2/17/25: Europe Freaks Over Trump Sidelining Them In Ukraine Talks, Trump Calls For Military Budget Cuts, Trump Says He Can't Break The Law
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Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Extra amazing. Ryan, bro show. People live for the pound. And not only the bro show, I was just realizing we're going to get to talk about Napoleon and World War II. Wow. What could be more bro show than that? That is very, very bro show. That's right. A little Roman Empire. Can we talk about... We have it covered. I am not a Roman Empire guy. Sorry, everybody.

I guess we could talk about Napoleon. Can we talk about the Napoleon movie and how awful it was? Maybe we can dunk on Ridley Scott. We can. That's when we'll make it a real bro show. All right, what are we covering today? This is the most difficult part of Crystal's job, and I always find it so trying. All right, all right, all right, good.

I've got my rundown there in front of me. We're going to start off with JD Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference, a major international fallout as a result of that. Europeans running scared. You've got Zelensky and others making declarations, some movements on the Ukraine peace talks. We're going to talk about Donald Trump in a Napoleonic-style tweet about he who saves the country cannot break the law.

We're going to talk about Israel, Gaza, and Iran. Some guarantees from Bibi saying that he has been given the green light to attack Iran and then Trump will back him up. Some other, however, indications about phase two of the ceasefire hostage deal. It's a complete mess. Ryan's going to break a lot of that down for us. We're going to talk about the Democrats. Jen Psaki absolutely stunned at Jon Stewart's declaration that the Democratic Party is not in fact democratic.

And Luigi Mangione, he's resurfaced. He's got his first new public statement along with a website. He appears to answer a lot of fan questions. So even though he hasn't been in the news for a while, the Luigi fan club is alive and well. And then Ryan, you've got a segment called Woke or Based. Are you going to give us a preview of what it is? I've been ordered not to take a look at any of these elements. I have no idea what's going on here. We want Saga going in fresh to our game show at the end here. Okay.

It's woke and or based. Woke or based. So I guess just for the people who aren't terminally online, I think they probably know what woke is at this point. Based is often what? It's a moniker that people in right-wing circles will use to say this is based. Based isn't like this is good. Yeah, exactly. And it's like hardcore. For example, we're going to show people a video of a German diplomat crying. That's I would call based, you know, in terms of being able to elicit that type.

of reaction from one of the most pathetic societies in the world. Oops, I forgot that Germany is one of our most viewed countries. Sorry, Germany. Anything before we get to that, Ryan? You want to plug in the thing? No, I think you nailed that. All right, thank you. It's a tough part of the job, man. No, it is. Usually I just sit here and drink my coffee. I'm off camera. It's nice. When I do it, I go halfway through it and then I forget. It's hard. It's hard. All right.

Okay, okay, let's get to Europe. As we said, J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference returning. He originally went to the Munich Security Conference, I recall. I think it was back in 2022 where he was one of the only people to speak against U.S. assistance for Ukraine. This time around, however, returning as vice president. Arguably one of the most important speeches given at the Munich Security Conference since 2007 when Vladimir Putin spoke there. Let's take a listen to the speech and we'll break it down. In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town.

And under Donald Trump's leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree. We gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security. And normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many great military leaders gathered here today.

But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it's important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor.

And what I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe...

from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America. Now I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don't go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.

Now these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy.

But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.

So, Ryan, that has elicited a full-fledged freakout in Germany and at the Munich Security Conference. Our friend of the show, Arnaud, I can never pronounce his name properly. I really apologize. Arnaud

Bertrand actually put out a very thoughtful, obviously Arnaud is very, I don't know if you would call him from the left. I'm not really even sure which way you would say that he is. He's somebody who I guess is very critical of the US and European bipartisan establishment. Shall we put it that way? Well, he actually put it really well. He said, "It's really hard not to make a parallel between J.D. Vance's speech right now at the Munich Security Conference and Putin's 2007 speech

at the very same podium. Both were watershed moments that fundamentally transformed the existing consensus. Putin at the time delivered the speech that marked the beginning of the end of the unipolar moment. J.D.'s speech will be probably remembered as the speech that marked the beginning of the end of the post-World War II Western alliance." And so he goes on, it's quite lengthy. I highly recommend people go and read it. But basically in the speech, it was both a declaration of quote unquote universal Western values and a criticism

of the European architecture for both taking advantage and free-riding off of the U.S. nuclear umbrella, actively using quote-unquote anti-democratic censorship policies and others to suppress nationalist movements and of course literally overthrow a government. Your Romania reporting, by the

has probably got to be one of the most influential things DropSight has ever done. I mean, considering how much has been picked up by Elon, by now being cited here by name by the vice president of the United States, it's genuinely remarkable because it does show us that there is both kind of a horseshoe element to a lot of this, but really at a very, very high level.

This is not about Ukraine. It's much, much bigger than that. It gets to the point of that there is a fissure between the United States and between Europe, both economically but culturally. There's criticism here of kind of the European EU-led establishment. They're what they view as their most important single conflict. Ukraine is, frankly, more of a footnote to the United States. And then really what I think that they are grappling with is at

the very same time that this Munich Security Conference speech and other happened, Secretary of State Marco Rubio today is in Saudi Arabia for brokered peace talks with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. And that demonstrates what I think is a true return to great power conflict

and to multipolarity. We are no longer, you know, working within the fakery of the United Nations or the European Union or some OSCE guidelines. It is the two great powers involved in the conflict sitting down across the table and saying, what are we doing here? Because at its heart, that's what it's always been about.

all the trussings of the European Union, the Munich Security Conference, and more. So I'm curious, you know, from your perspective, what you make of all this before we get to some German reaction. It was interesting to me that JD Vance didn't

kind of point out the Biden administration's role because it's one thing, you know, he wouldn't have to necessarily say, okay, and the U.S. is guilty on all of these things, could have just blamed it on Biden if he wanted to, but he didn't do that. He suggested that these European censorship and big tech policies kind of came out of nowhere and that the Romanian election that was overturned

was driven by this former EU commissioner or other elements within Europe. And certainly there were those elements that were fine to see that election annulled.

The first major power to call into question the validity of the Romanian election was the United States. Yes. And the United States basically greenlit the annulling of the election by coming out and saying that. And as we reported in our story, it was USAID-funded entities that were involved in the concoction of this conspiracy scheme, conspiracy claim that said Russia actually came in and like

used a fake TikTok operation. - This is basically Arnaud's point where he's like, this obfuscates much of the United States. - So why would he do that? That's an interesting-- - That's a good question.

