S2 Ep1012: Sam Stein: Elon Is Toxic
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Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Bullwark after dark tonight. I am here with the Bullwark's managing editor, Sam Stein. We are taping right after the very professional call of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race made by the Decision Desk HQ, Dave Wasserman and others. And I got an early flight tomorrow and Sam's kid has a tick in his or her head. His. Thank you.

Thank you for the revelation. It was not enjoyable pulling that thing out. Hope I got it all. So we're doing a late night taping tonight. So buckle up, everybody. We're punchy. All right, listener, you might think that, you know, the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, is that really worth it? Is that really a late night taping thing? Is that something I should care about? Let me tell you, if you have any doubts, I want to play for you.

one of the world's richest men discussing the Supreme Court race just the other day. They think it's well, it's just, you know, some kind of judicial thing that's not that important. But actually what they're doing, what's happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives. That is why it is so significant. And whichever party controls the House is

you know, to a significant degree controls the country which then steers the course of Western civilization. So it's like, I feel like this is one of those things that may not seem that it's going to affect the entire destiny of humanity but I think it will. Yeah.

Susan Crawford, the Democrat-aligned judge. You are affecting all of humanity, the destiny of humanity. Sam, what do you make of it? Good.

Good. Did you hear the guy scream at him? No pressure. No pressure. Do you feel like Western civilization was on the line in Waukesha County tonight? I mean, I personally did not, but maybe I'm happy it is, right? We get a little bit of, as Elon says, we get a little bit of a turn here. I'm happy with that. We're turning civilization in a new direction.

Are you not? I'm happy. I'm happy that Elon's sad, and it felt a little overwrought to me. Just a little? Just a touch? Destiny. Are all of our destiny settles on this Wisconsin Supreme Court race? This race that Elon heard about maybe four weeks ago and decided, you know what, I'm going to put $20 million in there. I think that there are a couple of things that are really important about the race that may be a little short of...

you know, Western civilization. But, but I think are pretty important. Number one is Elon Musk.

cannot just go buy races. And I think that there are people, particularly on the left, particularly progressives, I had some folks who have come up to me that are very worried about just elections going forward, Elon monkeying with it, the Twitter, the bots, the amount of money that he has. If you can't buy a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, then it's going to be very much more challenging to buy a bigger race. It's not like you can't buy any race, but I think that it is... Let me stop you there because...

I hear you, but what happens in a race where there isn't such donor enthusiasm on the Democratic side, right? Like the actual total amount of money was relatively matched in this race, but you know, there's,

Hundreds of races. Hundreds in the cycle. Sure. Could he steal a random mayor's race somewhere? Sure. To me, I think that Elon is not magic. He does not have scary magical powers. He is not able to manipulate the machines. Here's what he is. He's just a man. If anything, he's toxic. That's what I was going to say. He backfired. I think Elon's money, I think probably, which we'll get to next, because the nature of the backlash against Trump is,

and the nature of how these special elections work and the nature of the coalitions. Susan Crawford was probably going to be the favorite no matter what. But I think Elon was a net negative on this, even including the $20 million that he put in and the $2 million bribes that he gave to random twinks, college Republican twinks, yesterday. I think even in spite of that, I think he was a net negative. Oh, yeah. And I'm a little bit surprised that they had him show up, honestly. Like, if I were the Republican Party in Wisconsin...

You know, I would have said, thank you. I'll take your check. But can you just, you know, maybe like not come to the state? His numbers are terrible. And frankly, I think a lot of these races are way more referendums on him and Doge than they are on Trump. And so I feel pretty strongly that he was a net negative in a serious way tonight. So I think that is important going to the midterms because Elon is not going to disappear. Right.

You know, it's not as if I was on with John Hallman earlier and John said, I think rightly, I don't object to this argument,

observation, but he's saying that the Republicans in the House who are up in tough races and swing districts are hoping that a rebuke of Elon will get them to chill out and go away. That ain't happening. Or maybe to get Trump to push him away. Maybe Trump looks at... I don't think this happens because of the money, honestly. But that was the premise of this Jonathan Martin story, which is like

They want Trump to say, ooh, this is not good. And, you know, maybe that's like the nice side benefit from this race. And then Trump is like, you know what? We got to kick Elon to the curb. I don't see it happening. But it doesn't mean that there aren't people who aren't hoping it happens. Yeah, I agree with that. So Elon...

Being toxic, I think, is an important takeaway from the race. Another important takeaway, as Elon mentioned in his speech, so there's one thing he got right, is I do think we'll see. Like, Wisconsin has a really terrible gerrymander.

Having a 4-3 Democratic Supreme Court might make a difference in that. It might make a difference as far as the House of Representatives is concerned. I frankly don't think the House of Representatives will probably be that close in the next midterm, but that's meaningful in the micro. But if it were, this would help, right? Yeah, exactly. So I think that's meaningful in the micro. Yeah.

A turnout is pretty good. It was not quite as good. It doesn't seem yet. I mean, it's like we haven't obviously counted all the votes in Wisconsin yet, but it doesn't look like it's proto-Sawitz kind of like which was the big post-Roe Supreme Court race there. But like pretty good turnout from the Democrats there. And then we'll get to Florida. And so I think that is also encouraging. Yeah.

