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cover of episode 2/20/25: Trump Cheers House Bill With Medicaid Cuts, Trump Calls Himself "King", DOGE Screws Rural America, Elon Plot To Rug Pull America

2/20/25: Trump Cheers House Bill With Medicaid Cuts, Trump Calls Himself "King", DOGE Screws Rural America, Elon Plot To Rug Pull America

2025/2/20
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Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

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Krystal: 共和党提出的预算方案包含巨额的富人减税和对社会福利项目的削减,特别是医疗补助项目。特朗普起初承诺不会削减社会保障、医疗保险和医疗补助,但在第二天却支持了大幅削减医疗补助的众议院预算提案,这与他的承诺相矛盾。特朗普声称众议院预算提案完全符合他的"美国优先"议程。 Ryan: 特朗普政府无视法院命令,冻结外国援助资金,并为其行为提供复杂的法律理由。此举反映了特朗普政府对法院命令的蔑视,以及其对权力和控制的追求。 Bob Blake: 联邦政府冻结开支对农村地区的可再生能源项目造成了负面影响,这将损害农村社区的经济发展和能源安全,并违背了联邦政府对部落国家的承诺。

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Trump initially promised not to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. However, he later endorsed the House budget proposal, which includes significant Medicaid cuts. This chapter analyzes Trump's conflicting statements and the potential implications for the programs.
  • Trump initially promised not to cut Medicaid.
  • He later endorsed a House budget proposal with substantial Medicaid cuts.
  • The conflicting statements raise questions about his commitment to his promises.

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Find a shoe for every you at your DSW store or DSW.com. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our

full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. - We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. - Republicans are putting together their budget proposal. We referred to this earlier, and you know, it looks like giant tax cuts for the rich and a bunch of cuts to programs that benefit the poor and working poor, and in particular, they're taking a giant hatchet to Medicaid.

So Trump, in his little, you know, dual interview with Elon sitting next to him, was asked about whether there would be cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, quote unquote, entitlement programs. Take a listen to what he had to say. We don't need a Department of Education. OK. And what some people are trying to do is stoke fears that.

that, oh my gosh, my kid's not going to get the money for education. Or grandma's Social Security and Medicare. This was a big promise of yours on the campaign trail.

So I really want to give you both an opportunity to assure the American people you will keep that money will be allocated for students, but with higher standards. For example, I would assume associated with monies given or so much. And then Elon goes, but look, Social Security won't be touched other than fraud or something. We're going to find it's going to be strengthened, but won't be touched. Medicare, Medicaid.

None of that stuff is going to be touched. Nothing. You don't have to. Now, if there are illegal migrants in the system, we're going to get them out of the system and all of that fraud. But it's not going to be touched. So no cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, he says. Then the very next day, put this up on the screen. He...

goes out and backs the House budget proposal, which dramatically cuts Medicaid. The program, as Sam Stein points out, Trump said last night he would not touch. Here is the truth social that he posts. The House and Senate are doing a spectacular job of working together as one unified and unbeatable team, in all caps,

However, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important legislation currently being discussed, the House resolution implements my full America First agenda. Everything, not just parts of it. We need both chambers to pass the House budget to kickstart the reconciliation process, move all our priorities to the concept of one big, beautiful bill. It will, without question, make America great again. So you also, you know...

I mean, Trump has built, and this is one of the divergences of Trump 2.0 versus Trump 1.0. He really built a lot of his stance in the Republican Party and a lot of his credibility with regular people off of this repeated promise he was not going to touch Social Security and Medicare. And then in that statement, he also had originally expanded it, which on Hannity, to Medicaid.

But Elon thinks all of these programs should go and makes that quite clear on a regular basis. He's always retweeting Mike Lee saying Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and it would be better if everybody was in private retirement accounts, et cetera, et cetera. He also has gone out of his way to fraudulently claim that

Social Security is sending out all of these improper payments, you know, to people who are 300 years old or whatever, which is total and complete nonsense. And I talked about this earlier in the week. You can go check out that segment for the details and the receipts there. So clearly, Elon wants to dismantle these programs and is trying to frame it as like, oh, we're just going after the fraud. We're not actually cutting benefits. But, you know, if you're backing the House Republican bill that takes that's cutting some, what, $800 billion from Medicare.

Medicaid, you are going to hit benefits for a lot of people. And also, if you're serious about, you know, Elon talks about cutting $2 trillion in discretionary spending from the federal budget. 70% of discretionary spending is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicare.

Medicaid. So these programs are very much on the chopping block and Trump admitting here that, you know, backing the house bill and, you know, aggressively and saying it's my full agenda and it's spectacular. It's that it's one big, beautiful bill, you know, makes it pretty plain that he's not going to stand in the way of these kinds of cuts. So to play Trump's advocate here, uh, well not advocate, but a potential defense of what Trump is doing here. If you notice in his comment, what he says is, uh,

all caps, everything, not just parts of it is what we need. We need both chambers to pass the House budget to kickstart, and he puts that in quotes, the reconciliation process and move all of our priorities to the concept of one big, beautiful bill. It will, without question, make America great again. So what you could believe, and this is what

you know, the people who are hopeful that Trump is actually going to stick by what he said about Medicaid. What you could believe is that he's saying the House process of doing the tax cuts and all the spending cuts in the same reconciliation bill, and reconciliation just means that you can pass it with 50 votes in the Senate.

is superior to the Senate approach, which is to do separate reconciliation bills where you're going to do the reforms here and do the budget with the Medicaid and Medicare cuts and all this. And then you're going to do the tax cuts. There are a lot of MAGA people who are arguing if you do that, you will fail.

