The Bulwark Podcast - S.E. Cupp: The Outrage Is the Point

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

This time around, Trump has dispensed with the ribbon-cutting side of being president—he's just not giving average Americans anything to feel good about. Instead, his administration is defunding the police, freeing criminals, and welcoming home the alleged sexual predator Tate brothers. Meanwhile, Trump is also shrugging off the economic news even as Maria Bartiromo is raising the threat of a recession. Plus, our allies and trading partners are infuriated, and we've officially become one of the bad guys in Ukraine. S.E. Cupp joins Tim Miller. show notes Tim joined Bill for the "Bulwark on Sunday" "Bulwark Takes" on Apple Podcasts The Noah Smith piece Tim referenced

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Take the guesswork out of your check engine light with O'Reilly Variscan. It's free. Ask for O'Reilly Variscan today. Hey everybody, it is Bill Crystal Monday, but Bill is traveling. So on Sunday, I sat in with him on a new thing he's doing on Sunday on our Substack page, which is live conversations around noon Eastern time. So if you haven't checked those out yet, please go to thebullwork.com. You don't have to subscribe to watch it, but we'd love for you to subscribe

and check out our conversation from yesterday. Also, there's just so much happening, so many niche topics like I can't even get to on the pod. We are doing these one-off hot takes and sometimes they're hot takes and sometimes they're like interviews that are deeper dives on issues that we just can't get to on the pod on our YouTube page.

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Up next, Se Cup. Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. You might notice I'm sounding more masculine this morning. I'm on day two of the flu. And so I'm excited to have the laugher with me today because I need someone who can carry me on this podcast and I found the right person. She's political commentator for CNN, contributor to their new show Table for Five, host of the Off the Cup podcast, which gets off the news, which we all need. It's Essie Cup. What's up, girl?

Sorry, I'm so giggly. That was just really funny. Well, you know. And I'm sorry up, girl? Sorry. I'm so giggly. That was just really funny. Well, you know. And I'm sorry you're sick, honey. I'm sorry. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I'm a little worried about the lights in here.

I'm going to be sweating through at the end of the podcast. So you need some good material because we're clipping your clips today, not mine. I don't think I'm going to look good. All right. The last time we spoke, I don't know if you remember. Well, I mean, we've texted or whatever, but the last time we spoke on the podcast was the day after the Kamala debate, simpler times. Wow. Yeah, I know.

I know. It feels like a lifetime ago or even another earth. I wonder what you make now of just the biggest picture like the first seven weeks. How does it match or change your expectations? Is there anything in there? Any green shoots? I don't know. Just anything. Top line. What do you make of it? What's crazy is I thought the 2016 campaign was incredibly disorganized. And then his first term for all the things

And then his first term for all the things was a bit more organized, or at least an effort at it. It brought in some good people. He kicked them all out when he realized they were actually too good and wouldn't do his bidding. But this is the reverse. I found this 2024 campaign to be run in a very high level way by Suzy at all. And the collapse of that organization and order on day one of this term has been, I guess, shocking, but not, I mean, I am so shocked at the level of disorganization and

chaos considering he came in, I think, with a way bigger mandate this time. I mean, I judged people for voting him in the first time. I judged them harder for voting him in the second time, and there were more of them this time. Plenty of judgment to go around here on the Bollock Pod. So I actually expected, and I think I said this various places, that I was going to go into this administration with an open mind, Tim. Like, and try not to get sucked into the industrial outrage complex.

And how's that gone so far for you? Right, which is hard in cable news, but also in general, but impossible in this second term because it feels like the outrage is the point of everything they're doing because it's certainly not fixing shit. That outrage is the point of everything they're doing because it's certainly not fixing shit. That's not the point. So yeah, it's more chaotic than I thought.

It's like unnecessarily chaotic. There are lots of people in place that could help with some ordering of things. Sure. And then I look at his cabinet and I'm deeply, deeply scared for some of the people in there. Well, those things are connected, right? I mean, like the types of people he's putting

in is contributing to the disorder. Surprise is never the right word because I expected an utter collapse. Like I expected everything to go to shit. I didn't know exactly in what manner it would, you know, but I just, everything that Trump has ever done has ended in disaster. Like basically, except for the reality TV show where he pretended to be something that he wasn't. Right? So I figured it would end in disaster. The fact that we are seven weeks in and we have this economic shit show, I think is the thing to me that is the most interesting. I mean, the market is down again right now as we tape. We'll see.

Obviously that could change in the afternoon, but I mean, the market has been getting crushed. Our trading partners are fucking pissed. There is total instability. There's not been any focus on like, you know, the side of Trump that's like the ribbon cutting guy. You know, we haven't had that side of Trump at all. Like there's been none of that. Like we're going to build new stuff here. There's really been pretty little focus even on like the regulation cutting and occasionally I can mention that. But like, yeah, it's like

on across every metric, it has been a shit show. And like this weekend, you have Maria Bart Romo, like basically being like, I think a recession is coming to him. I mean Maria Bart Rove. Right. I mean, she was like one of the most insane people during the Stop the Steal thing. Yeah. So some reality is breaking in on her show. Yeah, but elsewhere on Fox, I'm sure you've seen, they're already messaging the Biden recession.

