? Like, interest rates are high. Like, what are some, like, real economic impacts that people would feel? Let's say that tariff-induced inflation is a little bit worse than we thought, right? When Biden left office, inflation was tilting back down towards the 2% target by some measures that leave out this thing called owners of equivalent rent,

which neither here nor there, but it has to do with housing costs. But by some measures, it was mission accomplished, right? Like we had the Fed's target priceability back. The Fed had already cut in, I believe, September of last year and was essentially projecting that there would be room for the rate cuts down the road. And again, this is where we get to then versus now. the idea then was that the what's called the long end of the treasury curve the 10 year especially that's the benchmark right and the idea was well because the Fed is working on the merits the 10 year would flow down along with the front end which the Fred has you know a lot of control over whereas the 10 year again this benchmark interest rate that determines mortgage rates

which people are understandably very upset about because they're quite high car loan rates which you know same story as well as credit card rates same story everybody would like those to be going back down. The thing is, you know, the cost of money is the biggest way that the Federal Reserve and all central banks, it's the biggest way that they exert downward pressure on the economy. If they're bringing rates down, if they're cheapening the cost of credit on the merits because, hey, inflation's coming down, we can let the economy flow a little bit more, we can let people borrow more cheaply. Let's let this thing run a bit hot. If you're doing that on the merits, well, then markets won't be skeptical and sell off assets that determine the price of longer

term borrowing. They'll go along right with the Fed because the Fed is working off of merits. That makes sense. Inflation is going this way. Growth is going this way. It's all the parts of the system are working as they should. If Stephen Myron and potentially somebody that replaces Powell who is, let's just be blunt here, seen by markets, right, which is ultimately what matters, not you or me or political podcast or columnist at any given newspaper, if markets think that Trump is put in a hack, and then he already has a loyalist that he's trying to put in, and then suddenly the FOMC starts voting in favor of what Trump would like rather than based on the merits of the economy, well, then you can see a drop in the dollar that isn't just an overnight

flinch based on an active decrease in terms of make independence. Well, then you might see the selling off, not just of U.S. Treasury bonds, but also a weakening of the dollar itself. And beyond the fact that that would make mortgages more expensive again, buying a car more expensive again on and on, then you're also getting to like really funky geopolitical questions because part of the reason people even listen to the United States and the global political system is because of the strength of the dollar and the strength of our financial markets. It's not because they like this. In fact, I think I haven't checked the international polls, but I don't think we're doing too well in that department right now. If in addition to not being liked, so that's, I guess,

our soft power, we lose what is actually quietly one of the biggest sources of our hard power, which is our currency, which enables us to issue sanctions and to block people from being under our military umbrella or to include them in our military umbrella. All that is backed by dollar dominance. And if that slips, then Trump, who cares so much about strength, actually would end up having this master plan of his completely backfire. And, you know, putting Trump aside, I think what matters, you know, is the people. It would terribly impact the people who put this guy back in because of, you know, sort of rose-colored lenses of having an idea that 2019, 2018, for all of its cultural war was more stable.

And so he's actively undermining potentially the exact reason that he got back into office. I don't think people put Trump back into office because they wanted him to take over the Fed. Yeah. I mean, look, you're singing from my hymn book, which is the risk to the U.S. global stability and how that trickles down. But I mean, even at just a more micro level,

there's some dark irony in the fact that, he could do all of this to get interest rates down, and it does actually nothing meaningfully for people that have mortgages or more middle, long-term rates because of the reaction of the bond market. That seems like a pretty, that seems like a decently likely kind of outcome, frankly, of the situation. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, like I said, we can easily just muddle through. It's frustrating for people that operate in the take sphere because, like, in a textbook way, when there are certain bad policies enacted, you would expect there to be consequences. But, you know, it's a $30 trillion economy, 70% of it is services, 70% of it is consumption. And a lot of the economy is just people paying their bills on time. And, you know, two guys like us, you know, chatting over the phone or on Zoom or whatever and then go in and get a beer. Like, you know, or you buying your kids shoes because it's the start of school. Like, that's what's so odd about these moments is, and why I mentioned the idea of a frog boil.

