Raging Moderates: How Trump is Setting Back Public Health

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0:01:11 There you are, pushing your newborn baby in a stroller through the park.
0:01:14 The first time out of the house in weeks.
0:01:17 You have your Starbucks, then tea, because, you know, sleep deprivation.
0:01:19 You meet your best friend.
0:01:20 She asks you how it’s going.
0:01:21 You immediately begin to laugh.
0:01:22 Then cry.
0:01:23 Then laugh-cry?
0:01:24 That’s totally normal, right?
0:01:26 She smiles.
0:01:27 You hug.
0:01:29 There’s no one else you’d rather share this with.
0:01:33 You know, three and a half hours sleep is more than enough.
0:01:34 Starbucks.
0:01:36 It’s never just coffee.
0:01:38 There’s no one else you’d rather see.
0:01:39 There’s no one else you’d rather see.
0:01:40 There’s no one else you’d rather see.
0:01:40 There’s no one else you’d rather see.
0:01:41 There’s no one else you’d rather see.
0:01:43 There’s no one else you’d rather see.
0:01:43 There’s no one else you’d rather see.
0:01:44 There’s no one else you’d rather see.
0:01:45 There’s no one else you’d rather see.
0:01:46 There’s no one else you’d rather see.
0:02:12 Hello, I’m Greg Gottfeld.
0:02:13 Welcome back.
0:02:14 And this is The Six.
0:02:15 Wrong show.
0:02:15 Oh, my God.
0:02:18 I even I am blushing.
0:02:19 That was good.
0:02:20 That was wonderful.
0:02:22 That was the dear leader is back.
0:02:24 Jess, folks, welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:02:25 I’m Scott Galloway.
0:02:27 And I’m still Jessica Tarlov.
0:02:28 You’ve had me the whole time.
0:02:29 But now you have Scott back.
0:02:31 It’s Scott full September.
0:02:32 That’s right.
0:02:37 You know, so there’s actually a business learning in here because a bunch of people I’ve done
0:02:40 a bunch of speaking gigs because I’m still a total fucking whore when it comes to money.
0:02:43 You know, August is supposed to be about reconnecting with my family.
0:02:44 No, no, no, no, no, no.
0:02:45 Connect the dots.
0:02:48 The reason we’re in fucking Nantucket is daddy takes every speaking gig.
0:02:52 Anyway, so they asked me about managing your brand.
0:02:59 And I think one of the things that people don’t appreciate in terms of it’s got serious fast in terms of real brand equity.
0:03:02 Hermes has three to four times the market capitalization of Nike.
0:03:06 And it’s based on one word and it’s scarcity.
0:03:08 They have created this illusion of scarcity.
0:03:10 I bought someone a Birkenberg.
0:03:13 Nicest gift I’ve ever purchased for anybody because she wouldn’t stop talking about it.
0:03:16 But anyways, when we went in, they did this big presentation.
0:03:21 And at the end, she said she looked around and she gave us the impression she genuinely liked us.
0:03:25 She’s like, if you want, I can put you on a list for the next bag.
0:03:27 And I’m like, yes.
0:03:28 I didn’t even know what it was.
0:03:29 She could have said, I’m putting you on a list.
0:03:30 I don’t know.
0:03:31 Tell your kidney.
0:03:32 I was there.
0:03:35 And they have created this tangible illusion of scarcity.
0:03:37 That’s also, quite frankly, the genius of Bitcoin.
0:03:43 Because of this strategy where you have to throw numbers at a computational algorithm that gets
0:03:48 harder and harder every time something is mined, they’ve created a tangible sense of scarcity.
0:03:51 And one of the reasons I take August off is, one, I’m lazy.
0:03:57 Two, I think it’s important to create, once you get to a certain level of awareness, and
0:04:03 I’m everywhere all the time, but to go dark for a little while and create a sense of scarcity.
0:04:05 Anyways, I don’t know if it’s working, but that’s my theory.
0:04:07 Jess, how was your August?
0:04:09 It was not scarcity.
0:04:14 I was in everyone’s face all the time because people more powerful than I am were taking
0:04:14 time off.
0:04:19 So I had a great time helming the situation here in Raging Moderates.
0:04:20 Yeah, you did a great job.
0:04:21 What was the highlight?
0:04:23 I mean, Hillary Clinton.
0:04:24 Secretary Clinton.
0:04:24 Yeah.
0:04:25 It’s just crazy.
0:04:29 She was everything I hoped for and more.
0:04:31 I came home and my husband was like, you look different.
0:04:33 And I was like, I am different.
0:04:35 I’m a changed woman from spending an hour with Secretary Clinton.
0:04:40 But I was working, got a little time off, but nothing major.
0:04:45 But you were very missed, especially in the comments where people are like, when the hell
0:04:46 is scot-free August?
0:04:48 I’ve been reading the comments.
0:04:49 That’s not true.
0:04:50 There’s a calendar.
0:04:51 No, no, no.
0:04:51 That’s when it’s over.
0:04:55 By the way, just for the record, most of the comments were, can it be scot-free year?
0:04:56 Anyways.
0:04:57 Maybe over on Pivot.
0:05:00 I feel like on Raging Moderates, it’s not as much that way.
0:05:01 I bring the rage.
0:05:02 I’m sorry I interrupted you.
0:05:04 I love, but I’m going to interrupt you more.
0:05:08 Secretary Clinton, and I told you to tell her this off mic, she’s legitimately a hero of mine.
0:05:10 She’s the only candidate I’ve ever canvassed for.
0:05:12 I went door to door for her in 2016.
0:05:15 And I especially liked her take on Israel.
0:05:16 I thought it was really nuanced.
0:05:21 I mean, it literally just articulated all the frustration I have when trying to articulate
0:05:24 my position on Gaza and Israel and the conflict there.
0:05:29 I think she is just so balanced and smart and thoughtful and practical.
0:05:33 And somehow she’s been able to do what I think few politicians of her stature are able to do.
0:05:35 And that is, she’s pretty grounded in the real world.
0:05:39 Like, she understands that, OK, you got to make money so you can have taxes and have a navy.
0:05:43 You got to be realistic about geopolitics that other nations aren’t just going to do whatever
0:05:44 the hell it is we want.
0:05:48 My favorite saying of hers is, you can’t have snakes in your backyard and expect them
0:05:49 just to bite your neighbors.
0:05:50 I love that.
0:05:51 I totally agree.
0:05:56 I thought, and I flagged that to you, that the Israel answer was what we had been looking
0:06:03 for, right, as, you know, pro-Israel, Zionists who are also devastated and outraged about what’s
0:06:05 going on in Gaza and the mass starvation there.
0:06:07 And that there needs to be a change in leadership.
0:06:09 And a change in leadership, which she’s been calling for for a couple of years.
0:06:14 But one thing that was a major takeaway for me was the policy stuff.
0:06:16 I knew was going to be sharp and great.
0:06:20 But she was so warm and normal.
0:06:28 And I kept thinking, if you had been more like this during the 2016 election, would things
0:06:28 have been different?
0:06:33 Because she gave that amazing interview to Howard Stern after the election, which was widely
0:06:39 heralded as the best interview that she had given, where she was, you know, humble and self-effacing
0:06:43 and talked about mistakes that had been made, but also, you know, policies she’d been working
0:06:46 towards for decades, you know, all the good stuff.
0:06:51 And I thought for some of the people who were on the fence or said, I don’t know, she seemed
0:06:52 kind of cold and aloof.
0:06:58 During that hour, she just she seemed so smart and so chill and warm and like us.
0:07:02 You know, that she’s doom scrolling as well, watching Diaper Diplomacy.
0:07:04 And I thought she was great.
0:07:08 So back to me, when I first moved to New York, I didn’t know anybody and I was single.
0:07:13 So I said to my sister, I said, do you know any dudes in New York who I can be my wingman?
0:07:14 Like, I know there’s shit going on.
0:07:16 I just need someone to go out and get into trouble with.
0:07:20 And she said, I know this guy who works for Bill Clinton.
0:07:21 His name is Doug Band.
0:07:27 And it ends up that Doug was literally the right hand man of President Clinton.
0:07:30 When you called President Clinton on his personal cell, Doug answered.
0:07:36 And if you look at pictures through the presidency, Doug is usually in and around the president.
0:07:37 Really nice guy.
0:07:38 Really enjoyed hanging out with him.
0:07:45 And I asked him one night, I said, tell me something about the president that no one else
0:07:45 knows.
0:07:49 And he said, well, and he thought for a minute, he goes, you know, there’s all this news about
0:07:51 their strained relationship, Hillary and Bill.
0:07:55 And obviously Bill’s, you know, not staying on the porch is pretty well documented.
0:08:01 But he said, what people don’t understand and no one talks about, if she calls, unless he’s
0:08:09 literally on mic, he immediately picks up and he said, people don’t realize how close they
0:08:12 are and what a great partnership and how much mutual respect there is.
0:08:18 Like they, they literally make each other and this flies in the face of some of the news has
0:08:20 come up, but they make each other the number one.
0:08:25 He said, people just don’t realize how incredibly close they are and how often they speak and
0:08:26 the affection they have for each other.
0:08:28 Anyways, I thought that was kind of interesting.
0:08:34 I’ve, I’ve experienced them in person and you can see that there’s deep, deep affection
0:08:35 and respect.
0:08:41 And I mean, his major policy role that’s through the 90s, like she was top advisor on all of
0:08:42 that.
0:08:46 And, you know, handing over health care to your wife, you got to have a lot of faith in somebody
0:08:48 to be able to do that.
0:08:50 But any fun stuff?
0:08:51 Like I expected.
0:08:52 I mean, we got serious really fast.
0:08:54 But, you know, how much you drink?
0:08:55 What drugs did you do?
0:08:56 Did you party hard?
0:08:58 Oh, you know me, Jess.
0:09:01 So I just mostly read and did a lot of yoga and a lot of self-reflection.
0:09:02 Oh, are you kidding?
0:09:03 What drugs didn’t I do?
0:09:06 No, I, what did I do?
0:09:10 I did, I, you know, my life is a story of crazy privilege.
0:09:11 I was in Nantucket.
0:09:11 I was in Colorado.
0:09:13 I went to Ibiza.
0:09:15 I just got back from Brazil.
0:09:17 But it was, I was actually, it got a little much.
0:09:19 I’m not, I’m usually really good at vacationing.
