2/20/25: Jesse Watters Freaks Over DOGE Vet Firings, Twitter Debunks Elon $55 Billion Savings, Trump Calls Zelensky Dictator
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Good morning, everybody. We've been mixing and matching all the show hosts this week. Great to have Ryan Grimm with me today. Good to be back here again. This has been a fun week. Yeah, so Monday my kids were off school, so I stayed home with them. Of course, they've just been like off school a week now with the snow that we had. Socker's not sick today, so Ryan has been doing overtime for us this week, which we appreciate. Hope he's better next week. The flu this season has been insane. Jeremy had it. He was like... Oh, really? He was laid out for like two weeks. Yeah, it...

has been decimating my kids' schools for sure. The one, like I can manage a flu. The one I cannot manage is the norovirus. That's the one I live in terror of. Yeah, and that's been going through my daughter's school as well. So we're hoping, we're praying to avoid that one. Scoot over this way. Yeah, exactly.

In any case, we got a lot to get to in the show today. It was actually very difficult to choose the stories because there was so much we wanted to cover. We've got a bunch of updates for you with regard to Doge, the latest cuts, where they're hitting. Also, a little bit of Republican pushback on some of the specific spending cuts, including...

some comments from Jesse Waters, which was a bit of a surprise. They've also been caught in more lies and screw ups with regard to what they claim they have cut. So we'll take a look at all of that and do a little debunking there. We have huge developments with regard to Ukraine. So Zelensky rejected Trump's offer to like, you know, basically give up half his country, all his rare earth minerals in the ports and whatever. And now Trump is out calling him a dictator and blaming him

directly for the war. So huge sort of 180 there in terms of the U.S. stance and even in terms of Trump's rhetoric and Trump's stance. I'll break that down for you. We also have a new significant development in terms of the courts. Trump refusing to abide by one particular court order. That is a significant escalation in what I consider to be a constitutional crisis. He is also declaring himself king, literally.

and blocking the New York City congestion pricing. So that's an interesting story just in terms of the local politics and also in terms of Trump inserting himself in that city's politics and policy specifically. We've got a guest on who's been directly impacted by the spending freeze. He is going to talk about how that has been impactful to his company and the people that he's trying to help and serve.

And I'm also taking a look at how Trump and Elon are basically doing like a rug pull on the whole country. So putting a few pieces together here is something I've been thinking about for a while. Yeah, the turn with Zelensky is extraordinary because everybody saw where this was going, but I don't think anybody saw that it was going to go this dark this fast. Yeah. Like it's bleak. Yeah. If you're Ukraine, if you're Zelensky. Yeah. You went from

being fetid across the United States and the West to being called a dictator. Right. And this is when your adversary here is Vladimir Putin, who is much more accurately characterized as a dictator. So there's obviously... Trump should be a little more cautious about throwing that word around on the same day that he's putting up a picture of himself with a crown. Right. Literally declaring himself king. He hates when people call him that.

Anyway. Yeah. Well, I mean, truly, actually, Elon is the true dictator here. So maybe he's just trying to reclaim some of his power. Hey, if ruling without an election means you're a dictator, according to Elon, what is Elon? Yeah.

Very. I think we know the answer to that. And that is a good transition into the first block. So as I mentioned before, we have had a little bit of Republican pushback. And part of this is coming from, you know, all these different Republican senators and congressmen. They're realizing like, oh, this and that project in my district are directly affected. Or as in the case with the USAID funding freeze, like, oh, the farmers in my state are going to be completely screwed by this.

But one thing that many of these people didn't seem to realize is that there are a lot of veterans in the federal government. And also, actually, DEI programs also include, oftentimes, opportunities specifically for veterans. So one of the people who is apparently finding this out is Fox News host Jesse Waters, who took to those airwaves with a plea for a specific friend of his. Let's take a listen to that. Let me tell you a story about Chris.

Chris was a guy I met at a shooting event in New Jersey last year. Is Chris in the interview? Or this is another guy. This is Chris. Is it a male or female? Let me finish. Oh. $55 billion. I love you. And so he was a 20-year veteran of the U.S. military. He was one of these guys in one of these elite units. Killed a lot of bad guys. Put his life on the line. And now he punched out after 20 years and working for the Pentagon.

And he's only been there a few months, so he's probationary. And he just found out he's probably going to get laid off. He's going to get dozed. And he texted me and he said, "Jesse, you know, this isn't good. I'm upset. This is really sad." And this guy's not a DEI consultant. This guy's not a climate consultant. You know, this guy is a veteran. So when you're talking about dozing people, veterans should get priority.

Because if you're going to go out there and kill enemies and put your life on the line for this country, you shouldn't be in the same category as people that are doing DEI.

Harold and his ilk like to talk about the slash and burn corporate ethos. We just need to be a little bit less callous with the way, Harold, we talk about doging people. Okay? I just want that to sink in. You're arguing with yourself. I am not guilty of that. You're arguing with yourself.

I finally found one person I knew that got doged and it hit me in the heart. There is so much about that that is fascinating. First of all, I like the terminology getting doged. I'm going to adopt that. But in addition, so first he says that this individual who, you know, I don't know, I don't know his circumstances, isn't a DEI consultant. He may well have been part of a DEI hiring program since they do oftentimes benefit veterans. But also what he's specifically advocating here for, Ryan, is a DEI program.

program to make sure that veterans, because he finds them to be a sympathetic group that he believes is worthy of humanity and keeping their jobs, that they should be enabled to stay there. And for some reason over the years, veterans have not done a very good job of establishing the federal workers as related to the veterans program. But it is. Like over the decades,

What the United States did is used the federal government as a way to give a leg up to people who were finishing their service. Yeah. And I was talking to a couple of veterans last night who, because I was tweeting about this Jesse Waters thing and they were reaching out. And one of the points they made is that when you leave the service, whether you did your four years or 20, right?

It can be difficult to get private sector work immediately because they will say you need three to five years of industry experience. And like a good friend of mine, for instance, did telecommunications work for the Army.

But that's for the army. So he had all the skills. Right. But it was difficult to immediately get into the private sector. Like eventually he got some entry level stuff. And then because he had so many skills, he moved up quickly. But some companies recognize that experience. Others don't. The federal government does. So the federal government is like, we know that you're well trained and you're good. Like you come on in. And people said that

You also have to consider that in the first couple years while you're in the probationary period, a lot of these people are still in the guard or reserve. And so if you're going after probationary people who, you know, the first couple years, like a lot of the people who are getting fired, not just the Pentagon, but all across the federal government, are active duty military because they're overlapping with that. Interesting. So...

