3/28/25: Signal Gate Burns Israeli Intel, Trump Special Election Panic, RFK Jr. Guts HHS
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Happy Friday, everybody. Hope you guys had a great week. I missed you guys. What did I miss on the show? What's been going on in the world? Have you ever heard of Signal? I'm learning. I'm hearing about it more and more, actually. Hearing about it more and more. Ryan and Sagar argued a little bit.

Yeah, I actually, to be totally honest with you, I watched every show because I was, I mean, so this is where I realized actually the value of our show, because there was nowhere else that I would have been able to go to like get a rundown of all the stories that we cover and like the particular perspective and whatever. So I was, I valued it as a consumer this week. It is true. It's like, yeah, that's nobody else is doing that.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, after the first, say, you know, five minutes, sometimes you can move on to the next one, kind of get where we're going. But yeah, there's nowhere else that really is going to and also give you that level of depth that Jefferson Morley won.

Yeah. Awesome.

Cool. Yeah, which was really cool. Barstool Sports called it a must read or a must watch. Oh, really? That gave it a big boost. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. No, I thought you guys covered the whole Signal Glide thing was like the most, you know, insightful that I can find anywhere. And of course, we've got a bunch more updates on that one. There's a bunch of kind of really interesting election updates, at least today.

Stefanik, is that how you say her last name? I always sort of screw it up. She had her nomination for UN ambassador pulled because it seems like they're nervous about losing that seat, which is like a very should be easy to hold for Republican, but apparently is not. And then we've got some moves with regard to RFK Jr. and cutting 10,000 jobs over at HHS, which I wanted to talk about as well. But Ryan, let's start with this because you kind of called this.

So apparently, so when you guys were doing coverage, you were like, you know, with this whole Signalgate thing, very possible that in these messages, they burned some human intel source on the ground. And now we're finding out that that appears to not only be true, but it was actually at least one Israeli source that

that they may have burned here. Go ahead and talk a little bit about this and I'll pull it up while you're talking. It's the exchange where Mike Waltz says something completely inscrutable. J.D. Vance says what?

And Mike Waltz says, sorry, typing fast. We have positive ID that this terrorist or the senior Houthi figure turned away some, you know, some senior figure in the missile program for the Houthis was in the apartment building that we just collapsed. Like so they had a positive ID of that. And, you know, what I had said yesterday morning on the show is that.

The most likely way you get a positive ID on something like that is from a person who was there and who told you, hey, dude is in the building because just flying a drone over top of the building.

is very unlikely to be able to give you that level of intelligence. Like you need gate analysis and like, they just can't pull that off and they wouldn't. And there's like a, you don't think Palantir has figured that out yet? they have not. And also there'd be like a seven, there'd be like a seven second window where the guy's going from like his car to,

into the building where the drone would have to be perfectly positioned. And even then, like capturing it in anything other than a kind of grainy, like this idea that we all have from Mission Impossible where we're like, computer enhance. Like that doesn't, boom, all of a sudden, match with everyone in the world. Boom, and you got it. Like that's not actually a real thing. So the way they actually do this is you have a guy who you're paying

And he is like narking out to somebody. In this case, it was to Israel. And then Israel's relaying back to the United States. And so that was from reading the signal chat. That was the most obvious explanation that there was a human source that they had there, which means now the Houthis and everybody else, you know, Iranians, whoever else are trying to figure out, OK, who do we who do we know?

Mm-hmm.

And just looking at the signal chat, I could tell. That we know of. Well, that's right. Yeah, that's right. I would say that, wouldn't I? Good point, Emily. Good point. I would say that. So if I can figure that out, like how can our national security advisor not think, oh, that's actually not something we should expose? Jeffrey Goldberg had already done them a huge favor.

By not publishing the chat where they all celebrated the collapsing of a building. Right. By not posting the chat where they talked about having basically a human source on the ground. And they baited him into posting it by calling him a liar.

Like they basically forced a hand. He was trying to do them every favor he possibly could. He really was. And if you're guilty and you know you're guilty, you can just go back and read your chats. One of those people, it's four week disappearing messages. They still had the chats. You just go back and look at them and be like, oh, this would actually be really bad for us and for our source if this gets out. Right. So we're going to apologize for this, say it was a huge mistake and we're going to move on.

Instead, they're like, this guy's a hoax liar who hacked his way onto our signal chat. And there was nothing classified there. Had his contact sucked into Mike Waltz's. And so they forced his hand. Nobody knows. Hate when that happens. He did not want to post that stuff because he is...

So in line and we'll talk about this in a second with the objective, which is to bomb the Houthis. Yeah, which is why it works. Just bomb them. I mean, that's why he's in Mike Waltz's phone, because they are simpatico on a bunch of like their neocon war aims. And so, you know, as even though one is technically Republican, one is technically liberal.

In this sort of stuff, they are very much aligned, which is likely how his contact got sucked into Mike Wells' phone. I mean, it also, Emily, it just makes it not that it wasn't already utterly preposterous, but like, obviously this information was classified. And it's just insulting to all of our intelligences to pretend that it wasn't. Given how much they classify and overclassify absolutely everything.

And you think that the, you know, location of this Israeli human intelligence source is not going to be classified information. Like this would be some of the most highly sensitive and protected information. And it also, to me, you know, one of the, you guys covered this ably. I mean, fantastically this week, and I don't have any points to make that weren't already made quite adequately by, you know, you guys and Sagar on the show this week, but like,

Even the inclusion of someone like Scott Besson on this show. Like, why does the Treasury Secretary need to know about this? And to me, the whole thing just gives, like, children playing war games, basically. You know, the whole tenor of it, the lack of any sort of consideration that this is a civilian building and, you know, civilians who you've just killed in service of this. The lack of any... This was the part that's making me crazy, is like...

They're all high fiving and like, you know, sending their little emoji celebrations over because the bomb went boom without a single word of consideration, whether this policy is actually going to accomplish a single thing. The reason being that they know it's not going to. So it's like, what are we even doing here? What are we doing here?

Jeffrey Goldberg also, I think, ends up looking foolish for trying to have kept this information quiet. Because in his original story, he says something to the extent where he's like, it's too sensitive to release, so I won't. And then after being goaded, it's like, oh, okay, actually, I guess I can do it. So at the same time, that's actually what gave the Trump administration the

The permission they feel like they got the permission to not pressure Mike Waltz to leave is like they all were sending press releases about Goldberg then releasing the information. And they're like, well, we can now spin this as fake news as an attack from Jeffrey Goldberg. They all had the chat.

Like they knew they were lying. It's stupid. Yeah, I mean, it's stupid, but it's like from a political perspective, they were like, oh, we can now jump on this. And that's what's kept Mike Waltz in the role because he's that unique figure that is like trusted by the national security establishment, but also has friends in MAGA world. And there aren't many people like that. So he's one of those that's like protect them at all costs if you're in the national security world, because they don't they don't really trust a lot of the other people in those circles.

But, you know, I do think if Goldberg had immediately released everything, which, you know, as a journalist, I think he should have, then they would have made the story about, like, how could you compromise this, you know, intelligence source? How could you reveal? He'd be on the hook. And he would be on the hook. So, I mean, I think that was – so I think they could have –

more successfully actually made the story about him if he had gone ahead and released what truly is sensitive national security intelligence information. Speaking of Goldberg, though, I mean, this is so on the nose. So he gets asked about the actual contents, not the process of using Signal, which I don't want to downplay because

So obviously, and this is part that I don't think has gotten maybe enough attention, not that no one said it, but I do think it's important. Like, this is not the only time they're using signals.

