Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews – 11/26/24 – D.O.G.E. and the Clownocracy

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Skewers, this week we discuss the grand, ambitious, totally-not-dumb-and-infeasible designs that Elon and Vivek have for the federal government through their shiny new Department of Government Efficiency. Spoiler: it’s not great. Join us. Support the show

What's up, What's up, everybody, welcome back, happy Skews Day to you, and I hope you enjoy the forthcoming Turkey Day. Gravy up, everybody, it's happening. Time to be thankful. You can find something to be thankful for, I'm sure. Today is November 26, 2024. I'm Trey. That's Mark. How are you doing, Mark? You feeling thankful? Yeah, man. I got my health. Fam is good. Speaking of having health, I'd drive my wife to a routine doctor's appointment on Saturday. And so a homeless guy panhandling with a pro-Trump sign. This is over

adjacent to Beverly Hills and I was like what a good fucking griff dude some like red sky is going to give him like a $50 bill actually yeah you're right no that's a good point when you first said that I was like Jesus Christ it's like you know when you hear about like gay people or black people or anything like the like supporting Trump you're always like what do you do and that's

what I first thought when you said that but then when you elaborated I was like actually you're right that is that is probably a good plan because that because the the pro Trump part will overcome any of the other parts like a typical like MAGA person who has money driving by a homeless person is going to be like get a fucking job whatever but if they've got if they're

reping maga if they're reping trump they'll forget all of that and just you know give them a fucking a hundred dollar bill or whatever so yeah yeah right that is it's a it's a good move it's the it's the only way the conservative movement's going to help him so gets uh get 50 bucks then the then the highlight was my wife gets nervous for doctor's appointment so she took his annex and she was so high on the drive back that uh she tried to put her sweater on over her seat belt That was a fun Saturday. Today's show, we're going to talk about Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, totally not named after a meme coin that Elon is invested in.

Is that, by the way, is that, like, is that, I know that, but I'm saying, like, is that acknowledged? Like, it's like, okay. So Elon's like, yeah, I get my own special department and guess what I named it. Because you know how I love Doge. Doge, that's my thing. Doge is my thing. And I get my own department. And so look what I came up with.

like that's that okay right just making sure okay speaking of other internet dipshits uh matt gates is now on cameo please do not give him 250 dollars to play a joke on your friend uh someone uh also tricked the costco guys and to doing a pro nazi video for richard sherman so there we go everybody's doing that yeah i told this what you said so first of all the Costco guys are something and big it's not big business that's the big big justice now The Rizzler is adjacent to this other feller and big, I've been trying to bone up on this recently because I'm so, so out of the loop,

yeah, the Rizzler is like a charismatic fat child who, and I was a fat child so I can say that, but he's also adjacent to this father and son duo, something and big justice and they were all on Jimmy Fallon together recently. But anyway, the, the,

whatever in big justice, they did a cameo for Richard Spencer. They got tricked into doing it. it and I told you when you sent it to me, like it reminds me one of my favorite dreams I've ever had. I don't know nobody gives a fuck about your dreams, but this is probably the funniest dream I've ever had was I had a dream once years ago when

Corey was really popping as the buttercreen dream online and he was doing cameos. I had a dream once that Corey got tricked into doing a cameo for a brutal Filipino dictator Rodrigo Duterte. And he was doing his whole lot buttercques. skew, you had Duterte, yeah, my man, like that whole thing. And, like, I literally woke up laughing so hard and couldn't stop laughing

because it's like, I could see that happening to Corey. So it's funny seeing that play out in real life with a Nazi instead of a dictator. But, yeah. I feel like we talked about it on this show a couple years ago. A bunch of American celebrities got tricked into, like, by Russian intelligence to do in, like, cameos to call for the overthrow of, like, Moldova's prime minister or something. Anyway. That last bit of tech news, so I haven't checked today, but a couple days ago,

Truth Social's value had continued to crater, which shocked me because, like, I assumed the existence of it was to be a placeholder for bribes, right? There's like, there's nothing stopping like Qatar or China or whatever being like, I am willing to buy True Social at a $5 billion valuation or whatever, right? And so of which Trump would get a huge cut, but apparently not yet or whatever. ever anyway and like his supporters the people bought into it because they thought it would make them rich because they'd be able to get in on it or are very upset people have lost their life savings one guy said he thought he was going to be able to buy a cruise ship not a bass boat

a cruise ship so yeah yeah i don't get so you said it continues to crater because like i don't all that wall street shit is fucking uh money harry potter shit to me i don't understand any of it but i thought like i know that i know it's going to come up later like Elon musk on the other hand after the election his his fucking his stock is through the roof literally fucking popping off yeah and i i know that true social ain't worth anything in reality but i just would have thought that off the back of such a huge win for trump and everything that it would that it would like you know it would at least pump it up a little bit it would juice it or something because that because of whatever i don't know i don't know how any of it works that's just what i would have thought

so like so my point is i guess if even in this scenario we're in right now. If even now that stock is bottoming out, then it truly ain't worth shit, right? Like, if it ain't hidden right now, there's no way for it to ever. Ain't nobody ever getting no cruise ships or bass boats out of true social at this point. Yeah. I don't know if you see what Laura put in the dock, but she's just having trouble

connecting to the YouTube stream. I'm not sure it's anything we can do about that. You work on that while I get to this next story. Okay. All right. So some Nazis marched through Columbus all the weekend, which is depressing, but I want to talk about like, maybe all is not lost yet because what happened was they, let me quote here from the story. The neo-Nazis told police they'd never experienced a response like the one they received in Columbus. They said people pulled guns on them and through cans of vegetables as they marched, waved flags, and yelled racial stirs. One of the officers noted the men were covered in. pepper spray quotes from a

Nazi. We do this all over the U.S. We've never been attacked like this man. The driver told police from a seat in a U-Haul. They're right around the back of a U-Haul. At one point, while being detained, the man driving the vehicle accidentally pepper sprayed his partner in the passenger seat of the van. I watched this footage. It's absolutely fucking hilarious. A bunch of black dudes ordered

as a countermarked the next day. There was much bigger. They marched the same route. And here's the they didn't believe cops of every statement and said they weren't charged, but I want to quote here from an officer was on the scene. A reporter watching the scene. One black officer tried to reason with the marchers pointing out that they were bound to see confrontation from

people for shouting hateful things. Quote, I definitely feel your First Amendment rights to say whatever nonsense this is, but come on, man, the Buckeyes are playing. Man, come on. I feel that, dude. I've been at weddings of dear friends before and been like, the fucking

balls are playing. Do we live in Knoxville? What are you doing? So, like, let alone a Nazi rally. You know what I mean? It's like, come on, dude. You got if I can plan that better. But yeah, it, it's just, I don't know. It's crazy to show, they call everyone on the left cucks and snowflakes and all this stuff. I mean, although at the same time, they do also call us like, you know, special forces,

Antifa operatives and stuff who are, you know. I'm excited for the reemergence of Antifa. They, they, when every Trump presidency, they come out like cicadas from their underground layer. Well, this feels to me like it should be like the start of it, you know, neo-Nazi show up into a march and they get like, they get, you know, they fuck around. and then they find out, they get given that what fur. I mean, that's, you know, that's Antifa's wheelhouse, or at least it's supposed to be. But it's just, it's like, you know, I thought you guys were hardcore.

