2/3/25: Trump Smacks Canada & Mexico With Tariffs, Elon Musk DOGE Gov Takeover
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full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. There are a million things that are happening in this town, including the trade war from Trump has officially started. We've got tariffs in place against China, Mexico, Canada, and some retaliatory tariffs coming our way as well.

Jeff Stein from The Washington Post is going to break all of that down for us. Elon Musk has basically seized the government, give you all the details there as best we know and what that is going to mean going forward. We've got new info about that horrific plane crash here as another plane, a small plane, went down in Philadelphia. Still a lot of questions about what occurred there as well. The Democrats have elected a new leader for the DNC. We'll show you what that guy is all about and what it pretends for the future of that party.

Tucker and Ben Shapiro have gone to war, trading blows, accusations, etc. And a Haaretz reporter is going to join us to break down a scoop that he is reporting out in advance of Bibi's trip to Washington, Bibi being the first foreign leader who will come and visit the New York Times.

Trump administration. So lots to get to. Lots of that. Actually passed some of these really delegation yesterday. I was like, what is this large Secret Service convoy coming in? I was like, oh, that's right. I wonder if he brought all of his dirty clothes like he normally does. That's right. Remember that reporting? He and his wife bring all of

of their dry cleaning, packed suitcases full of their own laundry. To Blair House, which is the president's official guest house, so that the White House tax... If the taxpayer doesn't pay enough for the Israeli government, we also have to literally wash their dirty laundry. I'm sure you could write a ton of stories about that. But as Crystal said, let's get to the tariffs. This is absolutely the most important story, both here in Washington, in the global economy. President Trump announcing it on Friday. Let's take a listen.

cities that we're giving to Canada and to Mexico in the form of deficits. And I'll be putting the tariff of 25% on Canada and separately 25% on Mexico.

And we will really have to do that because we have very big deficits with those countries. Those tariffs may or may not rise with time. So the details of the tariffs there are laid out by Donald Trump. Let me just, from the top line, it's pretty simple. Basically, 25% tariff on Canada, 25% tariff on Mexico. There is an exception of

for Canadian oil, but there will be some more tariffs that kick in on that on February 23rd, about 20 days from right now. 10% on China and a removal of something called de minimis. Matt Stiller will be joining us tomorrow to break that down. But effectively, what it does is it shuts down the loophole for any package entering the United States that is under the value of $800 that allows huge

huge Amazon China sellers to do business. It's the way that Temu, the way that Shien, many of these other Chinese companies which do direct e-commerce to the United States, arguably, in my opinion, one of the most important tariffs that was put there. But Trump also was asked here about his pledge to reduce prices and how that may conflict with tariffs. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

- You promised Americans to try to reduce costs in so many of the products that would be tariffed when they come into the country. The outgoing country is not paying the tariff. The buyers in the United States pay that, and then that's passed on to consumers in most instances. - Sometimes.

would you expect to have prices come down if you have such a broad plan for tariffs? And what do you say to the voters who want to see you reduce everyday costs? Well, let me just tell you that I got elected for a lot of reasons. Number one was the border. Number two was inflation, because I had almost no inflation. And yet I charged hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs to countries. And think of it, I had almost no inflation and I took in

$600 billion of money from other countries. And tariffs don't cause inflation, they cause success.

It caused big success, so we're going to have great success. There could be some temporary short-term disruption, and people will understand that. I had that when I negotiated some of the good deals for the farmers. People will understand that Trump is really betting on that. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is from his Truth Social over the weekend. The tariff lobby headed by the globalists always wrong. Wall Street journalists working hard to justify countries like Canada, Mexico, and China, who continue the decades-long ripoff of

America. He continues there, he says, "Make your product in the USA. There are no tariffs. Why should the United States lose trillions of dollars in subsidizing other countries?" He talks there and says specifically about the quote-unquote "pain" that may arise. Will there be some pain? Yes.

Maybe and maybe not. So that is the official word there from Donald Trump. He will be speaking this morning, as I understand it, with Mexico and Canada. These tariffs, by the way, are not yet in effect. They go into effect tomorrow. So that's where things stand right now, Crystal. Absolutely dizzying weekend here in Washington. As of right now, you know, the markets are actually...

having a pretty modest reaction. So we're filming, this is about 7:55 a.m., you and I are talking, S&P 500 down by about 1.6%, but to be honest, I mean, that's really not much. That basically just returns it to the value of where it was just a month ago, remains up 15%

on the last six months. So it's not like the markets have taken a major reaction. Approximately 30% of all U.S. goods enter from Canada or Mexico, but they are disproportionately more important for the Canadians and the Mexicans. About 75% of goods from Canada come to the United States. About 80% of goods from Mexico come to the United States.

So Canada, Mexico and China are three largest trading partners. Together, they make up about 40 percent of U.S. imports. The areas that will be most impacted, Jeff Stein can break this down for us as well. Autumn manufacturing. So the estimate is that this will increase the price of cars by about three thousand dollars per

Huge amount of produce coming in particular from Mexico. Canada, we rely on for a lot of building materials. Also, Trump seemingly recognizing the inflationary impacts that these tariffs will have put a lower tariff on

oil imports from Canada, and I believe the amount is between 60 and 70 percent of all of our oil imports do come from Canada. Yes, that's right. The expectation is in particular in the Midwest that will spike gas prices. Now, there's a few things to say about what we know from the past and what the impacts were and also about, you know, what it was that American people

thought they were voting for with Donald Trump. As he himself acknowledged there, one of the top reasons they voted for him was because they were concerned about inflation and the cost of living crisis.

Almost every economist will tell you these tariffs are going to raise prices. Probably the place where they will be most immediately felt is in the grocery store in terms of produce. You know, things like auto manufacturers, because that's a longer timeline to delivery. It may take a longer time period before you see those price hikes go into effect. But while it is not inevitable—

that producers pass on the cost to consumers. We know that is in fact what they have largely done in the past with regards to the tariffs put in place both by Trump and Biden in Biden's term and in Trump's previous term. We also know that, you know,

In terms of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., Trump's tariffs in the first term, which I supported, by the way, were not actually effective at that because they weren't paired with an overarching industrial policy. Biden continued those tariffs and expanded them in certain markets, paired it with somewhat of an industrial policy. That did help to reshore some jobs. The other thing that I'll say here is that the justification for these is pretty confused.

So Trump has to put a national security justification around this, which is why he talks so much about fentanyl, even though, you know, with regard to Canada, 1% of all fentanyl comes in from the Canadian border. Like it really is a preposterous excuse in terms of Canada.

Even in terms of Mexico, right, a lot of the reason why the business community was very comfortable with Trump this time around, and I think probably even why the stock market isn't reacting even more than it is, is they still see this as effectively like a threat. They've never really taken seriously the rhetoric that he has consistently used, saying, I want across-the-board tariffs. We're going to really rely on tariffs. We're going to get rid of the income tax and replace it with tariffs, etc., etc., etc.

