Raging Moderates: Newsom's Centrist Approach and Kamala’s Political Future
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Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Darlow. Jess, how are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. I'm in the great state of Texas at South by Southwest. I've been seeing on social. You're all over. Really? Well, your own social. Your team's doing a great job. I'm all over. I just love me. I did a big, when I went on stage yesterday for Pivot, I danced around with my belly hanging out, screaming. That was a big hit. Yeah? That was a big hit. Yeah, no mockery whatsoever.

is always the algorithms love mockery. It's true. The algorithms are pretty mean. And they were mean, actually, even before Elon Musk, but meaner now. And what have you been up to? How was your weekend, I should say? Oh, it was great. It was my birthday yesterday. I was in Jamaica, sans children. So we finally got away and it was fabulous. My husband loves

Jamaica always has. I've never had never been. And he loves Jamaica. He's obsessed with Jamaica, him and his friends. Yeah, it's it's a pretty amazing place. But we went to Goldeneye, Ian Fleming's old house. And now Chris Blackwell, who started Island Records, owns it. It's great. Oh, it's

It's fantastic, and it feels completely empty. Like, we were wondering the whole time if there were other people around, and there was a happy hour, which saw, like, 20 people at, and that was the max the whole time. So it was very cool and secluded. And my best friend has the same birthday as me. We met in preschool, and she came with her husband. They live in Florida now. So it was cool.

And you're 37, 38? No, the big four ones. So seven years until my midlife crisis, according to you, right? Where I started traveling only with my girlfriends. Yeah.

And dancing with my belly out. But the good news is, is that for men, 50 is the new 30. And for women, 40 is the new 80. I hadn't heard that one before. That's good. It's not really. It's upsetting. But thank you. That's good. Yeah. There's a term for that. New York. All right. Enough of that. Let's get into it. President Trump sent financial markets...

into a tailspin last week. Today, we're going to talk about Trump backtracking on tariffs, Representative Al Green getting censored for protesting Trump's trying to dress, what Governor Newsom really thinks about trans rights, and James Carville's surprising advice to Democrats, do nothing.

So markets kind of very volatile this week or last week with this ever-changing trade policy. On Thursday, he delayed tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, giving industries a brief bit of relief. But on Friday...

He was back on offense, threatening new tariffs on Canadian lumber and dairy, claiming Canada has been ripping us off for years. The back and forth has left businesses scrambling and critics warning of economic fallout. Jess, how did these sudden shifts in trade policy impact businesses and global markets? Really badly. And the strangest part to me has been

Yeah.

he went with the like, there could be a little bit of pain or, you know, maybe we'll see a recession and kind of shrugged it off. And Howard Letnick is out there, you know, doing his best dancing around it. Like, we're all going to be fine. And Scott Besson, we're all going to be fine. And Trump seems oddly comfortable to me with whatever the fate of the market or the American economy is going to be as a result of these policies that he hasn't done a

been thinking a lot about the difference between the first Trump term and the second Trump term, and how the chaos of this term is actually what we thought would happen the first time. But it was remarkably calm on a comparative basis, and how central to that calmness Steve Mnuchin actually was. And I thought, like, oh, is this something that people are thinking about? So I started keyword searching for Mnuchin. And I see that there are a lot of people who are talking about what

a good treasury secretary he actually was and that he managed to stay under the frame. And he had a few incredible photo ops and things like that with his wife holding all the money, et cetera, but that he was really an even hand. And there was someone who pointed out how Trump 1.0 put two of the best financial bureaucrats in power, Jerome Powell and Steve Mnuchin, and then Trump 2.0 hired knuckle-dragging cultists.

And I thought that summed it up pretty well. Yeah, it's really, it's almost getting a little bit comical, I think, a key to these negotiations. If

It's really difficult to even understand what he wants. When I think about, he says, okay, Canada's been ripping us off. It's hard to exactly discern what he means. And then he'll go to, well, they need to stop shipping fentanyl across the border. And that might be true of Canada. It's not. It might be true, excuse me, of Mexico and China, or you could at least make a philosophical argument. The amount of fentanyl that's coming across the Canadian border, I think it fit in a backpack. It's less than 1% of the fentanyl that comes into the nation. And in addition, you know,

We're now at a point where I don't even know if the tariffs are on or off based on what hour it is, where people are going to start clearing the shelves or developing alternative supply chains and alternative alliances, regardless of whether he takes the tariffs off again, because we just have no credibility. And the Atlanta Fed tracker, or they basically have a mechanism for protecting GDP growth, has gone from positive 4% to negative 4%.

2.8 consumer sentiment has had its largest fall since COVID. The economy is contracting at its fastest rate since the lockdowns. It's just really difficult to understand

What the endgame here is, if he's putting this out to try and accomplish some big, beautiful deal that he can take credit for. Any thoughts on what's motivating the administration right now? Well, he has always loved tariffs. Like the McKinley obsession is legit. And he can at certain moments wax quasi-lyrical about the beauty of tariffs and McKinley. And, you know, we have Mount McKinley now.