That in itself is a sign of just very dire economic circumstances, I would think, right? Yes. Yes. So anyway, I don't know. What do you make about the economic situation? The other crazy part is the campaign and its voters were so clear on the three issues, the economy being the top thing that they were going to the polls for. They didn't give a shit about pet

seeding migrants in Ohio. Like all the crap that surrounded the campaign, voters were super clear. Don't care about that. We care about the economy, immigration, crime, period, full stop, end of sentence. Nothing cracked the numbers that those three issues did. And again, economy at the top. So to come in and in his joint address, mentioned the economy, spend like, I think, something like 7% of his speech addressed the economy specifically. That feels like a lot. I don't know. It felt less. It took 30 minutes to even get to the economy and lowering costs.

Mount McKinley was in there and complaining that the Democrats don't clap for him. Mount McKinley came first. Yes, right. Renaming Denali came first before the economy. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico hit before the economy. All this shit that no one said, this is why I'm going to vote for Donald Trump, came before the economy. All this shit that no one said, this is why I'm going to vote for Donald Trump, came before the economy. And he doesn't have great economic news, but that's never stopped him to still not put it front and center and even claim wins he hasn't gotten

would be very Trump and he didn't. So I'm just wondering when these three issues are going gonna come back front and center and like instead of addressing crime and policing the new MAGA thing is to get Derek Chauvin's Conviction overturned or whatever or pardoned I mean, it's just it's going around all the three issues. And I just don't understand who this is for. The very online, like posters, I think it's who it's for.

On the crime thing, which I didn't even have on my list, but it's a great point. It's been the opposite. I mean, he's let out a lot of criminals. Yeah. So he's let out a lot of criminals and they've stopped, they've said that they're gonna stop investigating certain types of crimes, so the DOJ, a lot of white collar crimes.

Right. That's something that they're going to do. And there's been no focus on like the getting criminal, like cracking down on criminals. Even rhetorically, I haven't heard, I didn't mean to cut you off, but also the Doge cuts could delay deportations. The other thing of this three-legged stool, like they're getting in the way of their own stuff. And the FBI, people getting fired from the FBI. Yeah. You know, the Doherty situation,

the guy in the New York FBI office, so it was very well regarded. I was forced into retirement, reasons unclear. It could be related to, you know, retribution, could be related to the fact that he did some Russia investigations. like all of that is sure to come out. But like, you know, he has a standing ovation walking out of the New York office over the weekend. And it's like, that's right. So yeah, it's like they're firing law enforcement officials. They're defunding the police, like the federal police, like investigate real crimes, not like DC desk jockey, whatever, blah, blah, blah, deep state, like guys out in the field arresting criminals. They're getting rid of them.

So yeah, no, I hear you. I am that immigration thing. You can, I guess, give them whatever marks on, but like the economy and he's on again, they've now stuck into this message. They're going to the Biden message even worse. They're like, well, there's the transitory. Now we're into transitory messaging. They've already gotten into that six weeks in, right?

That they're like, oh, well, it's gonna, there's gonna be a little short-term pain, all right? There's gonna be a little short-term transition. And then Trump, on the tariff thing, I don't know where you are at on this, but there are still a lot of people out there that think he's bluffing, he's bluffing. But on the plane last night, when he was asked about this,

he basically says the tariffs are going to be what gets everybody rich. Yeah. And he keeps falling back on that. And I think he believes it. So I don't, to me, it's going to get worse before it gets better. Part of me, at least strategically, politically, I hope he's not bluffing. I hope he gets to do all the things he talks about doing so that we can see in evidence

how they don't work. I mean, I think I know how they're going to go, but you know, there's a whole half of the country that doesn't believe that, that believes everything he says. And so I'd like to just give him open rein. Now, I don't want the pain, the economic pain that I know that's going to cause and is already causing. But I hope he's not bluffing. I hope he gets to do it so he can't continue to say, well, if I got to do it the way I

wanted to do it with no evidence, just do it. Okay, do it. Show us. Do it and show us how rich we're all going to get. I'm just sick of all the games. Me too. All right. Now, moving on to the most outrageous stuff

of the first seven weeks here in Ukraine. So the intelligence sharing is still not happening. We pause that, I guess, to create enough suffering in Ukraine to force Zelensky to surrender. Zelensky said that Russian forces launched 1,200 glide bombs, 870 drones, and over 80 missiles of various types at Ukrainian targets over the past week since we stopped the intelligence sharing. A higher percentage of those have gotten through.

Trump said last night, it could be back soon. Wait and see. We'll see. I mean, it's pretty just sick what is happening right now. I don't know. Yeah, with friends like these, who needs enemies? We're enemies. I mean, we're enemies with a bad guy.

We're the bad guy in this. And that's really hard to stomach for all the reasons I know you know. As a child of the 80s and like a Reagan Republican, this is bananas and awful. But yeah, the intelligence sharing thing is how you know this isn't just, as Trump says, a guy who wants a peace deal, a guy who's neutral. This is a guy who wants Putin to win because you don't take away the intelligence sharing for any other reason than you want to give Russia a strategic advantage. Right.

