Raging Moderates: Trump’s First Moves, Biden’s Final Words

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0:01:53 – Welcome to Raging Moderates, I’m Sky Galloway.
0:01:55 – And I’m Jessica Tarlove.
0:01:57 – Jessica, I’ve decided after this,
0:02:01 kind of two week free trial of 2025, I want my money back.
0:02:02 I’m-
0:02:03 – Are you gonna do this every week?
0:02:04 But I get the joke now.
0:02:07 – Oh, did I use it every cycle of my stuff?
0:02:10 So by the way, when your kids are a little bit older,
0:02:13 especially your son, a decent means of-
0:02:14 – I don’t have a son.
0:02:16 – You have two daughters, I knew that.
0:02:17 – Yeah, sure.
0:02:18 – And they’re lovely.
0:02:21 – Yeah, no one cut this, by the way.
0:02:22 – Oh my God, yeah.
0:02:23 You have kids?
0:02:25 – They’re so cute, they look just like you.
0:02:25 – You have kids?
0:02:26 – Mm-hmm.
0:02:27 – Let’s start rumors.
0:02:28 – I am a birthing person.
0:02:31 – So one of the great, I guess you could do this
0:02:35 for your daughters, decent education and power
0:02:37 and history and politics and culture.
0:02:41 And also oddly, sex education is to have your
0:02:44 16 year old boy and I’m about to do it with my,
0:02:46 I did it when he was 15, but I did it two years ago
0:02:48 with my 17 year old, I’ll do it in a year
0:02:49 with my 14 year old is to watch
0:02:53 the entire Game of Thrones series.
0:02:57 It just touches on everything and it’s very bonding.
0:03:01 And in one of the episodes, Stannis Baratheon
0:03:05 decides to burn his daughter, Shireen, at the stake.
0:03:09 And it is so incredibly uncomfortable.
0:03:11 And I decided for my mental health,
0:03:13 going through the second run through of it
0:03:15 ’cause we’re watching it again together.
0:03:18 I would not watch that scene.
0:03:21 Yesterday was Shireen Baratheon being burned at the stake.
0:03:22 I didn’t watch it.
0:03:23 So you’ve got to carry this show
0:03:25 ’cause for my own mental health,
0:03:27 I just couldn’t watch this shit.
0:03:29 I just, I couldn’t do it.
0:03:33 So you tell me, what happened yesterday real quick?
0:03:37 – Like the inauguration or in my toddler’s life.
0:03:40 – Let’s start with the important stuff,
0:03:41 your toddler’s life.
0:03:44 – Well, I don’t know actually
0:03:45 ’cause I was at inauguration.
0:03:48 So all roads lead to Donald Trump’s secondary.
0:03:49 – You went to the inauguration?
0:03:52 – Yeah, have you even looked at the script?
0:03:54 I have two daughters and I went to the inauguration.
0:03:56 – You went to the inauguration as part of Fox?
0:04:00 – Well, yeah, I mean, we weren’t in the Capitol
0:04:02 because there were very few people in the Capitol.
0:04:03 We had reporters there,
0:04:07 but we had two gorgeous sets that were built.
0:04:10 One looking at the Capitol, one looking at the White House.
0:04:15 And yeah, it was there Sunday and Monday doing coverage.
0:04:16 And it was wild.
0:04:17 Yeah, it was pretty cool.
0:04:19 – Give us a sense for the vibe.
0:04:22 Like what, give us some on the ground, same vibe check.
0:04:23 You said pretty cool.
0:04:25 So immediately I disagree with you
0:04:27 ’cause I can’t imagine anything about that would be cool,
0:04:30 but I’ll defer to you ’cause you were there, I wasn’t.
0:04:35 – Yeah, it was like a maga polar vortex
0:04:41 with the wind chill and the Trump enthusiasm bottled up.
0:04:43 When I say pretty cool,
0:04:47 I think if something’s only happened 47 times
0:04:50 in our history, there’s something cool about it.
0:04:53 And I definitely felt the gravity of the moment,
0:04:54 how important it is.
0:04:58 And watching the peaceful transfer of power
0:04:59 go off without a hitch.
0:05:01 When everything got changed, you know,
0:05:02 just three days before– – When it’s us
0:05:04 transferring it, I’m sorry, go ahead.
0:05:07 – 100%, and that was a major theme of the day
0:05:11 that obviously January 20th, 2021,
0:05:13 looked nothing like this.
0:05:17 And a lot of people, even folks who liked Donald Trump
0:05:20 more than me, if that’s possible,
0:05:25 were citing how gracious now former President Joe Biden
0:05:28 and former Vice President Kamala Harris were about this,
0:05:30 and have been in the, you know,
0:05:32 since the transition started with Biden,
0:05:34 having Trump over right away
0:05:37 and saying to him, welcome home,
0:05:40 which seems pretty above and beyond,
0:05:42 considering the level of vitriol
0:05:43 that’s been spewed between them,
0:05:45 the level of I’m gonna jail you,
0:05:47 no, I’m gonna jail you.
0:05:49 And then everyone’s having tea and crumpets,
0:05:51 which probably says something terrible
0:05:52 about our political class,
0:05:54 that they make us think that everybody
0:05:56 is an existential threat to the Republic.
0:05:58 And then actually, they’re just pretty chill.
0:06:01 And I wanna hang out with them at Jimmy Carter’s funeral.
0:06:05 But, you know, some things are bigger than politics
0:06:09 and being able to cover inauguration like that,
0:06:13 and to have the kind of access that we had,
0:06:15 and to be able to walk around a city
0:06:17 that was totally shut down for events
0:06:18 that didn’t end up happening,
0:06:21 but filled with tens of thousands of people
0:06:22 that came from all over the country
0:06:24 and all over the world.
0:06:26 It was obviously a foreign influence problem,
0:06:28 but this is the first inauguration
0:06:32 to have foreign dignitaries there like this,
0:06:36 you know, hoping to sit next to Bezos and Lauren Sanchez
0:06:38 and her bra and get some business done
0:06:40 and get access to the Trump family.
0:06:41 – I won’t even go there.
0:06:42 Anyways.
0:06:43 – No, you won’t?
0:06:44 – No, yeah.
0:06:45 – Feel free.
0:06:46 – I mean, it was a story point.
0:06:47 – I think that could save America,
0:06:48 and I’ll come back to that.
0:06:50 But as Jess is talking about,
0:06:52 we’re gonna cover Trump’s inauguration,
0:06:54 we’ll come back to this Biden’s 11th hour legacy
0:06:57 and TikTok’s ban reversal.
0:06:59 So I did see, I have seen some clips
0:07:01 and my favorite one is all of your colleagues
0:07:06 going insane over Michelle Obama not showing up
0:07:09 about how selfish and outrageous it is.
0:07:12 And rumor is that Trump didn’t show up
0:07:15 to Biden’s inauguration and maybe even inspired–
0:07:15 – I wrote that somewhere.
0:07:18 – Maybe inspired kind of duck dynasty insurrection
0:07:21 that was a low point in our nation’s history.
0:07:23 But yeah, Michelle Obama, first lady Michelle,
0:07:26 not showing up, that’s really outrageous.
0:07:28 So, all right, let’s bust right into it.
0:07:31 Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th president
0:07:32 of the United States in a ceremony
0:07:34 at the Capitol in Tunda.
0:07:36 Wasting no time, he signed a flurry of executive actions,
0:07:39 including revoking 78 of Joe Biden’s policies
0:07:41 with drawing the U.S. and the Paris Climate Agreement
0:07:42 and the World Health Organization
0:07:45 and ending birthright to this agenda.
0:07:48 He also issued sweeping pardons for over 1,500 January 6th
0:07:50 rioters, including members of the Oath Keepers
0:07:54 and Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy.
0:07:56 For supporters, it’s the fulfillment
0:07:58 of bold campaign promises for critics.
0:08:02 It’s a troubling start to a presidency pushing the limits
0:08:04 of executive power.
0:08:07 – So, it feels like you were excited and caught up
0:08:11 or appreciate the majesty of the moment.
0:08:15 Any surprises or anything that you found sort of
0:08:17 out of the ordinary or interesting
0:08:20 in your couple days in DC?
0:08:23 – Well, the whole thing was, excuse me,
0:08:24 I also lost my voice there
0:08:27 to make millennial vocal fry even worse,
0:08:28 so I apologize for that.
0:08:29 The whole thing was out of the ordinary
0:08:31 because it was inside.
0:08:33 I was talking to Mark Teeson,
0:08:35 who is a Washington Post opinion columnist
0:08:38 and was a speechwriter for George W. Bush.