We went in 20 years of our covering politics from support our troops to actively firing our troops. In disproportionate numbers. In disproportionate numbers. Wow. That is incredible. And it also just speaks to what we're being sold as, oh, this is all about merit and it's all about efficiency, et cetera. When you're just blanket firing everyone who happens to fall in a particular category or with the deferred resignation program, you're most likely to be culling.

actually the highest level, most difficult to replace people who have the largest number of opportunities in the private sector. And let me tell you, once they're out in the private sector making those salaries, they're very unlikely to come back. It's actually the polar opposite of selecting for merit and making sure that it's the best and the brightest serving in government. So you've got a little bit of an inkling of awareness dawning on Jesse Waters and some others with regard to the way that the federal government has benefit veterans.

You also have, as I mentioned before, some Republicans who are starting to feel some pain in terms of priorities for their constituents in their districts and their states. Susan Collins has come out with a statement. Now we can put this up on the screen. This is from a

Politico, there were actually a number of outlets that were out with kind of similar stories about different Republican rumblings about this or that program. She says you'll see lawsuits. She actually questioned, she said, I think it's pretty clear that this violates Article 1 of the Constitution. She's significant not only because she's one of the few remaining Republicans in a pretty blue state of Maine, but she also is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

What did you make of her comments, Ryan? And like, do you think that it matters? Because typically, you know, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, they'll do like a little bit of, oh, they need to slow down a little and I'm a little uncomfortable or whatever. But when push comes to shove, they just basically go along with everything anyway. It matters because of her position. Like the Appropriations Committee considers itself to be, in particular, the Senate Appropriations Committee considers itself to be the wellspring of

Everything that the United States government does. Yeah, like they call the subcommittee chairs Cardinals Like they because because they want it to be clear that power is being projected from the House Appropriations Committee in the Senate Appropriations Committee and For her to get to that position her entire career She's she's wanted to get on that spot because with the flick of a wrist she's sending billions of dollars here and there and

And all of a sudden she's being told, actually, no, we're not. Yeah. Actually, you don't matter anymore. You're making suggestions. And it's the administration that is going to pick and choose which ones will actually execute on. And that is an existential threat. The reason she matters is because the government, unless Trump just completely ignores everything, will shut down on March 14th without a spending package being passed through Congress.

A spending package really needs Susan Collins as the Senate Appropriations Chair. Now, if Republicans... Because how do you get 60 Democrats if Susan Collins is vociferously opposed to it? I don't see how you get there. So then the government shuts down. So you need her. Meanwhile, you've got, as we're going to talk about, Trump supporting the House side over the Senate side, which includes all these Medicaid cuts. So I do think the fact...

The fact that she's Susan Collins doesn't matter. I'm sure he hates Susan Collins. Does he even care if she wins reelection in 2026? I don't know. They can afford to lose her. Right. But the fact that she sits in this chokehold position at the top of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I think, matters, at least in this moment. Is she up in 2026? I didn't realize that. I think she is, right?

- I think you're right, because I think she was up in 2018, she was part of that. There was an expectation she would, is that right? - Well, she was up in 2020. - She was up in, oh, so it would be, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. - And she'll probably face Jared. - Not working it. - Probably face Jared Golden, who's extremely popular.

House member there who was one in a Trump district like three straight times. And in an environment that's just, you know, increasingly partisan. Yeah. Where I think there was previously more Democratic-based willingness to, oh, I like this particular senator, whereas Republicans have made that like sort of more hard partisan switch years ago. So I do think she could be in trouble. But and I think you're right, Trump probably doesn't really care all that much. And it works for her to stand up to Trump in Maine.

True. Yeah. So that's interesting. Also interesting, put the Washington Post version of the story up on the screen. They covered some of the things we've already talked about. Katie Britt down in Alabama being like, I don't know about this NIH funding. Some of the senators who have come from farming states, I don't know about this USAID freeze. We need to get this agricultural products moving. And the money for conservation and all these contracts that

And you've probably seen these going around on TikTok, these like farmers. Yeah, that's right. Who are like, wait a minute, like I spent all this money on my farm.

Because I had a contract with the federal government. That's right. To do this particular thing. Yeah, now I'm out of pocket 80 grand that I thought was going to be half reimbursed by the federal government. And I'm literally screwed. Like my farm is gone if this doesn't ultimately come through. So they're hearing from those constituents. But actually what I found most interesting in this article was from one of the people who is supporting Doge and Trump and Elon fully, which is Senator Tommy Tuberville.

who suggested that the new normal may be just Republican senators and congresspeople having to go and plead their case to Trump and to Elon. And, you know, I'm sure that's the way that they would like it to be, where they can sort of, you know, dispense the favor of the king to people who are in their good graces.

And that helps to continue to, you know, enforce compliance with their will and make sure everybody's on board. So he said, and I quote, if we have to lobby for, hey, wait a minute, what about that bridge in Birmingham or there's a bridge in Mobile or whatever? I think that could be very possible. So he's laying out that, you know, he's fine with that direction because he has favored status.

with the king. He wants to keep that favored status with our, you know, CEO and chair of the board or whatever you want to call this duo at this point. And that may just be the new reality. And I think there's probably something to that because, you know, Trump has truly claimed the power of the purse for himself. We're going to cover some of his additional moves, you know, issuing this executive order to saying only I

and Pam Bondi, the attorney general, get to have a say on what is legal. You know, he, of course, said this thing about there is no breaking the law if you're saving the country. He literally declared himself a king in the context of this New York City congestion plan. And so Tommy Tuberville laying it out like, yeah, that's just how things are now. You have to go and beg your case to the people with power if you want to get these projects in your district. Yeah. You know, there's that famous allegorical story of, you know, the hippie who's like

walking through the West and he comes to a fence and he's like, fences suck, man. I hate this fence. Why is this fence here? Just takes the fence apart. And then whatever calamity ensues, like pick your calamity. The hogs run out and they destroy the forest by chewing everything up or whatever it is.

without any stepping back and saying, why is this fence here? - Right. - And who built this fence and why? And usually that is an allegory that's told by the right about reckless left-wingers who just, they just barrel in and they just-- - Change everything. - Change everything. And the conservatives are the ones that understand the fence is there for a reason.