And I think those are all and it happened and obviously state that's going to be very important in the future. And I think there's also a firm something that we've been talking about a long time around here, which is like that these coalitions have totally flipped and the old Obama era situation where Democrats did better in midterms and in special elections and excuse me, where Republicans did better in midterms and special elections.

and Democrats did better in general elections. Like that is totally flipped. And there's this hilarious kind of irony, kind of, it might not be funny for some people, but Wisconsin also passed a voter ID tonight. And I really don't think people have internalized. I think it's a very small minority of people that internalize the fact the voter ID is,

whether or not you think it's a good policy, probably helps Democrats now. It used to help Republicans, and I think it probably helps Democrats now. It's much closer to a wash now. Yeah, I mean, I think Democrats are still wary of it because of the effect it might have on African-American voters. But you are right in that the Democrat coalition is way more heavily tilted now than it was

I don't know, eight years ago on educated and engaged voters who are much more likely to have ID. And that is, you know, that's what we're seeing throughout these special elections. And probably what we'll see in the midterms is that people who are engaged politically are going to vote Democratic and they're coming out. The only hope that Republicans have is that they can nationalize all this stuff and bring out these Trump voters. But that's really hard.

like on special elections or random Supreme court races as we've seen tonight. All right. There's some specials in Florida that Republicans won, but there's some also some maybe green shoots for Democrats in Florida. One, your favorite candidate gave Alamont. She lost by 15 to Jimmy Patronus. She ran against Matt Gates in that district. And she lost that by 32. This is like the Florida panhandle. This is a redneck Riviera, Florida, Bama. Yeah, this is a, this is just a Trump one by I believe 37 points. Yeah.

It's pretty rad. And you know, somebody named Gay. If only she was named Gay. If only she was named Gay Hussein Voldemort, then we would really be in business. She's pretty close to being named Gay Voldemort. And she ran to the panhandle. And she only lost by 15. Honestly, there should be some clause in the Florida Constitution where if your name is Gay Voldemort and you come that close, you get to co-serve.

You can't run with that name. We respect you, Gay. It's great. I'm happy for you. I respect the gays and I respect Gay. But it's just really hard. And I think you should get 15 percentage points. What's the long version of the female Gay? Gaylord is the male version. Gayatress? Gayatress?

I don't believe it's Gayatris. No, I don't think so. What are we doing? It is a late night podcast. Gay, I apologize. I apologize, Gay. I don't mean to do that. Escambia County, Pensacola, 22% more Dem. The surrounding ones also about that. This is why I was tied into Gay Voldemort. No Democrat apparently has won Escambia County for president since 1960. I learned that on Twitter tonight. But Gay won it. Gay flipped it. Gaylene. Gaylene.

Which makes sense for the plan handle, that it'd be Gaylene. She leans gay. Lesbian. Lesbian Voldemort. Okay, over in Florida 6, and a similar demographic over in Daytona Beach, Mike Waltz

won that district by 33 in the election 24 randy fine who's a fucking piece of work yeah he's a republican he won by 14 over josh weill as a math teacher so neither of those reasons end up being that close 15 point loss for gay 14 point loss for josh josh weill but like that does not bode well and explains why at least stefanik got pulled out there was some chatter last week that um

Randy Fine was in trouble. But the chatter was mostly generated from Republicans hoping to do things, one, set expectations and to get as many national resources or attention on this race as possible. Because, again, it goes back to can you nationalize the race? Can you get those Trump voters engaged? And, you know, I think they succeeded in that. But then you step back, you say, wait a second, that's like a 15 to 16 point swing.

And I will note, this is, I thought, you know, the data points are actually more interesting in the micro in that they were breaking that each counties in these districts. And the swing was universal. I mean, it was uniform. It wasn't like, oh, there was just larger turnout in the more educated counties and like, you know, less turnout. No, every single county was moving in the Democratic direction differently.

about the same percentage points. And to me, that I think is way more significant than anything else because it signifies that this is just an across-the-board frustration or anger towards Trump that we're seeing manifested. That is why people like Elise Stefanik cannot leave the House.

And I mean, in Wisconsin, obviously, you have more of a kind of a diverse demographic. You actually have like white working class areas, black areas and lucky college towns than you do in kind of these red districts in Florida. And again, this is still coming in right now. But as of now, it's like 23 of 25 black.

districts Crawford did better or counties rather Crawford did better than Kamala you know so almost across the board and then it was totally across the board in Florida you know the thing that jumps out to me as special elections because of this of these coalitions we're talking about where

The more complicated it is to vote, you know, and the harder it is to get people to turn out to vote, the better it's going to be for Democrats, at least in the short term. So I think specials are even a little bit better than midterms will be for them just based on coalitions. Obviously, a bunch of stuff could happen between now and then if we're in a recession between next November. You know, obviously, there are other elements at play here. But I just look at this and it's like, okay, you know, and if they're going to run 19 points better in these districts, you know,

you know that brings in a lot of red areas into play and i do think that like this is my number one message to democrats call me is i'm like they should look at these you know r plus 10 12 13 14 districts and try and try to get some surprise i think that there could be some surprise wins at least make make elon spend a few you know spend money get people running civilization is dependent on all these things you

This is why we did the run for something episode. It is less dire in these areas than I think the conventional wisdom is. I think Democrats have some huge structural problems, particularly in the Senate and these red states. But in local elections up through congressional elections, I don't know. Right. I mean, the Senate's like a totally different conversation here.