Like we have one shot. We being MAGA, we have one shot to do this all at once. The beginning of the year, we got to do it immediately so that it all takes effect because they've seen Obama and Biden fail because they pass all these good things and all they get is the bad press and the taxes. And then the actual spending comes too late to be politically beneficial. And so these Republicans don't don't be idiots.

do this now so that by the time the midterms come around, people are feeling the benefits of all those wonderful things we did. So the argument would be Trump's only endorsing the House process of doing it all together, of putting them all together, and that he's still going to stop, fight them on Medicaid. The counter to that is good luck. You can't, the numbers don't work out. Exactly. So you're going to have to, but the way that Trump will, could ultimately make the numbers work out

is just blow the deficit up much further. Right. Okay, we're going to do the tax cuts and we're going to preserve Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security, which is what I think they will actually end up doing. And then when we're like, hey, you said you cared about the deficit, they'll be like, well, we didn't and neither do you. Let's be honest. Do you think that there are, because the other thing they have to deal with is,

They have a, what, three vote margin in the House. So they have to get every Republican unless there are a few Democrats that might vote along with them, which, you know, it's possible. These are very weak people who are, you know, some of them desperate to appear like, oh, we're bipartisan, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, some of them are have positioned themselves as these sort of like austerity deficit hawk Tea Party types, right?

the Chip Roy's of the world and whatever. And so that is the reason why, you know, they're desperate. They're definitely going to have in there their $4 trillion extension of tax cuts for the rich. That's the tax cuts and jobs act that he originally passed and now it has to be extended. That's a huge price tag, $4 trillion over what, 10-year period.

And so if you're going to even fudge the numbers to make it look like you're not adding to the deficit, which they're already saying, like, we're going to fudge the numbers. We're going to pretend like we're going to get all this growth that, you know, isn't really...

Maybe they will, but it's unlikely. It's not the way they normally do scoring, but whatever. They're already saying, OK, we're going to fund the numbers in this particular way. It still is going to require a lot of cuts from somewhere. And especially if you're going to add on top of that any of the tax related promises that Trump made to working class people, let alone the whole SALT tax situation.

situation, which also would be a very expensive add-on. So how are you going to, you know, how are you going to compensate for all of that on the other side? And as if you're digging into these numbers on Doge, you're quickly learning there are just a few buckets in the federal budget that really make up the bulk of the spending. It's the military.

And it is the and it is health care, Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. And if you aren't cutting those things like you are nibbling around the edges, that's just the reality. Right now, you can put this next piece up on the screen because this also gets to the same dynamic. Yeah. So the House Republican budget also calls for an increase in defense spending. Small one hundred billion dollar increase in defense spending.

This is the plan, again, that Trump just endorsed, as Prem Thakur is pointing out here, at the very same time that he has asked the Pentagon for a plan to implement sweeping budget cuts slashing 8 percent from the defense budget in each of the next five years per amendment that was obtained by The Washington Post. Apparently, Pete Hegseth has directed the agency to go out and look for how they would accomplish these cuts, et cetera, et cetera. So.

So again, you have Trump endorsing an increase of $100 billion in the defense budget at the same time that he's signaling an interest in another direction. Yeah. So when you listen to a lot of the House Republicans and Senate Republicans talk about Doge and talk about Trump's – talking about Trump rolling back the empire and doing spending cuts –

They very quickly get uncomfortable as soon as the Pentagon comes up. That's right. It's wild. The number of people within the MAGA coalition at the top willing to take on the Pentagon is minuscule. Well, and there's a reason why. The base, they're there-ish for it. As long as it goes after the...

Think they're willing to go after the weapons makers the military industrial complex a huge portion of our spending is veterans affairs and and salaries of active duty enlisted people and There were there who are already struggling and on food stamps and like, you know, so that gets interesting, too You cut the foot military budget too far. You're now

Now you're coming out. Getting into back. Actual humans. Yeah. Well, and actually, if you look at the polling, you know, if you ask people where you would most want things cut.

It is the military. Right. You know, they don't. They don't want the base closed. People like the idea. Like if you ask, OK, should federal government spending be cut? Of course they, you know, yes, we should be more efficient. We should have, you know, cut out the fat, blah, blah, blah. If you ask them, OK, well, should we cut programs for poor people? No. Should we cut education? No. Should we cut Social Security? Absolutely not. Should we cut Medicare? Absolutely not. Should we cut defense spending? Yes. Yeah.

Yes, we should. But you know this from where you live. That's right. If you ask anybody there if they should close the base, do they want to close the base? That would be devastating. It would be a death blow for the particular town that I live in. And that is part of why—

That's exactly right. Probably a quarter of the people watching this program right now live in an area that would be hurt very badly by that. And that is part of why. So, I mean, part of why the military budget always escalates is because you have these defense manufacturers, the military industrial complex that spends a lot of money in Congress and makes sure they get their fat subsidies and their budgets and their boot and doggo weapon systems that have massive cost overruns and are totally unaccountable and unaudited and all that stuff, right? That is a significant chunk of it.

But also these military expenditures go into almost every district, congressional district in the probably everyone actually in the entire country. Yeah. On purpose. That's that is on purpose. It is a sort of jobs program. And so, you know, you once you start to actually threaten that, then you get a lot of members on both both parties. I mean, this is part of what creates that uniparty consensus.

who start to get very upset about the, you know, the bases or the manufacturers or whatever it is in their district that is important to the economy and the people there. Yeah, there was even that wild moment where Bernie was like, are you sure we want to cut this? F whatever. Like there was some, some like, I forget exactly what weapon system they were making in Vermont, but Bernie's like, is that really where we need to cut? Like,

They know what they're doing when they built this system. Suddenly, suddenly it's a little different when it's your state or your treasured priority. So so we'll see how all that shakes out. But very interesting stuff. Ready to prioritize yourself in the new year? Your skin is a great place to start.