What Trump and Tuberville here are kind of proposing is not brand new on the scene. Like if you would have told LBJ or Richard Nixon that, hey, the president is going to dole out projects and that's how he's going to accrue power over these members of Congress, they'd be like, yeah, that is how I roll. It was after Nixon so thoroughly abused, and Johnson abused it too,

that Congress reasserted itself and passed the Empowerment Control Act and these other laws that said, no, that's not constitutional. We do this, not you, because you get too much power if you do that. And so now they're trying to roll that back. So it's always like, well, there's a reason there's a fence here. Maybe you don't like the fence, but be careful what you wish for. Ready to prioritize yourself in the new year? Your skin is a great place to start. Die

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There's also the context of, you know, in those prior eras in the LBJ and FDR era, there was a lot more cross-party collaboration because the parties had not ideologically sorted themselves in the way that they have now. More regional politics, too. Yeah, there were a lot more regional politics. And so now you have this set of very clear blue states, very clear red states, and a few states that are

on the margin that are like the only ones that matter in terms of presidential politics and the only ones where you could see, you know, shift back and forth between who represents them, which party represents them in the Senate. So, you know, it's a recipe for, okay, when Republicans are power—

in power, then red states get some of their projects and blue states get actively screwed. And guess what? When Democrats are in power, if that is such a thing that's ever allowed or possible again in the future, they're going to reciprocate. They're going to do the exact same thing. Like once you have started in this direction, you think the next president is going to be like, I'm going to hand power back to Congress. Very unlikely. Very unlikely. So let's get into some of the things, you know, just I'll do a sort of speed run through some of the most recent cuts, which will help to

help to explain why some of these Republicans are getting a little leery, even if they're not saying a whole lot publicly. And nor do I expect them really to say a whole lot publicly because ultimately,

Ultimately, the bottom line is they all have come to understand they have to pay fealty to Trump and to his movement and Elon at this point or else they will get screwed and he is not afraid to do it or they'll have primary challenges against them, etc. So A3, we've got the USA.

accidentally firing officials who were working on bird flu and now trying to rehire them, but apparently having trouble with that because they are struggling to find them. They didn't bother to get their new contact information. So this speaks to the just sort of blanket like, oh, we're just going to blanket fire this group of people. Turns out in this instance and also in the instance of some of the people who were like guarding some of our nuclear sites,

Some of these individuals are really important and you don't want to fire them, especially when bird flu is looming out there as a possible next pandemic. In addition, we could put the next one up on the screen. So they have decimated this education department arm that is really devoted to studying the ethnicities.

of public schools across the country. So seeing which schools are doing well, which schools are performing poorly. That seems like something you would kind of want to know. Let's put the next one up on the screen. Also in their zeal to cut at the Department of Education in particular, they've let go of 10% of federal student aid.

staff. So they say, and Prem Thakur says this comes after young Doge staffers obtained administrative access at the Department of Education. So that was one of the first casualties there. Put the next one up on the screen. And Trump has also cut

numerous top researchers at NIH's Center for Combating Alzheimer's. Huge setback potentially in the fight against various forms of dementia. Anyone, of course, who's had a relative who has gone through this, you know, parent, loved one, etc., knows how absolutely devastating it was. And the irony here, too, is that this was a cause, Greg Sargent points out, once championed by Republicans.

In fact, he specifically points out that the NIH's Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias, or CARD, its full name is the Roy Blunt Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias in honor of former Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who was very influential. What did you make of these cuts in particular, Ryan? What stood out to you here? The counterargument to...

the one alzheimer's in particular and more broadly to a lot of these nih cuts is that um well they're not they're doing a really bad job all we still have alzheimer's like that like that's the argument that you hear and and there's a more sophisticated argument that says

that the particular approach that the researchers who were getting all of the NIH funding to Alzheimer's has been a dead end and has set us back by 10 or 15 years. And so you actually need to break up this kind of intellectual cabal that has gotten in the way of progress. My counter counter argument would be that's not what they're doing here though.

First of all, there was a new director coming in who was not associated. Obviously, everybody is somewhat associated with that, but that was not her main line of interest, this dead-end research.

And they fired her. And they're likely to continue doing these reductions in force going forward. So it's not as if they came in and they said, we have evaluated the Alzheimer's unit. We feel like you haven't made progress. We feel like it's because you focus too much over here. And so the people that were doing that, there's going to be accountability. You guys are gone. We're going to invest broadly across the board in lots of different

approaches and we're gonna see and if this is a scientific approach we're gonna go in with hypotheses and we're gonna see which one works we're gonna stop putting our thumb on the scale one way or the other because obviously you have a hypothesis and you pursue that and at some point if if the hypothesis turning out not to be true you have alternative ones yeah I don't have alternative ones they're not doing that it's not as if these people that were fired are gonna be they're gonna backfill

They're going to retrench and then they're going to fire more people and then they're going to fire more people and then they're going to cut more funding, calling it, you know, funding to universities and other projects. They're going to cut that further back. So, you know, if you really were doing a Maha approach, saying this didn't work, let's look around. We're not a healthy country. This is what we're going to do. Okay, that's one thing.

But there's no the indication is that they're just cutting and they're going to it's going to stay cut. Yes, that's exactly right. And this is actually the topic of my monologue is that a lot of the ethos of Trump 2.0 is basically like things are bad. So we're going to make them worse. And, you know, I'm like, yeah, they are bad. Yeah, they are bad. But, you know, going because because what happens when you cut public research funding is that then you become more reliant on private funding.

Industry funding. That's the polar opposite of the direction that you want to go in. And, you know, I thought your story about the developments with regard to breast cancer that are impacting your family directly right now was really important and poignant because one of the things that I really object to as well is that

scientific research is not necessarily efficient, right? Because number one, if you want to find cures for diseases that are

are potentially rare. Like, those things aren't going to be profitable. And so there isn't going to be private research, not to mention that every single new drug molecule that's been invented in the past I don't know how many years has come out of public funding. So the drug companies are not really doing this type of life-saving research. Most of what they do is researching some way that they can, like, dupe our patent system and extend their patent on, like, Viagra or whatever their top-selling drug is. So, you know, the

There's that. And then there's also the case that as you're pointing out, Ryan, like some of scientific research is kind of serendipity and that's what you spoke to. It's like, oh, these people happen to be together at a conference, which would be classified as quote unquote overhead. And because you had this serendipity mixing of these minds from different disciplines and different corners of the scientific research community, there was a really incredible and important development that was made.