0:09:23 And because of the weekends, the way they felt, it felt like I had too much time off.
0:09:23 I was antsy.
0:09:26 I was texting everybody the last few days, trying to get back into it.
0:09:29 I’ll start to feel insecure that I was out of the loop in terms of news.
0:09:32 I feel like I’m really out of, really out of shape.
0:09:32 Anyways.
0:09:35 Well, you have a mustache also for those who are just listening.
0:09:36 Yeah, that was an accident.
0:09:37 That was an accident.
0:09:39 I said, I affectionately caught my second taste.
0:09:42 I was in, I was in Sao Paulo.
0:09:46 And I said to the barber, who’s admittedly is English is much better than my Portuguese.
0:09:48 I’m like, just take it all off.
0:09:49 And he left a little mustache.
0:09:54 I think I look, I think I look like Burt Realms if he was Jewish and less attractive.
0:09:57 By the way, folks, I’m allowed to mock Jews because I am a Jew.
0:09:58 That’s the general rule among Jews.
0:09:59 It’s how it works.
0:10:00 It’s how it works.
0:10:01 You’ve had a bit of a glow up.
0:10:05 That’s, by the way, that is exhibit 22 in the sexual harassment case.
0:10:06 You look very nice.
0:10:06 What’s going on?
0:10:10 Are your eggs dying and you’re going out and like partying at Chez Margot and flirting
0:10:11 with 25 year old bankers?
0:10:13 Is that what’s, is that what’s going on here?
0:10:14 No.
0:10:18 I mean, my eggs are dying, but I have only been flirting with my husband and I’m sleep
0:10:20 deprived because of little people.
0:10:21 I have a new bronzer.
0:10:23 Maybe that’s what you’re noticing.
0:10:24 How are the kids?
0:10:25 They’re fantastic.
0:10:26 I don’t care.
0:10:27 I don’t care.
0:10:27 All right.
0:10:28 Let’s get into it.
0:10:30 We’re going to launch our own YouTube channel.
0:10:33 Oh, we’re spinning out for the mothership and we’re going to have our own.
0:10:34 That’s right.
0:10:37 That’s because of the Rogan like numbers you achieved.
0:10:43 So in today’s episode of Raging Moderates, how RFK Jr. is upending America’s health systems,
0:10:48 Congress’s agenda for the fall, and she and Putin relationship.
0:10:49 We’re going to call that segment she rated.
0:10:51 Get it as an X rated?
0:10:51 Yeah.
0:10:52 Let’s get into it.
0:10:57 In just a few months on the job, RFK Jr. has pushed out the CDC director, gutted vaccine
0:11:01 programs, frozen billions in research, and sidelined the agency during the biggest measles
0:11:02 outbreak in decades.
0:11:08 Public health experts, including nine former CDC directors, are sounding the alarm, saying
0:11:11 decades of scientific progress are being dismantled in real time.
0:11:12 But Trump loves it.
0:11:17 He’s out there bragging, even as scientists warn Americans, that they are less prepared
0:11:19 or we are less prepared for the next health crisis.
0:11:23 Jess, you know, we’re running around with our hair on fire here, but let’s try and bring
0:11:28 this down to what the real world consequences might be of this kind of MAGA slash MAHA alliance
0:11:29 at work.
0:11:33 I mean, it’s actually hair on fire stuff.
0:11:35 Because people will die.
0:11:36 People have already died.
0:11:42 But the last week, the development about not being able to get the COVID vaccine unless
0:11:48 you have a prescription, even if you have comorbidities, and that CVS and Walgreens are saying that
0:11:52 they can’t offer it right now because of the quote unquote regulatory environment.
0:11:55 That’s how people end up dying.
0:12:02 And this isn’t because I think that COVID-19 for those of us who are lucky enough to be
0:12:05 healthy young adults was the end of the world.
0:12:10 It’s because there are people like Eric Erickson, who’s a conservative commentator, posted about
0:12:10 this.
0:12:15 He said, my wife has stage four lung cancer and she can’t get the COVID vaccine now.
0:12:18 She needs that in order to stay alive.
0:12:19 And she’s been fighting this since 2016.
0:12:23 So, you know, there are so many aspects to it.
0:12:26 The world of RFK Jr. is broad, right?
0:12:33 It’s everything from pesticides to water standards to brain worms and whatever else is going on.
0:12:40 But it does feel like this fight over vaccines is really what is at least ringing the alarm
0:12:46 bells the loudest and maybe a controversial position on this.
0:12:52 But I saw, you know, Donald Trump posted yesterday on Truth Social about Operation Warp Speed.
0:12:56 And he said, we need more clarity about it.
0:12:56 I want Pfizer.
0:13:01 I’ve seen numbers on this, but I I want the numbers to be made public because if it really
0:13:04 was as brilliant as people said, then I want that to be out there.
0:13:07 If it wasn’t, then I want that to be out there as well.
0:13:09 And RFK Jr. saying like, yes, this is the right way.
0:13:10 We need the transparency.
0:13:13 And the truth is, all the numbers have been published.
0:13:15 Like you can’t get all of these trials done.
0:13:20 You can’t be written up in every single important medical journal unless the numbers have been
0:13:20 made public.
0:13:27 But to me, it kind of signaled a little bit of a fracturing in the alliance that Donald Trump
0:13:33 was essentially saying there is a chance and it’s very large chance majority of his supporters
0:13:38 or the same ones think that Operation Warp Speed was the crown jewel of the first Trump
0:13:39 administration.
0:13:42 You know, the speed at which we were able to get this vaccine done.
0:13:47 And so I saw that as a little bit of fraying, I guess, there.
0:13:52 And I hope that, you know, he’s just hit with a ton of data and it all gets out there and
0:13:55 it can at least silence some of these critics.
0:13:58 But I’m very scared for what the future portends.
0:14:01 And, you know, it’s only September 2nd, right?
0:14:03 He hasn’t even had a full year in office.
0:14:08 And we’re already looking at the gutting of the CDC like that, that letter from the nine
0:14:09 former CDC directors.
0:14:12 And I wanted to get your take on this because there was a lot of really important stuff that
0:14:13 they said.
0:14:17 But what really stuck out to me is that they noted they didn’t always agree with their
0:14:21 leaders, but they never gave us a reason to doubt that they would rely on data driven
0:14:25 insights for our protection and that they would support public health workers.
0:14:28 And that is the theme across the administration.
0:14:30 The data doesn’t matter.
0:14:34 If we don’t like it, we fire the person like the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
0:14:40 They don’t like listening to the data on tariffs, on immigration, on the jobs number, now on health
0:14:41 care outcomes.
0:14:43 And people are going to die.
0:14:44 What are your feelings?
0:14:50 So I think looking back in 10 or 20 years, when we say who are the unsung heroes, I think
0:14:53 Chairman Powell, I think Chairman Powell is going to go down.
0:14:57 And by the way, a Trump appointee as one of the great economic heroes in terms of taming
0:15:03 inflation, bringing it down from like, you know, whatever it was, eight or nine percent
0:15:04 to sub three.
0:15:10 And I think the unsung villains are the people who will be seen as, wow, how did that happen?
0:15:13 And then the second and third order effects after they’re dead because they’re both old
0:15:20 men is Peter Navarro, who has somehow got the presidency or convinced him to implement the
0:15:23 most elegant way to reduce prosperity in history.
0:15:28 And that is tariffs of which, you know, it looks like we’re going from three to 15 percent
0:15:29 tariffs are the highest.
0:15:35 They’ve been in 100 years on average for every percentage point increase in tariff rates.
0:15:38 So we’ve gone from, say, three to 15, you get about a 10 basis point reduction in GDP.
0:15:43 So if we go from three to 15, incremental 12, some people say it’s going to 17 or 18, but
0:15:44 let’s say 15.
0:15:48 That translates to a reduction in GDP growth of 1.2 percent.
0:15:51 And it’s already starting to snake through the system and manifest.
0:15:57 And that is, it looks as if our GDP growth, which they thought was going to be about 2.8 percent,
0:16:01 is now going to be closer to 1.7.
0:16:05 And the thing is, these numbers are so misleading because they think, well, from 2.8 to 1.7, that’s
0:16:06 not terrible.
0:16:11 At 2.8, that means the economy is doubling about every 28 years.
0:16:16 And when the economy doubles, people’s standard of living doesn’t double, but it goes up dramatically.
0:16:19 As long as inflation doesn’t keep pace with that.
0:16:23 And so in your kid’s lifetime, you know, when your kids are thinking about buying their first
0:16:28 house, we could have an economy double the size if we can maintain 2.8.
0:16:35 If you’re at 1.8, that means the economy is doubling about every, hopefully, not every 25
0:16:38 years, but every 40 to 45 years.
0:16:42 So it just massively delays prosperity.
0:16:48 And if we want to talk about solving the deficit, if we want to talk about the resources to have
0:16:53 high-speed trains, if we want to have the resources to continue to have the most devastating
0:16:57 and lethal military force in the world, a lot of it just comes down to this.
0:16:59 You have to have good economic policy.
0:17:00 You have to have competent professionals.
0:17:01 But you have to have growth.
0:17:06 The thing that has killed the UK the last 10 years is there’s just not a lot of money
0:17:07 because the economy isn’t growing.
0:17:13 So in something the Democrats have not done a good enough job is talking about growth.
0:17:16 It’s like, OK, growth needs to be the agenda, not trying to buy votes by throwing money at
0:17:17 people.
0:17:22 But that devastation, that elegant way of not only reducing our prosperity, but raising
0:17:26 prices for Americans and fraying these 80-year alliances, I think it’s going to go down in
0:17:29 history as the ultimate shooting yourself in the foot and then taking the gun and sticking
0:17:30 in your mouth.
0:17:39 However, in terms of real, real despair in people’s life, real grief that was unnecessary, it could
0:17:46 be the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, or perhaps the millions of deaths and amputations
0:17:50 that will come from a discrediting of science.
0:17:57 Because to assemble the type of excellence and scientists that the CDC and the National
0:18:02 Institutes for Health, our crown jewels, have assembled over decades, these people, instead
0:18:06 of going to work for Pfizer and making a half a million to two million dollars a year in stock
0:18:10 options, go to work for the government at, you know, 200 grand a year because they want
0:18:10 to make a difference.
0:18:14 They want to figure out a way such that measles stays eradicated.