0:08:40 Now is the greatest Republican president
0:08:44 in everyone’s eyes ’cause he does oil paintings, right?
0:08:46 And doesn’t start wars anymore.
0:08:47 He was saying that he didn’t think
0:08:50 that we would ever have it outside again
0:08:54 because there’s just no way to secure the perimeter
0:08:55 to make people safe.
0:08:58 And that’s a massive change in the way
0:09:00 that this is going to happen.
0:09:01 Obviously Reagan went inside
0:09:03 because of freezing temperatures.
0:09:06 This was a combination of, it was cold though,
0:09:08 around the same as Obama’s inauguration,
0:09:10 which was outside with two million people,
0:09:13 but people are very clear about the fact
0:09:15 that there was a real security threat,
0:09:16 which I completely believe.
0:09:18 There’ve already been two assassination attempts
0:09:19 that we even know about.
0:09:22 I’m sure lots of plans that have been foiled.
0:09:25 So yeah, I’m sure he was in part concerned
0:09:27 about crowd size, real security threats,
0:09:29 and then cold temperatures,
0:09:31 especially with an older base of people
0:09:35 that were going to come for the inauguration.
0:09:37 And they did a beautiful job.
0:09:38 I don’t know if the clips that you saw
0:09:41 were of the inauguration itself or kind of the stories
0:09:44 that were going along around on the sidelines of this,
0:09:47 but it looked unbelievable.
0:09:48 And they had the overflow room,
0:09:52 which was filled with people like governors of major states,
0:09:57 like Texas, so they could fit our new kleptocracy
0:09:58 in the main room.
0:09:59 – Hedge fund managers in Texas
0:10:02 has bumped out or pushed out shoved governors.
0:10:03 – Well, they’re also government officials now,
0:10:04 a lot of them.
0:10:08 But that was, there’s something,
0:10:12 I don’t want to say beautiful because it breaks my heart,
0:10:16 but there’s something refreshing in,
0:10:19 I guess about the fact that Trump and Co.
0:10:20 don’t hide anything.
0:10:21 – Agreed, yeah.
0:10:22 – Right?
0:10:24 It’s just like, hey, I’m going to stab you in the front.
0:10:27 And when I do, it’s going to have Mark Zuckerberg’s perm,
0:10:31 or I’m going to have the CEO of TikTok
0:10:34 sitting next to our new director of national intelligence,
0:10:38 like Tulsi Gabbard just sitting next to the CEO of TikTok.
0:10:40 And we’re going to talk about TikTok later in the show.
0:10:44 But I went to the free press party,
0:10:45 which everyone wanted to go to
0:10:47 because Jerks Bentley was performing,
0:10:50 saw a lot of interesting people there.
0:10:52 But these guys from the Norwegian embassy came up to me
0:10:56 and they were like, oh, we love watching you.
0:10:59 And it’s amazing also how much of our cable news
0:11:00 is consumed abroad.
0:11:03 That was a theme I met an Israeli reporter
0:11:05 from Tel Aviv in the train station.
0:11:07 I took the train back and forth,
0:11:09 who was like, we watch the five every day.
0:11:11 And I’m like, are you guys busier?
0:11:14 And he was like, well, this is agenda setting, right?
0:11:16 Especially when it comes to what’s going to happen
0:11:17 with the ceasefire deal.
0:11:21 And hopefully that continues to go through as planned.
0:11:23 But the Norwegian embassy guys came up to me
0:11:25 and I was like, what are you guys doing here?
0:11:27 They’re like, oh, well, you know, we want to go to the party.
0:11:31 And I said, are you trying to just not end up like Greenland?
0:11:34 And obviously Norway is a much bigger country
0:11:37 and has a lot more going on there.
0:11:39 And they said, everyone is just trying to figure out
0:11:41 how to navigate, right?
0:11:43 Everyone needs to be on the right side of this.
0:11:45 So he doesn’t wake up one day and say,
0:11:49 hey, your natural resources are very appealing to me.
0:11:53 Hey, you’re in great strategic position, right?
0:11:56 To counter Russia and China.
0:11:57 Let’s work a deal out, right?
0:11:58 I know you’re a sovereign nation
0:12:00 and I know you pay your bills on time,
0:12:03 but I really like what you got over there.
0:12:06 And that was a major theme of the weekend.
0:12:08 I mean, all of the enormous sponsorships
0:12:12 from big tech companies that didn’t even do this
0:12:13 when their candidate of choice,
0:12:17 ’cause they were liberal leaning until 20 minutes ago,
0:12:18 was getting into office.
0:12:22 You know, everything was sponsored by X, Google,
0:12:25 Metta, TikTok, that really stuck out to me.
0:12:27 – How do you get 100 drunk Norwegian fraternity guys
0:12:28 out of your pool?
0:12:33 – Oh, I don’t drain it.
0:12:36 – Hey guys, would you please get out of the pool?
0:12:38 I mean, Norwegians- – Oh, ’cause they’re so nice.
0:12:39 – They’re just so nice, get it?
0:12:42 Anyways. – Yeah, and follow directions.
0:12:42 – That was, I thought,
0:12:44 one of the weirdest parts of his inaugural address.
0:12:48 He made statements about expanding America’s borders
0:12:50 and bringing our flag to-
0:12:52 – Gulf of America. – To new, yeah, but even,
0:12:53 that’s a renaming thing.
0:12:56 That’s just a weird, I don’t know, whatever that is.
0:12:58 That’s his rebranding, let’s call it,
0:13:01 I don’t know, let’s call it Altria instead of Philomorus,
0:13:04 whatever, that I think is unimportant.
0:13:08 But when he says, it strikes me that his role model here
0:13:09 hands down as Putin,
0:13:12 both in terms of his kleptocratic inclinations,
0:13:15 but also this sort of new,
0:13:17 we want to withdraw from the world in terms of military aid,
0:13:19 but we might invade you if we can raise a flag.
0:13:23 It’s very, well, who does he have designs on?
0:13:25 Well, okay, he has designs on Greenland,
0:13:29 like who’s next, we’re gonna start invading other nations.
0:13:31 I don’t, that I found very strange,
0:13:35 but it’s striking how much he seems to be parroting
0:13:38 or kind of mimicking what I would call Putin’s
0:13:40 sort of approach to governance, if you will.
0:13:43 We will start no new wars,
0:13:46 but also we’re an imperialist nation,
0:13:48 is an interesting contrast.
0:13:53 But I mean, this leads me to the broader thought process
0:13:57 that I was going through over the course of the 48 hours.
0:14:01 And I’ve been thinking a lot about what we did wrong
0:14:05 in terms of liberals when Trump got into office
0:14:09 and all of the capital and mental health
0:14:12 and wellbeing that we wasted, right?
0:14:16 On freaking the fuck out about absolutely everything.
0:14:18 And then this election came around
0:14:20 and a lot of people told us,
0:14:22 it’s just not that serious, right?
0:14:23 So do you remember,
0:14:24 and I don’t know who originally said it,
0:14:28 but when it became the talking point
0:14:31 that you had to take Trump seriously, but not literally.
0:14:36 And so I thought, okay, I’m gonna try to take him seriously,
0:14:41 like think about what undergirds what he’s saying,
0:14:44 like the imperialist machinations
0:14:47 that he’s clearly got in all of this.
0:14:50 And maybe he’s not gonna actually take over ex-country,
0:14:52 but what could he do in reality?
0:14:55 Or the number of inaccuracies, right?
0:14:58 In his inaugural address,
0:15:01 then the speech that he gave in the overflow room,
0:15:03 which got progressively more like a rally speech
0:15:05 where he starts talking about,
0:15:06 jailing Liz Cheney,
0:15:09 though I assume he was off script,
0:15:11 but it was amazing in the inaugural that he was like,
0:15:13 you know, I think actually, you know, we won California,
0:15:16 I’m gonna have them look into it.
0:15:18 Like he’s so high off his own supply
0:15:20 or whatever you’re supposed to say.
0:15:22 And I mean, he did become president again,
0:15:23 so I guess it’s a big day.
0:15:28 But if you try to take him seriously and not literally,
0:15:33 how do you square that with like the first flurry
0:15:35 of executive actions,
0:15:40 which are literally the bad stuff that he said.
0:15:45 Right, this isn’t, I’m not coming after Obala, don’t worry.
0:15:47 I’m just coming after the criminals.
0:15:50 Or why is your hair on fire?
0:15:54 Like my hair is on fire because you just tried
0:15:56 to take away birthright citizenship
0:15:59 from the vice president’s wife, right?
0:16:02 Or from Kamala Harris,
0:16:03 if this was actually to be implemented
0:16:06 and it’ll be challenged in the courts.