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So we have some significant court developments that we wanted to go through for you. So one of the big questions is, OK, so some of these temporary restraining orders, injunctions are coming down against the Trump administration and some of the efforts under Doge.

Are they going to listen? Or are they going to do what J.D. Vance and others have suggested of just saying, hey, like you and what army are going to enforce this court injunction? And we have another troubling indication in terms of the approach that the Trump administration is going to take. Let's go and put this up on the screen from Reuters. So nonprofits have now asked a judge to hold U.S. officials in contempt of

for defying an order with regard to specifically USAID. So the way this all... Pause on this just for one throwback. One of the nonprofits here is the AIDS vaccine program. The other one is the Journalism Development Network, which is the business name of the OCCRP, which we wrote about. That's the one you... That's the USAID-funded news organization that was...

They just you can go read our story and look at it doing like us propaganda basically deep state. I mean they they they very strongly will say that there is no Influence from the US of their funding, but it was funded, you know, a lot of their funding comes through Russian, you know countering Russian disinformation involved in the Romania situation There's there's yes there there's involvement with the Romanian situation. It's so yeah, it's US funding for overseas journalism

That is controversial because taking government money

directly to fund journalism is just, in the journalism world, extremely controversial. Yes. Like we wouldn't do it, for instance. Yes, exactly right. Exactly right. So that's what they, coincidentally, they happen to be one of the groups that's suing here. Groups suing, yeah. So the way this went down is, you guys will recall, there was this, there were a couple of executive orders that were, well, some of them were executive orders, some of them were just memorandums that were issued by the Office of Management and Budget. But in any case,

said directly, we're freezing all foreign aid spending. We're freezing anything that has to do with DEI or quote unquote Green New Deal, led to this huge amount of confusion. Medicaid portals were shut down for a while. And it still has been the case that some things have continued to be frozen. Well, a judge looked at this and said, you have to unfreeze the funds.

And that has led to this sort of court battle with the Trump administration arguing that, well, the funds you're telling us to unfreeze, like that doesn't really apply to some of these other executive orders that we issued. And USAID is really at the center of it. But in this dispute, the judge came back and said, no, when I said unfreeze the funds, I meant unfreeze all the funds, including funds at USAID.

Trump administration has continued to resist that order and put in a court filing offering some new sort of convoluted rationale for why those funds don't apply when the judge, I mean, I read the order was quite clear, like, no, no, no. I meant all the funds have to be here unfrozen.

So the these nonprofits that are suing, they said the court should not brook such brazen defiance of the express terms of its order. And they're asking specifically for Secretary of State Marco Rubio and USAID Deputy Administrator Pete Morocco and the OMB director Russ Vogt, who is one of the real ideological architects behind this whole thing, to be held in civil contempt.

We can put this next piece up on the screen. This is just the court filing here. Kyle Cheney, who's a good follow, just in terms of just like the legal, you know, all the back and forth legal pieces that are many and varied at this point. Breaking USAID contractors aid recipients say Rubio and USAID leaders should be held in civil contempt for violating a court order to lift spending freeze. So you can see that there on the side. So we still have not, I think, Ryan, reached the point where they're just saying, you know,

No, we're just not going to listen. They're still cloaking it in. We have some convoluted legal rationale for why this isn't directly in defiance of your court order. But we are inching closer to that level of just like you told us to unfreeze the funds and we're just not going to do that. Yeah. And to put Trump's argument, legal argument here in its best light, what he's what they're saying is, OK, you're right. The freeze that we did, that was right.

that was wrong, you've told us to lift the freeze, boom, we have lifted the freeze. However, we still have discretion on a case-by-case basis to not pay out these particular grants because within the grants, each contract has language

that if the U.S. decides it is no longer in the interest of the U.S. to continue with this grant, that the U.S. can stop the grant and the president is deciding that it's not in his interest. And we're not. And so therefore, we're not saying that we're never going to spend the the congressionally mandated appropriations. So we're not impounding the money. We're just pausing this particular contract because we feel like

this particular contract is not in our national interest and not in accordance with the executive order at this moment, which I think actually would be a completely fair argument if not for everything else they're saying.

Which which goes to a broader read which is they are actually freezing everything have no intention of spending it right And are trying to impound it but just not say yet that they're impounding it They're not because they're they're gearing up toward that fight, but they're not having it yet So but but this this particular argument Yeah, of course like on an individual level if if a state if the USAID or State Department says

You know, actually, we don't like the way that they handled this Romania situation, so we're cutting their contract. You can do that. Sure. But...

So the question is, is that really what they're doing? Yes. Yeah. And I mean, this kind of relates what you're describing here to they made a court filing saying Elon is not actually the head of Doge. Like he's just some guy like he's kind of like Anita Dunn. You know, he works in the White House. He works with Trump. He's an advisor, but he's not in charge of Doge. He doesn't have anything really directly to do with Doge. Even as Trump is out there being like Elon's in charge of Doge. He's doing a great job. Even as Elon is saying. Yeah, of course. I mean, this is.

obvious, right? And they haven't hit it whatsoever. But because it creates some legal complexities for them, in particular, one of the lawsuits is about the appointments clause of the Constitution, where if you're going to have, I don't know what the legal language is, but if you're going to have the significant role, you have to have a Senate confirmation. And so they want to downplay, in the context of that lawsuit, Elon's involvement. So they're denying what is plainly obvious and what they

admit to and the way they talk about Elon and his relationship to Doge all the time. And by the way, if you ask Trump, okay, well, if Elon isn't in charge of Doge, who is? He has no answer.