Here's what I think about this. One is that I know that the run for something people have seen is stark engagement. So I think people are jazzed. Two is there's been this sort of

And I know Lauren Egan is going to address this in her newsletter that comes out Wednesday night about how the Democratic brand is so damaged and people like Democrats and how the party is going to never resuscitate itself. But that data point is bunk. I just think people need to get over that data point. We were there with the Republicans a while ago. These things are cyclical and also people – this is really just a referendum on Trump and Elon –

And then three is that... Thermostatic polarization, Sam. Oh, yes. That's a more technical way to talk about it. And three is that you do need to challenge every race. And the reason you do is because even if you don't win them all, you have to sort of...

create a bench for future races. And I'm reminded of how in 2009 and 2010, you were there. I mean, Obama had 60 Senate seats. The House majority was massive. All the state offices were Democratic, it felt like. And then he just lost it all.

I was working in Iowa then, so I was thinking of Dave Loebsack. It's like this random super left professor at Iowa ends up beating Leach, who had been there forever, who had been a Republican and had been there forever. So you win surprising places. That race didn't even have any ads in it.

And this guy wins. No. And yeah, and they will, and they'll be shocked at the races that they actually win. And, and you just, you just run for it and you hope for the best. And sometimes you catch a lightning in a bottle. Yeah. One last thing on this. I've been meaning to mention this because it's relevant as a, as a local perspective for Louisiana, people wouldn't have noticed this civilization did not rest on these four amendments that we voted on here in Louisiana last week in the special election.

But the Republican governor, Jeff Landry, was pushing these kind of changes to the Constitution. They're on taxation and legal issues. And they're kind of arcane, except for the tax element. The rest of them were pretty arcane. But there was a big push from Democrats and activist groups here in Louisiana that was just like, vote no on them all, y'all. And there was a little ad campaign around it. Just vote no. No to Jeff Landry. No to what he wants. F him, basically, was the campaign. There wasn't even a ton of education on what the actual –

ballots were it was just like say no to this resist it and they got slaughtered like his ballot initiatives got slaughtered here which like in louisiana well it's a catchy phrase it is catchy phrase no to them all y'all all y'all yeah anyway i i think that there are obviously positive signs there even even here in deep red america imagine what this podcast would have been like if uh

Crawford lost. Well, it would have been kind of like the podcast is every other day. So it's not that hard to imagine. It would have been Tuesday. It's a fair point, though. You shouldn't over-interpret, but at this point, there's so many trends to this direction that it's like, okay. I agree with that. Everyone's like, don't read into special actions. No, I'm going to read into it. What else are we going to fucking do?

We're going to talk about Cory Booker. Let's talk about Cory. Cory Booker, boy, he hit the record for filibuster, record-long filibuster. I didn't think he could do it just kind of bladder-wise. Like when... What's the longest you've gone without peeing? Well...

I've got that dog inside of me, Sam. So probably a lot. I don't even know what that means. Probably a lot. I kind of feel like I'm a little made of sterner stuff than Corey. I was wrong. Corey surprised me. What was the final number? 25 plus. 25 hours plus. Record filibuster. I have some thoughts on it, but let's play a couple of clips. Let's first play him talking about kind of the moral moment.

This is an American moral moment. This is the question of where do we stand for health care? Where do we stand for social security? Where do we stand for VA benefits? Where do we stand for our American neighbor when the call and

The call and commandment of every faith in our land is to love your neighbor. What is the quality of our love, America? Now is the time to get angry, but let that anger fuel you. Now is your time to get scared for what's happening to your neighbors and let that fear bring about your courage. Now is your time to stare at despair and say you will not have the last word 'cause I'm gonna stand up and at least I can give one person hope in this country. Can I give one person hope in this country?

And so what do I want from my fellow Americans? Do better than me. Do better than we in this body. That's a low bar. We are flawed and failed people. I see people showing up at our town halls yelling at us, Democrat and Republican, do more. How are you letting this happen? Well, I hate to tell you we're doing all that I can think of. This is why I'm standing here to try to give voice to those people. But what is more needed from now is less people sitting on the sidelines.

I think that was in like hour 22 or 23. You can kind of hear his voice going, his mouth's a little dry. And so just like being able to summon that kind of spirit at that hour is pretty impressive. And, you know, I think there's like a tendency to want to go into from us and pundit world, like going to figure skating, judging on this. And for me, it's just like, man,

He's trying to get people going. Will it work? I don't know. Will it land with people? Will it land with just one person? I don't know. But I think that it is at least being responsive to this thing that we've been talking about a lot, which is there is a demand out there for people to say, fuck this. Come on. We can fight this. Don't despair. And he was at least being, at minimum, and maybe more than this, he was being responsive to that demand.

Well, look, I think, and I'm going to try to articulate this in a way that makes sense. Clearly, voters want Democrats, Democratic voters want Democratic lawmakers to do more. I will say also that it's clear to me that there's not really much more that Democratic lawmakers can technically do that would stop what Trump and Musk are doing, right?

In order for them to make that point to voters, that really the power to resist and oppose Musk and Trump rests in collective action and public action, something like this had to happen. Cory Booker or someone had to make a personal sacrifice, a historic personal sacrifice in this case, to say, look, I get it.

I'm doing this. It's not going to do anything. It's not going to stop a piece of legislation. It's not going to cause Republicans. Stall the day. One less day. One less day, yes. Of action. And look, maybe the next step, Chris Murphy should get up and take the baton and do one more day. You can make the case. But it's not going to ultimately lead to something not passing that could have passed otherwise. Maybe Republican lawmakers move by it, but that's about it.