And part of what they thought he would do was to use the threat of tariffs to coerce behavior. Well, in fact, he got some wins from Mexico already. Claudia Scheinbaum did some gigantic fentanyl busts. They significantly reduced the amount of fentanyl actually coming across the border in December in anticipation of Trump coming in. I think they seized

something like 1,000 pounds of fentanyl. Obviously, that's still 1,000 pounds too many. That is the lowest amount that we have seen in quite some time. So unclear what he even wants Canada to do or what the purpose of that really is. Mexico is already doing the things that he wants them to do, and he's still slapping the tariffs on. So the indication to the rest of the world is basically like, there's nothing you can do to appease this guy. You may as well either

band together in some sort of an alternative coalition or, you know, rush more into the arms of Asia. So, you know, obviously I think that this is incredibly foolish, counterproductive, is just going to spike prices, is not going to increase manufacturing, um,

or bring manufacturing back because that's not the track record and prove pretty devastating to our economy. See, I totally disagree. I'm very supportive of these tariffs, and I'll tell you why, which is that the reason, first of all, look, the fentanyl thing, you're not wrong, which is it's obviously a pretext. So there's this law called AIPA.

which affect the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, which was passed in the 1970s, allows the president to institute immediate tariffs by going around Congress, as long as there's a national threat that exists, quote, solely outside of the United States.

But, you know, if you look at that tweet that he put, or truth, I apologize, where he was talking about the tariffs, what did he say? He said, we have to make your products in the USA and there are no tariffs. The truth is this, is again, 80% of all goods from Mexico come to the United States.

Now, 75% come from Canada. The integration of our economies for the auto market has devastated manufacturing in the upper Midwest area, which voted for Donald Trump. Now, the way to accelerate that is to renegotiate our trade agreement. The problem is-

- He said that in his first term. - Yes, he did, and it was not as good. We criticized him here. I remember talking about it. - I mean, that's the thing is like we're operating under the trade agreement that you put into place, buddy. - Yes, but here's the thing. - So if there's a problem, it's on you. - We cannot renegotiate that until 2026 if we stick with the current policy. However, with the current tariffs, we can accelerate renegotiation. We don't have to wait three years. And then who knows if Congress will even fast track it. It could take until 2027, 2028 to be able to get that through. This is basically the only loophole way to immediately restart negotiations

of the USMCA, which is effectively the end goal. So everyone keeps saying that. And I do want to take an opportunity here to dunk on the UAW, who I think is acting incredibly foolishly. A7, can we please put that up there on the screen? UAW President Sean Fain put out the statement, the UAW supports aggressive tariff action to protect American manufacturing as a good first step to undoing decades of anti-worker trade policy. We do not support using factory workers

as pawns in a fight over immigration or drug policy. I mean, look, I'm an idiot and I can find out very easily that IEPA tariffs are not actually just about immigration or drug policy. - I mean, that's how Trump's selling them. - But you have to do it. - Why should we take the president at his word? - It's the only legal justification. So second, he goes, if Trump is serious about bringing back blue collar jobs,

destroyed by NAFTA, should do a step further and immediately seek to renegotiate our broken trade deals. Again, literally yesterday, they put out a statement saying they want to accelerate renegotiation of USMCA. So it sounds like to me, Mr. Fain and others would like for pretty little words not to include immigration and drug policy. And it's like, look, guys, it's not pretty. It's not, you know, it's not all bowtied and it's not all processed. But if you actually want to restore a

a trade imbalance, the only way is to slap tariffs on our largest trading partners to force and compel different behavior and to reset rules that actually are good for the American economy. Now, I'm not going to sit here and deny. I'm not one of those Biden spending egg pricer, you know, people. I don't think I've ever been. You did an entire monologue about egg prices under Biden. But I did not say that it was because of his spending. I said it was bad. I certainly agree. Now,

Okay, but is it going to be bad now when produce prices spike in the grocery stores? Yes. Listen, I don't think it's a good thing. We've done price gouging segments a million times here. I don't think it's a bad idea to, if you have a strategic industry like the auto industry, right? And this was the focus of some of the Biden administration tariffs in particular to protect the domestic EV auto industry because the truth of the matter is,

China's kicking our ass there. And if we didn't have tariffs on Chinese cars, we would have no domestic EV auto industry effectively. I think that makes sense. Putting tariffs on building materials, on oil, on avocados, on tomatoes, like why? - Because that's the only way you get them to gain on what's important. - The only thing you do with that is increase prices for consumers

and cause countries around the world to go like, "These people are insane. There's nothing we can do to appease this guy." So, no, I think this makes no sense. I think it is directly counter to what the American people thought that they were voting for. Now you can say like, "Yes, he was

out there talking about tariffs. He said it the whole time. But his tariff policy, when you poll it, it has actually never been popular, which is surprising to me, to be honest with you. I thought it would be more popular. Has never been more popular. And the number one reason that people said they were voting for Trump was to bring prices down. This is the polar opposite of that. So...

Listen, I think that this is foolish. I think it will be economically catastrophic. I do not think it will accomplish any of the things that he thinks. I don't even know what he thinks it's going to accomplish because, again, the rationale for this has been completely confused and all over the map. And the idea that it has anything to do with like fentanyl coming out of Canada is utterly preposterous. Yeah, it's a legal pretext. It's the only way that you can institute the tariffs. Look, we have Jeff Stein standing by who actually broke the news on a lot of this. So we can continue our debate after we talk to him. Why don't we go ahead and bring him in?

Joining us now is friend of the show Jeff Stein from the Washington Post. He's broken a ton of news on this topic and it's great to talk to him. Good to see you, man.

Hey, thanks, Edgar. Thanks, Christopher. Thanks for having me. So, Jeff, there's a lot of discussion now here in Washington. You've been in the camp always that the tariff threat was real. Let's go and put this up there on the screen from Axios A5, please, about the average cost that the U.S. household could get hit with, some $830 as a result of these tariffs. Could you go ahead and break down for us of what we know right now about the institution, whether it'll actually go into effect, some negotiation, other and other things that you're hearing?

So the executive order that the president signed does order, you know, 25 percent across the board tariffs on Mexico and Canada. No exceptions except for, I guess, one exception of energy, which is at 10 percent, I believe. And that is moving ahead as far as we can tell.

As you said, every point of this process, someone has said this is a bluff. This is a negotiating tactic. This is a way to get X or Y. And, you know, every person I've spoken to who has spoken directly to the president says that he says, like, no, this is not a negotiating tactic. This is not a ploy. This is like what I believe.

And, you know, I was listening to your guys like debate about sort of the efficacy or the benefits of this, which I think captured sort of like the broader debate very well. The thing that has bothered me throughout this whole discussion is that there is a segment of people who.

particularly on Wall Street, who have been saying, like, he doesn't mean this. Right. And it's just, like, what do you want him to do to prove that he does? Like, he basically just, like, ripped his shirt off and, like, wrote tariffs, like, on his chest and, like, campaigned on that throughout the country. Like, it was impossible to more seriously embrace this idea than Trump did in the 2024 presidential campaign.

