3/13/25: Dems Plot Fake Shutdown Resistance, GOP Senator Downplays Market Crash, Gov Spending Record High Despite DOGE
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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

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Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big breaking news updates. We've got the very latest for you on that effort to pass a CR as Senate Dems plot what their move will be. We got some new inflation numbers, potentially good news for this White House amidst economic turmoil and some interesting new comments from Tommy Tuberville as well. Doge so far in terms of the alleged cut spending goal, not really making a dent. Actually, spending is up.

after even all of their chainsaw efforts. So break down what that means. We've got the latest for you on Mahmoud Khalil and some other censorship efforts. We've got Zionists claiming a scalp in the Trump administration. This was an important battle. Didn't want to let this one slide by. Greasy Gavin meets Sloppy Steve.

I have some highlights from that podcast to share with you and what it all means about the future of the Democratic Party. And it is the end of an era at Southwest Airlines. They are now going to charge for bags joining the rest of the industry. So very sad to see. It is sad to see because I think it just really is a demarcation point in the overall U.S. economy and the consumer experience. We live truly in the idiocracy in the world in which we're all just going to get charged for everything in corporate states everywhere.

It's sad. It's sad. Crystal, what do you got here? This is a new one for you. Crystal's got an energy drink on the desk. Usually I'm the only can. A little promo. Alani. Yeah. By the way, we're not getting paid for this. Not getting paid. This is, it's sort of like, it tastes like a creamsicle. They're delicious and it's almost like bottled crack. Okay. There you go. About halfway through it. So things will get even more interesting as we go along. All right. Let's get to the checkout. All right. Let's get to the CR. All right.

I hate this topic because it's so like in the weeds D.C., but the TLDR is if the House and the Senate do not pass some sort of budget funding, then the government is going to shut down in a day's time. The House Republicans were able to pass a continuing resolution. They lost one vote from their caucus. They gained one vote from the Democratic caucus, but pretty much down a party line vote.

They did not negotiate with the Democrats on this. I'll give you a few more details about the CRUPS defense spending a little bit. It reduces some domestic spending by a bit. It has some other provisions in it that Democrats really object to. So that passes the House on more or less a party line vote. Then it goes to the Senate. Well, the Senate's a little more interesting because of the filibuster rules. They have to get...

seven Democratic senators because Rand Paul has already said he is not going to vote for it. So it was looking yesterday like the Democratic senators were just going to cave and vote for this CR. And this is extremely consequential because it is really the only time when Republicans are going to need Democrats for anything at all. So this is truly their only moment of leverage. The Democratic base is very adamant.

that they do not want Democratic senators to help Republicans to fund the government and give what they see as a carte blanche to Trump and to Elon to continue doing whatever the hell that they want to do. So there has been a mass mobilization of the Democratic base to call their senators and tell them vote no.

So yesterday it was a real open question. It looked like they were going to cave. And then Chuck Schumer gets on the Senate floor and seems to indicate a different strategy. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he has to say. Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their continuing resolution without any input, any input from congressional Democrats. Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate

to invoke cloture on the House CR. Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11th CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass. We should vote on that. I hope, I hope our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday.

So what he floats there is a 30-day, quote unquote, clean CR, which means the same funding levels as currently exist. No messing around, no different provisions, no rolling back this, no adding money to defense, et cetera, just for 30 days so that they can negotiate on a broader package. So initially, there were a lot of, you know, Democratic activists who were like, oh, my God, they're actually not going to cave. But what it looks like is

actually probably happening, although none of this is a done deal yet, is that they are more, it's less that they're not going to cave and more that they're coming up with a strategy to try to trick their own base into thinking that they're fighting for something. So let's put this up on the screen. This is the latest from Manu Raju over at CNN. He says, John Thune, who's the Senate majority leader now, takes the procedural step to bring the House spending bill to the

floor. The vote would occur Friday morning, hours before the government shutdown deadline, unless there's an agreement to have it sooner. 60 votes would be needed. Schumer is threatening to block it. But senators on both sides think an agreement to give Dems an amendment vote for a 30-day extension, which would fail, could help end the standoff. So effectively, Democrats' strategy appears to be that they're going to push for this show vote.

on a 30-day CR. They're going to vote for cloture, so they're going to not filibuster the whole thing. Their little 30-day show vote will fail. But since they've already voted for cloture, that means that Republicans can move forward with their CR and pass it with a bare majority. They no longer need the Democrats, and things move forward. So like I said, I know that was a lot, but the TLDR is that Democrats...

appear to be trying to come up with a plan to trick their own base into thinking they are not caving when they in fact are caving. - Right, it's hilarious because it would take people like us to sit here and to explain it to everyone. But the point is is that this is actually fecklessness on their part because they're getting a lot of pressure

to try and appear as if they're standing up to Trump. And if you compare it to, let's say, the Tea Party, I mean, they would have no qualms whatsoever of voting this thing down. They're like, "Absolutely not. "You're gonna give us what we want. "Oh, the House is out of town? "We don't care, shut the government down." If you think about it too, you know, the White House seems to think that they would be on strong grounds for a shutdown. I don't think that that's true because people usually blame the party in power of all three, and the executive largely is the person who absorbs

all of that. I think actually one reason I heard floated is that Democrats are terrified of a shutdown because then Trump gets to decide who is essential government personnel and who's not. So it would only be even easier for him and Doge to fire the employees. But broadly, people should be aware here. The Democratic leadership is rudderless. They have no idea what they're doing. The Democratic senators are actually getting quite a bit of

calls and others to their offices telling them, hey, please, like, do something. And they just refuse, basically, to even try. So they're trying to show people, oh, well, we did this. But I mean, I don't think that people, voters and others, are going to buy it. They're going to see that at the end of the day, nothing goes through the Senate unless the Democrats want it to pass. Like, let's be clear here. In a world without the filibuster, and you still need 60 votes for cloture, if the Dems vote for it, they know exactly what they're doing.