But in order for him to make the case to people that, look, you are where the power of resistance lies, he had to make a sacrifice along these lines. And I watched not all of it. I watched a decent amount of it. And I thought he succeeded in that. And I thought the last hour especially was a really remarkable, considering how exhausted he must have felt, really remarkable weaving of history of the civil rights movement and all that and his own life experiences.

into the current political moment that we are in. And I have people who I've, you know, sources now who've, federal workers who have been in contact with me for weeks, you know, total despair among these people, especially today. And we can, we'll get into it. I know because there's so many cuts today, you know, they, they, they lost their jobs today and their livelihoods. And they were just like, I'm sobbing watching this. Like he's channeling everything I feel right now, watching this. And, and,

That's all you really can ask for, right? Like in politics is doing that is channeling people's emotions and directing it into something constructive and good. And I think you accomplish it. I agree. And you're making a good point about like, who is the target here audience for this? And a lot of ways, really, it is.

people that are anti-Trump, right? I mean, they're democratic partisans, maybe not, but they're anti-Trump and anti what Musk is doing. And they, they are looking for somebody to be a leader, to channel their energy, to demonstrate sacrifice, to encourage them to get off, like all the things that you said, like, right. And I think a lot of times when people get into the analysis of this sort of stuff, it's like,

well, this went over the swing voter in Waukesha. And it's like, no, it's not going to win over the fucking swing. Obviously not. But like, that isn't the only objective. Like that isn't one objective of politics. It's one thing people need to do, but there are other like elements of this, you know, there's the legislating element, there's the leadership element, there's the motivation element. And so I agree with you. I think he's successful in that regard. I want to play one other clip that just kind of gets into the core of what the substantive policy critique was he was offering.

I asked you, are you better off than you were 72 days ago economically? I asked that question. Ask it to your friends. Are they better off economically? Well, I don't see how they could be because prices are up, stock market's down, the risk of recession is climbing, consumer confidence is in the gutter, 401k plans are losing value.

Are you better off than you were 72 days ago under this president's leadership on the verge of his so-called liberation day that's going to drive prices up even more? Again, this is another example of something we've been talking about. It's tough.

The strategists are all like, pivot to kitchen table issues. And it's hard, right? Because how do you get attention for that? Well, this is a way to get attention for it. And I do think while I've been banging for more emotional reaction from the Democrats on some of this, on the democracy stuff and the deportations and all that, this is a way to get into the economic issue. And I think in a way that is pretty compelling, right? Like that is...

that speaks to like the political opportunity for Democrats, which is what are people getting out of this?

I think that is a better framing than being like, our egg prices are up or trying to troll around that. It's like, no, it's like, have you gotten anything out of this? You also don't want to hook it to one thing. But yeah, I think that's right. Like, what have you gotten out of this? And in fact, what have you lost out of this? Right. There was that. And then there was this last anecdote he told. Again, I thought the close was really remarkable. But the last anecdote he told, which was his personal story, as we've through what's happening to NIH and science.

He's talking about Alzheimer's research. He's like, what is more unobjectionable than funding Alzheimer's research? We all know it's a scourge. We all have loved ones or relatives or friends who've been affected by this horrible, horrible disease. We have a role. We have a bipartisan role to solve this stuff. And yet here we are cutting this research, retarding our progress on this stuff.

And why? For what? We can say that again. Well, that was not in the negative sense, the pejorative way. Way to go. Fuck you. Anyways, what was I saying? So, yeah. And then he talks about being with his father, who was suffering from Parkinson's or something. I'm sorry if I'm being inaccurate here. And having to walk him to a bathroom.

So that he could urinate and having to help him take down his pants and all that stuff. And it was just like, oh my God, you know, you talked about kitchen table issues and that it's not what we can conventionally call kitchen tables because it's not about, you know, the price of groceries and stuff, but goddamn, you talk about that stuff at the kitchen table, right? Like everyone talks about it at the kitchen table. And, um,

Look, you might be right about the intended audience, but there was another intended audience, I do believe. And that was the Republican senators who were in the chamber or maybe just watching who have worked on this stuff with him in the past and who might say, you know what, like,

what are we doing? Just say your question. What are we doing here? Like, come on. Maybe that was the intended audience, but he should focus on a get-up audience. We're getting a little high on our own supply here. The Republicans, the scales have fallen from Ron Johnson's eyes tonight, Sam. I would say maybe not Ron John, but maybe Lisa Murkowski.

Maybe Mitch McConnell. Maybe Gabe Aldemort was watching. We don't know. I've got one other...

We have to do this because it's a political podcast. He's thinking about running for president. Yeah, of course. I'm just sitting there. I'm just leaving that there. Aren't they all? That's a real thing. Isn't that basically a prerequisite for serving the Senate? They're all thinking about it. This is a real thing. And I don't know. I'm open to everybody. Everybody get out there. You're yawning already. We've got a lot of time left. We've got a lot of time left. All right. Pull it together. Pull it together. Yeah.

The people don't pay zero dollars for this podcast to have a yawning guest. Did I just lose this? All right. So Corey's going to run for president. It was pretty good. More is more. More is more.