0:16:10 But I don’t know how to do this yet.
0:16:12 And if it’s gonna be a long four years,
0:16:14 it was always gonna be a long four years.
0:16:16 But what do you think about that?
0:16:18 Take him seriously, not literally.
0:16:22 And how to navigate this in a sane way
0:16:25 that doesn’t make you personally crazy,
0:16:27 but also doesn’t continue to alienate people
0:16:30 who might wanna be part of your coalition.
0:16:32 I think a lot of us are struggling with,
0:16:34 so do we sort of come together
0:16:39 and recognize the election has been decided.
0:16:43 It’s time to all be Americans versus an inclination,
0:16:45 I think I lean on in that as,
0:16:47 I just sort of refuse to normalize this shit.
0:16:52 I don’t, I can’t kind of come together around a guy
0:16:57 who inspired people to attack Capitol Police
0:16:59 and refuse to show up at the last inauguration.
0:17:02 It doesn’t believe in the peaceful transfer of power.
0:17:04 I don’t, you know, I’m just sort of, look,
0:17:07 I purposely didn’t wanna watch the inauguration
0:17:11 ’cause I wouldn’t be able to resist shitposting it online.
0:17:13 And I thought, well, at least give them 24 or 48 hours
0:17:16 of grace, but I do struggle with the tension
0:17:19 between being more graceful and trying to come together
0:17:22 and also thinking, you know what, I’ll do about,
0:17:25 I’ll show half the grace they showed us,
0:17:26 which is none.
0:17:27 Well, anything times zero.
0:17:28 Which is none.
0:17:28 Yeah, half of zero.
0:17:31 I’m thinking back to my math days.
0:17:35 And then the thing that was on display
0:17:37 that I saw these pictures of that was so disappointing
0:17:41 for me was the kind of the knee bending
0:17:43 of all these tech billionaires.
0:17:45 And I know what they’re thinking.
0:17:46 The smartest thing to do, this guy’s pretty easy
0:17:48 to manipulate and that is if I show up
0:17:50 and I give a million bucks to an inaugural committee,
0:17:52 it’s worth tens of not hundreds of billions of dollars
0:17:53 to my company shareholder value
0:17:55 ’cause I’ll stay in his good graces.
0:17:57 This is just a good trade.
0:18:00 At the same time, you know, where are the Americans?
0:18:01 Where is the fidelity to competition?
0:18:03 These guys don’t like him.
0:18:04 They don’t like each other.
0:18:06 They don’t want to sit next to each other,
0:18:08 which brings me back to who is the most powerful person
0:18:10 on the planet right now and stick with me here.
0:18:15 I think Lauren Sanchez, I’ve met her two previous husbands
0:18:16 and they’re both amazing guys.
0:18:18 One, I think his name’s Tony Gonzalez.
0:18:19 He’s a SFL player.
0:18:21 I met him in F1 Vegas.
0:18:23 He’s tall, he’s handsome, he’s super funny.
0:18:26 He’s just, seems like a wonderful guy.
0:18:28 Her second husband was a guy named Patrick Weitzel
0:18:30 who’s like 6’4″ handsome.
0:18:33 He’s kind of the Ari Emanuel that’s lower key.
0:18:36 He’s this super agent, incredible businessman,
0:18:38 you know, the guy you want to be.
0:18:41 And then her third husband, Jeff Bezos,
0:18:42 is obviously a very impressive guy.
0:18:44 So this, Lauren Sanchez, I would argue
0:18:47 is one of the most skilled people in the world.
0:18:49 I don’t entirely know what those skills are.
0:18:50 I think she’s got a magnetic personality.
0:18:52 Everybody I know says she’s,
0:18:55 she’s just got to be a captivating person.
0:18:58 When I saw the Zuck staring at her chest,
0:19:01 it dawned on me that if she really wants
0:19:02 to do the world of solid,
0:19:06 she should give her fourth husband should be the Zuck.
0:19:10 And then Priscilla Chan would get half the voting shares.
0:19:13 And I think you’d see a dramatic spike in mental wellness
0:19:15 and trust in our institutions.
0:19:18 So I think Lauren Sanchez is the leader we need right now.
0:19:20 Your thoughts on the impending divorce energy
0:19:22 of Mark Zuckerberg.
0:19:24 Well, I was actually surprised
0:19:26 to see Priscilla Chan was there.
0:19:28 She didn’t get to be in the room.
0:19:31 It was only Lauren Sanchez that I got to see.
0:19:31 You’re kidding.
0:19:36 So Bezos, Bezos’s wife or girlfriend got in
0:19:39 but not Zuckerberg’s wife?
0:19:40 Yes, exactly.
0:19:44 Which supports your argument
0:19:47 that she’s the most powerful person in the world
0:19:51 or that Jeff Bezos is more valuable to Trump
0:19:53 than Zuckerberg is at this point.
0:19:56 So he’ll have to continue going on Joe Rogan.
0:19:59 I guess ’cause Trump likes her look.
0:19:59 But anyways.
0:20:01 I mean, who doesn’t like that look?
0:20:06 I didn’t think the look for the inauguration was appropriate.
0:20:07 I thought she looked great.
0:20:08 You don’t, you don’t.
0:20:08 Well, yeah, she looked great.
0:20:11 But I don’t think you should have your bra out
0:20:12 in the rotunda.
0:20:16 I mean, listen, I was probably not the target audience
0:20:21 for it that felt like a straight eyes look at me look.
0:20:23 It was also high fashion.
0:20:25 But I think it was Alexander McQueen.
0:20:30 But I should note as well, the fashion was incredible.
0:20:32 And I brought this up on air.
0:20:36 It is very meaningful that all the big fashion houses
0:20:41 have now signed on to dressing the Trumps and the Vances.
0:20:44 And clearly Ushavance is the star of all of this.
0:20:49 Her, her fashion coming out, seeing her all done up
0:20:52 and how much she was reveling in this
0:20:55 and the sweet way that she was looking at her husband
0:20:56 with the little kids.
0:20:57 I don’t know if you saw the daughter,
0:21:00 the three-year-old toddler had band-aids
0:21:02 on all of her fingers.
0:21:04 Did your kids love band-aids when they were little?
0:21:05 It’s funny I said that.
0:21:06 I would have liked,
0:21:08 that’s one image I would have liked to have seen.
0:21:09 That sounds really adorable.
0:21:10 I’ll send, I’ll text it to you.
0:21:12 It’s very cute.
0:21:16 And the young family energy being back at 1600,
0:21:18 Pennsylvania Avenue or, I mean,
0:21:19 they live in the Naval Observatory,
0:21:21 I think is very good for the country.
0:21:23 I mean, he’s the first millennial vice president.
0:21:24 It’s a big deal.
0:21:27 She’s the first South East Asian second lady.
0:21:27 Yeah.
0:21:28 I don’t think it’s fair.
0:21:29 I think there’s a lot of family energy with Biden.
0:21:33 These great, great, great, great grandkids are everywhere.
0:21:34 Get it?
0:21:36 Great, great, great, great grandkids.
0:21:37 I do.
0:21:38 And also, I mean, there’s an implicit joke in there about–
0:21:40 My humor is not landing.
0:21:43 My humor is not landing.
0:21:45 There was another way to go with the joke though as well
0:21:48 because there was the Hunter’s kid
0:21:51 that they don’t recognize that lives in the South
0:21:53 and doesn’t get to be part of the Bidens.
0:21:54 I thought you were also making that joke.
0:21:55 I didn’t know about that.
0:21:56 But no, it was just an old joke.
0:21:57 Wow.
0:21:58 But Trump was the one who was falling asleep
0:22:00 at the Capital One arena.
0:22:03 Later in the day, Biden looked alert, perturbed,
0:22:06 and then on his way as he left on Marine One,
0:22:08 and then Trump loaned him Air Force One
0:22:10 to go out to California for a vacation.
0:22:12 Okay, that was the positive stuff.
0:22:14 No, I generally agree with you.
0:22:17 I think that the tech billionaires
0:22:19 and really just the billionaires writ large.
0:22:20 I mean, this is–
0:22:23 In the administration, there’ll be, I think, 13 billionaires,
0:22:25 which is the most there’s ever been.
0:22:27 And I hear from my colleagues, like, oh, are you
0:22:29 going to say you don’t like rich people?
0:22:31 No, of course we like rich people.
0:22:33 But at least we have the decency to just make them
0:22:37 an ambassador and not the head of a department
0:22:38 that they have no business running.
0:22:40 Or put them in the rotunda versus someone
0:22:42 elected to be governor of a huge state.