Yeah, I think that's right. And so I think they if this is what they go forward with, with, again, not a done deal yet. And guys, if you want them to stand up, you can call them and let them know. And I know many people out there that are. But

I do think if they, you know, it's almost worse. Like just if you want this thing to go, then just freaking vote for it. Yeah, I agree. Just vote for it. Like don't mess around. Don't try to trick people into thinking you're fighting when really you're not. Like don't do that. I think that will actually just piss people off even more because they're going to see through the trick.

Let me go ahead and play Pramila Jayapal, who, of course, a progressive leader in the House, warning Democratic senators of exactly what Sagar is saying, which is you may face a real backlash if you go along with Republicans and this one moment when they need you and when you have some leverage to potentially extract something from them in this negotiation. Let's take a listen to what she has to say. They should refuse to allow this bill to pass in the Senate. If they don't.

I think there's going to be huge backlash from across the country. And I think all of them will, you know, will have to deal with the consequences of that. The Republicans have the White House, the Senate and the House. If they want to do this and if they want to screw over the American people, they can do this with their votes and their party. I do not believe that Democrats should participate. And to Sager's point about the Democratic leadership being rudderless,

We have all known for months now that this shutdown fight was coming on March 14th. And yet they had not worked out a strategy. They hadn't really aggressively messaged around it. So, you know, that there isn't a clear cut, like,

okay, here's what we're demanding in exchange. Like we will support, we don't want to shut down the government because we're Democrats and we support the government, whatever. But here's our list of demands. None of that has been developed. None of that has been messaged. To address

what Sagar was saying, too, about, you know, the concern that, listen, number one, for Democrats, it's uncomfortable because they are the party of like, hey, we actually think that government does some good things. It's a different ideological orientation versus the Tea Party that's like, screw government, whatever. We don't care if it shuts down. So that is uncomfortable. But to address that core concern of like, OK, so if there's a government shutdown, then maybe you're just handing power to Trump and Elon to say who's essential and who's not. And I just look at that and I'm like, what world are you living in? Because they're already operating that way.

I mean, we just got the, you know, Department of Education just got slashed by half this week. USAID was just completely dismantled, as was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Like, probationary employees were mass fired across the government. Elon and Doge are deciding what they feel like spending and what they don't.

So you that ship has sailed like they already are calling the shots on literally everything. They are racking up losses in terms of the court system. But as you can tell, like that is taking a long time for any of that to be enforced or final decisions to be made, et cetera. And meanwhile, they're just rolling through and doing whatever they want. So if you think that you're protecting something by going along with this and continuing like the government

is effectively already in a shutdown in a certain sense because Trump and Elon have already claimed those powers for themselves. Yeah, I think it is just ironic that really what we're watching is a fall apart of the Democratic strategy, which doesn't have a singular pillar like last time, which was just Russiagate. And so this time around, whenever they're trying to be and find a message, they just don't really know quite what to do. I also think that there is an elderly aspect

to this with Schumer, where Schumer is a traditionalist of the White House. He's not somebody who's ever read the base and or its moments. So his political movement is not one that at least like with McConnell, McConnell was an old school creature, but he understood very clearly the assignment. If we'll all remember the famous quote of him in 2009, and he's like, our job is to get Barack Obama not reelected.

period. He's like, we're not here to do anything else. Our job is to defeat Obama. That's it. We need to hold up the president's agenda. And he laid it out very clearly. That was a big scandal in Washington at the time. But if we're looking back, it was the correct strategy if you were working on behalf of the Republicans, because what the Republicans saw is their base hated Obama. They didn't want anything to do with any senator or whoever was going to play ball. And that

happened in the Tea Party wave, many of the people who got took out, many of the incumbents, even in their primaries, were those who saw as too conciliatory to the administration. So at a political level, they just have no clue yet what they're dealing with right now. And I do think it's a, I think it's a big problem for them. I mean, I would,

be inclined to agree with your assessment that it's like elderly gerontocracy. I think that's part of it. But then when you see Bernie Sanders, who was like 83 years old, who's out there and like leading the charge. I mean, Bernie has, Bernie is,

Bernie is the leader of the Democratic Party right now. Like he has stepped into that role. I think that is, you know, I don't think that's true. I think that is absolutely true in terms of the he is the one person who is like setting the bar of, OK, here's what we're going to do and here's how we're going to move forward. Here's how we're messaging. That's what I mean by he is the leader of the Democratic Party at this point. It sure as hell is not Chuck Schumer. And so I think it's less an issue of his age and more an issue of an like

a cowardice that has set in at the core

of Democratic Party electeds, especially like elected leaders. They are so afraid of rocking the boat, of facing some blowback, of having to make a case, of really getting into the arena. And that's, to me, what really comes through here because, again, we've known the shutdown fight was coming. Okay, if you don't think this is the place to take a stand and like put your chips down and like use what little bit of leverage you have, then...

What is your other plan? Like, give an alternative where you're, okay, well, no, we're not going to do it. But here's where we really think we're going to take a stand. It's not going to be on reconciliation, which is the next big thing that's going to come up because that doesn't require you. That requires you.

That requires only a bare majority vote in the Senate. There is no 60 vote filibuster on the reconciliation bill. So where is the other place where you're going to take any sort of a stand? So that's why, I mean, it really is just so clear that they are not up to the moment. You know, it's like it's telling that they feel at least some pressure from the base. Like, OK, we've got to at least try to trick them into thinking we're fighting for something. But I think you're fools if you think they're really going to fall for it.

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Hi, I'm Matt. And I'm Leah, and we're from the Grown Up Stuff podcast. And just in time for tax season, on this week's episode, we're chatting with CPA Lisa Green-Lewis about how small businesses can tackle their taxes using TurboTax Business.