You know what I mean? If they want to get in dealing with Antifa, they'll show up in Portland. That's what they'll do. Every time they need it, they need some footage or whatever, they just go to Portland. Yeah, but dude, if you just show up, so it seems to be for me that you said that a group of black man organized a countermarch. So I'm just assuming that a lot of this resistance to these guys was black dudes, black people. Because I'm just, if you show up yelling explicitly racist things or whatever, talking about how they're subhuman and white supremacy and all this stuff, and then some black people fuck your shit up, like, what, what, I mean, what was, what else was supposed to happen? But I know they think, like, the government is supposed to protect them, but then, like, when, when, right, and they normally do.

And then when, you know, when black people riot in air quotes after, you know, another unjustified police shooting or whatever. whatever, then it's, uh, that's got to be squashed immediately. And the Nazis show up and counter protest, the, uh, anti-police protest and they all fight along side the police. Yeah. Yeah. Look forward to it. Yeah. Yeah. That all checks out. But all right. We're going to keep going. By the way, uh, producer Matt is generally back. But tonight, it's producer Laura. I'm not saying we're going to switch back and forth every time, but you guys love Laura. She's here. We're going to, we got, uh, we got two producers in the stable now. Yeah, we're moving up in the world. But producer Laura is with us tonight. And we do appreciate that.

This is weekly skews. Before we could. continue. As always, I want to remind you of a few things. If you'd like to see me do stand-up comedy live and in person, and of course, you should want to do that. Then go to Trey Crowder.com and check out my upcoming tour dates. Next weekend, the weekend after Thanksgiving, I'll be in Northern California, the Bay Area up there in Sacramento. Those shows are already filling up and looking good, which I appreciate, looking forward to that. And then after that my yearly holiday homecoming shows back home in Nashville at Zanis, one of the best clubs in the country. And then I'm closing out 2024 at the Den Theater in Chicago, Illinois on December

21st, one of my favorite venues I've been to in the past five plus years. So check those out, but also I got plenty of dates in 2025 already up and on the website. Go to traycrouter.com. Check them out. Come see me. Also, if you'd like to support this show, you can do so by signing up on Patreon. You can go to weekly skews.com slash more or go on Patreon and search for my name. You'll find us either way. $5 a month gets you access to two

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Patreon and support the show in the process. So we hope you'll consider it. sign up on there, get some more skews in your life. Now, as for the show, and as we talked about earlier, we've got the perfect people in charge of finally reigning in the inefficient bureaucracy that is the American government, a meme lord named Elon Musk and also his Indian sidekick, Rebecca Ramoswamy. They've been given the keys to their own brand new, shiny governmental agency, the DOP. It's not an agency.

Well, whatever it is. It's a podcast. Okay. Okay. The Department of Governmental Efficiency, and they got big, big plans, most of which don't make any sense. We'll talk about them all a little later, but first we begin on that subject, really, with the Daily Dumbass. Laura, graphic, please. Tonight's D.D., federal employees who didn't realize their social security numbers were also

reflective of their competence via numerology. This is the aforementioned Vivek talking about their plans, their ideations. Getting there on day one, say that anybody in the federal bureaucracy who was not elected, elected representatives obviously were elected by the people, but of the people who are not elected, if your social security number ends in an odd number, you're out, if it ends in an even number you're in. There's a 50% cut right there. Of those who remain, if your social security number starts in an even number you're in and if it starts with an odd number you're out boom that's a 75% reduction then literally stochastically okay one of the virtues of that this a thought experiment not a pop not just uh you know stupid is extremely illegal to the extent laws even fucking

matter anymore and i'd like like the if you do want to attack the federal bureaucracy just trying to get annoy everyone until they quit is probably the best way to do it So hiring the two most annoying people on the planet to fucking go around in government department to the government department is probably a smart strategy. But I want to quote here from Mark Meadows, one of Trump's former chiefs of staff who said, talked about raining the, raining in the federal bureaucracy. He's like, quote, I think Elon will find it easier to go to Mars, which really hit for me. So to be completely fair to him, but this is still stupid and don't hit. He said that, he's like, that's just a thought experiment. Obviously, we can't do that.

what we what we imagine though imagine that you could do that but you could also filter for incompetence and for competence and zeal basically I'm paraphrasing but that's basically what he says but it's like it's like appropriate to me because it's like kind of their whole thing it's like imagine we could do this thing that would be great for everybody and then everybody listening it's like god that's awesome listen to what they're going to do but it's like but but they don't know how to actually do that thing. They have concepts of a plan for how to, there's no real substantive path forward for them. They're just like, oh, we're going to get there. We're going to make, but you have no idea how great we're going to make America again. Listen, we're going

to do this. We're going to do that. And it's like, how are you going to do that? And it's like, well, imagine we could do it this way. And it's like, okay, but can you? Well, no, obviously, we can't do it that way. We're just saying, like, if we could, that would be cool, right? And it's like, so it's all just bullshit. But I'm honestly, I mean, I'm kind of worried about all this because, and this is going to come up a lot tonight because it's relevant. But as long time listeners know, my day job when I started staying up was I worked for the federal government. I worked for the U.S. Department of Energy for six and a half years before I quit in 2016. And I've still got a lot of very good friends who still worked there.

And actually one of them got married last weekend. And I went to it. So I saw a lot of my old DOE employee friends at my buddy's wedding. And they're like, they're pretty, they're pretty worried about all this. They're sweating bullets about it. And like, you know, obviously they're my friends. I'm biased. But like, you know, they're good people who work hard and I'm worried for them.

But they're like, they're scared that this is going to actually happen. So I, this whole, close to me. This whole Doge thing has a grand opening, grand closing vibe to it to me. But like, because like, like, there's a, there's a report in Rolling Stone, the day, like a notebook dump that was going to be on the record from a bunch of people in Trump's orbit that went off the record because they won. A lot of them were expecting to lose.