Even Pam Bondi just got asked, are you going to keep using Signal? And she's like, yes, basically we are. And I think this was actually part of Project 2025. The reason to use Signal is because you evade FOIA requirements. So the journalists like Ryan and Ken Klippensee and whoever else wants to get their hands on like what the hell is actually going on here will never be able to because the messages disappear and they're lost and that's it. So it's an attempt, a systematic attempt to evade

And the FOIA legal requirements, which I know it's very like Pollyanna at this point to expect any of these people to like care about what the law is. But that part is not, you know, it's not insignificant. But Goldberg is much less comfortable saying,

when he's outside of talking about like the failures of the process here and is asked about the actual substance. So you can see here, he gets, gets asked by NPR about the 53 people that the U S killed in Yemen. And they say, there's little talk of the fact that this attack killed 53 people, as we mentioned, including women and children, the civilian toll of these American strikes. Are we burying the lead here? Goldberg says, well,

Well, those, unfortunately, those aren't confirmed numbers. Those are provided by the Houthis and the Houthi health ministry, I guess. So we don't know that for sure. Yeah, I mean, obviously, we're, well, I don't know if we're bearing the lead because obviously huge breaches in national security and safety of information. That's a very, very important story, obviously. And one of the reasons, you know, it's a very important story is that the Republicans themselves consider that to be an important story when it's Hillary Clinton doing the deed, right? So that's obviously hugely important. But yeah, yeah.

I think that covering what's going on in Yemen, the Arab and Iran-backed terrorist organization, the Houthis that are firing missiles at Israel and disrupting global shipping and occupy half of Yemen and all kinds of other things in the U.S., you know, and the Trump administration criticizing the Biden's response and Europe wants Trump to do more. I mean, yeah, there's a huge story in Yemen, but Yemen is, as you know, is one of the more inaccessible places for Western journalists. So maybe this becomes like

a substitute for a discussion of Yemen, I don't know. Ryan, your response to that very eloquent explanation. I mean, we have a journalist in Sana'a, Shoei Malmasi. It's not inaccessible. People can go there. What isn't inaccessible is Gaza. Western journalists completely banned from there. For Jeffrey Goldberg to call what the Houthis an occupying power,

When he recoils at the term occupation for Israel's occupation is also wild. But yeah, the whole thing shows how blind he is on this entire question. It never occurred to him that the collapse of this apartment building is a war crime. Right. It never dawned on him that there actually isn't any point in this bombing, that it's not going to end the blockade.

It's just going to blow some things up. And it doesn't occur to him that all of these F-18s and all of these Tomahawks can fly at this poor country in the middle of the night, but the claim that they might kill 53 people...

is, you know, a preposterous claim made by the Houthi-run health ministry. Yeah, and that language is... What do you think missiles do and what do you think bombs do when they land in the middle of the night? On an apartment building that collapsed because, yeah, he's, you know, seeing his girlfriend there or whatever. And I...

I mean, I also like the Houthi-led health ministry. It's the exact same language that they use to discredit the Palestinian civilian death toll in Gaza. It's the Hamas-led health ministry. It can never just be like, here's how many people were killed. Emily, another aspect, I'm genuinely curious what you guys think of this, is like Trump hovers over this signal chat?

But like in a very bizarre way, like, you know, J.D. Vance is trying to make this very milquetoast argument about like, oh, we're doing too much for the Europeans. I'm not sure Trump realizes how this is dissonant from his messaging with regard to Europe.

But it seems like they're all sort of freelancing and doing what they want without actually having Trump, you know, total buy in or they're sort of like projecting onto Trump what they think that he should be thinking. And we've had now this series of series of questions aimed at Trump where he'll at least

claim maybe he's just pretending that he's like, oh, this is the first I've heard of this. This is the first I've heard of that. I don't even know what's going on there. I don't know. It just feels to me more and more like he really is more checked out of his own presidency, except on the things like terrorists, you know, the things that he's like directly interested in. But he's outsourced so much of his presidency to Elon Musk. And then in this chat group, it also felt like he was sort of, you know, removed from what I think would be an important part of his Middle Eastern policy here.

Well, that's one of the things that I think resonated or one of the reasons I think this Signal Chat resonated so much is that it's the weird...

very familiar, I think, like rhythm if for anybody who works in an office of people who are trying to collaborate on a job and are like in different places and don't have time for like a full meeting together except applied to life and death foreign policy. It's a very strange thing. And it sounds like you're reading it without having all of the context from the inside. It sounds like Hegseth and Waltz

somehow secured buy-in from Trump and are just executing the policy. And J.D. Vance is saying, well, when the president gave the green light, I don't think we fully fleshed out the implications of this decision. And it is true that the lead has been buried this entire week. I interviewed Christian Parenti yesterday, and he was talking about how this is a significant departure from the foreign policy that Donald Trump ran on. This is a war that he explicitly came out against.

And here you see very casually in a group chat that war being perpetuated with his blessing, but not with his direct involvement, instead with the direct involvement of Stephen Miller, Susie Wiles, and then a sort of limp thumbs up from J.D. Vance, who buckles when he realizes that it's going to be war.

a big thing if he wants to be like the stick in the mud or the like to actually like obstruct this process. So it's very, it's very, very strange to try and figure out what role Trump exactly played in this debate. If there was a debate at all, it does seem like J.D. Vance is implying in his point that there hasn't been a significant conversation that the president doesn't fully realize his side of the argument.

And that's very strange. Yeah. Yeah. The debate, the debate gets ended by Stephen Miller, who comes in and as deputy chief of staff, like he is the guy who on behalf of the principal in any office, including the presidency, you know, would have the authority to like ended the debate by saying, hey, guys, glad to hear everybody's input. I've heard from the boss. The boss says this is the judgment call. Like that is that's how these offices go. He didn't quite say that, though.

Oops, that's Jordan Sheridan's live stream just started. So he didn't quite say that. He said, my understanding from our conversation with him basically was that this is a green light. And then everybody's like, okay, well, let's go. It reminded me of, there's this, and producer Griffin who's listening in here would remember this story. There's this like scene early in Lennon's tyranny where he like,

crosses off a few names on a list in a meeting. Oh, yeah. Because they were done, you know this story, because they were done talking about them. Yes. And, like, he moves the papers over here. I think Barea or whoever his hitman at the time was, like, collects these papers and he sees these, like, names crossed off. That knight rounds them up and executes them. And the next day, Lennon's like, what happened? Where are these people? He's like, you told me to kill them. He's like, no, bro, like...

I was just like doodling on the paper. Oh, my God. Which is why you need some processes in place when you're going to kill people. It can't be Stephen Miller divining what Trump might have been saying in a meeting. Like Trump needs to like be told directly like, hey.

Here are the plans. Like, choose one of them. Press the button. Sign here. Like, do this. So it's very clear. You guys have all seen Trump speak for 40 years. He's not that clear. Right. People can read into what he's saying, what they want to hear. Yeah. So to then kill people based on that? Based on that. It's like Soviet level insane. I can imagine, like, if this was a leaked chat from the Biden administration, like,

And you've got Sullivan and Blinken and whoever else, you know, random members. We think Joe Harris, you know, like I think he's misunderstanding this. No, I think this is what he really wants. I mean, you know, that would the way that would be interpreted. And I think justly so is like this guy is not really the president. Like, you know, these are the people who are actually making the decisions.

They don't even they can't even really tell what he thinks and don't really care what he thinks. Ultimately, they're like making their own calls in this very ad hoc signal chat group, which to your point, Emily.

you know, Tulsi Gabbard gets asked about, hey, where were you when this, she's like, I don't really remember, which is probably just a dodge because she wants to dodge accountability. But it definitely had the vibe of like, you're doing eight other things and washing the dishes and like, just, you know, respond like, let me throw an emoji so they know that I'm like paying attention to what's going on here. And we're talking about collapsing an apartment building with 50 civilians in it or however many people were ultimately killed. And so that's the part of it about it that to

To me is so just, it's just deeply disturbing. And then Ryan, you were pointing out this, like the just insanity of them all being, Oh, great job.

JD van says, Oh, excellent. That's when some like, you know, fist pound emojis come in or whatever. Once they found out they collapsed this apartment building. It's like, you know, you accomplish nothing other than death and destroy. You're like patting yourselves on the back for this policy that it's the same policy as the Biden administration, which we already know doesn't work. Like,

Like we already know what does work, which is the ceasefire, which you guys just greenlit Israel to end and go back to total siege and complete bombardment. So that's the part that too, it's like,

You know, these people have lost their minds, actually, like to live in this delusion like you deserve congratulations for this in any sort of way is the part that I just keep coming back to as being completely and utterly insane. Not to mention just the, you know, full normalizing of there's no like, oh, well, how many civilians are there? Nothing, nothing.

