Raging Moderates: Trump Ditches Ukraine and Cozies Up to Putin
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Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarlow. How much did you miss me? How much did you miss me? Is it tough? It was rough. Yeah, I was walking around like a lost puppy all week. Like, who do I talk to? Yeah. What do I do? How was your trip? My trip was great. I was in Zermatt. I'm basically now, if someone told me I could never ski again, I would say, well, how much will that cost me? All I can think about is the ACL I'm going to tear.

And it's cold and I don't know, skiing's not my thing anymore, but it's a good way to trap my kids on a mountain and

And it's European skiing. It's all about the lunch. And you go and you drink lunch. And yeah, it's great. And I enjoy that. And time with my boys. So it was wonderful. What did you do last week? I did my regular life. I had this crazy moment walking. I had the double stroller. I had both my girls with me. I was walking into the village to get some cookies because all you're looking for with young kids is an activity, right? To get them out of the house. I'm like, let's go get cookies.

And this young man I saw, he was kind of checking me out. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. You know, I still got it. And then he goes, hi, mom. And I was like, oh, my God, what is happening now? Has my sexual identity become mom? And then he looks me dead in the eye and he goes, burp me.

What? Yeah. Burp me because I have kids, right? Like burp me. Like you burp kids. Oh, like that was, that feels a little creepy. It's so creepy. And then now I'm thinking, am I just a mom? Have I become only a vessel in life and no one would want to catcall me about something distinct from my children? But I did have them with me. And also he seems like a total pervert. Anyway, that was the highlight of my weekend. Yeah, I definitely, there's something about, I've noticed that

When women, after they have kids, like seven, eight years later, especially women who I think got a lot of confidence from their looks, when their kids get a little bit older and they realize they've spent 10 years doing nothing but raising kids. Everyone talks about dudes' midlife crises. I have never seen midlife explosions across America.

some of my partners and their friends. Oh, my God, they go crazy. So you got that to look forward to. I love how you brought that up and you kind of like that, that you didn't mind the pervy as long as it was a little bit. It sounds like you kind of didn't like it, kind of did. Well, it's more interesting than watching Moana, which I also did a number of times this weekend. So you live for very little. You remember the baby face?

I traveled a lot. I made a lot of excuses and left town. I can't. I'm the mom. Yeah. No, I was out. So along those lines of children, today we're going to be talking about Trump turning on Ukraine.

Trump's honeymoon coming to an end, and Mitch McConnell's retirement announcement and legacy. Let's bust right into it, Jess. One month into his presidency, Trump is making a dramatic pivot toward Russia, upending decades of U.S. foreign policy while previous Republican leaders championed a tough stance on Moscow. That was kind of their go-to. Today's GOP is largely silent as Trump moves to cut support for Ukraine and cozy up to Putin.

His administration has even floated excluding Ukraine from NATO, and he's blaming Zelensky for a war Putin started. Meanwhile, a Quinnipiac poll shows that 81% of Americans, including 73% of Republicans, don't trust Putin. So why is Trump ignoring them? Jess, Trump's team is pushing for a peace deal on Putin's terms, which European leaders say would weaken Ukraine. If this strategy backfires, what are the long-term consequences for U.S. influence and alliances? Well, I feel like first we should

talk about what's going on. And you were away last week, so I'm sure you have a lot of pent-up thoughts about what seems like... Oh, no, I'm calm. I'm fine. I'm just fine. As usual, super mellow about it. But, you know, the capitulation, the complete betrayal of Ukraine, it makes me feel as though every...

negative thing that we have thought over the last several years about Trump vis-a-vis Russia, you know, from anything. And I'm not going to say he is a Russian asset, but obviously we started in that place from 2016. Then you have Helsinki in 2018, where he stood up there and sided with Putin over the intelligence agencies who had all told us that Putin meddled in the election. And it

had wanted Trump to win, that it's all kind of coming to fruition. And Boris Johnson, the former prime minister of the UK, who's a staunch ally of Ukraine, a friend of Zelensky, has been a number of times. He tried to

soften this a bit, I guess, on X. And he posted, you know, obviously Zelensky is not a dictator. Obviously, they didn't provoke this. This is all Russia's fault, etc. But he said that he thought that Trump was trying to shock Europe into unfreezing the 300 billion that they have in Russian assets and to use that to support Ukraine. Now, that feels like