A Forbes study mentioned that a whopping 93% of small businesses overpay their taxes. And 17% of Gen Zers believed that you could write off any expense as a business expense. So it's really important to do your taxes right. Listen to Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

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The last thing I wanted to mention about this CR, and this will transition into the block we're about to do about the economy, which is just a little interesting nugget in there. You know, they put these little provisions in, think that nobody's really going to notice. They put this up on the screen. So inserted into this continuing resolution is

is an item to what the New York Times describes as quietly cede power to cancel Trump's tariffs, avoiding a tough vote. So it says House Republican leaders on Tuesday quietly moved to shield their members from having to vote on whether to end President Trump's tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, tucking language into the procedural measure, that's the CR, that effectively removes their chamber's ability to undo the levies. The maneuver was a tacit

acknowledgement of how politically toxic the issue had become for their party. Another example of how the all Republican Congress is ceding its power to the executive branch. So they don't want to have to take an up or down vote on Trump's tariffs because they don't want to get crosswise with Trump. But

Business world hates the tariffs. The tariffs are very unpopular at this point. So they're just like, OK, we just we're going to wash our hands of it and just let you do whatever. And we're not going to have any say in it here. That's not that's really not surprising, actually, at all, because why would you want to take a tough vote? This is also part of the problem with all of these things getting lumped together as usual. They always don't want to make it so that they have to take single up or downs. But I don't know.

I'm curious to see if that's so base reaction. I mean, my thing with the only reason I said I don't think Bernie is the leader. I think that's a little bit of progressive wish casting. Like it's not like this Democratic base is all on board with Medicare for all or all this other stuff. They just want somebody to, quote, fight. So Democrats like, you know, they want the activism. That's like the beating heart of what they think is being a Democrat right now.

I don't know. I mean, I'm just skeptical because if this were true, then that guy Zoran would be winning, you know, hands down in the New York City primary, right? And it's just not going to happen. Like, I mean, I said on, I think, our editorial call, my call is Cuomo by 50. Like, the truth is, is that these traditional Democratic politicians and others, even if as long as they embody like somewhat of the fight, they seem to be massively more popular, you know, than any sort of called of like actual progressive politicians.

politics. So I just don't think we can say Bernie is, quote, the leader of the Democratic Party. I just think that the fight and all of that is being dispersed in popularity across the board. But there are still like serious policy differences and even like theoretical differences in power and all of that that are working out right now. So let me let me parse that a little. We could say more of this conversation with the block we have coming about on

up about the Democrats. So first of all, I disagree with you that the base doesn't want Medicare for all. Even when, I mean, when Bernie was losing to Joe Biden, still a overwhelming majority of Democratic base voters preferred Medicare for all. But the reason they voted for Joe Biden is because they thought he was more electable and they wanted to defeat Trump. And that was their number. They were convinced of that. And that was their number one issue. So it really, you know, didn't have

ultimately the election didn't turn on Medicare for all in the Democratic primary. If it did, Bernie, they would have picked Bernie Sanders. That's number one. But number two, you're absolutely right that, you know, from talking to Brian Tyler Cohen, you get the sense like it's not that Democratic based voters have suddenly become like more progressive in terms of their ideological valence. They just want someone who will fight. So if that person is Jasmine Crockett, who is more mixed

in terms of her, you know, the ideological valence of her. She's been like pro-crypto. She's been more like pro-Israel. But she is a fighter and she's very charismatic and she's not afraid to get in there and mix it up. Like...

They will take her. They will take Al Green. They will take Bernie Sanders. They will take AOC. It really you're 100 percent correct that it has much less to do with where they position themselves on a left right spectrum and more about where they position themselves on. Are you willing to actually stand up and fight and do something about

and at least show that you're upset about what's going on in this era. And so I think that's really sort of the core here. And, you know, if you are a Democratic leader who thinks that the right thing to do is, for example, to just like, you know, hang out and make nice with Charlie Kirk all day, it doesn't really matter where you are on the ideological spectrum. They're going to see that as totally unacceptable. I want to see to see if the, because for this theory to work, then these people have to start actually getting serious primary opponents and losing.

And I mean, we're not really going to find that out for another 18 months. But I'm curious, like, let's watch everybody. And if anybody sees a serious challenge to a real Democratic incumbent, let us know. I want to track those campaigns and maybe we can compile like a spreadsheet or something and then check. We can have the Justice Democrats people on and talk to them about what they're saying. I mean, no offense to them, though, but it's like, you know, they don't have a very good track record.

here. So that's why I just, I am very skeptical of all these people's political judgment. I have not yet seen any truth to the fact that these folks are truly harnessing anything to like be able to win an election. You know, you can have some power, you can have some social media buzz and that, but actually winning is a very, very different thing.

I'm still very skeptical. The other people that would be interesting to have on are the Indivisible people because they're not Bernie people. In fact, they were sort of adversarial to some of the Bernie primary candidates. Who was Indivisible? I forget Indivisible. They sprung up after Trump was elected the first time. And they were like the sort of core resistance group that sprung up in counties across the country. And so they are the ones who...

Again, they're they're ideologically they're just like squarely in the sort of Democratic liberal mainstream and thoroughly disgusted with the lackluster rudderless approach of the Democratic Party. So, you know, be interesting to talk to them and see what they're hearing from their groups. And I know that they're one of the groups that.

Hakeem Jeffries was pissed off at them because their members were like calling Democratic leadership and telling them to stand up. I know that their meetings have been flooded with people who are showing up like, what can we do? How can we fight back, et cetera? And again, this is not, you know, this isn't just a summer. It's not Bernie aligned. This is like,

base liberal resistance voters who are now truly disgusted with Democratic leadership in a way that is so different from 2016 when Nancy Pelosi was a hero and Adam Schiff was a hero and they felt like Democrats were truly fighting for them and on their behalf and they were loving MSNBC and all of that stuff. Yeah. So I think it'd be really interesting to talk to them about what shifts they're seeing and what kind of energy they're seeing and how they're feeling about how things are going because again, Democratic leadership's underwater.

with the Democratic base. And I've never seen that be the case. Yeah, but Republican leadership's always underwater with the Republican base. Yeah, but that's the point. It's like the Tea Party was a real thing. Yeah, it was until it wasn't, right? And it's like it was, and then Paul Ryan was there, and he was unpopular even though he was a Tea Party guy. And then Mike Johnson is here, and he's unpopular, you know, with the base. Who came before him? McCarthy, he was unpopular. But so it's like, I don't know. It's one of those where...