It's just and I do think this is partly a Gaza effect where murdering civilians, not that we haven't murdered plenty of civilians in the past, et cetera. I'm not trying to whitewash the war on terror and how everything went in Iraq and Afghanistan, et cetera. But there's not even a thought of what is the collateral damage here. And we all know how in the Osama bin Laden raid.

how they took a riskier maneuver in order to avoid civilian collateral damage, because those were things that were at least considered at the time for a vastly higher level target than whoever this dude, you know, that they allegedly killed was. And it's just it's grotesque to see, like the value of human life has just been utterly discarded here. Yeah, today they would just drop a nuke on Abbottabad.

That's right. And be like, we think we killed him. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. It's pound emoji, American flag. Victory. Victory is ours. Always relevant. But Ryan, when you were pulling up that Intercept article you wrote about Biden and the Houthis, I was thinking...

The Trump administration campaigned on being sort of different from the forever wars, neoconservative foreign policy establishment. And what we see in this

is how dangerous it was. Funniest headline of all time. Yeah. Are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes. Which is very Trumpian, honestly. You could hear Trump saying that, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But it's just like war by drone is we've slipped into this era of war by drone. I think it's

I think so, Obama. But there's nothing different about the Trump policy. There's nothing different about the way that Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz are approaching war by drone. It's as casual. And it's like, I don't know. I think that's what they campaigned against. I think that's what brought this strange coalition of people together. And it's just

slipping into the same routine. Well, and the Hegsteth point is an important one because we were sold, oh, he is a different guy than the one who was out there making his career on cheerleading for the Iraq war. The guy who was cheerleading the Ukraine war, you know, the guy who came around to opposing the Iraq war, like, I don't know, five years ago after Hillary Clinton, everybody else had already changed their minds. He was still like, go Iraq war. Um,

So we had been sold that he'd had this total ideological remake. Well, it's very easy to oppose a war after that war has become profoundly unpopular, either among the broader public or with the Ukraine war among the Republican base. It's a much different thing to in real time when it's difficult, when it's unpopular to say, no, I don't think that this serves, you know, from their perspective, like America first, I don't think this serves American interests. What are we doing here? This is not what we campaigned on, et cetera. And, and,

To me, what comes out in this chat is that like the skepticism of his evolution is quite warranted. This is still the guy who is totally ready to, you know, drop a bomb or go to war or whatever is the sort of like, you know, popular thing in the moment. He is not the one who is going to be planning a flag and making the difficult case because, you know, again, I think J.D. Vance's argument here was right.

sort of silly and like besides the point and whatever but he should have had an ally in that chat in pete hegsad saying you know jd makes some good points and here's some other things to consider etc instead it's the total opposite jd quickly realizes like i'm the only one here who has any qualms about it so i'm just gonna immediately capitulate and stand and and tulsi and joe kent like there should have been there should have been four and maybe wickoff i mean

Maybe, you know. Witkoff, yeah. He was like traveling and checked out. He was in Moscow. Ryan, I think we talked about this on Wednesday, but it's interesting in the chat how Pete Hegseth says his point of contact, which was originally the point of the chat that Mike Waltz put together, was Dan Caldwell. And Dan Caldwell comes from the very skeptical world of Forever Wars. And so you have this strange connection

I guess it is just strange to see people who have talked a lot of talk then come into the administration and in a very early test fall into old habits. It shows the power of the war machine, the momentum of the momentum of the war machine. It's like two parties now would be the Democrats who like, you know, feel guilty about dropping the bombs and are doing it for humanitarian purposes. And then,

MAGA who's dropping the bombs but is angry that they have to do it for Europe. Those are the choices. Those are your choices. Yes. Choose wisely, America. Yes. So let's just quickly touch on the politics of this, which is, you know, I mean, it's all of the insane things that have happened in this administration, you know, and Doge and tariffs and inflation, all everything. Right. Right.

And this seems to be the scandal that has like really broken through for whatever reason. Harry Anton did a bit on some of the polling around this. So let's go ahead and take a listen to what he had to say about it.

There's a lot of interest in this story, all right? Google searches this week versus last week for these topics. For the Atlantic, how many people are searching for the Atlantic? Up 900%. I think the highest on record since Google searches began. They started tracking them back in 2004. How about for Signal? Of course, the app on which this all occurred. Up

Over 1,000%. Again, the highest on record. It has gone up through the roof on these two particular topics. Whether or not people ultimately end up caring and it changes their minds about the administration, that's one thing. But the interest at this particular point is absolutely there. People are interested in this story. Right. Beyond the interest or take on it, you don't read that in the Google search, but there is interest, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Trump's cabinet, obviously many of them are on this group chat. Many of them are facing a lot of scrutiny and questions right now. Trump's cabinet to this point before this was already on somewhat, I don't know, we call it thin ice with the American people. What do you have? Absolutely. I mean, here we go. All right. Disappointed with the administration appointments of these different presidents. You might notice only one of these presidents, only one of these terms that were a majority disappointed. Look at this in 2025, 4%.

52% were already disappointed with Donald Trump's picks for his administration. That is the first time you get a majority. Back in 2017, it was only 44% for Donald Trump. Before that, you see 16, 17, 14. Joe Biden's picks were not, in fact, pulled, but less than 40% disapproved in separate Pew polling. So the bottom line is, even going into this, there was already a lot of skepticism about

about Donald Trump's picks for his cabinet, for his appointments. There's no doubt in my mind that this number will almost certainly tick a little bit upwards because we already were dealing with a public that was quite skeptical. This story can only make things worse, Kate. So there you go. I mean, the interest in this has been really high. And I do think it gets to what Emily was saying about how, in a sense, it's kind of a relatable scandal. But

But then with this like bizarrely dystopian, like, you know, it just makes you realize like, oh, these people are not really, they're not doing some sophisticated, like brilliant analysis. It's not really thought through. There's no like gaming this out. They're approaching this the same way that I approach like planning my kid, the snacks for my kid's soccer game or whatever. Like what the hell is going on here? And,

And accidentally adding people to the chat. And Emily, I missed you on the show yesterday because I mentioned that Andy Cohen made a joke about Signalgate on Watch What Happens Live on Wednesday night with no context because he knew no context was needed. Everybody watching Bravo is deeply familiar with what's going on. And that's how you can measure people.

full, like absorption into the public. Jeffrey Goldberg did what some of the most, the shrewdest housewives do at a reunion and printed out the text messages. That's essentially what Jeffrey Goldberg did. Receipts, receipts, text messages, screenshots, screenshots. Yeah.

So, yeah, maybe Jeffrey Goldberg watches. Maybe that's where he took his cue from when they were trying to get to the bottom of Lucy Lucy, Apple Juice, the puppy, and Beverly Hills. And they printed out the text messages and brought them to the reunion. We're very off track now. You're completely losing me at this point, but I'm sure much of the audience knows what you're talking about. Hold on. Hold on. I've got it for you here. Let me share this. No.

There it is. Receipts. Proof. Time. I'm glad you did that right. That was perfect. That was perfect. Yeah. So I don't know. It's just the other thing that the last thing I'll say about it is like they have handled it in the worst possible way.

You know, if they had done... If they had just been like, yeah, we fucked up. Next question. You know, like, then...

this would be over because there's nothing interesting to a reporter after you've sort of like admitted it, then everybody just moves on. There's nothing more to like get you on. Like, Oh, you said you didn't know Jeffrey Goldberg. Here's a picture of you. Like Jeffrey Goldberg now has like, I'm sure he could come out with all sorts of other proof that they knew each other, et cetera. And so it just like, it keeps them going. It keeps the story alive. And if I,

fully think that even though this is a totally insane thing to happen, Jeffrey Goldberg to Ryan's point was trying to protect them as best he could. He did not want to release these things. If you had just been like, we screwed up.