Yes. Because Elon is obviously in charge of Doge. So this kind of, you know, ties into that denying the reality that is in front of us with some, you know, sort of convoluted legal argument ties into that whole thing. There have been a few other developments here that I think are worth just running through quickly. So there was another executive order that was signed by Trump that does a variety of things, but in particular is really trying to undercut the independence of some key agencies,

namely the FTC, the FCC, and the SEC, which is the Securities Exchange Commission, which, you know, they were upset that the Securities Exchange Commission was actually doing its job somewhat under Biden and enforcing the law, especially with regard to crypto. So they're trying to get them under control over there. But really extraordinary results.

Also, legal positioning and framing here that really ties into Trump's comments about how you can't violate the law if you are saving the state and some of the other more dictatorial positions that he has taken, which is that, listen, only the president and the attorney general can speak for, quote, what the law is. Let's take a listen to that.

Lastly, we have another executive order that President Trump signed relating to independent agencies. This executive order would establish important oversight functions in the Office of Management and Budget and its subsidiary office, OIRA, supervising independent agencies and many of their actions, and also reestablishes the longstanding norm that only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is.

So this fits with also the way that Elon has been describing the workings of our government, which is basically like Trump is the only true representative of the people. So if you're standing in the way of what Trump wants to do, then you are anti-democratic. You are trying to thwart the will of the people. And as you pointed out many times, Ryan, that is not the way that our system works. In fact—

The House of Representatives is specifically set up to be a more representative body and to reflect, you know, the individual like proclivities, regional proclivities of all the different districts and varied constituencies within the country. We don't have a system where the president is basically like King and gets to wipe the slate clean and implement his entire agenda. But that is the way that they're trying to position and explain their philosophy about all of this. And if he's.

restricting when he says the U.S., if he just means the executive, because sometimes that's what, that's how you refer to the executive, you know, it's the U.S. If you go to civil court or criminal court, it's the U.S. versus, you know, whoever. If that's what you mean, I could, I could, there's an argument to be made that the president wins. He should be able to tell the SEC what its priorities should be. And if the SEC is not abiding by those priorities, he should be able to

change out who the leaders of the SEC are or the CFPB or FTC or any of these other agencies. Like you have an election, you run on saying you're going to do something through the FTC, it would be messed up if Trump wanted to do anti-monopoly stuff and he's got Wall Street guys over at M&A guys over at FTC and they're like, no, we're not doing that. But what you can't do is just dismantle them like he's doing with CFPB. Right. Right.

Because I'm actually okay with a president within the laws created by Congress having direction over these agencies. I think that's fine. But you can't just get rid of him. Right. Which he's—

Look with with several of them. He's just saying like well, this doesn't exist anymore We're putting putting it in either in the wood chipper or RIP see CFPB Like you have to Congress has to be involved in that like that's our system. Yeah, very well said All right Let's go ahead and move on to this congestion pricing piece which kind of fits into the whole like Trump acting like a dictator Elon acting like a dictator, etc

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So check out Lenovo.com slash Legion. Empowering creators everywhere. President Donald Trump has weighed in on New York City's congestion pricing, put this element up on the screen, saying that it's dead. He's going to kill it. Congestion pricing is dead. Manhattan and all of New York is saved. Long live the king, posted Donald J. Trump to his Truth Social Instagram.

This was, curiously, a significant amount of leverage that Trump had over Governor Hochul, who is now under pressure to remove Eric Adams from office. We didn't even get that dynamic. There was some sense that she didn't want to cross Trump because she didn't want the congestion pricing to be nuked.

That leverage is now gone. Trump really leaning into this King Donald routine that he started here. He also, the White House posted this, we can put this next element up, a mock-up of a fake Time magazine that's Trump wearing a crown with long live the king written under it.

Congestion pricing is only about a month old at this point, and Governor Hochul came out with a statement urging Trump to back off of this effort to kill it. We can put this next element up here. This is a statement from Governor Kathy Hochul. She says, "Public transit is the lifeblood of New York City and critical to our economic future as a New Yorker like President Trump knows very well.

Since this first in the nation program took effect last month, congestion has dropped dramatically and commuters are getting to work faster than ever. Broadway shows are selling out and foot traffic to local businesses is spiking. School buses are getting kids to class on time and yellow cab trips increased by 10%. Transit ridership is up. Drivers are having a better experience and support for this program is growing every day.

We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king. The MTA has initiated legal proceedings in the Southern District of New York to preserve this critical program. We'll see you in court, she says. And, you know, key to this is that question of, I mean, aside from whether or not we're ruled by a king or not, I guess we'll figure that out over the next couple of years, the question of whether or not this is popular. I can put this next element up on the screen, a poll question.

about six in 10 saying they want New York City congestion pricing to continue if you dive deeper into the poll. The support is quite strong for this new program, stronger than it was, I would say, when it was launched. - Yes, that was my, that was what I thought as well. - Yeah, and the advocates of it argued that it is one of those government programs that doesn't feel right out of the gate. You're like, "I gotta pay for something I didn't have to pay for before," which, by the way,

Streets are the only thing that we think should be free. Like if you ever suggest that riding the bus should be free or riding the subway should be free, which I'd be cool with, you sound like a radical commie socialist. And they're like, what, are you crazy? But why? Like that's a, the public built the bus system, the public built the subway and the public built the roads.

