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Unknown A
All right, guys, we're able to get the Friday crew here together to go through some very interesting breaking news. We've got for you, Ryan and Emily. Pleasure as always.
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Unknown B
Hey, Crystal.
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Unknown C
Hey, Crystal. Hey, Emily.
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Unknown A
Shout out especially to producer Mac, who has done lots of extra work for us this week and has also agreed to edit and post all of this. So thank you so much, Mac, for that few things we want to get through. So, first of all, CPAC yesterday, Emily was actually there. Lot of antics, a lot of. There was a chainsaw involved, potential drug use. I don't know. Dudes were there, like, calling for Trump's third term and for him to be their Red Caesar, which I guess that's not really anything new at this point. Steve Bannon doing a. His own version of the Roman salute. I guess people are saying maybe he's autistic as well. Maybe that's what's going on there. I don't know. Don't know. So we'll weigh in on all of that. Also very interesting, yesterday there was a town hall in a heavily Republican district that had major 2010 tea party in reverse vibes.
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Unknown A
A lot of constituents there who were very upset about what's going on with Doge, shouting him down, et cetera. So we'll show you some of that. And then also interesting, Elon's response to that, which was basically to completely censor those clips on Twitter, you know, as a secure and totally committed to free speech kind of a guy is want to do. And we also have just the latest rundown with court cases and what Doge is up to to, you know, give you the very latest there. So let's go ahead and jump in here with cpac. As I mentioned, Malay gave Musk a chainsaw, which he proceeded to, you know, take in and wave around the stage. Let's take a look. Probably gonna get a strike for that music, so that's cool. But, Emily, you were there. You were actually there. What was the. What was your experience? What was the sense on the ground there?
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Unknown B
Well, CPAC is. I think it's kind of never been as high energy as it was during the Tea Party years, even during all of the Trump stuff. But yesterday I was in the lobby of the resort that it's held at, and I looked over and. And I saw a small crowd forming around Milei, and I had no idea that Milei was even coming. Of course he was coming, but I didn't know. He's a very small man. He's a very short man. And interestingly enough, Steve Bannon spoke after all of that, and I know we're going to talk about it in a moment, but it's pretty strange to me. Not surprising, but it remains strange. And there's quite a tension between the like sort of regular middle American conservative CPAC goer and then me Lay, who is coming off of this week of like a crypto scam.
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Unknown B
His involvement in that. I mean, he endorsed it basically, and. But he wasn't involved in any of the transactions to the extent that we know. But it just. The sort of populist melding with melayism is very musk and melee ism. And just having this like billionaire slash, you know, austerity party on the stage, it's just. I mean, it's weird.
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Unknown A
Yeah, it is a strange, a strange CPAC is always a bit of a strange confab, but I think those tensions are particularly noteworthy this time around. And Ryan, to Emily's point, Malay is facing a giant political scandal in his own country where he is president after promoting this massive pump and dump crypto scam. And it's not like just me that's saying that one of the guys, Hayden Davis, who was involved, it is like, yeah, all of these crypto coins, all of these meme coins, they're all quote unquote, dog shit, including the ones that he participates in that he admitted to what's called sniping, which is, you know, you as an insider, as soon as it launches, buy a ton of the coin as it goes up, and then they dumped it all and the whole thing collapses. Like, this is. Nobody is even really denying that that's what's happening.
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Unknown A
Milei himself is under fire politically. You know, I'm not as enough of a expert on politics in Argentina. Maybe you are, Ryan, to tell whether this is really going to hurt him politically or not. But they're accusing him as a fraud and corruption. They're trying to file articles of impeachment against him. And yet here he is in America hanging out with Elon Musk, still a celebrity, giving him the chainsaw, et cetera.
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Unknown C
Yeah, and we've, we covered Argentina before. It's. It has this structural oddity that there are like eight or 10 different, you know, choke points and power centers in their politics, and none of them are able to cobble together enough for a majority kind of coalition to actually govern the country. And so they just kind of have an ungovernable system where all of these different fiefs and factions just kind of protect their, their own interests. And so Milei came in on the back of a promise that he was going to, like, you know, take a chainsaw to all of that and fix that. And it may be, it may be too much for him. And then you get involved in a pump and dump scheme, and that's blood in the water for these factions who want to make sure that, you know, he doesn't actually accomplish what he's.
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Unknown C
What he's trying to. So, yeah, he's got to be perfect to kind of overcome the peculiarities of the Argentinian system. And he's, he's anything but perfect. But he's such a, he's such an interesting case. And I think his presence at CPAC is revelatory of this phenomenon that libertarian itself, libertarianism itself has never really been popular among basically anybody except a small subculture. But I think the weirdness of libertarianism has sort of glommed on to populism because you look at Milei and you're like, oh, he's a chainsaw wielding leather jacket wearing maniac. There's something populist about that. He's gonna go after the types that I don't like.
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Unknown B
He frames it that way very well.
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Unknown C
Exactly. And yet when you actually, when you look in, you're like, well, what do you believe? It's like, oh, he's a Milton Friedman guy who's always been a Milton Friedman guy for his entire life, who just wants to get rid of the entire state.
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Unknown A
Right.
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Unknown C
Like, that's the opposite of some of the right wing populism that wants to, you know, build state capacity to support families and to support workers. Like that's the opposite. And yet there they are in the same, you know, hotel lobby.
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Unknown A
Right.
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Unknown C
Well, and trying to figure it out.
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Unknown A
All those characters coming together. Elon being very much, you know, a sort of Malay believer, you know, much more on that radical libertarian or even anarcho capitalist ideological spectrum. Meanwhile, Steve Bannon is there as well. Bannon being kind of the ideological, you know, father of Trumpism 1.0, the MAGA movement, and that more statist approach that you're referring to, Ryan. And so all of this coming together, all of it, I mean, I would say it's unresolved, but I actually think it is sort of resolved. I mean, at this point in time, Elon is certainly running the show and has won all of those ideological battles that have come up thus far in Trumpism 2.0, which has made it, you know, quite a remarkable break from some of the ways that Trump has pitched and positioned himself politically. So you know, Elon very much wanting and receiving some rock star treatment at cpac.
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Unknown A
Let me give you a little bit of some of the cringier moments, in my humble opinion, of his appearance there. He's wearing sunglasses and a chain. Apparently this is a reference to some doge meme that was out before. And I mean, just all in all acting, honestly, very strange. Many are speculating. We Elon is a known drug consumer. Many speculating perhaps that played into this. There were also some personal drama going on in the background.
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Unknown C
Schedule three. We're not alleging any. Any Schedule one drugs here.