Like, he's just grasping at straws at this point, that Trump isn't playing 3-D chess while we're stuck playing checkers. But it is one of the more depressing moves, I guess, of the first five weeks of the Trump term. I feel very sad. What about you? I think that we take for granted that the number of—

people who have not died or the number of people who've died at the hands of another human being declined dramatically post the World War II order, that the number of children who died because of hunger or infectious disease has absolutely plummeted, that the number of people who get to

be with their dying partner because we embrace civil rights, that the opportunity for a Black girl to become a lawyer or a doctor based on her merit without being held back based on her ethnicity, the color of her skin, her gender, her sexual orientation, that the post-World War II operating system in the West has been the most prosperous system

decent, righteous era in history. And central to all of that was this post-World War II order where Western democracies would have each other's back, that we had disagreements. But at the end of the day, we recognize that elections, rights, rule of law,

a certain level of decency, not demonizing special interest groups, that we had been, we brought a group of people out of the darkness, Germany, and allied, turned our enemies into our allies by, in this extraordinary move of vision, the Marshall Plan invested in our former enemies, and we had this new world order of the most prosperous nations in the world who had each other's back.

And we took this operating system for granted. It was so incredible. It yielded such incredible fruit for so many people that we kind of took for granted that, well, of course, that's a default operating system. Why would we do anything else?

So when Trump decides to ignore history and give in to a murderous autocrat that is invading Europe and lie to say things like Zelensky is a dictator or that Ukraine started this war, I think even the Russians are shocked at this shit. I think they're like, what? Yeah, how did this happen? And

You just can't help but think, OK, so is this essentially Trump saying to Putin, let's carve up the world, let's have spheres of influence. You have these rights to Antarctica or to the, you know, to the North Pole. Like how could we get this lucky?

and you get yours, I get mine, and we're dictators and we're autocrats, and we're both going to make a shit ton of money. Other than that, I can't find reasoning for it. Is there a silver lining here? I think Europe is saying, okay, we can no longer depend on the U.S., and we can no longer depend on their umbrella of military support. That might be a healthy thing. Europe is substantially increasing their own military budget. But this is an upending situation.

of the world order since World War II that has been the most prosperous. The North Atlantic Treaty has been the most prosperous operating system in the history of our species. So this is, in my view, while everyone's focused on all this bullshit and this misdirects of DEI or Andrew Tate or even Doge, I think, is a misdirect, this really is the story. This is the thing we should be focused on, and that is

Do you really want to break up what has been the most successful alliance in history? Do we really want to have a reputation for abandoning our allies and saying, OK, history, history is wrong. When a murder side of crowd invades Europe, we shouldn't be worried. I think the answer is yes. And it's been interesting to watch.

The number of folks that have gone to work for Trump, especially in the foreign policy world, like the Marco Rubios of the world, Mike Waltz, the folks that we initially were saying, well, at least these are the really good guys, right? We're going to be fine on this front. But as they're talking and they're supporting Steve Witkoff as well, doing interviews over the weekend, the special envoy, it's like you can see their souls leaving their bodies. Right.

Right. As they're discussing what the new plan is for the world. And it runs so counter to decades of experience. Some of them have fought for themselves as veterans. Right. Not just policy wonks sitting in D.C. or in their home states talking about what the future should look like. People who actually put their lives on the line and are now going against that new world order. Right.

And Trump has had a bee in his bonnet about Europe since he arrived on the scene. He stood up there and said, if you're not making your 2% contribution to NATO, you don't deserve to be in this with us. And people have started paying up, and some people even paying above the 2% for their own defense. And there's some merit to those statements. There is some merit to that. And I think that we need to strive—

to look at the totality of the picture because there are decent arguments that are underpinning some of this. It's just when you look at the complete product, you have to wonder if there is a completely nefarious motivation for getting us into this kind of position. And Europe is weaker than it used to be. The economies are stagnant. Like you said, if you want to get rich, build a business, et cetera, you do that in America. If you want to spend your money, you go to Europe because...

You can do apres-ski and you can shop and you can talk to interesting people from all over the world who are there to relax and to have fun, but they're not innovating anywhere close to the way that we are. They're not educating anywhere close to the way that we are. And I think that Trump and co. are certainly cognizant of it.