0:18:22 If you were to ask thoughtful people, experts, and I do think that expertise is a thing and
0:18:25 it matters, what have been the greatest innovations over the last hundred years?
0:18:30 I think most people would immediately, because we’re so obsessed with technology, go to GPS
0:18:32 or go to DARPA or the internet or something like that.
0:18:36 I think that it would probably right up there, if not number one, would be vaccines.
0:18:37 So just some data.
0:18:44 So smallpox, which was around for about 3,000 years, in 1980 was, they said it was officially
0:18:45 eradicated.
0:18:46 Like we did away with it.
0:18:47 Polio.
0:18:51 My first day at Morgan Stanley, and this is a great foot in your mouth moment, they
0:18:54 assigned me an assistant and we’re walking upstairs.
0:18:55 I said, hi, how are you?
0:18:59 You know, this young, attractive Latino woman, not that that makes any difference.
0:19:00 And she had a bit of a limp.
0:19:01 And I said, oh, what happened?
0:19:05 Assuming it was like, you know, stupid white guy, like she did playing in some softball league
0:19:06 or something.
0:19:07 And she said, hi, polio.
0:19:10 That’s not a great way to kick off your first conversation with your assistant.
0:19:11 Not ideal.
0:19:14 It only got worse for me at Morgan Stanley from that point forward.
0:19:17 Anyways, polio cases have decreased 99 percent.
0:19:18 Measles.
0:19:25 The vaccine for measles has resulted in the aversion of over 60 million deaths since just 2000.
0:19:30 And tetanus, newborn deaths due to the disease, have decreased 97 percent.
0:19:35 And when you have measles and rubella, you’re talking about kids who there’s a lot of death,
0:19:40 but a lot of these little kids are going to have limbs and digits amputated.
0:19:42 That’s what measles does when it goes untreated.
0:19:47 So it’s as if we’re not only not making as much progress.
0:19:51 I think that the thing you would say about the EU is that they just haven’t made as much
0:19:52 progress as other nations.
0:19:53 China’s kind of eaten their lunch.
0:19:57 If you look at economic growth of China, it hasn’t come at the cost of the U.S.
0:20:01 The U.S. still has the same number of unicorns, the same number of billionaires as a proportion
0:20:02 of the rest of the world.
0:20:04 It’s come at the expense of the EU.
0:20:07 And the primary culprit in the EU is that they haven’t grown.
0:20:11 We’ve decided, oh, we’re not only not going to grow, we’re going to regress.
0:20:14 We’re going to move backwards in time.
0:20:18 We’re going to have economic policies of 100 years ago, and we’re going to take all the
0:20:23 incredible advances in medicine that save lives, and we’re going to roll them back.
0:20:30 I can’t think of the analogy here is Stalin put in place a bunch of cronies, not experts.
0:20:34 And one of the experts he put in place was some military expert or general or something,
0:20:39 and you put him in charge of agriculture, which is a big job in a food-based economy at the
0:20:39 time.
0:20:40 I don’t think it was an energy-based economy.
0:20:41 It was an agro-economy.
0:20:46 And he decided, oh, the best way to double productivity was to plant seeds twice as close
0:20:50 to each other, despite the fact that that just doesn’t work and actually ends up hurting
0:20:54 crops and resulted in a famine that killed tens of millions of people.
0:20:59 And that’s where I think we are now, is we’ve just said, oh, don’t trust experts.
0:21:00 Trust your gut.
0:21:01 Trust your opinion.
0:21:06 And that is not only bad news, but this purposely trying to unwind.
0:21:10 It’s not going to be like a Democrat gets elected and immediately rehires these people.
0:21:14 These people are going to go on to do new things, and they’re going to decide, well, what happens
0:21:17 if J.D. Vance gets reelected in 2032?
0:21:19 I just don’t want to take that chance.
0:21:24 And this is such a frang of our society, because it used to be we had political arguments, and
0:21:28 then when the data came in, or a doctor, an actual expert came in and said, no, this
0:21:32 vaccine is safe, we all rallied around that.
0:21:36 And what was interesting with vaccines is the anti-vaccine movement started on the far
0:21:41 left back in the kind of 70s and 80s, you know, don’t put anything in your body, free to be
0:21:42 you and me, just eat granola.
0:21:45 And then the far right embraced it.
0:21:49 And I think a tell for a really, really shitty idea is what I call the 40 test.
0:21:54 And at negative 40 Celsius and Fahrenheit meet, creating an inhospitable environment.
0:21:58 Whenever the far left and the far right come together on something, it’s usually a really
0:21:58 bad idea.
0:22:01 But I think RFK Jr.
0:22:06 will likely go down as probably in terms of death, disease and disability, one of the most
0:22:08 damaging figures of this millennium.
0:22:09 Your thoughts?
0:22:11 I’m with you.
0:22:13 And while you were talking, you mentioned Stalin.
0:22:18 I thought about, do you remember the movie, The Death of Stalin, where Steve Buscemi plays
0:22:18 Khrushchev?
0:22:19 Yeah.
0:22:23 And it’s kind of what you imagine is going on in the White House right now.
0:22:25 This is not about Trump being dead.
0:22:27 I know that’s the left wing conspiracy right now.
0:22:31 But you just have like eight people that are doing all the jobs.
0:22:35 And they’re all a little bit insane.
0:22:37 And they all have too much power.
0:22:40 And that’s in every single division.
0:22:42 Like Marco Rubio is even kind of making jokes about it.
0:22:45 He’s like, you know, Russ Boat seemed like he didn’t have enough jobs.
0:22:50 So I’m going to give him, you know, control of finishing off USAID as well.
0:22:53 You know, Rubio has four jobs at this point.
0:22:59 You know, you can’t get enough people who will go along with what it is that you want them
0:23:00 to do.
0:23:03 And you’re completely right about losing top talent.
0:23:08 And, you know, some former folks from the CDC have been speaking out about this, giving
0:23:11 interviews, talking about career trajectories and what they could have gone and done with
0:23:12 their lives.
0:23:15 But they wanted to make sure that they could serve the public.
0:23:20 And I’ve been watching Bill Cassidy, Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana.
0:23:24 Having a live meltdown on social media.
0:23:31 He’s fighting with anti-vax wackos about, you know, how good the B vaccine is.
0:23:36 When I say anti-vax wackos, I’m also including Rand Paul in this.
0:23:39 He’s fighting with Rand Paul about maternal health care.
0:23:44 And I thought in preparation for today, I was going to check out, you know, who of the Republican
0:23:48 caucus or doctors before they came into public service.
0:23:51 And so I went on their websites and there are four of them.
0:23:52 Rand Paul, who’s an ophthalmologist.
0:23:54 So maybe that’s, you know, not the same thing.
0:24:00 But then you have Roger Marshall from Kansas who has sane moments like where he’s defended
0:24:03 USAID and said, you know, we’re not just going to go and burn tons of food.
0:24:04 You have to get it out there.
0:24:08 He was an OBGYN that’s proudly delivered over 5,000 babies.
0:24:13 I’m like, you’re part of the party that has stripped millions of women of reproductive health
0:24:14 care and you’re an OBGYN.
0:24:16 Like, I get it.
0:24:16 You’re pro-life.
0:24:19 But these things, they do not add up.
0:24:23 John Barroso, Yale educated and orthopedic surgeon standing by and voting for this.
0:24:30 And then Bill Cassidy, who was really kind of like the deciding holdout in terms of RFK
0:24:30 Jr. getting through.
0:24:35 And he said that he got, you know, all of these promises from him and that the vaccine
0:24:36 panel is going to meet.
0:24:37 That never happened, right?
0:24:41 The CDC directors, they’re saying we never briefed RFK Jr. on anything.
0:24:44 But I’m looking through what he used to do.
0:24:51 The guy ran a hospital for the uninsured, you know, making sure that 36,000 greater Baton
0:24:55 Rouge area children are vaccinated against Hep B at no cost to the school or the parents.
0:25:00 Can you think of anything that is less commensurate with the modern GOP than who Bill
0:25:06 Cassidy was before Donald Trump or Donald Trump even 2.0?
0:25:11 This guy also voted to convict for the second impeachment, right?
0:25:14 He was one of only a few that stood up and said, no, Donald Trump actually did incite an
0:25:15 insurrection.
0:25:17 I’m not going to leave this for the courts like Mitch McConnell.
0:25:20 I’m going to say right here, right now that he’s guilty of this.
0:25:26 So you could take a stand like that against a vengeful president who’s definitely coming
0:25:26 for you.
0:25:32 But you can’t say as a doctor that has treated thousands of children and protected them from
0:25:33 the thing that RFK Jr.
0:25:37 abhors the most in the world that you can’t support his candidacy.
0:25:42 And a colleague of mine mentioned this during the confirmation hearings for RFK Jr.
0:25:43 And I thought it made so much sense.
0:25:45 And I was like, why didn’t they do this?
0:25:50 You could have just given him a role at the Department of Agriculture, right?
0:25:57 You could have said the Maha movement is foundationally about getting the dyes out of our foods and
0:25:57 pesticides.
0:26:00 And let’s just put you over here.
0:26:02 I’m not even saying that you have to make him the head of the USDA.
0:26:05 But just you rope him along.
0:26:06 You got his voters, right?
0:26:09 He was out there campaigning for you, talking about how bad the Democrats are.
0:26:15 Put him somewhere where he can focus on the least frightening aspects of his ideology.
0:26:21 They’ve given him license to tear down something that is so foundational to the safety of Americans
0:26:24 Americans is heart-stopping to consider.
0:26:29 And but I was doing one of those, like, how did we get here moments, right?
0:26:30 Because this has happened.
0:26:31 There have always been anti-vaxxers.
0:26:34 And you said, you know, start on the left and it goes to the right.
0:26:36 And I agree about when the far left and the far right meet.
0:26:38 That’s what scares me about Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, right?
0:26:41 How many voters there were in crossover.
0:26:47 But you have to go back to the pandemic and think about how the country was managed during
0:26:54 that period to understand how the pendulum swung so far to the right so quickly.
0:27:01 And when I posted about Bill Cassidy, I got a lot of responses that were citing this letter.
0:27:06 I don’t know if you paid attention to it at the time, but in June of 2020, over a thousand
0:27:10 health care professionals signed this letter saying, you know, I know there are stay at home
0:27:15 orders, but if you are out protesting for social justice, Black Lives Matter after the murder
0:27:19 of George Floyd, that that is medically okay for you to be doing.