I was talking last week to a Republican senator. I'm going to preserve his anonymity here. And I said, you know, like, what's going to happen with the tariffs? And the senator said to me, like,

Like I have been begging him to not do this. Like he's in a state that's like very dependent on trade with Canada. I was like, so what does that conversation look like? He was like, I spoke to the president for two hours. All he wanted to talk about was how great William McKinley was. That is not like someone who's like using this as a negotiating point. That's someone who like is thinking about his legacy, thinking about,

Like, sort of these huge questions about the ordering of the American economy and trying and is determined to go there, regardless of the people in his orbit. So I just feel like, like, you can be for the tariffs, you can be not for the tariffs, but like, pick one, you know, like, this, this, like, like,

The superimposed quantum state of like, "I'm not for the tariffs, but I'm for Trump's economic policy," is increasingly untenable. Yeah, that's like the Tea Party current position on the tariffs. Well, and so people understand—McKinley, when McKinley was in office, first of all, huge amount of federal— federal government was wildly smaller than it is now— huge amount of revenues came from tariffs. This was before there was even an income tax.

which is something else that Trump has floated, maybe not as consistently as a huge tariff regime, but he has floated. We're gonna substitute in tariffs for the income tax, which, you know, I mean, what do tariffs right now make up as a percent of federal revenue? It's like minuscule. It's a rounding error.

effectively. Yeah. So this would be, I mean, it's impossible to imagine that such a thing could happen with the modern country and modern federal government as it exists. What do you make of the market reaction so far this morning, Jeff? Because it seems like there may still be baked in a little bit like, yeah, sure. Okay. He's doing these across the board tariffs, but he's talking to these leaders today. Like he's not really going to go forward with this, right? I do think the markets continue to discount the

the severity of this. And also Trump has been talking about, you know, he campaigned on universal across the world tariffs. And I see no reason to think that Mexico and Canada will be the last countries he slaps tariffs on. I mean, if you follow the economic logic of getting Mexico and Canada to its conclusion, why not do it to all of Europe and all of China and all of India and all of et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, I think, I don't know, there's a lot of different angles here, obviously, that are really important to discuss. I mean, Canada is not the reason that the Midwest has lost its manufacturing base. I mean, the most articulate strident critics of NAFTA would not identify in Canadian labor practices the source of the long decline in American manufacturing. It's just like...

Nobody would say that. None of the people who won the intellectual grounding for Trump's push on trade, there are people, obviously, like Michael Pettis and Peter Navarro, people in that orbit. They have a very coherent

explanation about how NAFTA and the opening of China and American trade practices led to the destruction of the American middle class and blue collar jobs in Michigan, etc.,

But no one would say that Canada was responsible for any of that. It's just not, it's like non-responsive to like the issue. So, you know, if they want to go after China or they want to go after particular sets of sectors, but, you know, it's like the democratic response to this is still so confusing and weird because it's like, oh, we like them in some cases, not all of them, blah, blah, blah.

And I think that's a very confusing message to people. Yeah, I think it's interesting as well. Whenever we're talking here in the broader context of some of these tariffs, some of the things you've also tracked is the legal response. So as I understand it, this will almost certainly come under scrutiny from the courts. These IEPA-type tariffs have been used sparingly in the past, and consumer groups and others

are likely to sue. What do you think, how do you think that will proceed through the federal court system considering what just happened with the OMB funding? I actually think the Supreme Court is quite likely to defer to President Trump's authority here.

AIPA, as you mentioned, is typically, you know, this 1977 law is typically used as the basis for economic sanctions. And even though the Constitution is quite clear in Article 2 that the Congress has the power to levy taxes,

There's a huge amount of deference from the courts to the executive branch in matters of national security. That's what they're citing here with the fence and all and other things. Typically, I've reported as you guys have me on for about economic sanctions a lot, typically, the courts have barely interfered with that at all. I actually think the court challenge is unlikely to be successful.

Jeff, what can people expect in terms of assuming that this tariff regime goes forward and retaliatory tariffs are levied from Canada, China and Mexico as have been threatened? What do you think that people can expect in terms of impact on their day to day lives?

I mean, I think the macroeconomics here are a little more complicated than people realize. There is, you know, the Trump people I've been speaking to have been arguing, not unpersuasively, that currency markets will shift such that you'll see, you know, the overall prices that you see at the grocery store may not look, you know, dramatically higher one day. That might happen. You know, I think there's reason to believe that, but there's a potential for the sort of

through line for how this actually gets implemented and actually effectuate in the economy or instead of price appreciation sort of changes in currency valuation between the peso and us in Canada and that that might depress our purchasing power

but not necessarily lead to sticker shock at the grocery store. So people might get poorer and not see the visible impact that they're sort of accustomed, that they're being primed to see now, which is, I think, a bit of a danger for Democrats that they warn, price hikes, price hikes, price hikes, price hikes, and then there's this more nuanced, still very damaging, but more nuanced effect. I'll just say, like, imagine a Democrat in office doing this. This is like the biggest...

tax hike, if you want to call it a tariff tax hike, which I think most economists would. The biggest tax hike in decades, I mean, close to a century, more than a trillion dollars worth of stuff is going to be taxed at 25%. I mean, imagine Barack Obama being like, we're going to do like a trillion dollars on taxes on everyone. It's like, it's an incredible thing that a Democrat can never touch with a 20-foot pole. Yeah.

Well, without getting too crazy, can you just modestly try and explain some of those currency things? Because that's going to be a big point of contention. So the peso and the Canadian dollar are on free fall of this morning. The purchasing power of the dollar, the dollar is becoming stronger as a result. Just get into a little bit of that so that I don't have to do it and so that we can prime everybody for this conversation in the months ahead.

I haven't covered this in a couple of weeks, but my understanding basically is that if the purchasing power of the U.S. consumer is basically depressed by the

the tariffs, but basically the tariffs make things so that each import is more expensive. It's possible that the prices of goods for stuff in the US falls, right? Like if the purchasing power of a consumer stays constant, but it gets more expensive for the imported goods, right?

then the ability of the U.S. consumer to spend the prices for other things because there's more demand than supply for the outstanding things that are coming into the country or are being produced domestically will go down. So there's going to be some substitution effect for the effect of the tariff.

Overall, because the basket of goods is smaller than it would be in a non-tariff world, the overall economic benefit that each consumer gets will be smaller. But because of the substitution effect, it might be a little hard to detect that.

Does that make sense? Yes, yes. That's a better explanation than I would have been able to follow. I was kind of re-wheeling there like midway through that. No, no, no, you did a good job. Otherwise, I'm just going to have to read from Claude or chat GPT, so I'd rather it come from you. We prefer Jeff GPT. Yeah, we prefer the Jeff GPT. Jeff...