That's it. That's the only reason because it's not boots on the ground. It's not even weapons. It's information and it's super valuable information. And so withholding that is the dickiest part of this. And also, like I said, the clearest indication of whose side he is on. As if we didn't know. But that's how you know.

And if I'm an ally watching around the world, I mean, the stuff he and his folks are saying about Japan, about NATO, about all the alliances that we've had for so long that I think are really important would make anyone very, very nervous about who America is anymore and what we're willing to do for anybody but ourselves. Yeah. I want to get to the alliances next. But just one more thing on the deal, the supposed deal. So they're in Saudi, I guess, this week.

Yeah, Jeddah. Again, we've decided to do this on Russia's home court. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? A lot of countries could have pegged to do the negotiations. We're going to do it on... Was North Korea booked or... Yeah, we're going to do it on an autocrat's home court.

And there's mixed messages on whether the intelligence sharing can come back in. But the deal that is being leaked, and who knows? I hope maybe it'll be better. We can always hope. But it's essentially that Ukraine surrenders, Russia gets to the territory. Ukraine gives us the rare earth minerals in the hopes that that will mean that we will defend them, but we won't give them any security guarantees. Right.

And we might start giving them weapons again. And we might start giving them Intel sharing again, and they have to have elections or, or another option to be for Zlensky to resign. So like the short answer is basically surrender, resign and pay us a ransom. That's like the opening gambit here in the art of the deal. Yes. And the maybe we'll give you weapons again, maybe we'll defend you again is irrelevant. They've already surrendered under the plan of this deal, right? They've surrendered already. Yeah, it makes no sense other than they want Putin to win. They want Russia to win is how this makes sense. And I don't know where that goes. I don't, you know, I'm not very confident in the deal making abilities of this administration,

to say the least. Yeah, well, here's where it goes. I mean, the Europeans breaking from us. So I've talked a bunch of last week about France, what they've been saying. There was a report out high level British sources are saying that they think it's time to stop doing the five eyes intelligence sharing with the US. Romania is maybe not our most important ally, but I thought that this was an interesting quote from Romania. The butcher in the White House is knowingly weakening Ukraine's defense capacities in order for Putin

to strike cities. My God. That's pretty blunt there from Romania. The Polish foreign minister is in a Twitter fight with Marco and Elon. Marco is like demanding that he says thank you or the Russians will be on his border. And it's just all collapsing.

It's collapsing. It's collapsing. The Western Alliance, the Atlantic Alliance is just collapsing. You could say we're becoming weaker. For all of Trump's talk, we are becoming a weaker force and presence on the world stage. And that is shockingly by design, it seems like. What they would call America first, I would call a weakening of American exceptionalism and might and power and influence and preparedness.

It's in the way he talks about the economy as well. There's this economic warfare. It's not boots on the ground, but it is warfare nonetheless, just to get back to the tariffs. Mucking about in other people's economies, which is what he's doing with threats and real tariffs, is an economic warfare. And now all these talks of maybe militarily taking over Panama or Greenland, and then all of the withdrawing from these alliances, and in fact, strategically breaking them on

purpose. This is all a weakening of America, and it does not feel like isolationism, which is, I think, what he was promising. This is a lot of interventionism to change global economic stability, to change global security, to change long held geopolitical relationships. This is incredibly interventionist to me. I don't know that anyone on his side will care really, but I care about things like consistency and

honesty. You, you know, a little bit more than me. I'm pretty much persona non grata in this world, but like you talk still to like national security, Republican types, right? Some of them still chat with you. Like what, like where are they? And we have a big budget thing that coming up this week, March 14th, they're gonna need to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open. It only takes three House Republicans to say,

hey, I'm gonna vote for this, but like the string attached here is that we gotta do intel sharing again, or we have to at least provide the weapons that have already been budgeted, right? Like, you know, and it can be a small thing, right? But like, I don't know. I mean my words, but I've heard a number of Republicans in the House and Senate and staffers complain about, like I said, cabinet picks in these security positions. Specifically Tulsi. One person I talked to called her a clown and voted for her because not being with this president on everything is, I feel like, not an option. So, you know. At least it wasn't a very significant role that he was voting to confirm a clown for, he or she, I guess.

So, you know, just the director of national intelligence. Just that. Just that. I know that there was some relief when she pushed back on Doge, when she pushed back on Elon and the firing he's trying to do. There was a little relief of that, but she has since come out and said some propagandist shit about Russia that confirmed she is exactly who we thought she was. But no, I think there's definitely anxiety among a lot of Republicans on the national security front, but a total unwillingness to do anything about it. I want to get to Elon and Doge, probably. We've mentioned a couple of times because I don't think I actually said it.

Elon tweeted, be quiet, small man, at the Polish foreign minister. Again, what are we doing? Like what, the shadow president is just like be raiding on social media, the Polish, the Polish foreign minister who is just out there saying, hey, I paid for Starlink so you can't take it away because I paid. And then threatening that he might, that he might turn it off. Yeah, he might just turn it off. I feel like maybe this is wrong. I don't know why this exists in my memory, but maybe not during this campaign,

but like at a time you were kind of Elon curious. No, is that wrong? Never. You've always been Elon in curious. Yes, deeply. So, okay. Well then that gives you clarity of vision here. One thing I guess you have been curious of

that we all have are is streamlining the government. So what do you make of his effort to do that thus far? Ridiculous, stupid, terrible, awful. I was pleasantly surprised to hear this interest in cutting the government, streamlining the government, making it leaner and smarter, because this is the rare conservative thing that this administration seems to have been interested in. And it's a bedrock of small government, limited government conservatism. So I thought this is good.