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Unknown A
Yes, there you go. Anyway, there are also some personal drama going on in the background here that we'll get to. But anyway, here is a little bit of Elon.
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Unknown D
That was something I am become meme. Yeah, pretty much. I'm just. I'm living the meme. It's like there's living the dream and there's living the meme, and it's pretty much what's happening.
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Unknown A
You know, you're like living the meme. Okay, we got that. We also have another part where he is, you know, saying comedy is legal again and really trying to lean into that. Let's take a listen to that, you.
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Unknown D
Know, and have like a sense of humor, you know, so like, I mean, the left wanted to make comedy illegal. You know, you can't make fun of anything. So there's like, comedy sucks. It's like nothing's funny. You can't make fun of anything. It's like legalized comedy. Yeah, legalize comedy.
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Unknown C
And we've shifted the entire culture and just.
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Unknown A
Emily, maybe I'll ask you, like, how does that feel to you? Like, how do people who are into this feel about those clips? Because I look at it and I'm just like, oh, this guy is so weird. Like, he's so. There's such a pick me vibe to it. Like such a try hard vibe. Like desperately wants to be funny and it's like, just not really fun. I mean, Trump, for as much as I don't like that he is funny and he's charming, is charismatic. Like Elon, at least for me, is not those things.
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Unknown B
I think that's a good point. I mean, the crowd obviously loved it. And that gets to this long conversation that we could have and we sort of started having about who's really won. I mean, right now, Elon is winning the war against Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon would say that Trump has, you know, put Andrew Ferguson and all of these, like, other policy people over at the ftc and he's still signaling that he is going to be tough on Big Tech. And you know, I had Matt Solar on last week and talk to him a little bit about that. We had Doha Mackie on, talk to her a little bit about that, keeping Lina Khan's FTC rules. But I mean, it just, he just talked right there in that clip about how, quote, we were able to change the culture is one of the things he said right there.
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Unknown B
And I think that's even more powerful. And it's like the Tea Party era at CPAC was like the one moment that libertarianism went from a weird subculture to something with mass popularity in the Republican Party or it had a lot of momentum in the Republican Party. There's like a Time magazine cover that said the libertarian moment and Rand Paul was on it and it was this marriage of populism and, and austerity. People like Russell were like, this is the crucible that they were formed in. Which is interesting because that's what Milei expresses. It's what Musk doesn't really even bother to express. And there are a lot of people, I think, who are in the Bannon Trump camp who I don't believe have quite realized what could be coming from that marriage. And so I think Elon is like a pop culture icon to a lot of people on the right.
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Unknown B
They say, you know, he infused all this cash into Trumpism or into Trump's campaign and like made fueled this like cultural vibe shift on Trumpism and all of that. But I don't know, I mean, he might be wearing out his welcome. Like the polls are starting to look really bad for Ellen and who knows what Trump does with that if, if the trend is sustaining.
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Unknown A
Yeah. What do you think is about that, Ryan?
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Unknown C
Yeah, not just the money that he put in, but buying Twitter, I think did two things. I think it did. It did play some role in swinging the pendulum back, as he would describe it, like away from the left's scolding and towards whatever he ever. He's doing. Yeah. And also it became a full time pro Trump vehicle, which, you know, which the, you know, it's impossible to exactly quantify it, but absolutely played a role. If you don't have the, the K Hole clip, I could play that one. Do you have that one?
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Unknown A
No, I don't. Go ahead. If you've got it, go ahead and pull it up.
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Unknown C
Here we go.
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Unknown A
Okay.
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Unknown C
So this is. If you got to protect the First Amendment, it's not much more important than that.
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Unknown D
Yeah, I got a lot of criticism. People said, well, that proves he's a huge idiot. From a, you know, like, look, you know, you bought it for whatever, $44 billion, and now it's worth, like, 8 cents.
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Unknown C
And it's not worth 8 cents.
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Unknown D
But, you know, that is that. But the. Yeah, it was essentially to, you know, buy freedom of expression.
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Unknown C
So that. That is. What you're seeing there is this. Your mind's eye sees a thought, like, flittering by.
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Unknown B
This is. You're describing a cable as.
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Unknown C
I don't want to comment on what was going on in his mind, but I. But it. It. There is a moment where your mind sees something and it's a thought, and you're like, oh, that's an interesting thought, but you can't grasp it, and you can't actually concretize it, and you definitely cannot form it into words on a stage that are legible to. To an audience. But if you watch it, like, 10 times, like I have, you can actually tell what he's saying. He's doing his line about it doesn't matter what he's saying.
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Unknown A
Yeah, but it's like.
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Unknown C
And he says elsewhere throughout the night, he said, you know, we're doing this, but we're gonna. We're having. We're. We're having fun while we're doing it. And he definitely is. He's definitely having a good time.
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Unknown A
I didn't realize how perfect a combo you guys would be to help, you know, guide us through this between the fish head and the conservative movement participant, help interpret this whole sequence of events. I mean, what. Just, you know, to get back to some of the tensions in this movement. This is kind of relevant. So while Elon is up there on stage doing, you know, Elon's things, the mother of his children, one of his. One of the mothers of his many children, was making a plea to him on Twitter because she says, this is Grimes, who is the mother of three of his children, including, you know, little X, who he has been bringing around with him kind of everywhere. Grimes says, please respond about our child's medical crisis. I'm sorry to do this publicly. It is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation. This requires immediate attention.
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Unknown A
If you don't want to talk to me, can you please designate or hire someone who can can so that we can move forward on solving this? This is urgent, Elon. And this is like, literally the same time that he's up on stage with the chainsaw and doing the things that you saw him doing. And of course, you know, reminds everybody that just a few days ago, Ashley St. Clair, who we know is, you know, now mother to one of Elon's children, was also making a plea on Twitter, like, please, I've been trying to get in touch with you. We need to work some things out, et cetera. And this has led, sparked quite a lot of debate, Emily, within the MAGA, or the right wing or whatever you want to call this movement at this point between the more traditional family conservative types and the new, like, you know, Elon Bros and the tech bro types who have a more, I guess, libertine attitude and are like, you know, way to go, Ashley St.
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Unknown A
Clair. You've secured the bag and you got your kid. Great genetics. This is all amazing, which anytime you start talking about genetics in that way, I start to get very uncomfortable for, I think, obvious reasons. But now you have another situation where one of the mothers of his children is having to take to Twitter to beg him to respond on what she describes as an urgent medical situation for one of their children.