One last thing just before we let you go, because this will preview our next segment as well. You also had a big scoop with regard to Elon and his acolytes seizing control of Treasury payment system. Can you talk just a little bit top line about that news you were able to break as well? Yeah, I mean, this is what I've been focused on a lot. You know, the senior most

A career official at the Treasury Department was told by allies or deputies of Elon Musk to hand over the sort of system responsible for dispersing $6 trillion of payments, Medicare, Social Security, basically everything that the federal government does. And this guy said, you know, you don't have legal authority, essentially, to access that. And the Musk people...

effectively pushed him out. He went on leave and resigned on Friday, and now we reported on Saturday that these Musk people now have access to this system. And the Trump administration has been very clear that it intends to massively kind of exert unilateral authority to shut down payments approved by Congress. And what the Musk people will do with that information is anyone's guess, really.

All right. All right, Jeff. Well, thank you so much. I know you got to run because you got 18 other stories that you need to break this morning. So great to see you. Thank you so much, as always, for your time. Good to see you.

So as we just previewed with Jeff Stein, who originally broke this story, Elon Musk and his acolytes have effectively seized the Treasury Department and they have control over all of the payments that go out from the federal government, along with seizing various other agencies that we'll get to in a moment. Let's go ahead and put Jeff's reporting here up on the screen from the Washington Post. He says, Scoop, the highest ranking Treasury official is expected to depart soon, and that has now happened after a clash with Elon Musk allies over the last year.

their demands for access to a sensitive internal government payment system. Musk allies wanted access to that system responsible for dispersing trillions in federal government payments annually as part of DOGE. Treasury career staff saw the request, as he puts it, highly unusual. David LeBrick, viewed internally as consummate nonpolitical civil servant, expected to exit after joining Treasury in 1989. Last week, he was active

acting Treasury secretary. And the update there is now Musk has, in fact, and his apparatchiks, allies, whatever you want to call them, have been given access to that Treasury payment system. Now, just to explain to people how this works.

All of the money, Social Security payments, Medicare payments, veterans benefits, all of the money that goes out from the federal government is dispersed by this system. Treasury officials have no authority to pick and choose which of these payments go out because, as we all know from Constitution 101, Congress has the power of the purse.

They appropriate the funds. And so this system is really just about executing on the payments that have already been congressionally authorized. So that's why that's one of the reasons why this is such a big deal. The other reason why this is such a big deal is Elon Musk is not president of the United States. No one voted for this guy. He hasn't been confirmed for any sort of a Senate position. And now he and his acolytes have access to all of the

of this incredibly sensitive information, also Elon Musk being the richest man in the world, having his own massive government contracts and conflicts of interest since he is not in a Senate-confirmed position. He has not mitigated any of those conflicts of interest. And we can put the next piece up on the screen. He at least claims that he is using this access to shut down payments that he does not like.

Now, this is based on Mike Flynn, former General Mike Flynn, who tweeted out, "Oh, the Lutheran faith is using this money." They received massive amounts of taxpayer dollars with the indication being that they're using it for money laundering and human trafficking. Most of this money actually goes for things like Medicaid block grants. It goes for things like Head Start and Meals on Wheels and domestic violence, addiction services, those sorts of things.

whether or not you think that this organization is good, bad, indifferent, the bottom line is it's not up to Elon Musk or General Mike Flynn to decide whether or not these payments go out. So that's piece number one is the Treasury. Piece number two, you can put B3 up on the screen here. This is the Office of Personnel Management, basically the HR department for the entire federal government.

Here you also have Musk aides locking out career workers

from this Office of Personnel Management system. I'll go ahead and read this to you. They say, AIDS to Elon Musk, charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency, have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees. Those systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, social security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades, and length of service of government workers.

Next piece, B4.

the General Services Administration. Elon Musk's allies have infiltrated that agency as well. And they're looking for ways that sort of like, it's almost like the operations managers of the government looking for ways to use White House credentials to access agency tech,

potentially allowing them to remote into laptops, read emails, and more, sources say. I will pause for a minute before we get into what is the latest with regard to the USAID, which Musk has said he's been feeding into a wood chipper again. How do we feel about that agency?

That's up to Congress to decide whether or not we're going to eliminate various federal government agencies, not a man who no one voted for and has no Senate-confirmed position or power. So I saw where I've been trying to grapple with what all this means, how to describe it. I think it is somewhere beyond a constitutional crisis.

I think it is probably short of a coup given that he doesn't, as far as I know, have control of the military. But that's the kind of territory we're getting into when you have one guy, richest man on the planet, not elected, no Senate-confirmed position, who has seized control of the payment system, all of the federal government's sensitive data.

is, you know, deciding willy-nilly what payments should go out and what shouldn't, what agencies should exist and what shouldn't, and has, you know, effectively done this and sees this with this handful of, like, 20-year-old kids with, as far as I can tell, very little pushback.

In principle, it's obviously insane. And I know that there are a lot of Doge fanboys and others who are out there, but this very much falls in the territory of their unilateralism. And in fact, he also, you know, even my friend Ryan Groduski made a good point. He's like, look, let's say there's a guy who made all of his money based in large part to some federal government policy. He's like, should we really give him reigns?

over the federal government. This is where I really depart with a lot of my Silicon Valley tech right friends, even though in principle, you know, I may not disagree with, you know, getting rid of USAID or whatever. If it's gone through at least somewhat of a more democratic process, like it'd be better for me if the Secretary of State were doing it or the president, you know, people who are elected, confirmed by the United States Senate. Their theory, as I understand it, is that they're trying to invite a lawsuit under the impoundment

that we had talked about previously. What they're trying to do is to stretch things as much as possible in terms of control before legal challenges can come and kick in, and under impoundment, trying to basically challenge what we talked about previously, that principle where the federal government is not required to stick with this. In that said, though, there is a decent amount of executive authority

that the president can have in disbursement of payment. Specifically, again, as I understand it, is around NGOs. Because that comes down to administrative judgment for disbursement of funds. So Congress might appropriate X millions of dollars for, like you were talking about, meals on wheels. The administrators themselves can decide for whom to disburse funds.

the contract. So I was looking into the legal justification for that a bit, and that seems to be the ground that they're standing on, on top of trying to invite a challenge for impoundment to fast track it to the Supreme Court. - I mean, it is, as far as I can tell, brazenly illegal for this random dude

with no electoral mandate, no congressional mandate, no mandate whatsoever to just go in and be like, I don't like this appropriation. We're not going to push this one out. I mean, it's clear cut, not just separation of powers, but it'd be one thing if it was the president, if there was any transparency around this whatsoever. I mean, even that, I

I think is blatantly unconstitutional, but he has effectively made Congress completely irrelevant. Like right now it wouldn't matter even if Democrats had won the House and the Senate, whatever, like Congress is now irrelevant. Even if whatever they pass, if Elon Musk can just come in and be like, no, I don't like that, not doing that.

That is as like clearly unconstitutional as it could possibly get. And so, you know, it it to me, I think you would say probably, Sagar, that I was fairly alarmist in the in advance of Trump getting elected. Yeah. You know, I think he's an authoritarian. I think he's a fascist. I was deeply concerned about the things that he had announced.

that he had planned to do. This is beyond what I could have anticipated. And it's really the Elon Musk factor that I did not weigh in. Like, I did not anticipate that in week two we'd be talking about the richest man on the planet having effectively seized the government with basically no resistance.