But they were going to blast Elon, and I'm quoting here as an annoying fucking loser. All right, he was taking credit for a bunch of other people's shit. And also, like, how are they going to, these dudes think they can judge the competence of others when they don't even know how to do their own fucking jobs is crazy to me. Right. If you read reporting about how, like, SpaceX and Tesla and

Twitter is actually run, Twitter's the one he actually fucking focuses on. but like there are people who work at SpaceX whose entire job it is is to babysit Elon and get him out of the room when important shit's being done okay like the idea

that he's some like super genius is like really weird to me and every reporter who's treated him that way over the years should probably go find another line of work I just don't know how any rational person can still believe that when you just look at his like

output on Twitter daily you know what I mean like just watch like it's not just that he tweets all goddamn day so it's like how hard could he possibly be working It's just also the stuff that he tweets. It's such like 19-year-old edge lord ship posting bullshit that, like, if Albert Einstein was alive today, he wouldn't be tweeting that stuff. Right.

You know what I mean? Like, he's not a fucking super genius. Like, demonstrably. He's Edison taking credit for a bunch of other people's work. There you go. Yes. He's much closer to Edithson. Yes, that's right.

You have this video of May Musk. So since Trump's back in power, we got to do this criminology bullshit where all this behind-the-scenes stuff is going to. going on. So, like, for context here, all these stories about everyone hates Elon prompted, appear to have prompted his mom to go on Fox News and say, sorry, excuse me, say this shit. Yes. I mean, he walks around as the wealthiest man in the world bar none. Do they like him, really? You know, I don't like the word wealthy or billionaire or things like that because I think it's degrading. I think he's the genius of the world. And people are loving him for that. They don't when they see me they go crazy because of his mother. So his mom had to go on the news and say

that people like him. Right. Which again, like who is is that work on? I mean, I guess there's people that that does work on, but it's like, what else is his mom going to say? He, you know, it's like, of course, he's the bestest boy and everybody loves him and we're so proud of him. It's his fucking mom. Like, it's like, the inverse is true where it's like, or you'd like to think it is. Like, who was that Arizona senator or congressman who like, they got his entire family to appear in an ad being like our brother fucking sucks right? And it's like if that happens

that's like noteworthy you're like damn that's a bad look right there but the opposite just your family especially your mama being like he's my special boy I love him so much it's like what the fuck is that supposed to do for anybody you know but I guess there's people out there being like look

see see listen to her who knows him better than her she knows how great he is it's silly it's not like part one of the reason to have a little like like like like hope on this stuff is like talking about how much like these motherfuckers like it's a nest of vipers who all have petty rivalries and opposite views and hate each other right so besides that by turning on must there's a story like that the trump transition teams investigating boris epstein who was apparently trying to charge people 30 to 40,000 dollars a month consulting fees to either

recommend them for jobs in trump administration or to not cock block them from jobs in the Trump administration, including Trump's current nominee to be Treasury Secretary. Epstein is just a media, he's a guy who goes on TV. That was his whole thing. I think he worked in White House and Trump won for a little bit. Michael Anton, who famously wrote an anonymous bog called the Flight 93 election about how it was better to destroy the country than let Hillary be the president. He turned down a job this to go around in Trump's White House because he did not want to work

with Seb Gorka. This is a man who would kill every single one of us to prevent a Hillary Clinton president. presidency, but does not want to see Seb Gorka in the lunchroom. Right. We talked about this last week. I keep coming back to this. It's kind of the only shred of hope that I personally have been able to glean from all this. And the video I did last week was about this subject where just the idea that like the only thing to take any kind of solace in is that this is a cadre of narcissists, megalomaniacs, sociopaths, who like you said, a lot of times have inherently competing interests.

And they're all in the, they're all trying to climb up the same bucket, you know, and it's like that just can't, surely that will lead to general incompetence and disarray, which given who's in charge is a good thing for the country generally. If they keep fucking each other over, each other over enough to keep from having time to fuck the general populace.

And that's what we got. They do have different concerns and political beliefs and conspiracy theories. They're all caught up in. But the main belief, all differentiate on is they all think they're the specialist boy and you can't have all the specialist boys right yeah so exactly so I wanted to get into this because just like how talk about this stupid fucking agency and how it's like they it's been treated as the most important thing in the world by a lot of people it's extremely stupid but if you want to know like they're

just to me they're a science just giving the Elon a pat on the head because like the new the leader of the congressional doge committee in the house is going to be marjor Taylor green who's definitely a person you put in charge of stuff when you want it to go well sure I'm sure her and Elon will be fist fighting about like week two over in the Senate the point person is going to be Joni Ernst who they do take seriously but also the idea she's pitching him on let me read you this list of stuff she's offering him up consolidating government office space and auctioning off unused space changing the composition of the penny and

curbing payments to the United Nations now the United States think will ignore for this purpose for these purposes so their idea to increase government efficiency is to Airbnb a floor at the EPA or whatever and get rid of the penny. Like, this is like the no dumb ideas here, just spitballing part of this. Throwing stuff at the wall. Let me ask you about the office space thing, though. I saw another headline about Elon. It was like day one, no more work from home, right?

People got to come back into the office because I know, again, because I've got a lot of friends that still work there, ever since the pandemic, at least the DOE, and I presume most of the federal government has gone basically full-time work from home. And that's not quite true. That's all the stats. It's like, it's way less than a majority, but maybe the department. But part of the energy is like, well, energy is like like highly educated office workers, right?

Yeah. They can do that. A lot of people have to come in to like do stuff. Sure. Well, that's the only, that's the only part of the government I ever worked in. And that my whole office where I used to work, that they went fully work from home. And so the idea of like we need to cut down on like the real estate for like office space or whatever. But also we need to make force people to come back into the office at the office at the

same time seem like an example of like competing interest you know what I mean like if you want to you want to clear up overhead for government office space let people fucking work from home but at the same time Elon is going like no more work from home it can't matter because like boss men are just they put them on full tilt the general idea of people being able to work from their house they just can't stand it as a I think the idea is you bring them back to you if you could force them back to the office they'll quit then you can sell off the buildings right so uh for that's what you That's what you think the main idea.

You think the main thing here is just like they're just trying to get people to quit is what they're mainly going to try to do. It's either doing layoffs because then you've got to pay severance and shit. A lot of companies have done. Sure. Yeah. So for context here, getting rid of the penny is probably a good fucking idea. Okay. So, um, because pennies, you know, they're worth one cent, but they cost three cents to make.

Nichols costs 11.5 cents to make. Nobody uses pennies or fucking nickels for the most part. Producing these two coins last year cost them made $179 million. And we probably also. get rid of the $100 bill for reasons we'll get to in a second. But like, so the only reason we have a penny is because there's one company called Jarden Zink. Pennies are made of zinc, not copper. They paid $140,000 in lobbying fees in 2011 to get a $48 million government contract later that same year.

So it's basically just a make work program for one fucking zinc company. Yeah. And if you want to understand how the U.S. government actually works and stuff we could attack, you can buy a $48 million contract for $140,000 to make a useless product that poisons babies and kills dogs. Yeah, man, that's wild. Big Zank stepping out and make sure, like, who else is on their side and, you know, big wishing well, maybe?