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Unknown B
So, yeah, I mean, I think we're up to what, 13 children at least with three or four different women. And he is running however many companies and invested in companies with geopolitical relevance, not just massive multibillion dollar companies, but like hugely influenced, influential companies. And he's now advising the President. It's just a like all around insane situation. And this was, I mean, didn't he also reportedly shadow Ban Grimes after this happened?
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Unknown A
Yes.
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Unknown B
Yeah, right. So it's just like he's, he's always polarized the maga, right, in the same way that Trump has. And it was a lot law. It took the MAGA world a long time to reconcile Trump's personal life and his like, sort of crude tones with like being, you know, the Moral majority. And people sort of landed on all kinds of justifications and rationalizations, just that, you know, there's always going to be an imperfect vessel for basically the ends justify the means is the argument. And so it's there, there's muscle memory there to deal with Elon that a lot of people are defaulting to. But I think to the extent that he puts himself forward as like a really heroic, impressive figure, this definitely hurts that. I mean, Trump has never pretended to be like some type of upstanding. He says things like it sometimes, but no, I mean, it's always like a joke.
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Unknown B
He's, he's not pretending to be like some morally upstanding figure. But Elon Musk is on a crusade to tell people have children. And he's Doing it this way, not taking care of his own, like, that's. That. That'll be a problem for him. And it's just. Honestly, it's so gross to watch play out. I don't think anybody is enjoying that at all.
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Unknown A
Yeah, it's deeply sad, you know, to watch these women have to take to Twitter to beg him to do the very basics of. I mean, it's just. As a parent, I'm sure, Ryan, you also can't imagine being in that situation where your wife would have to take to Twitter. I mean, the Grimes is his wife at this point. But to beg you to pay attention to some urgent medical issue involving one of your kids, like, it's preposterous to even.
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Unknown C
Well, it's just a completely different kind of life. Yeah. We're both on Earth, but you can't even, like, put yourself anywhere near there.
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Unknown A
Yeah, for sure. Exactly.
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Unknown B
Right.
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Unknown C
I just hope that he does the thing that she asked, which is, if you can't talk to me, just assign somebody who can. Like, he's the richest guy on the planet. Like, he can pay. He can hire a brand new assistant to just be responsible, making sure that he keeps this responsibility because there are responsibilities that are supposed to come with fatherhood.
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Unknown A
Yeah. Another thing that we referenced earlier. So Bannon was there. Bannon did give a speech. At the end of the speech, he copied one of Elon's moves and did his own quote unquote Roman salute or awkward gesture or Sig Heil, depending on your. Your perspective here and how well your eyes are working here. We can go. We can. We can see this.
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Unknown C
Amen.
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Unknown A
If you want to see again. Okay, here we go. You know, I mean, it actually feels to me like obviously signaling to Nazis is not something we should. Any of us should find acceptable. It also feels like, kind of particularly sad to me because Bannon is setting himself up as this kind of nemesis to Elon. He just called him recently a parasitic illegal immigrant as one example. So then to just, like, copy his trollish behavior and take co opt and like me too. One of his signature moves at this point is also just sort of like, pathetic and again, an indicator to me of who is the Alpha at this point and who is completely running the show.
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Unknown B
I think this is reflective of some real problems that exist on the right. Beyond that, like, the problem of any reactionary moment movement is being so reactionary. So, like, for example, with Steve Bannon, who is not on Elon Musk's team at all, there's so many people on the right. I've seen this for years. That feel anything that gets, I guess, called like politically correct or whatever, you then have to just own it. And that's like you're owning the libs by just completely owning anything that the libs don't like. And I feel like Steve Bannon is kind of doing that because a lot of the bros with the Elon thing, which, by the way, like, we debated this, I think it was just Elon being like, dumb.
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Unknown A
But what do you mean by that, though? Like, like trolling or just like being autistic, as has been some of the defense.
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Unknown B
I mean, I think it was him just like being like careless with his. I don't think he was. I actually don't think he was intentionally trolling. I think he was just. I don't even want to try to get into Elon Musk's mind, but honestly, I think he was just like moving around on stage. And a lot of right wing bros do this shit now and don't even like, know what they're doing. So I don't think it was like intentionally racist. I. We debated this a few weeks ago. I don't think it was intentionally racist or Nazi. He was stupid. But I think then when the. On the right, you have people being like, yeah, f. The libs, like, go do your Roman salute. You end up embracing the Roman salute because you react like you have this knee jerk reflex to own the libs. And this is like a physical embodiment of something that has a lot of ideological consequences too.
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Unknown A
Yeah. What do you think of that, Ryan? I mean, the like, like Emily said, we already debated this, so we don't have to go back and debate that particular part. But yeah, the whole currency, like the whole core of the political movement is just like, oh, that made you mad. We're gonna do it more, whatever it is. And that's kind of what ties all of these very different ideological strands together at this point.
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Unknown C
Yes, right. It does not matter what you're for. It only matters who you're against. And the libs apparently don't like when you do a Nazi salute.
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Unknown A
So snowflakes.
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Unknown C
Those snowflakes. So therefore it's okay to do one.
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Unknown B
In fact, Bannon's been calling racist, by the way. Like, he's been going off on how racist Musk is.
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Unknown C
Yes, he has. Yes, that's been one of his lines. And. But Crystal, my fundamental. My basic reading was the same as yours. Like the. The pathetic nature of it. I thought, you're taking this guy on Instead, you're just, like, meekly copying. You know, Musk did it twice, and.
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Unknown A
He did it way. With way more vigor, and he did.
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Unknown C
It from the chest.
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Unknown A
Yeah. Bannon's was a little, you know, was a little afterthought.
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Unknown C
And then he even does a little timid nod afterwards. Like, what did I just do? Like, yeah, yeah. Come on, man. Pathetic.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown C
Shameful.
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Unknown B
He's the Mussolini in this.
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Unknown C
Yes.
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Unknown A
Even some of the Nazis weren't that impressed. I saw Nick Fuentes was like, you know, this is getting a little much, even for me. That was his comment.
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Unknown B
Yeah, he did say that. He was like. He's like. He's throwing up a Roman. And he was like, I was writing, you know, policies for. For. Yay. This is the Nick Fuentes clip that he. He said. He's like. And even I am like, wow, this is getting too real. With. The other thing I want to say with Bannon and Musk is that he. It's Bannon to the point, about, like, him being meek. That is kind of interesting, because the other thing he said, he told my colleague at Unheard this week, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, in reference to Elon Musk. So to your guys's point about what keeps everybody together, Bannon literally came out and said that it's not what you're for, it's what you're against. Like, he actually just openly made that argument that that is the glue in MAGA right now.