And so, you know, I knew that there were basically no guardrails in place anymore. You know, the Supreme Court has given Trump a pretty blanket immunity for anything that's remotely connected to the job. Any sort of Republican opposition has been, by and large, pretty much vanquished.

you know, any of the sort of career civil servants or the type of like the general millies or the type of more establishment folks who are interested in maintaining the institutions, like they've all been excised. I knew all of this going in. I did not have the creativity to imagine the richest man on the planet seizing control of the government in week number two. Could not see that one particularly coming. And so, you know, the fact that there's been

Next to no institutional pushback, you have the media is a mess. The Democratic Party is like basically why do they even exist at this point? Yeah, I don't know where this goes and I don't know how it ends. And even the idea like, okay, they want to push for this impoundment control legal fight or whatever.

J.D. Vance came out and was like, yeah, and if we get a court ruling that we don't like, we'll be like Andrew Jackson. Go ahead and enforce it with your army. So I don't have any confidence that they're going to abide by any legal rulings that would come down against them. They seem dead set and Elon seems dead set on doing whatever Elon Musk wants to do. And the rest of us are irrelevant. We just get to stand by and watch.

So, you know, I'm sort of cheering for Trump and Elon to have some sort of falling out and for Trump, who at least is duly elected president of the United States, to reassert some control over the government. So far, the indications in that direction are not great, given that Trump is out tweeting talking points seemingly directly from Elon Musk about South African land appropriation and saying that, you know, he's going to he's going to.

stopped sending aid to South Africa because of this law that they passed in their own country.

In addition to all of this, I mentioned the USAID stuff, so let me go through that as well. Let's go ahead and we can just go through in order here. B5, this was the first piece. So CNN reported that senior USAID security officials were put on leave after physically trying to refuse Musk's Doge access to agency systems. Musk's cronies threatened to call U.S. marshals.

to be allowed access to USAID. They wanted to gain access to security systems and personnel files, three sources said. Two of those sources also said the Doge personnel wanted access to classified information, which only those with security clearances and a specific need to know are able to access. On Sunday, in response to CNN's report about the incident, Musk said that USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.

Their account, their Twitter account has been taken down. Their website has been taken down as well. We can put, let's put B8 up on the screen here because this is the very latest. USAID staffers were told to stay out of Washington headquarters after Musk said that Trump agreed to close it. Now, USAID, it's a

effectively a tool of soft US soft power. There are all sorts of things that USAID does that are like democracy meddling that I in no way support. USAID does also run some really critical programs, life saving programs, things like petfarm, things like, you know, tackling malaria in developing countries. So they do some good as well. It really doesn't matter how you feel about this agency.

The truth of the matter is, it is not up to Elon Musk or Donald Trump to just say, "We're done with this." This also clearly has to go through Congress.

You do not, as the richest man on the planet, have a right to just pick and choose which federal government agencies you like and which you don't. Guess what? The people's elected representatives get to have a say and input into this. So this is where we are this morning. Effectively, you know, a hostile takeover from the U.S. government of the U.S. government by Elon Musk and incredibly, you know, insensitive.

This would be bad from anyone, right? I promise you, I would be saying the same thing if it was Bill Gates or George Soros. And I promise you, Republicans would have a big problem with it.

If it was George Soros who had seized control of the Treasury Department system and was randomly shuttering agencies, U.S. government agencies, that he happened to not like for whatever ideological and self-interested reasons. So to me, this is an incredibly, I don't even know what words to put it. Like I said before, way beyond constitutional crisis, probably not quite at coup because the military is still under control by Donald Trump, but we're somewhere in that range.

Here's what, okay, on USAID, and this is where, I mean, this is why the constitutional crisis thing is like not technically accurate. It's been authorized by Congress, but nobody says that it has to be an existing agency of the government. If you fold it into the State Department, which is what they said that they did, and the programs can still disperse money under that. Elon said he's feeding it into a wood chipper. Yes, but if you— That's not folding it under the umbrella of this or that. By doing that, you take it from its USAID administrator reports up to SECDEF.

And seizing control of the systems. This isn't like, oh, we're going to do a little reform. It's just we're getting rid of this because we think it's –

and evil in a criminal organization. But this is what I'm getting at, is that if you fold it under the State Department, that's actually totally within the executive authority of the president. Coming back to this, and this is actually what I've been thinking about a lot too. Here is, I don't support Elon or any person being able to do this, but I think the lack of institutional pushback is because I think there was actually a broad support for this type of burn shit down. I'm not just talking about Elon. No, I see. This is where I totally disagree. But,

People do not push the red button for Trump. Popular vote. Without some serious shit going wrong over the last four years. When did anyone, when did anyone even mention on the campaign trail, like, we're going to get rid of USAID? Trump has never, Trump has never run as an austerity politician. You know that. But this is not austerity. Of course,

It's 0.7% of the federal budget, like you said, fomenting coups in Africa. But soccer, I'm not just talking about USAID. I'm talking about Elon's whole-of-government seizure. He is a Javier Millay-style anarcho-capitalist. He wants to take a massive headspace

hatchet to the federal government so that it is completely impotent and weak and can't stand up against him or any other robber baron corporate titan. That is his goal. That has never been the Trump approach. And I can't believe I'm here like cheering for Donald Trump to reassert his ideology. But I actually am in this case because this is not remotely what people voted for. Greenland wasn't mentioned in the, you know, it has it was meant USAI.

wasn't mentioned in the campaign. Going to war with Canada wasn't mentioned in the campaign. We're not going to war with Canada. None of this economic war. Yeah, that was actually. None of this, none of this like austerity, anarcho-capitalist slash and burn. Yeah,

any of this. He certainly didn't campaign on, he certainly didn't campaign on, I'm going to allow Elon Musk total and complete control of the government. That was never part of the campaign pledge. And you see people don't like it because Elon Musk approval rating has plummeted. Doge's approval rating is like 29%.

They're not excited about this direction that they're going in whatsoever. They were upset about gas prices. They were upset about cost of living. They were upset about what they perceived as border chaos. They voted for those things, yes. Does he have a mandate on those things? Yes.

This has nothing to do with any of that. No one was like, yes, I would like the richest man on the earth, an unelected billionaire, to have access to every sensitive government system and control over it. That's insane. No one voted for that. I don't agree with that because, first of all, Elon was literally on the campaign trail and he was with them. Doge is one of those things where if you're asking these podcast guys what they're the most excited about organically, every single one of them has brought up Doge.

They're like, I can't wait to see this slash and burn. And I think what it gets to is a deep lack of institutional trust. Now, coming back to it, I don't agree at all that none of these things weren't mentioned. Doge literally was a promise by Trump and Elon on the campaign trail. I don't even support a lot of Doge stuff. You yourself thought it was like a make-work campaign.

irrelevant blue ribbon commission. Well, okay, in reality, that's probably what it all will be because in terms of all of this cutting USAID's funding, it's 0.7% of the federal budget. Like in terms of even, quote, seizing control of the payments. If 99% of the payments go through and one NGO gets cut off, I'm not going to cry about it. So this is what I'm saying. What would you say?