Like, it will, by the time any of this gets to the point where it's disrupting daily life, it could be too late. All right. Any other broad, like, stated the economy thoughts? And we had 229,000 jobless claims this morning, some market, which was about expectations. Job market is a little tight, but not catastrophic. Stock market's kind of resilient. A lot of other bad signs, kind of in macro of weakening economy. Does that sound about right?

Yeah, it's a very like meh economy. You know, and one of the things that would help is, you know, we actually would have probably been in a similar situation. Let's say, to go back to the previous hypothetical, let's say Harris won. Harris administration is probably looking at an economy that after the boom, the booming job market of 2021 through 2023 was slowing down and that probably needed lower interest rates in order to keep the business cycle going. right? And while there would have been disagreements about how she approached housing, right,

which has been very hot this year and this, out of the other, you know, regulations, which you have kept in a con, at a base level, and let's take Harris out of it, a replacement level Republican that wouldn't have been obsessed with. Well, there wouldn't have been tariffs. Yeah, that wouldn't have been obsessed with a global tariff campaign. There are some things happening in our economy right now that are structural, whether it's inequality, which is just God awful. And I know it's not sexy to talk about inequality anymore because that feels like so 2010s. But I mean, it's like it's a it's a real awful problem. And the lack of socioeconomic mobility in this country, there's also the threat of AI. And it the really scary fact that, you know, for a lot of entry level college

educated folks, like some of these models are just as good as them, which is kind of coldless to say. But I mean, like you, I spend a good amount of my time talking to employers and they actively are just like, why would I hire an analyst or a research assistant? Maybe because the model still need. I mean, I guess humans make bad mistakes too. The model still make some mistakes. You know, I play a song at the end. You need to hold their hand.

Yeah, I play a song at the end of every episode. I had Gary Kasparov on last week. And I was like, where has he been mentioned in music? Because I wanted to play one of the songs that mentioned Gary. And ChatGBT BT was like, oh, and LCD sound systems losing my edge. And I was like, whoa, you're in my wheelhouse now. I was like, that's not true. It's like, I know every word to that song.

So, you know, I mean, maybe that's why. The hallucinations are wild. And yes, no, I'm not, I'm not, you know, we're not an I robot, like, for sure. But, like, there are structural things that would have happened regardless. But, like, it is really crazy. I know you know, uh, Joe Wisenthal, he's a pal of mine. And, like, I was talking with him and some folks recently, we're also kind of in, like, the macro and finance world. And we were just talking about how, like, you know, it's so insane that, like, this Trump 2.0 group could have come in and, like, done all their cultural or stuff.

and probably have done like some pretty gross level of the xenophobic mass deportation and still had polls going okay for them and just done like nothing otherwise and just let the economy cool down as it was cooling down and then let the Fed do its job and then mortgage rates fall and then people are potentially back in that 2019 mood where everybody in MSNBC is tearing their hair out but the rest of the country is like ah well like he's kind of an asshole but the economy is doing okay and doing nothing would obviously better i know it's just this combo and all the i mean obviously the tariffs because of the light inflation and then you have the bb which i haven't really mentioned but that you know the debt bomb there also is negatively impacting interest rates in

the bond market i would disagree and then to your inequality point it's just like a big transfer like all he's doing is a big wealth transfer it's like a tax cut for rich people and then tariffs are affecting you know working class and right middle class people right whereas last time you just cut taxes mostly for the rich in corporations, but he didn't really touch the entitlements. This time, you know, he, you know, whack the bottom and sprayed more gifts at the top and then, you know, did a little bit of, you know, comparatively little on no tax on tips and, yeah, no tax and overtime. But some gimmicks.

Yeah, it's just, I guess I shouldn't be surprised because so much of what is, what seems to be powering this Trump 2.0 administration is not rationality, but it's just like, If I was on that side and I was ever involved in politics, I'd just be like, do nothing. Dude, golf. Yeah, golf, bro. Literally, yeah, which is like supposed to everything to do. Changed the name of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, which takes us to our final topic. I guess maybe you wouldn't have, do we want America's name on the Gulf?