I honestly don't know because I think you're totally right. That's one of the things that I actually most agreed with with Arnaud's threat is, listen, I mean, I'm very critical of European migration policy and all of that, but he is correct where he's like, hey, look, you guys are the people who destroyed Afghanistan. He's like, you're the ones who are one. Syria for the most part, yeah. I mean, I guess what I would say is it's not like there weren't a whole bunch of NATO troops there as well and they weren't all, some of the biggest drivers were,

of the permanent occupation of Afghanistan was built on much of these European institutional liberal values, as in like, oh, we need to stay there so girls can go to school, or beyond any sort of national interest. That's largely what I think European policy has become. It's about genuflecting, it's about really, even the censorship,

The censorship regime on Romania, the Ukraine literal worship, like so much of it comes down to defending like capital L liberal values across the continent. It's part of the reason why they hate their own nationalist movements so much when in my opinion, they're more responsible for their rise than anyone. You know, Merkel's ideology leads to Brexit. It leads to the rise of the AFD in Germany. It leads to the National Front.

winning unbelievable margins in the French election. It's actually, you know, the destruction of the French establishment. So when you think about all of that, the roots of it come down to migration. But I think a lot of the roots of it also come down to, you know, the subservience to like this...

to this non-national identity, which is the European Union. And so much of the current European population, and especially the European diplomatic and elite class, view themselves as Europeans first and not French and/or German first, which is just not really compatible with putting your own citizens forward, which is why their own citizens are really revolting against a lot of these things. - It is, and the other point I agreed with Arnaud there, though, is that one of the shared European values

that exists over the last hundreds of, or thousands of years is war. - Yeah, true, that's true. - Like they love to do war. - They are warlike people. - No, I'm joking. - They are warlike people. And so for the Trump administration to be pushing a combination of we need more nationalism in Europe

And the European nations need to individually spend more money on their military budgets. It's like, have we completely forgotten what happened in the 1930s and 1940s and the 1910s and the 1870s and the 1830s and the 1850s? The alternative to that is that the United States should be the ones that's the guarantor of all of their security while they free ride off of that with their free health care institutions and mass budget.

Maybe we, China, and Russia together. Well, we're going to get to that. Babysit them. At the same time, you've got China sending its diplomats over to Europe being like, you know what? We already told you that the U.S. is a nasty landlord. I think it was Singapore, the prime minister said. The U.S. has gone from being this kind of hegemon to now this low-rent landlord coming around hitting us up for the rent. Well, yeah, but they've also been delinquent on that rent.

that rent for quite a long time. This is part of the difficulty, which is for all of our money and all of that, when the push comes to shove, what do they do? They're the ones who are major importers of Chinese cars, of Huawei, all their infrastructure. They openly buck any US attempts to try and tell them to try and implement the same sort of export control. So in a lot of ways, they are the people who have created their own disaster. They've decided to both, they've basically tried to ensnare our country.

through worship of the transatlantic alliance. And I'm not kidding. It as is an actual worship. The one last thing that Biden's dementia addled brain was able to cling to was what? I expanded NATO.

Literally, when he's on his deathbed, he'll be saying AUKUS and NATO. That's what he views his legacy as. He'll probably forget his own grandchildren's name before he forgets NATO and the fact that he brought Finland into the alliance. So that just demonstrates what we're dealing with in terms of America's elite, part of the reason why a lot of this stuff is getting amplified.

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So we've got that. We have the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who immediately criticized J.D. Vance. You had the, I think it was the Vice Chancellor, who took the podium immediately after Vance, where he was like, I was going to give a prepared speech, but I have to just sit here and say how outrageous it is.

there. So, I mean, at a basic level, number one, they're not used to being talked to this way. But two is, like Arnaud said, they are dealing with the, they are dealing with a shakeup in the way that things usually go. Usually the way that this Ukraine peace talk stuff would go is like, oh, well, we would gather the G6, not the G7, right? We would gather the G6, Assange Russia,

We would all create prepared statements and there would be the European Union would sign on and NATO, et cetera. And then as a, quote, united front, we would go and we would negotiate. Now, it would never work because the Europeans, the UK and others are fanatically obsessed with defending Ukraine. And instead, Trump is like, no, I'm the guarantor of the NATO. I'm guarantor of NATO security. I'm guarantor of the EU's security.

I'm going to go and hash this out with Putin, and you guys are going to swallow it and deal with it. And I mean, to be honest, I think that is basically true in terms of how it will all shake out. Now, I'm not saying that they will go quietly, and Zelensky himself has now made some declarations in a new interview with Meet the Press. Let's take a listen to that.

That President Trump said this week, he did not say yes when he was asked if he sees Ukraine as an equal member in the peace process. He did say later that Ukraine would have a seat at the table. Have you been given any assurances that Ukraine will have an equal seat at the negotiating table? So I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine.

never, and our people never, and our adults and children and everybody. It can't be so. This is the war in Ukraine against us, and it's our human losses. We are thankful for all the support, unity between USA,

In USA, around Ukraine support, bipartisan unity, bipartisan support, we are thankful for all of this. But there is no any leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us, about us. The risk that Russia will occupy Europe is 100%.

If the United States pulls out of NATO, Russia will occupy Europe. Yes. Not only Europe. They will begin from those countries, as I said, big our friends, but small countries who have been in the USSR and the Soviet Union. They will begin and we'll see what will be the answer. But Europe will not answer because they don't have. They will begin to defend itself. Each country defend itself. And at this moment,

So Russia will get all this, all the successes with all the territories they will want. I don't know what they will want. So the percent of Europe, 50, I don't know. Nobody knows. So there we go from Zelensky in terms of his declaration. I mean, I don't know about this last part, if the US pulls out of NATO. I don't see anybody saying the US is going to pull out of NATO. Really what he's upset about, Ryan, is that Trump said, no, you're not going to be in NATO, which is the most obvious declaration. But what's really crazy is you're watching the European Union

trying to figure all this out and the Europeans. So let's put the next one, please, up on the screen. This is what I alluded to. Quote, left out of the Ukraine talks, Europe races to organize a response. Just yesterday, the prime minister of the UK, Keir Starmer, said that the UK would provide peacekeeping troops inside of Ukraine.