I did not like the idea of putting an unelected man child in charge of it, but that wasn't my choice. But no, I was very open minded to this, but I cannot believe how clumsily and dumbly they've gone about this. I mean, no expert in anything would say that this is the way to fix any problem. What a waste. What a wasted opportunity because there is bipartisan support among the electorate for cutting fraud and waste and making the government smaller. That's such an easy win. It's low-hanging fruit. You could easily win at this if you just did it in

like a normal way. But Elon is, like I said, he's such a man-child who I feel like is running around the country playing at politics, like with toys, like the economy is a toy. All these agencies are little chess pieces on his big game board. It's ridiculous. And I don't know when or if Trump will ever get tired of him embarrassing us on a world stage. Will that ever get tiring for Trump? I don't know. I think he likes it. But what does he like about it? Tell me. I think that he likes that this guy is the richest person in the world and he lands rockets

and he hates the same people Trump does. He does not land rockets. Well, he's had a few misses lately. Let me just tell you. The cool landing was cool, I guess. Right. More often does not land rockets. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, it's a hiddenness. I think Trump, now we're getting deep into psychoanalyzing Trump, which I don't like to do, but like Trump sees himself as like the rich guy

that wasn't respected by the other rich guys in New York, you know, and I think that Elon and him have this in common, right? Like, Elon's also been very successful, and like, these dumb liberals that didn't invite us to their parties or whatever, blah, blah, blah. I think that there's something to that. There might also be something to the heat shield element of it. That, yeah, I've heard that. How long he wants that kind of heat shield, I don't know. But I don't know.

I wouldn't want to be embarrassed this way, especially if I had as thin a skin as Donald Trump. This is just, it's laughable, it's humiliating. We are a laughing stock because Elon tweets at foreign leaders like they're just trolls, like they're Twitter trolls he's swatting away, it's crazy. Here's the other thing. When I interviewed Bannon like back in December, he was very, because he hates

Eli, right? But like he made this point that I take also, which is that like, in addition to being a heat show, he's also Trump's hammer right now financially, right? And like, I think that unlike any of these other people that have been around Trump and embarrassing him at various levels. Like none of them had their own base of support, right? Like, Eli has its own Twitter base of support. Like, you don't do really want to get mad at him and have him sickening people on you. He's, he does seem erratic. He has his own financial support, like boots on the ground. It wasn't even just like writing a check. Like he was out there doing organizational stuff. You know,

you could use him to intimidate somebody that's not going to support your agenda and not that they seem to really care about legislation at this point, since they're just doing everything by fiat. So I do think that there's like some element of that too, that Elon has a little bit more leverage than any of these other Trump people ever have. I think that's right. I think that is true. But then again, what does Elon have over Trump that Trump can't say, hey, let's cool it with this. Let's rein this in or let's do it this way. Let's get a little more responsible, a little less reckless. Like why can't he rein him in?

He doesn't want to. That's the part I don't, I guess I just don't get. It's also been seven weeks. Psychologizing Trump has never been my strong suit. Here's the other thing about Doge that's like, here's just a prime example of the ridiculousness. I don't know if you saw this. This was Friday afternoon. Tom Cole, who's like one of these old line Republicans that's still around, you kind of forget he's still in there. He's

from Oklahoma. He's the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. So, you know, powerful. And he wrote this, after working with closely with Doge, I'm thrilled to announce that common sense has prevailed as the National Weather Center in Norman, the Social Security Administration Office in Lawton and the Indian Health Service offices in Oklahoma City will remain operational, blah, blah, blah. He goes on. And Chris Murphy, like, posted about this and is like, this is an insane system, it's a petition to the king. Like that's how we're going to do this thing.

Like this is a very un-American system where it's just like, Elon's going to go in with a flame thrower and start burning everything to the ground and you know, you can get your thing rebuilt if you happen to be the Appropriations Committee Chair from Oklahoma. But there are Social Security Administration offices and places that don't have representatives like Tom Cole or have Democratic representatives or have insane MAGA representatives. And so I guess those are just going to go away. Yeah.

It's this sing for your supper. And it's a theme, right? Why didn't he thank us? Why isn't he more thankful? This theme of you have to earn, you have to earn your democracy, you have to earn your government, you have to earn services you've already paid for, you have to re earn our support, even though we've you thanked us 1000 times. It's so much about them as if, and I said this before, like in that meeting with Zelensky, Trump and JD Vance

looked like two losers on bar stools, trying to be like, we own this bar, who are you coming in here? You don't own the bar. That's not your house. The White House isn't yours. It's our house. It's our house.