Who knows what kind of torment it might cause going forward? But, yeah, have you just done some name changes? And I think you would have been better off. Let's do the Katrina thing really quick. So tomorrow's a 20-year anniversary. When I had your brother on a year and a half ago, he talked about how formative it was for him. I meant to go back and listen to it, but I'm kind of going from memory. I think he was a senior in high school or junior, and I guess you're younger, so it was maybe a little less.

Yeah, he's six years older than me. Yeah, so less so you were pretty young. I was 11. Yeah. So I'm just wondering what kind of like memories you have of that, like whether, what, you know, sort of the, you know, significance you think of it is now, two decades on. Do you have any other deep thoughts or ruminations? Yeah. Well, no, no, I don't, I don't have deep thoughts.

My brother does deep, but I do have thoughts. Yeah, it was, it was awful, you know, for, it was speaking of an equality. It was really, I had a very Disney Channel childhood, you know, like. The sweet life with Jet with Cody and Tal. Yeah, except like, imagine just oak trees in the bayou and just, and like, you know, Vietnamese and white and black friends and we're all frolicking and having pool parties. Like I, like any 11 year old, I didn't think. about the deep inequality in my city and in the country that much. I was a fucking kid.

And then I just saw how, you know, we had the money and sort of means and social capital to just go over to my uncle's place and basically have vacation. Then there were other 11-year-olds that were on their roofs or at the Superdome because either they, you know, couldn't afford to evacuate or or maybe they could. But the idea of, okay, well, then how are we going to get back? And you know, you also have to keep in mind August 29th is the end of the month. And the first and 15th of your person that is quite dependent on government assistance, once you get to the end of the month, you're running pretty thin. So there are a lot of people that would have left if this happened like in early in mid-August, but that we're not able to. And so that was, though I only learned the economic numbers there later on, I could just see, you know, I was on my uncle's couch in Houston watching.

you know, on CNN, all the awfulness that was happening, you know, Anderson Cooper and all the folks that were reporting it down there, which is I think part of when I look back at it, why I ended up being interested in journalism. But yeah, they're like, oh, wow, I'm here and I'm comfortable with my family and there are all these kids just like me that weren't able to escape. That really haunted me for quite some time. And then I guess thinking about New Orleans now, the doomerism around climate change is sometimes appropriate. But like, I really disdain, as we talked about regarding a certain article. We'll just say it. You don't have to pick on them. I'll pick on them. These articles happen like every other year or so, but this is the latest

is the economist. The headline is it's very, it's really a really sensitive headline for the 20 year Katrina anniversary. Does it make sense for the U.S. to keep subsidizing a sinking city? You always have all these, as if there's like some alternative. I guess maybe mass evacuate everybody to Baton Rouge would be the plan. I don't know. No, well, I mean, the implicit plan, and it's kind of, you know, I've been an editor and I've been a reporter. So I know how one structures new stories.

And so they don't, it gets quite explicit, but it's mostly implicit. The implied message through using the voices of other characters, shall we say, is that, you know, well, it could be worth it to save New Orleans. if it had the GDP of Miami, which is under threat, or the GDP of New York, which is obviously under threat. Anybody that's lived in Brooklyn knows how much the flooding risk of low-lying parts of that area and that the subway is always flooding these days, right? We can go on and on. There's the majority of the population or something like that. Near the majority of the population lives near coast, and a lot of people live in underlying areas. But you know what? There's also

people, you know, at or below sea level in places like Amsterdam, right? And places throughout the world. You know what happens? The government values the lives of those people. And unless there is actually a low population area, there are low population areas that are also facing climate risk. Okay, yeah, that makes sense to make some of those really bloodless or even cold blooded calculations. But there's a million plus people on the greater New Orleans metro area. And to openly say in a always fact-checked and usually carefully reported magazine that like well you know the human capital folks down there is pretty low and GDP is low human capital yeah it's just tourism it's just tour because this stuff doesn't matter it's just tourism restaurants music food it's all this is low capital yeah yeah i don't imagine i know some folks that have that are at the economists now or that have worked there before who who are okay eggs but yeah we're gonna since they're being mean about my city we can be a little bit mean to them I don't know of too many people that likely work at the economists. That would be as fun to get a beer with down here in New Orleans compared with you.