I've got one other attaboy to a Democrat that I want to close with. So this is a very unusual podcast today. But first, we got to do a little serious stuff. As you mentioned earlier, a total bloodbath today at HHS. Our new colleague, Jonathan Cohn, who's awesome and everybody should sign up at the Borg.com for his newsletter if they haven't yet, has a new one out tonight. RFK Jr. Guts America's Health Bureaucracy Podcast.

It's been a little hard for me to follow this because like a lot happened. And I guess also before you tell us what we know, we've had amazing feedback from our listeners and viewers and readers who are in the government or friends who are. We have a tip line, theborg.com slash tips, folks have been sending it and it's totally anonymous. So if you or a friend were hit by these cuts, please tell us your story. But anyway, what have we learned so far?

Just quickly on the tip line, I cannot stress enough, we've gotten some great stories out of these tips. This is not just sort of like, oh, we want to get your news. You guys are giving us great stuff. We genuinely appreciate it, and it's contributed to a lot of these stories. So yeah, today was probably about as devastating a day for our healthcare bureaucracies as anyone can remember in recent history, for sure. It had been previewed last Thursday. They were going to cut roughly 10,000 positions from HHS.

That's the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees the FDA, the NIH, the CDC, other agencies. And today was the day. And I had scores of people coming, showing up at work, getting an email saying, we're sorry, you're being put on administrative leave and you no longer have access to the building. And that's that.

And it was really sort of indiscriminate in a way. I mean, well, I guess not indiscriminate, but it was just a lot of people had trouble figuring out like what the actual upshot was. It wasn't just administrative leaders. Like that was clearly part of it, but there were top, top scientific officials who were just like, Oh, like for instance, the acting director of the national human genome research Institute. He, we got an email from a tipster. Thanks again.

unexpectedly placed administratively. He had a 20-year career as a researcher and a leader at the NIH. He was just gone. And Cohen tracks a lot of this other stuff. I mean, it's like LIHEAP, Head Start, food inspectors. They were all just cut. CMS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Yeah. And it's hard to put your head around just like,

how big an impact this actually will have. But he did quote Wendy Armstrong, Marie, this director of infectious disease at the University of Colorado, your old neck of the woods. We've had a lot of devastating days, but this is really unfathomable. Armstrong said, it's astounding. It will affect patients with all kinds of different kinds of infections and Americans will suffer and people will die.

And that's a horrible thing to see coming. It's bad. And I will just add that part of the subtext of here, maybe it's not even the subtext, is that RFK is just trying to reinvent basically how we do health in this country. And he's installed people who have deep skepticism of the health bureaucracies.

And they have a lot of political support. I will say that. I had a lot of people in my feed being like, thank God, go for it, cut more. But I think it's objectively, you can say it's a head in the sand approach to how we do this stuff. Jonathan interviewed Kevin Griffiths, who is an old spokesperson for the CDC.

He was actually there for part of the time that RFK had been installed at HHS. And he told Jonathan that RFK, as long as he was there, never attended a briefing on measles, even though there's a measles outbreak that has been happening. That subject matter experts at the CDC had briefed RFK one time by the time he left, but it wasn't on measles. Avian flu, same thing. And we're just in a place where

The heads of these agencies have distrust in science and don't seem particularly concerned all that much about the real problems that they are facing in the current moment. Yeah. I don't need to the political element of this in a second, but like the real substantive health and effect, particularly on the research side is,

To me, it's the thing that I just keep coming back to. And there are a lot of terrible stories. But as we get these stories on the tip line and I'm reading them, the ones that jump out to me are always like,

We're in the middle of a 20-year study on whatever it is, diabetes or a specific type of cancer or whatever. And that is stuff that is not easily remediated by some rich guy coming in and doing it or the private sector obviously coming in and doing it. That's not like...

some of this other stuff which is maybe patchable you know it's like this is we're effed you know and like maybe europe starts to do more and but like all that takes a lot of time and there's real suffering oh no no yeah no you're absolutely right i mean look nh budget's what 30 billion dollars we're not going to get rid of all of it but let's say we do cut five

7 billion there's not some dude waiting around being like you know what i want to fund that random study on you know some you know chromosomal issue or something that just doesn't happen and rare diseases or things like you know yeah and and people like well can't the private sector step in and the answer is no i mean in theory they could but their motivation is profit

They're not going to fund long shot. What if it's a thing that only 12 people get a year? Even if it works out for them, they're not in the business of funding long shot, go to the moon type initiatives. They want to fund something that can get them profit in 5, 10, 20 year horizons. The real only funding mechanisms are foreign countries. Honestly, to God, the people I've talked to, the only foreign country who's got the money to come in and get this done

China. And across the board, every single, I mean, it's on trade, it's on science, it's on, you know, foreign aid, every single vacuum that we're creating, that Trump's creating, China will fill. And it is the theme of the first two and a half months so far. Well, CNN has a story about how China has launched some large scale military drills from multiple directions around Taiwan. Yeah.

this evening so you know great so in addition to that handing over a lot every all the soft power uh maybe the hard power might be coming for us as well do you see any direct political thing i mean the cdc not to just be rank politics here but like cdc like there is a lot of these jobs are in georgia there's a big senate race there i don't i mean you know we hear from people there are places a lot of places in the country the virginia governor's race i don't know i mean yes and no

Yeah, the CDC cuts will impact Georgia in that. And Ossoff was talking about that, for instance. And then the research stuff that Booker mentioned, I mean, I think that does have resonance with

some folks, Bill Cassidy and, and, um, who facilitated a lot of this. Thank you, Bill. And, um, Bernie Sanders, who helmed the, uh, the committee that oversees the stuff have asked RFK to come and explain what the hell's going on. But like, do you really expect Bill Cassidy to be like, you know what? I got this one wrong. And no, it, this shit's like the, the, whatever cliche you want to have the horses out of the barn on this stuff. And, um,

I don't know how much this is a political issue per se. I think when you do start capping grants to state universities for biomedical research, that becomes a jobs issue in local states. And Katie Britt obviously had that happen. She objected. So we'll see. But I think it's one of those things that may be a little bit too esoteric for people to vote on.