We're going to make sure we lock it down. This will never happen again. And by the way, you know, I mean, I do think Mike Waltz should have should resign and be forced out. Like, it's such a big fuck up that if that happened, I think it would be done over and everybody would have moved on by now. But because they keep insisting on making these ridiculous. Oh, they got sucked into my phone. And no, actually, like somehow Goldberg hacked in and oh, nothing was classified. And oh, they weren't war plans. They were attack plans, whatever. Like,

It's just, of course, people are going to keep digging and catching you in the brazen lies and insults to all of our intelligences here. Mike Walters.

I think what the reporting suggests is that Waltz did not offer to resign. And Trump is kind of on the fence and is frustrated about it. But Waltz didn't offer to resign. And it seems like Waltz does not want to take an L. And that's where the disastrous response probably starts and ends, because he then goes on Laura Ingraham, looking pretty confident, feeling like he can handle this. And Laura

what she's concerned about is what a lot of people in MAGA world are concerned about who don't trust Mike Waltz and never have truly fully trusted Mike Waltz. They trust him more than they trust Mike Pompeo and those types, but they're like, well, why do you have this number in your phone? And he has no good explanation for that. There could be terrible explanations, by the way, from a MAGA perspective. Maybe he's trying to shut down stories. Maybe Jeffrey Goldberg, like there's all kinds of reasons that he could have Jeffrey Goldberg's number in his phone, but he doesn't have a good answer for it.

And so because of that, he couldn't be honest. And you can't get away with lying over and over again or trying to evade the truth over and over again without looking foolish. And he's ended up looking completely foolish. He got caught. And the administration now has this albatross of Mike Waltz, even though the neocons are right. It was Pete Hegseth who then started throwing all of this classified information into the chats. Like it wasn't just Mike Waltz. They all...

And yet, by the way, the other thing to the other point to make to this is nobody cared that Pete Hegseth was sharing the classified information, right? Like if this was shocking to everybody and something they'd never seen before, other people would be like, Hey, let's hold up. But no, it's like, it's hard to actually even blame Hegseth because everyone was clearly accustomed to this and normalized to it. It wasn't, it didn't seem to shock anybody or surprise anybody. They probably have been doing this many other times that we just haven't seen. So yeah,

Yeah, that's exactly right. No heads are going to end up rolling. But I mean, maybe maybe Waltz is forced to resign. His credibility internally has been damaged beyond repair. He will never be fully trusted by any like most people inside the administration. Again, he looks stupid to a lot of people who have a hard time taking your national security advisor seriously if he can't even keep a

group chat lockdown. There was some DHS staffer who had accidentally included a reporter on some information about like ICE raids and, you know, was immediately punished, put on administrative leave, future in doubt at DHS, like immediate consequences for what is ultimately a much lower level fuck up than this fuck up.

And, you know, this is something so, you know, my dad worked as a civilian scientist on a naval base for most of his career, and he was a lifelong conservative, but now he hates Donald Trump. But one of the things that really bothered him about Trump was the

cavalier, the, you know, the abuse of like classified material, having them in these boxes, because my dad had had to follow these incredibly strict process and procedure of how you handle this classified information. And to see the complete disregard of that from people who are at the, you know, top of the food chain there, he just, that, that

That thing really got to him. And you see that some of the reaction New York Times had a story with some of the like airmen who would be, you know, on these types of missions who have to follow. Like they can't even talk to each other about what they're going to do. So to see these plans being sent out across Signal to this very broad list, even putting aside Jeffrey Goldberg on there, even that was like.

What like this is how you operate. This is insane. Like any of us would be complete, you know, discharged like it would be a major issue for us if this is the way that we operated. So, I mean, I think that's another another facet of the story. But in any case, we can go ahead and move on to some of the political news stories that are interesting right now, including Emily, you're making a trek up to Wisconsin.

to cover this state Supreme Court seat. So give us a little bit of rundown of what's going on in this race and why this has become such a lightning rod. Yeah, here, let's pull up this article because interestingly, Elon Musk has been involved both on the sort of aggressive side, like on the offense and on the defense. Democrats have made this race. So the way the Wisconsin Supreme

Supreme Court works is that they're not partisans. They're sort of conservative or liberal, but Democrats, you know, everybody knows the liberal. Right. Yeah. So we can't call her like the Democrat judge or the Republican judge. But basically, we can. We can. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we basically can. So here I'm opening up this article because just what

what we learned is Elon Musk is now getting even more involved than he already was in this election. Democrats have tried to actually make this a referendum. My New York Times is not loading. Here, one second, everyone. Here, I got you. I can pull it up. You got me, Crystal. I've also actually got the Elon tweet that he put out that I can pull up here with. He's going to the state and is...

is going to do another of his million dollar giveaways. He says on Sunday night, I'll give a talk in Wisconsin. Entrance is limited to those who vote in the Supreme Court election. I'll also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote. This is super important. Again, as I said before, not that anyone really cares that, you know, things are legal or not when done by the richest man on the planet at this point. But this is pretty brazenly election fraud, like based on the co

both in Wisconsin and federally. Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce someone to vote or register to vote. It's illegal to give, lend, or promise anything of value to influence voting behavior. They cap incentives at $1. And so, you know, million dollars, little bit beyond that limit. But, yeah,

you know, this is just, again, a very similar playbook to what he used, especially in the state of Pennsylvania in the presidential race. And, you know, it's like goes without saying if George Soros was doing this on behalf of the Democrats, I think Republicans would probably have a little bit of an issue with it, but it's Elon Musk. So, you know, here we go. Well,

Well, yeah. And so this race is Brad Schimel, who is a very well-known kind of establishment conservative figure in Wisconsin and comes out of those years where Wisconsin has this very robust conservative movement internally because of the Scott Walker momentum. And you have Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan and Sean Duffy and Ron Johnson coming out of that, like really the 2010s. And Brad Schimel is very much of that crowd.

He is up against Susan Crawford, the liberal justice. This is for control of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Tesla does have business in front of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin, like actively has business in front of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin. And so if you're wondering why

$20 million is pouring into this race. It's genuinely like an interesting question. You know, right now, everyone wants to make it a referendum on Elon Musk. So you can understand even from an ego perspective, why Elon Musk would say it's a bad look for, you know, I asked my parents and they were like, yep, these ads are Elon focused on the state Supreme Court race.

So that's why Elon Musk, even more than this one Tesla case, may be interested is that he could end up looking like a real albatross, like a real electoral albatross for Republicans heading into the midterms because the entire country is watching this election as like an early test case as to his brand and how it could potentially motivate Democratic candidates.

party voters. So $20 million has flowed in here. And it's just like for a state Supreme Court, we're not even talking about a partisan Republican versus partisan Democrat national race. It's not even a

congressional seat. It's the state Supreme Court. And so for this much attention and money to come into it is like pretty significant. And you can see why even beyond Tesla, Elon Musk is concerned and trying maybe even to lower expectations already. Well, Elon, I mean, he by

by putting so many millions into the race, put himself at the center of the race, especially given the fact that and made it into a sort of referendum on him. I mean, it's possible that the ads would have been about him at least tangentially, even if he hadn't weighed in. But, you know, by dumping those millions, he has effectively made it a referendum around Elon Musk

how you feel about the direction of the federal government with him, you know, running the show. And the particular lawsuit that you were referring to, Emily, it's about, you know, Tesla is unique because all of their dealerships, they're not individually owned. They're corporate. They're all corporate. And there's laws in certain states, including Wisconsin, that basically ban that showroom.

structure. And so that's the interest, the business interest that he has. And then as Ryan, I'm sure can, you know, explain, elaborate on, there's a whole bunch of ideological partisan interest here in terms of drawing districts and then also ruling on things like, you know, pro-choice, pro-life issues, labor law, et cetera, that just, you know, fits into the whole ideological Trump, Elon Musk package.

Yeah, those are the key things. And the money is interesting because while obviously a candidate would have rather have more money than the candidate who has less money, the Democrat is going to have a lot of money. Right, Emily? I mean, you're going to see plenty of ads from the Democrat. So there's sort of like a threshold situation where if you have no money and somebody else has a ton, the person with a ton is going to win 100% of the time.