0:22:45 Watching, because Trump had this whole long exchange
0:22:47 with Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas.
0:22:49 And he did make a joke, because everyone was standing.
0:22:50 And then Greg Abbott’s in a wheelchair,
0:22:52 so he obviously doesn’t stand.
0:22:55 And Trump had a little funny back and forth with him about it.
0:22:59 But he spent 10, 12 minutes talking to Greg Abbott.
0:23:03 Greg Abbott was front lines of the border crisis, right?
0:23:05 And you can’t get that guy in the rotunda,
0:23:09 but Lauren Sanchez can be in there, or the CEO of TikTok.
0:23:12 Well, they do understand optics, so I’ll give that to them.
0:23:14 The thing that kind of summarized what’s happened here,
0:23:16 and that I found incredibly discouraging
0:23:20 and the most underreported story of the last few days,
0:23:22 was that the day before he was inaugurated,
0:23:24 he launched the Trump coin.
0:23:27 And this is essentially a meme coin.
0:23:30 It’s a means of supporting the president.
0:23:31 On its first day at Randall,
0:23:34 I think 11 or $12 billion in market cap.
0:23:36 And I don’t think I’m being an alarmist here,
0:23:40 but the conversation I see will happen or may have already
0:23:42 happened is something along the following.
0:23:46 President Trump, congratulations on your great victory.
0:23:48 This is your buddy, Vlad.
0:23:52 Just FYI, I’m thinking about putting 600 billion rubles
0:23:57 or 10 billion US dollars into your amazing Trump coin
0:23:59 as a means of stabilizing our currency outflows.
0:24:02 We want to have more crypto.
0:24:04 And my economists have done the math, and guess what?
0:24:06 If based on the limited amount of float,
0:24:10 if I just put $10 billion in, which is nothing for me,
0:24:13 controlling the 12th largest economy in the world,
0:24:16 I think it’ll take probably the price of the market cap
0:24:18 of the Trump coin to 50 billion and based on your stake.
0:24:21 This would make you one of the five wealthiest men in America,
0:24:22 just FYI.
0:24:24 And oh, in unrelated news,
0:24:28 could you please seize arms shipments to Ukraine?
0:24:30 I mean, the potential here,
0:24:34 we thought Donald Trump media was a conflict and a bad idea,
0:24:36 but they have to file forms of the SEC,
0:24:38 making it sort of transparent when they sell shares
0:24:40 that would crash the stock,
0:24:42 all sorts of conflicts of interest.
0:24:43 He’s tried to distance himself by that,
0:24:45 by putting into a trust controlled by his sons,
0:24:49 which makes no fucking sense as if he doesn’t control his sons.
0:24:52 But now they’ve figured out the ultimate grift,
0:24:56 and that is a meme coin that they can basically say to,
0:25:01 say they need another vote to have a federal ban on abortion.
0:25:04 And a few, Susan Collins or whoever it is,
0:25:06 or holdouts pretending to be moderates,
0:25:07 you can call them and say offline,
0:25:10 say by the way, I can put $10 million in your account
0:25:12 for your campaign or your personal account,
0:25:13 and nobody even knows,
0:25:15 ’cause I can do it with the Trump coin,
0:25:18 which by the way, has a $12 billion market cap,
0:25:20 although it lost half its value yesterday.
0:25:24 The level of like frictionless grift
0:25:26 that was slipped on under the cover of night,
0:25:28 the day before the inauguration,
0:25:30 while the news cycle would squeeze it out.
0:25:33 I mean, it feels to me that this is a full,
0:25:36 the shape-shifting of America from a platform
0:25:38 for among other things, prosperity, economic growth,
0:25:41 all great things, producing very wealthy people,
0:25:44 also I think a wonderful thing.
0:25:45 But it also used to be a platform
0:25:49 for rule of fair play, civil rights,
0:25:52 a lack of corruption, an electoral process
0:25:54 that sent people that were supposed to think about
0:25:56 preventing a tragedy of the comments and think long-term,
0:25:59 and deny the rights of special interest groups,
0:26:02 specifically corporations and rich people, such that,
0:26:04 we didn’t end up with such great income inequality
0:26:06 that it leads to revolution,
0:26:08 that we projected democracy and women’s rights
0:26:12 and freedoms and humanity and no, you know,
0:26:14 no forced weddings or honor killings
0:26:16 that we would project that power around the world.
0:26:19 It feels like all of that is now an asterisk
0:26:21 on a giant fucking dollar sign.
0:26:24 And that is we are now a full platform
0:26:26 for figuring out a Hunger Games economy
0:26:28 where you can take the most prosperous platform
0:26:29 in the world, the United States,
0:26:32 and either figure out a way to make the jump to light speed
0:26:34 to become very, very wealthy,
0:26:36 at which point you have political power,
0:26:38 the power to get wealthier and wealthier,
0:26:42 and everything else has been crowded into a small corner
0:26:45 that occasionally gets a nod, but we’ve gone,
0:26:47 I mean, we have gone, and to your point,
0:26:50 I sort of admire how brazen and upfront they are
0:26:51 that we are now a kleptocracy.
0:26:55 But the Trump coin for me and the Melania coin
0:27:00 perfectly embodied that we no longer seem to care
0:27:02 that, okay, the U.S. has been for sale for a long time,
0:27:05 including Democrats through Citizens United
0:27:06 and healthcare lobbyists who have weaponized
0:27:10 both people on both aisles, but now the world is for sale.
0:27:14 And effectively, he could call,
0:27:17 he could get the warring parties in Sudan.
0:27:20 I talked to Ian Bremmer and he said,
0:27:22 the way Trump gets a Nobel Peace Prize,
0:27:23 and he’s supposedly obsessed with getting one,
0:27:28 would be to go in and solve the civil war in Sudan.
0:27:30 More people are dying in Sudan every day
0:27:33 than in Gaza or Ukraine combined,
0:27:35 but no one gives a shit, right?
0:27:37 But what I don’t see him trying to solve it,
0:27:39 I see him calling both parties and say,
0:27:40 who’s gonna buy more Trump coin?
0:27:42 And whoever buys more Trump coin
0:27:45 and takes my wealth up one to $10 billion,
0:27:49 I’m gonna weigh in with U.S. military intelligence,
0:27:52 some heavy equipment, and this side is gonna win.
0:27:55 It’s gonna be like eBay hits geopolitics.
0:27:58 Who is the highest bidder in an elegant,
0:28:00 non-traceable, totally opaque method
0:28:02 through this new vehicle they have figured out?
0:28:05 And it’s sort of, there’s an insidious genius around this
0:28:06 called the Trump coin.
0:28:08 And I just didn’t see that much coverage.
0:28:12 I saw a lot more coverage of Zuckerberg staring
0:28:15 at Lauren Sanchez’s chest than I saw
0:28:19 of all the potential scenarios that are very, very bad
0:28:21 for the Trump coin.
0:28:23 – Yeah, I totally agree with you.
0:28:25 And it was one of those stories,
0:28:27 I guess on Friday when it started trickling in
0:28:30 that this was happening, and certainly over the weekend,
0:28:34 where I thought, is this because we don’t have people
0:28:37 up to the job of reporting on this?
0:28:40 Or is this a choice that our major news outlets
0:28:44 are now making to not cover him objectively?
0:28:47 And this is part of the war that’s going on
0:28:49 within the Washington Post, right?
0:28:52 Why so many of their star reporters are leaving the paper
0:28:55 because they don’t feel like they’ll be able to,
0:29:00 at least to their mind, cover him objectively and accurately
0:29:04 because Bezos doesn’t want there to be a slant against him.
0:29:08 And I thought a lot about the committee hearings
0:29:11 when they bring in the tech CEOs and it’s so clear
0:29:14 that the senators are not up to the job
0:29:17 of interrogating them about what’s going on
0:29:21 on their platforms and not just the kind of objective stuff
0:29:23 that we all see, like you’re ruining the lives
0:29:25 of 13 year old girls, right?
0:29:28 There is a spike in harmful behavior,
0:29:32 their mental health is completely in shambles
0:29:35 because you allow them to be served ads
0:29:36 that make them feel terrible about themselves.
0:29:41 You let predators into their inboxes and their DMs.
0:29:43 I feel like it was only Snapchat really
0:29:46 that took it seriously about how many kids
0:29:48 were being groomed online on these panels.
0:29:51 And I think that was the main motivating factor
0:29:54 for Mark Zuckerberg to show up on Rogan
0:29:55 and have this come to Jesus moment.
0:29:57 I mean, he said it was about free speech
0:29:58 and censorship around COVID,
0:30:02 but I think it’s really about the FTC coming after them
0:30:05 and everyone knowing the dirty tricks
0:30:09 that go on with these huge social media platforms.