In addition, sometimes you're going to pursue something like with Alzheimer's that doesn't turn out to be the thing. And so it's not, quote unquote, efficient. But if you didn't go down that path, you wouldn't know. And there was a possibility that it did work out and it did end up saving lives and being incredibly impactful for people. So when you apply this capitalist business logic to something like

public research in the benefit of the people, you're going to end up with far worse results and far fewer breakthroughs that are important for all of our lives. Yeah, and the entire budget for NIH last year was $47 billion. The cost of treating people with Alzheimer's

As people can look that up huge. Yeah, like from Medicare and Medicaid and you and you personally and like you watching this like you personally or Your parents or your cousins or somebody might just might have to bankrupt yourself so that you can get So that Medicaid will then cover either you or your parents getting getting the coverage that they need when Alzheimer's hits and that's aside from the absolute terror of

that Alzheimer's is plus the heartbreak it is for families who are going through it to be in a room physically with their loved one, but spiritually they don't even know you're there. They don't recognize who you are. To save a couple bucks a week is short-sighted spiritually and morally, but also fiscally. It costs more money to not try to prevent this. And also, like you said, commercially speaking,

preventing Alzheimer's, if we can prevent it, is not the kind of thing that you can then market and sell because you make more money treating it with like a blockbuster drug

Than preventing it in the first place. That's exactly right. What did you say the NIH budget is? I think 47. Would it be? 47 billion. According to ChatGPT, as of 2024, the U.S. projected to spend approximately $360 billion on health and long-term care for individuals living with Alzheimer's. That's projected to be up to a trillion by 2050. So the entire NIH budget is...

Entire NIH budget that includes the weaponized, you know militarized stuff that they're sneaking into Africa for labs and whatever right like that includes even includes that is a Fraction of what we spend treating Alzheimer's. Yeah, there's this assumption. This is a longer convo that Capitalism leads to cost savings and efficiency. I feel like my way. No, GPT might be off on that Okay. Well, you can you can take a look. I they it does hallucinate so you never know but um

But when you look at our health care system, which we, of course, put profit at the center of our health care system, and that directly leads to us paying the highest cost and having the worst outcomes.

in the developed world. And so if you actually want to improve people's health, what you do is you shift that dynamic away from centering profit and towards actually valuing people's health. And cutting back on public research spending dollars is, again, the polar opposite of the direction that you ultimately want to go on. Did you find any? No. All right. Well, we'll take a look and verify those numbers and post a note in the segment. But yeah, blame...

Blame AI. Blame Sam Altman if the numbers aren't ultimately correct. It's expensive. Yeah, it's a lot of money and it's worth researching to see how we could prevent Alzheimer's ultimately in the long term. Yeah, $231 billion. This is Alzheimer's impact movement. Wow. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money.

All right, let's go ahead and get to some of the spin and the latest spin and lies coming out of Doge. So the whole time Elon has been like, oh, we're going to be so transparent, so transparent, which, of course, is the polar opposite of the way that they've operated. And specifically, they were claiming for weeks that they were going to post this list of all the incredible savings that they've been able to glean from, you know, these

these wasteful federal government expenditures. This is not chat GPT. Numbers are correct. All right. Well, there you go. In 2050, Medicare spending on people with Alzheimer's will total a projected $453 billion with a B. And that's just Medicare? That's just Medicare. That's not private spending. Wow. Unbelievable. $637 billion. So thanks for saving us all that money, Doge. You're doing a great job. Yeah, by firing like eight people working in the Alzheimer's Center.

Eight people. We could do a GoFundMe. Like, we would be smart as a country to do a GoFundMe to rehire those eight people. Just putting a couple chips onto the table in hopes that they have a breakthrough. It would be worth it to all of us to just do that GoFundMe. I'll put in $5 a week on that. Absolutely. Such a great point. I mean, Alzheimer's is, you know, it's personally got to be frightening to everybody. Just if you personally or your loved one gets it, it's just...

It's almost I'd rather get hit by a bus. Yeah. No, I have a very close friend who has been, you know, watching this unfold. Yeah. And it's it's one of the most difficult things you can go through. And you're going to save a couple bucks a week and fire these eight researchers like it's it's cruel and stupid. Yeah. Cruel and stupid. That is a good way to put it.

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So they've been promising all this transparency about all these great cuts and savings, et cetera, that they're making, all these fraudulent supposedly programs that they've been rooting out, et cetera, except for the fact that all of the programs that they've suggested thus far are like, well, it's not really fraud. It might just be something you don't like, but it's not actually fraudulent. In any case, they finally put out a spreadsheet.

And lo and behold, even the spreadsheet they put out was blatantly wrong on any number of levels. Here's a little Bloomberg News report breaking some of the numbers down. What is the number that we have calculated? And we'll put this into the context of the $55 billion that Elon is taking credit for.

Yeah. So the Doge on its website says that they've saved about $55 billion for U.S. taxpayers. But when you go in and add up all of the contracts that they list online that they say they've canceled, it only comes to about $8.6 billion. So, you know, just a small fraction of that overall $55 billion. Also, in going through all these contracts, it's clear that

there was at least one major clerical error. There was one contract that was listed for $8 billion that was actually only an $8 million contract. So they had listed it, so about $16 billion. But when you take that away, it's a much smaller figure. This has sort of really been a key tension point as Doge has gone into federal agencies and started slashing spending and firing staff.

of that they said, look, this is the most transparent effort that's out there. You can go and read all this information. But when it's both riddled with errors and there isn't oversight that normally, you know, is layered above federal agencies, things like watchdogs and the Office of Government Ethics, Doge really operates independently of that. And that has raised a lot of concerns, both from members of Congress as well as other federal government watchers.

So it's kind of insulting to all of our intelligence that they put out this spreadsheet. They're like, oh, we saved $55 billion. Okay. Then you literally just add up the column and it doesn't add up to $55 billion. It adds up to $16.6 billion. Then you sort by which, you know, many people online and also reporters at New York Times and whatever. Then you sort by like, okay, well, what's the biggest program that you cut here? And the one that rises to the top is this $8 billion program.