You are public servants. There is no awareness of the public service aspect of this job. And the only people that could really get in their way are Republican lawmakers, and they're not doing that. So there's no stopping this. You say you'll learn a new language every year, but few of us actually commit to it. Babbel makes it easy for you to learn one in less time than you think. This year, speak like a whole new you with Babbel, the language learning app that gets

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Some people just lean into the tourist thing. I try to fit in. It's important to try to fit in. Some people just lean into the tourist thing. I try to fit in. I'm monitoring the outfits. I'm monitoring what folks are wearing. I made a whole outfit switch when I went to Seville one time because I was noticing all the kids were just wearing all gray. I thought that was very hip. Anyway, I haven't quite pinned down where we're going yet.

We're working on finalizing it. But once we do, I'm going to be turning back to Babel. I've been behind on my French, I do have to admit. A lot's been happening out there. You can't really blame me. Just to make sure I can do some ordering. Make sure I can do the basics. It's important to try. Trying is important in life, and Babbel helps you try. So, with over 16 million subscriptions sold, Babbel's 14 award-winning language courses are backed by a 20-day money-back guarantee. So let's get more of you talking in a new language. Babbel is gifting our listeners 60% off subscriptions at babbel.com slash bulwark. Get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash bulwark spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash bulwark.

Babbel dot com slash bulwark. Babbel.com slash bulwark. Rules and restrictions may apply. So here's somebody else that might be able to get in their way. At least Elon's way, not Trump's way. Tesla's stock is down 25% this month. And here's a rant from your boy, Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports.

My boy? Yeah. He was on, he was on, I think.oy of Barstool Sports. My boy? Yeah. He was on- I know Dave. Yeah, I think he was on Fox Business or one of these shows. And I just want to play a little clip from it. If you're going to send emails to federal workers and say, what have you done for the last five days?

I think Tesla shareholders are entitled to ask their CEO, Elon Musk, what have you done for Tesla the last five days? Yeah. I mean, Tesla's down another 8% as we speak right now. When that rant was going, Tesla's at 280 something, it's at 239 as we talk right now. So it was already going down when Portnoy did that rant. It's gone down a bunch since then. There's maybe something there. Maybe he'll be able to be bullied out by his fiduciary responsibility to his company. No? You know, I don't know.

I know having covered Elon a bit before Doge, you know, people are scared of him too inside his companies. He is vengeful inside his own companies. He fires people when they say things he doesn't like. And so I don't know, there might be a culture, even among his shareholders, of a fear of retributions. I don't know. And Dave is right. And it's a great idea. But I just wouldn't put a ton of hope in the idea that someone out there is going to hold him accountable. What do you make of the corruption side of this? I kind of hate the question of like,

will this have political salience? It's kind of like, who cares? It's a long time away. But I do just wonder how the port noise of the world and like these more soft mag, it's maybe even unfair to call them soft mag, but whatever. Like the people that were, that got caught up in Trump, you know, that were, that were less ideological about it. Let's put it that way. Yeah. You know, they don't like the corruption. Apparently Musk had 32 investigations into his companies when Trump took power.

All of them are being quashed. I've talked a bunch about this Justin Sun guy. He's a Chinese crypto magnet that put 50 plus million into Trump's worthless various crypto griffs. And now the SEC isn't investigating him. And I think this is just the tip of the iceberg of the corruption that's going to happen on all this stuff. I don't know. Do you think that there's going to be some salience there or do we just live in a kleptocracy

now? Yeah, we live in a kleptocracy now? Yeah, we live in a kleptocracy. Also a plutocracy, what I'm calling a plutocracy because of the tech specificness of our plutocrats today. We do. And yeah, the Starling contracts, I think I said something like it's like making the arsonist the fire chief, but also the accountant, the head of HR, the guy who decides the insurance payouts, like who gets it. Yeah, the insurance payouts and awarding him contracts and accelerants. Right? Like because Elon is overseeing agencies that regulate his businesses overseeing agencies that regulate his businesses

and decide whether his businesses will live or die. Like, I mean, it's crazy. And this should be a huge, the story. Imagine the Clinton era, right? Of trying to find bits of corruption anywhere you can, right, with whitewater, these really kind of complicated, you really have to look for the corruption. It was there, of course, but you really have to find it. This is such obvious corruption and self-dealing.

The Hunter Biden paintings, you know, that was some corruption, but this is like- Apples and oranges. And suddenly, nobody cares. Nobody cares that the George Soros of MAGA, suddenly, I mean, I feel like I had my memory erased. Like someone's trying to erase my memory from the past 20 years of conservatism. Where like, remember when that stuff mattered? Boom, severance, you're at work now, you forgot all of that. Like, it's crazy. I mean, the real explanation is that for most of these people, it didn't matter. It was

team jerseys and you're putting your team on whatever. And it's like, this is just like the most extreme. It's like a sociological experiment. It really is. Of that. It's like, how ridiculous could we make? Like, how ostentatious can we make the corruption and demonstrate that you still don't actually care? Like, we'll have the president start a worthless coin eight hours before he becomes president. See if anyone cares. And let shadowy foreign governments and individuals pay him for this worthless coin, millions

upon tens of millions of dollars. And we'll just say, do you care about that or did you just care about the Mark Rich part? You know what I mean? Right. exactly. Well, while we're discussing the Democrats, I do have one Democrat to pick on today, just because I just think it was just such a prime example when I was watching this sick over the weekend of like, why it's important for everybody to get out of their bubble. You know, you got to get out of your bubble a little bit. Oh, good. Tell me who offended. I love these.