0:27:25 And it ends by saying, this should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings,
0:27:29 particularly protests against stay at home orders.
0:27:35 And it was so interesting to me to see that coming up over and over and over again in my feed.
0:27:40 And it feels like it was that kind of, you know, the match, right, that they threw on this
0:27:46 tinderbox that exploded into people going in all sorts of frightening directions when there
0:27:50 was an inconsistency about what they were allowed to do during COVID.
0:27:53 And, you know, you said we can’t be the party of the status quo.
0:27:55 You can’t say it’s all perfect.
0:28:02 But it feels like for so many people, there just hasn’t been a proper accounting of how
0:28:06 various blue states and I mean, there were complaints about some red states like in Ohio
0:28:12 as well, but were managed during the pandemic and that the CDC has become the redheaded stepchild
0:28:15 of all of this, that everyone just takes all of their fury and throws it at them.
0:28:17 Like they say, the CDC is who kept the schools closed.
0:28:18 That’s not true.
0:28:23 And Jared Polis, the blue state governor, opened up Colorado when he thought it was safe and
0:28:24 everyone went about their business.
0:28:26 Yeah, it’s really interesting.
0:28:33 COVID will be maybe the exception of World War Two will be seen as probably the biggest
0:28:37 influence maybe in the last hundred years in terms of how it changed our relationship with
0:28:40 work, how it changed our relationship with the economy.
0:28:42 You know, the deficits exploded.
0:28:45 Also, a lack of trust in government.
0:28:48 And I think a lot of it reverse engineered to income inequality.
0:28:54 And that is, if you were fortunate enough to be, you know, had some money, I’ve said this
0:28:55 and I’m not proud of it.
0:28:56 COVID was the best two years of my life.
0:28:58 It meant more time with my kids.
0:28:59 I was traveling.
0:29:04 I was molesting the globe, traveling, you know, talking to clients in person and trying to make
0:29:04 money.
0:29:09 And then when everyone embraced Zoom because of COVID and I got to go boogie boarding with
0:29:12 my kids in the afternoon because I have money and I live in a nice place.
0:29:16 And then, oh, I get to watch a lot of Netflix with my family, not be on a plane all the goddamn
0:29:16 time.
0:29:20 And my stock skyrocketed because of a stimulus plan where we said, let’s take kids credit
0:29:23 cards and flush the market with stimulus.
0:29:27 Eighty five percent of it wasn’t spent, meaning we overspent by five X.
0:29:28 So where did it end up?
0:29:31 It ended up in the market, ended up housing, housing went from 290 to 420.
0:29:33 Markets skyrocketed.
0:29:39 It was a gigantic opportunity for the incumbents to get rich on future generation credit card.
0:29:44 It scarred people in terms of school because, and by the way, I got this wrong.
0:29:46 I was a lockdown guy.
0:29:47 And you were in Florida at the time.
0:29:48 I was in Florida.
0:29:48 Yeah.
0:29:53 I said, look, if we can manage to stay six feet away from one another for eight days,
0:29:54 the virus goes away.
0:29:56 For me, it was just math.
0:30:00 And then I, you know, did a little bit of reading from people who knew what they’re talking
0:30:00 about.
0:30:03 I’m like, no, the viruses and pandemics don’t work that way.
0:30:04 People don’t work that way.
0:30:04 That doesn’t work.
0:30:06 Everyone’s going to get their turn of the woodshed here.
0:30:12 But what’s interesting is I think the CDC and you pointed this out, Trump deserves real
0:30:14 credit around Operation Warp Speed.
0:30:18 The Chinese and the Russians all announced vaccines.
0:30:20 No one was lining up for Chinese or Russian vaccines.
0:30:27 And when a devastating global pandemic challenge faced the world, who kind of, if you will,
0:30:30 came to the rescue and said, all right, who’s the smartest kid in class?
0:30:32 We’ve got to try and defuse this bomb.
0:30:35 Who is the smartest kid in class from a standing start?
0:30:37 Granted, we had more resources, but who knows?
0:30:40 It could have been someone, you know, out of Japan or whatever.
0:30:42 It was definitely the U.S.
0:30:45 And that was an enormous brand building event.
0:30:48 And Trump deserves credit for that, as does our health and science infrastructure and our
0:30:52 great pharmaceutical companies who really went balls to the wall, if you will.
0:30:56 Where they really screwed up was in their communications and messaging.
0:31:01 I remember a lot of medical professionals saying, don’t wear a mask, don’t hoard them.
0:31:02 They don’t work in the beginning.
0:31:07 And then all of a sudden it was like, just kidding, you have to mask.
0:31:13 And then what I didn’t realize, and I think a lot of us didn’t realize, is just the impact
0:31:19 having closed schools had on kids and their families when they weren’t allowed to socialize
0:31:20 with other children.
0:31:26 The people with money and adults could be fine, but kids kept out of school, put huge strain
0:31:27 on low and middle income families.
0:31:32 And the kids, and I saw this with my youngest, my youngest really struggled and we didn’t
0:31:32 know what was going on.
0:31:36 And it was just kind of obvious what was not in school with device addiction.
0:31:40 And just things kind of never have kind of come back.
0:31:45 And then the other big messaging gaffe was the government gave people the impression that
0:31:48 the vaccine would cure it.
0:31:48 Yep.
0:31:49 And you wouldn’t get it.
0:31:50 No, no, no, no.
0:31:52 That was the wrong messaging.
0:31:56 The right messaging was the truth and still very powerful that if you take the vaccine,
0:31:58 almost nobody dies.
0:32:04 And that is, okay, we can’t stop you from getting COVID, but we can mostly stop you from
0:32:05 dying from it.
0:32:09 And also, I don’t think they did a very good job of countering some of the misinformation
0:32:11 or the both sideism around.
0:32:14 Well, there are some side effects, flip a coin.
0:32:21 And, but more than anything, I really think the teachers unions really fucked up here.
0:32:27 I think they saw it as an opportunity to use these kids as drug mules and use it as leverage
0:32:33 to negotiate greater compensation for a workforce, which is primarily younger, primarily female,
0:32:34 who are the least vulnerable.
0:32:40 And use that, weaponize that to try and get them time off and try and get them additional
0:32:41 compensation.
0:32:44 I think this was a real disservice.
0:32:45 They did not step up.
0:32:48 As a matter of fact, I think they exploited the situation.
0:32:53 And I think so many people were so traumatized by the whole thing.
0:32:57 It’s strange too, because we, I would argue like who handled it better than the U.S.
0:33:05 Yet, it has created this undercurrent of mistrust in our system, in our government, in science
0:33:06 and expertise.
0:33:10 It’ll be really interesting to kind of say, well, what, if this happens again, one, it’s
0:33:14 going to be devastating because we seem to be dismantling the health apparatus.
0:33:17 But what would we do differently around messaging?
0:33:23 It’ll be hard because it doesn’t look like we’re going to have reliable messengers or in
0:33:29 general, we don’t have a national figurehead that everybody trusts and can get behind.
0:33:35 And so, you know, I mean, Trump obviously did his whole like injecting bleach, but, you
0:33:38 know, Trump did a lot of things that are not cool.
0:33:42 Remember those shots of Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci with their head in their hands?
0:33:43 Like, oh, my God, I can’t believe this is happening.
0:33:47 Not again to detract from Operation Warp Speed, which was this huge achievement.
0:33:53 But, yeah, we don’t have a single source of truth in any respect on any topic that folks
0:33:54 can get to.
0:34:01 It’s Donald Trump’s most impactful legacy that you and I, we know what color the sky is right
0:34:01 now.
0:34:05 And two people who vote differently than us have a totally different opinion.
0:34:10 But you’re right about the school’s direct correlation between Democrats losing their edge
0:34:12 on who’s best to handle education.
0:34:18 Glenn Youngkin winning the Virginia governorship and Phil Murphy, you know, four or five points
0:34:24 winning in New Jersey, you know, just skirting by by typical New Jersey blue state standards
0:34:27 because of those schools being closed.
0:34:31 And, you know, Democrats are having to do a lot of work to regain that advantage.
0:34:38 And smart congresspeople like Jake Auchincloss are out with plans for one-on-one tutoring for
0:34:45 kids and AI supplements and things like that to make sure that we help these children that
0:34:50 we put in a terrible position because they were most of the time ones with not enough access
0:34:53 that they couldn’t, you know, zoom in from the Hamptons or wherever.
0:34:55 They might not even have great Wi-Fi at home.
0:35:00 And the stories about the kids, you know, parked at a McDonald’s trying to do Zoom school on
0:35:04 a laptop that was lent to them or a tablet is harrowing stuff.
0:35:11 The private sector is responding to some of this kind of, I guess, the adjacent of the
0:35:13 anti-science, anti-vaccine movement.
0:35:19 And I think it’s kind of a giant distraction that’s rooted in good ideas, but is, in my opinion,
0:35:22 another weapon of mass distraction is the Make America Healthy Again, the Maha movement.
0:35:28 And a lot of large food manufacturers are doing a lot of what I call signaling in response
0:35:29 to RFK’s Maha movement.
0:35:34 Coca-Cola is rolling out a cane sugar product as an alternate to the high fructose corn syrup
0:35:35 sweetened sodas that are available now.
0:35:37 Okay, fine.
0:35:41 And there is, I think, a very strong argument that a lot of our economic incentives and regulatory
0:35:46 capture have created a food supply system that is just not optimized for health.
0:35:47 It’s optimized for profits.
0:35:48 That’s the bottom line.
0:35:52 And we subsidize foods that are just not good for you.
0:35:56 And meanwhile, the foods that are good for you have become increasingly expensive.
0:35:59 Starbucks may eliminate canola oil from their menu.
0:36:02 Steak and Shake will cook its fries in beef tallow instead of seed oils.
0:36:06 General Mills, PepsiCo, Con Agra, Nestle, Hershey, and Kraft Heinz have all pledged to eliminate
0:36:08 artificial dyes from the products in the next two years.
0:36:11 Look, I think he gets some of this right.
0:36:17 But again, it’s a bit of a distraction because, and I’ve been on this for a while, if you wanted
0:36:20 to make America healthy again, I think the two things you could do would be, one, increase
0:36:27 minimum wage of $25 an hour, make sure that no one goes hungry, and also, and this is less
0:36:31 conventional, make GLP-1 drugs accessible and free to people.