0:30:13 But we need good journalism on this more than ever
0:30:15 because the amount of people that I know
0:30:17 who are very smart informed people
0:30:19 who didn’t even know about the Trump coin
0:30:20 than the Melania coin.
0:30:23 And I mean, this has permeated the entire Trump bubble.
0:30:26 I saw there was a pastor who also spoke at the RNC,
0:30:29 a big Trump guy, he launched a coin
0:30:32 after he spoke yesterday at inauguration, right?
0:30:37 So the grift is spread across anyone
0:30:41 that is MAGA adjacent at this point.
0:30:43 And it feels there’s no way to stop it.
0:30:45 I mean, there were very obvious ways
0:30:48 to curry favor with the Trumps round one.
0:30:51 You stayed at Trump International
0:30:53 and all of these foreign dignitaries did it
0:30:54 and they made sure their staff did.
0:30:58 Remember, they had to stay at his golf courses
0:31:01 where I’ll just go to Scotland, check in, let’s pay,
0:31:03 Trump will see it on the ledger.
0:31:05 But now you have what’s going on obviously
0:31:09 in the Bitcoin world or the cryptocurrency world,
0:31:11 I should say, but then Eric Trump announced
0:31:14 that they’re opening a new hotel in Albania.
0:31:16 Oh, and we’re supposed to act like
0:31:19 this is normal development, right?
0:31:20 For the first family.
0:31:22 Well, of course they have these jobs.
0:31:24 He’s a businessman, that’s all fine.
0:31:25 That’s all well and good.
0:31:29 We used to say like, oh, Ivanka Trump got the patents
0:31:33 for her shoe line from China while Trump was in office
0:31:36 and Jared Kushner makes a couple billion dollars
0:31:38 getting the Saudis to invest in his fund.
0:31:40 And we’re like, okay, well, these are things
0:31:42 that we can spot, we think they’re bad,
0:31:44 not enough of the American public, right?
0:31:48 Thought it was bad enough to keep them out of office again.
0:31:52 But this will be running out in the public
0:31:56 but underneath the public eye at the same time.
0:31:58 A lot of people don’t understand what’s going on.
0:32:00 They also don’t know that 80% of Trump coin
0:32:05 was reserved for the family and early investors.
0:32:07 And all of that will vest during his first presidency.
0:32:11 This wasn’t like putting your peanut farm in a trust, right?
0:32:13 That we could revisit this afterwards.
0:32:16 And no one seems like they’re up to the job
0:32:17 of dealing with it.
0:32:20 – Well, when you have Nancy or Speaker Pelosi trading stocks,
0:32:22 which you shouldn’t be able to do with what is
0:32:25 the world’s most privileged insider information,
0:32:27 it’s the beginning of this corruption.
0:32:30 And hotel rooms, booking hotel rooms,
0:32:32 occurring favor around patents from China,
0:32:36 that is all just checkers versus the chess of this.
0:32:39 This is, those are all slingshots.
0:32:40 This is an elephant gun.
0:32:43 Even after a 30% decline in the price of the Trump coin,
0:32:46 it has a market cap as we record this of $7.5 billion.
0:32:48 They own about 80%.
0:32:51 So he basically made $6 billion on paper.
0:32:53 And as far as we know, he’s already borrowed against it.
0:32:57 He’s already given it to Supreme Court justices
0:32:58 to uphold the ban.
0:33:01 And if you don’t think Clarence Thomas would take $10 million
0:33:05 in Bitcoin, well, that’s like saying he wouldn’t go on a yacht
0:33:09 or a cruise with someone who had issues before the court.
0:33:11 I mean, this is, and it’s sort of,
0:33:15 we’re sort of turning into, okay, like they say to,
0:33:16 unfortunately some law enforcement people
0:33:19 in countries with big drug cartels, you know,
0:33:22 either letter gold and that is he’s demonstrated power
0:33:24 to kind of run people out of politics
0:33:26 or sick online trolls after them,
0:33:28 death threats, people showing up at your house,
0:33:31 which puts a chill on free speech and his critics.
0:33:32 But at the same time, he now has the ability
0:33:35 to not only become the wealthiest man himself
0:33:38 through grift in other countries by selling foreign assets
0:33:40 and foreign interest to the highest bidder,
0:33:44 he can start doling out money to other people very covertly
0:33:46 to get essentially what he wants.
0:33:50 I mean, this is just so, I gotta admit,
0:33:52 the thing I like most about it is it’s just so brazen.
0:33:55 They’re not even trying to hide it.
0:33:57 All right, let’s take one quick break.
0:33:58 Stay with us, we’ll be right back.
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0:37:27 – Welcome back.
0:37:28 During Biden’s final week,
0:37:31 he gave his farewell address from the Oval Office.
0:37:33 Biden chose to focus on economic inequality
0:37:35 and take a final shot at the tech oligarchs.
0:37:37 He opened by addressing the ceasefire deal
0:37:39 reached between Israel and Hamas,
0:37:42 an agreement he worked on with the Trump administration.
0:37:44 Hours before the transition of U.S. leadership,
0:37:47 President Biden issued pardons for General Mark Milley,
0:37:49 Dr. Anthony Fauci, members of Congress
0:37:51 involved in the January 6th investigation,
0:37:52 and members of his family.
0:37:56 Jess, any thoughts on the ceasefire deal,
0:37:58 the timing of it, and kind of, if you will,
0:38:03 Biden’s sort of last sort of actions on his way out?
0:38:05 – Yeah, well, I was excited.
0:38:06 There was a ceasefire deal.
0:38:09 I don’t know how this didn’t happen earlier
0:38:11 since it’s the same deal that’s been on the table
0:38:13 for what, like, eight months at this point,
0:38:16 and three phases to it were in the first phase,
0:38:18 which is the last 42 days.
0:38:20 The big headline that 33 hostages
0:38:21 are gonna be coming home,
0:38:25 we’re not sure how many of them are alive or dead,
0:38:28 but we did see three returned over the weekend,
0:38:30 and those reunion videos
0:38:33 were some of the most beautiful footage
0:38:35 I’ve ever watched in my life.
0:38:39 And I can’t believe the strength of these young women
0:38:42 who all, thank God, were “returned healthy.”
0:38:44 Now, what’s going on in their minds
0:38:48 and the lifetime of trauma that they will endure for this
0:38:51 cannot be underestimated, but thrilled to see it.
0:38:53 I really want those bebis babies,
0:38:55 those little red-headed babies,
0:38:58 better be coming home and they better be alive.
0:39:01 And I know everyone is on pins and needles waiting for that.
0:39:04 It’s interesting that the deal goes through
0:39:06 the rebuilding of Gaza, which is in phase three,
0:39:09 and Mike Huckabee, who’s the new,
0:39:12 or will be the new ambassador to Israel,
0:39:14 gave an interview talking about a two-state solution,
0:39:17 and he said, “I’m not really interested in that.”
0:39:20 And I think for Bebe, music to his ears, right?
0:39:22 That’s what he wants to hear.
0:39:24 And who knows how far the implementation
0:39:25 of the deal actually goes through?
0:39:27 We may just get through phase one and two,
0:39:29 and then Israel kind of says,
0:39:31 “Actually, this isn’t good for us.”
0:39:33 Or God knows, Hamas starts again,
0:39:38 ’cause watching the dozens of prisoners and terrorists,
0:39:43 Palestinian, released for these hostages
0:39:45 that are coming back to Israel,
0:39:47 and they’re rejoining the fight.
0:39:49 Within seconds, there are videos of them
0:39:51 back with their terrorist cohort,
0:39:55 talking about how they will continue with the plan.
0:39:59 So bracing for more in terms of impact of terrorism,
0:40:01 but very thankful that there is a deal on the table,
0:40:04 and it has at least begun being implemented.
0:40:05 What do you think about it?
0:40:07 – Yeah, so I think you gotta give credit
0:40:09 where credit’s due, and that is
0:40:11 the upside to Trump’s unpredictability.
0:40:15 This just had so many echoes of when Reagan came into office,
0:40:19 and then Iran decided to release the American hostages.
0:40:21 And that is, I do think there’s just no getting around it,
0:40:25 despite what are probably heroic, nonstop,
0:40:30 very well orchestrated, intelligent efforts
0:40:33 of Secretary Blinken and the Biden administration.
0:40:35 I just don’t think it’s any accident
0:40:36 to know in the eve of inauguration
0:40:38 this deal went through. – Of course.
0:40:40 – And I do think that Trump’s unpredictability,
0:40:44 and quite frankly, also his just resolute backing of Israel,
0:40:46 played a role here.