Like, who else wants? Coinstar. Yeah, who else wants pennies to stick around fucking nobody. But it's every, so much things in the government just end up coming back to that. Like lobbyist, lobby and it's just where the money goes. And yeah, like you said, that's a hell of an ROI, dude, $140,000 in lobbyist fees in return for a $48 million government contract. You can't beat that with a stick.

And see, that's exactly, like, that's the type of shit that, like, that should be rained in. Do you know what I mean? Sure. We're talking about this, we're talking about what we got on the air. But, like, when we talk about bureaucracy and waste, comparing the government, the private sector, it's so weird because, like, if normal private sector stuff gets done in the government, it's a huge scandal. For example, if someone takes a company plane somewhere, right? That happens every day in the private sector. It's not considered wasteful.

For personal use, right? Or, like, if somebody uses a credit card for, like, a four martini lunch to cost, like, 500 bucks to take their friends out. That happens every day in corporate America. It's not considered wasteful. And when people say, like, oh, you want the government running health care, like a bureaucracy? It's like, have you dealt with Blue Cross Blue Shield? What the fuck you're talking about? So, like, to me, like, we should get money out of politics.

We might, if we have time when I get that later because I got some stuff in the back end of the stove stuff about it. But, like, the people are going to lobby the government for crooked shit. that's going on it's the cost a lot of it's the cost of doing business now when you catch them doing it you the voters the most important lobby should fucking punish the politician and the company right but like every example of you can't pick out these small examples of fraud and waste of like well I guess we got to abolish democracy that's fucking stupid right I'm not saying that but I do think that again because I worked for the federal government for six and a half years and I remember when I worked there I saw all kind like they're like I think two things can be true I'm not saying that the same thing doesn't exist in the private sector and also the government I was was a kind i worked in government contracting i'd let out government so most of what the government does is contracting with private industry to do the work they want done and i know that they get gouged like crazy on that shit because i was part of it so like it ain't that's efficient either it's not but like still there's a there is just there's a lot of bullshit that goes on in the gut with like as far as efficiency and all that stuff like the like i'm i'm sure this happens in private industry all the time too but like and i'm sure this happens in private industry all the time too but like and i'm sure you're sure you already know this, but like every year, all the various departments, they had their own budget. And at the end of the fiscal year, if they had money left over, they would let out some bullshit contractor sign up some fucking purchase order or something for something that would amount to getting rid of it. Like, I don't know how many different times we painted over our

parking lot at the federal building when I worked there, but it seemed like every single year. And because everybody in charge of those departments is like, if we don't spend this money, they'll reduce our budget and I can't we can't have that happen we have to illustrate that we need this so they just spend it on shit that they don't actually are we going to keep making Elon's case for him I'm just saying

I'm just trying to be honest and up front I'm just saying like there's like but I know but I don't trust these motherfuckers to do that or any of these because I told you before we started my whole even when I worked there and I saw this shit firsthand I still never

trusted the whole conservative talking point of like slashing government spending and stuff because like you couldn't even bring up the idea of touching the fucking DOD or the military. And again, I worked with a lot of people who came from the military and the stories I heard about the shit that they did. Oh, let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a story. My buddy was in the Air Force and for the same reason you just described, he was stationed in Mountain Home Idaho. And because the, again, if you don't spend all your budget, you get less than next year, they put in a second golf course of this one Air Force base. Right. So,

The Pentagon just failed its seventh audit in a row, $830 billion in just missing this year. For comparison's sake, I think Medicare for all would be $68 billion and saved like $70,000 a year. That, yes, that. That's what I always thought about. It's like if you, you're right about there being inefficiency and waste in the government. But when you won't it, when you completely take the whole military and DOD off the table as a non-starter, I don't take you seriously anymore because that's where the biggest amount of that shit comes from by far. So if we ain't talking about that, I don't want to talk about none of it. If you're not starting with the military, then this is all bullshit.

I agree completely. That's how I always felt about it and still do. So, so we're talking about who they're going to fire. Elon's like taking, like I mentioned earlier, they're going to start a podcast. We're going to talk about ideas for how to shrink the government. And Elon's taking suggestions on Twitter about who to fire. So his fans are scrolling LinkedIn for government employees who have job titles they don't understand, bring them to his attention. He's blast them out to get death threats.

For example, this woman named Ashley Tallis had to make her socials private. Her job title is U.S. international finance. She works the U.S. International Finance Corporation. Her job title is Director of Climate Diversification, all right. Which Elon apparently thought meant we're going to make hurricanes gender fluid or some shit. Like, like, give all gender neutral names like Terry and Bailey or something. That's so funny. If you, so like, for this is about like how to, it's just technical work and how to make

agriculture more robust under conditions of extreme weather. It seems like a fairly important job right now. I have no idea if she's good at it or not. But she has science, engineering, and business degrees from MIT and Oxford. She's interested in climate sustainability. She took a job to work for the government where she makes $172K a year, which is not bad living, but it's likely much less than she would earn in the private sector. So here's the problem here is like the tradeoff of the government job is you get security.

You get job security. And if you take that away, who's going to want to fucking do it? A person with these credentials is going to go straight to a private sector where, yes, they're just as vulnerable as the rest of us, but they're going to make $500 a year or $700,000. Probably what they want, right, is just the general privatization of the whole thing. But like this type of thing, this runs off qualified because you're right, you do take, it's like you said, government jobs are secure and there's upsides to it, but you take a big pay cut. And a lot of these people are like, you know, they're bright-eyed and. bushy tail coming out of grad school or whatever and they want to like help

thing they want to do you know what I mean they want to do work that helps can't have that right so if you start like punishing that and running these people off it's like how the fuck is that supposed to help me but dude the idea the the job title of the director of climate diversification

and it'd be like what kind of trans pronoun bullshit is this is so goddamn I mean it's sad little funny but it's just it sounds like something It sounds made up, even though I know it's not. It's like so over the top that it's just so absurd. This is a good example if you're going to end up paying more because if you take away

this job security, like next time there's Democratic administration, you try to rehire for this position, assuming like they take away civil service protections and fire her, you're going to have to pay market-riged salaries and hire these people back. So next time this person is making $172K right now will cost you $500K. That's how this is how this is fucking self-destructive. Right, of course. Yeah. And also it's just ignorant, like going back to what we were talking about with the military.