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Unknown B
So, yeah, that has all kinds of, like, downstream ideological consequences for any movement.
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Unknown A
Yeah, of course. Because. Yeah, then it's just, like, the more outrageous. The more you flirt with or overtly adopt these symbols, the more beloved you are. And so that only has a ratchet effect in one direction and ends up with, you know, multiple significant party leaders doing Nazi salutes on stage, apparently. Let's go ahead and move on to this town hall. So this is in a Georgia. I think it's Georgia's 7th congressional district. It's quite a red district. Trump won it by 20 points. He got, like, 60.5% of the vote. This congressman we're about to show you, he won it by even more. He got, like, 65% of the vote. So this is a red Georgia district drawn to be a safe Republican seat. And Greg Bluestein, who's a fantastic reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, he showed up at this town hall event, which had an overflow crowd, you know, out the door, lined up to go in, and people.
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Unknown A
Constituents there very unhappy with this congressman. And things got pretty Heated pretty quickly. Let's go ahead and take a look at a little bit of that. Not the president, and you are doing.
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Unknown B
Us a disservice to set that down and not stand up for us. So if we're gonna have a town, and I'm gonna go and stand in front of you and take.
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Unknown D
Take your question and try to answer.
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Unknown B
Them as honestly as I can, then. Then let's do that. Okay, but. But if you're going to just yell at me, that's not gonna be enough.
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Unknown A
He says, he says, if you're just gonna yell at me, that's not gonna be productive. And some lady goes, but we're pissed. I. I ran for Congress in 2010. Tea party wave. Great timing as a Democrat. And, you know, I went to many town halls that had a very similar vibe of people flooding in, super angry, super mobilized, but they were on the right. They were part of the Tea Party movement. And listen, this is just one town hall. I honestly, I don't think many members of Congress are probably going to do town halls anymore because they've just taken to avoiding direct questions from their constituents altogether. So I guess kudos, at least to this dude, to having the balls to go out there and face this hostile crowd. He probably thinks, oh, I'm in the safe Republican district. It'll be fine. I doubt we're going to see many more of these on his schedule.
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Unknown A
I think this is also the guy that had made that comment about, like, you know, working your way through high school if you couldn't afford lunch, as there were attacks on. Yeah, attacks on the school lunch program. He was like, get a job and work your way through high school. So that's. That's this guy. That's who we're talking about. But, Ryan, I know you were covering those Tea Party town halls as well. Like, what do you make of this kind of grassroots energy even as the Democratic leadership continues to be basically, like, asleep at the switch?
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Unknown C
The images are strikingly similar. The question I have is, what portion of this audience was Republicans and what portion was fired up, angry Democrats? And some of the context cues that I think you could take. Emily, I'm curious for your take on this, too. At one point, he's talking about Social Security and saying, you know, that it's going to bankrupt. Bankrupt us, that we need to raise the retirement age and, you know, and thereby reduce benefits for people. And he says, there's no other solution. And, you know, a couple people yell out, raise the cap, which tends to be a Democratic argument. You Know, which, you know, basically says raise the cap so that people making more than 100 and whatever it is, 16, 20,000 per year, you have to continue paying Social Security taxes higher than that. But it's not exclusively a Democratic argument by any stretch.
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Unknown A
Well, I can say too, I mean, I live in a district that it's used to be until it was redistricted. Very similar political, like, you know, goes roughly 60 to 65% for Republicans. And even in a district like that that is solidly red, they're still Democrats.
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Unknown C
30 to 35% of Democrats.
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Unknown A
Yeah, there's still a lot of Democrats. And they are still, they still have their county committees and they still get organized and they still, you know, when they're mad, they'll still show up at a town hall like this. So my argument is, but that was the case in the Tea Party era too, is that it wasn't like those were like swing voters that were showing up. They were local Republican activists who got extra engaged in the Tea Party era. And so, you know, my argument isn't that this is like, you know, some non political swing voters that are showing up here, but Congress people have town halls all the time where literally no one shows up.
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Unknown C
Yes.
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Unknown A
So when people are showing up, yeah, somebody is fired up, like there is something happening. Even if that is, you know, most of that is being expressed by the people who are most likely to get active, activated and get engaged.
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Unknown B
Yeah, well, I mean, this is basically how the Tea Party started. So the Republican Party realized they were mobilizing people at these local levels for town halls. And because everyone had cell phones with video cameras on, was fairly new at the time. You could capture really striking scenes and build and build and build momentum. That so? Yeah, Rich McCormick's district, I think he won by almost 30 points, if not more than that last election. So there are, I mean, there chunk of voters are Democrats, chunk of voters are probably independents. But also reportedly from journalists who were there, his team did not seem prepared for this at all. Which is also kind of interesting because if, you know, like the local Dems are mobilizing a group to come to a town hall, you'd at least have some idea. You could almost hear it in that clip too.
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Unknown B
He seemed pretty taken aback by the crowd. A couple of other Republicans have started to publicly express their concerns with what Doge and Elon Musk are doing. And just saying, like, this is getting a little bit crazy. Politico Playbook had a rundown of a couple of them this morning being like, this is you know, not as there's a more thoughtful way to do this and as I think that's like a very. I think we said this last week. To me, this is the biggest trend to watch in the next couple of weeks because 80% of federal workers are not in D.C. and so as the local VA, for example, I was listening to NPR this week, and one of the guys who runs, like, the system at the local va, I think it was like the computer system, part of the computer system at the local va as that guy gets laid off.
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Unknown B
And, you know, people start to hear about that at barbecues, PTA meetings, soccer sidelines. That gets really hard for Republicans to defend. Even if there is a big atmosphere for cutting the federal government or appetite for cutting the federal government, which, by the way, there is. I mean, polling even before Musk and Know shows that there is. But that doesn't. That's not like license to upend people's communities. That's not like political license to upend people's communities and have it be fine. People are mad at D.C. they don't care about, like, USAID workers taking their boxes out onto the streets and whining. They do care about the people in their communities.
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Unknown A
Did you guys see the poll that asked people which government agencies they most would want eliminated? You guys know this. Do you know what the number one agency was? Doge. DOGE was the number one agency that people wanted to see eliminated. In fairness, USAID was, too. So, you know, which is like, it's also like, Republicans have clearly bought into the idea that, you know, for all this foreign aid, my USAID is just worthless. It needs to go, et cetera, et cetera. And then on the other side, you've got probably mostly Democrats who are like, I've got one agency I'd really like to see go away, and that would be Doge. So, yeah, has arrived to greet me. So finally. Yes. So, you know, the other thing that is relevant here is this was a Republican congressman. This is a Republican district, all that stuff. But, you know, we talked about before, either you guys or me.