In Alaska as well. So I think there is a fundamental affection that he has. And that's not to say that all tariffs are bad. And I saw actually your markets co-host, Ed, pointed this out. There was an op-ed in The New York Times.

by a Rust Belt Democrat, Chris DiLuzio. He replaced Conor Lamb, who also ran in the Senate primary against John Fetterman. And he wrote a piece defending tariffs and saying that anti-tariff absolutism is not good policy. And there's a very strong argument to make that we need some protectionist tariffs, even when it comes to Canada and Mexico, to make sure that

we are producing things at home that people can earn a good wage, which I know is fundamental to what you're doing with that Project 2028, which I think is so cool. And I was

pretty taken with his argument. And he mentioned how we're all OK with the China tariffs. Right. So they Trump had the 10 percent tariff on China and Biden actually tripled it when it comes to steel and aluminum. And we get basically all of our construction supplies from Canada, including a lot of steel and aluminum, plus a ton of cement and lumber. So

why, I'm not saying a 25% tariff, but using the same logic that we do against China, which is obviously an adversary versus a friend, but there's some good economic policy to it, right? We're not just punishing China because it's run by an authoritarian and they're terrible on human rights. There's a reason we're trying to protect the American worker there. So why wouldn't we think about maybe like a 5%, right? Or a 10%. Yeah, so my understanding of tariffs is that

they do make sense when they're used as a weapon to try and restore asymmetry and imbalance in trade. If the U.S. doesn't have access to the Chinese auto market, then fine, you want to bring your cars over here, we're going to tariff them. You might want to protect certain key strategic industries. The steelmaking industry, you can make an argument for, we need to at least have a few mills kind of always fired up, such that if we need to make tanks or

Our primary source of steel goes dark, like what happened with Putin and oil in Germany. We're not caught sort of flat-footed. But just a sweeping tariff at these levels is nothing but an increase in costs. I read that the average car, should these tariffs hold, is going to go up in price somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000. The way cars are manufactured is you actually have certain parts that leave the

you know, Lansing, Michigan, go to Canada, have worked under them, then go all the way down to Mexico, have more work or assembly, and then come back to Lansing, Michigan for assembly at a Ford plant. Some of these, some of the parts used to assemble a car go back and forth a half a dozen times across borders. So $8,000 to $12,000 increase per car, they're talking about an average increase per household of $1,200. I mean, this is

This is really weird. And even more so than the actual tariffs is the sclerotic reputation we're establishing. Because even if you decide, OK, we're going to do a deal and we're going to come to some sort of accommodation that works for both, you know, who can trust that we're actually going to do what we said we're going to do? We're now talking about supposedly Trump wants Iran to think about another deal. We're shutting off intelligence to

Ukraine, and then they bomb a hotel where Americans are. We talk about putting it back on and putting sanctions back on Russia. I mean, it's just the world economic policy is being run on this guy's blood sugar level at that moment, which means that if you're going to base billions or if you're the EU or trillions of dollars in trade and alliances and supply chain,

on one man's blood sugar, you decide, no, I'm gonna just have workarounds even if they're more expensive. It's just the automobile industry right now, I'm at South by Southwest and a key theme here

when I talk to advertisers is that they're advertising businesses down. I mean, this has so many ripple effects across the economy. They're advertising businesses down because some of the biggest advertisers are automobile companies and they literally are just, we don't know what to do. We've paused all marketing and spending because as far as we know, we're not going to have cars on a lot and we're just not sure what's going to happen.

So they can't even plan. If the tariffs were absolutely going in, they would say, okay, we need to plan our business model. We're going to raise prices, find alternative routes or supply chain. But they would have a business plan. Right now, this is the worst of all worlds. I think that's what Eisenhower said. The wrong decision is bad, but no decision is worse. And there are entire companies who have to make essentially no decision because they don't know what environment they're going to be operating in.

Trump backed off of this round of tariffs because the CEOs of major car companies reached out to him, right, and called and said, you can't do this. I mean, it's eight to twelve thousand dollars extra for a regular car. It's twenty thousand dollars for a truck.

So anyone who's actually using their car for work is facing an extra 20K, which is obviously unaffordable. I agree with what you're saying. I don't think that it means that tariffs aren't going to end up being a tax on the consumer. A majority of Americans know that. I think it could go up to $1,800 actually per annum per family, the cost of these if they're implemented in the way that they're being posed or pitched. But the result that I'm seeing most clearly from...

the wobbly or frenetic nature of this administration is that our allies are getting stronger on their own.

So you look at Claudia Scheinbaum, who I think has been great in handling President Trump. She has an 85 percent approval rating. Do you know of any world leader with an 85 percent approval rating who isn't like Vladimir Putin has fake polling? The queen. I don't know. You're right. That's that's insane. Remarkable. And also for a female head of state right on top of it, which I wouldn't expect Jewish climate. Right. A Jewish climate scientist lady.

has an 85% approval rating in Mexico during a time when dealing with one of the more xenophobic American presidents in history. It is crazy. Or like Mark Carney, who's going to be the new prime minister of Canada, won the race to be the head of the Liberal Party over the weekend, has no technical political experience, but he was a central banker, which

which is why people picked him. And he went after Trudeau consistently about how poorly he had handled the economy. And the major thing that he said was, you need someone who can steer Canada through this war with America.

When would you ever think that that would be a platform that a Canadian premier would have to run on, right? This idea that we are going to be at war with our neighbor, that we are in incredibly friendly terms, or historically speaking, have been on incredibly friendly terms with. So that's happening there. You look at the European countries that are building up their own defense. They're thinking about, you know, what nuclear arsenal can they get to to help with sharing there. We're cutting off the...

intelligence sharing with Ukraine at this moment. They're being embraced by Europe. We're on the wrong side of everything with that vis-a-vis cozying up to Putin. And I see everybody else getting a lot stronger while we're getting weaker at home and abroad. Yeah.

Yeah, it really is. It's very difficult to understand the trade. And the trade right now at a very macro level is the following. We're basically trashing and fraying and making much more brittle and fragile these 80-year alliances with the world's largest economies that through free trade, coordination, general goodwill, cooperation towards each other, lower costs for Americans and increase the sales of our products abroad.