Though maybe, and I guess maybe there's a macroeconomic thing. We're going to get deeper on economic stuff on tomorrow and Thursday's pod because it will be on the heels of Liberation Day. I want to talk about Liberation Day next. But I do think that just this combination of this kind of quasi-government austerity, it's kind of like haphazard austerity policies of the government with the tariffs. It does contribute broadly to the economy. So anyway, Liberation Day is,

Dude's going forward with it. We've had a running kind of debate between me and you. You thought it was all smoke and mirrors. How long do you think these are going to last? What are you taking? I think he's bought in, man. These guys... Well...

It's hard to pull back from the rationale they have. They think that this is central to their vision for the golden age of America. And I don't know, man, your former colleagues at Politico reporting that a lot of people around the president, vice president don't really get it or understand, but like they want to go big.

And so, you know, I don't know. I think they're going big. What do you think? Are they going big or are they faking it tomorrow? I don't know. They'll go big tomorrow. And then in the next week we'll have... It is funny. They're doing it. They moved it so that the announcement is at 4 o'clock. Because they don't want... What they didn't want was the image of Trump talking and then the ticker going down, down, down. They don't want that meme. So...

This is not their first rodeo. No, my prediction is they'll put them in place, and then sometime next week we'll have some sort of...

carve-outs that have been negotiated strategically by Donald Trump. And then we'll be like, oh, yeah, you really scored a victory, Mr. President. And that's that. You've already seen a little bit of this in pre-negotiation. Bibi was out tonight. What did Bibi say? He said, today we canceled all of the customs duties levied on products from the U.S., Israel's largest trading partner. So it's kind of like a no, don't reciprocal me. Yeah.

donald let's pick it up i assume we get a couple of those others from his other friends like the autocrats throughout the world i mean we'll see arduan or whoever the guy in el salvador yeah but kelly well i mean his economy is based on bitcoin so i don't do we do they tear bitcoin in prison with bitcoin so anyway we'll see more of that the funniest pre-amble to this for me is have you seen the uh

There's already some knives out for Howard Lutnick. Yeah, I saw that. That was great. Like if this fails, it's on Howard. Oh yeah. Cause like, yeah. Lutnick. It's the commerce secretary. It's a comms problem. It's like, if it fails, it's Trump. It is funny because he is like this little chihuahua of a man. And he's like, you can kind of see him as like,

to me, I imagine him like, I mentioned him and Trump, everything is high school. Really? I mentioned him and Trump back at boarding school. Trump was whatever the baseball player. Right. And let Nick was like the mill house who kept running around trying to please him. Like, yeah, Donald. Yeah. Don, whatever you want, Donald. And there is like a little bit of that energy from him. And I could see how that, that may be great. Some of the colleagues, but, uh,

I don't think Lutnik was the master manipulator behind the Liberation Day. I got to be honest. Lutnik cracks me up, honestly, because he's out there and he's like...

He's convinced himself that the best thing that he can possibly do is just be like the most ubiquitous salesperson possible. But he keeps saying things that are like really bad, such as, oh, I don't know if anyone should squeal if they lose their security, social security for a week. Like, come on, dude. So, you know, the fact that he, he's done all this stuff and, and, and is, uh, you know, out there all the time for Trump and then still is going to have to fall on the ax when this stuff hits the fan. Um,

I think it's poetic in a way. Yeah. That'll be six round. I think we should have a little gamble between Waltz and him. They seem like the most likely first people to be fired via Bleat. And I guess I'll take Waltz. I think Waltz kind of lasts less long than Leitec for me. But I don't know. It's a tough call. And Waltz, there's still a drip-drip here. But the terrorists can... I mean, terrorists, if they go south really fast... When they go south. Yeah, it's going to be ugly. It's going to get bad. And then, you know...

I like Scott Besant. I think he's my dark horse for potential. See ya. Yeah. We can't have, you know, let's see. You got to make the gay, the fall man, not gay Voldemort, not gay, gay Besant.

If people are as obsessed as I am with while the stock market continues to go down worst quarter since 2022 and worst month since 2022 Newsmax is stuck skyrocketed me and JBL did a whole 20 minute breakdown on this on YouTube people should just go check this out what was your what was your conclusion my conclusion is basically there are a couple of options.

One is that there is a troll. It's a Wall Street bets type situation. And there is a meme stock troll thing that's being driven up by people on various whatever discords in people in crypto worlds. But why would they do that? Because it's funny for the LOLs. Here's the problem. Here's the why they would do it. This is the whole of that theory. Is that unlike some of those other stocks, meme stocks...