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Unknown A
And so I don't remember at this point. But anyway, Hakeem Jeffries and co Getting irritated at groups like Indivisible and Move on who were organizing their. Their bases, you know, their lists and whoever, to call and complain not just to Republicans but also to Democrats, like, we want you to do more. And the Hakeem Jeffries of the world were irritated by these calls flooding their office. And part of what they said is like, oh, well, they're, you know, they have the wrong target. Well, obviously, they're also mobilized against Republicans, just so you know, Hakeem Jeffries. But the other piece is Democrats are these Democratic incumbents. I don't know if they realize yet that they are kind of playing with fire because their poll numbers among the Democratic base have plummeted, plummeted. And that is very different from last Trump administration when Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff and all these people, they were heroes to the Democratic base and the resistance.
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Unknown A
And they still had much more trust in liberal media institutions where they feel these people have failed them. They feel they're asleep at the switch now. They feel that they are totally not up to the moment. And so I was telling you guys, I was looking at the poll numbers of how Democrats feel, like the Democratic base feels about Democratic leadership in Congress versus how the Republican base felt about Republicans leadership in Congress during the Tea Party era. And the numbers are actually very similar with both being underwater or close to underwater. So some of the possibility for a Democratic Tea Party and to throw out these bums they're not up to the job cycle is definitely there. And we'll see if, you know, if that sort of thing materializes through. And there are some organizations like Justice Democrats already set up to help corral and marshal such a theoretical movement.
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Unknown C
Yeah. And I think something's going to come out of this that's going to be interesting. You're right. To highlight this gap between, you know, how Democrats felt about Democrats, their elected leaders back in 2017, which there was a lot of. There was a lot of anger at the time for letting Trump win, but they were willing to kind of work together. Like, right now, the Democratic base just feels completely abandoned and betrayed and let down.
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Unknown B
Well, so, yeah, this feels like an interesting recipe because, I mean, I've looked at the, like, Democratic leadership numbers for years and been like, why? And it's one of the cases where, with their own base. And it's one of those cases where sometimes I think the media being sympathetic to Democratic leadership, like to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer or whatever, it actually hurts the left because there's this false sense of almost security, you know, like, oh, Nancy's really popular. Like, Nancy, we'll send her out to the Sunday show. She'll do fine. But meanwhile, lurking under the surface, like average Americans, average Democratic voters or Democratic swing voters are like, this is BS And I'm curious. This is going to be me picking out a wound. But some of what I saw when the M4A stuff was really viral and, you know, that was a lot of fun for you guys, I'm sure, with, like, forced the vote.
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Unknown B
But some of that just reminded me of, like, the visceral hatred towards the Beltway and towards the political process that a lot of people on the right had during the Tea Party years. And I know that it manifests itself sometimes in ways that are not sensible. And we see that sometimes with, like, debt ceiling negotiations on the right. But what Republicans learned from that, like, wave that continued into Trumpism and everything is that the bloodlust is very, very real. And sometimes, actually the politically smart thing to do is to indulge it. I'm saying the politically smart thing. I'm not saying the like, but the politically smart thing is to indulge it, because that's where your voters are, your representative in the House of Representatives. And you have to find a way to balance their intense fury with the system, with the way that you conduct yourself in the House of Representatives.
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Unknown B
I feel like Democrats have just totally waved the kind of grassroots people away for so long in a way that just, I don't think is politically made sense, but was only made possible by the media's, I think, like, affection for Nancy Pelosi.
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Unknown A
Well, I think part of what's different this time is, like, as much as I would like it to be different, the left is not anywhere close. Like, the actual left is not anywhere close to a majority of the Democratic base. And so, you know, they could sort of afford to ignore the Bernie Sanders left. And it is also true that, like, the most active parts of that movement are, you know, predominantly in cities. And that's why, you know, an AOC can win. But there was very little progress in terms of justice. Democrats being able to primary in, like, you know, more of a swing district or whatever. What's really different this time is last time around, the indivisibles of the world, like, that's the liberal resistance base. Like, that's, like, the core of the liberal resistance space. They were lockstep with the Democratic Party, and so they saw them as allies.
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Unknown A
And actually sometimes indivisible was also a real problem for some of the, like, Bernie Left type of candidates, et cetera. This time there is a real split. And so now you're not just talking about, oh, these, like, annoying lefties that we can just basically ignore. And whatever they're gonna do, they're never gonna be happy, and they're gonna do whatever they're gonna do. Now you're talking about somewhere. I mean some 70, some percent of the Democratic base thinks that Democrats are not doing enough to resist Trump and some 50% have a negative view of Democrats in Congress. So now you're talking about a majority of your just regular old vote blue solid Democratic liberal voters who are like, screw you, like you are failing me. And that is a very, very different dynamic that they are not prepared for and that they have never had to reckon with in the past.
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Unknown A
So I think that's part of what is really different at this moment. And there's, you know, I see this as well in like, you know, the, the shows that are performing well and the commentary on Twitter and on blue sky and whatever. Liberals also have this sense of these people betrayed us. There's this Bernie Sanders tiktoks are blowing up like crazy and getting millions of views.
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Unknown B
Your guys talks.
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Unknown A
Well forgot exactly millions of views. But you know, he's out there doing town halls about oligarchy in purple states and Kamala Harris is like getting her CAA contract. Like people see who is showing up and who actually has an answer and a response at this moment. And those leaders are largely on the left. So there's also, you know, a real sort of opening among liberals now that they've seen like, oh, this status quo way of doing this totally failed and these people totally failed and these media institutions totally failed to help me understand and prepare for what's actually going on. There is a different opening for radicalization there as well. That didn't exist, I think in the past.
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Unknown C
Yeah, yeah. And that's where I think it's going to be interesting to see what comes out of that on the left.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown C
Because there's a real, there's fertile ground to be planted now, despite how dark the moment is for the left. And they may have a lot of time in the wilderness to grow, to grow those weeds, but if you don't.
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Unknown B
But then you end up with a Trump if you don't, you know, like that's, you have a total hostile takeover if you, if your answer to the Tea party is the 2016 version of Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz.
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Unknown A
Great point, great point. All right, let's get to Elon's response to these clips, which is also really noteworthy. So you know, understandably, people started sharing these clips in the town hall around because they were sort of extraordinary scenes. There were a bunch of different clips to some lady who was like a descendant of Patrick Henry stood up and was like, this is you betrayed the founder, founders and my relativism Whatever. So there were a lot of really extraordinary moments there. But Elon apparently didn't like this stuff getting shared around. So I'm going to show you. This is the reporter Greg Bluestein, who I mentioned before, who went to the town hall, and he did a thread on what he saw there and just recording video from what was organically unfolding before him. And some of these posts, like this.