0:36:38 The obesity industrial complex has been weaponized, and you are fat-shaming people if you talk
0:36:41 about it and don’t acknowledge that they’re, you know, they’re not finding diabetes, they’re
0:36:42 finding their truth.
0:36:46 One and a half trillion dollars goes to obesity-related illnesses.
0:36:48 Seventy percent of America’s overweight are obese.
0:36:49 Forty percent are obese.
0:36:50 In Japan, it’s four percent.
0:36:57 And there’s just so much money in this business and so many subsidies, subsidizing really shitty
0:37:02 food that you have essentially Washington fighting to make us less healthy and not reinvesting
0:37:07 that money and making kids more healthy such that they don’t need or don’t feel a need to
0:37:11 get cheap calories from fast food that is bad for them, such that they don’t have to head
0:37:16 out in COVID driving their Uber with Diet Cokes and their diabetes medication putting themselves
0:37:17 in harm’s way.
0:37:22 They’re talking about within the system, they’re about ideas, but it’s the system within which
0:37:26 we operate, that if people can’t afford not to have a second job and are constantly stressed
0:37:30 out and they can’t afford to eat healthy, they have to just get the cheapest calories
0:37:33 possible, that is the system.
0:37:35 That’s the basis for health.
0:37:40 And where it shows up is the people in the highest decile of income live on average seven
0:37:42 to 10 years longer than the poorest Americans.
0:37:44 It’s sad.
0:37:45 And RFK Jr.
0:37:47 goes to tanning salons.
0:37:49 That’s my final comment on all of this.
0:37:50 Yeah.
0:37:54 By the way, most importantly, did you see their health challenge?
0:37:58 I like this stuff, this fitness matcha shit, the way they went to a, I think it was a marine
0:37:58 barracks.
0:38:04 And there’s this thing, basically you time, four time, you try and do 50 pull-ups and 100
0:38:05 push-ups.
0:38:09 So you can break them up, five and 10, you know, whatever it is, 10 and 20.
0:38:14 And I think RFK Jr., to his credit, he’s in very good shape for a guy who’s 70.
0:38:18 He did it in, I think, five minutes and 30 seconds.
0:38:23 And Secretary Hegseth did it, I think, in five minutes and 10 seconds.
0:38:24 And it was just back to me.
0:38:27 Do you think I could beat both our Secretary of Defense and RFK?
0:38:27 Really?
0:38:27 Yeah.
0:38:28 Really?
0:38:28 Totally.
0:38:31 I think the mustache would propel you to victory, actually.
0:38:32 The mustache?
0:38:32 Yeah.
0:38:36 Your second taste is what would really give you the pull-up advantage.
0:38:37 I’m going to do this.
0:38:38 I’m going to film it.
0:38:39 And I’m going to post it.
0:38:40 And I’m going to do some sort of charity thing.
0:38:42 I’m going to challenge who are the weakest people.
0:38:43 Who can I troll?
0:38:44 Well, not Trump.
0:38:45 That’s no fun.
0:38:46 His kids.
0:38:49 I think Don and Eric look like total fucking wimps.
0:38:50 I think you could definitely beat them.
0:38:51 A hundred percent.
0:38:53 I think I can beat Hegseth.
0:38:55 I think I can beat Secretary Hegseth.
0:38:55 Anyways.
0:38:56 He’s quite fit.
0:38:57 Stay tuned.
0:38:58 We’ll post it on our feed.
0:38:58 Yeah.
0:39:00 This is for the new YouTube channel.
0:39:02 It’s actually just going to be Scott doing push-ups.
0:39:03 And pull-ups.
0:39:04 And pull-ups.
0:39:04 With his mustache.
0:39:06 And then having a stroke.
0:39:07 That’ll get our downloads up.
0:39:10 But then we’ll treat you because health care matters.
0:39:11 That’s right.
0:39:12 So you’ll survive.
0:39:13 All right.
0:39:13 Stay with us.
0:39:14 We’ll be right back.
0:39:21 Support for this show comes from Grammarly.
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0:40:36 Miller Lite, the light beer brewed for people who love the taste of beer and the perfect pairing
0:40:37 for your game time.
0:40:43 When Miller Lite set out to brew a light beer, they had to choose great taste or 90 calories
0:40:44 per can.
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0:41:07 Google’s new Pixel smartphone is here, and like it or not, it’s got AI shoved into every
0:41:08 nook and cranny.
0:41:11 And some of it is actually kind of cool.
0:41:15 This week on The Vergecast, we spent a week with Pixel 10, and we have a lot of thoughts about
0:41:17 whether it’s AI is actually useful.
0:41:21 Also, the American government now has a 10% stake in Intel.
0:41:22 How?
0:41:23 Why?
0:41:26 Will you see dividends on your income tax returns?
0:41:28 Plus, weird cameras are having a moment.
0:41:32 We go through the last five years of surprising photography trends.
0:41:34 That’s this week on The Vergecast.
0:41:40 Welcome back.
0:41:44 Congress is back in Washington after the August recess given to us by Epstein.
0:41:49 I love that he forced us to close down the government a few days early.
0:41:51 Mike Johnson was like, I’m out of here.
0:41:52 I don’t want to talk about this.
0:41:53 We don’t want to talk about Epstein.
0:41:58 A government shutdown looms just weeks away unless lawmakers can strike a spending deal.
0:42:02 But Trump has ratcheted up tensions by unilaterally slashing billions in previously approved funding.
0:42:06 Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are considering a rules change to push through Trump’s nominees,
0:42:11 and a bipartisan sanctions bill on Russia is still stalled until Trump makes up his mind.
0:42:17 And hanging over everything is renewed pressure on the release of the Epstein files.
0:42:21 Jess, how do you think Democrats should approach the spending fight this time around?
0:42:30 Well, I just I want to start by saying that I’m actually feeling optimistic about the state of the Democratic Party,
0:42:40 which I don’t think that I’ve said since the election and we’ve been doing a lot of bitching and I feel like they’re in line.
0:42:46 They’re doing what they can without any control, which is a very hard position to be in.
0:42:53 And they seem to be hearing the chorus from the American public, which is we would just want you to fight.
0:43:01 Right. We just need to see that you have a pulse and that you’re doing the best that you can with the hand that you’ve been dealt.
0:43:06 And you’ve been away for the bulk of this redistricting fight.
0:43:13 But Gavin Newsom has really taken on, you know, I don’t know if he’s the nominee in 2028, but he is the nominee today.
0:43:13 A hundred percent.
0:43:14 Yeah.
0:43:15 A hundred percent.
0:43:19 And I assume that the proposal will pass.
0:43:33 We’ll get the five seats from California to counteract the five seats in Texas and then hopefully also shore up for swing Democrats as well so that they’ll have a safer time come the midterms in winning their seat again.
0:43:38 But Politico is just reporting that we could get another three seats between Maryland and Illinois.
0:43:43 Kathy Hochul for 2028 is going to be looking at what she can do in New York.
0:43:46 And I get it. Indiana is going to do it on the Republican side.
0:43:48 Missouri, Florida is going to see what they can do.
0:43:58 But with Democrats now up between five and eight points on the generic ballot, the expectation is that we still should be able to do fine in the midterms.
0:44:00 And that makes me feel good at a base level.
0:44:04 In terms of the spending shutdown fight, what do we call it?
0:44:07 The looming spending showdown.
0:44:12 You know, we don’t have control of anything, so we don’t have the best deck that you’ve ever been dealt.
0:44:21 But Schumer and Jeffries want to have a meeting with Johnson and Thune, talk to them about what we can do in a bipartisan way to keep the government open.
0:44:22 And that’s usually how this works.
0:44:25 Like, these are typically not necessarily partisan fights.
0:44:27 You know, everyone jockeys for what they want.
0:44:30 And this one gets a little of this and that one gets a little of that.
0:44:32 So we’ll see how that plays out.
0:44:40 Trump is now doing these rescission packages, though, where, I mean, Susan Collins, who’s the head of the Appropriations Committee, has said that it’s blatantly illegal.
0:44:44 But, like, they just took almost $5 billion from USAID with the stroke of a pen.
0:44:51 And if they’re going to be going about this with that kind of approach, that’s obviously pissing off Democrats and going to make things more complicated.
0:45:06 But one thing that is bubbling that I find really exciting, and I think that you will as well, is that there’s apparently a large group of Democrats that want to use the spending fight as an opportunity to talk about what we could do on immigration.
0:45:14 So not something as big as the bipartisan immigration package that we had from James Langford and Chris Murphy, but to say, like, let’s get our dreamers protected.
0:45:21 Folks who had temporary protected status from Venezuela, from Haiti, let’s talk about that.
0:45:28 And it’s interesting because this is the kind of deal that you would think normally, without Stephen Miller, Donald Trump might be interested in, right?
0:45:34 He’s not as much of an immigration hawk as the rest of the folks that fill out the Oval Office.
0:45:46 So if they can get somewhere with this, I’d be curious to see if there are any Republicans that are tempted, because there are definitely going to be Republicans that don’t want to fund the government, right?
0:45:51 That happens every time that you lose a few people who are like, you know, we’re being so reckless in the debt and the deficit.
0:45:54 And, you know, I’m not being too much of a Pollyanna about it.
0:46:00 The odds of it passing or being the cause of being able to keep over the government are very slim.
0:46:05 But I think it’s cool that we’re going to have the conversation and at least shows that we’re willing to lead on it.
0:46:07 Yeah, there’s definitely sort of, all right.
0:46:18 I think Democrats have been really exasperated, frustrated, incredibly jaded and disappointed by the lack of what was seen as a robust, vigorous, high tensile strength pushback.
0:46:26 And the general sense of the strategy coming out of the Democratic Party was, you know, let them kind of make a mess of it and we’ll come back in 26.
0:46:30 But kind of don’t get in the way of your enemy when they’re doing something stupid.
0:46:32 I don’t think that works.
0:46:35 And there’s been a small number of voices.
0:46:37 I think Pritzker’s been good on this.
0:46:39 Governor Moore’s been good on this.
0:46:41 Senator Murphy’s been good.
0:46:44 You know, people, I think Senator Warner is pretty articulate.
0:46:46 There’s been people who have been effective.
0:46:49 I think the most effective pushback have actually been media personalities and comedians.