And now these nations are just going to figure out different alliances. And even if we go back and say, hey, just kidding, we didn't mean it. Love you. Come down to Mar-a-Lago. They're going to say, sorry, boss, you're just not a reliable partner. I don't know who I'm waking up next to. And for me, everything comes back to high school. And then as I saw this fantastic study,

that attempted to figure out or get to the bottom of why popular kids were popular. So they looked at the most popular kids in high school. Were they the best looking? No. Were they the best athletes? No. Were they the smartest? Again, no. The thing they had in common was they liked the most other people. They were that kid that would, going down the hallway, would yell, "Hey, Lisa, Jim, good to see you. What'd you do this weekend?" And was confident enough to like other people,

that those were the most popular kids. And I read this data showing that about three quarters of Americans feel pretty good about Canada. They're like, yeah, Canadians go on. But now two thirds of Canadians don't think of us as an ally. They have really been, I don't want to use the word traumatized, but really feel, quite frankly, just devastated.

poorly treated. And it's not like they're going to get over that in six or even 12 months. We are basically saying to the world, we're going to be the least popular kid and as a result have fewer alliances, fewer treaties, less cooperation, because we're acting as if we think you're a fucking idiot. And where we keep yelling expletives or hurling insults.

at the other kid's rolling by us. And the next day, the kid doesn't even know what we're going to say about that kid. We're just so unpredictable and big and flexing our power and flexing our muscles and just being somewhat abusive. This is going to have, unfortunately,

It's really going after what is a key attribute in any brand. And be clear, the brand is incredibly important. It's what precedes you. It's what puts you in the room before you're there in terms of negotiations and expectations. But one of the key things about our brand that people don't appreciate until now is the U.S. is actually fairly, is this fair? I think it is, is fairly consistent. There are certain standards around free trade, rule of law, consistency. Quite frankly, we're slow to change things. We have, you

you know, a checks and balances government that any large treaty you, you could believe that we just weren't overnight going to do away with NAFTA, that there was, you could invest around it. Mexico,

in Canada because it would probably stay in place for a long time. And the only way it would be changed is if all three houses of government agreed on it. Not that someone had given the campaign $285 billion, showed up with just a bunch of kids. By the way, I was at a dinner with one of the Doge kids. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't speak to him. He's, I think, about 19 and

Did you, like, slip him a drink and say, don't worry? I'm not going to tell anyone you're underage and that you're in my Social Security payments? I'm just kidding. You're too young for Social Security. Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be getting mail from the AARP. But yeah, it was sort of interesting. And I was initially going to go over and talk to him. I thought, that's just going to depress me. Anyways, I'm now going to parties with Doge children. But this is, it's hard to see how we don't come out of this pretty structurally well.

It just doesn't make any sense to me. All right, let's take a quick break. Stay with us.

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Welcome back. Last week, Texas Representative Al Green was formally censured after interrupting President Trump's address to Congress, shouting, "'No mandate to cut Medicaid!' as he waved his cane. The moment led to his removal from the chamber and a 224-198 vote to rebuke him, with 10 Democrats joining Republicans in the censure."

This split underscores ongoing divisions within the party over how to push back against Trump. Greene, who has a history of direct action, including being arrested alongside the late Representative John Lewis, seems unbothered by the consequences, saying,

Jess, what do you think this says about the Democratic Party that 10 of their own members voted to censure Greene? Is this about decorum or is it a sign of deeper fractures? Well, I think that there is an unfair expectation that Democrats are supposed to have it perfectly together at this moment. Like after Romney lost in 2012, they spent years trying to figure out what to do. And they had a plan and they ended up with Donald Trump as the nominee in 2016 anyway. And that definitely wasn't their plan.

So I'm trying to take a step back.

And look at this, like, everybody is out to win their race or to at least win their day in terms of coverage, what they're putting out there. And those 10 members who voted to censure Al Green are from swing districts. They're representing Trump voters. It may just be how they feel also personally. But you look at the character of these people. We had Tom Suozzi on the podcast before, like a Chrissy Houlihan, Jared Moskowitz, Ami Berra. Like, these are

These are really great, dependable Democrats that believe strongly in the mission of the party. They're great representatives. And I think they're just running their own races, that it wasn't personal about Al Green. I don't think it was about, you know, taking a stand as a unified Democratic Party. I think that they felt like the way that it looked to have Democrats

Al Green not only doing that and disrupting to that level, and it should be noted that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and Joe Wilson from years ago when Obama was president have been hugely disruptive. And Republicans didn't care and they didn't censure them. And everyone just kind of moved on because that's their character and that's who they are. But Democrats always hold ourselves to higher standards and it can be tough electorally, but I do like that about us, that we have some sort of moral compass. But the big problem with what happened during Trump's

speech is that there were these incredible guests that he brought, including this 13-year-old who had brain cancer. I think he's had 13 operations. And he was essentially like a make-a-wish kid, right, who got to become a Secret Service agent. And a bunch of Democrats didn't even bother to look up from their phones while he was being honored.

And I think that that's really what turned a lot of those Democrats who voted to censure Al Green and even some who didn't vote to do that, like Aurore O'Connor, but spoke out against how awful that looked. That we just didn't seem—

up to the challenge in that particular moment. Like, there is a way to not normalize some of the things that Trump is saying, and there were tons of lies, and his speech was an hour and 44 minutes, so the fact-checkers couldn't even keep up with what was going on. But when you have guests like Lake and Riley's family was there, hostage families, this kid with brain cancer, you gotta stand up and you gotta applaud. And they didn't do that. Yeah, I thought it was really, really telling in the sense that

One, it was just, I think we came out of that, when I say we Democrats, big losers. We looked reckless, overly emotional. I think our behavior just turns off moderates and emboldens Republicans. Because, look, at the joint address or gatherings of Congress, the president wins. It's a bully pulpit. There's a lot of majesty and respect.

What you do in that situation, quite frankly, is you sit quietly, you say nothing. And in instances where they bring in a hero or a kid who's endured a lot of surgery, you stand up and you applaud. You show you're, you know, you show you're still a human, right? Instead, all of the disruption and the woman following her around with the sign saying, this is not normal. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert look like idiots and we didn't like it when they did it. And we shouldn't, we shouldn't copy that kind of behavior.

It really made us look weak. I actually thought, you know, the best moment for the Republicans was when they removed him. I thought Speaker Johnson came across as authoritative. And we're starting to look like, I mean, it kind of made me sad just for America where it feels like we're two steps away from being, whereas in South Korea, where occasionally the Congress just breaks out into fisticuffs.