But then you dig into that and it turns out that is a complete error. It's actually not $8 billion. It's $8 million. A little bit of a difference there. And now your spreadsheet, which you claimed indicated savings of $55 billion, which only actually added up to $16.6 billion, now only totals to $8.6 billion. So one of the sleuths online who was digging into this—let's put this up on the screen—

indicates that with that $8 billion to $8 million thing, apparently there was originally some typo on the contract. So the contract value was listed at $8 billion rather than $8 million. Then it was corrected, the real TCV, I don't know what that stands for, was $8 million corrected in January.

three years, only 3.5 million was awarded. So it was very easy to discern when, like, as someone even here on the outside was doing, that this was not the correct amount of money. And then in addition, Ryan, if even with the $8 million amount, if they

If they've already spent three and a half million, then you're not saving even an entire eight million. And that rationale actually applies to all of the other things that were in this spreadsheet. So basically, it's a complete, you know, exaggeration. Parts of her just completely wrong. And many of these things, too, as I said before, they frame them as like fraud. But in reality, it's just stuff that Elon doesn't particularly like.

And it was Customs and Border Protection, I think, that they... Yes, that's right. So people also need to use their common sense. And when we think through these numbers, Customs and Border Protection's entire budget is not that high. Like it's, I don't know offhand exactly what it is. You can Google that and find it. $8 billion would be a huge portion of their budget.

like entire budget. And this was like some DEI thing or something. DEI training or whatever it was. Something like that, yeah. So then you have to ask yourself, what are the chances that like two-thirds of the border protection's budget is this DEI training? You don't even have to then like Google and like follow the charts and the contracts all the way back to the source. You can just be like, that's probably not true. And there are a lot of people that are frustrated that Musk isn't getting all the flowers that he deserves for this.

I think what they need to think about is that he is a government worker. And if you think about it from the perspective of people who don't necessarily trust all government workers without having their work be verified and checked, and don't necessarily trust the motivations that they have because they have their own interests at play. Any government agency that made the types of errors

that Doge is making at this point would be considered waste, fraud, and abuse of the most obvious scale. Yes. And you would say, well, cut this one. They don't have people who can fact check their work before putting it up to the public to look at. Or who can use basic common sense. And who appear to be lying, like actively lying about what they have found. Now, at the same time, I don't want to do much taunting

their inability to find savings I don't want them like to get more serious about like to then go crazy like I'd find an entire Department of Education Yeah, gone, which is not legal like you you want to do that. You got to go through Congress But anyway, so think about the doge people and if you're if you're on this side that thinks all government is like corrupt and and wasteful think about Doge as what it is it is a government agency that is in competition with

with these other departments for money because it is run by a government contractor who wants to go to Mars and needs federal resources to do that. Yeah. And so that agency has every incentive to tell you that all this other spending is wasteful and we need to suppress it so that we can, and this is what you'll eventually hear, so that we can invest

you know, trillions in this project to go to Mars. That's exactly right. And I do think that that, I'm reading his biography right now, the Walter Isaacson one, and, you know, have been trying to research this creature who is now in charge of all of us. And I do think that that is like his primary driving goal.

Which sounds, I mean, it sounds sort of insane. At least it's a goal. He has appointed himself the savior of humanity. He believes the thing that we should be driving. That's exactly right. Savior of human consciousness. He believes the thing we should be driving towards is being an interplanetary species. He talks about this all the time.

And, you know, when he started SpaceX, it really was a sort of preposterous boondoggle. But he does it anyway. He's able to persist. He's able to get billions of dollars already in federal government contracts. And, you know, you should take note of the fact that you've got SpaceX engineers now in at the FAA. Well, the FAA had been investigating SpaceX.

Elon and SpaceX for one of their launches that came apart midair, which caused huge damage. I mean, they had to scramble, they had to reroute some 12 commercial flights. It was actually very dangerous.

And so that agency was investigating him. Now he's got SpaceX engineers who are there inside. I have a feeling that investigation isn't going to go very far. And they're making cuts at NASA. Well, guess what? Again, if you strip down the capacity of the government, suddenly you need SpaceX even more than they already do. And I do think a big part of his rationale and motivation here is basically like he realized he needed the nearly limitless space

resources of the federal government treasury to pursue his goal for humanity of putting us all on Mars. And that is a lot of what is driving this. And he sort of latched on to this, you know, dark enlightenment, like Curtis Yarvin, oh, we need a CEO dictator thing, because it helps him, it enables him in that goal. So it's a convenient ideology for him to get what he wants. And so all of these little piddling cuts and things that are going on, like that is not

the ballgame. I don't even think you should really consider what's happening right now as any attempt at cutting government or efficiency. It's about consolidating power on behalf of Elon Musk and his goals. And one of the ways we know that is because, listen, they put out their spreadsheet, which claimed $55 billion, which only actually showed $8 billion in cuts

The Government Accountability Office on an annual basis finds some $150 billion in improper, in actual fraud, not just things that somebody there didn't like, but in actual fraudulent payments.

So we have a government agency that does this stuff. Now, if you want to beef that up and make it more effective, fine, go to it. But you also know, Ryan, that they're not actually interested in like effective and accountable government because one of Trump's very first moves was to fire almost all of the inspectors general that are supposed to oversee these agencies and make sure that they are being run effectively and without corruption and graft and which have been, you know, have actually done some important investigations for journalists like yourself, um,

into presidents on both the Democratic and Republican side. Right, and cutting a tiny amount of subscriptions to like Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg, like bond markets for regulators. So like SEC, FTC, CFTC, CFPB, these people are, now they don't have access to like these little subscription services while they're trying to regulate the markets. And for people who are like, okay, well, at least he has a vision.

I'd like to remind you that Musk is not the first person to have these generational megalomaniacal views of present humanity versus future humanity. I think it was Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un's grandfather, but it might have been Chairman Mao who said,

when he was confronted with the vast amount of casualties that were involved in the creation of the Communist project either in China or North Korea forget which one He said basically, you know, what is you can find his quote out there somebody's like what is 50 million deaths when we are fighting for untold billions of people in the future like the Mao or Kim Jong Il whichever one it was was arguing that

We are fighting for an almost infinite number of future people who will live in the communist paradise that we produce through this revolution. So how can you tell me that it's a problem that 50 million people, innocent people died? Right. 50 million against billions? So all the people of the earth against the infinite expansion of consciousness? Yes. Interplanetarily? Yes.