Congress in general is always a popular. There's much more rebellion on the Republican side. Yes. And now you have a Democratic base that is showing much more rebellion than they previously have vis-a-vis their own leaders and media outlets. I mean, even think about like the 300,000 people who dumped the Washington Post when they didn't endorse Kamala. Yeah.

You know, I mean, that's it. It really is different because that's what determined the 2020 election is that that like liberals were like, tell us who to vote for. And all of those outlets were like, it's Joe Biden. And that was basically that. Yeah, that has changed. That's true. Yeah, I think that's that's a fair point. We'll talk more about this in the Democrats block.

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Hi, I'm Matt. And I'm Leah, and we're from the Grown Up Stuff podcast. And just in time for tax season, on this week's episode, we're chatting with CPA Lisa Green-Lewis about how small businesses can tackle their taxes using TurboTax Business.

A Forbes study mentioned that a whopping 93% of small businesses overpay their taxes. And 17% of Gen Zers believed that you could write off any expense as a business expense. So it's really important to do your taxes right. Listen to Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

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All right, let's talk about the economy, shall we? Because lots of stuff still going on here. Republican senators doing themselves no favors. Senator Tommy Tuberville taking to Fox News saying there's no pain, no gain. That's his message on the tariffs. Let's take a listen. And Trump's tariffs making America great again. It's a great strategy. If somebody's finally doing something out of the White House, President Trump, that is, that says you have to take an action in another country.

Yeah. No pain, no gain. That's what we used to tell our football players. There's going to be some pain with tariffs. But tariffs got us back as the strongest economy in the world when President Trump was in the first time. He knows what he's doing. Democrats get out of the way. Shut up. You have no answers. You didn't do anything right in the last four years with Joe Biden. We have a game plan. Trump has a game plan along with Howard Ludnick and the other people that are pushing the tariffs.

We can turn this thing around. But folks, let me tell you, this is our last chance. If we can't get it done now with tariffs and with putting and pulling regulations and getting people back to work and cutting our debt and cutting the amount of spending, we're not going to have the country that we've had before. So people need to just listen,

- Learn from this, understand it's short-term pain. We're gonna get this turned around. President Trump knows exactly what he's doing and he has a game plan, something Democrats didn't know anything about. - No pain, no gain. These guys have really gotta get their stuff together because that has never been a historical message.

that has worked politically literally ever. You need to instead be talking about the gain part and not really talking or emphasizing the pain. You're like, we have a serious plan. This is what we're doing. These are the number of jobs that are going to be coming back. I saw you and Emily covered that Howard Lutton. Yeah, I wanted to. It was unbelievable. And it's, you know, it's ironic. Two days ago, he said there won't be a recession. So which one is it? And he said, just to remind people, he said a recession would be worth it. Right. Worth it. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Nobody in all of human history in politics has ever, ever succeeded by running on that. And that is the part which is really starting to drive me crazy, is that without any serious affirmation plans and actual trust with the American people that things are going to get better tangibly, quickly, we are a consumption-based society after all, then I don't think that this is going to work. And you really actually risk doing a lot of

damage and reversing a lot of the basically embrace of the American people of targeted tariffs. Most people are on board with tariffs if you sell them correctly and if you tell them, explain the benefits as well as they're part of a plan. But if you have a yo-yo strategy and people basically start to believe that all tariffs are bad, we're going to end up right back to where we are in the first place. No, many tariffs are good. I'm extremely supportive of tariffs. Canada, Mexico, China, etc.,

The problem is is that they're on, then they're off, and then they're off for the auto workers, and then now we're here, and soon we're gonna be giving exemptions, and then we're not giving exemptions, and people can't pay attention

At the same time, their public services are basically remaining flat. So now what? And then, oh, in your retirement account, I think 35% of Americans have 401K, and so their retirement is down. The rest of the 65% of Americans or so are going to be affected by the stock market, basically whether you like it or not. If there's a 20%—so what are we down right now?

from the all-time high. I think we're down roughly like 8% or 9%. S&P futures, while you and I are recording, is all the gains of yesterday are basically being erased. So let's say we go down, we're roughly down 10%. When you're down 20%, you know, not only will we pass correction territory, we're going towards recession territory, there's going to be layoffs. There's no question. You know, the only thing that...

could potentially, I think, save the economy right now as the Federal Reserve. They're not meeting until May to announce their interest rate. Two months is a long time. And America's not a forgiving nation. It's really not with consumption. They will do it if you sell them, if you have a plan, et cetera. But if they feel screwed around with and they just have less money, that's not a good, that's not a,

Not a place to engender any sort of confidence in your government. And we're starting to see some of this tick down. Now, here's the same caveat with all these polls. It could be fake. I have no idea. But there are at least a number of polls right now showing Trump's economic approval going down. I would only pay attention because traditionally it's been even if the polls were fake, even in the fake ones, he's usually been doing pretty well. Here's what the CNN poll had to say.

Donald Trump's current approval rating, according to our brand new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, is 45%. His disapproval, Sarah, is at 54%. He's clearly upside down, underwater, any expression you want to use to say this is not where any president would want to be. And if you look, though, over time, that 45% number,

That was actually his high watermark in all of CNN's polling throughout his first administration. So if you look at the issue set overall, how is he handling the whole host of issues that we tested, there are some issues he scores quite high on. 51% approve of his handling of immigration. But you ask the key question, the economy. It is by far issue number one for voters. Nothing really comes close overall for Americans.