Chris Ruddy, who's the owner of Newsmax, owns like 80% of the stock. So all they're doing is making him rich. So that's the whole net theory, which takes me to corruption. Either there's some kind of backroom deal. I mean, Ruddy is a Mar-a-Lago member, is in there with Trump a lot, and there's a lot of similarities to the coin. Maybe there's some other rich people, some foreigners that are pumping it.

It's just a rug pull. But usually you have some sort of big show around it and you try to get a lot of interest in it. But they really didn't do that. I know. But that leads you to the theory that

You know, there's some whales out there that are driving it up. And then it's like there was a bet that like retail would get behind it because people would be like, oh, this is a hot bet right now to like bet on MAGA Media. But it's crazy. It's like it's easy. It's a declining industry. It's cable news. It's in a declining industry. Declining industry and every macro trend suggests that MAGA Media is struggling right now. Yeah. And they're worth more than 50% more than News Corp right now.

Like in total market value. Anyway, go watch the whole video. The thing is, it's fucking insane though. It's an insane story. And, uh, you know, they'll probably, they'll probably be a Michael Lewis book about it at some point. I bought some at the IPO by the way. Did you? How much are you up? You know what? Can I tell you something? I'll have one more admission on this.

During COVID, I started messing around with meme stocks and all that during COVID to kind of fit in with the bros. And I did this. I made a bet. Some of my colleagues will kill me if they know which company it is, so I won't say. I made a very small bet on a conservative media company after Trump won the last time because I was like, for the same reason, I guess they'll do well. And it tanked. I don't know. I lost like 400 bucks on it or something.

that you know so it wasn't it wasn't a successful bet for me so the theory of the case was right i was just early as is always the case on my failed investment opportunities um no annapurna funds over here two more things i know i know you're not exactly the cory booker of this podcast you're not wanting to do a full 24 hours i can go mike johnson the speaker of the house uh lost an internal battle with anna polina luna yeah it's kind of like uh

you know, kind of new hotness in the house. Kind of, she's, I think it's taken away from the like Lauren Bobert, MTG. She's kind of the rising, she's the rising star star. Yeah. Female star. The short of this, the details are kind of a little less interesting, but the short of this is that she wanted proxy voting for new mothers and Johnson and, and then we said basically no. So they had the rule on, you know, the rules that govern the house going for a vote today. Um,

And Aluna convinced seven other Republicans, I guess, in the Democrats. Nine. Yeah. Eight other. Eight shoes and a knife. Okay. To go along with this and to vote the rule down. And then Mike Johnson just was like, okay, fine, and took his ball and went home. And the House is now closed for the week?

I wanted to bring this up because it's kind of funny that Mike Johnson got owned by Annapolita Luna. I think it bears mentioning, I just haven't focused on this enough on the pod, the house has done nothing. We're on April 1st and they've literally done nothing. They continued the last year's budget. They got the government funding bill. Yeah, that was it. I think the details on this actually are not unimportant. I kept asking Joe Perticon

Why the fuck do they care about proxy voting for new mothers? In what world is this a hill that they need to die on? What does Mike Johnson actually care about? He's like, oh, they think it's unconstitutional. Mike Johnson proxy voted. Also, unconstitutional, look around. We're deporting people who

who are innocent to El Salvador and not give them due process rights. Like this is like the constitutional line that Mike Johnson's going to freak about. And it just didn't, I just couldn't wrap my head around why this was such a big deal. And I still don't really get it. So then why did they just shut down the house for the week then? I don't like it. Well, then he was like, well, because we have to now consider this discharge petition and it's going to, you know, take up all the business and we can't really consider any other thing else. And it's like, dude,

It's just take the L just do the proxy voting. It's unfathomable to me. The point for me is like, they have one job kind of, which is to pass a reconciliation bill, right? Like to pass, to extend Trump's tax cuts and to codify whatever cuts from Doge they want. And to like do all like, they're going to do all that in one bill. And to me, it feels like they've done nothing. Like they've made very little progress. Yeah.

yeah they control all of washington they've handed everything over to trump so this also goes to the constitution thing it's like your constitutional line is is is proxy voting but meanwhile it's like you've you've completely ceded all the power of the legislative branch to the executive you're like you can just king trump pretty much like the whole thing is bizarre stupid clowns okay

Want to do a shout out? To me? For Representative Glenn Ivey. No. From Maryland. Oh. Not to you. No. Sam.

All I do is praise you, Sam. I just praise you. Glad I have you on Fox on this douchebag Will Cain's TV show. And he was talking about the story with Kilmar Abrego Garcia that I've been obsessing over. For starters, good on him for going to Fox. I've heard some pretty dispiriting things, actually, since I began my rants over the past two days or three days about why

Joe Rogan is out there more on this than Democrats. And I thought that it was like, I wasn't just assuming it was just caution. And I was like, well, if I, maybe if people such as me and Chris Hayes and others have been out there and you like, we've been doing this, like maybe a little light of fire under people's ass, like, Oh wait, we can do this. And to me, it actually seems more like there's,

they're being actively discouraged from speaking out, is my understanding. So that's pretty dispiriting. But not Glenn Ivey. Glenn Ivey was on Fox, and I just want to play a little bit of him with Will King. I've prosecuted the crimes of illegal immigrants for eight years. I locked up more people in my day than you ever did. So don't lecture me about not being passionate about prosecuting illegal immigrants to do something wrong. I've done it. You haven't. Back up. Today, Congressman, you write the laws.