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Unknown C
One, you can view for people's context. This is Georgia's, like, standard, like, top political reporter. Yes. Not a Dem or a Republican. He's like the political guy.
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Unknown A
Exactly. So some of these posts in the thread you can view, like this one about bipartisan ways to cut the federal deficit. But this one, which is actually the one that I, that I shared, that I showed you guys, where people are yelling at him and upset about Elon and whatever. Well, if you go through this thread, you can't see it. It says this post is unavailable.
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Unknown C
What happens if you click Learn more there?
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Unknown A
It says notices on posts. We may sometimes add a notice to an account to give you more context. I mean, really, it doesn't explain anything. This tweet may include sensitive content. Yeah, it really doesn't explain anything. So you can't see it. The only way you can see it is if someone else, like, posted or retweeted it. You can get to it. And then, you know, like I said, some of them are available. Oh, here's another one. I think the Patrick Henry one I referenced, I think that one is also censored. And then, you know, McCormick responds here about what he describes as duplicitous work being done by the cdc. And so it was reasonable, he's saying to lay off a bunch of workers because of this quote, unquote, duplicitous work. But in any case, two of the clips that were going the most viral and were the most critical of Doge just, you know, completely censored from Greg's feed and make it much more difficult for people to be able to find and share these highly critical moments.
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Unknown A
So, you know, I mean, listen, it's like, goes without saying, this guy positioned himself as the free speech, the ultimate free speech, bro, and is anything but and is incredibly sensitive to any criticism. I mean, this is the second time in the show we brought up him, like, shadow banning and censoring content that was uncomfortable for him or critical of him. The other one being from his. The mother of three of his children.
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Unknown B
Well, look at this, too. I just shared this. This post from Bacha, who picked up in the Wall Street Journal quote, lawyers at Twitter threatening advertisers to spend more money on X or else owner Elon Musk will leverage his close relationship with Trump to torpedo mergers. This goes beyond a conflict of interest, is straight up extortion. That's how Bach referred to this report in the Wall Street Journal, actually, that the CEO Linda Yaccarino is involved with this. It's not just like random employees going rogue. This is like a pretty, pretty serious accusation in the pages of the Wall Street Journal about how Twitter is handling its CEO now being that close to the president. And all of the same arguments that conservatives like me made during the Trump administration about concentrated power. You know, Ryan, I remember you and I talking years ago about whether Twitter should legitimately be a public utility like Clarence Thomas.
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Unknown B
Clarence Thomas has said that common carrier, the sort of common carrier legal philosophy may best be applied to Twitter. And I think what we're seeing here is like proof of more and more why this is problem. The concentration of power is problematic.
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Unknown C
And also if people need an explanation or evidence for the rather basic point that a person who actively owns a major company should not be also a senior advisor to the president. If you need evidence of why that would be the case, because that person can then say, look, I see you have a merger here that you want to get through. I am the man. If you want that merger to go through, you need to write checks to my company like that. I mean, which is, I think if they can prove this, even under the current understanding of corruption and bribery, it would be, it would be a criminal act. But of course, it would be the Department of Justice that would need to prosecute that. A U.S. attorney and the FBI. And so, you know, we're going to have to wait a while. I don't know what the statute of limitations is on this stuff.
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Unknown A
You don't think Pam Bondi is gonna get right on top of this.
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Unknown B
Preemptive pardons.
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Unknown C
I was thinking it'd be so funny if as you're like outgoing move in the Department of Justice, if you're in the morning meeting, you're like, guys, found an amazing one. We should look into and send the Wall Street Journal link into the doj. Slack. Look at this. Ah, just kidding. I quit. And now I have to hire my own defense attorneys and I'm getting prosecuted. And the only other point that is kind of obvious, but it's worth making. Elon Musk loves to quote Orwell. You know, that it's what like a lot of, A lot of bros love to do like, that's. That's their go to guy. And I think Orwell would love the fact and would and would almost have predicted if he had been asked. The guy who would bring in the most Orwellian levels of censorship and thought control would, of course do it. Quoting Orwell.
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Unknown A
Yes.
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Unknown B
And he would be a capitalist. Like, he would be a capitalist, which Orwell would have easily. Yeah, I mean, Orwell was not a. Not exactly a capitalist.
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Unknown A
Well, to the point about, you know, what. What the justice system is up to, we've got this. So Democratic Representative Robert Garcia, apparently he was critical of Elon Musk, and now he's been sent this letter from the Department of Justice threatening to potentially prosecute him for that criticism. So this is from this guy, Ed Martin, who, by the way, was outside the Capitol on January 6th. And that's his. That's his whole vibe. Anyway, he says, as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, I received requests for information clarification. I take these requests seriously and I act on them. With letters like this one you're receiving at this time, I respectfully request you clarify your comments from February 12th. During a live interview with CNN, when asked how Democrats can stop Elon Musk, you spoke clearly. What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight.
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Unknown A
This is an actual fight for democracy. This sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk, an appointed representative of President Donald Trump, who you call a dick, lol, and government staff who work for him. Their concerns have led to this inquiry. We take threats against public officials very seriously, blah, blah, blah. So basically, you know, you've got this stooge, Ed Martin, who is the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who had posted on Twitter previously like, hey, this was when journalists got a hold of some of the names of the Doge hacker apparatchik kids and were publishing them, because that's very clearly in the public interest to know who these people are. And this same guy threatened to investigate the journalists who dared to report on what was going on at Treasure and these other agencies and, you know, reveal the identities of some of these people who had gained access to, like, our Social Security numbers as one example.
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Unknown A
So this is kind of his whole mo. But, you know, you might say, okay, well, you know, this probably won't go anywhere. And even if it did, even if they tried to investigate him, like, it's probably going to get thrown on a court or whatever. But this sort of threat from the Department of Justice, you have. You have to take seriously and even if it ultimately goes nowhere, how much of your life gets consumed by attorney's fees and responses and being targeted and all of these things like, this is not a nothing kind of a thing threat to throw out there at this random congressman who said something about Elon Musk that Elon Musk didn't like.