But if somebody has a ton of money and you have like a half ton, you're in the ballgame. Yeah. And sometimes that money on the ton side can backfire as people's mailboxes get completely filled with like these glossy mailers. And in rural areas, you have to pay to throw those out. That was like a huge problem in Maine, you know, where they spent like $30 million each on these on like glossy mailers. And you're just forcing all these rural people to then pay extra money to take them to the dump.

And so that does not engender, you know, good, good feelings toward those people. And then a guy like Musk, who is not the most attractive character to some, can then motivate the opposition to come out and vote. So there's a limit to what money can do. Well, and that's, I think, a really, really important point, because one of the things that's tested in this election, probably in the Florida election, which we're I know we're going to talk about in a second as well.

David Shore's analysis that went mega viral last week about how low propensity voters, if they had turned out at even higher levels, would have given the election, the victory margin for Trump, a boost. Like he actually and that's the opposite. Democrats used to always say if we turned out, that was the whole like rock the vote philosophy is that if we can turn out as many low propensity voters as possible, we will win because low propensity voters tend to be on our side.

A.K.A. working class voters. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so now it's interesting that in a midterm cycle, the low propensity voters are –

like the types of people who would come out that Elon Musk desperately needs to like draw out. And in all likelihood, this is not going to have the same level of turnout as the presidential election in Wisconsin or in Florida for Mike Waltz's seat. And so what this is testing is kind of that theory of the case is if low propensity voters are truly like, like, are they really with, with Musk? If you don't get a lot of turnout, what does that mean? I,

I think that there are open questions that we'll get some answers to in analyzing the turnout on Tuesday.

Yeah. And I just add up the polymarket odds. They were at 90 percent that the liberal was going to win. Now they've fallen to 83 percent since Musk made his announcement that he's going to the state and doing his million dollar giveaway, et cetera, et cetera. So I guess he's managed to shift the odds a little bit in his favor, at least according to polymarket. But, you know, look, Democrats are very energized. Like you see it.

you know, every town hall, you've got all these people showing up, you've got all these Tesla protests across the country, you've got, you know, them flooding their Senate and congressional representatives with calls and messages. And, you know, it's high, high level of energy, anger, concern, and not a lot of channels to direct that at this point. So, you know, when you have these

either off-year or special election situations, like this is the moment, not just for people in that state, but for people around the country, like, oh my God, here's a thing that I can do. And especially since Elon is perpetually

profoundly unpopular. You know, Trump is unpopular at this point, but Elon is way more unpopular. And Dems are unpopular too, which is interesting. Like that's what, like what's one of the more interesting things here is like, this is Democrats opportunity to test out a new brand strategy, you know? Cause they're also like, that's why Wisconsin is not a red state. I am still surprised that Trump won Wisconsin. Obviously I haven't lived there in a while, but like, it's not a red state. And it was very, very, very, very close.

So it's a test of Democrats brand when Trump is sort of out of the picture and now you're making it about Musk. True. Potentially the future of the right. Sorry. No, that's a great point. Yeah. And Elon has really made himself central to this story. Yeah.

A couple other political stories. I mean, this is kind of wild. So Elise Stefanik had been nominated to be U.N. ambassador. And now Trump has decided that he is going to ask her to pull to pull out of that process. And, you know, the reading of this, which I think is correct, is they're concerned she was a she's a congressional representative in New York. They're concerned that they may lose this seat.

in the special election to replace her. So he says, as we advance our America First agendas, essentially we maintain every Republican seat in Congress must be unified to accomplish our mission. Elise Stefanik has been a vital part of our efforts from the very beginning. I've asked Elise as one of my biggest allies to remain in Congress to help me deliver historic tax cuts, great jobs, record economic growth, secure border, et cetera, et cetera. So, I mean, the TLDR here is just like,

They're afraid they're going to lose the seat. And obviously, Republicans have this very slim margin. They've already taken Mike Waltz out as well. And apparently there's even a little bit of concern. We'll get to that about lose about losing his seat, which he just won by, I believe the number is 38 points.

So, Emily, talk to us about this Elise Stefanik's nomination being pulled, because it does seem like, you know, they're hitting the panic button here a little bit, at least with regards to these special elections, which, again, when you have low turnout elections, you have a Democratic base that now consists more of high propensity voters and they're super energized.

you've got a kind of recipe for disaster on the Republican side. Well, and you want to pass a fairly controversial agenda through Congress. So it's actually pretty hard to keep the coalition together. They learned that lesson with Thomas Massey and discovering that he was

simply not going to budge just because the party needed him to. He's like, I'm not gonna be a team player if the team is doing something that I think is disastrous and have been on the record for years saying I think is disastrous. So if you're not offsetting tax cuts and if you're throwing all kinds of stuff into the reconciliation, you know, as a party, you can see where for Republicans it makes sense. And you can see if you're Republican leadership, that's their job is to keep the team on the same page.

but it's going to be tough to keep everybody on the same page and they can't lose many votes. So at least the phonic went on Hannity, which was being guest hosted by Kaylee McEnany last night and basically confirmed your reading of this crystal that it's exactly because they're,

They're dancing around that, obviously, but they're saying basically we just can't take the risk. We can't take the risk. It's too much of a risk. But it's a seriously tight margin. There's so little room for error and there's so much opportunity for error that it's

You know, they're definitely panicking. And this was it. Yeah. This is Lisa Murkowski that said, like, they're just figured this out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly right. She's like, you just realize this now. Elise Stefanik. This is according to Grok. She won with 60 to 62 percent of the vote last time in this district. So she had like a 36 percent margin.

that she won by like she this is not shouldn't be close which is why they felt confident putting her in there like oh surely we'll be able to win this seat back and so to have to pull the fire alarm on a district that is this red is you know it's a very significant indicator of where the sort of energy is especially like i said in these sort of like special elections did you pull up the murkowski thing yeah there was also some concern among republicans that uh

The Democrats wouldn't hold the election in time and would hold it open longer than they're supposed to, which would leave them a half of a half a vote rather than a vote loss. Basically, Ohio's Mike DeWine did that to Democrats back in 2018 when Marsha Fudge stepped down and became HUD secretary.

Like they kept that was the Nina Turner, Chantel Brown race. They kept that seed empty for like 18 months or something and saying they did that to Detroit.

Several years ago as well, when John Conyers died, basically left Detroit without a congressman for like two years. So I think Republicans were like, what if they do to us what we do to them? Yeah, could be some of that. Could be, too. This also relates to this. So they've got to fill down in Florida Mike Waltz's seat and their –

Axios got their hands on an internal poll of the race to replace him. And this, again, is a seat. I mean, this is a red district. Waltz won it by 30 plus points. I think Trump won it by 30 points. This should be a layup. And they have a recent survey by Tony Fabrizio, who was a chief strategist for Trump, had the Republican down by three points.

after leading by 12 in February, according to a person familiar with the data. One thing that's kind of funny about, I mean, that's wild, first of all, that Democrats would even have any kind of a prayer in this race. Now, they go on to say both Republicans and Democrats still expect fine, who apparently I didn't really wasn't really familiar with him. He's apparently like a controversial figure in Florida, kind of like bombastic and does all kinds of like

wild and crazy things, whatever. Anyway, apparently both sides sort of still expect him to win. But the fact that it's close is, again, like huge, huge alarms going off because of this. In fact, one of the people they quote says, you know, if the Democrat can even come within 10 to 15 points

That would be a real red flag for Republicans about the energy that is going against them here. And it was sort of funny. I don't know if this is what happened, but in the original reporting of this, Axios had said, had flipped the numbers, had said that fine, the Republican was only up by three. In reality, the poll actually has him down by three. But I think that result was just like so unbelievable that they were like, that can't be like you meant the Republicans up by three, right?

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah.