On that score, he's actually performing a tick below his overall approval rating. 44% approve of his handling of the economy. You see that there below his job overall there, the economy, 44%. 56%, Sarah, disapprove. He is minus 12 percentage points on the issue that Americans say is the most important. So everybody take that for what you will. The

point is, is that even our friend Logan Phillips from Race to the White House, he pointed this out. Let's put it up there. On the screen, you know, you currently have a net shift from approval to disapproval, dropped an average of 5.3% across eight separate polls in the Trump overall net approval rating. And all of this, you know, generally tied to, I think, the economy. And you really have to be certain that what you're doing is going to produce a good outcome

and that people are going to be with you throughout that period. And the White House right now is coasting off of being new. We see this in Caroline Levitt's comments. Actually, that's what she told me, right? Whenever I asked about the stock market, but somebody over there actually asked a great question. So like, how much longer are you gonna blame Biden? Here's what she had to say.

How does the White House measure this in terms of when can you not blame it on former President Biden and what does it fully become President Trump's responsibility? Well, we've only been here for 52 days, but certainly the president is working hard every day to, again, bring down the cost of living, which we see is already happening. You see the cost of eggs is going down. Cost of gasoline is going down because of the massive deregulatory efforts of this president. And also the fact that we are

delivering on his promise to drill baby drill already. You saw this past weekend the National Economic Advisory put out a report that because of the regulations we've already slashed in just 52 days, we've saved American taxpayers $180 billion. That comes out to about $2,000 per American household.

That's in 52 days. So the president is working diligently and he's working hard on this every single day. And we need Congress to also help. We need Congress to pass a tax cuts, which the president campaigned on and the vast majority of the American people support. So there you go. She's like, well, we've only been here for 52 days. Look, America will give you runway. That's what I want people to remember. Trump is not sunk. He's not done. There's none of that whatsoever. You still got a long

We're only 53 days or whatever into the administration. However, I'll go back to the Biden administration. He started at a 70-something approval rating. It took him nine months to go underwater. Trump is the most divisive person probably in modern American politics, so started off a little bit lower. But the economy was a huge strength of the administration.

of his, always. The whole like, oh, wish I had mean tweets right now or whatever. And seniors, the people who vote more than anybody, are also the people with the most assets and are going to be paying the most attention to the stock market. So there's a lot of political built-in

peril for the Trump administration right now. And I don't know, I really wonder how much of it is bluster, how much of it is real. And I actually think the worst possible outcome would be maximalist tariff strategy for the first three months, stock market correction, and then a reversal.

Because then you wouldn't even have any of the new jobs as a result of the tariffs. You'd just get the pain. You'd have just the pain and then caving to the business community after a couple of months, which – and then also the public, as I said earlier, would nuke its approval of tariffs, which, like, no, tariffs are good and necessary. But –

I don't know. I'm worried. I'm worried about not only the strategy, but I could see people pulling away. If we get to 20% and 30% correction territory, I mean, nobody in America has experienced 30% or whatever in a long time. Yeah. I saw some people posting Warren Buffett's letter to America the other day. He wrote this in 2008 about why he was going to—

I was like, guys, the market's only down 10%. He wrote that when the market was down 50%. So none of us have been there. I have a lot more respect for my dad now after living through this and how he white knuckled it all the way through the Great Recession. So none of us have had to live through that yet. Hopefully we don't. But that can cause all kinds of crazy political problems at that time.

if we get to that. No doubt about it. And you might be surprised to learn, but I share your concern that this is going to just completely negatively polarize people against any tariffs whatsoever. He's giving tariff policy a terrible name right now because it's done in such a chaotic haphazard across the board, non-targeted, no story about why we're doing this and what the benefits are or the story changes every day, et cetera. And as you guys know, I support

his tariffs that he put in the first. I supported the Biden tariffs, which were paired with industrial policy, which did have positive benefits and helped to reshore some manufacturing, like, you know, and were targeted at particular industries. Like, there are instances where tariffs make a lot of sense. But the way that this is going, it's a cost

total and complete disaster. And we showed yesterday, Emily and I, the word cloud from JL Partners, they asked people like, what is Trump's biggest mess up? And maybe you guys can throw it up in post and add it into the segment. But tariffs was number one, front and center. And then it was like tariffs misspelled different ways. And then the number two was all different sorts of things regarding Elon, Doge, federal firing government. So like,

all of those are really core sort of economic pieces. And for Trump to have at the core of his administration discontent, like that really is the story of his administration right now, discontent around his economic moves, that is something that is definitely new and different ultimately from the first term. I do want to say, though, they did get some good news. Now, there's another inflation report that is

set to come out maybe today or tomorrow, and we'll see what that one says as well. But we can put this up on the screen. Inflation cooled somewhat more than expected in February, 2.8 percent. Core reading also eased, but looming tariffs, they say, may keep consumer prices rising. So consumer prices were up 2.8 percent in February from a year earlier. That's a

according to a Labor Department report, versus a January gain of 3%. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal had expected a 2.9% gain, so it came in a little bit better than expected. Prices excluding food and energy categories, the so-called core measure that economists watch in an effort to better capture inflation's underlying trend because food is more volatile, rose 3.1%. That was the lowest year-over-year reading since 2021, also lower than the 3.2% expected volatility.

by economists. So when you heard Caroline Levitt there saying that, oh, egg prices are down and inflation is cooling and lowest reading since 2021, whatever, this is what she is referring to. One of the theories of what they're doing where it really feels like they're manufacturing a stock market crash and manufacturing effectively a recession is that that is an effort to crush demand

which means crushing your like, you know, wages and ability to spend in order to get inflation under control. And so, you know, that is one theory for what is going on out there, which, you know, if your goal to get inflation down is basically to like screw over regular people, I don't think that's something that people should support, even if it does have the impact here of cutting inflation. But I'm not trying to like, you know, sandbag them on this. Like, it's good. And

inflation coming down like it's good it's a good piece of news for them etc but just putting in that broader picture of what one of the theories about what the hell they're up to here is no one knows uh let's put the next one up there egg prices by the way have started to fall so that's good um they fortune magazine was saying it could be just for a little while this is actually mostly as a result of like the wild swings in the bird population and in bird flu control but uh also it

possibly, hopefully could be a result also of the administration announcing an investigation into those egg producers, right? Because, and you know, this is part of my issue as well, goes back to the Biden administration. I'm not really sure why,

I'm not really sure why they're not talking more about these types of initiatives. I mean, I have a suspicion, which is that it's very anti-big business and they don't necessarily want to be tagged that way. And I would say, okay, great. Big business or whatever is not the be-all, end-all approach.

of the U.S. economy. It's a good thing to fact that a daily staple like this and the price is going to continue to go down. We should try and do more of that across the board. So interesting also political judgment there by the White House. But yeah, I mean, like you said, I'm rooting for inflation to go down no matter what.