Those things, like if you believe, if that's your ethic, we are not the ones that matter.

And this is the type of ideology that has been very pervasive in Silicon Valley in recent years that like Sam Bankman-Fried was an adherent of this effective altruist ideology, which argues exactly that. Now, I don't think Elon necessarily thinks of himself exactly as an effective altruist because they were concerned specifically about the development of AI destroying humanity, which seems to be like actually a reasonable thing to be concerned about. Also, they're more earthly based. Yes. Yeah.

But Elon has a version of that and does exactly the calculus that you are describing, Ryan, which you can see quickly how that leads to justifying any sort of level of death, cruelty, et cetera, in the short term. So when you look, for example, at like, you know, cutting USAID funding. So now you've got kids in Africa who are going to die of HIV and AIDS, right?

It's like, oh, well, that's small potatoes in the grand scheme of, you know, generations and generations, tens of thousands of years of human civilization. So that's Elon's perfectly willing to pay that price, let alone any sort of like, you know, law breaking. He doesn't care about that. None of these CEOs care about law breaking to them. That's just the cost of doing business. And that's what move fast.

and break things. Ultimately, that's like core to that ethos is basically break whatever laws, do whatever you need to do so it'll work out in the end. So yeah, it is the type of ideology that intellectually intelligent people can use to justify absolute monstrosities on a world historic level. Yeah, whereas from my perspective, if you want to go after USAID for being a tool of American imperialism through its soft power,

Okay, that's great. That's a great point. Yeah. I'm not sure that's the one they're making though. Yeah, when you're taking it and putting it under Marco Rubio's State Department, something tells me that's not really the end goal. Ready to prioritize yourself in the new year? YourSkin is a great place to start.

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But in any case, so that's that's the latest with Doge. And that's actually a good segue, Ryan, into the very latest with regard to Ukraine and the new sort of foreign policy orientation of the Trump administration. Yeah, let's start with this wild post on Truth Social that that he then Trump then posted to Twitter. You can tell how much

how excited he is about his different statements, whether or not he moves them from Truth Social over to Twitter. He moved this one to Twitter.

Trump is saying here. How's your how's your Trump impression crystal, but he's saying not great think of it a modestly successful comedian comedian successful comedian Volodymyr Zelensky Talk to the United States of America into spending 350 billion dollars, so that's not accurate We talked about it closer to 200 billion the actual numbers from the German think tank that studies this is closer to like 120 billion or so and a lot of that is

what we value or overvalue our weapons stock that we just shipped over there. A lot of that money never left the beltway here, right here. It's a lot of money. Either way, he's right. It's been a lot of money to go into a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start, but a war that he, without the U.S. and quote Trump, why does he put Trump in quotes, will never be able to settle. The United States has spent $200 billion more than Europe.

Again, the coroner this German think tank actually the Europeans have spite spent slightly more But 60% of our money has been in grants. Whereas the Europeans has been in very low interest loans They're quibbling in fact checking. But anyway, that's that's that's that's on that point It says why didn't sleepy Joe demand equalization? So any goes into okay. So here he this is the key party. I

Zelensky refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle. A dictator without elections, Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia, something all admit only Trump, again in quotes, and the Trump administration can do. Biden never tried. Europe has failed to bring peace, and Zelensky probably wants to keep the gravy train going.

I love Ukraine, but Zelensky has done a terrible job. His country is shattered and millions have unnecessarily died. So on the things that he says that are correct, at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, have unnecessarily died.

This is correct. Zelensky has canceled elections, which is kind of preposterous because it's a whole, you know, we're fighting for democracy here. Right. Given that. Biden did not try to achieve peace. Biden did not try to achieve peace. And the war does need to end. All those things are true. The attack on

Zelensky as this dictator and loser or whatever, has sparked a response from, I guess it was Lavrov now calling him a cornered rat. And is edging, who knows? It's one thing, I think Hegseth got unfair criticism for acknowledging outright that

that look, a lot of this territory is not coming back. We need a peace agreement. And the Democrats beat him up for that. It's like, no, nobody believed that you were getting this territory back. That's okay. So it's not like it was an important piece of leverage because anybody honest knew that that was the case. To tell the whole world that you think Zelensky is this level of a loser...

It does I think change the negotiating calculus in a way that is not beneficial to Ukraine. I think that's a fair

I think that's a fair assessment. Yeah. And we do have, we can put B1B up on the screen just to reiterate the, you know, the fact check component of this. So this is, according to that German research you were talking about, Ryan, how much the U.S. has contributed versus how much the Europeans have contributed. You can see, you know, I mean, it's a lot of money, don't get me wrong, but it's not, what did you say, 350 billion. You know, so

You can feel how you want to feel about it, but like just at least know the actual numbers. Let's be honest. Yeah. Right. About the amounts. I mean, listen, I want this war to end. Right. I think it is disgusting and immoral that the Biden administration blocked the best chance for peace, which at the best terms.

for Ukraine, which came very early in the war when they had outperformed and caught Russia unawares. And Russia had been hit with all these sanctions, and they weren't sure how that was going to—whether they were going to be able to really survive that economically or not. Now they've kind of adjusted, not to say that it's great, but they know that they can get through that. And you're in this long war of attrition. And so their hand is much stronger now than it was at that time. But we also have to have some commitment to the truth here. And—

to some level of morality as well. Like Russia invaded Ukraine, that he, whatever, NATO provoked it, blah, blah, blah. I mean, actually you could put it more on the US's side. Oh, for sure. In terms of the blame versus Zelensky and the Ukrainians. Oh, 100%. Yeah. And so, you know, to then say, oh, it's Zelensky's fault.

that his own country got invaded, and he's the dictator when, yeah, he should have elections. But you're talking about Vladimir Putin on the other side of this equation. Like, it's just a total inversion of reality and the truth. And I think part of it is—I mean, I think what happened in terms of the sequence of events is—

Trump came to the Trump administration, came to Zelensky with this just like brazen colonialist imperialist plan of like, we're going to take half of your stuff forever and maybe we'll continue to support you. But then again, maybe not. Actually, this is just basically in repayment for what we've already done. And this is B3B we can put up on the screen. They were able to get the details of this plan and they were so onerous.