Well, I mean, maybe the poll will turn out to be inaccurate, but you can see for Republicans where they're not doing town halls anymore because people are motivated enough to come out and show up, meaning those are the types of people who are motivated enough to canvas and to make phone banking calls and do that sort of work. If your grassroots activists are motivated, then that's significant. And

that makes it

a difference. We're not saying that it's like everyone is super angry and the regular voters are just flooding to the town halls. There's some of that, but it matters even if it's just the activist grassroots base. And that's definitely what's happening. And those are the people who make the calls and knock on the doors and send the small checks. So you can see the combination of curious polling in a close district that shouldn't really be that close or in a district that looks close that shouldn't be that close. And what they're seeing on the ground is

You can see why that would be making them quite nervous. I wanted to play one of Josh Wheel. That's a Democrat in the race. One of his ads. I mean, I think mostly this is just reflective of like national dynamics. But I also thought it was interesting to see how he's making the pitch here in this red district and what he thinks, you know, is landing with voters and causing them to move to his side. So let me go ahead and pull this up.

this message.

So the unhinged reference to some of his antics, but then really drilling down, Ryan, on the Medicaid and then backing this idea that Elon Musk has been promoting that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

And with communist iconography behind it. Oh, I didn't even know that. Yeah, that's what it looked like. Ryan's like, hell yeah. He clocked that right away. How dare you smear him with that? Yeah, Elon Musk is the one who called it the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. Elon Musk is going after Social Security as we speak, shutting down offices,

Calling it rife with fraud. Like the other day, yesterday, he said, you know, shock, like 40% of the calls that come into social security offices are scams. Like, I don't, I guess Elon Musk doesn't have a phone because if he did, he would realize that more than 40% of all calls that come into your phone are scams. Like if you're getting a call, it's probably a scam. Why would the social security office be different? So, okay, therefore we should like cut scams.

spending on the administration of Social Security because we're getting so many fraud calls. So yes, I think you're going to see Democrats running against Elon Musk and against what he's doing to Medicaid and to Social Security. Republicans think, aha, we're going to cut Medicaid. It's just poor people. The reference to nursing homes was brilliant.

That's how basically everybody pays for nursing homes. And that matters not just to the people in the nursing homes, but it matters almost even more to the children, the adult kids of the people in nursing homes. Un-American, you love to see it.

Emily, I think this also comes before they have even passed these Medicaid cuts. Right.

Imagine the sort of grist for the mill after those cuts are actually codified and the impacts become real rather than theoretical.

Well, and it could become controversial just with the influence of Steve Bannon. And Steve Bannon is like extremely opposed politically. And I think it's for him become ideological, too, because I think he's so deeply upset with what's happened with the tech takeover. So that could, I mean, genuinely put a lot of pressure on some of the guys who are having to take a vote for what is going to be billed as, quote, reform reform.

and not a cut, many such cases as they say. But that's

Another like test here is whether Republicans can. They're very, very. And it's actually interesting. They're very high on selling cuts right now. Right. Now is the time that Republicans can actually sell cuts. They've never really been able to do that before. So it feels like they have generational momentum to talk about slashing and burning because nobody has the political will other than Donald Trump and Elon Musk to actually like say this is what we're doing. So.

does that, I mean, do they overplay their hand to the point where the benefits start getting touched and you're not able to sell it as reform, which is what Republicans always try to sell it as, Medicare and whatever. They try to say, this is just, we're reforming the system, we're cutting out fraud. But if everyone sees like, well, that's interesting because as we're about to talk about in a second, you just fired 10,000 people from HHS. You just cut

these DEI grants. You cut X, Y, and Z. It seems like you're actually just cutting. So what

You're telling me that this is just plain reform. That's a hard thing to do. Right. I mean, with the Social Security, it's like becoming really clear. Right. Cutting Social Security Administration. It's not making things better. It's making things worse. It's making so that fewer people are able to access the benefits that they're entitled to with that program. And I will we can go ahead. Like you said, Emily, this does dovetail well with the next story, which is RFK Jr. just announced that he's planning 10,000 programs.

cuts over at HHS. So this is Wall Street Journal. They say, and he announced this in a video on X changes would reshape the nation's health agencies, closed regional offices. He said he would ask 10,000 full-time employees spread across agencies tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs,

providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more. The cuts are in addition to roughly 10,000 employees who already chose to leave the department through voluntary separation officers office offers since Trump took office according to the department together, the cuts would eliminate about one quarter of a workforce that would shrink to 62,000. And they have a quote here from RFK Jr. He says, we're going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments.

And I guess that's the part that is highly questionable, I guess we'll say, to say the least.

Because, you know, if you're slashing, these are agencies like the FDA is already truly understaffed, like in terms of being able to get regulatory approvals through to be able to make sure that our food supply is safe. You know, something that Maha should be really interested in. There are already too few inspectors to be able to really adequately do the job. And so now you're talking about slashing employees.

that funding and, you know, any sort of new drug approvals, medical device approvals, any sort of, you know, access issues you have with regard to Medicaid. This is all being slashed on the chopping block. And, you know, Ryan to

to believe that it's not going to have the same impact that it's having in Social Security, where already wait times are astronomical and field offices have lines out the door and they're trying to cut telephone service and all these sorts of things. Like we've seen the way they operate. It's just very difficult to buy at this point. Right. And for what advantage? You're not going to see a reduction in the deficit as a result of this. You're not going to see interest rates come down. Like the way you would actually reduce the deficit

is you know through uh you know congressional action where you increase revenues and reduce spending instead they're probably going to have the lowest revenues in a very very long time because they're slashing away at the irs and they're going to they're going to hit the debt ceiling a lot faster yeah yeah it's a yeah that's a tax cut uh that hits um that you know for corporations you

Particularly for corporations and the very rich who can afford the best accountants, they're going to push the envelope on the legality of tax breaks, assuming that they can fend off or not get audited. The working people are going to pay the same or actually more because it's much easier for the IRS to come after people.

regular people than it is for them to come after rich people because of the way that our enforcement is designed. That's exactly right. Yeah, because rich people can fight back. Poor people can't. So firing 10,000 HHS people, it makes up for like one billionaire that is going to rip off the IRS as a result of these cuts. The average cost of fighting an audit is like $1,200. It's really high. And they don't allow you to use a credit card statement. Like you have to have the actual physical receipts. And it's like,

A regular person up against the IRS is effed. I mean, I actually think there's probably an argument that there's bloat that can be cut from places like HHS and done responsibly and in a way that actually makes sense.

the organization way more efficient. I guess it's just a matter of trusting the process, as they say. And I don't think a lot of people have trust in the process right now. Well, not to mention, I pulled this article, like there's already problems because they've already, 10,000 people have already been sort of like pushed toward the exit and decided to take the fork in the road or whatever offer. And already they are struggling to meet these mandated requirements

for how fast product reviews are supposed to go through with regard to medical devices and some new tobacco products, apparently. And some of the new people that they had brought in, according to this article, had sort of these technical skills with regard to evaluating some new e-cigarettes,

are doing age verification. And so some of the people who are kind of at the leading edge of regulating these things, they were in the probationary period, so they are out. But this also includes reviews on medical devices, etc. And so this is before we get the mass cuts that Kennedy is planning here, the additional 10,000 mass cuts that he's planning. And we also know that

They had to scramble and rehire a bunch of people that they had fired over medical devices was one piece. Another piece was we have this massive bird flu epidemic that has been spreading like wildfire. And some of the people that were tracking that were fired. And then they're, oh, my God, maybe we need those people. Let's bring them back. So, you know, how many more instances of that?

Are there going to be and how many instances where they don't realize these people were important? They don't get rehired and they're effectively playing with fire here, Ryan, that you could have some completely disastrous situation that falls directly into their lap. And while they're trying to root out waste, fraud and abuse, they're they're probably engaged in one of the most wasteful.

government practices in the history of the government. Like they are, they've taken tens of thousands of people and put them on administrative leave first for a very long time before firing them. So that means that the taxpayer is doing nothing. Yeah. Not working. The rest of the people are then scrambling to develop these new plans to lay off

you know, more people going forward. They're spending a non-trivial amount of their time doing their five bullets, which adds extra bureaucratic paperwork. Like if you work for the federal government, you do too much bureaucracy already, too much filling in five buckets, whatever. Right. Like that's the problem with the federal government, layering another one on top of that. Right.

you know, just creates more and then, and then they're meeting about these reorganization plans. And then like you said, they're going back and then rehiring people who they, who they fired hastily. Um, and that's before we get to the IRS, which of course is, you know, every dollar you cut there is, is many dollars that you're, that you're not getting, getting in. So, um, you know, Doge is really, you know, producing an enormous amount of waste, fraud and abuse.