federal employees are a very small part of fellow spending like you pull up this pie chart uh laura yeah uh it's like i told you a minute ago they they don't almost everything is contracted out do you know what i mean like like on the in oakridge tennessee where the oakridge office of the department of energy is i worked in the i was a fed i was a federal employee and i worked in the federal office building where all the feds were at and the ratio of federal employees to contracted employees who worked for the DOE in some capacity in that area at that office it had to be like 20 to 1 except revert like you know it was crazy like that it was the vast majority of them are not actually federal employees so like and like I'm going to be utterly shocked when all these contracts

that when we fire these people and the contracts to do some some version of their jobs goes to company's owned by Elon Musk and he paid that too yes absolutely so so there's like the federal budgets somewhere around like I don't know six trillion dollars a little bit more and federal employees civilian federal employees cost 271 billion of that so 5.8 trillion has nothing to do with personnel at all okay right um uh so Elon was like we got to get rid of the F-35 which is a good fucking idea the F-35 is a wasteful program but it's because he thinks you replace all long range like uh you know strike fighter strikes with drones which they'll just get hacked and turn it around to use it us so it's fucking stupid you need human pilots to do stuff

The F-35 was a boondoggle, but that's a totally different thing. You can get rid of it without replacing it with drones. And, like, talking about how they just pick line items and fucking demagogue about dumb shit they don't understand. So they've been going through the government, like, civilian science budget and picking out the one of the experiments that sound crazy or frivolous to them, which John McCain used to do this shit when he was, like, talking about pork barrel spending. And this is like, pork barrel spending to me is like getting a bridge to nowhere built and putting your name on it. Okay. Right. Science is good to fund.

in my opinion because it's like it's like the argument against NASA and space travel and all this shit for all those years where it's like

just look at all the collateral benefits we got from the space race and the space program from things that were spent you know what I mean it's like

it's like but belcrow and all kinds of like it just pushes things forward right because people look back on and like fuck the moon

or whatever fuck Mars we don't need to do any of that but it's like so much other stuff came out those programs. And like you said, science is just generally a good thing to fund. Again, when I worked at the DOE at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory while I was working there, there was a lady

scientist out there who had a project going where she was literally trying to open up a portal to another dimension. That was her. That's what she was trying to do. It was a fucking stranger thing. She had opening up the multivirte. You know me, sci-fi nerd. I was like, hell yeah, keep it going. Bring the upside down in here. Couldn't be much worse. But anyway, I think that shit's cool so I'm inherently fine with it but I guess I do get how like your papaw in Iowa it's like the fuck is that my money's going to what is that shit fucking you know you pay $10,000 a year in taxes if you're paying $10,000 a year in taxes maybe a half a penny is going to this shit okay right but it does make people furious they hear about like one experiment's how about like

the way they describe is putting shrimp on treadmills but it's trying to study shrimp mobility to see how they survive in their environments we can for our ways to still have shrimp to eat So, like, another one was about spraying bobcat urinal of alcoholic rats, but that's about studying PTSD. But, again, if you don't know what you talk about, it does sound fucking ridiculous. But, like, I'm fine with taking a mill or two out of a $6 trillion budget and spraying bobcat urinal rats to see if we've got to fix troops brains. They come back from my rat. Who knows how that's going to turn out, you know? Right.

Well, they have a theory. They're trying to see if the theory works, all right? But, like, we pay so much money for people to fuck around weapons that don't even work. Like, for example, the F-35, like, who was a joint. it's a strike fighter, which means it started off as a fighter plane, but we stopped you having dog fights, so we got to figure out something to do with it, so we made it to a bomber that carries one bomb.

And I know you know about, like, all those, like the men who stare at goat shit or whatever, like the CIA, fucking, uh, the, all them crazy-ass programs that they had for years and stuff like that. Going back to like military ways, my all-time favorite, I know you've heard me talk about this and I'm sorry,

but my all-time favorite is there was a, I can't remember if it was, I think it was the Navy, maybe I'm just thinking that because it's aquatic, but one of the military branch, She's funded this study where they paid this lady to see if she could teach a dolphin to talk, right? She was trying to teach a dolphin to, like, be able to speak and understand English, I think, because they were wanting to use a dolphin as like an underwater agent or something,

strap a bomb to its head, who knows. But they were trying to teach a dolphin to talk, and she couldn't get this dolphin to pay attention because it was so sexually frustrated, right? Because if you know anything about dolphins, they are horny as hell. So what she started doing was she started jacking this dolphin off to get it to calm down. right, which worked, by the way. She got in there. He would chill out.

He would listen to the lessons, whatever. But then after a couple years ago, whatever, she's like, you know what? I don't think this dolphin's going to talk. And so they canceled the program and she left. And after she left that dolphin, he just floated to the bottom of the tank and killed himself because he was so heartbroken over his jackoff doctor breaking up with him. That's my favorite example of a silly military spending. or whatever you want to call it.

Talking about serendipity in science, she was trying to just doffin and talk, but instead she figured how to get a dolphin to kill itself. She learned something of mental health and coffins. Okay. So, like, that's how science works a lot of times, right? Like the classic examples, like, you know, penicillin, Alexander Fleming left like some petriasis sitting around

because he was trying to figure out how to grow bacteria, how bacteria grew. You noticed it was a blank spot in one of the dishes after running its experiment a thousand times. There was mold to kill bacteria. That's how we got fucking penicillin. Right. If he wasn't just sitting around,

he wasn't just fucking around. probably using somebody else's money, we don't have antibiotics. It's like this, it's like this headline says, science is inherently inefficient because it's like the whole thing with science is the idea that like, we don't know. That's like the overarching thing is like, we don't know. We're trying to figure out, but we don't know. So we're going to do this and see if that leads to further not, you know, see if that's the answer.

And a lot of times it's not the answer, but it might open up some other shit. They're like, holy, we didn't even know. We didn't know that. Look at this thing. That now we kind of know that. we don't know and it's like that's how science just works you know you also have to repeat the experiment like a thousand times with minor variations to see how it goes right right like it's it's boring work that it is like you said inherently inefficient like the

headline says by the way ozimpec came from a guy wondering stuff about heel a monster venom okay so like i don't like like i like i zimic appears to be a miracle drug for a lot of people right now and like joe biden's going to open up the cover by medicaid which is going to drive RFK Jr. Insane, so that's good. So speaking of RFK Jr., a woman named Stella, we're talking about the kind of scientists we are going to fund, apparently, in this government. Woman named Stella Emanuel, who's a partner in the

Antivax Group, America's Frontline Doctors, says she's been nominated to join RFK Jr.'s staff. She's the doctor who claims that alien DNA is being used in medical treatments, and then fibroids are caused by demon spurn. So let's get our best leading scientist on that. See, if you can call this by do... Top women, yes. Top, top minds,

Stop my science is a strong word for somebody like that dude that I mean that's completely unsurprising that that's what we're dealing with now But good Lord bro like I mean who else was RFK Jr. going to hire but still The the contradictions in this shit are going to fucking drive me absolutely insane As any person with a non-disordered thinking, I think will be like not only have to have a clean living obsessed human health and human service as secretary Who's clearly on like tiger testosterone and more HGH the entirety of the w. okay yeah like Hulk Hogan says Trump has asked him to like be on the presidential council in sports fitness and nutrition like I was a kid in the 80s and yes he did tell us to take his take your vitamins that's before we knew how well and how much

drugs these guys were and there's a 71 year old who still on steroids do not take health advice from this man right it's also like I mean maybe I'm wrong but I like you said you were a kid in the 80s it's like there was a time where it's like because the president's counsel on sports fitness and nutrition I have to imagine I imagine it's focused on the youth and stuff. And it's like there was a time where I feel like even at a PR stunt or whatever, this would have been effective because he was, you know, a lot of Hulkomaniacs out there.