It was actually more onerous than the terms that were imposed on Germany after World War I is what they proposed to Zelensky. And Zelensky very gingerly was like, well, you know, we're going to have to think about that. And I don't think that's going to totally, you know, work out for us on our end.

And if you put B3 up on the screen, like it's not just my theory that that's what pissed off Trump and led to him calling Zelensky a dictator and a loser and all this stuff. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz says that his relationship, Trump's relationship with Zelensky soured over his refusal to sign that rare earths mineral deal the U.S. has proposed. Waltz, quote, I think the frustration really stemmed just in the last week from this bizarre pushback and escalation of rhetoric over presentation of what

see as an absolute opportunity, that's to have the US invest in Ukrainian infrastructure, to have them grow both their minerals, their natural resources, their oil and gas. We look at the type of aid the Europeans are providing. It's often in the form of loans. It's being repaid with the interest on seized Russian assets. We believe the American taxpayer deserves to recoup much of their investment. So we propose this totally extractive, exploitative, quote unquote, deal to the Ukrainians, which again, doesn't even promise

that we provide them with future military aid, they get effectively nothing, no guarantees for the future out of it, except the sense that, okay, well, if we're there, we're probably going to protect our economic interests in the future from a Russian invasion. That's what they would theoretically get out of it. Zelensky's like, I don't think we can go down that path. And now Trump does a total 180, whereas previously he had actually been pretty friendly towards Zelensky and Zelensky had gone down to Mar-a-Lago and all that sort of stuff. So, I mean, that's

That's what caused this turn. But in addition, Trump has signaled, he talks all about William McKinley, which is really the sort of start of brazen American imperialism. And he has obviously talked about, I'm going to take Greenland, I'm going to take Canada, I'm going to take Panama, I'm going to take Gaza, I'm going to take half of Ukraine. He

does not think that there should be any real like international rules, guidelines, norms, et cetera, surrounding what great powers can do. I mean, he truly believes in this, like might makes right if you want it and it serves your interest, you're just going to take it.

And so I don't think he has any philosophical or moral objection to Putin seeing Ukraine and being like, well, I can take it. And so I'm going to. And so I think that's, you know, that's part also of what plays into this dynamic that's now playing out with him and Zelensky and Putin. Right. And so, you know, there's a lot of talk about

the unipolar world of American hegemony evolving into a multipolar world and the advocates of the multipolar world, of which I would say I'm actually one, don't often talk about the side effects of it, which are each pole in the multipole

is basically told by the other multipoles, okay, that's your area. And so that's where you get this, the Monroe Doctrine, McKinley really expanding on it to saying, okay, we're not a hegemonic world power.

But we're going to compete with Spain and Britain and France. And so we're going to go take the Philippines and we're going to try to take Cuba and we're going to take Haiti is ours. Latin America, like, you know, so we're so that's our orbit. And so it's actually completely intellectually and geopolitically consistent to say that you're against this kind of kinetic World War Three with Russia and China, you know,

But you're but you're also fine with like smaller wars of conquest Canada Mexico, you know all that all that like bullying bullying that you see You know messing around with Ukraine kind of cuts against that because Ukraine would in a multipolar world would clearly be in the Russian orbit and

But his he's going back to his businessman thing. We're like, well, we spent all this money So therefore, you know, we deserve all of this stuff it but it's what triggered that That Trump post was kind of the first overt criticism that Zelensky had offered So yeah, so he he gets this offer you have to give us 50% of your country because it was reported as rare earths but as as you noted

It's more than that. It's their ports. It's their entire economy. Pretty much everything. Because you're not going to get $500 billion out of the ground, out of there. So then he leaks it to the congressional delegation that went to Kiev and says, look what they're trying to do, and I'm not going to sign this. So then it leaks out. And then Zelensky calls reporters in, and we can put up, I think it's B2. Zelensky calls reporters into his palace and tells them,

I would like to have more truth with the Trump team. And then says that the president was living in a, quote, web of disinformation. So

So he's not criticizing Trump directly. He's basically doing the thing where the king is... He's being misled. The king is being misled by his advisors who are lying to him. Trump took it personally and then goes hard at him with that true social post that he then moves over to Twitter to make sure nobody missed it. And so we have...

Now we have members of Congress, Republicans, being asked to reckon with the question, is Trump a dictator? And let's put the poll up first before we have that. This is pretty funny. This is funny. And something that people should remember. Americans have a plus 19 positive view of Zelensky, minus 2 of Trump, minus 63 of Putin. Of

Of these three characters, Zelensky is by far way more popular. By the way, I mean, people are also pointing out like Zelensky's favorability rating in Ukraine has fallen, but he still has a higher favor. I think he's like 57 percent favorability in Ukraine. So higher than Trump among his own countrymen. And even...

more significantly, you know, above Trump in terms of our population and the way, you know, that people here feel about him. I mean, it is kind of funny. One of the things that was always noteworthy to Sagar and I is that even in spite of all, and I do think that Ukraine and Trump positioning himself as like, quote unquote, anti-war, I think that helped him a lot in the election. But some of Biden's best ratings always came on his, quote unquote, handling of Ukraine. He was like still underwater, but by less than...

than in other various areas because I think there is a deep American instinct of wanting to stand up for the little guy and feeling like, I mean, and plus decades of Cold War ideology about Russia being the big bad guys and the villains in the Rocky movies and whatever that goes pretty deep.