If the United States were to not do so. Now, already the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has said, number one, no U.S. peacekeeping role will ever happen on the ground. Now, two, that NATO membership for Ukraine is basically off the table. And three, that the return to 2014 borders is unrealistic. I don't know. I literally don't know how anyone could argue against that.

those three proposals. People are saying, oh, it's a concession to say reality. I don't think that's a concession. I mean, a concession would be, honestly, a concession would be putting our own forces on the ground for a place that has absolutely zero national interest to the United States. But overall, you're watching this all get shaken up. So I'm curious for your reaction here. Yeah, we threw the

All the weapons that we had stored outside the D.C. suburbs and shipped them over to Ukraine and threw them at Russia. Ukraine threw hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives at the line there. Possibly more. Possibly even more. And these are where the lines are. So if somebody didn't want that to be the case, what is the option for them? It's not as if we have...

more weapons that we could really throw at them like The Ukraine was allowed to strike, you know Russia inside Russia with some of those long-range missiles But even if we gave them every long-range missile we had and let them shoot them as far as they want into Russia Russia has an industrial base and a population that is many times larger than Ukraine's that just and that's simply the case and

Like there was some hope that Russia's economy would completely collapse as a result of sanctions and the war economy. The economy is struggling in Russia for sure, but it did not collapse. And so the reality is that Ukraine is not playing with much of a deck at this point. Much of a deck at this point. And Ukraine also knew that if Trump won this election, they were screwed.

Oh, absolutely. They even kind of said that. They said that out loud because they knew it. We knew it. Everybody knew it. Now it's happened. And now they're screwed. And then you have to ask, what was all of this for? Right.

What did so many people sacrifice their lives for? Well, you know what it was for because unfortunately the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other kind of said it all out loud. It's about killing as many Russians as possible. I guess we just forgot that. Which is just psychotic because it, yeah, it was about weakening Russia but it's like Russia's not necessarily weaker. No.

Might be stronger. Honestly, I mean, I predict that it would be much more difficult for them to get where they are. I'm stunned by how quickly they were able to bounce back. And by bounce back, I mean, yeah, they ate like a 20% haircut or something on their initial GDP. But after that, they've just turned their country into a war economy. They've sanctioned proof to all their financial institutions 10 times more than ever before. The Chinese have stepped in to supply all their consumer electronics. North Korea's got plenty of ammo. They're willing...

to send, they're willing to send their own troops to fight and die for Russia. This is the best thing that's ever happened. - Do we believe that yet? - Well, yeah, good point. You know, you're right. I probably shouldn't fall victim to somebody's psyops. - But it might be true, I don't know. - I'm pretty active on Telegram in terms of these channels, viewing videos. I have not yet seen any videos of actual North Koreans dying.

who are on the front line. If you see any, I guess, send it to me. They keep showing us Russians that look Korean. It's like, bro, half of Russia looks like that. That's true. There are a lot of Russian citizens who have heritage from quite literally Asiatic, like from the steppe or from Kyrgyzstan or whatever. Any of these places that are still inside of the current Russian Federation. So great point on that one, Ryan.

one, Ryan. So the Ukraine last ditch appears to be selling mineral rights. And this is something that Lindsey Graham has been pushing hard for many years. He certainly has found a way to Trump's heart talking about how many awesome rare earth minerals they have and why that's the reason that we should support Ukraine. Let's take a listen. I think the main thing for me is that Ukraine has value.

literally has value. Right. So you can talk about democracy and people love talking about democracy here, which is great to talk about democracy, but where were you in 2014 when they actually needed you? So Trump now sees Ukraine differently. Big as the rarest stuff. Oh, my God. I said, playing golf, these people are sitting on literally a gold mine. What did he say? What do you mean? I showed him a map. Yeah. Look.

Everybody says Putin wants to reconstruct the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire. You should have a map of the rare earth on the golf course. Not on the golf course. But later. Later, yeah. He's seen this. Look. This stuff is... That's one of the reasons the guys wanting to go into Ukraine is take their stuff. I mean, there's trillions of dollars of very valuable...

rare earth minerals that he's trying to take by force. And I told President Trump, that's not a good way to do business. So you made Donald Trump a Ukraine hawk by showing him that map, huh? Well, I don't know if he's a Ukraine hawk, but I made him understand that if you let Putin get away with this, grabbing stuff that's not his by force, other people will start doing it.

So that's the, I guess that's all they have now in terms of what it looks like. There's some reporting here. Let's put this up there on the screen from Josh Rogin. He's very tapped in to the foreign policy elite. He says, multiple lawmakers here in Munich told me that the U.S. congressional delegation presented Zelensky with a piece of paper they wanted him to sign, which would grant the U.S. rights to 50% of Ukraine's future mineral reserves.

Zelensky, quote, politely declined to sign it. He continued, after a lot more reporting, I have more detail, this plan was presented to Zelensky by the U.S. ambassador in advance of Secretary Besant's trip to Kiev. Zelensky told those lawmakers about it today. In today's meeting, Zelensky was telling them about the paper, which many of them didn't even know about, not the other way around. He said he couldn't sign it because it didn't contain any security guarantees for Ukraine.

So that's the current status. Yeah, so Josh had it a little bit backwards the first time around, but still a nice little scoop. But basically, yeah, what happened, so Secretary of the Treasury comes to Ukraine, and ahead of his trip, the U.S. ambassador presents Zelensky with this deal. Like, we will take 50%

your rare earths and there's not even a quo on it. There's not even a promise that, oh, and as a result, you will get these security guarantees. It's just like, by the way, we're going to take 50% of what you have. Zelensky declines to sign that and then kind of tattles to the lawmakers who come a couple days later. One question I'm starting to have, though, is how rare these rare earths are.

- Yes, that is a great, that is such a good point. - They're everywhere. - I hear about it all, yeah, you're right, the Congo, Afghanistan. - Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico. - People said Afghanistan was down a trillion dollars. I think Mexico does have a large lithium deposit. - They do. - Chile, right? - But isn't that rare? - Good point, I guess it's not. I hadn't thought about that. So we should get into Trump's ear and be like, they're not that rare. - They're just Earths. - They're actually in Wyoming. They're sitting right here. We could go tap it right now. They're even in Canada.