If it was, I mean, it's almost unimaginable because they would never do this. It was Kamala Harris that got elected and George Soros is now in control of the Treasury, the GSA, the OPM, cutting agencies. What would you say? No, I agree with you on the actual conflict of interest. What I'm trying to reconcile is- It's not just a conflict of interest.

It is blatantly unconstitutional. It is a seizure of the government. It is rendering the congressional, duly elected congressional representatives completely irrelevant by the richest man on the planet. - What I am trying to reconcile-- - That's what is going on. - Is what you just said, is that there's no institutional pushback. There's not even really, I don't think that there's some major public outcry.

Some what, Quinnipiac, polled, Elon? We'll see, all right, in terms of Doge and all that. And also, did we not just live through an election where polls were complete bullshit? How are we supposed to know whether any of this stuff- But you like those polls when they say what you like on immigration. Well, okay, so I can pair that. When Donald Trump gets elected in the popular vote, then a bunch of Hispanic people vote for him.

Well, we can pair electoral result with a poll, and then we can say that there's some relative confidence. Tracking poll on Elon, like, look, if anything, the electoral results show people don't give a shit whether Elon is their support. If they get creamed in the midterms, then yeah, maybe. But I'm very curious to see how this stuff goes. What would it even matter at this point if they get creamed in the midterms since Congress does not even exist? This is where we're all exaggerating. Again, like, you know,

using constitutional this is why I get upset or annoyed about this whole Nazi fascist it's like words have meaning it's not a constitutional crisis whenever one Meals on Wheels NGO gets a payment delay for 10 seconds that's not the point the point is not because there are gradations for this no there is not the point is not oh one NGO is going to be defunded

The point is that this is not the way our government is set up to work. We don't have a king. We're not supposed to have rule by one single oligarch. And that is what we have right now. That's why this is a constitutional crisis. And I guarantee you, if it was George Soros...

If it was Bill Gates, if it was Mark Zuckerberg working hand in glove with Kamala Harris and locking out everybody from the government and seizing their laptop, getting access to their laptops and seizing control over the entire federal government disbursement system, I guarantee you Republicans would agree that it was a constitutional crisis because you're fundamentally talking about not just the separate, that's why I say it's beyond a constitutional crisis.

because this isn't even just about some like executive branch versus legislative branch dispute. This is about someone who is not elected or confirmed to anything, taking control of things he has no right to take control of. It is a crime spree. It is a smash and grab

- Well, there's no grab happening. There's smash happening. But this is what I'm trying to get at. And this is where, again, words matter and terms. For example, under the AUMF, every president since George W. Bush has violated the Constitution, correct? Right? Is that a constitutional crisis? By bombing countries which Congress has not declared war on? It's bad. Are we gonna call it a constitutional crisis?

No, we're not because that's been happening for 20 years. Unfortunate has become normalized. I fought against it for the entire time, but it falls within, you know, a scope of how things are working. I would love. This does not fall within any scope. Okay, but again, this is my point. We've never had anything remote like this. Is that when we think about, when I come back to why is it that people support, and I don't,

I don't think it's good to have somebody who's unelected, billionaire, whatever, tons of conflict of interest, who has his own enrichment, who is totally in control of this. Now, again, when we come back to why is it that so many people are totally supportive of this, or at the very least, a lot of the Republican coalition, it comes down to zero institutional trust and a genuine desire to blow shit up. And I don't think that you're, that you are understanding how many people, and this

is the through line through MAGA. Everyone's like, how can Tulsi and RFK and Elon and Trump, who have all of these conflicting things, all come together? They are against the system. The system is broadly what people voted against in the popular vote. We can try and retcon it into inflation, egg prices, and all of that. I don't really think so. I think really what it comes down to is a giant fuck you for all of the way that things are done, process. Things, by the way, many democratics

socialists and others I've heard say is screw the parliamentarian. How many of them have advocated for rejecting norms, stacking the Supreme Court? I've heard you say to be able to get what people want. No one voted for Elon Musk. I do. No one voted for Elon Musk. I wish that were the case. It's not true. I'm telling you. Here's the other thing. Yeah. Here's the other thing. Like,

Even if there is – I don't – 100% is the case that there is some constituency that's like, go Doge. Destroy the federal government. Like, go after them. Seize control of the treasury. Right.

That doesn't mean that it's constitutional. Doesn't mean that it's right. Doesn't mean it's gonna be good for the country. Doesn't mean it's gonna have massive reverberating impacts. So it is a weird thing to watch. It's a strange feeling because there seems to be, it is true, I mean, you're right about, there's like a whimper about it. And it's so much is happening so quickly too that I don't think any normal person could really wrap their head around it.

everything that is going on either. But once you have, you know, allowed a single unelected billionaire to take control of the federal government, like, you don't really go back to just being a normal democracy after that. And so...

Massively consequential, deeply troubling, incredibly disturbing. And I don't think that there's any, like, I, you know, I don't think they, I don't think there's any reason we should have confidence they abide by court decisions. I don't think that we should have any confidence that they'll just, like, you know, have normal elections next time around. Like, that's where we're at. The level of unilateral trust.

seizure that is going on here is, I mean, it's difficult for me to put into words how

extraordinary, unusual what is going on with all of this. Chris, so I looked up that J.D. Vance quote that you were claiming, and here's what he said. As so, I think the thing you can do in the Senate is push the legal boundaries as far as the Supreme Court will let you take it to. Basically make it possible for democratically accountable people and the executive in the legislature to fire mid-level up to high-level civil servants like that, to me, is the meat of the administrative state.

The key word there was as far as the Supreme Court will let you take it to. No, no, no, no, no. This was a fact check based on the Supreme Court decision thing that he apparently said on some podcast in 2021. I didn't realize this was, has he raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings? This is some reason from the, I'll send it if maybe he said something previously, but that's what I was able to find.

- Here, I will tell you the quote. - Okay, let's-- - When the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and said, "The Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it." - Right, I'm talking from the same, I'm talking from the exact same transcript of where he says,

As far as the Supreme Court will let you take it. So if we want to cherry pick, you know, parts of these quotes, he says literally as far as the Supreme Court will let you take it. Now, who knows where that will come from? That was from a 2021 podcast that he made where he said this on. Yeah. So first of all, it was like, what, four years ago. Now, at this point, somebody should ask him, Margaret Brennan, whoever. If I ever got a chance to interview him, I'll ask him about it.