I'm especially rooting for inflation in the most important places in American life to go down, like in housing, and especially hoping that these interest rates go down so that people can get more affordable mortgages. But things are not good right now, no matter what. And the White House has got to pay very, very close attention. Otherwise, they're in big trouble. And they'll end up with high tariffs.

high inflation, high unemployment, and high interest rates. What a shit situation that would be. Can you even imagine? Stagflation is definitely one possibility that is on the table. And the other thing to note about this report is it really comes in, it's reflecting data from before any of the tariffs were put onto. So we don't really have any indication yet what that might have done, what impact that might have had on prices.

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All right, let's get over to Doge. This is, you know, funny, depressing, depending which way you want to look at it. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So for all the talk of cutting federal spending, of budgets, of America going bankrupt, etc., a new, you know, report from the Treasury Department, keep that in mind, from the actual Department of the Treasury, not from everybody else, shows that U.S. federal spending actually rose to a record of $603 billion just last month.

Despite, you know, any claims of, what is it, $100 billion or so in savings. Remember that, what's the word? You were an accountant, right? Lies. Amortize? Lies. No, but what am I looking for? Like that word about like taking spending and putting it over a period of time? I think it's amortize. Yeah, amortize. Okay. Despite like, this is always when people are like, we're cutting $10 trillion in spending. It's like, yeah, it's theoretical spending over 10 years, man.

Like, how much are you actually cutting right now? So they have claimed $100 billion of savings, quote, but only a handful of departments have registered any drops in spending in the first full month of the administration. Spending actually rose by $40 billion compared with the same month just last year on a like-for-like basis, which is a 7% increase in month-over-month data. They have actually shown

Few large categories that have achieved some decrease. The Department of Education had cut outgoings by about $6 billion. So that means that those were made up for elsewhere. Jessica Rydell, who is an economic expert at the Manhattan Institute, was quoted here saying, Doge savings are so small as to not be identifiable in monthly spending totals. And continuing whenever you're down here is the monthly outlay, for example, on USAID was some $226 billion.

compared with 547 million in the same month. But that's what I kept trying to say even during that whole USAID fight is I was like, hey guys, this is 0.2% of the federal budget. And it's like, well, if we look at where a lot of the payment and the spending and all of that is going, it's on stuff that no one's even thinking about cutting. Defense budget,

entitlements, and debt servicing. All three of those. Arguably, interest rates have cost America more than anything else because it increases the amount that we have to pay to service our debt. That alone, apparently debt servicing is more than all federal tax revenue that they took in just last year. So what are we doing here? If, you know, in the idea of federal, you know, employees or whatever, it's just a drop in the bucket.

in the bucket. Like, if you really want to change things, fine, you know, let's have that conversation. I'd be happy to, but nobody seems particularly interested. Yeah, and, you know, some of the discourse I've seen online about this is like, okay, so which is it? Is Elon, like, you know, messing everything up or is he doing nothing at all? And what you're pointing to helps to square the circle. If you eliminated every single civilian federal government employee, all of them, it's 4.3% of the budget. Mm-hmm.

The things that he has targeted, USAID, we're talking about a budget in the millions. Well, meanwhile, you're planning an extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, you know, tax cut for the rich and corporations, $4.6 trillion. Okay, so...

It is very possible to, you know, slash government workers and make it so old people can't call the Social Security lines anymore. And there's huge lines and hours, you know, to get service and to completely dismantle USAID, cut the Department of Education by half, cut NIH funding by a significant amount and do a lot of real damage to.

while saving comparatively pennies in comparison to the federal government budget. And that is effectively what is going on here because, again, they haven't touched the Pentagon. I mean, that's the place where you would really want to cut. And, you know, I don't want them to touch Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. But if you aren't doing, you know, significant, significant cuts in those areas, then you're going to see the numbers continue to go up.

I mean, that's just where you are. And it's very, I mean, you can't take seriously anyway, their claims of grave concern about the debt and the deficit when they are planning these massive tax cut giveaways to people who really don't need it. And also, by the way, planning on increasing defense spending, et cetera. So, you know, the-

I have always said it's really important to not take at face value the claim that Doge is about saving money. Doge is a power play. That's what it is for Elon and also for, you know, people who are ideological libertarian libertarians or anarcho-capitalists who are just opposed to government, don't want government to have power. See government as like a rival power center to the conservative movement, people like Russ Vogt.

who is a real sort of ideological stalwart in this direction, it's not really about saving money. For Elon, it's about making sure these agencies can't stand in the way of his companies, especially targeting the ones that have irritated him the most, the FAA and other places, making sure that he has his hand on the tiller so that he can, whether it's feeding data into his AI system or whether it's potentially getting, shuffling contracts into his companies, which we've already seen him do in certain instances,

And it's also for others an ideological project of just like how do I tear the government down and make sure that it can't work and can't deliver for people. So, you know, it's sold because it's popular as efficiency, as cutting out waste, as reducing the debt and the deficit. But that isn't really the core of the ideological goal. One other thing, I wanted to get your thoughts on this, Sagar. So I was thinking about the areas, like you named the places where they actually spending went down, like they've made the most severe cuts.

And USAID, Department of Education, CFPB are kind of top of that list, all of which, again, have comparatively small budgets when you look at the grand scheme of the federal government. But those are three areas where the Russ Vote, Project 2025, conservative movement, where they had a plan to dismantle them.