We don't even have to annex Canada. We could just buy it from them. We don't need to send a bunch of people to die for all of this. So I will say I think that remains the biggest obstacle to any sort of future Ukraine peace deal is this convincing Donald Trump that in 50 years from now we'll be able to have access to all of these mineral rights or whatever. Apparently this is an active...

thing that Zelensky and them are pushing. But at a big level, again, just to prepare everyone, the Munich speech is paired with the Saudi Arabia peace talks, which are ongoing right now in Riyadh. We will stay tuned for what that looks like. But it is the first real bilateral talks between the United States and Russia in years since the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict. Trump literally said he spoke to Putin. They mutually agreed to visit each other's countries. And we'll continue to keep everybody updated.

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Something about Mary Poppins? Something about Mary Poppins. Exactly. Oh, man. This is fun. I'm A.J. Jacobs, and I am an author and a journalist, and I tend to get obsessed with stuff. And my current obsession is puzzles. And that has given birth to my podcast, The Puzzler. Dressing. Dressing. French dressing. Exactly. Exactly.

Oh, that's good. Now you can get your daily puzzle nuggets delivered straight to your ears. I thought to myself, I bet I know what this is. And now I definitely know what this is. This is so weird. This is fun. Let's try this one.

Our brand new season features special guests like Chuck Bryant, Mayim Bialik, Julie Bowen, Sam Sanders, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and lots more. Listen to The Puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's awful. And I should have seen it coming.

Speaking of that, this is definitely something very close to Ryan and I's heart, was an off-the-cuff remark by Donald Trump where neither of us really believe it's true, but we would like for this to be true. Let's take a listen. We have the greatest military equipment in the world. We're building it. At some point when things settle down, I'm going to meet with China and I'm going to meet with Russia in particular, those two, and I'm going to say there's no reason for us to be spending

almost a trillion dollars on military. There's no reason for you to be spending $400 billion. China is going to be at $400 billion. We're at a trillion. We're going to be at close to a trillion. And I'm going to say, we can settle this or we can spend this on other things. We don't have to spend this on military because and I'm going to be meeting with China. You know, we were trying to deescalate nuclear and I was in a position where Russia had agreed and China

had agreed we were going to start and then we had a rigged election so that never took place but this one was too big to rig. We won by so much that it was too big to rig. President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear and I think the rest of the world we would have gotten them to follow and China would have come along too. China also liked it. Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear

And the destructive capability is something that we don't even want to talk about today because you don't want to hear it. It's too depressing. So we want to see if we can denuclearize. And I think that's very possible. So, Ryan?

Is this the most radical proposal since what? Since Richard Nixon or prior to that? I'm trying to think. Maybe the Kennedy administration? The START treaties? The nuclear treaties? This is definitely in that vein. Now, obviously, there's...

not a single, is there maybe one lawmaker in Washington, maybe two or three who might go along with this? - Like Bernie. - All 532 other members definitely gonna be against this. So again-- - Bernie as long as you don't go after whatever they're making in Vermont. - That's right, as long as you're not touching whatever is made in Vermont, he says.

Well, you know, we don't have to spend this on other things. We can lower our defense spending all around and we won't have to spend it on the military. It's a nice idea. It's certainly a nice idea. You have to go back to JFK's American University peace speech. Oh, the one that got him killed. The one that probably got him killed. Right. And also people should go back and...

Check out the conspiracy analysis around that where he may have been influenced by LSD toward the end of his life. Is that true? I didn't know that. From Mary Pinchot Meyer who he was having an affair with. Was she a secretary? Cord Meyer's ex-wife. Cord Meyer, one of the

kind of top original goons in the CIA. She was also very close friends with Timothy Leary. - Oh! - And she definitely dosed David Bradley and a bunch of other luminaries in the 1960s. - Fascinating. - And so there's some-- - Blowing my mind right now. - No question she smoked weed with JFK. - All right, so I have to, all right. Well, it's the old weed. - There is some question-- - We'll make an exception. - Did they trip? - Okay. - It's possible. - Yeah. - She was then murdered on the towpath.

So go have fun down there. I'm unfamiliar with all of this. This is a good one. I need to talk to Oliver about it. We've got to give him a call. So Trump is creeping into dangerous territory here. You're right. This is very dangerous territory. But he's obviously correct. If you can sit down with China and Russia and be like, look,

We're dropping a trillion. You're dropping 400 billion. Russia, you're dropping an insane percentage of your GDP on military spending and nuclear spending. You can't afford that. We're getting bankrupted.

China, don't you want to do more Belt and Road stuff instead of nuclear weapons? And if they can come to an actual agreement on that, that's Nobel Peace Prize worthy. That's again why I'm so supportive of ditching all of these fake institutions, which I think either propagate conflict or do everything to truss up

great power competition in the language of international values. We were talking a lot about this last time with Crystal, about the idea of propping up and sending a million or so Ukrainians to their death or to being maimed for democracy. And it's like, this is obviously not about democracy. It's about realpolitik,

A bad reading, in my opinion, about trying to get all these Russians killed. But it especially falls apart with realpolitik policy in Israel. So you're like, oh, well, actually, we're okay with it over here, but we're definitely not okay with it over here. It's just ridiculous, right? And it falls apart on its own face to any neutral observer.

out there. Her point was, well, maybe it was a good thing to at least still trust it up with democracy. But this gets to my point that there is no true balance of power in the language of human rights, democracy, institutions. Great powers are the people who run the world. It has just been through these institutions that have been their vehicle. But

at its heart, the future of the world will be basically decided by the nuclear powers and especially by the United States and China to a lesser extent Russia here with respect to Europeans. So just sit down with them and be like, okay, what are we doing here? This is something that we didn't so much in the past. I mean, one of the things I respect so much about our leaders like Eisenhower and Truman and FDR is, I mean, outside of FDR's case, Truman and Eisenhower are deeply skeptical of Khrushchev or of

Stalin, they still met with them all the time because they even, you know, mutually distrusted each other at those alliance tables. But they had obviously a common enemy under Nazi Germany. But even beyond that, trying to figure out what can we do about, you know, making sure that there is not such another devastating war. And I think if anything...

The removal of consequence, like of war, what you were talking about earlier with Europe, has turned all of this into like an intellectual exercise that belies how important it is to actually have true balance of power, to have honesty in international relations where hypocrisy, in my opinion, just breeds too many gaps.

for people like Russia and others to view what is US national policy with respect to Ukraine. When we don't speak in the language of national interest, we both cannot understand one another, but it leads to so much ambiguity, hypocrisy and others that it leads to things like Iraq, Libya, the North Koreans being unable to trust us for giving up their... Imagine if we had never taken down the Libyan regime and destroyed Gaddafi, I think there's a chance.