My point falls back on something pretty simple. This idea that like we're canceling elections or any of this. No, there's no evidence for that. Like you can't extrapolate things beyond. But even again, I'm going to take it to the bigger, big Democratic point. You made an important thing. Yeah. People, oh, so much is happening. And you know why people don't care? Because most people only care about results. They don't give a shit about process. That's something I've heard you say a million times. They don't care about the process.

parliamentarian. I've heard you talk about calling for the stack in the Supreme Court. They don't give a shit. They want the government to blow up. That doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. As long as they get their social security, as long as they... But then on the other hand, they're about to hike prices through massive...

and also prices likely to go up through the mass deportation policy. When you want to stack the Supreme Court, why does it not matter? Why do norms not matter when you want to stack the Supreme Court? Why do norms not matter whenever you want to disregard the parliamentarian? Because they agree with the end goal. My point is always with the same point you would make then. People don't care about that.

They want what result? They want less immigration broadly. They want this a change to the federal government. No one voted for Meals on Wheels to be cut, Sagar. No one voted for Head Start to get cut.

No one voted for mass austerity. People like in general. Mass austerity is a definable term of where you massively reduce probably more than 5% to 10% federal government spending. Which is what Elon is pushing for. That's what he's pushing for, but that's not what's happened. We're not in mass austerity yet. And if it does that happen, then I'll call it mass austerity. What you have seen is a disruption of heads, not even Head Start, by the way. That didn't even happen.

Meals on Wheels had a question as to whether they were going to get their funding, and then the funding was immediately resumed after a 24-hour period. I'm not going to cry if I'm paying for somebody's health care in Africa and it stops, okay? I don't give a shit about that. And I don't think most people should either. Do you think that it is a concerning principle? I've said yes. That we should have now a billionaire who, you know, massively conflicted, like, huge

huge, one of the largest government contractors who now has access to all of our social security numbers, to access to the treasury payment system, and is just willy-nilly deciding who should get paid and who shouldn't. As a matter of principle, in terms of where the country goes from here, do you think that's a problem for now? I have said absolutely yes, I do. But, you know, as again, I have to reconcile this. Most people are not principled. Most people don't care at all. But I'm not talking about most people. Yeah.

Why not? Those people are living their lives. They're the voters. They're the ones who decide. Your job is to explain to people why these things are troubling and why you should care, even if you are trying to live your life and just go about your business, why these things matter, not just now, but for the future and for the precedent that they set.

So to just wave your hand, oh, no one cares, well, you have an important platform here to help to explain to people why it matters and why they should care and why it would be deeply troubling if it happened also if it was a Democrat who was in power at this point. Listen, again, I can tell I'm blue in the face. Having somebody who is unelected make these decisions is bad.

But listen, as a guy who has very unpopular positions on many things, I have basically given up at a certain point of trying to change people's behavior. I have seen too many instances of how many people are just willing to go along with something as long as it conveniently aligns. And so

As an analyst now at this point, I'm just trying to understand democratically, as you said, why is this alarmist position either not taking up? Why are there not protests in the street, overdose? And I'm like, well, it's pretty clear to me that the public is so fed up with this.

that they are just, they are absolutely willing to go along and to cut the Trump administration a lot of slack until some serious shit goes wrong in their life. Now, on the tariffs or on Doge or any of this other stuff, it's totally possible if they screw up Medicare, Social Security, any of these other programs, but

But in the interim, I mean, what? Yeah, again, PEPFAR, go ahead and pull PEPFAR. It was massively unpopular at the time under George W. Bush. He actually got hit a ton from the conservative movement for it. Basically, a lot of these global aid programs and all that they exist, when you try and reconcile with the fact that we don't even pay for our own citizens, they're ludicrous. They don't make any sense.

And yes, many USAID programs are basically venues in order to establish regime change abroad. They're not good. So, you know, this gets to the question of are people going to cry about lack of medication going to some global health program abroad? No, and I don't think they should. They've always, foreign aid has always pulled at like the absolute bottom. That is true. When we talk about Social Security and Medicare, maybe. That's a bit different. Like, for example, the PEPFAR thing.

I think there was a huge reaction against the PEPFAR funding being frozen. And because there was a public reaction, and this is one of the only things that's encouraging, they actually went back on that and said, no, no, this can be funded. Like, they gave an exemption so that PEPFAR could continue to be funded. So when people hear foreign aid in the abstract, I think you're correct that there's just like, oh, why are we doing that? Okay, but in principle, why are we paying for other people's HIV drugs? But...

because do we even pay for our own conscious HIV drugs? The reason is because of soft power and imperialism. That's what it really, I mean, it's equivalent to like, you know, similar to like China's Belt and Road Initiative. They're not doing it out of the goodness of our heart. We're not doing these USAID programs out of the goodness of our hearts, not at the federal government level. At,

the population level, you know, to counter your point that people don't care. No, actually, I think people do care. They like to feel like our government is doing good things around the world, whether it's malaria prevention or dealing with HIV and AIDS in the developing world, a program that's been tremendously successful and saved millions and millions of lives. But all of that

And that is really kind of beside the point because as I said before, how you feel about USAID isn't really the issue here. The issue here is having some dude who happens to be the wildest man on the planet saying, I don't like that agency. I'm feeding it into the wood chipper.

with no congressional input, no input from your elected representatives, with no Senate confirmation, having no one having voted for him. That is the issue that is at hand. How you feel about USAID is really quite irrelevant to that conversation. And that is truly a place we have never been in before. So

you are correct that, you know, I think most people are not focused on all of these things that are going on. They don't know what to make of it. They, you know, are living their lives. But listen, it's one thing, you know, we're about to talk about the plane crash thing. Like, it's one thing to

seize control of a private company Twitter and slash a bunch of jobs and turn it into like, you know, a cesspool of Nazism and whatever in your own personal propaganda outlet and the consequences be like, oh, my DMs don't work today once again or whatever. It's another thing when you're talking about, hey, we need people to regulate food safety so we don't have another, you know, outbreak of salmonella and people dying. Hey, we need air traffic controllers.

to be present in adequate numbers, which is something we dramatically don't have right now. And they sent out the same email that went to everybody else in the federal government that's like, please leave, please resign, even to people like air traffic controllers. Some functions of federal government are important. Some of them we really rely on to have a functioning society. Some of them are even life or death. And we've now

We haven't handed over. Elon Musk has now seized control of all of those functions. So even if you're cool with like, I don't really care about the AIDS funding to kids in Africa or, you know, to malaria, that is really not what this is about.

Because the control that he has asserted, that he has seized, is vastly broader than that. And as I said before, is brazenly unconstitutional. So if that is on the table, then literally anything is effectively on the table at this point. Okay. Again, I just think it's a matter of gradations. And here's my prediction. If they stick to USAID cutting funding to NGOs, it'll be massively popular.

I think that's the truth. If they don't touch Social Security and Medicare... They already had to roll back the PEPFAR thing. Okay, the PEPFAR thing was because of congressional... They already had to issue another thing saying, okay, not life-saving aid. There were not people taking to the streets saying, please restore PEPFAR. It's because there are a bunch of members of Congress who are very, very pro-PEPFAR. So, if anything, there you go. There's a check...

on the power. I don't think any of this is necessarily a good thing. I think that if they cut USAID or if they reform USAID, whatever the end result of this ends up happening, or start cutting funding to homeless NGOs or, sorry, unhoused NGOs as they call themselves, yeah, I think it's going to be crazy popular.