Well, I mean, this is one of the tough things. I don't know if you guys saw the clip that's going around of Ezra Klein explaining like a very bureaucratic process for I think it was for broadband to Jon Stewart and Jon Stewart just losing his mind. It's like a 14 step process and it is laughable and infuriating. And that's genuinely one of the tough things about all of this is that there is.

there's a desperate need to reform the American bureaucracy. And on the right, it's like,

Who else is going to do this? I mean, like nobody else ever wants to do this because there are a lot of special interests that protect every layer of the American bureaucracy and influence every layer of the American bureaucracy. It's lobbyists. It's, you know, unions. And like this, this does happen. There are a lot of special interests that have made our process the way that it is. And it sucks. And it's like, is this really the guy? It doesn't have to be him.

If they were trying to do that, great. But there's no sense that that's the direction they're going. And I agree. Like right in my neighborhood, we moved here in 2012 and this giant grocery store closed then. And they said they were going to replace it with like condos at the top and then, you know, another grocery store and shops underneath going to be a big development. They just started construction.

Today, it's 2025. It took 13 years. China built probably 25 cities between that time and now. And my neighborhood couldn't build, you know, 172 condos or whatever, whatever the number is. So it is a problem. But just going in and like firing half of the NOAA scientists.

Is not the solution. In fact, if you want to deal with that problem, you need to both cut some of the regulations that are unnecessary and timely and build government capacity. Like, I mean, that's the FDA example is a perfect one. Like they didn't get rid of any of the regulations. You just now have fewer regulators to actually go through that process. And so now your medical device approval process is going to take longer. Right.

which is why I don't even want to tolerate this discussion of, oh, this is about efficiency. It's not about efficiency. There is zero evidence that they care about quote-unquote efficiency. In fact, they fired the people or forced out the people who were at the digital service thing that they took over who were actually working on efficiency. Ask the Social Security recipients,

who now cannot get someone on the phone or have to wait hours and hours or have to go into a field office that is being closed, whether their process is now more efficient, right? It's not.

whatsoever. Yeah. Social security has wildly way less fraud than any private payment platform. There's nothing comparable to social security, but a multi-billion dollar payment platforms or other, or other, you know, social security like organizations around the world. Our social security is way better than that. And part of that is because we have this social security inspector general's office that is well-staffed and,

and takes it deeply seriously because they know if anybody ever misses a check, this country will burn. And so they are deeply dedicated to making sure checks go out at the right time and they go to the right people. In fact, one of the things they've gotten criticized for is being too aggressive. If somebody dies and they get like two months worth of checks after that, Social Security will pretty relentlessly go after the estate

to get the like $5,000 back. And the family is like, come on, man. Like, what are you doing? Right. Relax. And Congress even was like, guys, relax a little bit. Give a 30-day grace after they die. Social Security is like, no, we want absolutely zero fraud. Zero fraud. What has Musk done? He's tried to fire 20% of the IG's office aimed that has so successfully made this

a pretty fraud-free program and instead pretended that it's rife with fraud. He said that there were millions of people getting checks who were 200 years old. They looked into it and they found that there, I think, were 201 people who were dead who were still getting checks out of hundreds of millions of people who've gotten Social Security over the last almost 100 years.

And so like to cut when you're cutting the I.G.'s whose job it is to cut out fraud and who have successfully done it. Done so. Mm hmm. You're not serious about cutting out fraud. It's not the goal. Like that is not the goal. There are a number of different goals. One of them is to destroy government capacity to regulate big business.

they've dropped a quarter of all enforcement cases, gutted the CFPB, you know, totally defund Australia, the SEC, gutted the IRS so they can't, you know, collect taxes of billionaires, et cetera. Like that's,

one goal. Another goal is just like an ideological anti-government project. So if government doesn't work, then that justifies more cuts to government. Another goal is being able to make available more cash for, you know, tax cuts and subsidies for people like Elon Musk. Another goal is for him to be able to have direct control over

over agencies that have tried to regulate his businesses or investigated his businesses or to be able to gobble up any sort of contracts or subsidies, screw over his competitors, et cetera. Those are the goals. Like efficiency is not a goal.

Efficiency is the packaging, but it has nothing to do with the project that they are actually engaged at if you look at not what they say, but what they are actually doing and the impact that it's having on government. I mean, you know, to just take it back real quick to the abundance discourse here.

They killed this project that was ready to go or had already run. You know the details of this. These EV chargers that were already like being installed like this was, you know, building out. They ripped them out. In an abundant style way. And they're like. The Trump administration took EV chargers that were in on federal land and in federal buildings that were already installed and ripped them out. Took just took them out. Spent money.

to destroy infrastructure that was already created. Yeah. Because they don't like EVs or whatever? If the idea is like, I mean, the abundance idea, which I have issues with putting this at the center of democratic discourse, whatever, but to be fair to them, their idea is like, we need to make it easier to build. That is not what's going on here. They're making it easier for robber barons to steal from the public purse and get away with crimes. That they're making it easier to do, but to actually like,

build out infrastructure or some sort of like capacity or government ability to respond to a challenge. And no, that is the polar opposite of what is going on here.

Meanwhile, somebody shared, you know, China's like by 2030, they're going to have some fusion fission nuclear reactor. Yeah. Arnaud was writing about that. Yeah. That would be like, you know, I mean, that China is just like we'd like to pretend that like, oh, we still got the edge, but they're like nipping at our heels. I mean, they're just kicking our ass at this point. It's not close. The real AI arms race is probably going to be between different companies in China.

The real EV arms race is between different companies in China. I do think it's one of the things that it's frustrating. And I don't like when people on the right just completely enjoy the luxury

left wandering through the wilderness, because if we had a healthy political climate, your options wouldn't be the Biden administration's insane 14-step process to put in broadband and Elon Musk. Like, we have the worst of both worlds right now. And so people are being asked to choose between a Democratic Party that defends this process and Elon Musk, who doesn't give a damn about whether the ends go to the right means. So it's...

Everything sucks. I got one last one to put up here that just, you know, I think demonstrates the kind of short-term, like penny-wise, pound-foolish approach here. And maybe you have a different view, Emily, but U.S. is ending money for this vaccine fund to

to help get kids inoculated around the world. And, you know, in the grand scheme of the federal budget, this is like literally pennies, but has massive impact on millions and millions of people. It says the Trump administration tends to terminate the U.S. financial support for Gavi, the organization that's helped purchase critical vaccines for kids in developing countries, saving millions of lives over the past quarter century, and to significantly scale back support for efforts to combat malaria, one of the biggest concerns.

killers globally. And it's just like, I don't know. I look at this, right? I'm like,

do we think we don't also live in this world? Like, do we think that none of this has any, like, did we not just live through a pandemic and see very clearly how the things that happen on the other side of the world, lo and behold, can have an impact on us too. And so it seems to me both just like cruel and foolish and will have zero impact whatsoever on our debt and our deficit if that was indeed any sort of real priority for them. Yeah.

Yeah. And the compromise here has always been that the world will allow us to continue with this draconian patent system that that takes very easily producible medicines and vaccines and makes them unaffordable for half or more of the world. And in exchange, we will provide very affordable access for not half the world, but the poorest of the poor.

So that's sort of the balancing act. Like we we over here in the United States will get to get we being the pharmaceutical companies to get very and New Jersey will get to get very rich. And we'll make sure that as a product of that, we're not killing hundreds of millions of people from preventable illnesses.