Not a big chance, but there's somewhat of a chance that the North Koreans would listen. But that's what they always say. They're like, I'm not listening to you. I will never trust you. Look at Gaddafi. I don't blame them. If I were them, there's no way I would give it up.

Right, he gave up nuclear weapons and he was quickly there after he was dead. The only place where I'd slightly disagree with you there is that I would draw some daylight between the approaches of FDR and Truman. Whereas FDR, I think if he had lived, was willing to... And in the whole, if he had lived, you can kind of fill in your own utopia. But there's a lot of evidence, I think, that FDR had decided...

that in a post-World War II era, it was time to share the world with communism and with the Soviet Union. Yeah, that's definitely true. It wasn't going to be a cold war that was a zero-sum contest of we must defeat them or they will defeat us. He believed that there was enough of a world order that could be

And that the pressure of communism, because it was going to blunt the ills of capitalism and create enough of a social welfare state that it would be more stable in a Keynesian kind of way. Whereas Truman and the kind of national security apparatus that was behind him really saw it as a zero sum. So in some ways, we now have another opportunity to make that bargain possible.

with another version of communism, but now instead of FDR, it's Trump, and instead of Stalin, it's Xi. And let's share the world. Well, Xi is a lot smarter than Stalin, so I'd rather talk to him. Let's share it instead of fighting over it. It doesn't have to be a zero-sum competition. Right. Well, I'm not so sure about that, but at the very least, zero-sum competition can actually still have a more stable outcome than whatever the hell is currently happening.

with Ukraine, it's not in NATO, we're gonna treat it like NATO, we're gonna send a lot of troops there, it's a vital interest in NATO, except NATO countries are supposed to be a vital interest. It doesn't make any sense. All of it falls apart in itself. You gotta defend Ukraine so that we can defend NATO. It's like, well, the whole purpose is to defend NATO. And then before that, NATO knocked off Muammar Gaddafi. So what? Libya was a vital interest to NATO? That still remains one of the most insane things that ever happened. Let us, however, not say

Let us, however, say that the resistance right now to reducing military spending is titanic in terms of what you're up against in Washington. We have an example here from Dan Crenshaw. Crenshaw, some people have called him. I don't know why they would.

here on Face the Nation. Let's take a listen. When it comes to the military and military spending, the U.S. spends about 3.4% of its GDP on defense. Are you on board with boosting it to 5%, which is what President Trump is saying Western countries need to do? Are Republicans going to do that?

It's quite the target. Look, we've got a lot of work to do right now. We've got a budget to pass from last year's budget. Government funding expires on March 14th. So we've got to deal with that. We've got to deal with the debt ceiling. We've got to finance disaster aid for California wildfires. We've got a reconciliation bill coming up. Look, you look at the world at the moment and where America stands and the investments we need to make.

It's pretty obvious we need to increase the defense spending and the exact amount of course will get worked out in Congress.

So there you go. And yes, and Pentagon spending is the only thing that the media will ever talk about in its proper terms, which to me, the proper way of talking about spending is as a percentage of GDP. Obviously. Because that's how you can understand something. What do you spend in rent as a percentage of what you make? That's what matters. That's right. And so 3.4%, all of a sudden now it's, oh, that's kind of tiny. We could do a little bit more than that. They never will talk about the actual foreign aid to Africa. Right.

as a percentage of GDP. That isn't the regime change stuff. Well, you're going to hear it from me at least. Well, that's part of why I get annoyed. Everyone's like, this is an American revolution. I'm like, guys, it's 0.7% of the federal budget. And that includes all the regime change stuff. I was going to say, so if you take out the woke bullshit, it's like maybe 0.25% of the federal budget. If you want a real American revolution, you've got to go for the Pentagon or you've got to go for the entitlement programs. I don't think we should go for the entitlement programs, so what do we have? Pentagon it is. Let's talk.

If anybody ever wants to talk about that, my door is open. My phone line is ready. However, conveniently, there's just way too much. I mean, as you and I know right now, of all the talk for firing federal workers, et cetera, there has not been even a modest dent in what the economy of Washington really is.

is. If Doge and all those other people actually go after the Pentagon, that's when you're going to see a real fall in housing values and a destruction of the Northern Virginia economy. Until that time, we're not talking about a substantial amount of money.

The closest we got was we reported last week that Elon Musk had a $400 million contract for these Harvard Teslas. We had it here on the show. And then, whoop, they nixed that contract. So did they nix it? I thought they only changed the name of it. First they changed the name, and then a day or two later they said, actually, this whole thing's on hold. Really? Yeah.

And frankly, from a green, let's talk about clean energy real quick. From a green perspective, this was stupid anyway. Because if you are driving around in an armored diplomatic vehicle, then by definition, you're in a difficult country. It's a developing country. Yeah, so where are you going to charge your car? You're going to charge it at the embassy, which is fired by a coal-powered plant. Like any country, if you're in Norway, you don't need an armored Tesla. Yeah, good point. You can get around in an Uber. Right.

And there you can maybe find some renewable energy. But in Congo, where you do need armored vehicles to get around, those are coal plants that are firing your electric vehicle. So you've got the carbon footprint of making the thing, then you've got the carbon and of getting the rare earths to make it. You're starting to sound like me on electric vehicles. Then you've got the carbon footprint of shipping it over to Congo. That's right. And then you're plugging it into a coal-fired power plant. Well, it's actually stupid because you take the cobalt out of the Congo. You ship it to China or the United States. You refine it. You put it in the country and you ship it back to the Congo.

to the con and then you plug it into a coal-fired plug it into a coal-fired power plant so that's

So they've paused that contract. Okay, good. You're welcome. That's $400 million for you. Right, but now what are they going to buy? They should just buy a Land Cruiser. That's what we all know. What's that truck that all the terrorists use? Hilux? Toyota, get the Toyota. That thing is sick. Let's be honest. We've got a lot of proof in a lot of these videos. I want to see the diplomats riding in the back of the white Toyota. In the back of a Toyota Hilux. It's indestructible. When I lived in the Middle East, all the Arabs were rolling around in Toyota Land Cruisers. You've got to learn from them. You've got to learn from them.