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Unknown C
Right. And the saying is, you know, you know, you're. You're bringing a knife to a gunfight or. And, you know, so clearly that's the, like, cliche that he's playing off of. And he's. Except he's using the. One of a bar fight, I think. And I think that the conservatives having, quote, unquote, weaponized, the term weaponized over the last several years, you know, weaponized has become one of the chief metaphors that the MAGA movement uses, particularly when it talks about the Department of Justice, for instance, having been weaponized. But lots of other things are now getting weaponized. It's like the, it's like the, the new big word. And so if you've made that the new big word, then saying actual weapon, weaponized, like, yeah, you're still, you're still in the realm of metaphor there. I don't, I don't, I don't see how this case is going to fly, but you're right.
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Unknown C
Like, getting a letter like that is pretty wild. Yeah. What did you think, Emily?
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Unknown B
To me, this is like this visceral cultural populism that goes back to the Tea Party. It's like when there's just so much rage in the conservative mind right now going back to when Sarah Palin was, you know, had her map with targets on and got blamed for the.
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Unknown C
Got the time. Sued.
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Unknown B
Yeah, yeah.
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Unknown C
And they lost.
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Unknown B
God, she was like, the times actually kind of accepted the narrative so much that they ended up printing something wrong. They corrected it. But I think that's what this goes back to. It's like retribution for conservatives feeling like they would speak metaphorically for years and be called racist or violent or whatever. Now, the department doesn't like, this is stupid. It's just dumb. The Department of Justice has, by their own, Trump's own, like, DOJ people, years and years of corruption to disentangle. So, like, threatening someone for talking metaphorically about Elon Musk is not the best use of their time. Nor is it wise to start bending over backwards to help this billionaire, like, to be in his safe space. Like, it's just stupid.
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Unknown A
I mean, you're using between that story, the one that you laid out for us, Emily, about using. Threatening to use the powers of the federal government to come after advertisers who dare to not spend their money on Elon's platform. And then we also have. I mean, this is all deeply authoritarian, like, let's just call. Call it what it is. And then this is also not really making me feel any better Here you've got Musk's private guard. So his private security is now going to be able to carry out arrests. They've been sort of deputized. CBS is reporting this out. This is the reporter here. She says the U.S. marshals Service has deputized members of Elon's private security detail, granting them certain protections of federal law enforcement. After several within Musk's orbit relayed heightened concern about his safety. U.S. marshal Service routinely deputizes police during the inauguration, for instance.
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Unknown A
But deputizing personal security is an unorthodox move, they say, not immediately clear what authorities must teams will be granted. But law enforcement deputized by the marshals are typically permitted to carry weapons on federal grounds and carry out arrests. So he now has his own officially deputized law enforcement officers guarding him. Ryan?
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Unknown C
Yeah. What could go wrong with that?
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Unknown B
Well, one thing I do, I say is, like, this is partially why I don't think the right has fully reckoned with how damaging Elon Musk could be in the long term. To the ends of, like, genuinely, like, let's put it charitably, like, reforming the federal government. Like, let's say we take the what the pod save Burroughs said and, like, maybe Democrats should have been doing some of the stuff, some of its comments, nonsense, like, there's bloat and you can kind of own the issue politically. Like, that's the most charitable version of what Doge is supposed to be doing. If we take that to its logical conclusion, I don't think people realize how damaging Elon Musk might be to that cause in the long term because there's so much potential, like, every single day for malfeasance, like, flirting with authoritarianism. Well, I mean, oligarchy, like, naked, obvious oligarchy that ends up undermining that in the minds of voters.
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Unknown B
And because Trump had the sugar high in his approval rating early on, they felt like they had all the momentum in the world. Some of this they felt like they couldn't do without Elon Musk bringing in, like, these dudes, these, like, brilliant young guys. They felt like they never would have been able to have the, like, vigor to end the, like, the stamina to take on all of the Federal government in these sweeping reforms, testing, stress testing, the courts system and all of that without Elon Musk. But what it may end up turning out to look like is Elon Musk is what disqualifies a lot of this in the minds of voters because polling is showing his approval is starting to dip significantly.
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Unknown A
Yeah, well, so I. Those components were sort of the more like power grabby authoritarian pieces. But then to your point, Emily, there's also the just like naked self dealing pieces which are increasingly obvious. So here's, I mean this one kind of fits in both buckets if we're being honest. So the National Labor Relations Board's Buffalo office received word from its landlord, that's the gse, acting on behalf of Doge, that they had unilaterally canceled the region's five year lease, no prior notice to the agency. They have been given 90 days to vacate that building. And Kim Kelly, who's the great labor reporter, points out that, and I actually didn't realize this, Tesla workers in Buffalo had just tried to unionize a few years back and so, oh, lo and behold, this one particular regional National Labor Relations Board office has been targeted for closure. Hmm, wonder if that relates to any upset at Elon by Elon Musk who absolutely hates union unions in general.
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Unknown A
Union workers has, you know, is openly. Yeah, strike busing is suing the NRL NLRB to be declared unconstitutional altogether. So yeah, those things possibly, possibly could be linked. And then we've got this one as well. You know, we didn't even get into, and I don't want to get into all the back and forth with this astronaut who's up on the International Space Station. They were going back and forth, but at the end of all of this, Elon says it's time to begin preparations for deorbiting the space station. It has served its purposes very little incremental utility. Let's go to Mars. And as Ryan and I were talking about yesterday, like the Mars thing is I think the core of his ideological goals, like he wants to use the resources of the federal government, he wants to marshal them into his private company to accomplish his vision, grand vision for human civilization, which is for it to be a multi planetary species.
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Unknown A
So anyway, he says, let's go to Mars. So this guy says, are you suggesting that the International Space Station be Deorbited prior to 2030? As you know, SpaceX currently has a contract to build that deorbit vehicle to safely bring the station down in 2030. The decision, Elon says is up to the present. But my recommendation is as soon as possible. I recommend two years from now. So Elon is the one who's getting the cash to do this deorbit vehicle. And he's like, let's go ahead and, you know, let's go ahead and move up that timeline so we can go ahead and do this deorbit even sooner than was already planned, even quicker than that 2030 original timeline.
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Unknown B
Well, there's just been this, like, I think part of the thing that Republicans has made Republicans feel comfortable with Elon Musk is that there's so much to be concerned about in terms of conflicts of interest. You can kind of just put it all into the conflicts of interest bucket and the public is just going to kind of digest it that way. Like, okay, yep, we know he has conflicts of interest. He said, you know, he's going to police himself. Trump won't let him touch anything. We've kind of handled it. But again, what I don't think everybody has fully realized and I took a look at the buffalo thing and what actually unsettled me and it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately is, you know, so many people like, well, why aren't you like, fully pro elon? Like, those are the only way to like achieve limited government ends, which I am a limited government person.