It's like we're about to become that nation. And the other thing I think it reflects poorly on Democrats is clearly our leadership has no control over these people.

Because this just didn't make sense for the Democratic Party. Your point is an interesting one, and that is I've never understood why the Democratic Party eats on its own. I'm still pissed off at Senator Gillibrand for getting all high and mighty and chasing Senator Franken out of office. And did you see she didn't have the same kind of words for Andrew Cuomo getting back in the mayoral race? She got her seat. She was essentially an unknown. And in my view, she kind of brightens up her room by leaving it.

And the Clintons appointed her, right, to the Senate seat that was vacated, my understanding is, by Secretary Clinton. And the Clintons don't speak to her anymore because they think that she's not a very consistent person. But for her to basically eat one up, for us to allow her to ruin the career of one of our most articulate and, quite frankly, humorous voices counter to Trump so that she could have an 11-second run for presidency, that was the ticket no one was asking for.

Remember that? The former mayor of New York and Kristen Gillibrand were both running for president. And my favorite was she said she wanted to represent other young mothers. I'm like, you're a young mother? Anyway, is that rough? Is that rough? Not cool. I'm a 41-year-old woman. No, but she's much older than you. I know, but just don't do it. You were good before that. I was good? Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I am who I am.

But yeah, I agree with you. I was at first I thought it's good they censored him. And then I thought, why are we always deciding to eat our own and hold our like you said,

We shoot ourselves in the foot, and I'm not sure we should be disarming unilaterally, but I thought it was a terrible look for Democrats. Yeah, I wanted to add to that with the eating your own. Al Green, by the way, is in a Democrat plus 53 seat. He doesn't have to think about what his constituents are going to say, right, if he causes a ruckus. I mean, inevitably, I'm sure they like it. He's been their representative a long time. But what really pissed me off was

was seeing progressives criticizing Elisa Slotkin, who gave the Democratic response. So Bernie did his own thing, as usual, and he did great. He had millions of social media impressions. He is a viral machine in the best possible way. But Elisa Slotkin gave the Democratic response.

She did an amazing job. There were conservatives all over social media saying she did a great job. She talked about being called to service, you know, in New York on 9-11, went and joined the CIA, did three tours. She just won a swing state that Donald Trump won. She managed to pull that off. She talked about growing up in a household with a mom who voted for Democrats, a dad who voted Republican. She talked about how happy she was that we had Reagan during the Cold War and not Trump because...

he would have ceded the world to the USSR. And progressives are dumping on her because she said that George Bush was a patriot and that she said anything nice about Reagan. And I saw a lot of comments like, oh, well, why isn't she talking about FDR? FDR is not a touchpoint for many people who are alive right now. I understand on a historical basis why that makes sense.

But if you think that talking about Reagan and Bush being of good character isn't smart if you are trying to get swing voters, moderate voters, left-leaning independents, even some right-leaning independents to vote for you, or even just that she's telling us how she won her election. I mean, we should just be having tutorials all the time from Democrats that pulled these miracles off in this environment.

And it really upset me. I was like, this is if you think she's too conservative, you don't like that she voted for the Lake and Riley Act. You're concerned about, you know, how she's going to be on trans issues, etc. That's fine. There's a time and place for that. But when you see someone that gets up

After Trump's speech, which had a very high approval rating in terms of the audience, which was skewed Republican, of course, but still like he did well in terms of his delivery. She gets up there. She gives a succinct response to it that talks about what really should matter to the party, like the economy, our national security, making sure that the day to day lives of Americans is improved and better.

And you want to shit on her? Like, I have no time for that at all. Yeah, what the Republicans have that the Democrats lack is a certain level of synchronicity and coordination. And that is if you look at the relationship between these kind of conservative think tanks and

conservative media and Republican talking points and discipline, they're coordinated. And the sum of its parts or the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Whereas the Democrats look sclerotic, like we don't like the person giving the response because they were too moderate. Oh, we're going to have these random interruptions and yell out. We just look all over the place and disorganized. And quite frankly, we just don't have our shit together.

And something that people vote for is they would rather vote for someone who seems resolute and youthful and vigorous and competent than someone who just seems to be kind of like flailing and don't know, you know, you don't get a sense for where they stand. And the same reason why I think our, you know, our trading partners are

are going to not trust the U.S. around different alliances. I think that the American public right now looks at the Democratic Party and it's like, Jesus Christ, pick a theme. Like what, who are you guys? What are you? And the response to this has been ranging, you know, ranges from ineffective to kind of overly, overly emotional. It's just a, it's just not a good look for us. All right. Let's take one more quick break. Stay with us.

When we're up out of here...

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Welcome back. Before we go, California Governor Gavin Newsom is under fire from LGBTQ+ activists after saying it's "deeply unfair" for transgender girls to compete in high school girls sports. He made the comments on the debut episode of his new podcast while chatting with right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk. Newsom, once a trailblazer for LGBTQ rights, also agreed that a Trump campaign ad attacking Kamala Harris over gender-affirming care was politically devastating.