They're probably not the life of the party. So maybe that's part of why they don't understand why New Orleans is so great. You know, culture matters and people matter. And you can't value them purely and, you know, their ability to consume or their likelihood of them filing a patent and being an inventor and keeping that human capital in the metro area. Like it's just... We're doing high capital things like market timing. Right. You know, very, like, critics are very critical.

I love economics. I think it's a really important way of analyzing the world. It's part of why I'm employed. It's trying to understand it myself and then explain it to people. But there is a certain social Darwinism to it if you analyze it without context and without humanism. And ultimately, we are humans in a society. And I think that matters most. So hopefully we, we, you know, that's the last.

of those sorts of articles from the economists for a little while. How do you feel being back just a little bit? I mean, you were young, obviously, so like the differences and stuff. Yeah, but weirdly, like, I mean, I definitely don't remember five and under very well, but maybe this is just me. I have, like, a pretty good memory of five to 11. There are certain things of pre-Kastrian in New Orleans that I'll always miss and that, you know, aren't ever going to quite be the same.

but there are things that are improving in New Orleans and that I think are great and I think we have the possibility to recognize that with like a proper, dare I say, green New Deal style investment in places like New Orleans, we can fortify our wetlands and learn how to live better with the water, you know, desalinate the water. What I really like about my colleague Ezra Klein's new book with Derek Thompson Abundance is like it takes these things that could be really awful seeming and like these challenges that are so large and you know kind of goes jfk style and says like no because it's hard because it can sometimes feel overwhelming like let's like let's put our brains together and learn how to solve these things and then hopefully between

you know technology and democracy and this that and the other like hopefully we have you know shorter work weeks and healthier coast and better water and like we all can spend more time like reading and acting and dancing and like you know and chatting about politics right like this is you know we'll always have things to argue about but i don't think we need to argue about whether you know certain cities should exist or not so i'm going to go over to um some of the memorials because there were lives lost. And I grew up in my family, my mother's side, very Catholic. So even though I'm not really a practicing Catholic anymore, I do still kind of consider myself a spiritual person. So definitely want to pay my respects. And then, you know,

I'm sure in New Orleans fashion, there'll be like a bunch of really fun celebratory stuff going on this weekend too. So maybe I'll see you at one or two of them. You'll see me around, man. It's good to see you. It's good to meet you and appreciate you very much. We'll be seeing you're on town. All right. See you. Thanks, y'all. Thanks to my buddy Sam Stein for jumping on and going over the breaking news at the top. Also, if you're not a, if you're just a podcast listener, you're not a YouTube viewer and you're just looking for some laughs this weekend. I do have to say our fingering trio materials with me and Sam and Will Summer have been pretty good and you might want to Google those or avail yourself of those over on YouTube. And obviously,

I appreciate Tal a bunch for coming on and giving us some New Orleans memories, talking about the economy. I'll be back tomorrow. I'm treating myself to something tonight. So we'll see if I'm at 100%. But the good news is we've got a great guest who can carry me if I'm not. So we'll see you all then. Peace.

30 miles out in the Gulf Stream, I can hear them South Winds moan. The bridges are looking low up. A shrimp boats are hurrying home. The old man down in the... any quarter I slowly turned his head He took another sip From his whiskey bottom

And looked at me And he said I was born in the rain By the punch of train Underneath the Louisiana moon I don't find the strain Of a hurricane They come around every tube

I black water A devil's daughter She's hard and she's cold and she's made But nobody's taught her that it takes a lot of water To wash away New Orleans A man come down from Chicago Gonna set that levee right It's got to be up about three feet higher

Won't make it through the end of the night The old man down in the quarter said don't you listen to that boy The water be down by morning sun and he'll be back on his way to Illinois Because I was born in the rain by the punch of train underneath the Louisiana moon I don't find the strain of a hurricane they come around every June I'll pack of water, a devil's daughter, she's hard and she's cold and she's me. But we finally taught her that it takes a lot of water to wash away in New Orleans. The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brow.