And so, you know, when you see a poll like that, it is a bit of a reality check about the kind of political forces that Trump is playing with here as he overtly sides now with Putin in these negotiations. I mean, and, you know, I hope that

Out of this, Trump is able to get some peace deal. I worry that the viciousness of it at his own ally is going to undermine his ability to do that. But, you know, we'll see. Like it's it's still alive. It's still a live question. And at least he's trying. But like we said earlier, Biden didn't even try. Yeah. Biden. In fact, the Biden administration thwarted efforts.

to try to get to a peace deal and hundreds of thousands of people are dead since then. But one of my favorite things in Washington is John Thune getting asked about what Trump is up to on a daily basis. So let's see how John Thune, Senate leader, responds to the question of whether Zelensky is a dictator. Well, I like I said, the president speaks for himself.

what I want to see is a peaceful result, a peaceful outcome. And I think right now there's a negotiation going on. And let's see where that ultimately leads. Hopefully it'll get to the outcome we all want to see. And then you don't have many, quote unquote, moderate House Republicans left. And the definition of moderate has shifted as the actual moderates have kind of been run out of the party or become Democrats. A kind of conservative who

who works with Democrats, is Don Bacon in Nebraska, usually faces a somewhat close election. He was asked about this. Let's roll, let's roll Bacon here. Stick up for what's right. And so I've,

I want to be very strong in my words today because this Republican does not agree with what the President said. Russia's on the bad side here, and we need a president that has moral clarity when it comes to this war. And right now, I don't see that. I had hoped the President would step up and be better than Joe Biden. I felt like Joe Biden was slow in getting weapons there. He was using rules of engagement that restricted Ukraine. It was really feeding the gridlock.

Now I had hoped that this president would step up and try to finish this war in the right way, not in a noble way. And this is what we see today is not a noble course of action. I guess the only thing I'd say to that in Trump's defense, somebody's gotta, somebody at this table's gotta do that. Is that, is there, has there ever been an American president that nobly ended a war? Like it, we don't, we don't end wars with much nobility.

And the kind of security establishment is always claiming that they are for ending wars after they've already ended and that they were for ending the war that you ended, like, let's say, Biden in Afghanistan, but not the way you did it. Right. When they stood in the way of ending the war the entire time. So you can, I think, agree with the comments like on the surface, but I think they're obscuring the.

a real reluctance to actually engage with a peaceful exit, which is not to defend ignobility. Right. Well, the other thing that does just make me a little crazy about all of this is like,

I think partly because of the Russiagate hysteria in his first term, like liberals would be surprised to learn that Trump pursued a very hawkish policy vis-a-vis Russia and specifically with regards to Ukraine. You know, he armed Ukraine in a way that Obama was unwilling to because Obama feared this sort of conflict and provocation of Russia.

Trump, in spite of rhetoric that was sort of like Putin curious or Putin friendly or whatever, what his administration actually did was quite militaristic and quite hawkish. And so that's also why I find it outrageous for him to then, at this point, after you helped create the conditions

that provoked this reaction from Russia and Russia, Putin has his own agency and he did his thing and it was illegal and he shouldn't have done it. But it was foreseeable ultimately this outcome, like you were part of creating these conditions.

And now you want to turn around and blame Zelensky and the Ukrainians. Like, it is disgusting. It is outrageous. And people should feel, like, disgusted and outraged by that. And it also, you know, it also does make it so, as you were pointing out, Ryan, that in terms of the dynamics of this negotiation, it does not make them simpler. It makes them more complex, actually. And it certainly makes it so that whatever Ukraine is going to end up with at the end of the day is going to be worse than

than what they may have ended up with if Trump had taken a different course here. Yes, yes. Everyone waving the Ukrainian flag over the last two years claiming to be supporting Ukraine, you know, has left them in a worse situation than they would have been otherwise. We don't have time to get into this deeply, but just want to finish with the context of all of this. Put up B7 here. This is a New York Times piece from yesterday about

The headline Trump eyes a bigger better trade deal with China You know Trump really is projecting the idea strongly that he wants to reorganize the world order and once better relations with Russia which presumably the idea is to like drive a little bit of a wedge between

deeper into the relationship between Russia and China and then to cut a big deal almost a g2 situation with China to say look we were willing to like back off the idea that we're gonna be a hegemon and let's

see how cooperation works out rather than aggressive or actually like kinetic competition works out. As the Times points out, he's bitter. Trump's always bitter, but he's bitter in particular about he thinks Biden didn't carry out the deal that he cut with China in 2020 where China was supposed to buy another $200 billion worth of U.S. goods, balance out the trade deficit.

and he thinks that he would have if he were still in power so now he's going to go back and you know cut a cut a broad commercial diplomatic deal that involves you know reducing nuclear weapons and spending and military spending which to me great if he could pull this off you know

Go for it. This could be one of the areas where Elon as a CEO dictator king is actually beneficial since he has so many business interests in China. It's one way of putting it. You know, it may actually be that that's part of what has shifted Trump in this direction because, you know, he had a much more. Well, and it's still I think it's still very much up in the air because there are different ways you can do multipolarity.

Right. One is and Ben Norton's been been writing some about this. You know, the Chinese have sort of laid out their principles of they want equal treatment for all countries, respect for international law, multilateralism. They want openness and mutual benefit. So not this idea of like a new Cold War and we're in competition with you. Right. So not a return to those, you know, Soviet versus U.S. dynamics, which led to.

untold number of proxy wars. It was not like we avoided the giant conflict with them, the big hot war that ends the world. But it was not like it was a conflict-free era. Probably tens of millions died violent deaths. Yes, exactly. So there's that way of doing multipolarity, which many people within the Trump administration, including Marco Rubio, he is a China hawk.

He has a sort of like, you know, hawkish, historically aggressive posture towards China, sees it as a competition, has talked about the acquisition of Greenland in this sort of like Cold War way of this is a way to check China. And if we don't take it, then China is going to take it. And we need to make sure that we can own the Arctic as the ice melts in these shipping lanes overland.

open up as a result of the climate crisis. So that's one way. And the other way would be to have these sort of more mutually beneficial, cooperative relationships where you're not just directly competing with each other around the world in all these proxy fights and building up your military aggressively, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it's still very undetermined, which

which direction Trump is going to decide to take. I don't know that he really knows either. Yeah, and if somebody's going to shake it up like that, it would have to be Trump because the entire Washington blob, the national security establishment, has spent decades invested in American hegemony. That's where their careers are. That's where their lives, that's where their professional lives are based. So they're going to, you know, they're going to go down with the ship. I think the key takeaway to me from Trump's tweet about Zelenskyy

Trump is a, which everybody says about him, whoever talks to him last

He's very easy to be influenced. Yeah. He is clearly surrounded right now by people who hate Zelensky. Yeah. And have a hostility towards the whole Ukrainian project. That's what's reflected in that tweet. Yeah. It's a very internet-brained take, honestly. Yeah. And so that is a window into who's influencing him right now, which is suggestive of where this is heading. Yeah.

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