And so I feel like the places where they have been able to move the most aggressively and the most radically are actually the places that RussVote,

was most interested in targeting. - I wouldn't say it's Russ Bow. It's that the Heritage Foundation, all of them, have hated the Department of Education for years. There's been almost a 15-year project against the CFPB, USAID as well has been a long-time target. No, you're not wrong, which is that these are long-time targets of the federal government. I mean, do you remember Rick Perry's famous debate moment on the stage where he forgot the three departments that he wanted? It's like, these are long-standing. He was like, "Oh, can't think of the third one." He later on, by the way, his excuse was he was on painkillers.

Which is an insane, okay, but you shouldn't admit that, dude. It's better to just say you're being stupid. Back issues or whatever. It was like, oh, I was actually highest on painkillers at the time. I'm like, okay, got it. Brightest bulb. But I'm just saying, you know, there is a picture that's starting to emerge of the Doge people sort of running through these agencies, you know, getting access to these sensitive databases, you

causing a lot of trouble and tumult. And, you know, like at the Social Security Administration, certainly they're slashing, which is another longtime conservative target, but slashing the number of people there, floating all these crazy ideas for, oh my God, there's all this fraud. Oh, wait, it turns out that those dead people aren't getting the funds. Maybe we can cut the telephone service. They're just sort of running rampant on this like chaos train.

And the things that are really aggressively moving are things that were sort of lined up through Project 2025 and where there was an existing, longstanding conservative priority and plan of how they wanted to go about doing it. Do you think that that's—

I'm not sure. I think it's just that those really look politically. These are obviously the easiest ones to cut. It's just that now you have to deal with real stuff. And it's also a lot more complicated. So I'm just not sure. I'm not ready to buy all that much into it. But this is actually another reason why they're flirting a little bit with problems is that you have incited you both will not.

actually decrease federal spending, but you will also have launched like this grand program against it. And so if any, because I've seen people who are real, they're like serious dozers is the way I would describe it. They're like people who have genuinely for decades wanted to massively cut the size of the government. They're like, hey guys, just at the same point I made on tariffs, if you don't do this properly, no American, the American people are not going to trust any future effort to seriously want to reform the government. I was like,

Hey, you know what? That's actually kind of a good point. You really have, you could nuke a lot of public trust in that and make it so that hanging and keeping around dead weight in the future becomes a more politically popular decision. You found this of a teletown hall survey where, and look, people who call into town halls and participate in this, these are 0.1% of the most politically activated. So just remember who exactly we're dealing with. But it's still important because those are the type of people who show up and vote.

He was doing a teletown hall, did a poll of people who support or oppose Doge, and the results were pretty astonishing. This is Republican Tom Barrett from Michigan. Let's take a listen. We'll go ahead and move on to our second poll question. And that question is, do you approve of the Department of Government Efficiency's mission to streamline the federal government and reduce spending? Again, this question is regarding Doge.

Do you approve of the Department of Government Efficiency's mission to streamline the federal government and reduce spending? Press 1 for yes and press 2 for no. Again, that's 1 for yes and 2 for no. Our results are coming in and it's at 70% for no and 30% for yes. That's 70% for no and 30% for yes.

70% for no. So, yeah, that's a little bit of an issue there. Again, let's keep it. So do we have his district information? Yeah, I just looked it up. According to ChatGPT, this was Alyssa Slotkin's old district. It's a swing district. So he won it pretty narrowly, 50.3% of the vote. His opponent got 46.6, and there's a Libertarian who took the remainder of the vote. So you're talking about a swing district in Michigan. Obviously, you know, that's important. I mean, no one is saying this Teletown Hall is like, you know,

scientific poll or anything. But the other thing that's funny is I was saying to you, there was that edict that went out from the head of the NRCC. I can't remember the dude's name, but McCormick, maybe something like that. Anyway, he was like, don't do in-person town halls.

Like, if you're going to do a town hall, do a teletown hall because it makes it much easier. You can control who gets to ask questions. You don't have the specter of the crowd with signs and, like, yelling at you and whatever. And so he's taking that advice of, like, I'm not going to see these people in person, but I'll do my teletown hall. And even within the context of that is getting, you know, a clip that gets played on shows like ours and passed around, et cetera. So it is kind of interesting. I mean, these people are—

People are very activated and very concerned about this. And the impacts show up in more places than you would expect. We've talked about the federal parks, the national parks that are important to people and important to economies as well. And again, let's say you cut 10 park rangers that are critical to the operation of that park.

how much money did you say? A piddling amount. But the impact is really devastating to that area because the park can no longer function. You've got long lines to get in. You don't have people who are able to maintain it. Or like there was an issue with like people getting locked in the bathroom and there's no one there to help them, et cetera. Some places had to stop taking reservations altogether because they were already short-staffed and then further cuts came and they just really could no longer function. So let's see.

three up on the screen because this was some inside details about the Social Security Administration and the back and forth there. And this is what I was talking about a little bit, the Washington Post tariff sheet, about how the Doge people went in

And initially they were like, oh my God, we found all that. Look at all these people who are 300 years old who are in the system. Like, holy cow, we found billions of dollars in fraud here. And then the career people were like, well, actually that's not what's going on. Those are just

all the names of people who have ever gotten Social Security and we're aware they're in there and their birthdates aren't correct, but they're marked so they're not getting paid. And by the way, we did an investigation to see whether we should clean them out of the database, but it came back, it was going to cost millions of dollars and it doesn't really cause a problem. So we just left them in there.

So the career people are able to explain to them, of course, the president and Elon are still running around making this case because it enables them potentially to make the case down the road that like, oh, we're cutting Social Security, but it's just fraud, etc. And so once they were the Doge people inside of Social Security, we're convinced that, OK, it's this dead people thing is not real. Like this is kind of a dead end for us to pursue. Then they were like, how?