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Unknown B
And they look at this. I'm like, we might not know for years, for years what corruption happened in any given circumstance. Like, we literally, it may take years for us to get hard, concrete proof that there was self dealing in one situation or another because there's so much going on. But I also think as these, like, really particular, specific, narrow examples start trickling out into the daily news cycles, it'll just become obvious in a way that Republicans didn't anticipate. They kind of expected everyone to be able to digest all of this as a whole. Like, oh, yeah, he has conflicts. It's okay. You're either okay with it or you're not. But I think as these like, sort of very specific things sometimes about local communities like Buffalo come out, it's just, it illustrates it like repeatedly to people who are paying attention to the news in a way that's going to be a turn off.
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Unknown B
I don't think Republicans have totally grappled.
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Unknown A
With well, and it's just going to be a relentless drip. I mean, I think people can very intuitively understand the richest man on the planet with all of these different corporate interests with tens of billions of dollars in federal government contracts is not the person you want to be having these, this incredible command of the federal government. And so you have that intuitive understanding. You have a just sort of reflexive reaction against the idea of an unelected billionaire just like taking control of everything. And then you have the daily news cycle of, oh, he gets rid of the NLRB office in Buffalo and it turns out that, you know, they had run afoul of him before. Oh, he's bringing in SpaceX engineers, the FAA. Oh, look at that. FAA was investigating SpaceX for one of their, you know, failed launches that came apart and forced a dozen commercial airlines to have to divert.
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Unknown A
You know, it's every single day there's going to be a new story like this illustrating just how poorly this person should be regarded as a steward of all of our taxpayer dollars.
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Unknown C
And I think the biggest risk for the MAGA movement here is that we either get a cyclical recession or Musk actually sparks a recession. And the way you could spark one is, would be by setting in a massive kind of hiring freeze across the country. So, and right now, like obviously, so you're going to, you know, the next, the next couple of months of unemployment, whatever the job gains were going to be, you're going to have a number of people that don't hire because they're uncertain about the economic circumstance. You're going to have probably several hundred thousand, you know, jobs lost either through the federal government directly firing people or the contractors that are losing their contracts then laying off people. Universities seem to have completely frozen hiring and are probably, probably some of them are cutting non profits that rely on, you know, government funding.
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Unknown C
States, you know, a lot of the, a lot of state programs rely on federal funding. So they're going to at minimum not hire potentially they're going to lay people off. And so Elon Musk has, you know, said like, hey, you know, we're at an unsustainable path and we need to work. It's going to be painful on the early side. And you know, there was a Reagan recession very early on and then the economy rebounded in time for him to kind of recover and just absolutely romp in 1984. So that's possible like that Maybe, maybe that's what happens and maybe it's, maybe it works out. And Elon Musk is right. The other potential is you get a big recession and people are unhappy about it. And we're like, wait a minute, we've been growing economically since 2009. We had the crisis in 09, then we had very slow growth from 09 through 15 or so.
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Unknown C
And then it picked up more all the way through here. And now all of a sudden, people are getting laid off, wages are crashing. This sucks. And, you know, and also, I can't find eggs. And I don't even know, you know, what the, like, measles rate is and like, and what the rate of bird flu is because you fired all the people and banned them from, you know. So, like, there is a real risk that, like, things could turn ugly and that people turned not just against Musk, but also against Maga for it, which I think that's kind of what Sohrab Amari was arguing. And I think, Emily, you've made the same point that, like, you fought hard to get to this place, and now you're kind of putting your eggs, you know, which may be infected with bird flu, into Elon Musk's, if you can.
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Unknown A
Even find them or afford them.
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Unknown B
Screw it.
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Unknown C
So he better be right.
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Unknown B
He's not Donald Trump. Again, like, this reminds me of the same thing we talked about the, like, moral compass of Elon Musk earlier. There's this, like, muscle memory that a lot of people on the right have. Like, okay, so Donald Trump's not. He's a. He's a morally imperfect vessel for our moral ends. And so they think the same thing with Elon Musk. Like, we already dealt with this. It's going to be fine. Politically, he is not. His business conflicts are nowhere near Donald Trump's. And I think Donald Trump and Ryan has reported some of this out, has some, like, very concerning business conflicts, like all of the deals they try to do in Saudi Arabia and those different places. But Elon Musk is on his stratospheric conflicts of interest compared to Donald Trump.
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Unknown C
Like, Jared Kushner looks like a Boy Scout.
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Unknown A
Sure.
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Unknown B
Exactly. Like, this is daily on a significant geopolitical scale. And so it's not the same. Is. Is a very, very different figure.
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Unknown A
Yeah, Ryan. And Ryan, I think your point about a potential reset, I mean, Elon said when he was campaigning for Trump, like, there's going to be some temporary pain. Not for him, of course, not for his friends, but for you. So it's not like he wasn't upfront about what he thought his actions could cause. And, you know, I sort of feel like, you know, when I'll talk about the federal budget and be like a usaid, like, that's, you know, however many billion, that's barely a blip, and conservatives will say, well, a billion there, a billion here soon enough, you're talking about real money. I feel like that with these jobs that are being cut, like you're Talking about cutting 10% of the federal government workforce. And you may think you may have some Internet brained idea of what a federal, who a federal government bureaucrat is and what they look like, but as Jesse Waters discovered, oh, it turns out a lot of these are veterans.
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Unknown A
Turns out a lot of them, they're not even, you know, in D.C. they're all around the country. Turns out these programs that have been frozen, you know, have impacts in neighborhoods, communities in red states and blue states. Like you're not just owning the libs with this stuff. And at a certain point, you know, enough people are having like a directly, a direct impact on their own lives or on the lives of their friends and family that it really does add up to both a political and economic catastrophe.
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Unknown C
Yeah, the people just, just to underscore it for people that the folks here in Washington who are getting rich off of the government are not government workers. They are weapons makers, they're lobbyists, they're pharmaceutical lobbyists, they're Amazon executives.
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Unknown B
Well, sometimes they then go into the federal government and go back out.
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Unknown C
They might go in as like a very top political official, but they're not going in as career people.
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Unknown A
No. Yeah, that's exactly right. So we'll wrap it up there for now. There's still plenty of stuff we could talk about, but it's already. We've already been going for over an hour, so. So, Ryan and Emily, thank you so much for spending some time with us this morning. You guys have a great weekend and soccer. And I assuming Sagar is feeling better, which he says he is on the mend. But we will see you guys. Yeah, we will see you guys on Monday.
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Unknown C
See you later.