0:40:48 So I think, who gets credit for this?
0:40:50 I think the answer is yes.
0:40:53 And I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game around this.
0:40:56 It is time, or it feels like it’s time for the war
0:40:59 to come to something resembling an end.
0:41:02 I found that image of the transfer of the hostages
0:41:07 and all of those folks in mass, Hamas,
0:41:10 just looks as strong as ever.
0:41:14 And just to see that kind of level of chaos,
0:41:17 it just was a very chilling, frightening scene to me
0:41:21 that we’re nowhere near a resolution.
0:41:22 I don’t know what that says about
0:41:24 the way the war was prosecuted,
0:41:26 about the future of that region,
0:41:28 but that was frightening to me.
0:41:30 And I’m glad, I’m really glad those folks are home.
0:41:33 I’m glad I’m hoping that death and destruction
0:41:35 lets up here.
0:41:37 Gaza has become ground zero
0:41:40 with the greatest concentration of child, empty tees.
0:41:44 So it felt like this just needed to come to an end.
0:41:49 And my kind of Yoda on this is a guy named Dan Sinor
0:41:52 who has a wonderful podcast called “Call Me Back.”
0:41:53 And he’s basically said,
0:41:57 this was a bad deal for Israel, but a deal they should take.
0:42:00 And I thought that kind of summarized it perfectly.
0:42:02 And again, people didn’t talk much about that
0:42:05 because it was sort of overridden.
0:42:08 – Well, I do want to say, and when I mentioned,
0:42:09 like why did this happen eight months ago,
0:42:12 I understand why it didn’t happen eight months ago,
0:42:15 but I wonder, so the key player in this was Steve Whitcoff
0:42:18 who is the special envoy.
0:42:22 In charge of this, he’s a real estate developer and investor.
0:42:25 And he spoke at the Capital One arena yesterday
0:42:28 at the kind of rally section of Trump’s inauguration.
0:42:32 And it has been interesting to see bonus points
0:42:36 for bipartisanship that Steve Whitcoff
0:42:39 and Jake Sullivan, leaving the Biden administration,
0:42:42 have talked about how this was a joint effort
0:42:44 and how important the support has been
0:42:46 on both sides of this.
0:42:47 And I do want to plug,
0:42:50 Jake Sullivan gave a great interview with Ezra Klein
0:42:51 that was much more satisfying
0:42:55 than Anthony Blinken’s interview on the daily
0:42:58 to say the least, but joint effort.
0:43:03 I do wonder like, why couldn’t the Biden administration
0:43:06 get a special envoy like Steve Whitcoff?
0:43:07 If it wouldn’t be Steve Whitcoff himself,
0:43:09 I know he’s very close with Trump.
0:43:11 I’m not saying that this would have happened
0:43:13 necessarily eight months ago,
0:43:17 but it feels like we probably could have made more progress
0:43:22 than we thought if we had had the right kind of talk
0:43:25 and the right kind of people at the table for this,
0:43:28 easy for me to say sitting here, but very thankful
0:43:30 for the outcome and the hostage families,
0:43:33 not all of them, but a lot of them were on stage
0:43:36 with Trump at the Capital One arena.
0:43:38 And it sends a very clear signal
0:43:40 about which administration people think
0:43:41 is on the side of Israel.
0:43:43 And I heard that over and over again.
0:43:45 – So let’s just briefly,
0:43:47 I’m just going to rattle off these executive actions.
0:43:49 And I got to be honest, I think that sends
0:43:52 a very strong signal around leadership and governance
0:43:55 to almost like practically on stage on the days.
0:43:58 – On stage, he had a little desk and signed them.
0:43:59 – There you go.
0:44:01 So ending birthrights that I’m going to go through all of them
0:44:04 and any specific ones that stand out to,
0:44:05 ending birthright citizenship,
0:44:08 leaving the World Health Organization,
0:44:10 renaming the Gulf of Mexico,
0:44:12 revoking electric vehicle targets,
0:44:14 reclassifying federal employees,
0:44:15 making them easier to fire,
0:44:17 declaring a national energy emergency,
0:44:20 creating a policy recognizing only two genders,
0:44:22 pausing the TikTok ban,
0:44:25 rescinding 78 Biden-era executive actions,
0:44:27 declaring a national border emergency,
0:44:30 issuing pardons for January 6th defendants,
0:44:32 we’re trying from the Paris Climate Agreement.
0:44:33 I’ll stop there.
0:44:35 Anything, anything especially stand out to you
0:44:36 is especially good or bad.
0:44:40 – I don’t really have a lot that feels good about this.
0:44:42 It wasn’t, I mean, we have to be conscious of the fact
0:44:45 that a lot of the things like cutting red tape, et cetera,
0:44:47 is going to come in the reconciliation bill
0:44:49 or that’s how they want it to be.
0:44:51 Speaker Johnson didn’t even want him to
0:44:54 rescind the electric vehicle mandate
0:44:54 because he wanted to make sure
0:44:57 that that could be part of the legislation
0:45:00 that should hopefully get passed in April.
0:45:03 But, you know, stuff that sticks out to me,
0:45:05 obviously ending birthright citizenship
0:45:06 is a huge headline in that.
0:45:07 I already mentioned that.
0:45:10 That means Ushavans and Kamala Harris
0:45:11 wouldn’t be American citizens.
0:45:14 It’s supposed to take effect, I think, February 25th.
0:45:16 There will be huge litigation around that.
0:45:21 I think we have to separate the EOs into buckets
0:45:25 of, you know, ones that are kind of expected,
0:45:27 like taking down the Spanish language version
0:45:29 of the White House site
0:45:32 or taking off the women’s reproductive
0:45:36 healthcare government site as, like,
0:45:38 we kind of knew this was coming.
0:45:40 It’s shitty and weird, like,
0:45:42 especially when you won record numbers
0:45:43 of Latino support, like,
0:45:44 why do you need to get rid
0:45:47 of the Spanish language Twitter account, right?
0:45:51 Designating that America only has two genders,
0:45:52 male and female.
0:45:54 You know, it was really interesting to see someone
0:45:56 like Caitlyn Jenner cheering all of this on
0:46:01 and wondering where she fits in all of this.
0:46:06 I think that a lot of the border security/immigration EOs
0:46:08 are a really big deal.
0:46:11 They canceled the Customs and Border Patrol app,
0:46:13 which was the legal way
0:46:15 that everyone was making appointments
0:46:16 for their immigration hearings.
0:46:18 Upwards of 30,000 people had their appointments
0:46:19 just canceled yesterday.
0:46:20 And these are people, by the way,
0:46:22 that are waiting in Mexico for their appointments.
0:46:24 They’re not running wild
0:46:27 on the streets of Chicago killing people.
0:46:30 They are waiting in proverbial line, right,
0:46:31 to have their appointment.
0:46:32 I think that that’s a very big deal.
0:46:35 You removed all of these people
0:46:36 or took away the power from all of these people
0:46:40 in the Justice Department that oversaw our immigration laws.
0:46:41 I think that’s a big deal.
0:46:43 We’re withdrawing for the World Health Organization.
0:46:45 That was approved by Congress.
0:46:45 He can’t do that.
0:46:47 And that links to our conversation
0:46:48 that we’re gonna have about TikTok.
0:46:50 You know, Congress passes laws.
0:46:52 They’re supposed to be separation of government,
0:46:53 three equal branches.
0:46:55 He obviously doesn’t believe in that,
0:46:57 which if you aspire to be Vladimir Putin,
0:46:58 I totally get it.
0:47:00 The pardoning of the January Sixers,
0:47:04 JD Vance was on Fox News Sunday last weekend.
0:47:06 And Shannon Brehm asked him about this.
0:47:09 And he said, well, it makes sense to pardon people
0:47:10 who are nonviolent offenders.
0:47:12 And having listened now to a lot of interviews
0:47:16 with people who literally did just walk around the Capitol.
0:47:17 I mean, you should have figured out
0:47:20 that you shouldn’t have been there.
0:47:23 But that versus violent offenders who beat cops,
0:47:25 peppers sprayed them, used metal poles against them,
0:47:29 riot gear, et cetera, is crazy to me.
0:47:31 And he pardoned everybody.
0:47:35 And there was an interview, I think on MSNBC,
0:47:38 with a guy who had turned in his father
0:47:43 for being part of the January Six riot.
0:47:44 And he said he’s scared
0:47:46 that he’s gonna come and kill him now,
0:47:48 that he’s gotten out.
0:47:51 I think there’s gonna be a huge spike in domestic violence
0:47:53 as a result of this.