0:46:54 But there’s no doubt about it, and it’s both a good and a bad thing.
0:46:59 The presumptive Democratic nominee right now, presumptive is the wrong word, most likely, highest odds, is now Governor Newsom.
0:47:04 And we’ve gone from, you know, there’s two stages to this.
0:47:10 There’s resist and pushback, and then there needs to be, quickly, it needs to be followed by, in my opinion, ideas.
0:47:16 But he has, hands down, been the most effective countering force to Trump’s activities.
0:47:20 One, and it’s sort of brilliant, it’s been just mimicking him.
0:47:24 Because it’s basically just holding up a mirror to him and saying, this is how fucking stupid your shit is.
0:47:28 I mean, look at all caps, ridiculously narcissistic.
0:47:33 It’s just sort of, it’s the ultimate mockery as not flattery.
0:47:36 Just highlighting how insanely ridiculous this shit is.
0:47:44 And he comes across as unafraid, as opposed to the strongly worded letter, or good sir, and smacking them with your glove.
0:47:48 You know, I invite you to a debate at Oxford Hall anytime.
0:47:51 And it’s just sort of, people were ready for this and hungry for it.
0:47:54 And also, other people could have done it and tried to do it.
0:47:57 But Governor Newsom has the seat to do it.
0:48:02 And that is, in the last 10 years, California has become the fourth largest economy in the world.
0:48:03 It’s past Japan.
0:48:11 If you look at the seminal technology the last, you know, 20 years, it’s probably AI in terms of creating shareholder value.
0:48:17 And I would bet, in terms of market capitalization, 95% of those shareholder gains have happened in California.
0:48:20 California is a net contributor.
0:48:21 They contribute $80 billion.
0:48:25 And all the people bitching about all this, typically, come from states that are net takers.
0:48:29 So, I think he has the seat.
0:48:32 He has the, you know, kind of the cleverness.
0:48:33 He has the courage.
0:48:41 He’s definitely, and I said this six months ago, whenever I would bring up Governor Newsom, I said this on Pierce Morgan as a candidate for 2028.
0:48:43 People would roll their eyes, and the comments would fill up.
0:48:47 He definitely evokes a very strange reaction I’ve never quite understood.
0:48:51 I think a lot of people in California think that the governance there hasn’t been as robust as they’d hoped.
0:48:56 But I think he kind of has all of the makings and the contrast.
0:49:01 And what he’s always been good at, and this is an example of that, he’s not afraid to go behind enemy lines.
0:49:03 He’s not afraid to go on Fox.
0:49:05 He’s not afraid to get back in people’s faces.
0:49:10 But this has been an enormous win for the governor.
0:49:18 This has taken him from probably 8% likelihood as a nominee to 20 to 30, and everyone else is trying to mimic him and follow him on the Democratic side.
0:49:22 I think it needs to be quickly followed up with programs.
0:49:25 As it relates to the budget talks, I’m for shutting the government down.
0:49:29 And I’d even go one step further than that.
0:49:40 I think that what is going on here is so weird, misguided, stupid, and oftentimes depraved at the hands of our dear leader that I’m now thinking that we should think about,
0:49:50 on the consumer side, this is what Democrats can do, but on the consumer side, I wonder if we need a movement around a week or a month of consumer shutdown.
0:50:12 If half the population were to reduce their spending for a month by 5%, you know, cancel or not cancel all the streaming media platforms such that and eat out, you know, once or twice less a week, drive less.
0:50:15 You say, okay, we’re not going to buy the Disney tickets this summer.
0:50:17 We’re going to take one less trip.
0:50:23 We’re going to try and drive less, put less gas in our tank, whatever it is, and say, I’m going to take my consumer spending down.
0:50:33 If half the population could take their consumer spending down 5%, people don’t realize how much a 1% to 2% decline in GDP, how much that would rattle the markets and corporate America.
0:50:34 Now, it would come at an expense.
0:50:36 People would be laid off.
0:50:38 The economy would hurt.
0:50:40 It would hurt the American worker.
0:50:45 But what we have here, America has become a platform for shareholder value.
0:51:06 And if consumers basically stood up and said, you know, we’re just not down with the way the administration is acquitting themselves, and we’re going to stop spending money for 30 days just to show you we’re upset and encourage their representatives to shut down the government, I think it would be the first time that we had what I’ll call more than just all caps funny tweets from the California governor.
0:51:07 Your thoughts?
0:51:08 Well, I’m worried.
0:51:09 I like the idea.
0:51:23 I also like the idea of some sort of unified action because we are so disparate in the way that we live and what we consume, the media we’re taking in, you know, what color we think the sky is, et cetera.
0:51:43 But I wonder how effective that would be with an administration that seems completely impervious to the facts on the ground because you have had data, which I know is not their favorite thing to pay attention to, but you have had data, right, about, you know, consumer sentiment, consumer spending, the early impacts of tariffs.
0:51:53 You’ve had CEOs of major American companies going into the Oval Office and saying our profits are down several billion dollars, right?
0:51:57 Like all of Detroit showed up and said, hey, we’ve got a really big problem here.
0:52:03 You can see, you know, the line in terms of manufacturing employment is going straight down, right?
0:52:07 This is the thing that Donald Trump promised us would be coming back and coming back on day one.
0:52:08 It’s going the opposite direction.
0:52:12 And frankly, the Trump administration just doesn’t give a fuck.
0:52:38 So if we did that for 30 days, do you think that it would actually elicit any sort of policy change or it would just be more of a galvanizing force for American vibes as we head into a new election where hopefully there would be some sort of balance of power change and we could have a formal check on the Trump administration and the Senate, which I imagine is not going to go blue.
0:52:40 I think that’s exactly right.
0:52:52 I mean, if you think about what’s strange about all of this is that if the two sort of seminal moments in terms of dramatic change in policy and the way we approach governments, the first was, you know, the Declaration of Independence.
0:53:02 And then probably the second was the end of slavery and deciding that our economy needed to reconfigure and the people holding all the economic power and the people who were supportive of slavery.
0:53:08 We went to war against each other and changed our governance, our approach to governments and our rights and amendments, et cetera.
0:53:19 But the original gangsters were the founding fathers who said, OK, we’re going to set up a government that, quite frankly, is based on what are considered traditional Republican ideals.
0:53:24 And that is we don’t want a king. We don’t want any one idea, any one person to have too much power.
0:53:32 There needs to be limited government power. We need diversity of opinions, diversity of power that slows things down.
0:53:38 And we’re going to create three co-equal branches of government. And what it looks like now is that we don’t have enough diversification.
0:53:42 And there’s it’s not co-equal. It’s the president and the two dwarves.
0:53:49 It feels like our justice system either lags. He just starts doing shit and sees if he can get away with it.
0:53:55 And if it gets pushed back, fine. No shame. Shameless is not a superpower, but it is his superpower in some ways.
0:54:00 And that Congress feels neutered. They control Congress. Total lack of leadership.
0:54:05 All Republicans are scared to death. It must be amazing to be an elected representative because none of them speak out.
0:54:16 They all line up and the Democrats are seen in American. What surprised everybody is Americans would rather have strong and depraved than somewhat right and weak.
0:54:20 They just don’t want not hot. Yeah, it just doesn’t like in any. It doesn’t work.
0:54:29 It doesn’t work. So I wonder if, OK, how do we develop a another co and co-equal branches to stop this?
0:54:38 And I think the the power that people don’t realize they have as I think about it, I think, OK, if I take to social media, I’m doing a call.
0:54:51 I’m name dropping because I’m desperate for your affirmation, but I’m doing a call with a very senior senator who said I want advice on messaging and I want advice on platforms and new media, which probably just means I want you to send me money and pretend I care what you think.
0:54:54 I hope it also means that we’ll have he or she on our podcast.
0:54:58 Oh, yeah. I really want this guy to run for president, but I think it’s going to.
0:55:03 Anyways, the current vibe among Democrats now is we need to do a better job of meeting voters where they are.
0:55:06 We need to do a better job of social media messaging. I get that.
0:55:20 But I’m now really into this idea of developing a new co and that is if you could figure out a way to rally Americans such that they, in fact, reduce spending and it starts showing up in the numbers.
0:55:24 All of a sudden, I mean, this is what we want. We want Trump and the Republicans.
0:55:34 We want the MAGA movement to have to come to the table to say, OK, we’re not going to create an environment where the best and brightest are all leaving our health infrastructure.
0:55:40 OK, you need to talk to us about your approach to immigration. We’re all for better immigration policy.
0:55:45 And let’s note that during the Biden administration and the Obama administration, they were deporting more people than they are now.
0:55:49 They’re just doing it more performatively in a more desperate, depraved way.
0:55:59 But there’s no one who has been able, there’s no entity, there’s no co, if you will, that has forced the MAGA movement to come to the table and negotiate around what the original founding fathers wanted.
0:56:04 And that is they wanted participation and representation across the plurality.
0:56:06 And that just doesn’t exist right now.
0:56:10 You know, there’s one branch of government right now and he’s orange with big ankles.
0:56:17 The other idea I have is I think that there’s an opportunity right now to mint or mine a resistance coin.
0:56:28 I think a lot of people out there would give five, 10, 20, 100 bucks, buy a coin, send the value way up and potentially use that money to try and get moderate.
0:56:33 Republicans are trying to get moderate issues better funded because they are raising so much money.
0:56:35 Another five billion.
0:56:40 The journal I had this morning, the Trump family has a new coin that made five billion.
0:56:44 And that’s part of Gavin Newsom wants to have a Trump resistance coin as part of this.
0:56:49 But I like that idea because now also people don’t want to give certainly not giving to the DNC.
0:56:50 Yeah, no, it’s irrelevant.
0:56:52 Well, it’s totally irrelevant.
0:56:56 And also people are concerned that their donations are not going where they want them to.
0:56:58 So they still give to individual candidates.
0:57:04 But, yeah, if there was like a Save Democracy fund, everyone that I know would be smashing that button.
0:57:06 Yeah, I’ve been actually looking into this.
0:57:07 I think you’d have to do it.
0:57:15 I think you’d have to host it, if you will, or do the legal framework offshore because I’m worried now that the DOJ would actually be weaponized to come after the IRS.
0:57:19 Like we need more capital and we need a bigger stick.
0:57:24 And I think consumers don’t realize we have a consumer led economy.