It's Stacey Abrams. If you get stuck in your bubble and then you start to make arguments- And expect nothing less, by the way. That don't, exactly. That don't make any sense, okay? And you have to at least be able to hear the critiques. Even if you grant that like 94.7% of the

mega critiques are bad faith, or BS, you got to at least listen to them so that you can understand how to push back on them. And so that you can kind of address the 5% that accidentally were legit. So here it is, Stacey Abrams, I guess got 1.9 billion, she was the head of this group and Chris Hayes in a very friendly way, just kind of asked her to explain what all the hubbub was about. I wanted to play for you her explanation of how she was going to use the 1.9 billion taxpayer dollars.

In 2023 and 2024, I led a program called Vitalizing De Soto. We worked in a tiny town in South Georgia to demonstrate that by replacing energy-inefficient appliances with efficient appliances, you can lower your cost. And in fact, we accomplished that. For 75% of the community, they got appliances that are lowering their bills right now. We had one woman who saw her electric bill cut in half from 180 to $98. That's what we delivered. And based on that program, a coalition of organizations,

famous organizations came together and said to the EPA, if we can do this here, we can do this for millions more Americans. Let us invest the money of America in lowering the cost for Americans." And the EPA said, okay, great, go for it. So, DeSoto, Georgia has 116 homes in it, in the town. So I mean, I guess it seems good what happened in that. Scalable.

Yeah, it seems good what happened in that trial program. But it's like, okay, so what do we do? I guess if you came to me and said our plan was to give 2 million poor people new appliances, I probably would have said, okay, that seems like a dumb program. I mean, that seems like a good program for a nonprofit, the Gates Foundation to do that or whatever. But if it's the government, it's like maybe we should just give them cash or not do that or pay down the debt or whatever. It's just like we have this very convoluted system where we're going to replace toasters in homes for 1.9 billion.

I just don't think that anybody who is not totally in the tank would listen to that and be like, great point. Right. And like, if you listen to that and be like, great point. And like, if you listen to that minute long explanation and compare it to Donald Trump just being like, Stacey Abrams got 1.9 billion to give people toasters. Like, who's winning the argument? He is. He is.

Yeah, those are the kinds of things like, I don't know if it's bubble or not really understanding where we're at. Money. Money, right? Yeah, and solving big problems, right? It feels a little like bringing a knife to a gunfight when you're like, this is not what's going to win your voters back what you need. And this isn't addressing your policy problems. The policy problems that Democrats have are that the top three concerns of the country were not being solved by democratic policies. We've already said the economy, inflationary economic policy didn't work at the border,

open borders didn't work and crime, soft on crime policies didn't work. Whether perception or real, that is where we're at. The crime issue was getting better. What about the time Biden, by the end of the Biden campaign? The FBI had to revise its numbers and no one said anything about the fact that they then showed crime was actually going up. Sure. I wonder why.

I gave you the perception part. I gave you that some of this could be perception, but these are the top three problems. Democratic policies did not solve them for many Americans. So to ignore those top three things and decide it's really a question of leadership, David Hogue is going to fix this over at the DNC. It's really a question of like how we message this or it's a question of whether we protest at the joint's address and hold paddles up. That's going to solve it. Or Stacey Abrams' big solution. Here's what I did with billions of dollars.

This is so missing. This is so missing the obvious point. And Alyssa Slockin, who I know and really like, got the closest to that, got the closest to it in her address when she talked about, listen, people want cuts. Okay, that's acknowledging something that many Democrats do not do not acknowledge. People want cuts. I have a different way to do that than the current administration is doing it. People want to lower the cost of goods. I would have a different approach to that than this

administration is doing. Democrats need to accept the problems that Americans are telling them they have and offer different solutions instead of protesting about Elon or Trump paying taxes. I mean, none of that is it. That ain't it. That's very good. And I would add on the list of problems that American people have, I did not notice a big clamoring that was like, I really want the government to give me a new microwave. What I really need right now is a new high efficiency microwave. And I wanna do it at scale.

I want it at scale. I haven't gotten a raise in five years. I'm working three jobs. I'm worried about my kid and opioids. I'm worried about crime in my town But give me a new energy efficient oven It's gonna cut 60 bucks off my monthly bill my buddies that are in who I love by the way that are in renewable You know kind of hedge fund world are gonna be mad at me for this one shake their finger

But I actually I just want to reiterate I'd support this as a nonprofit effort, as an effort in the private sector, figure out ways, raise some cash, go do this. Great. Or what if the government offered like a GE some subsidies for giving people new energy efficient appliances? Something simple. Good. We're on record. We also want to solve this problem. Something simple. I'm fine with it. It We also want to solve this problem. Something simple. I'm fine with it.

It's just, you know, it's like, that's just not the best explanation that you can give. Correct. I think the right explanation is just to not do interviews, if that was really the best you had. I want to move on to Andrew Tate, who is a real fucking loser and, you know, makes Stacey Abrams look like you should get a Stacey Abrams candle by comparison. This guy and his brother are back in the country. I hate to hand it to Ron DeSantis, but they came to Florida and Ron DeSantis was like,

no, this is not Florida. We're going to investigate you. So good on Ron DeSantis. But then he heads out to Vegas. Dana White, who's now on the Meta board, gives them a welcome to the States boys bro hug when he arrives at the USC fight, Cash Patel. The director of the FBI is at the fight just sitting near these two- Predators.