0:47:56 Saw one woman who actually refused the pardon.
0:47:59 She said, from her time, she had 60 days in jail.
0:48:02 She said, I realized what I did wrong
0:48:05 and also who’s responsible for this in Donald Trump.
0:48:07 And I don’t want it.
0:48:09 But that obviously sets an enormous precedent
0:48:11 that there are no lines in the sand
0:48:13 for people who attack law enforcement,
0:48:16 back the blue, out the door, obviously.
0:48:17 That one stuck out.
0:48:20 And the guy who’s the head of the Proud Boys getting out.
0:48:22 And then I wanted to ask you about,
0:48:24 well, tariffs, he says, February 1st,
0:48:27 he’s gonna start a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada.
0:48:30 Get all your avocados while you can.
0:48:32 And then removing the security clearances
0:48:34 from all of these former heads
0:48:37 of the CIA, directors of national intelligence.
0:48:38 Anyone who signed that letter saying
0:48:42 that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation,
0:48:44 he’s a yanked security clearance.
0:48:48 – Yeah, some of it is more meaningful than others,
0:48:49 the renaming stuff.
0:48:54 Some of it declaring the border and national emergency,
0:48:55 the lifting the bans.
0:49:00 This stuff around, the rhetoric around energy strikes me
0:49:03 as especially just, I don’t know, inaccurate.
0:49:06 So all of this drill baby drill,
0:49:08 it should be build, baby build.
0:49:10 We have the number one oil produce in the world,
0:49:14 Biden, Biden okayed a bunch of drilling permits.
0:49:15 That’s just pure rhetoric.
0:49:17 The naming stuff is bullshit.
0:49:21 – I don’t necessarily agree,
0:49:22 but I can understand declaring the border
0:49:25 and national emergency, I get that.
0:49:28 And saying they’re going to expel
0:49:31 or deport criminals who are undocumented workers,
0:49:35 technically they’ve committed two crimes, I get that.
0:49:40 But the birthright stuff, pulling down the Spanish language,
0:49:42 that feels more like, fuck you, I’m a racist.
0:49:46 That’s just, it’s unnecessarily mean
0:49:49 and waving your middle finger in the face of people.
0:49:54 I don’t understand, I think he loses a lot of credibility
0:49:58 and most, he creates a lot of unnecessary enemies
0:50:00 when he does this stuff
0:50:03 that seems just more coarse than effective.
0:50:08 And some of it revoking electric vehicle targets, okay fine.
0:50:14 The thing I like is reclassifying federal employees,
0:50:15 making them easier to fire.
0:50:17 I don’t see any reason why government employees
0:50:20 shouldn’t be subject to the same pressure
0:50:23 and accountability as private sector employees.
0:50:26 Now having said that, this notion that government
0:50:28 is out of control, you might find that government spending
0:50:31 is out of control, but that’s mostly around entitlements
0:50:34 and the ballooning interest on our ballooning deficit.
0:50:36 The number of people who work for the government
0:50:38 has ranged over the last 50 years or 60 years
0:50:40 between 14 and 17%.
0:50:42 And it’s actually towards a low end right now.
0:50:44 So, and the majority of our employees
0:50:47 work for the government, work for state and local.
0:50:49 So the notion that all of a sudden
0:50:51 the government state or the social welfare state
0:50:53 has just ballooned, that’s not really true.
0:50:56 You could argue that government spending has ballooned,
0:51:00 but it’s not, you know, anyways, I like that.
0:51:03 I think that made sense.
0:51:05 Declaring a national energy emergency,
0:51:07 that’s just bullshit, it’s just not true.
0:51:11 We just don’t need, creating a policy,
0:51:12 recognizing only two genders.
0:51:15 I’m sort of of the mind like, give it to them
0:51:16 so we can stop talking about this
0:51:18 because it’s been such an effective cudgel
0:51:21 and weapon against Democrats.
0:51:24 And that is, I don’t, you know, okay, fine, have at it.
0:51:27 Let them decide that there’s only male and female.
0:51:30 That’s fine, I do think that Democrats
0:51:31 served up the mother of all fastballs
0:51:35 by deciding that, oh, a six foot four swimmer
0:51:39 can show up in a unitard and win everything
0:51:43 at the women’s nationals or that a transgender woman
0:51:46 can cross the finish line in a bike race five minutes early
0:51:48 and everybody, all the Democrats gather around
0:51:50 and say it’s inspiring.
0:51:52 So I’m always sort of like, give them that,
0:51:56 let them move on, stop demonizing this group of people
0:51:58 of which there are less than a number of people
0:52:01 probably paying PDEL in California.
0:52:03 But some of this just felt, yeah,
0:52:05 I don’t agree with those economic policies.
0:52:07 The tariffs thing, I actually think is being,
0:52:08 I don’t think tariffs are a good idea,
0:52:10 but I think he’s more pragmatic.
0:52:11 And if you look at his first term,
0:52:14 he was seen more, he proved to be more of a pragmatist
0:52:16 than an ideologue.
0:52:17 I think he’s trying to, he sees himself
0:52:19 as a deal maker here.
0:52:22 And I think he’s trying to send a shot across the bow
0:52:24 of these nations saying, you need to come to the table
0:52:27 and give me something or I’ll implement,
0:52:29 ’cause he could have implemented those tariffs today,
0:52:30 but he decided not to.
0:52:33 So I do think he’s being pragmatic around that.
0:52:35 – I mean, I hope so and maybe goes down to 10%.
0:52:40 I just, I think in his race to always do the most,
0:52:42 to like, I’m gonna sign the most executive orders
0:52:45 of anyone on their first day in history,
0:52:48 you have a lot of bullshit in there.
0:52:51 And it creates these outrage headlines
0:52:53 and then you can slip a Trump coin in, right?
0:52:57 Because we’re all hair on fire about, right, totally.
0:53:00 But one thing that I cannot look over here about
0:53:04 is the nearly 1,660 Afghans
0:53:08 that had their resettlement in America canceled
0:53:10 because he got rid of these refugee programs.
0:53:11 These are people, a lot of them
0:53:13 who have American service members, it’s family,
0:53:16 people who worked with us during the Afghan war.
0:53:19 And they’re up a creek, they’re,
0:53:21 a lot of them are gonna have retribution
0:53:23 coming their way from the Taliban.
0:53:27 And this is making one of Biden’s biggest mistakes,
0:53:32 right the way that we left Afghanistan, so much worse.
0:53:33 And I don’t understand it.
0:53:36 If you made it a centerpiece of your campaign,
0:53:41 that Biden was a terrible foreign policy president, right?
0:53:43 And that he, 13 of our service members died
0:53:48 and that we left thousands of people that helped us
0:53:51 over the course of this long war
0:53:53 and risked their lives for us.
0:53:57 And now you’re just like, effort, you gotta stay.
0:54:02 I hair on fire about that one, for sure.
0:54:03 Well said, Jess.
0:54:04 Okay, we have one more quick break.
0:54:05 Stay with us.
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0:57:38 – Welcome back, before we wrap,
0:57:41 this weekend, TikTok went dark for US users
0:57:43 after major app stores removed the platform
0:57:46 following the enforcement of a 2024 law banning TikTok
0:57:49 unless it divests from Chinese parent company ByteDance.
0:57:50 Less than 24 hours later,
0:57:54 TikTok flickered back to life, credited to President Trump.
0:57:56 Trump said he wants to delay the enforcement of the ban
0:57:58 for 75 days, aiming to negotiate a deal
0:58:01 to protect national security while allowing TikTok
0:58:03 to continue operating in the US.
0:58:05 What are your thoughts on this, Jess?
0:58:10 – It seems really bad, and Congress passed a law.
0:58:15 I mean, we are now in a new frontier
0:58:17 in terms of the separation of powers
0:58:19 or returning to the old frontier,
0:58:22 but this time, more emboldened by the fact
0:58:25 that he has four years to try to do
0:58:29 as much crazy stuff as possible.
0:58:32 And obviously, this was something that started under him.
0:58:34 I was struck, and I didn’t know this,
0:58:39 that all of the senators who received the classified material
0:58:43 about the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on TikTok
0:58:46 voted to pass this law banning at 50 to zero.
0:58:51 When do you get 50 to zero about something?
0:58:53 And I don’t know.
0:58:56 I mean, Tom Cotton is raising hell about it,
0:58:59 and there are gonna be a lot of people who say,
0:59:03 well, you can’t do this, but who’s to stop him?
0:59:06 And the CEO of TikTok at the inauguration,
0:59:09 I think, is meaningful.
0:59:12 I get it, there are 170 million Americans on that.