How about we cut the phone service so that old people can no longer and disabled people and, you know, whoever needs to call in and, you know, ask a question about Social Security, et cetera, so that they either have to go in person, which, by the way, some of those offices are being cut and shuttered as well, or they have to file it online.

do you have elderly relatives, parents, whatever? Like, do you know how sometimes they need to talk to someone on the phone and they struggle to fill out some paperwork or figure out how to navigate online? Like it's kind of an important service. So they were going in that direction. Again, the career staff came in and were like,

you know, that's really not a great idea. Like this isn't going to work out well, et cetera. So now they've pared back again to what they're going to do is just cut your ability to change your direct deposit information via the telephone. So that's what they've landed on. But, you know, I mean, all of this like,

internal tumult, cutting the staff at the Social Security Administration, which already was reportedly sort of like short-staffed, trying to strip down. Now you're talking about services that allow people to get enrolled. Already the phone wait times have spiked. Already the wait times at these offices have spiked, et cetera. And you just get a, like,

you know, these people don't really know what they're doing and they're just sort of like rooting around and making it up as they go. So I know this is going to be tremendously unpopular, but should we really coddle old people by just keeping phone service around? Of course. I don't know. Fucker. What are you talking about? It bothers me. It's like when you go to a parking garage and they have an attendant there, even though there's like a button there to press and you're like, why are you even here? Like, oh, people can't figure it out. Sorry, grandma, you have to starve because you can't figure out how to navigate online. No, you don't have to starve. I mean, I have.

We have faith in American old people that they have the IQ to figure it out about how to enter your data online. Aren't they being a little bit stubborn by demanding that we pay a bunch of people to stay on the phone? How hard is it to check your routing number on your computer and your phone, okay? Seriously, Sagar. No, it's there. It's right there. You literally log in. Have you ever really worked with the elderly? I have not. You're talking about disabled people, like...

Well, that's a different question, though. Because here's the thing, too, is like people, oh, the government doesn't work and it's so hard to navigate. It's like, OK, well, we have this service that makes it easier for people to navigate. It's like, nah, let's cut that. Let's make it more difficult for people to be able to get the, you know, Social Security payments and access the system that they have themselves paid into. This is why I'm not going to get elected, because I just think that it's not that hard. I mean, the amount that this costs.

is like nothing. It's, you know, in the content grants of things. And it makes life, but this is the most popular program that has ever existed in our country. Most successful social safety net program in the world. Like, yes, I think people should have as easy access to it as possible. I mean, but how long does this continue? It's like, do we have to wait until... Forever. Why not?

Why not? So we always have to have phones? Why not? It's ridiculous. This is not curvy. 90-something percent of people have a cell phone with 5G data on it. It's not difficult, especially with the iPhone. They even have boomer mode on the iPhone. You can have your text as big as possible, and they make it easy to go out. Disabled, I will absolutely give you 100%. That's fine. But I don't know. There's something about it that bothers me a little bit where we just –

It's like that least common denominator thing where it's the Nassim Taleb concept where if you have one person who's disagreeable in a group of like 100, then the group of 99 will generally go with that. It's like do we really need to have like all of these government services for people who just refuse to use the internet? I don't know. It just makes me a little bit skeptical of that. Not saying that what I'm saying is popular at all. I know people freak out about it.

Like, think about Joe Biden, cognitive decline. And now imagine a legion of Joe Bidens. I mean, listen, memory loss and like these are this happens as you get older. And so, yes, I think to make it as easy as possible for people to be able to access the benefits that they have earned and deserved is like the bare minimum of what we should expect from our government.

Call me ableist, ageist, or whatever. I don't know. It just makes me uncomfortable. I'm like, how much do we really have to sit here and cater to all of them? I'm sure all my younger folks or whatever who are out there who have had to ever deal with disagreeable old people or in an office space or something can agree with me. But anyway, to your point about Doge not sending their best...

This is a hilarious segment that CNN found. One of these Doge workers has been doing these get ready with me posts on Instagram, working as an influencer, actually in her government office, posting some of her outfits in like cutesy little poses. So let's take a listen. And if you're able to watch, I do recommend that you watch it. Let's take a listen.

It looks just like any other influencer video. A young woman posing in front of a camera over and over and over again, showing off her trendy but timeless professional fashion. But she's no ordinary influencer.

And that's no ordinary office. Her name is McLaurin Pinover, and she's a Trump administration's new director of communications for the Office of Personnel Management or OPM, which manages federal employees. All of these videos were shot in her government office right here at OPM headquarters in Washington, D.C., ground zero for Trump's plan to cut

thousands of workers from the federal government in the name of efficiency. Inside her office, Pinover captures video at her desk, putting on makeup, modeling new outfits to her 800 followers. Pinover markets clothes on her account. Using what's called affiliate links, she could get a portion of any items sold through her Instagram page, like this $475 skirt or $300 dress.

But it's unclear whether she's made any money. On February 13th, the day 20 people on her communications team lost their jobs, she posted a moment for mixed patterns. And the week when her agency demanded all federal employees list five things they did that week, she posted the business woman special.

Not a great look, okay? The most humiliating part is that she only had 800 followers. Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of work to be putting in for 800 followers. Like you said, too, on those affiliate links, it's like, you know, you'd be lucky to get one or two people to click on something like that. Anyway, the more that you're going to see stuff like that, I think it's going to be a problem. Yeah. I think it's a problem. Yes. Yes.

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It's time to put America first when it comes to spectrum airwaves. Dynamic spectrum sharing is an American innovation developed to meet American needs, led by American companies and supported by the U.S. military who use the spectrum to defend the homeland. It maximizes a scarce national resource, wireless spectrum, to protect national security and deliver greater competition and lower costs without forcing the U.S. military to waste $120 billion relocating critical defense systems.

America won't win by letting three big cellular companies keep U.S. spectrum policy stuck in the past, hoarding spectrum for their exclusive use to limit competition here at home while giving Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE a big leg up overseas. For America to lead, federal policymakers must build on the proven success of U.S. spectrum sharing to ensure national security, turbocharge domestic manufacturing, rural connectivity, and create American jobs. Let's keep America at the forefront of global wireless leadership. Learn more at SpectrumFuture.com.