Predators that had trafficked women and then kept them in a fucking video prostitute home, whatever you want to call that, bragged about it. JD Vance, I noticed you pointed out follows one of them on Twitter as a big fan, both of them. Oh, Tristan and Andrew. Like this is fucking sick. Like this is sick. Going back to our top thing also,

this has been a priority. Like they could have just ignored this one, but like the administration decided no, bringing Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate back to the states was an important negotiating thing that they needed to do with Romania and Now they're all kind of growing out in Vegas The corrosion of the Republican Party and The place MAGA has pushed it into is one now where you have to reflexively, you don't have to, but people believe that you have to reflexively defend

the worst kinds of people to own the libs, to champion free speech, whatever it is, you have to. Because it's not, it's the young Republicans, a group that helped bring me into a movement of conservatism with principles. It's, you know, Dana White and these other Trump acolytes. It's the vice president following these boys. And it's a ton of right-wing influencers giving them a moral pass and even saying, though they haven't been proven guilty, they've admitted to doing what we're saying that they're doing, as if there's some technicality so we can ignore all of that, is insane, but so reflective, so illustrative of how far the Republican Party has devolved and in jettisoning all the principles, this is what's left.

This is what they're more to. I think more than anything else. I don't mean this like child predators. I mean, defending the indefensible is kind of what they're left with because the principles are gone. The things binding conservatives together inside the Republican Party, that's gone.

This is what they have. Yeah, and I thought the most telling exchange about this was Gates posted something about DeSantis and basically said that DeSantis is virtue signaling. It's total nihilism, right? Like there's nothing that is worth defending just on the merits. And it's nihilism and it's personal grievances, right? Matt Gaetz is mad at Ron DeSantis. That's why he tweeted this. This has nothing to do with the Tates. Just like nothing has anything to do with morality

or principles or even whether things are working. It's just personal grievances and what you can get from people. Pressing. I am pleased to see a lot of Republicans and sort of conservatives come out against the Tates saying unashamedly, you know, people on the far right and right wing media say unashamedly, these people are terrible, stop defending them. I've seen more

of that than I thought maybe I would. Okay, that's worth saying. I would ask though, who do you think is gonna win that battle? Sure, yep, we know. This is a rhetorical question. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of terrible people, our HHS secretary of RFK,

he's been kind of quiet. I've been noticing we haven't ma-ha'd a bunch, but we do have a new measles case in Maryland. Right. And then we've got the department of ag, a new character for our show is Brooke Rollins. I don't feel like anybody gives this woman enough attention. She's the secretary of agriculture.

She posted on Instagram, I feel like this is related to RFK, you'll see why. Yep. I know where we're going. Rollins told the Breitbart News that Trump's administration will be focusing its egg price reduction efforts on repopulation of chickens. And that administration is now ruling out any vaccines for animals against avian bird flu. We've actually just come up with like a vaccine for chickens, I guess, in February, it's been finally approved. And the Ag Secretary is saying, nope, not going to do this. I don't know, worried that Bill Gates is going to get

his microchips into the chicken, which will get into your Popeyes, which will then get into your system. I don't exactly know the rationale for not doing that. So no, we're not going to vaccinate the chickens and we've got measles in Maryland. And also, you should raise your own chickens if you want to lower the price of eggs. Yeah. Just get a little in your backyard, get some wire. Yeah. Inner city? Who cares? Get a little crate. Now, the lumber for your little crate, it's going to get a little in your backyard, get some wire. Yeah. Inner city, who cares? Get a little crate. Yeah.

Now that the lumber for your little crate, it's going to cost a little more because we're tariffing Canada now. Yeah, right. But that's okay. That's steel wiring too. That's going to go up. But yeah, I don't want to laugh about measles in 2025. One child has died.

It's happened. This is heartbreaking and disgusting and preventable. And if this happens in numbers, we are no longer a first world country, right? If we're dying, if our children are dying of diseases, we can prevent. Science has a tool for this. I don't know how we call ourselves a civil society. I don't know how we call ourselves a first world country. It's crazy.

That's pretty bad. Do you have any other, any other RFK, any other maha thoughts? I'm pleased at how quiet he's been, but that also makes me nervous. What's he doing in this? When we're all paying attention to Elon, what is he doing? Well, we keep our eye on RFK. Our final topic, it's kind of a big thing thing. I mostly just

wanted to point out listeners to it because it's very interesting. Noah Smith, we've had on wrote a sub stack post. The thesis of it is basically that the liberal world order from FDR essentially through 2015. Now he's a little bit of distance. Seems like with Trump's election in 2016, that might be the end of that era. There's this question about what will replace it. I think he's of the view. I still have the hope that it could be cobbled back together, looking worse and worse every day. But if the view is that something else is going to replace it. I think he's of the view. I still have the hope that it could be cobbled back together, looking worse and worse every day. But if the view is that something else is going to

replace it. He points out, I think, pretty sharply that like MAGA cannot actually be the thing that replaces it because it's a destructive force and that they haven't actually built anything. They don't seem to be capable of building anything. It's a very long think piece, but I think it's important to kind of start to wrap our heads around both that question, whether MAGA is capable of doing this, and if not, that what? So I just wanted to see if you had any deep thoughts

on that you wanted to leave us with. Well, yeah. I challenge this premise a little bit. Please. Because MAGA hasn't built anything, is true a bit, but he seems to be dismissing the, I mean, he is dismissing the online infrastructure. Yes. His indictment is that MAGA is just an online fan fiction kind of movement.