0:57:27 Two thirds of our GDP is consumer spending.
0:57:28 And that’s unusual.
0:57:31 Most economies are either business economy or an energy economy.
0:57:32 We’re a consumer economy.
0:57:41 And a 1% or 2% decrease in spending that’s tangible or can be reverse engineered to that creates a massive headache for the administration.
0:57:43 Anyways, let’s take a quick break.
0:57:43 We’re going to have a quick break.
0:57:44 Stay with us.
0:57:49 Support for the show.
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0:58:55 Summer’s here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats.
0:58:56 What do we mean by almost?
0:59:00 Well, you can’t get a well-groomed lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered.
0:59:01 A cabana? That’s a no.
0:59:03 But a banana? That’s a yes.
0:59:05 A nice tan? Sorry. Nope.
0:59:07 But a box fan? Happily, yes.
0:59:08 A day of sunshine? No.
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0:59:26 Welcome back. Before we wrap, you probably noticed we dropped a pilot we’re working on here at Prop G Media.
0:59:29 Little ad, little unpaid ad here, Jess.
0:59:30 It was great.
0:59:33 It’s going good so far, isn’t it? I’m sitting here in my Viore, by the way.
0:59:38 I’m wearing my doctor’s housewife douche wear athleisure today.
0:59:46 So in sum, I want to sell Prop G Media for a ridiculous amount of fucking money so I can go to Nantucket for two months next year.
0:59:49 And the strategy is we want to have more and more voices.
0:59:54 It used to be just yours truly, which means you have a practice, not an enterprise.
0:59:55 And I want to expand it to an enterprise.
1:00:00 We’ve brought in multiple voices, Jess being one of those voices at Elson and Prop G Markets.
1:00:05 And I think we need to get to five or six voices to have a real tangible, what I’ll call enterprise.
1:00:10 And so I’ve spent some of the summer thinking about where the white space was.
1:00:20 And as I think about all of our podcasts, I thought, what is the what is the most important entity topic that gets the least amount of really solid coverage or discussion or discourse?
1:00:31 And I kept coming back up with the topic that is always related to every issue or almost every major issue economically and geopolitically and that has, in my opinion, terrible coverage is China.
1:00:40 And that is one day, based on the TikToks I see, I’ll believe that China’s fucked because of a demographic collapse and over leveraged real estate.
1:00:51 And then the next day, I think they’re unbeatable when I see these TikToks of BYD or of their dark factories or the fact that they’re scooping up all these incredible relationships that the U.S. seems hell-bent on destroying after 80 years.
1:00:54 But I feel as if there’s a lack of good information.
1:01:04 And then I don’t know if you’ve listened to Prop G Markets, Jess, but we have a regular guest named Alice Han, who’s one of our most celebrated guests, who is an analyst at Green Mantle covering China, has lived in China.
1:01:10 And then her co-host is James King, who used to cover China for the Financial Times.
1:01:13 And I’m tooting my own horn here because the pilot’s out.
1:01:14 It’s done really well.
1:01:18 But there’s just some super interesting things.
1:01:20 I want to get your reaction that I hadn’t realized.
1:01:32 The most disturbing photo, I think, as it relates to a diminishing or an erosion in our geopolitical power was that photo that came out from the summit where – so quick trivia question.
1:01:33 I know you’ll get this right.
1:01:38 Who has she met with more than any other geopolitical leader, political leader?
1:01:40 I assume Putin, but –
1:01:41 Ding, ding, ding, ding.
1:01:41 Okay.
1:01:42 Putin.
1:01:43 I win.
1:01:43 You win.
1:01:50 Alice basically said that the biggest winner at the summit between Trump and Putin wasn’t Washington or Moscow.
1:01:52 It was, in fact, Beijing.
1:01:56 That essentially all things are coming up, roses for China.
1:02:01 Trump has managed to thrust India into China’s arms and Russia into China’s arms.
1:02:05 And James had this story that really struck me how much things have changed.
1:02:08 And that is, essentially, there’s this river.
1:02:12 The Chinese border, northern border, the border is Russia, is tense.
1:02:14 And there used to be border skirmishes.
1:02:15 They don’t like each other.
1:02:23 And we take for granted the lack of investment we need to maintain the longest border in the world, longest undefended border, which is the U.S.-Canadian border.
1:02:25 It costs us nothing because we don’t need anything there.
1:02:27 They have to have troops there.
1:02:28 They don’t want to have troops there.
1:02:34 They want to trade there so they can focus on the southern part of their border in case they decide to invade Taiwan.
1:02:40 And the natural geographic barrier is this river called the Amur River.
1:02:43 And in Chinese, the name is means black dragon.
1:02:46 But 10 years ago, there wasn’t a single bridge across it.
1:02:48 And now there are three bridges across it.
1:02:54 And the trade across between China and Russia, just across this river, is a quarter of a trillion dollars.
1:03:00 Exports from Russia to China have increased from 10 percent to 30 percent.
1:03:04 I mean, these guys, we have done exactly what we should not have done.
1:03:10 And that is, we have thrust three entities into each other’s arms, specifically India, China, and Russia.
1:03:23 And in addition to having a GDP that rivals combined, actually, is greater than Europe and is getting close towards the U.S., what they have is technology and capital, energy from Russia, and the largest emerging consumer economy in the world.
1:03:33 And they basically all come together, not because they like each other so much, but because we have been such fucking idiots and have been so heavy handed and have threatened them.
1:03:41 And the most recent example of how stupid our economic and geopolitical strategy is, oh, India, you’re buying oil from Russia.
1:03:42 We don’t like that.
1:03:42 I’m mad.
1:03:44 50 percent tariff.
1:03:46 They don’t even respond.
1:03:48 And we lower it to 15 percent.
1:03:52 And Marco Rubio gets out his knee pads and puts out a tweet saying, oh, you’re a great nation.
1:03:53 Here’s to our friendship.
1:04:02 They’re basically incenting everybody to do fucking nothing when we threaten them because our threats hold absolutely no weight.
1:04:21 And it just struck me how China I’m now after listening to this podcast, I thought people just don’t take seriously how deft and measured Chinese leadership has been in terms of growing new alliances and taking advantage of a fractured, reckless and quite frankly, somewhat sclerotic U.S.
1:04:22 Any thoughts?
1:04:33 Well, my first thought is that I thought the podcast was great and I’ve listened to Alice on Prof G Markets before, but I thought she did a wonderful hosting job.
1:04:45 It felt like a very organized conversation that had interesting insights, but was also done on a level for anyone’s grasp of what’s going on with China.
1:04:49 Like it felt like somewhere that you could go if you didn’t know everything about it.
1:04:53 You know how sometimes you listen to a podcast and it’s like only for people that are steeped in this.
1:04:55 It felt very accessible.
1:04:59 That was the word that I was looking for with two very bright people.
1:05:10 So I think it’s a great thing and I hope that it does super well and becomes part of the Prof G fam in terms of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, which is what’s going on.
1:05:22 And, you know, the timing of this, that essentially the deadline that we gave to Putin, right, that he was supposed to, you know, have new terms and meet with Zelensky, that instead this is what he’s doing, sends the clearest signal, right?
1:05:25 That we are not the world that he wants to function in.
1:05:30 We’re not the world that he is going to function in and that he has found other friends.
1:05:39 And when you look at the pictures, so obviously President Xi, President Putin and Prime Minister Modi are, you know, the central figures of this.
1:05:47 But there were over a dozen other leaders and it’s a who’s who of the absolute scum of the earth, right?
1:05:48 North Korea is hanging out there.
1:05:50 Myanmar is hanging out there.
1:05:52 Iran is hanging out there.
1:06:01 And you just think, how did we mess this up so badly that we have driven—I mean, some of these people are just fundamentally like that.
1:06:16 But someone like Modi in our relationship with India that we have driven him into their arms to the point, and the New York Times mentioned this in their write-up of the summit, and I thought it was really important, that Modi has sprayed pictures of this all over his social media.
1:06:25 Which sends a very clear signal that, like, when you look me up, I want you to see me standing next to China and Russia smiling.
1:06:37 And the underlying principle or the connective tissue of this summit is creating a bulwark against our trade wars that we have created for no apparent reason.
1:06:48 I mean, arguably, we need to continue to push back harder against China, but a lot of these tariffs that we’ve come up with are clearly just, you know, the stuff of nonsense that someone dreams up in the middle of the night.
1:06:53 And then we don’t hold anyone accountable for it, and there are no standards they actually have to meet.
1:06:55 I don’t know if you were following this plot line.
1:06:57 Well, you were off in Nantucket.
1:07:03 But, you know, Trump’s out there bragging, and we’re getting $600 billion from the EU, and we’re getting this from the Japanese.
1:07:08 In none of the actual black-and-white writing on what the deals are, do they owe us anything?
1:07:12 You know, there’s no reason to believe that Tim Cook has to spend $100 billion here either.
1:07:20 Like, it’s all fantasy land stuff, but what’s going on at that summit and what’s going on in that part of the world is very, very real.
1:07:28 And one of the highlights for the summit will be, on Wednesday, this military parade, right?
1:07:37 The President Xi is going to have, going back to, you know, Donald Trump wanted a military parade, and we said, well, that’s the stuff dictators want, and lo and behold, that’s the stuff dictators want.
1:07:44 But he’s going to have Putin with him, and he’s going to have Kim Jong-un with him, and it’s to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
1:07:57 So that’s what’s going to be going on over there while we’re having all caps tweets over here and our press conference about Jeffrey Epstein, which is still important, but what they’re doing is even more important.
1:07:58 Agreed.
1:08:04 It feels like this totally missed plot line, and I’m glad there is a pod that will be focusing on it.
1:08:11 It’s interesting that the other thing that came out in the pod that I hadn’t realized is that one of the biggest beneficiaries of the war that we don’t talk about is North Korea.
1:08:15 That Russia has been paying North Korea $2,000 a month for every soldier they send.
1:08:17 That they send to die.
1:08:18 Yeah, essentially.
1:08:18 Yeah.
1:08:29 And supposedly, or their estimates are, that North Korea has garnered about $20 billion from Russia for troops and supplies.
1:08:35 Keep in mind, the entire GDP of North Korea is $27 billion.
1:08:44 And so if I’m doing my math correct, that would be like somebody buying or Europe buying $20 trillion in goods to funnel through to Ukraine.