It's the roads that people feel like they have this right to. Yes. So when it comes to the congestion pricing, I put up on my feed last night, I was curious for my own followers how they were liking it. And, you know, I think universally everyone likes

who responded at least to me, obviously it's not a scientific poll, but Twitter is filled with cranky conservative people who don't, and they are not shy about sharing their opinions with me. You can just scroll through my feed and see. Everyone is like, the streets are, the commutes are less. I'm shaving a half an hour to an hour off my commute. You can walk around the city better.

public transportation ridership is up, and money is flowing in to the city that is supposed to be earmarked to upgrade the subways. And the buses, as somebody pointed out, the buses from New Jersey are making it through the tunnels much more smoothly, which then makes being able to take the bus

a much more feasible thing. Before, like I'm not going to take the bus and sit for 30 minutes inside this tunnel. Yeah. But now if it's going to move through and if the bus, if you're taking the bus from Harlem all the way down and it's moving much quicker and all of a sudden,

A bus trip, which previously was not even something that you would consider doing because who wants to sit on a bus for an hour and a half? Now all of a sudden it's reasonable. And now your Uber and your taxi rides are much quicker too. So everyone seems happy, obviously except for people who are getting hit with the toll. But a lot of the people who are paying the toll are like, it's taking me an hour less and I'm

Time is valuable and I will spend that That's a great point - yeah I actually have taken a bunch of those Express buses from New Jersey into the city and if you haven't lived there or done that like you may not know that they come like If you are in a certain area, they'll come like every 10 minutes. It's actually very practical It's not a hardship to walk out one block

wait for this bus for five minutes, and if you miss it, get the next one 10 minutes later, and zoom into the city and be dropped in Midtown Manhattan. And can help with your commute. So working class people are commuting into Manhattan. Well, working class people can commute to somewhere else and then take public transportation. Take the public transit, yeah. I talked to some friends who live in the city who were very upset about this because they feel like

for once, there was something that was done that immediately actually improved their lives. Right. Imagine that. And made life easier. I mean, you know, I lived in Manhattan for a number of years and the nightmare of trying to get from one side down to the other or get down, down or up to end, not know. And that's the thing too, is like,

not knowing, is this going to be a day where it's going to take 30 minutes? Is it going to be a day where it takes an hour and ultimately I just like bail out of bail out and walk the last mile or whatever, you know, and to have that level of predictability and just ease of movement, it really is like a freeing, a sense of freedom that people had gained with this congestion pricing because it had made such an improvement. And then to have Trump just come in out of spite,

effectively and totally reverse it. Yeah, I think that this is this was a material improvement for people who live in New York City. The other piece here with the like long live the king part is I feel a little bit like, you know, gaslit in the same way with Elon Musk's like Heil Hitler thing. Like we're supposed to pretend like that.

you didn't just do the thing that we saw you do. Like, don't get mad about us calling you a dictator when you're calling yourself a king and a dictator and sharing this time magazine, fake time magazine of you as a king on, you know, on from the official White House Twitter account. Also, this wasn't some rando.

But, you know, I was saying to you earlier, I also think it is a little bit of him trying to reclaim his power because it is true that Elon of the two of them seems like the much more powerful entity now. Trump is mostly out playing golf. The number of days he's played golf already in this administration is quite extraordinary. He wants to do the pieces he wants to do. And a lot of it does feel like it's been sort of like

handed over and outsourced to Elon. So I think he also wanted to reassert himself a little bit here. The Eric Adams dynamic is interesting to me. And by the way, you know that this is really popular because Kathy Hochul is actually taking a stand in favor of it. And this is the most like,

weak-kneed, pathetic Democratic leader you can imagine. Feeling to the suburbs. Yeah, exactly. And so the fact that she is stridently and in multiple posts aggressively defending congestion pricing tells you just how popular it is with New Yorkers, not just like some tiny sliver of lefties in Brooklyn or whatever. And I do think that it probably makes her more likely to exercise the power she does have.

to remove Eric Adams from office. But, you know, she's been meeting with a variety of leaders, getting their opinions on that. Apparently there's some concern. I don't know what his numbers are at this point. They can't be good. There's this knee-jerk assumption that he still has strong support among black voters.

In the city and in the state, and I just maybe, but I haven't seen the polling to justify that. I would think that they would be disgusted with the, you know, corruption and self-dealing and cozying up to Trump as much as or more than anybody else. And yesterday you had a significant number of black elected officials coming out and supporting Eric Adams as black elected officials. Like they were saying, as a black elected official, we oppose Trump.

Kathy Hochul removing Eric Adams. So there is, at least on the elected level, that kind of pushback being organized. Yeah. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they speak really for anybody but themselves. And also there are other black elected officials that you could have in that office who are interested in the seat as well. It would be Jumaane Williams who would become mayor, right? Yeah, that's right. Which would be kind of amazing because he's

Just kind of a radical lefty Working Families Party guy. Yeah, it would be a pretty dramatic ideological shift from Trump de facto running New York City, as he apparently does now, to having a Working Families Party left. Trump should go spend some time in New York. He hasn't been there the last month. But traffic in front of the Trump Tower, it's just constant fumes. And you can't move.

He should go check it out. Maybe he'll like it. I mean, if it's all at the whim of the king, then the king needs to get in his chariot and go to New York City. Increasing the value of his properties within Manhattan. It absolutely would. That's the appeal to make there. Yeah.