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All right, let's go to Donald Trump and his Napoleonic Declaration, in addition to some updates around Doge. So Donald Trump shocked America. I guess maybe not so shocking. Let's put this up there on the screen. He who saves his country does not violate any law. So Ryan, who and what came up with this saying? What is the echo, historical echo,

here. Yeah, so this is an apocryphal Napoleon quote that comes from the good Napoleon movie, Waterloo, which was like that 1970s. I've never seen it. Maybe I should watch it. It's on YouTube. Yeah, it's cool. I'll check it out. Yeah. And they famously, they have like

150,000 extras actually do the battle. So I don't know if it was 150,000, but tens of thousands of people dressed as Prussians and French soldiers. It was the most sophisticated and gigantic battle scene ever filmed by Hollywood. And so, not the CGI whip-up that Ridley Scott made us suffer through. But yeah, so...

whether Napoleon said this or not, this is how Napoleon felt. - It's been attributed to him. - He definitely did say, "I am the revolution." - Right, I am the state. Didn't he say that? That's the famous line? - That was the king who got cut off. - Oh sorry, that was the king, that was the king, that's right. - But what Napoleon said is, his version of that exact same thing was, "I am the revolution." 'Cause he was saying, people were saying, "Hey, I thought the revolution was for all of these fraternity equality, didn't we just talk about all this stuff?" And he said, "Well no, I am the revolution."

So whatever I do is therefore an advancement of the revolutionary values, the French revolutionary values. And Trump saying this is really only kind of stating, textualizing of what has always been his subtext, that there isn't really ideology behind Trumpism. It's whatever Trump says. Now he's taking it to the place that it's not even illegal if I do it, which...

Nixon as a, as a, When the president does it, it's not illegal. Yeah. That was considered to be the worst thing that a president had ever said, basically. Did he say that? I don't think he said that in office, though. I think he said that in the David Frost interview. But it was like, he was trying to make his comeback and when he said that, like, banish this man to Elba. When the president does it, it's not illegal.

illegal. Let's put the next screenshot up there from Elon. Lots of American flags there. I guess Elon is a consul, a deputy of one of Napoleon's generals here. He's the Talleyrand. Yeah, that's right. Although, I mean, does it fit? Well, yes, because Talleyrand screwed him in the end. That's true, but he was also, Talleyrand was like a

How would you say? He's like, he was an opportunist. He was constantly playing people off of each other. He was a vassal to the king and then to the revolutionaries and then eventually to Napoleon. He features very prominently in the popular book, I'm forgetting, 48 Laws of Power. There are a ton of Talleyrand quotes.

Yeah, and then Talleyrand sells Napoleon out. That's true. Careful. See, I'm not nearly as well-read on my French Revolution. It's just the black hole, to be honest, because there's so much, right? You start with the Revolution, and then the Revolution goes through all these phases, and then there's Napoleon, and then Napoleon.

and the king comes back, and then Napoleon III comes, and I'm like, I can't get my head around all this shit. It's just too much. I think there is a-- - Yada, yada, yada. - There's that Revolutions podcast, what's that guy named? Mike Duncan. It's so long, but all my friends who have listened to it, highly recommend it. - I've listened, it's great. - Eventually, one day, I will get my head around the entire French Revolution.

revolution. But let's, you know, kind of put this together with Trump and with Elon, kind of a fusing of the two forces. They did a joint interview on Fox News. Let's take a listen. Tried it, then they stopped. That wasn't, they have many different things of hatred. Actually, Elon called me. He said, you know, they're trying to drive us apart. I said, absolutely. No, they said, you

We have breaking news. Donald Trump has ceded control of the presidency to Elon Musk. President Musk will be attending a cabinet meeting tonight at 8 o'clock. And I say, it's just so obvious. They're so bad at it. I used to think they were good at it. They're actually bad at it because if they were good at it, I'd never be president.

Because I think nobody in history has ever gotten more bad publicity than me. I could do the greatest things. I get 98% bad publicity. I could do outside of you and a few of your very good friends. It's like the craziest thing. But you know what I have learned, Elon? The people are smart. They get it.

Yeah, they do. They get it. They really see what's happening. All right. So joint interview there by the White House with Donald Trump. Pretty obviously a move by Trump to quell some of the Elon as president. Although I'm not so sure because I've never seen Trump do that for literally anybody else. Maybe his vice president. I mean, that's that's it. A joint interview. I am coming around to the crystal point of view that there's something weird going on here.

here. It's odd. I've never seen Trump like this act so not even subservient, but accepting of obviously an equal power center. I guess all we can take away from it is I think he just agrees with Elon. I mean, is that what it is? I really have no idea what it is because, and look, I mean, I've said this before. I do think that there is like a popularist aspect to Doge. People hate the government. You know, they hate the government until they need the government.

But in the interim, people hate the government and they don't have any particular – I don't think that outside of a lot of liberals who are reading the news constantly and like glued to their phones, I'm just not so sure that the so-called popular revolution against all this stuff will materialize. Maybe in the future if you can pin a natural disaster or something on them. But I'm not seeing it at least yet outside of the Democratic faithful. All I took away from that interview is Trump is totally dedicated to him.

which again, I think is crazy. I have no, I really don't understand this dynamic, how it really came to be and so close, especially because

If you're a Trump aide or others, if you're Trump yourself, you want to be in control of your narrative. You want to be in control of your own story. Like even Vance works for Trump. He's not a separate power center in and of himself in the way that Elon is. And so Elon's main character energy I always assumed would rub up against Trump and maybe it will eventually in the future. But even to this extent, I never would have predicted that he would have tolerated.

Yeah, Elon's out there doing his own thing and creating his own reality and then forcing Trump to respond to it. And it's quite incredible because I find myself in this very unusual and almost uncomfortable situation of kind of pulling for Trump. Yeah, it's the same way. Trump, like, stand up for yourself, man. Come on. And sort of pulling for the MAGA folks to be like,

Get some dignity and some self-respect here, guys. Like, you fought for eight years to get back into power. And you let this guy come in in September and stroke a check and...

He gets to just be along for the ride. Like, don't you have any dignity? No, I don't. That's actually the actual answer. And I mean, look, maybe there's some lessons in this is that being rich and famous is actually all that really matters in terms of the currency for Trump. Trump, in a certain sense, either agrees with all of this or he's fine. Maybe...

Let's say a galaxy brain case, which is Trump is here, more popular than ever, high approval rating. People are describing him as energetic. All he really cares about is tariffs and maybe Russia-Ukraine, right? Ish, in terms of like getting on the phone, being president at a high level. Just let Elon deal with all the unpopular stuff, which all the donors and all these other people go crazy for.