1:08:47 I mean, North Korea is a big winner here.
1:08:57 And then to what you were saying about, you want to talk about like a Three Stooges or Groucho Marx level of self-inflicted injuries among a ton of self-inflicted injuries.
1:09:06 The one we’re not talking about and that you brought up that could have just devastating impact on it and with such an own goal is India.
1:09:09 India is a democracy.
1:09:10 India has more PhD students.
1:09:11 India is English speaking.
1:09:26 And the two things we have done, one, these stupid tariffs, these reckless, like thumbing our middle finger at them to an economy that is now the largest, has more consumers, is the most populous country in the world,
1:09:31 is adding more people to the middle class will likely be one of the biggest consumer economies in the world.
1:09:32 It’s the fastest growing.
1:09:35 It’s basically where China was, call it, 10, 15 years ago.
1:09:44 And then the other thing we’ve done that people aren’t talking about is all of this nonsense around persecuting international students and our academic institutions.
1:09:48 That registers and lands really hard, especially on India.
1:09:59 Because as someone who works at what is an elite institution, the pipeline of some of the best and brightest in the world into academia is from India.
1:10:03 And it’s created so much goodwill between the two nations.
1:10:22 If you walk through Stern, probably a third of our kind of best and brightest, the most revered people in peer-reviewed research or in the classroom, whether it’s Aswat Damodaran or my buddy, Vasant Dar, you know, Arun Sundarajan, Ardine, Raghu Sundaram, what do they have in common?
1:10:29 They all came up through this farm league team of a billion people and established themselves as some of the brightest artists working people in the world.
1:10:34 And in exchange for that incredible commitment and intellect, they got the ultimate prize.
1:10:37 They got to come teach at a U.S. university.
1:10:41 And you develop empathy and links and we do trade together.
1:10:46 And, you know, for a long time, I was thinking, I got to go to India because I have so many friends there.
1:10:51 And we are literally like we are absolutely tearing up those bonds.
1:11:06 So the notion that the emerging consumer economy in the next 20 or 30 years, they will have a lot of money to spend on its military, will come up with a ton of interesting technology around AI, chips of their own, is now looking east towards Russia instead of west towards the U.S.
1:11:09 And it didn’t have to be this way.
1:11:14 If they were forced to choose, the logical choice would have been the U.S.
1:11:16 And they shouldn’t have been forced to choose.
1:11:18 We should have gone carrot, not stick here.
1:11:20 But this is something that is going to take us a decade to repair.
1:11:27 And George W. used to talk about the axis of evil being, I think it was North Korea, Iraq and Iran.
1:11:30 The combined GDP of those nations were a trillion dollars.
1:11:42 These nations have combined, you know, that are basically uniting against us, say, we’re sick of the fucking crazy uncle trying to muscle his way around and do these stupid karate moves at a Thanksgiving dinner and trying to intimidate everybody.
1:11:43 They have an enormous economy.
1:11:44 They have an enormous economy.
1:11:54 In addition to enormous economy, consumer demand, technology, capital, energy, what they have that the EU doesn’t have is they have a willingness to sacrifice.
1:11:57 Russia will kill and injure a million of its own people.
1:12:03 China has a history of starving people if they need to, if it consolidates power.
1:12:05 These nations are not afraid to sacrifice.
1:12:11 Meanwhile, the EU, Europe, which is being invaded, has stepped up economically in terms of funding for Ukraine.
1:12:15 But what would it take to get the EU to put boots on the ground?
1:12:23 They’d rather let Europe fall or at least the Ukrainian part of Europe fall than actually put one of their kids on the front lines.
1:12:36 And I’m not saying that’s not the right move, but the bottom line is the guy or gal who’s willing to like, actually, OK, I’ve not only got fists, but I’m willing to throw them, even if it means I break my hand.
1:12:39 You know, we have lost that will.
1:12:43 And what you have with these three nations is that, quite frankly, they kind of have it all.
1:12:47 Technology, capital, energy and a willingness to sacrifice.
1:12:51 And we have thrust them into each other’s arms.
1:12:56 We have essentially created an axis, a very powerful axis, and it didn’t need to be this way.
1:13:04 And I said a year ago that I thought the new swing votes in the world were going to be the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and India because of their economic might.
1:13:06 And the fact that they kind of occupied that middle ground.
1:13:07 And what have we done?
1:13:09 India no longer looks like a swing vote.
1:13:16 It looks like they’ve gone to China and Russia, which makes our relationship with the kingdom even more important.
1:13:24 And what I hate about Democrats in their purity test, about rolling their eyes, about human rights issues in the Gulf, it’s like, well, folks, we can no longer afford to be this purist.
1:13:32 We have to have a really strong relationship with the kingdom because one by one, we are alienating the strongest nations in the world.
1:13:38 And the one thing they will all have in common is they will put their differences aside and come together because we are acting like such assholes.
1:13:40 And to make money.
1:13:41 And to make money.
1:13:51 I just wanted to add quickly, India exempt from this, but it is a lot easier for folks to develop a hundred year plan when your elections are meaningless.
1:14:00 And we are too often trapped, I think, by the bounds of that, thinking the worst thing in the world is if you don’t have your seat any longer.
1:14:06 Well, the worst thing in the world is a lot bigger than whether you are actually sitting in Congress or in the Senate.
1:14:20 And on the point about what’s going on with immigration here and, you know, our elite universities, the Chinese have said to our scholars, to the world scholars who would typically come here to build their labs.
1:14:21 No problem.
1:14:23 How much money do you want?
1:14:26 What university would you like your lab to be headquartered at?
1:14:27 A hundred percent.
1:14:35 And that’s going to have enormous implications, not only on our economy, but just, you know, the future of science and technology and medicine.
1:14:37 It’s very disturbing to watch.
1:14:42 And, you know, this is only two weeks after the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska.
1:14:45 It feels like a complete boomerang.
1:14:48 Also, I wanted to add, and I know we have to go, David’s been popping up.
1:14:58 It was noted as well in one of the write-ups of what’s gone on so far at the summit that Putin called Xi Jinping after he met with Trump to make sure that they debriefed.
1:15:01 So that’s who his daddy is, right?
1:15:09 He comes here and everyone says, or the Americans would have you believe, oh, you know, we showed our might and we flew our B-2 bombers over them.
1:15:11 And, you know, we showed him really who’s boss.
1:15:22 No, we know who’s boss because if you’re running home and you’re tattling to the Chinese president, that’s the relationship that you really care about and that you know you have to keep in good status.
1:15:24 I don’t mind politicians being whores.
1:15:31 It’s when they’re such cheap whores or if they can be manipulated, fine, but when they’re so easily manipulated, it’s really disappointing.
1:15:40 I mean, and with respect to our geopolitical threats and our economic policies, the way I would describe it is so much has been going on that we forget almost nothing has been accomplished.
1:15:42 There really aren’t any trade deals that have been accomplished here.
1:15:44 No war has stopped.
1:15:46 There is no peace force in Gaza.
1:15:52 There is no pressure on Russia to negotiate a ceasefire.
1:15:58 The only thing we have accomplished is driving our enemies into each other’s arms such that they become more formidable enemies.
1:16:00 Any good news?
1:16:01 You doing anything fun this week, Jess?
1:16:03 I’m just working.
1:16:03 You’re just working?
1:16:05 But I’m working with you, which is so fun.
1:16:07 And it’s great to have you back.
1:16:09 No, it’s like really exciting.
1:16:16 It’s weird every week to turn up and try to build chemistry with somebody that you don’t really know, except Hillary, because we were.
1:16:20 Yeah, because you’re you’re too like connected from day one to total gangsters.
1:16:22 Yeah, I’m in New York this week.
1:16:26 I’m going to shame our go tonight so I can stare at hot young people and get fucked up.
1:16:27 A few of my favorite things.
1:16:30 A lot happens here with me not being here.
1:16:32 I can’t tell you the stuff I found in the guest bedroom.
1:16:34 It’s really it’s both compelling and a bit off putting.
1:16:41 I sometimes show up here and every time I come into my place in New York, I have to go hello because I’m not sure if anyone’s going to be here.
1:16:44 But that’s all for this episode.
1:16:45 Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates.
1:16:47 It is great to be back.
1:16:47 It’s great to see you, Jess.
1:16:48 Congrats on everything.
1:16:55 Our producers are David Toledo and Eric Jenicus, although I don’t know how long Eric’s going to be around as he is not laughing at my jokes.
1:16:57 Our technical director is Drew Burrows.
1:17:01 Going forward, you’ll find Raging Moderates every Wednesday and Friday.
1:17:05 Subscribe to Raging Moderates on its own feed to hear exclusive interviews with sharp political minds.
1:17:08 This week, Jess will be talking to Republican Representative Don Bacon.
1:17:10 You won’t want to miss it.
1:17:13 Who the fuck is Representative Bacon?
1:17:13 What does he do?
1:17:14 What are you doing?
1:17:15 What does he do?
1:17:16 He’s the congressman.
1:17:18 Yeah, he’s pushed back against Trump.
1:17:19 He is retiring, though.
1:17:20 Oh, we love him then.
1:17:21 OK.
1:17:23 I mean, he still voted for the reconciliation bill.
1:17:23 Anyway.
1:17:28 Representative Bacon, the last couple of times Jess has had a Republican on the show, it has not gone well.
1:17:29 We need you to bring it.
1:17:30 OK.
1:17:33 We’ve also launched a YouTube channel for the show.
1:17:35 So if you prefer to watch, head over there and hit subscribe.
1:17:37 What district is Representative Bacon?
1:17:38 He’s from Nebraska.
1:17:39 Good for him.
1:17:40 Is he a sane Republican?
1:17:40 Do we like him?
1:17:41 Some of the time.
1:17:44 I mean, he voted for the reconciliation bill, so I’m not cool with that.
1:17:47 But anyway, you listen and then you’ll see what you think.
1:17:48 Listen and learn.
1:17:49 OK.
1:17:51 Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
1:17:52 You don’t miss an episode.
1:17:54 Thank you, everybody.
1:17:55 Thanks for sticking with us.
1:17:57 We’re going to bring it in the fall.
1:17:59 What an interesting time to be an American.
1:18:01 Jess, have a great rest of the week.
1:18:02 You too.
1:18:03 We’ll see you all later in the week.
1:18:03 We’ll see you all later in the week.