But like, kids today. Schwarzenegger was a spokesman at some point. Right. And that makes sense. But like kids today, they don't give a fuck about the Hulkster. You know what I make? No.

It'd be made more sense to pick like Jake Paul. Exactly. It would. Yes. 100%. Uh, So back to Elon for a second. Like I said,

I don't think Doge will last long. But Elon's net worth went up $100 billion. dollars after the election. Man, that's so crazy. The richest man in the world is net worth went from like $2.40 to $3.40 or some shit. That's so much, dude.

Because shares of Tesla went up. We talked about true social earlier, but Tesla has like the yearly revenue of T.J. Max. Stock value is already a fucking fraud. Right. I have no idea why people think other than government connections

that Tesla's electric car manufacturer would be much more successful under a Republican administration. Exactly. I do. I'm saying, I'm saying. I was saying earlier, it's all like Harry Potter bullshit to me, but we've talked about it on the show before for weeks now.

It's like, I would think, I thought the way, I know a lot of it's just based on vibes and whatever, but I thought it's like, oh, if a bad story comes out about a company, watch out, the stock's going to crater or whatever. And it's like, yeah, it just seems to me that it should feel obvious that Elon actively antagonizing one of his primary, perhaps his primary demographic for Tesla consumers, you know what I mean? Like, we live in California. How many fucking Tesla's you see? how many of you see they have a bumper sticker on that say, I bought this before he came out as a douchebag or whatever. Like there's a lot of buyers remorse out here, but I'm saying these types of people were the ones that were going for Tesla's,

and he's been alienating them for three months. Like he's going after the MAGA crowd who thinks that electric vehicles are gay, and they like co-rolling and drill baby drill. And it's like, how does that not negatively impact the stock? I don't understand none of this shit. If I had to guess what happened is a bunch of big institutional investors who want to curry favor with the new administration and get on Elon's good side, probably just decided to put a couple billion dollars from their $100 billion fund in Tesla and drove the price up. But like, so just corruption, you know, how it goes.

So speaking of corruption, something like clicked for me about like how to think about the entire election when I saw that the billionaire owner grew, the billionaire, the billionaire owns the LA Times pretty much came out as full MAGA. Now, I'd seen the stories about him spiking anti-Trump stories and a pro-Harris editorial, but that went sort of the same mistaken bucket as Bezos that like it was about just being fearful of fascism or whatever, but then he like came out of full MAGA. And like, then thinking about that, thinking about the election in 1896 that we talked about on Friday to the bonus episode, just made me rethink the whole thing. For context, 1896 was William McKinley versus a. William Jennings Brian or William Jennings Brian, all right. The election happened during a depression. Brian ran a populace campaign where we wanted to come off the gold standard, which made the money people mad.

The money people won the election. That led to the Lochner era of the Supreme Court where we had the, you know, where we got child slavery and shit. And it's made me realize this is just the same fucking fight over and over and over again. Also, a funny thing about the Brian campaign was like he also got tired unfairly for being an anti-Semite because he was mean about the gold standard. Because like you've got to really connect the dots there. Like, if you hate gold, you hate Jews for, you know, reasons that should be obvious to anybody.

Right. So, yeah, it's. This whole thing was just about money, capital versus labor. And it was revenge of capital. And we're going to see if it's going to be permanent, like the lock, or semi-permanent, like the locked era was for a few decades or what. But like, I just want to contextualize some shit for a second because everyone's gotten very heated about who's to blame for everyone left of Liz Cheney, including Liz Cheney. Right. Yeah, right.

So a lot of people submitted to this take that the Democrats lost in 2024 because of woke or whatever. And I just want to point out that what was happening in 2020 because everyone seems to have forgotten. The people were taking to the streets, setting cop cars on fire. Nancy Pelosi was kneeling in Kent Day cough. It was probably the peak of wokeness as like a general like social movement. I'm not even talking about the protesters and stuff. I mean like general like white people sort of like talking about anti-racism and putting pronouns in their bios and stuff. was like 2020 and then Joe Biden won the presidency by seven and a half million votes and

Democrats picked up two Senate seats in in Georgia. Right. Yeah, but don't, don't you think that it's like, I don't know we've talked, talked this to death over the past few weeks and continue, we'll continue to do so about what it all comes down to. And it's like the whole idea of like ultimately it's just, it's just the goddamn eggs. That's all it fucking is. It's not, you know, eggs being metaphorical. But I'm saying the idea of like all that was happening in 2020, but just the general idea of like the American electorate or the big chunk of. of it in the middle when they are like this is bad who is in charge i'm not voting for that and it's so it's like a 2020 pandemic the george floyd riots and all that or george floyd protest i

should say and all that stuff was happening and people just being like things are bad right now we will punish the current regime and then this time around the same thing happened because people don't understand like corporate price gouging and how inflation actually works but they but the same thing was in their head. They're like, this is bad. I can't afford my groceries. This is bad. We're going to punish the while.

I remember you'd said before the idea that some people think that like, we're just going to be stuck in a four-year pendulum if we're lucky enough to have elections from here on out because it's always going to be like that, you know? Social media makes everyone mad at all the time and whoever's in power you're going to be mad at. It's sort of how I feel about it. So, but like, but what did change and like all the, all the billionaires got on one side. And that one side was against the people. All right.

And you can look at the information environment. It's not just Trump buying X. It's like all these billionaires buying newspapers. The LA Times guys censoring the editorial. Bezos censoring the editorial. The New York Times, the Washington Post, they fired a bunch of political reports and led up to the Trump administration.

They order to cater to their billionaire donors. A lot of colleges are presensoring curriculums. Okay. So like that's part of the information environment I'm talking about. That makes it so confusing for everyone to understand or tell what's going on, even if they're trying, okay? So to further contextualize what happened after 2020 and during the pandemic,

if everyone remembers the expanded unemployment benefits, $300 per month per kid people got, we also since then killed the Bork Antitrust Framework, ended non-competes. Biden was set to include dental covers and health insurance. They put two lifelong union lawyers in the NLRB. And like you look at the economic data from 2020. Poverty rates went way down when we mailing out the tax. $2,000 checks and whatever because so many people live hand to mouth. And a side effect of that, I mean, first of all, people are way happier during a global

pandemic and feel less stress. You really need to think about what the fuck we're doing in this country. Absolutely. But also having more money equals freedom in this country, right? So when you have extra money in your checking account and personal savings rates were through the roof compared to where they normally are in 2020, 2021 because the money that the government sent out, it gives people more space to hold. out for higher paying jobs.