So I have all my donors are happy. The media is obsessed with a foreign target who's literally absorbing all the bad press. And I'm just sitting pretty up here at the top. Like he's like a whipping boy, I guess, for what the real agenda is. But like you said, that's not really what the quote real agenda was supposed to be. So I do honestly find the entire thing interesting.

bizarre. I just think that at a certain level, Trump is fascinated by Elon. Maybe he buys the hype. Maybe he just- In that space, he's like, you're an interesting character. Yeah, he's like, he is an interesting character. I mean, there's no, Trump is, whatever you can say about Trump, he's definitely a weird guy in his own right, but he's a very social person. He was a socialite for many years. He's met a lot of people. He has to know Elon as a total

weirdo. And yet, for some reason, it doesn't seem to rub him the wrong way, where anybody else who treated Trump like this would just never get away with it. At a policy level, there have been some flags here around some of the latest Doge cuts. Let's go ahead and put this one up on the screen. This was kind of a hilarious plot point. So there was, what was it? There

One of them was apparently at a nuclear weapons facility near Amarillo, Texas, where some 30% of cuts took place. And the nuclear weapons role of those workers and the feds who oversee it is some of the most sensitive missions apparently in the U.S. So after discovering that many of these workers who are in something called a probationary period

Legally, feds hire people on a probationary period before they convert to full-time. While you're probationary, you can still be fired, and when you're not, it's just much more legally difficult to fire you. That probationary period can last up to three years, just so people understand. It's not like they've been disciplinary placed, it's just that they're more newer entrants. So anyway, the Trump administration just fired across the board all probationary employees, but apparently they have reversed it for these 28 employees who are in charge of the nuclear weapons facility.

Also, for people who don't know, the nuclear weapons are overseen by the Energy Department,

which I've always found very interesting. I forget exactly when it happened, but we decided to take away that authority specifically from the Pentagon and turn it into a civilian practice to make sure that civilian control, command and control over the nuclear chain of command always remained ironclad. Yes, and the real heads, when they're adding up military spending... Yeah, they add that, you're right. They add that in because when you're like, oh, how do we get to a trillion when a department of defense is this? It's like, well, because a lot of these other departments have...

spending that is fundamentally military. Yes, you can also be probationary if you get a promotion. So you could be 10 years in, then you get a promotion and a raise. It's only like a three month stretch, but there are definitely significant numbers of people who got a promotion in like December and then found themselves like vulnerable to just getting whacked. And I think the politics of this can work out for Republicans

If it's all spectacle, like if they're launching a spectacular assault on federal workers and you've got Democrats defending these federal workers, the public... That's where we're at right now, I would say. Yeah, the public probably sides with the attack on the federal workers. But if it goes beyond spectacle and as actual substance, which it seems like it is, like firing 10% of federal workers, that's a substantial cut.

you risk genuinely harming things that voters want to be taken care of. Like nuclear safety is an excellent example of it. Some of the stuff, for instance, getting rid of the people whose job it is to make sure that the last few birds of an endangered species survive, you're going to drive a decent number of animals into extinction.

Does the public care about that? I would say no. Unless it's a bald eagle problem. They probably don't. Now, the next one, if we put this one up on the screen, huge cuts at the FAA. So I think we've had nine airplane crashes since in the last month or so, including... Military as well. And including the deadliest since like 2009. And to respond to that...

by cutting hundreds of FAA employees some of whom say that they were directly involved with safety to me is not just like offensive as to me as an American citizen who wants to fly and not you know crash into a military helicopter or like just die have the ship have the plane blow up. Yeah, it's it's also politically moronic because now if and when there is another plane crash and

You can quite honestly and genuinely point to hey the way that Trump responded to nine plane crashes at the beginning of his term was to fire hundreds of FAA ploys and now there are more crashes and There's also reporting that FAA is allowing SpaceX technicians to come on in and you know They're gonna they're gonna show the FAA how to how to do things and so you're taking full political control and responsibility for something

That could be a huge political liability. So that's where the spectacle, the spectacle can work for Republicans, but if it drifts into substance and they actually destroy the government, which it seems like they're trying to do,

that could actually backfire. I totally agree. And I've always warned that about the Doge stuff where, look, USAID, sorry, like, I just don't think anybody will care outside of the people who actually work in that or people in Africa. But FAA, I mean, I always point to that. And I also tried to really highlight how quickly public opinion can change. And

And I don't think people really understand how quickly you can go from like an 80 percent approval rating to 30 or like 35. It can happen on a dime and in the span of nine months. I mean Joe Biden, when he took office, he was like 74, 75 percent. Now maybe it was fake. I don't know. You could say that.

But by October, he's underwater as a result of Afghanistan, inflation, so much, you know, so many different expiry of federal programs. Nate Silver actually had a good tweet on this. He goes, keep in mind, Obama went from 69% approval rating to Democrats losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts in the span of less than a year. I always try to highlight that. Remember the Bush 04 to 05 period? He literally went from winning the popular vote and, you know,

reaffirming all these conservative things about the country to getting absolutely blown out 18 months later in public approval. - And how do you do that? By going after Social Security. - Social Security, exactly. And Iraq, obviously those two things, you put them two together. So I'm just always pointing out with Doge and all of this, and as triumphal and all of this can sound, really good political movements and actors

think strategically and in the long term. And these Doge cuts through the FAA is a perfect example of why? Why would you ever allow this? Why would you even give the Democrats the option of if there's another plane crash, they're gonna crucify you. And that's what they did with FEMA under...

So Republicans did about FEMA. I'm talking about with the response to the North Carolina floods. Remember all of the FEMA dollars going to illegal immigrants? That was a real thing. People in North Carolina were really pissed about that. This is the same thing. You don't want that on your head no matter what. So can there be reform? Can there be change? The counter to what I'm saying is like you people are just talking heads. You guys are idiots. You don't even know what you're talking about. Never bet against Elon. Never bet against Elon.

These SpaceX guys, one of them is worth $15. Maybe. I don't know. We'll find out, I guess. It's a great national experiment. I'm curious for your take on the NIH cuts, too. I'm very pro that.