And some people will die of preventable illnesses, but it won't be hundreds of millions. It'll just be maybe hundreds of thousands. And we'll call that charity and foreign aid. And what it is, of course, is propping up our unequal system that keeps us rich and keeps them poor. So we're now ripping that up. And so we're telling the world that the deal is we are going to get fabulously rich because

We're going to artificially keep the price of these medicines and vaccines at such extraordinary levels and at the barrel of a gun that hundreds of millions of people could die. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds, like enormous numbers of people could die from these very treatable illnesses. And pretend that those – that that won't come over here and hurt the United States. This is even a separate question. And we're daring the world to not revolt against that. Right.

And we're doing it while Russia and China are both becoming more influential around the world. And so I would say that we cut that bargain for a reason. Like our elites cut that bargain for a reason. We thought it was beneficial to keeping inequality alive and well around the world and keeping us rich. Our elites did not cut that bargain because they're soft-hearted humanitarians. Right.

So, okay, now you're going to rip that up. See how it goes for us. Yep.

I mean, I think I do have a slightly different perspective on this. I think this will be a gap. There are already private like Mark Cuban is already trying to make up the difference with private funding for a lot of these programs that the United States used as foreign policy tools, but were actually what they would call is they would call charitable, but we're actually using and deploying selectively as foreign policy tools in a way that wasn't.

wasn't actually all that charitable, probably did some really wonderful things. He clearly did some really wonderful things and still does do some really wonderful things, but was being deployed in a sort of cynical and selective way for the sake of the American empire. And so I do expect that American charity will probably make up the gap. And the COVID example to me is actually an interesting one because we framed our wonderful grant to the Wuhan Laboratory as being the name of

pursuits and research. Yep, exactly. And so I mean...

This stuff doesn't bother me quite as much, assuming that they already that there are already people in place who will make up the difference. But I also see it as more likely, you know, Russia, China, India and India makes a ton of generics. We'll just be like, you know what? We don't respect this copyright system of yours anymore. You made these drugs. We're stealing the copyright. You are pirates. You are scoundrels.

F off. We're just, we're stealing it. We're going to make them ourselves and we're going to, we're going to sell them for pennies around Africa and we're going to sell them in exchange for nickel and cobalt and other rare earths. And, um, y'all can just go sit and spin, you know,

And we're also going to buy stuff from Canada because you've like pissed off Canada for God knows why. Yeah, it's decades of like emotional blackmail from the imperialists that have built up and people in the third world are caught in the middle. And it's like the American people are like, well, this is cynical and selective. And so much of it is done under the surface. And then the people in the third world are the ones who continue to get screwed because of the American political process.

To me, it's another instance of like taking a system that's bad in the ways that you guys both lay out and just making it worse. So it's like, oh, we're going to keep our patents. We're going to keep, you know, we're going to keep blackmailing you in this way. And now you're just like instead of us making this deal where now these kids will be saved and have vaccines and not die from COVID.

easily preventable diseases. Now they're just going to die and we're going to get rich. So that's, you know, seems to me the theme of a lot of what the Trump administration has done and the way that they've sold it because they can point to these things that are like, oh, you know, I mean, they wouldn't, I don't think they'd explain it the way Ryan did because they don't care about that. Like they're in favor of the profits and the patents and the exploitation and all of that. But they can certainly point to the way that USAID has been cynically weaponized on behalf of empire and

While also building their own imperial projects and threatening Greenland and, you know, Canada and planning a war with Mexico and, you know, bombing the Houthis and all these sorts of things.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, anything else you guys are taking a look at today before we wrap here? No, I just wanted to say, I spoke to two different groups of students this week and it's insane. Um, how like, it's just cool. They come up to you. Like they're the OG hipsters of breaking points. They'll be like, we've been watching since rising. I feel like, you know, since they were in middle school. Yeah. I feel like everybody always says like, Oh, we've been watching guys from rides. Surely not everybody has been watching us since rising, but I do feel like they love to, to claim that, which is cool.

No, it's cool. Like the students just it's cool to be around college students who have kind of grown up with the show and just wanted to shout out all those guys because we appreciate them and appreciate them watching. Did you get any vibes from them, Emily, about like the campus crackdown stuff and the arrests that are happening?

Yeah, you know, it was interesting because I feel like the pendulum is sort of swinging or it's like conservative students. 10 years ago, I graduated college 10 years ago. It was like it was hard to talk on campuses and like be comfortable and all of that. And I sort of feel like the kids on the left are the ones that are really experiencing that now. They used to be sort of in control of the crackdown and now they are sort of losing that because there's so much focus on Gaza. And that's one issue that they just it's hard to speak freely.

Well, yeah. I mean, people are literally being disappeared and arrested, kidnapped off the street by masked officers, unidentified officers of the state for, you know, with no arrest warrant or charges or anything. So, yeah, I would say that would have a chilling effect. Definitely. Anything you're looking at, Ryan, before we wrap? No, just, you know, the world's falling apart. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I don't know if, you know, I know a lot of people have been asking about Walker. Yeah.

People may have noticed he posted, you know, he posted today like his family is now contemplating going back to pet food. And he's already malnourished. Was he able to get, you know, the treatment that he needed for his? Oh, my God. No. And, you know, we've got doctors at the hospitals that we're in touch with calling around all the pharmacies. There's nothing. There's nothing in Gaza. It's been since March 2nd.

since anything was allowed to get in. And when you have, you know, almost 2 million people just, you know, consuming food and medicine, you know, there, I think there are, there are a week or two away, uh, that, uh, UN said they're a week or two away from running out of, you know, cook cooking oil and food basically for even for their charitable kitchens. Um, it's quite, it's quite, quite bleak. Um,

Yeah. It's, uh, and I don't, I don't know where the end is in sight. We, Rasha Abu Jalal, one of our reporters, um, in Gaza wrote a piece yesterday, um, that people should read. It's not, it's not that long, but it's, it's, it's good. And it, it's poignant and it really gets to the, actually I have it right here. It really gets really, really, it really puts you there. Um, so people can just Google that. Go find that piece. It's just, just wild. Um,

I can't imagine even as a mom, even just not just but not being able to provide your kids with enough to eat. Right. Like just imagining the pain of that, let alone everything else that, you know, is is the torture these people are being put through. Like even that to me is overwhelmingly unimaginable.

So and I mean, you know, I watched your coverage of your colleague who was assassinated and his sense that his theory that, you know, if the world just knew what was going on, surely they wouldn't let this happen. And how his, you know, his connection to that hope was increasingly fading and fading.

It's hard to see it any other way because we can all see what's happening. Like we have, you know, we've seen it every day. And now it feels like I think with the Trump administration and now that, you know, the Israel destroying the ceasefire and being greenlit by the Trump administration, et cetera, like what hope is there? I don't know. I genuinely don't know because it just feels like everybody's sort of given up on, you

Being able to do anything different. And, you know, now Trump's floated this, say, let's ethnic cleanse it. And the Israelis are like, cool, let's do it. That's been our fever dream for a long time. We're going to put together an agency to develop a plan and that's what's going to happen. We're going to go back to bombing and starving, et cetera. And the world is just like, you know, it's just a shrug and it cheapens. I mean, the immediate is, of course, the horror.

that Palestinians are being put through, but it truly does cheapen human life everywhere. It really does. You know, I mean that I mentioned that in the Yemen bombing, like civilians in an apartment building, it's not even a consideration, not even a consider, not a mention, not a care, not a concern. And again, I'm not like trying to be Pollyanna about the U S war machine and the number of civilians that we've killed, et cetera. But again,

It's just like this is just normal operating procedure now to collapse an entire apartment building in order to get one like not that special military target ultimately. Yeah. Yeah. The next week or two is going to be really critical as supplies fully dwindle. Like this can't go on. Something has to give.

Something has to give. Yeah. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for filling in for me this week. And as always, for your extraordinary reporting. You and Sagar are great together. It was fun to watch from the outside. And thanks to Emily. She had to run to another thing this morning. But always great catching up with her and hearing her thoughts on things. And hope you guys have a fantastic weekend. I will be back. Normal shows, all that stuff next week. So I will see you then. See you soon.

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