It also makes them realize how much easier life could be with a little bit more money. So they start organizing and start forming unions and going on strikes. We talked about all the labor actions that happened in the last few years. All this is part of the context of it. And that did not fucking hit for bosses. Of course not. Yeah. So that's how you get up with like formerly lubcoded billionaires like Musk and Bezos being relieved that Trump is back because they're hoping he can stop their employees from fucking wanting too much and getting up.

Right. So let me ask you that I know you're not going to have the answer off the top of your head for this. And also, I should have fact checked it, but of course I didn't. I saw some motherfucker on Reddit say that, like, somebody's talking about billionaires and all this shit. He was like, do you know 70% of American billionaires are actually registered Democrats or they're on the Democrat side? Do you know anything about that? Was that just a 80% of all statistics are made up thing or like, or is it a what you just said about Bezos? I could buy the idea that, like, people like Bezos and guys like that,

We're like, it's more, it was for a long time more, from a PR perspective, more palatable to be aligned with Democrats, but as long as you were still making billions of dollars and could fuck people over. But as soon as push came to shove and it's like, oh, well, I mean, if we're, we're talking about me not being able to fuck people over, then yeah, I'm on this side. Like that. Jeff Bezos was started off as a bookseller from Seattle. Right. I don't care how Maggie E.U. Act. That's them. Right. That's late. Right. But eventually at a certain level, it's like you say, I mean, really, that's what happened with Elon, right? I mean, again, he did people, like, people kind of forget now, but he didn't used to be coded entirely this way for a long time. But then during the pandemic, he was the electric car guy. He was trying to save the world, all this shit.

Fucking liberals loved him. California, but like, during the pandemic, they were like, you, your workers can't come to work because it's dangerous or whatever. And he was like, fuck that. I need my goddamn wage slaves. This is unacceptable. because he was about to hit because he was about to hit a stock target that was going to pay up like a 30 billion dollar bonus right and that was the beginning of his big pivot or whatever it's just money it's all money like i made me think of like the george w bush quote the business of america's business that's all this is so like so like like i mean for context like traitor joes the hippie-coded grocery store that only sells cage-free eggs is currently party to a lawsuit that's trying to say unions are unconstitutional yeah i mean I buy it, you know, that checks out. So, like, one thing we all got to get on the same side of is, like, there are no fucking good billionaires. Like, hell, if Oprah and Beyonce had employees that were trying to unionize, they probably would have been singing and speaking in Trump rallies. Okay. So, like, even, like, even on the left side, like, there was like, like, Reed Hoffman, the guy from one of the reads, not what, Reed Hastings is Netflix, Hoffman's, like, LinkedIn, I think.

So Hoffman went on NBCNBC and said in exchange for donating to, like, to Kamala Harris, he expected her to fire Lena Con or it would be a good idea, at least. he was a you know the consumer the the CDC and because he was helping consumers too much you all you had billionaire is basically doing a pincher move against the idea of good government regulation defense of consumers and workers dude I'm not I'm obviously not calling for it because I don't even know it would turn but like literally outside of a full blown rise of the proletariat revolution or whatever like what what can what can regular people ever hope to do about that do you know we don't need to do chairman mouse shit we just need to go back to like 2004 era campaign finance.

But I'm sorry. Oh, yes. You're right. Yes. But now that money's in politics in America and it benefits all the people who would possibly change that rule, who the fuck is ever going to change that rule. And it's like you said, there was a person in chart in a high level of government, Lena Khan, right?

We had the people's best interest at heart. And a billionaire was like, hey, I'm trying to get common elected. And if I do in exchange, I expect that that bitch will be fired because I can't have that shit. and it's like that happens on both sides and it's what you know ain't no war but a class war god damn it like what do you do i mean i just don't i just don't know where any of it's supposed to go you know like i like my main thing is like like anybody doesn't make their number one agenda item uh on their campaign platform is to try to get money out of politics expand the supreme court it's just a complete non-star to me at this point it's like it's like everything is cooked until that happens like there's right but it's like the

catch 22 of that though is that like a person who's dedicated to doing that will get run out of the race or outspent or whatever by the people that are backed by the same fucking billionaires that keep the status quo going. Do you know what I'm saying?

Because the reality is like they just can't compete because they don't have the money because they want to get money out of politics. But someone who's ready to take the money in politics will just squash them in every regard in spending and ads and all that stuff because,

I mean, what are you supposed to do? So it's like, that's what I'm saying. It's like I said, it's a catch 22. I just don't, You know, there's not a lot of hope there, basically.

Well, I got, like, so, so I got a message from a viewer last week who's like, I didn't respond because I don't like argue on the internet because I don't think it's like, like, a context collapse on the internet goes like, it makes everything like sound meaner than it is and more abrupt than it is. And like it was like, I got a gripe. America's not a left wing country. It never will be. Yada, yada, yada. In which case, like. Did we say that? Do we?

I was, I was saying that like, we got. like the idea that they should, that the lesson they should take is to move right was probably bad, right? Oh, so. Oh, okay. They mean the American electorate,

this country's not going to support leftism is what they were trying to say. Like this country's not left. Yeah, right. Okay. But like I'm telling you, people were happy when they had a little bit of better unemployment protection. I'm not talking about like,

right. UBI where we all get to give off forever and write poetry. I'm talking about like slightly better social safety now, better health insurance and like higher unemployment benefits. And so like everyone's not so fucking desperate. the time. And we just didn't experiment with that. People should think of when they hear progressive or left wing, but they don't.

They think of it. And that's part of the branding problem or whatever. We just did a giant experiment with it in 2020, 2020, and people fucking loved it. Now, the people who were the people who weren't getting a chunk of it, the people who still had to go to work driving for Amazon who weren't getting shit. And that fucking sucked, right? So, like, that's, we got to think about how to fairly implement it, but everyone was in a hurry in 2020 for fairly obvious reasons because people were, you know, getting evicted

and dying of the plague. So like when you say America's not left wing, no, I do not think guys working on an oil rig or reading about how to be, how to be anti-racist on their lunch break. And the most of them anyway, I absolutely fucking agree with you. But it is worth noting here that both Trump and Harris ran on reviving the child tax credit that was popular in 2020, 2020 and 2021. Okay. Trump also ran in 2016. Again, I'm cursed with remembering stuff. He ran in 2016, not just to Hillary's left in the Iraq war, but he ran on providing Americans with better.