And he's not, he's not wrong, but that is incredibly powerful. And for everything that Democrats built their grassroots and their young Democrats and their, it has not made them a dominant force in American politics in a very long time. I mean, since Obama, I don't think Democrats have had a ton of persuasive power. I think he's right about identifying the nature of the MAGA movement, but that is powerful in itself. I would also say whatever's going to and Trumpism, the Republicans have not built

yet. The Republicans haven't haven't created that. And because, like I said, they've jettisoned the conservatism, the principles, there's nothing moreing MAGA to anything static. It's only more to what Trump just said. The last Trump impulse is what is currently defining the MAGA movement. Well, that's by design. Trump not defining his principles, the Trump order, the Trump version of foreign policy, not defining that is intentional. And it's actually, you know, people who study mass movements will say that that's a really important thing to do if you want a movement to grow and continue, you can't define it because once it's accomplished those minimal goals, it ceases to be important.

So you have to leave it sort of ambiguous. And Trump leaves ambiguous because he doesn't know and he doesn't know what he wants it to be or what he stands for Other than these transactional kinds of You know ideas so Maga is moored only to trump, which means when trump goes either You know, he's not in office anymore or he dies It's really not more to anything and it's not more to don jr

It's not more to jd Vance or whoever the successor is. It's really just attached to him and defined by him. So that could leave room for a lot of things to come and fill that void, some really ugly, gross things, but also maybe conservatism again, who knows? But it's not going to be, it's not, it cannot carry on. Trumpism can carry on in voters, but it can't carry on as a defined movement, I don't think, without Trump. And I don't see anything past Trump for MAGA, other than just the kind of chaos and running around and how do we try to emulate it, but no one's going to be able to do that very well. And so I think you're going to have all these like fractious groups

of like the white nationalists over here, the America first people over here. And I just think it's going to be kind of a mess. Yeah, I could be messy too. And at some level, there is like some weak links but some links between you know Orban and Bolsonaro, though he's out now and you know Le Pen and Maloney and like and Farage and you know and so maybe there's something that kind of emerges out of all that. But I don't know, to me the most interesting thing about it, why I wanted to raise it besides just recommending to listeners that go check it out is that I essentially agree with the premise that, and I think Bannon does too, who is I think really the person

that is most in touch with the actual ideology to the extent there is any with MAGA, is that it's a destructive movement. I think that is the right thing. It is not really prescriptive at all about like, once we tear down the administrative state, once we tear down the Western alliances, once we get rid of these liberal elites that everybody hates, then it's kind of like, we'll see what happens. Like, honestly, we'll see what happens. We're going to tear down this order and rebuild something new. And some people have thoughts.

TBD. Yeah. Some people have thoughts within the movement, but there's no cohesiveness. And I just think that because of that, it will leave us, assuming we get rid of this guy and get over it, with kind of like a really open aperture, like both on the right and on the left for like different types of things to fill it. And in some ways, this is why I wanted to leave with this, in some ways that is exciting. I don't know. My small C conservatism is like, it's like scary in some ways because it's like, I thought the old order was like pretty good. I had some complaints on the edges, but I could have stuck with the old order. But if you accept

the thesis, I do think that there's an opportunity there for somebody that wants to seize it. So anyway, I don't know. Do you have any final thoughts on that or is that good? I do too. And I think I was trying to get at that. There's going to be such a vacuum because of all of this unmooring that it could create an interesting opportunity for either or both parties. But by that time, like will we survive this? Like by that time, how much more corroded and eroded and diluted will we be as a country, but also these two parties? It'll be interesting to watch.

I maybe hope I'm not alive for it. It was important and on brand for the Borg podcast that you take us to the dark notes to end because I agree. Will we survive it? Open question. It's a fair question. We'll be discussing it every day even when I have the flu. Thank you, Se Cup, for carrying me today.

Let's do this again soon. Feel better. I'm doing my best. Everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow. I'm going to do it. I'll be here with the newest member of the Borg. I'm very excited. I think you guys are like him. So we'll see you all then. Peace. 40 ounce in my right hand watching drunk history alone. It's a vibe here working through a few things. Feeling like I'm Jordan in the flu game. Liquor to alleviate

the nightmares. Yeah. I got a whole lot of baggage. Grew up in a place with a whole lot of static It's been a couple years since I strolled out the traffic And made a lane all on my own I've been living for my soul, by that I mean my son They hoping that I fold, but I have just begun I'm finna tell my story to this nothing in my lungs And my face turn blue and my fingers go numb I've been getting over shit, I've been going through shit

Life would be the Titanic if it was a crew shit But I ain't no DiCaprio, I ain't finna sadly go The Bullork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brehm.