Speaking of Harris, she's reportedly considering a run for California governor in 2026, and she's told allies she'll decide by the end of the summer. One could cement her leadership in the Democratic Party, but take her out of the running for president in 2028. Meanwhile, Democratic strategist James Carville has a message for the party. Do nothing. He argues that Republicans are so bad at governing, their own chaos will sink them. Jess,

Does Newsom's stance on trans athletes hurt his 2028 chances, especially with progressives? I mean, they're not going to like it. It's...

part of him tacking to the center and I think a little bit of a fulfillment of him coming out and probably what he naturally thinks versus how he's been campaigning or governing over the course of his career. But I saw there was a New York Times Ipsos poll out on the issue of transgender women in women's sports. So it's an 80-20 issue, like across the general public. And

against it. But it's also 67 to 31 percent of self-identified Democrats do not think that transgender women should be playing in women's sports. So this is the common sense position, right? This is the stuff that we've been talking about since the Charlemagne the God ad came out, but really for several years, right? Like what Bill Maher has been going on and on and on about. Just say the normal thing, which this is biologically unfair. We are not trying to

tamp down on someone's civil rights. It's hard to make an argument that it is the civil rights issue of our time that transgender women get to compete on a collegiate level against women. We're not talking about having equal access to all the amenities of society being treated equally under the law. We're talking about a very specific test case of this. And Tim Ryan was talking about it a few weeks ago, actually, when he was on Marr, and Marr was quickfire asking him, you know,

Is this the hill to die on about several issues and brought up this issue? And Tim Ryan said, no, it's not the hill to die on. There's a way to say that you want to make sure that rights are protected without saying that Leah Thomas should be swimming against biological women. And I get it. Gavin Newsom wants to run. He's doing what he can to make sure that he is more palatable to a larger, more moderate population.

But I do think that there's going to be a lot of mea culpa over the course of the next few years. People are going to have to talk about why they said that Biden was completely fine and that they didn't think that there were any legitimate concerns about him serving for the next four years. And I think that's going to be a lot of mea culpa.

And certainly a policy like this is going to be one of them. They're going to have to talk about the border as well. Why did you not say anything for a lot of them for the first three years of the Biden administration when there were hundreds of thousands of people crossing the border on a monthly basis? Did you see the new CBP numbers? It's down to, I think, 8,100 crossings in February.

It was 250,000 peak on a monthly basis under Biden. And this started under Biden for sure coming down. But it's quite clear there have been no new laws passed. The rules on the books, if they are enforced, can do a lot in stemming illegal immigration. Yeah, it's I think in general, people look at the Democratic Party and are drawn to some of the ideals and some of the people and then go, oh, wait, but they're fucking insane.

And this is one of those issues. I said this two, two and a half years ago on Pivot and got a lot of pushback. But when there was a bicycle race or a bike race in North Carolina, not a big race, but a race that was big enough that it had cash prizes. And a transgender woman came across the finish line five minutes before the rest of the crowd.

And then you saw the footage of basically a six foot four swimmer with just enormous wingspan shows up and takes the NCAA finals and like shatters every record. And I think America looks at that and goes, they've gone fucking insane. And they're defending this because they decided this was some sort of woke to establish a woke bona fides who immediately had to go, okay, I'm going to ignore all common sense and

And it was just, it's done enormous damage that we don't have basic common sense. And I think, I believe our view on this should be, look, if a local school board, we believe, let's embrace the Republican ideology that on decisions around nuance, individual schools and parents should make up their own mind. If there's a school where they say, look, a 14-year-old transgender woman would really benefit from participating in junior high school or high school sports, where quite frankly, the stakes aren't that high.

then fine, they can decide to let her participate. But anything involving scholarships, money, accolades, admissions to colleges, whatever it might be, or contact sports, quite frankly, no. And I don't see the crime against humanity here. I will never play basketball. I don't have those skills. I wasn't born with those skills. And I believe if you're born with testicles and a penis and the advantage of testosterone and that bone structure,

unfortunately, you don't get to play women's sports. Because to me, the math was just so simple. And that is, if we're going to permit this and have no regulation around it, then essentially what you're saying is all the accoutrements of athletics, all the money, the fame, the prestige, the relevance, the self-esteem is going to slowly but surely be sequestered to people born with a penis. I was just shocked feminists didn't say, no, we can't

We can't have this. And we just allowed this just strategically

on an issue that really doesn't impact that many people, and I'm sure we'll get emails on that, to that was where we were going to say, okay, this is a big issue for us. And we just come across as just insane. And the one commercial that moved the needle more than anything during the presidential campaign was that commercial basically saying, you know, I think it was accusing the Democrats. And of course, I believe it was somewhat of an exaggeration or taken out of context that we were paying for the transgender surgery of inmates. Yeah.

undocumented inmates. This to me, I think this is Governor Newsom, who we know is running, you know, triangulating to the middle. And quite frankly, pissing off the left is a feature, not a bug in terms of your electability. Somebody is going to have to, you know, someone was saying, who's the leading candidate for Democratic nomination in 2028? And I said, it's probably governor you really haven't heard of right now. Someone will rise to the moment.

and I'm not even sure we know this person right now. I've always thought Governor Newsom would make a really strong candidate because I'm convinced we're a very luxus nation, and he just looks presidential. Also, I think it's a fantastic debater. I think he's one of maybe a handful of Democrats that goes behind enemy lines, as evidenced by the fact he went on with very conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. But this needs to be an issue that the Democrats need to pivot very aggressively. People should have rights if a local school wants to

Let a transgender girl play sports, more power to you. But with respect to anything regarding, you know, advantage, no, this just doesn't make any sense. They need to pivot hard on this because otherwise they are just handing a gift, the gift that keeps on giving to Republicans. Yeah, they also need to talk about it in the framework of fairness, because that has been where Bernie Sanders has been so successful, right, in talking about the oligarchy issue.

that's out there and how unfair things are for the average American, the American worker, et cetera. And so that's how Governor Newsom and Charlie Kirk were talking about the issue on his podcast, where he said, you know, I was a college athlete, so was my wife. I have two daughters. I know that it is not fair. And my conservative co-hosts

On the five, I've obviously been relentlessly talking about this, but they picked up on exactly what you said, which is where are the feminists in all of this? And you've seen very few, you know, champion female athletes,

It's saluting for Martina Navratilova, who is incredible on this issue, speaking out about it. You can't get an answer from like a Billie Jean King, for instance, on this issue. You have a Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird, et cetera, defending trans women's rights to be in seriously competitive women's sports. And...