0:59:14 There are six million small businesses
0:59:17 that make their livelihoods off of TikTok,
0:59:19 and that’s the main argument that Kevin O’Leary,
0:59:22 Mr. Wonderful, is making for why we need to buy it.
0:59:25 He has put together a $20 billion bid for it
0:59:28 that they don’t seem that interested in,
0:59:30 probably because this isn’t about money,
0:59:32 it’s about national security.
0:59:36 And by that, I mean our lack of national security.
0:59:40 But it’s extremely scary.
0:59:43 And if you have a moment where you can get lawmakers
0:59:46 together on something like this, why not go for it?
0:59:48 Also, why can’t we just make our own?
0:59:52 I have not understood that fully.
0:59:57 – So the mere fact that on a dime,
0:59:59 TikTok could have their algorithm push out
1:00:03 and elevate a ton of TikTokers who are understandably upset
1:00:03 ’cause they make their living
1:00:05 or they just plain don’t like it,
1:00:07 170 million Americans, if they can find 1% of them,
1:00:10 1.7 million, and then I’m gonna go out on a limb here
1:00:13 and assume that they massively elevated the distribution
1:00:15 and viewership of that content
1:00:19 that inspired massive political pressure and discourse
1:00:22 and occupying the news, i.e. propaganda.
1:00:26 The fact that on demand, in real time,
1:00:31 a platform that is obviously influenced by law
1:00:33 and has to do with the CCP wants,
1:00:37 the fact that they could inspire a real-time influence
1:00:39 on our government is exactly the reason
1:00:42 it needs to be banned.
1:00:45 When do they do this again when they invade Taiwan
1:00:48 or when they just want us to get angry at each other?
1:00:51 And this has a larger theme and that is,
1:00:55 are we as Americans a serious people?
1:00:58 We’re in the Paris Accords, we’re out, we’re back in,
1:01:02 we’re out again, we’re in the Iran deal, no, we’re out again.
1:01:07 We have 79 US senators, 350 odd Congress people
1:01:11 sign into law something banning it.
1:01:15 They had six months to figure this out,
1:01:17 they decided not to, and on the eve of the banning,
1:01:19 we blinked.
1:01:22 President signed this into law, it was a law,
1:01:24 but what did the Chinese and the CCP say?
1:01:28 Hold my fucking beer and we blinked.
1:01:30 And now we’re trying to figure out
1:01:35 how to get out the knee pads and fillate the CCP.
1:01:38 What happens the next time we have real negotiations
1:01:42 with any adversary or competitor globally?
1:01:43 We are not a serious people.
1:01:47 We blink, we sign laws and then we repeal them.
1:01:49 We enter treaties and then we leave them.
1:01:52 We fund NATO and then we start,
1:01:56 we start threatening other NATO countries.
1:01:59 This embodies or epitomizes the fact
1:02:03 that we are losing currency and credibility
1:02:06 around anything we say, any threat we make,
1:02:10 even if it’s a law that passes overwhelmingly,
1:02:13 well, will it really happen?
1:02:14 I wouldn’t take us seriously.
1:02:19 So what happens when we threaten to reciprocate
1:02:22 or to defend Taiwan?
1:02:24 Do they take us seriously?
1:02:27 Or do they now feel like between our ability
1:02:30 to turn Trump into a deca-billionaire?
1:02:32 And the fact that even when they vote for a law
1:02:35 and vote on something, they don’t seem that serious.
1:02:38 Does anyone take us by our word?
1:02:40 We are no longer a serious people.
1:02:42 – I would add to that,
1:02:45 that unfortunately this became a bipartisan problem
1:02:48 because Biden blinked first on this.
1:02:51 He punted it to the new administration.
1:02:54 And I think that it’s very much indicative
1:02:59 or representative of this kind of cloud of disappointment
1:03:01 and disgrace to a lot of people
1:03:03 that he left the White House in.
1:03:04 You know, there were a slew of stories
1:03:06 that came out over the weekend,
1:03:07 big publications, right?
1:03:10 And the Times, Politico, The Guardian,
1:03:12 all these Dems who now feel emboldened
1:03:15 to talk about how they, you know,
1:03:17 knew Biden shouldn’t have been the nominee, right?
1:03:19 And they had ex-experience with him.
1:03:21 And, you know, he’s not talking to the Pelosi’s
1:03:24 and Joe Biden said we were friends for 50 years
1:03:25 and then there’s all this infighting.
1:03:28 And the time for that was in the public square.
1:03:31 Frankly, when Dean Phillips was screaming
1:03:33 from the rooftops, you know,
1:03:35 “If I have to be the guy, I’ll be the guy.”
1:03:37 I would rather it would be someone better, right?
1:03:40 Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, et cetera.
1:03:44 And I fully take responsibility for,
1:03:47 I said on TV many times that I thought he could do it
1:03:49 when it was clear that he couldn’t do it
1:03:51 and at least couldn’t do it for the next four years,
1:03:52 which he’s now admitted it as much,
1:03:54 even though he says he would still win
1:03:57 when we would have been absolutely obliterated.
1:04:00 But he should have done this.
1:04:03 He should have not given Trump the opportunity
1:04:07 to be the savior or perceived as the savior of TikTok.
1:04:12 And then to keep it operating for at least the next 75 days.
1:04:16 And when you think of how fast disinformation spreads
1:04:19 or whatever they want the algorithm to say goes,
1:04:22 75 days is a lifetime, right?
1:04:25 And then it’s gonna be another 75 days
1:04:28 until we figure out a way to–
1:04:29 – What is their motivation to get a deal done?
1:04:31 Oh, we really need it this time.
1:04:33 We gave you 180 days and you didn’t listen,
1:04:34 but now we’re gonna give you another 75,
1:04:36 but we really mean it this time.
1:04:39 – Well, he wants to also split ownership, right?
1:04:41 He wants us to, he had the–
1:04:41 – Yeah, there’s a word for that.
1:04:43 – The true social post, like the 50.
1:04:45 – There’s a word for that, socialism.
1:04:47 We’ve decided, he’s decided that the U.S.
1:04:48 – That’s terrible, yeah.
1:04:49 – That the U.S. government should own
1:04:52 50% of a private enterprise.
1:04:53 I mean, how is that any difference in the U.K.
1:04:55 deciding to invest in DeLorean
1:04:57 or Obama investing in Ceylon?
1:05:00 That is, socialism is when the government controls
1:05:00 the means of production.
1:05:02 When he decides certain businesses
1:05:05 and he thinks he has a better business perspective,
1:05:06 he decides we should own 50% of that
1:05:08 and he’s gonna make us rich.
1:05:10 That is socialism.
1:05:11 That is the basis of, okay,
1:05:14 we’re gonna now become the means of production
1:05:16 and own businesses because we know better
1:05:18 than private enterprise and–
1:05:20 – Well, even if he kicks it to private enterprise,
1:05:22 it’s gonna be private enterprise that he controls.
1:05:25 And we just have gone through this whole rigmarole
1:05:27 over government censorship, right?
1:05:31 Of the people and the ultimate free speech advocate,
1:05:35 one of the biggest applause lines during the inauguration
1:05:39 and we’re back at zero or frankly less than zero
1:05:42 because a lot of people are willfully blind
1:05:43 to all of this.
1:05:44 – I’m gonna finish where I started.
1:05:47 I see this as Shereen Baratheon being burnt at the stake.
1:05:48 I just am not down with this.
1:05:50 I refuse to normalize it, Jess.
1:05:52 I am not coming together.
1:05:53 I am not–
1:05:53 – You have to.
1:05:55 It’s in the title of the show.
1:05:55 – Is it?
1:05:56 – It’s in the title of the show, right?
1:05:57 – Kinda.
1:05:59 – Well, I think I am being a moderate.
1:06:00 Well, let me go this way.
1:06:02 We’re raging, we’re raging.
1:06:02 How’s that?
1:06:03 I promise to rage.
1:06:04 – We’re raging hard, yeah.
1:06:05 Okay, we’ll rage.
1:06:06 – All right.
1:06:08 – But we have to work together where we can find
1:06:09 normal ways to do it.
1:06:10 – There you go.
1:06:11 All right, that’s all for this episode.
1:06:13 Thanks for listening to Raging Moderates.
1:06:17 Our producers are David Toledo and Chenenye Onike,
1:06:19 our technical director is Drew Burroughs.
1:06:21 You can find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday.
1:06:24 That’s right, Raging Moderates on its own feed.
1:06:26 Please follow us wherever you get your podcast.
1:06:29 Jess, I hope you and your daughters are well.
1:06:32 – We are great, thank you.
1:06:34 And have a few years before Game of Thrones, thank God.
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