And I think there's a reason for that, is that people are deeply fed up and feel like the government helps all these other people. And they're like, wait, why does this money go over there? And I don't feel like I'm being helped. And so as long as they don't touch the most popular programs, which look, to be fair, you're right. Elon definitely wants to do that. But if Trump is able to keep him away from that, this is very likely to be a PR coup. Now, there's a lot of issues that could fall in, is if they do. I just think fundamentally, your view of the federal government is not one that people

hold. They may find out. Now, they may find out, you're right, under FAA or NOAA or FEMA or any of these. You might. But something tells me that they're not actually dumb enough to do that. There was a huge reaction against when all the payments were frozen last week. And if you look at, so people in general, they feel like, oh, the debt's too high, the deficit's too high, like we should cut, the government should be more efficient.

When you ask people about should the government spend more or less on various programs, the only things they actually say less on are like the military because they feel like, oh my God, we already spent so freaking much on the military. If you ask them about programs to alleviate poverty, they say we should spend more. If you ask them about programs for education, they say more. If they, healthcare, they say we should spend more. So there was a big reaction when payments were frozen because

First of all, I mean, the Medicaid thing was just like, obviously people were freaked out about that, but it wasn't just that. It was also Head Start. It was also Meals on Wheels. It was also domestic violence shelters. It was also addiction treatment. Like people do believe that the federal government should be investing in the American people and helping to support people in their time of need. They do believe in that.

So when you ask the broad question, should we cut spending? Of course, everyone's like, sure, yeah, like cut out the waste. But when you get down to any of these individual programs, there's a big reaction to it. And not just the big ticket ones, obviously, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, but truly any of these programs, when you go after them, people, and this is pretty bipartisan, really disagree. So, you know, as you said,

Listen, I think you're right that there isn't a big reaction against this yet because the rubber doesn't hit the road. People don't see it in terms of it wasn't like when the Medicaid portals froze or whatever. I'm just saying that I think the consequences of where we are and what it means for having operating like anything approaching a democracy where your elected representatives matter at all...

I think we're in a really, I think we're in a very dark place. I think it could definitely turn into that. Well, let's get to FAA because that's where, that is where, look, I'm going to grant it to you. And this, what have I said? Presidents very often overreach. If I were to predict anything that will be Trump's downfall, it will be tariffs. And I say this as somebody who actually supports tariffs because we live in an ultra consumerist society. Look at the TikTok thing. People want to buy cheap shit. That's all they care about.

Over and over, we have proven that people, you know, they may support some tariffs on washing machines and others. But overwhelmingly, Temu is a massively popular business for one reason. People want to buy cheap crap. And can I say— At Xi'an, all this other junk. It didn't come out of nowhere that just people want to buy cheap crap. Yeah.

This is what we – low prices are what we've effectively been given in lieu of like – Yeah, a job. Yeah, a job, high wages, broader social safety net, et cetera. So it's not that I don't also share that critique of society that like, okay, do we really need more like cheap crap filling up our homes that we throw in the landfill and whatever. But you can't really blame people because this is the deal that has been on offering.

This has effectively been the social contract is, yeah, we're going to ship your jobs overseas. Yeah, we're going to destroy your wages. Yeah, you're going to have a worse social safety net than any other developed world country, but at least you can buy some cheap shit from Amazon. And if you want to tear up that social contract...

You have to have those other pieces in place. And in addition, I mean, some of the, we don't have to go back to the tariff debate. I'm sure we're going to have the tariff debate again tomorrow. But in addition, like just to do a blanket across the board, it's like, well, why are we tariffing avocados? That's just going to raise the prices. Is there really a need to have a domestic, like massive avocado growing operation? Is that, you know, that has nothing to do with reindustrializing the country. It could grow in California. I don't agree with that.

But, you know, that's sort of my broader point with the tariff conversation is you can't just raise prices without also doing these other pieces that will make that social contract make sense. I don't disagree. My vision for America is very much exactly what you said. That's still why I support the tariffs, though, is that when something happens like that, I'm going to go for it. Because, again, like...

And you know, you may ask, you ask a question about avocados. How do you get somebody to buckle on auto parts and all these other price control increases? Well, you hit them where it hurts, which is 80% of their exports. But beyond that, my prediction, and this is unfortunate, is that America worships at the altar of consumerism. Every action that Americans take is one where they waste their time on TikTok, which is why it's massively popular.

Whenever something is cheaper, they go to Temu. Whenever they want cheap clothes, they go to Xi'an. They don't give a shit if it comes from China. They don't even care necessarily if it costs somebody their job here. Undercuts U.S. e-commerce. They could care less about de minimis or any of these other nerdy terms, you know, that I'm going to throw around. And so my unfortunate prediction

is that America is now so addicted to $200 televisions, to Walmart, to Black Friday, to Amazon replacement phone chargers which are 1/50th of the price even though they break in two days, that they will revolt only over that. But that kind of fits with this Doge conversation where America now has this quasi-secular libertarian ideology where the government sucks

And the only thing that really matters for them is the ability to shop, to buy a new car every five years and load yourself up in debt. And then, you know, it's like, I just, when you see the individual choices on balance, you're right, we can absolutely blame government policy. But we're here now. It's been 40 years. We live in this world.

And this world is not one that rewards, unfortunately, industrial policy. It's not one that is not a country or a population anymore that can be told, hey, we're going to do tariffs, but we're trying to build more auto manufacturers and other things here. They're like, no, I want a new car. I want it to be cheap. It's like this is the individual choice that people have now told us over the last 40 years. I don't know if you can deprogram that.

I would like to. I don't think it will happen. Yeah, again, and we don't have to belabor this because I do want to get to the plane crash thing. But I don't think that you can just – the problem with the Trump policy is that it just raises prices. It doesn't – if you paired it with –

a national vision of a shift in the social contract of we're gonna lift your wages, we're gonna have universal healthcare, we're gonna provide for you in these ways, but yeah, you're gonna pay more at the store for X and Y and Z. You're not gonna have the same level of access to cheap crap from China. We're shifting the values and the priorities in this country

That would be something that, you know, again, you would have to go out and make the case to the American people. And we've had decades and decades of people being treated not as citizens, not as family members, not as community members, but just as consumers. And low prices being the end-all, be-all. That was what was given to us in exchange for, hey, we're going to decimate the industrial Midwest, but your prices are going to be cheaper and overall GDP will go up by a percent, all of which flowed into the pockets of

of people like Elon Musk, by the way. But that's not really what we're talking about now with this particular tariff conversation, which is just on the side of raising prices. But to get back to the crash and the way the rubber can hit the road in terms of whether you know it or not, the federal government, when

When we want it to be there, we really want it to be there and we want it to be effective and we want it to deliver and we want it, for example, to make sure that planes don't crash into each other and fall out of the sky. That I think everybody could agree on.

My name is Paola Pedrosa, a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy Podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective. I think God sent me this gift so I can show it to the world. And most of all, I help people every single day. Listen to the Ghost Therapy Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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