I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that people are just denying what biological advantages are afforded to men. And that has been something that we just haven't been able to have

you know, serious clear-headed conversations about. And some of that gets into the language police stuff that we have, you know, weird terms for things and we're talking about inseminated people and struggling to find men and women. Not that we don't know that there are, you know, 30 intersex combinations that can happen and that the law needs to make sure that it protects as many people as possible.

But when you can't have a straight, normal, common sense conversation with someone where you can talk about men and women and talk about where it is appropriate to have transgender athletes competing and where it is inappropriate to do so, we become...

like aliens to regular people, even seeing that 30% of Democrats versus 18% of the general electorate are in favor of transgender women in women's sports. That's a pretty big difference. Obviously, you have a bunch of Republicans in the general sample. They're going to be pulling it to the other side. But when you have a conversation with somebody, if you just went out to lunch with them and said, what do you think about this? I think odds are that they would think the same way that we do about it.

I felt it a couple of years ago when we were speaking about this issue. There's definitely a narrative you're supposed to sign up to. It's almost like the narrative around being a MAGA. You have to be MAGA or you could be alienated or voted off the island or Trump will go after you in primary. On the left, it's more nuanced in the sense that if you don't sign up to the narrative and this certain ideology, you're treated like an apostate. The blowback on this, if you didn't sign up for the narrative, and there was just no critical thinking. This seemed like an easy one.

But I think we lost a lot of credibility. Anyways, what do you think of the idea of a Governor Harris? I don't think we're going to have a President Harris. So I think that it is a much more reasonable idea for her to run for governor if she wants to continue to serve the country. I know that she's technically the frontrunner in the early polls for 2028, which is what happens. The last nominee is always the person that's furthest ahead. And she did save us from failure.

certain electoral disaster, because I think if Biden had stayed on top of the ticket, Trump would have won over 400 electoral votes and those swing state senators like the Alyssa Slotkins of the world would not have been able to win their competitive races. But,

you know, I assume that people would line up for her in California and that there are a lot of people who are considering running who would kind of bow down to the idea of Kamala getting in. And perhaps that's the right route for her. But I just, I feel strongly that the national stage is not going to be where she ends up again. I'm really split on this because she's a confident person, right? And I,

And I think she was a good attorney general, good senator. And she'd probably be, I'd like to think, a competent governor. The problem is, I think when you run for president and you lose against Donald Trump, quite frankly, just I think you go away for a while. I don't think I think she'll be a talking point for for Republicans and their races if she maintains her national profile.

I think when you lose your president, quite frankly, I think the best thing for the party would be if she just went dark until we have a Democratic president and she's appointed to the Supreme Court. I think she'd be an outstanding justice. Yeah, I think she'd be an outstanding justice. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that, actually. I mean, I know people say things like Obama, but I hadn't thought about it for Kamala. Anyways, but my sense is she's going to be a continued talking point. I don't think

I think she'll continue to be a flashpoint for Republicans. And I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I'll be curious. But given... I think she's setting herself up for real challenge and embarrassment here because...

About every couple of decades, a quote unquote lifestyle mayor or governor wins in California cities and in the state because the quality of life in some of our bigger cities in California, I'm from California, is eroded so much that I think the moons are lining up for what I call like a no-nonsense kind of Pete Wilson-ish kind of governor. Yeah.

And I would hate to see her run and lose. I think it would basically send a signal that,

to the entire nation that democratic ideals are kind of just totally done and gone. So torn on this, because I think she's a competent person and would probably be a decent governor, but I think her brand and the possibility of a loss and her as a constant talking point for Republicans, reminding them of why Americans didn't vote for her in the first place, will be another cudgel or a weapon that will benefit

Well, she has a lot of those loony positions that we're talking about with Newsom that she's taken. We only ended up with the Charlemagne the God ad because Kamala signed yes on like an ACLU questionnaire when she was running for president in 2020, saying that she would be supportive of transgender operations for people who are currently incarcerated. And the New York Times has an analysis, by the way, there are plenty of transgender people who got

their gender-affirming care while Trump was president. So he was lying about that and saying that this was just something that happened under the Biden administration. But this comes, that whole conversation was rooted in the fact that Kamala had taken a far-left position. One of the most important propositions or ballot, proposition ballot measures was Prop 36 for California this year, which was undoing a 2014 bill

what was it, Prop 47 from 2014, which allowed people to shoplift up to $950 without being arrested. Yeah, that's right. Right, and it passed with 70% of the vote, 68, 70% of the vote, and Newsom opposed it, and Kamala wavered on it. She was asked the weekend before the election, on like Saturday or Sunday before we all went to vote on Tuesday, and she was like,

And she demurred. She didn't say where she would stand on it. You can't be like that anymore. You certainly can't run for governor of a state where you have 70% approval rating for something and not take a stance at all, let alone pick the thing that's

Yeah. So speaking specifically

Speaking of being on the or kind of political strategy, what do you think of Carville's notion that Democrats should step back and let Republicans implode? Do you think this is a dangerous gamble, this notion of just do nothing? I think it's a little more nuanced than do nothing because it's important that you continue to amplify what is going on. So the best message tested message.

line of argumentation right now is around the cuts to Medicaid and that Trump isn't focusing on the economy. So over 80% want him to focus on the economy. Only 36% think that he actually is. Nobody, Republican, Democrat, Independent, wants these Medicaid cuts. And I'm sure you've seen the coverage of the town halls that are occurring all over the country. And the Republicans are saying that they're astroturf. It's all Democratic plans. And George Soros is setting everyone up for it. But the Republicans now don't want

swing district congresspeople to have these town halls because it's gotten so brutal. And they have veterans showing up who are saying, like, you're slashing our benefits, you're firing me. You know, we don't like what Doge is doing, hands off our Medicaid, et cetera. And so I think, quote unquote, do nothing, if that means

amplifying what their spending bill is actually going to do, amplifying what Elon Musk is doing, which he's the weakest link in the administration. People like the idea of getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse. They don't like the approach that he's taking to it and don't really see that as what's being executed. Then I say Carville's right. But he's also taken a lot of big swings and missed. Like he said Kamala was definitely winning. You know, he's, it's part of his charm.