Congressman, today, you don't prosecute the laws. You write the laws. In fact, I did a joint prosecution with Rod Rosenstein of MS-13 when he was the U.S. attorney and I was the state's attorney. I've done this before. You have not. Don't sit there and lecture me about being passionate about people who break the law. I've done it. You have not. A-plus. Glad.

glenn ivy what was the distinction will cain's trying to draw there you write the laws i think will cain is trying to say you don't get any credit sir sir you don't give me credit for you severed you were severed between prosecutor and yeah your past life prosecuting these criminals you don't give me credit for that if you're not out there right now as a congressman supporting what these deportations trump is doing i guess

but he goes on there's a longer clip but he goes on there and they cut there's like a boring section of the clip but again it's there's some legal ease elements to this where ivy is out there and he's basically saying look this is not how this works like like this person was you know under uh you know whatever temporary do not deport order and like you know he has his wife and kid are citizens like if you wanted to have a deportation there's a process to doing this is that you go to a judge and they're 30 days like you know

and will cain's like no like what this is no we need new we need real tough guys who are just going to randomly deport people you know based on whims and sadism and like i don't know i mean is he convincing anybody on fox i don't know but i think it's better it's much better people on fox to hear yeah to a hear the counter argument because you know again if joe rogan can be compelled maybe some fox viewers can so to hear the argument and b to demonstrate the like oh

The Democrats aren't all just the worst clips that you play on The Five. There are Democrats that actually made their career prosecuting gang members and can speak about that. And I think that that is a valuable use of time. So good on you, Glenn Ivey. You got anything else on that? Absolutely. And I just like...

Yes, I've been on this. I've been beating this drum for a while now. But like, you got to go on these places. Like, what is the alternative? They're just going to paint you as a caricature. And like, you know, every clip is going to be, you know, you transpose with like, you know, the border being overrun or whatever. And secondly, and we've talked a bit about this, but, you know, it may not be a winning issue for Democrats, but it sure as hell is not going to be a winning issue if you don't push the issue.

You can't assume that it's just going to turn or that it's just going to go away. And this was the Kamala Harris fallacy, too. It's like, well, we don't want to talk about immigration because it's not a friendly turf. Well, it may be an 80-20 Trump issue, but it's much better if it were a 60-40 Trump issue.

You got to do these things. And so lean into it. Right. And I think I actually, I'll shut up after this, but I do think maybe I'm crazy. They were kind of hitting a tipping point here. I mean, Rogan, the national review people, you know, some conservative immigration activists who are all like, you know what this, we probably do need due process here. What's going on. Those are cultural markers. And I think that,

We actually would see more if Democrats went on these platforms and said, you know what? I've prosecuted MS-13 members. I know the dangers of gangs, but we can't fuck this up and ruin it all by deporting innocent people. It's a pretty easy argument in my book. Same. Here's what I think on this. The thing that I'm worried about, which I get,

Because we're seeing this from DHS right now is putting out the fact that this, that Abreu Garcia was part of a human trafficking ring. I've said this about every person I've brought up. I don't know. I don't know because they didn't get due process. So I don't know. Maybe the makeup artist was like smuggling in fentanyl in their little, you know, Mac, you know, powder cases. I don't fucking know. I don't think so. It doesn't seem like it to me, but we could find out. So I think that there is a good reason.

for Democrats who are politicians who have a different role than me as a fucking blabber to like, maybe not like lean all the way on every, on a specific case. Cause you don't want to be the guy that's like, Oh, turns out you were defending a human trafficker. We can fill that void.

the commentariat and the advocacy groups and outside groups and you can speak to the broad element of people are not for disappearing people off the street without a due process i that is what rogan said that is what the polls actually say and i think that folks can go out and do that and so

Good on Glenn Ivey for doing it. I agree. Is it that hard to say, I don't necessarily support this person. I just want to make sure we're deporting the right people. Yeah. And that we're not wrongly sending people to a fucking concentration camp in El Salvador. All right. I told you a little less thing, but we have a bonus piece of audio. I want to leave people on a happy note.

Only people on a happy note. How often have I left people on a happy note? Katie, have I left people on a happy note one time since November? I can't recall. Maybe I have. Sometimes I. I'm sure you have. Have I? Probably some. Maybe a shot in Freud. I've left people certainly on a laughter, a note of laughter. But pure joy? I don't think so. Do you still have that in your life?

I do. I'm a father. My child doesn't have lice or ticks. So, you know, I get to give her a good night hug tonight. I've got pure joy. I'm going to go to Coachella in a couple weeks. That'll give me joy. I've got joy in my life. You know who else has joy in her life? Susan Crawford. Let's listen to her. But I've got to tell you, as a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I'd be taking on the richest man in the world. LAUGHTER

For justice in Wisconsin. And we won. And there it is. She beat Elon. That's good. She affected Western civilization itself. Western civilization is saved. Thanks to Susan Crawford.

Good haircut, too. Everything, the whole thing. It's a good vibe. It's a whole good person. There's so many Wisconsin haircuts in this video. People, you've got to check it out on YouTube. The audio listeners, these are happy cheeseheads. Sam Stein, thanks for staying up late with me, brother. Thank you for having me. What a pleasure. What a pleasure. What a pleasure. Everybody else, happy Liberation Day. We'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullard Podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace.

And I don't care where you come from. We're all moving on.

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The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.