All right, let's go ahead and get to our guest who's been directly impacted by some of the federal freezes and hear his story. We're really fortunate to be joined this morning by someone who has been impacted by some of these across-the-board spending freezes. Bob Blake is the founder of SolarBear, a full-service solar installation company, and also Native Sun Community Power Development, a Native-led nonprofit that promotes renewable energy and energy efficiency. Great to meet you, Bob. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me. Yeah. So you got this notification, like a letter from the federal government on January 28th. Um, give us a sense of what you were up to and how this has impacted you. Yeah. Well, we had a number of projects that we were working on, uh, between electric vehicles, um,

And also solar projects, battery projects through the Department of Energy and other agencies. And we got this letter saying to essentially stop that, you know, in all these different projects.

And so we adhere to the letter because it did come down from this particular administration. And so we're kind of sitting in a spot where we're kind of in limbo right now trying to figure out exactly what our next moves are going to be. And so if you're trying to talk to somebody, let's say somebody is watching this and their number one concern is they want to

cut the deficit, cut government spending, and make things more affordable for people here in the United States. What would you say to them about this spending and whether that's actually going to accomplish that long term?

Yeah, great question. You know, a lot of these projects are around and focusing on renewable energy. And we know that that is one of the cheapest sources of energy that we can, you know, use. The other part about this is a lot of these projects are out in rural communities where

where, you know, because of the weather patterns, because of what's currently happening with climate change, you know, a lot of the savings are going to go into these communities. And not only that, but hire these individuals to be able to work

you know, work in this industry. So, you know, this is really going to affect, you know, a lot of these most vulnerable communities, especially in rural America, where a lot of this funding and a lot of this money is concentrated at.

And so tell us specifically about the programs you were working on. I know one was for building on electric vehicle chargers. Another was a solar installation project. Give us a little bit of the nitty gritty about why these particular projects were important for these particular communities.

Yes. Well, they were going to save the average American, right, fuel savings. You know, we deal with energy poverty in these areas. They were going to be able to save them on their electricity bill. We know that a lot of folks that, you know, lose their homes, one of the first things they can't do is pay their electricity bill. So it's kind of, you know, a

a way for us to be able to keep people in their homes, the jobs, the operations and maintenance that were going to be happening from these particular projects, the workforce development opportunities that were going to be happening from this. Also, just the opportunity that one of the battery projects was actually going to be backing up a criminal justice complex.

So, you know, and those extra savings could have went into rehabilitation programs, being able to offer, you know, folks the ability to get a job when released. So there's a lot of things here that I believe that, you know, that these savings could have helped these communities by implementing them. So what's going to happen without this federal money?

Well, currently right now, these projects are on hold. I hope that this administration reconsiders because investment into rural America is an investment into this country, investment into...

to energy sovereignty is an investment into this country. So I hope that this administration reconsiders their actions and then we can continue forward with these great projects that the past administration felt like were needed. - It just occurred to me, by the way, are the workers who are being furloughed as a result of these projects being shut down applying for unemployment benefits as we speak?

You know, I can't speak for every subcontractor, but, you know, what happens a lot of times in these situations is that they do have to apply for, you know, benefits. Which you can imagine why I'm asking that question, because the person who is eyeing this from the perspective of trying to save taxpayer money

has to realize that what they just did is they're still paying people taxpayer money, except now they're paying them to sit at home in homes powered by fossil fuels that are more expensive instead of paying them to go out and develop renewable energy.

Right. And I think you get to a much bigger picture, right, is the purpose that these folks get from doing this kind of work, right? And this is how we battle the social ills that are plaguing our community, like drug addictions, alcoholism. We can go down the list, but you give these folks the purpose and the opportunity to get up every morning and serve their communities better.

You know, there's other ways that, you know, and if you don't do that, they're going to fall into these other traps. And that's one of the things that I'm concerned about and that I worry about because, you know, we all love our communities and we just want the best for them. Well, and of course, it's also just one more broken promise between the federal government and these tribal nations also that you're working in that has to fuel a lot

long and very justified sentiment of, you know, you can't trust these people. They're not going to be there for us when we need them.

Great point. You know, um, that that's another thing here. A lot of my projects are in tribal communities. Um, and there's been a lot of broken promises between the United States government and tribal nations. Um, there is a nation to nation trust responsibility that I believe that United States government needs to fulfill. Um, the, uh,

Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch did point out that treaties are the supreme law of the land. I hope that this president and this administration adheres to that. So you're absolutely correct. This is just another long list of broken promises that are happening in Native Country. My last question for you, Bob, and then Ryan may have one as well, but what do you do next? What's your plan from here? Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.

Yeah, well, you know, I, I will continue to advocate for, you know, uh, a greener, cleaner future for, for all, for, for all. And, and, um, we will try to get these, uh, these projects, uh, financed some way, somehow. Um, and, um, you know, the bottom line is, is that a lot of people are counting on us and, and we, we want to, we want to come through. So, um, that's going to be my next job. Um,

And I hope that we can continue to fulfill our at least our promise to these communities. Well, thank you, Bob. It's a pleasure to meet you. And we're really grateful for you sharing your story. Thank you for having me. It's our pleasure.