for sure. Right. Yeah. He's well, whenever he speaks, you listen, because he's just so compelling. And so matter of fact, but he's a winner and we like winners. That's right. But you're, I think your instincts are right on. And that is, it's not doing nothing as much as it is demonstrate more discipline instead of running over here and going, Oh my God, Gulf of Gulf of America or male versus female. No, no, no, no. Be more disciplined. Talk about

surrender in Ukraine and that they're coming after your Medicare and have experts and data and look like an adult and just hammer them. The difficult thing about Democrats is not what to talk about. It's what not to talk about. And specifically, they need to stop taking the debate around these ridiculous, stupid issues that don't affect anybody that are clearly being thrown out there as weapons of mass distraction.

Even Doge, I believe, is a weapon of mass distraction. And instead of getting all angry about 19-year-olds, whether they should be in there, I get it. But the majority or a lot of moderates, quite frankly, see some of these firings and under the breath are like, well, welcome to the work week. This has happened to me and other people. What they should, in my opinion, be focused on is a much more

boring but impactful piece of data. And that is, this is all a distraction to the notion that one, they're going to increase the deficits by $800 billion a year, which is nothing but a tax increase. We're about to experience the greatest tax increase in history on young people in the form of unprecedented deficits. And two, they're coming for your Medicaid. There's no way, look at what they're planning here. They've tasked the Energy and Commerce Department with cutting $800 billion. That means they're coming

They're coming from Medicaid. And just – and anything else, again, it goes back to the same notion. The Democratic leadership doesn't have the discipline that McConnell imposed or that – it appears that Speaker Johnson and Trump are imposing on the Republican Party. We just lack –

They just lack sort of that. And instead, they just they take the bait and they start saying, can you believe he said this? And it's like, well, OK, that that. Yeah. All right. We all know he's reckless and he's weird, but focus on the things that are indefensible on Republicans part that are popular among Americans and hammer away on those one or two issues. So it's again, it's not do nothing. It's more discipline. Just just before we wrap up here, what do you think of

What happened recently that supposedly Trump has directed has basically said, all right, Doge is now an advisory or almost like a service to different cabinet members. But they ultimately get to make the decision around layoffs. Any thoughts? Seems like Elon Musk is ruffling some feathers. There was some reporting of what went on in that cabinet meeting and that Secretary Duffy said,

who oversees transportation and Secretary Rubio, our Secretary of State, were both forthcoming in their criticisms of Musk and basically said, like, what the fuck do you want us to do? Like, Sean Duffy said, we're having plane crashes, right, at an unprecedented level, and you're cutting air traffic controllers. And that apparently Trump sided with them over Musk. So I don't know, you know, I'm not a Musk whisperer. I have not

deeply studied him as much as you or certainly as Kara has. But it feels like he is on more tenuous ground than he certainly was at the beginning of this and that Trump at least has some level of realization that the fate of the administration's success actually depends on these individual bureaucracies working well and not necessarily whatever Elon Musk.

is doing. So he's continually demoted. You know, they say Amy Gleeson is actually the administrator. Now he is an advisory person, et cetera. And you look at Tesla basically cratering, right? The international sales are some of the most astounding. What is it down in Germany? Like 75 percent. So he, you know, might want to tend

to his home. That could be his children or his companies that he had before he did this and pay attention to that versus the day-to-day grind where it seems like

these folks who got confirmation for these jobs have a different kind of plan on how to execute. Yeah, if this in fact is true, that he's now got to defer and the ultimate decision is made or not made by the cabinet heads, it's effectively, I think, the end operationally of Doge. And the notion that we decided that an individual, the world's wealthiest man,

who is severely addicted to ketamine, reported by the Wall Street Journal, is concurrently being sued by two women for sole custody of their children because he's not involved in their lives. Maybe that's not the individual who gets to bypass any sort of congressional vetting or approval to decide if veterans or children get their medical care and food. And in addition, if you look at what so far has happened from Doge, the audit

The only thing it has demonstrated, in my view, is that the U.S. government has a lot less fraud and waste than initially feared. If this were a physical, I would argue that the U.S. government has gotten a clean bill of health, that this wall of receipts meant to just highlight all the outrageous waste and fraud.

There's no there there. The first thing they reported on the wall of receipts was an $8 billion savings. It ended up it was $8 million and it was money that had already been spent. And then items two, three, and four, it ended up weren't even true. They're having trouble finding all of this waste and fraud that was supposedly out there. And this isn't an operation. This isn't about operational efficiency. It's about political ideology.

I got an email from a fraternity brother I hadn't talked to in 30 years, a kid named Greg Townsend Kidd. He's now, you know, 57. And after graduating, you have trouble. All you see when you hear from these kids is a guy you used to do beer bongs with. And that's you assume they're still doing beer bongs and listening to Led Zeppelin.

And this guy, this man, Greg, had gone on to law school and has been working for a division of the UN pursuing war criminals around the world out of Switzerland. I mean, I was just so blown away by his work. And he said that their funding had just been shut down, but they're continuing to work because they all are so committed to creating an incentive system globally where people think twice before committing war crimes. And

Essentially, the funding was cut off. So if you look at where they quote unquote have what Doge has really done, it's not an operational or an efficiency mechanism. It's a political ideology because they just decided, I know, let's just shut down all US foreign aid. That's a political decision that has nothing to do with efficiency or fraud.