But I feel like this is a place where you and the people who are supportive of this are internet brained and Are like okay, you're probably they're connecting NIH to like funding the lab in Wuhan Which they did and they should be criticized for and that and they should actually I think ban all gain-of-function research just like Obama did and

And then they connect NIH to COVID hysteria and lockdowns. And then from there they say, well, NIH sucks. Let's nuke NIH. And you throw in this idea that universities are hogs at the trough with the overhead that NIH is paying for.

Then you convince yourself that okay. This is actually a good target for us This is a politically right target when I think going after cancer research going after medical research just period is is he is a huge mistake just on a kind of human level because

government spending on medical research is the thing that drives the advances. And then the corporations, the big pharma comes in, they swoop up the innovations, they patent them, they make all the money off of it. That system should be changed and they should not be able to make the amount of money that they're making off it and it should be cheaper for us. But we do want this process happening where

scientific advances happen because they save lives. Of course. I just think it's a little bit more reductive. So, I mean, the university thing, for example, again, I grew up in a university town. My parents work in academia. I think universities are genuinely hogs at the trough. Okay, let's look at it this way. Let's look at academic...

actual spending by public universities, all of which books are public, and look at the rise of what? Administrative costs. Administrative costs accounts for the vast majority of tuition increase. A lot of this is DEI, you know, but it's not just that. It's just general administrating bloat. So what the NIH thing did is it took it from 69 to a cap of 15%. Now,

I talked about this with Crystal. They're like, oh, well, some of it is all this non-administrative cost. But like the base assumption within the NIH freeze in terms of – what is it? The administrative cost freeze comes down to you guys are not good stewards of the taxpayer money. I think that's probably basically true. Anything, by the way, which attacks the center of gravity of university power, I'm also fine with. So I'm being very honest about it.

where I would like to see a complete change in all university financing, which heavily relies on the government, as you said, also begs all of their alumni for money, plus the taxpayer. And student loan is like the architecture on top of all of that.

But on the public research and medical financing thing, I'm not saying it's all bad. And obviously, I think it's a case-by-case basis. But it's one of those where Zoom out, and this is where I really just agree with a lot of the RFK critique. It's like, okay, we've been throwing all this money at all of this for literally decades, and actually the rates of disease are increasing. And actually, fundamentally, we have this wrong, which is all of the money goes into creating a, quote, drug when 90% of this could probably be solved by changing lifestyle factors.

That's a much bigger zoom out thing. Nothing about the NIH will solve that today, but it's about philosophy and allocation of resources. Fundamentally, like political economy is the allocation of public resources to what you think is important. And so it's about thinking it –

for me at least, if I were to create a grand design of what I could, it would be moving dollars away from whatever, creating some drug or molecule or whatever that fixed supposedly, not even fixed as cancer, 'cause that's not really how it works, as opposed to looking at the lifestyle factors, food, subsidy, whatever, that leads to this explosion in cancer over the last 50 years or so. - No, I'd love to see them address the lifestyle front.

I'm skeptical that they're actually going to do that. I don't think you have to destroy the, you know, you don't have to take the NIH money away from universities in order to do that. And I think our university system gets a lot of, you know, legitimate criticism. But what it, but it is also in many ways a

our crown jewel like it is the thing that separates us from other countries and you know you never know exactly how this stuff is going to work out you know i because my wife's going through this now i was actually studying how it is that the diagnosis that she has would have been basically a death sentence in the year 2000 and today is extremely treatable and will be a hopefully just a bump in the road and go through treatment and it was you know in 1987

The UCLA hosted a conference where a Genentech scientist spoke and said, we've identified this HER2 protein. I'll get the language of it wrong. But he said, but we don't know what on earth to do with it. And this guy, Slayman, who was at the UCLA oncologist at the time, happened to be at the conference and he heard it. He's like,

I bet that there's a potential cancer link there. So he reaches out to the guy, gets some samples, tests them against the samples he got, and he discovers that in all the biopsies he had, the HER2, the higher the positivity, the more aggressive the cancer was. And that was the one that was killing so many women. So he tells the Genentech person that. The Genentech person goes back to his lab and says, who can develop an antibody for this HER2? Because if we can actually hit this HER2, target it,

We could actually stop this cancer from being so deadly. And then Genentech's like, yeah, we're not investing in cancer research anymore because it's not commercially viable right now. Too many cancer drugs, failed FDA, and if we fail another one, forget it. So he goes around and this guy Slayman fights for NIH funding and other ways to make sure that this research actually gets done.

And it has revolutionized the approach to breast cancer. And now women who 20 years ago were dying from these diagnoses in their 40s, 30s, 40s, 50s and up, now are surviving. Like almost. I think that's amazing. It's huge, right? And without the NIH and direct money and without the university system, what was that conference where they met? That was overhead. Yeah.

Yeah. As overhead. Yes, right. Well, that's part of my point is that there's definitely quote-unquote justifiable expenses. I think you would probably agree with me, though, that...

that by and large the way that the current system is is deeply corrupt, yes? Because it's not just about NIH. It's like how many of these are funded by the pharmaceutical company? The number of administrators that they've got now is absurd. Yes. And it hasn't stopped them hawking for money, right? To every alumni, every corporation. But I think you could do something about it. Like just go directly at the administration. Like rather than like saying the NIH is going to choke it off. I think that's a totally fair point. And by the way, we'll be very politically...

And they're going to start taxing endowments. So maybe the tax on your endowment has to do with... I'll eat a sock here if we actually tax endowments. I would love to see it. There's nothing I would love to see more than... How about we make that trade? We'll take the endowments. We'll tax it at 100%. We'll take all of that. We'll forgive student loans once, and then we'll get rid of the system.

And then fine, we can have as much NIH funding as we want. We'll even take a token amount from Harvard's endowment tax and we'll give it to NIH funding. As long as we make college free or affordable again. I don't know. It doesn't have to be free, but back to the 1960s where you can actually afford it. Yeah, absolutely. I'm totally on board. That's part of what I'm saying, though, is that so much of the increase in tuition costs –

If you ever look, go around. I highly encourage this. I use Claude. You can use ChatGPT or any of that. And peg university tuition inflation to the CPI and see how much. It's up there with like college textbooks and a few others for one of the single biggest increases in costs. It's ludicrous. And these administrators and others are getting filthy rich off of it. Hence my general skepticism where I'm like, yeah, I don't really trust a lot of what's going on here. But excellent point, Ryan.

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Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin of the Kingdom Third, and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends, Mark and Craig Kilberger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter. Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is My Legacy.

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