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As we discussed earlier this week, Argentina's president just hyped a massive crypto shitcoin pump and dump, which effectively robbed his own biggest supporters. The whole thing was ultimately quite similar to the scheme Trump also pulled, and lo and behold, some of the same people were involved in this Argentina Libra rug pull as were involved in the Melania rug pull. YouTube scam investigator CoffeeZilla managed to score an interview with one of these fraudsters, and there was a particular part that helped me

put together something I've been trying to articulate since the beginning of Trump 2.0, whether with regard to Doge, Maha, or the new return to outright colonialism and imperialism. The moment came towards the end of the interview after this scammer, his name is Hayden Davis, admits that all crypto is, quote, dog shit. How then does he justify his role in massive repeated scams of people using this, quote unquote, dog shit? Take a listen to what he had to say. I'm very pro, uh,

getting everything away from regulated markets. But I'm now recognizing, because I think that that's another game. I think that's an insider game, right? Whether it's the Pelosi's of the world or the stock game, that's an insider game too. It's just a different type and people have to be more careful. But capital markets are an insider game. The whole thing is. Nobody's ever going to convince me that it's not rigged. Banks pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year to

to do illegal shit because they can make more money other ways. Like I could keep going on with bullshit after bullshit after bullshit. I think if you're going to die on the sword of meme coins being insider this or sniping that, like you're full of shit because there's – every market in the world is like that. That makes a shitload of money. Well, yeah. I just want to put a note in that. If your argument for capital markets is –

They are rigged. That's actually an argument for more regulation against rigging than it is for less. Like you wouldn't look at a rigged game and go, hey, guys, let's take away all the rules we had in place anyway to try to stop it getting rigged, right? Yeah, but then you have to trust the regulators, and most of them are being paid off, and that's been proven time and time forever because humans are flawed, right?

But once again, the conclusion to like seeing problems in the world is not like you realize like your brakes aren't working correctly. It's not to go like, hey, the brake manufacturers paid off. So let's just not have brakes at all. It's going it's methodically approaching it and going, OK, we need to advocate for more regulation here. We need to advocate for more rules here saying like, oh, yeah, it's all rigged. Isn't the dunk?

That people think it is on rules in general. Does that make sense? Sure, but it doesn't matter. Like that to me is kind of a – a little bit of a mute point because it's like it doesn't matter. The people that have the most money, the most access, and the most control, which is insiders, in any market in the world always win.

So Hayden basically says, well, mainstream financial markets are scammy too, so I'm going to get mine with an even more brazen scam. Coffey, of course, correctly points out the answer to financial fraud is better laws, enforcement, less corruption, but Hayden's already made up his mind. Since the big banks are imperfect, we should just give up on policing things like rug pulls, insider trading, and outright theft.

Now, that philosophy actually seems to me to be pretty core to the ethos of Trump 2.0. It's a dark nihilism that effectively says, look, everything's bad, so let's just make it worse. Since the financial system is gamed by insiders, let's just go full open scam. Since money has infected politics, let's just take open bribes. Since we've been hypocritical about international law, let's just revert to pure barbarism.

It's an ethos that I think is very much at the core of the anarcho-capitalist ideology that Elon and Project 2025 architect Russ Vogt have infused the second Trump administration with. Since governments can't fully check corporate power, just disband the government, privatize all functions, and let the oligarch CEO dictators run wild. Don't believe me? Just listen to Marc Andreessen, as influential a person as any in this administration, explain how since democracy will always be flawed, we

We should just openly embrace oligarchy. So the iron law of oligarchy basically says democracy is fake. There's always a ruling class. There's always a ruling elite structurally. And he said the reason for that is because the masses can't organize. Right. What's the fundamental problem? Whether the mass is 25,000 people in a union or 250 million people in a country, the masses can't organize. The majority cannot organize. Only a minority can organize.

And to be effective in politics, you must organize. And therefore, every political structure in human history has been some form of a small organized elite ruling a large and dispersed majority.

every single one. And so basically, the presumption that we are in a democracy is just sort of by definition fake. Now, good news for the US, it turns out the founders understood this. And so of course, they didn't give us a direct democracy, they gave us a representative democracy, right? And so they built the oligarchy into the system in the form of Congress and the executive branch and the judicial branch. But so anyway, so as a consequence, democracy is always and everywhere fake. There is always a ruling elite.

And basically the lesson of the Machiavellians is you can deny that if you want, but you're fooling yourself. The way to actually think about how to make a system work and maintain any sort of shred of freedom is to actually understand that that is actually what's happening.

So the basic message here is democracy is fake, so just give up on letting people have a say and embrace your billionaire overlords. You can see how this ideology, also tied to the ideas of Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin, the so-called dark enlightenment or neo-reactionary movements, how this provides a very convenient philosophical backdrop for Elon to execute on his own plans and personally selected goals for humanity. Elon...

He wants total power. And this ideology provides him a pathway to exactly that. I've been reading Walter Isaacson's biography on Elon. One thing you really get is how he has personally cast himself as the savior of humanity. Launches SpaceX. That's a sort of insane boondoggle at the start. He believes he must personally guarantee humanity's future as a multi-planetary species.

Never mind that none of us voted for the CEO dictator king to destroy the lives of working class people in order to chase his Martian dream. If Elon's multi-planetary goal takes shredding the Constitution, so be it. If it takes sentencing kids with HIV in Africa to death, so be it. If it takes hijacking the entire resources of the United States government to funnel into SpaceX, so be it.

But in order for the public to just sit back and watch their data and their tax dollars and their voice in our government all plundered by the richest man on earth, some critical mass has to be convinced that the government wasn't really worth saving anyway. That their voice in our government and their rights that are protected by that government were not really worth preserving after all. That perhaps all those things were fake to begin with, as Andreessen wants them to believe. And the role of this ideology of nihilism is to persuade Americans of exactly that. And look,

I actually understand some of the appeal. There's a feel of honesty to this level of nihilism, to saying, as Hayden Davis did, "Well, the insiders always come out on top, so why not just celebrate it?" Or, "Democracy never can be perfected, so let's just embrace our oligarchs." It's an appeal that has kind of always been at the core of Trump, helps to explain why, even though he lies more than probably any person I've ever known outside of Elon, why so many people continue to view him as an exceptionally honest politician.