And what Trump has been really good at is using people as human shields and kind of soaking them up, having them do his dirty work and then firing them. 92% of his advisors were fired in the first administration, which was more than the previous three administrations combined. And I think he's essentially –

I mean, the thing about Trump that's just so obvious that people don't want to talk about, nobody, he is literally Chernobyl after the meltdown. You get near him, you're going to die a hideous death, at least your reputation. And it's happening to Musk. I see it here at South by Southwest. People are throwing shit at Teslas. You know, when I talked about Tesla, I'm like, you know, zero to 1939 in three seconds. It's really hard to understand the political calculus behind

or the political calculus here, the economic calculus, he really fucked up. And that is the opportunity to remove inspectors from the 32 different investigations across 11 agencies against his companies. Okay, that's an economic incentive to get involved and be cozy up to the president.

But the cost that's being levied on him and his brands right now is enormous. People are canceling Starlink contracts. Entire countries are saying, Poland's saying, we can't count on you or your technology. Provinces of Canada are canceling Starlink. And I thought that's the one that is really going to scare the shit out of them. What's unusual about this, and I use Nike as a counterexample,

Nike took a political stand, and sometimes it works. When they decided to embrace Colin Kaepernick when he bent a knee, that was a real political risk, but they did the math. And that is two-thirds of Nike sales are outside of the U.S. No international individual is that concerned or thinks the U.S. has race relations correct. And about two-thirds of their revenue came from people under the age of 30 or non-whites.

Meaning the people that were outraged and did videos of burning their Nikes, that was probably their first pair of Nikes. They did the math and said, this is going to cement and tickle the sensors of the majority of our profits and revenue base.

And Musk has done the exact opposite. 75% of Republicans who he's sort of lighting up or illuminating or activating say they would never buy an EV. So he's done the exact wrong math here. And that is the group that he is most going to piss off and alienate is sort of his core customer base. And all this bullshit in Europe, it does seem like there's a very healthy gag reflex in Europe today.

around him trying to meddle in their election. But I have never, it feels to me, and I've said this before and I've been wrong, this feels like a tipping point. It feels like the worm has turned and I was thinking the Bill Burr rant against him was sort of evidence of that. But Tesla has shed a third of its value in February. And I mean, the polling on this guy is absolutely, it's just brutal. Anyways, I don't, I think, and I'm calling it and I've been wrong before, but I think the Musk brand

has absolutely peaked and is crashing in the fall right now feels unsustainable. I mean, you would know better than me. I feel like it is very early in the Trump administration to be writing the obituaries for anyone, let alone the person who got Trump elected. And we also need to keep in mind that

The normal things that should, quote unquote, take a person down do not apply, certainly to Trump, right? And a lot of people in his orbit. And I get this criticism all the time from lefty friends, you know, don't normalize him. You know, this is normalizing, etc. There is nothing more normalized than the fact that Donald Trump got reelected.

and that everyone knew exactly who he was, and that they knew as well that Elon Musk was coming in for the ride and all of this. He was by his side, almost glued to him for the last two months of campaigning. So I'm not sure that I agree completely with you in terms of this being the end of it, but it certainly feels like a trouble in paradise moment, and that, again, the American people

are smarter than Trump and co think that they are. And they're trying to convince all of us that public servants are just leeches instead of people who dedicate their lives to helping other people. And does that mean there aren't some bad public servants? Of course there are. But by and large, a workforce that's 30% veterans, people that we all agree with, should have the most opportunities when they come home from serving this country, possibly, you know,

risking their lives for us and they should have these possibilities to go and work for us and continue to make America better, that Musk is really off-key in terms of how he's talking about those folks. Yeah. To your point, Cara was saying that Trump is scared of Musk, that he's the world's wealthiest man, which is his

his metric for credibility and that the last thing he wants to do is piss him off. I think he's just going to fade away. I think it's going to be, if in fact... He's going to disappear him? Well, no, I think Musk will decide to fade away. I think Musk at some point is going to do the math and go, this is just not worth it for me. And also, if in fact, it's now the cabinet members who get to decide or either do this or not do this,

Secretary Rubio is not going to lay off some people in the State Department to save some money at this point. He doesn't give a shit about a small increase in the deficit. He's got a difficult job. He's not going to start laying off what he thinks might be bureaucratic. He wants all the firepower he's

he can get. The notion that these guys are going to say, okay, I'm really going to take a chainsaw to my, the incentives are, I need to get shit done. I need to reflect confidence. I need to have decent morale. I need resources to get things done. I'm getting, you know, shoved back and forth by these decisions. They need people. The notion that they are going to decide to start cutting costs, I think effectively or operationally,

It might be, if in fact he's now there on top, so to speak, might be, if you will, the end of Doge. It's got to be the Pentagon anyway. Got to be the Pentagon? I mean, that's where all the money is. So they have to go after the Pentagon if they're going to be actually making any savings. And we've got to go. But I'm just saying it's all smoke and mirrors saying we're going to go, we're going to cut here or there. We know where the money is. It's in the entitlement programs and in the Pentagon. And so far they're not doing that.

It's interesting. That was one, I think, strategic error on the part of the Republicans. I think they would have had a lot more credibility. They would have obviated or kind of defenestrated any criticism if they had gone after the Pentagon first.

And that is, I would think it would have been much harder for Democrats to be critical of the process. I thought that was a strategic error on their part. I would have started with the Pentagon. Any thoughts? Yeah. I mean, you go where the money is, right? And that was something that Secretary Hegseth said that he was open to. He said, you know, we've never passed a clean audit.

And we absolutely should. So, yeah, start with the audit of the Pentagon. All right, Jess, that's it for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. Our producers are David Toledo and Chenanye Oneke. Our technical director is Drew Burrows. You can now find Raging Moderates on its very own feed every Tuesday. That's right. You can now find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday. 40% tariffs are against all of you. That's right. Its own feed. That's right.

That means exclusive interviews with sharp political minds. You won't hear anywhere else. It ends up that Jess is very, not only talented, but very well connected. This week, we're talking with Democratic attorney Mark Elias about why the courts could be the biggest line of defense against Trump in a second term. Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Jess, have a great rest of the week. You too. Enjoy the rest of South by. Thank you.

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