government-run health care than Obamacare was repealed and replaced if anybody remembers that slogan. Okay. Now, I know he was lying. Right. But it's worth thinking about why Trump, who doesn't play by any rules, has superior political instincts to anybody currently work in politics outside of maybe Bernie. He thought it was worth it. Right. Why did you think it was worth it to lie? Right. Why does he think the electorate's ready for these offers? Right. Okay. Yes. Because those types of like progressive populist policies are, you know, popular with regular people. and it's like it and yeah and also you've been on this show in recent weeks you've said like the idea that they should like leave trans people behind is bullshit fuck that i've heard you say that and i agree with it so it's like that's not what you're saying you're just saying that like there's a lot that there's a lot of progressive or left wing that are progressive and left wing that people don't realize how popular they are because when they hear progressive or left wing they just think of whatever over whatever that woke shit they don't think of, you know,

healthcare and better wages and that type of thing, which they should. They should think that. You know. Right. That's not shit they should think of. I saw like a couple of centrist Democratic senators get on do their like Twitter threads thinking through how to process the election and what I'm literally said,

Bernie was right about everything. And I was like, well, but what he means is like talk about economic issues. Be progressive in your social values, but don't fucking antagonize. and I don't pander because the pandering feels fake. Like what you need to do is expand healthcare access for everybody, which will help, you know, everybody, including, you know, Mars or last groups. Exactly.

Yes. But what you don't do is not push for helping them materially, but go to their events and announce your pronouns and give the, give the fucking ad clip while also not helping people. Do you understand what I'm saying? 100%. I've totally, yes, I agree with that completely. Like, I made a video saying, trying to say a shitty version of that or whatever. I got some DMs and stuff, people being like, why, you know, you're blaming this on minorities and marginalized groups, wherever. It's like, no, I'm not.

I'm saying the focus should be more on, like you said, like helping everybody, because that will help marginalized groups, too. That should be what the primary focus is, is all I'm trying to say, you know, and they've just lost the threat. We've been saying that for years, forever. It's been like the fact that the Democrats lost their position as the party of the working man or whatever is, like, one of the biggest failings that they've ever had, I feel like, like they, they won the working class vote. Like, it's like, like, like, the way those statistics are thrown around is like, it's like, they lost people to high school educations and people that can shoot his working class,

but we're talking about like people that own $300,000 year plumbing businesses are also in that group. Right. Okay. So like, like, the idea that like, like, like, so it's a weird way to think about it. So like, like, people own car dealerships without college degree, you know what I'm saying. so like so i'm talking about stuff that i have no idea what to make of trump's choice for labor secretary is a decent lens to think about whether or not america's in the in a labor in a fighting

for labor mood or not because this fucking floored me the one money picked is uh is named laurie chavez de reamer from oregon who just lost her house race okay she's very pro labor for a Republican to the degree she's on this particular issue is to the left of a bunch of Democrats. Okay. She was one of only three Republicans to co-sponsor the Pro Act, which protects workers' rights to organize. She also co-sponsored

the Public Service Freedom and Negotiate Act, which requires all states to recognize public sector unions. And Senator Republicans freaked the fuck out over this. Okay. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana wrote on Act City plans to question her about her support of Democrat legislation in college that would strip Louisiana's ability to be a right

to work state, if that will ever be her position going forward. The New York Post ran a headline quoting conservatives calling her, quote, toxic and unsurious. I understand nothing about this. I understand, like, cabinet picks don't necessarily matter too much because she's going to take marching orders from the White House and a lot of stuff. But this is better than Trump's first administration where one of his labor secretaries was Eugene Scalia, Anthony Scalia's son, who was fucking psychotically anti-labor.

At least she's not, you know, pure fuck the workers on the boss's side. I have no idea what she's going to do but like the real test would be his

pick for National Labor Relations Board. It's a less high profile but a very consequential position and it like I'm wondering

what Elon thinks about this considering he just spent billions and billions of dollars to get Trump elected so he could try to crush the NLRB

he's part of that lawsuit talked about earlier so I have no idea what this is going to mean of anything but it tells me something about

like Trump's read on the mood of the electorate and I have no idea about like, I mean, again, he's so transactional. Maybe somebody, maybe it's like this is just to, because the Teamsters didn't endorse Kamala, maybe it's just

payback because they asked him to pick her, you know, like maybe that's just, right. Which case? I mean, if it was the difference in Trump winning, fuck Sean O'Brien of the Teamsters, but if it's like, if this just helps keep things from getting worse faster, cool.

But like all these different industries, and we got to get out of here, but like, it's so weird to me because money's offered across purposes and Trump's in the pocket of everybody. He's promised everything to everybody. Right. We talked about that last week as a week before about the old, like, you know, Walmart

bitching about the tariffs or like Big Pharma versus RFK Jr. and all these like competing interests. It's like you said, they can't all win and they all have a lot of power. So what the fuck is that going to look like or what's that actually going to mean? You know? You can't help both Pepsi and Coke. It's promised them

both. The only can help both Pepsi and Coke is to like get rid of milk in schools, nothing but sodas and split it 50-50, but then you put them up the big milk people. Mark, don't give them any ideas now. Right. So we've got an incoming administration where half of them want to kill Medicare to pay for tax cuts. The other half wanted to vent fake accountings they can do the tax cuts without the Medicare cuts because they want to help pharma and doctor specialists. And like, good fucking luck, guys.

Good luck splitting this goddamn, Adam. Yeah, no. I mean, again, that is sad as it is, that what you just described. is literally, again, all that I'm kind of clinging to in terms of optimism is that it just, it's not. It can fall apart so quick, dude. Take a step back and look at it. So much of it is just not feasible because of everything we say.

There's just too many competing interests, too many of which are too powerful. And it's like, when the oil company is like, wait a minute, you're actually doing these fucking terrorists, but we get all the oil from Mexico and Canada. Right. And they're going to be like, well, yeah, like, well, why the fuck did we support you? They're like, I don't know, I got to stay out of jail. Fuck you. Exactly.

Exactly. And it's like, don't get me wrong. I don't think the ultimate winner and all of that is going to be the American people. I guess it's just, I'm hoping it'll just like the idea that it might gum up the works enough or fucking, you know, to like slow things down. Like, they'll just be so mired and infighting and everything that it will keep them from realizing the most nefarious of their schemes or whatever. I don't understand what even are they you know but well I mean they should work really hard to kill the day everybody in the Senate should work really hard to kill the nominations for Pete Heck Seth and Tulsi Gabbard and after that just go from there because like this domestic shit doesn't make any sense and I don't understand how Tesla is still going to be in business once China does retaliatory tariffs it doesn't none of it. Where are you going to get to lithium Elon? Where is the fucking if the lithium coming from?

Yeah. Especially since Joe Biden deployed that hurricane to shut down that lithium mine in North Carolina. He sure did. 4D chess move. All right. Thank you guys for being here. As always, we appreciate it. As a reminder, real quick, go to Trey Crowder.com.

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