He doesn't bother to hide his schemes, doesn't bother to hide his crimes. He will just say, we want Ukraine for the rare earths rather than dressing it up in democracy language. He will just say, we're going to permanently remove every Palestinian from Gaza rather than pretending that some sovereign state for Palestinians is just around the corner. Rather than doing a little insider trading a la most of Congress, he will just launch his own shit coin to openly scam his own people to the tune of billions of dollars. Right?

Rather than spin the truth in a way that's shady but still has some connection to reality, he'll just make shit up out of thin air and really doesn't care if you know it that it's an out-and-out lie. This brazenness gives his lies somehow the vibe of honesty. The "everything is bad, let's make it worse" nihilism also provides another kind of psychological reward because it prizes a total lack of self-restraint. If big banks are reading the system, why should Hayden Davis restrain himself from running mass scams?

If politicians spin an office gate, why shouldn't you lie and cheat to get ahead? And what fun really ultimately is self-restraint? Feels good to let loose, say and do whatever you want to do. That removal of the burden of self-restraint was experienced as a sort of liberation for plenty after Trump won.

In the immediate aftermath of Trump's victory, a top banker delightedly told the Financial Times how happy he was that he could use slurs in the workplace again. Quote, I feel liberated, one top banker told the paper. We can say the R word and the P word without the fear of getting canceled, except he actually said them. It's a new dawn. In fact, the most celebrated quality in Trump world is shamelessness.

The more you're willing to openly contradict previously held beliefs, operate with total and complete hypocrisy, the more successful you're going to be. The more you can turn off your feelings of empathy, concern for others, the more based you are. So you can, as Elon has, brand yourself as the ultimate guarantor of free speech in one breath and in the very next call for journalists at a troublesome media outlet to be jailed. You can, as Trump did, position yourself as the party of workers as you gut every aspect of worker rights.

You can, as RFK Jr. did, claim you're on a mission to make America healthy again and then say absolutely nothing as a seed oil lobbyist is installed at the USDA and life-saving disease research is gutted. You can compile an ASMR video of migrants being deported so your most deranged supporters can be stimulated by the visuals of human beings treated as animals. So based, Elon replied.

These lies, cruelties, and hypocrisy, they all trigger outrage. And outrage generation is the most valuable currency in Trump world. Those with the shamelessness to trigger the most of it rise the highest.

But at the core of all of this is that ethos that since the institutions let you down, you may as well have a Bacchanal burning it all to the ground, letting your own worst impulses and those of the society and human nature itself run wild. It's whataboutism brought to its logical conclusion. Since Hillary sent emails on a private server, how can anyone complain about Elon and his hackers downloading all the data of the entire federal government?

Since the insiders always come out on top, why not just give the insiders everything up front to begin with? Since the voices of the masses were being drowned out by the wealthy, just hand over all the keys to the wealthiest person on the entire planet. To borrow Coffeezilla's analogy here, their answer to the brakes failing is to rip the brakes down entirely and send the car careening towards a cliff. Listen, it's a fun and easy solution right up until the crash.

Much harder, of course, is the work of building up institutions, making them strong, making them credible. Much harder is checking the rich and the powerful, bringing back a balance of power to working people. Much harder is checking imperial power and restoring a semblance of global cooperation and respect. But to use an Elon phrase here, society is at a fork in the road. On one path lies a rebuilt New Deal with capital check to government unafraid of standing up to the wealthiest social contract that provides stability, prosperity for everyone.

On the other path lies the societal equivalent of a crypto pump and dump scheme, where for a brief moment, you might actually feel like you're winning right before the rug is pulled. And insiders like Elon, Andreessen, Peter Thiel, the Trumps, the rest of the billionaire class rob you blind.

To be honest, we might already be set irrevocably on that bump and dump path, but it is our responsibility to our loved ones, our kids, future generations to never stop fighting and to never stop believing fundamentally that humans are capable of more than just burning it all down. And Ryan, I was curious in particular your thoughts on that. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

Been fun chatting with you today, Ryan Grimm. As always. It was a grim takeover this week, I was saying. That's right. Yes, that's right. And hopefully Saga's back next week. Like we were saying, this flu is... This season has been brutal. And I was reading, I should get the flu shot, but I was looking at it, and it's apparently not that great a match either. I got it yesterday. I know.

I didn't tell you why you were getting it, but apparently in some years it's like a really good match. It provides a lot of like, you know, preventative and lessons that, whatever, lessons that will help us a lot more. And this year it's like not the greatest. It's a bit of a crap shoot. Yeah. They do their best. They try to see like our, what was it?

Last year, how do we... Well, and I guess maybe that's one of the things, the potential promises of the mRNA vaccine is because they can develop it more quickly. Maybe they can make it a better match. But in any case, we hope Sager feels better. We hope you guys have a great weekend. If there's breaking news, we'll make sure to jump on and cover it for you. Are we going to be here tomorrow? What do you think? Not here, but...

We'll chat. We'll chat. Yeah. We're a little shorthanded this week, so we'll try to do a thing tomorrow where we've got to see if we've got the resources, et cetera, et cetera. So in any case, if we don't see you tomorrow, enjoy your weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday.

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