But, you know, you listen to the Germans had their elections yesterday. We meddled in their elections outright with Elon Musk and J.D. Vance, you know, pushing forward the far right AFD, which underperformed. So the CDU wins. And I'm listening to the— Can you believe that? It's not easy to make Nazis less— I can't believe that. Yeah. It's not easy to make Nazis less likable. And we figured it out. We sent our A-team over. And we were like, yeah.

Why don't you hear J.D. Vance out on this? Why don't you hear Elon Musk out on this?

But it should be noted, you know, the CDU is the conservative party and MERS, who's the leader of it, will be the new chancellor, is much to the right of where Merkel was, especially on immigration. So this is a trend line that we are seeing across the world that people are not interested in open borders. They want to hear about a national identity. They want to hear about people doing it the right way. And they want to make sure that you don't have this

cultural hodgepodge that doesn't jibe with the way that they want their society to be. So that is part of this. But some of the quotes from Murs about the impact of the election and also thinking about the U.S. as partners are

Leave me almost despondent. You know, we must prepare for the possibility that Donald Trump will no longer uphold NATO's mutual defense commitment unconditionally. We also need to talk to the British and the French, the two European nuclear powers, about whether nuclear sharing or at least nuclear security from the UK and France could also apply to us. They are scared and they are not looking to us personally.

for help. It's smart of them to be thinking this way. So I'd love to hear what you think about that. But then also, I want to talk a little bit about Zelensky, the man, because he seems like a total hero in all of this. I was listening to his comments from the weekend. He was speaking in Kyiv and

And, you know, this is a guy with a 57% approval rating. We know in wartime people don't have elections. He's not a dictator. I am not saying that Ukraine doesn't have corruption. Of course, there are oligarchs there. If there are oligarchs, there is going to be corruption. But the fact that he stood there and he said, I'll step down for peace. If you give us NATO, I'll go. You know, it's not about the personal ego in this. And it does harken back to a World War II time, right, where you saw people rise up

and show their character in such a way. And that was very moving for me. I love this term. Well, what if what could go right? And I wonder if I see this and I was just horrified. I mean, first off, Senator Marco Rubio, like, who the fuck are you? But literally, and what I mean that is not like, who are you to say these things? But I have no idea who this individual is. He was this cold warrior. That's how he his foreign policy stance was. He was a cold warrior. And now he's

He's saying he's signing up to the notion that Ukraine started the war. That would be like FDR saying, well, what were those ships doing in Pearl Harbor anyways? The Japanese, I can see why they attacked us. It's just insane that we would be surrendering, that we would say, okay, that's it. We surrender. And I wonder, I'm trying to see the silver lining here.

I think Europe is more impressive than people give them credit for. You know, Dassault makes incredible jet airplanes. The German Tiger tanks and the manufacturing capability there is incredible. The economies of Italy and France are still, you know, relatively big economies. The UK has some of the best universities in the world. Europe, this is a wake-up call. Get your shit together and unify.

And put aside your petty, stupid fucking differences because this is an existential threat because you no longer have a sane and, quite frankly, decent ally that I don't want to say you shouldn't have. I'm not saying you took them for granted, but quite frankly, they realize now a big brother is not going to save us here. We have to develop our own unified allies.

approach to an economy, our own unified approach to a war machine. And I think it might actually be very unifying. In addition, going on a war footing sometimes or preparing for a war footing can actually be good for an economy. People are disappointed that the Russian economy hasn't sunk as fast as some people thought because actually a war footing helps juice an economy, at least in the short term. This bullshit that the Ukrainian government

The war in Ukraine has somehow been bad for the U.S. economy. Yeah, it's sort of expensive, $60, $65 billion a year. Okay, fine. Military budget is $800 billion. By the way, about 95% of that has gone back to U.S. military suppliers and has juiced the economy in red states. I wonder if it might actually bring unity to Europe, which is that Europe might actually be a union.

again, that the Brits realized they have more in touch or more in common with the continent than they thought and maybe do something like a backseat move where they become more integrated again with the EU. They increase their military spending and they put up a front that says, okay,

we've got this. I think this is an opportunity for leadership in Europe to say, Ukraine and Germany has said this. We've got your back. We recognize that this is a huge loss, but be clear, you don't need to surrender and fold right away. And the other silver lining is, I don't know if you've seen any of these Republican town halls, but there are enough people who have grandparents who fought in the war, who remember what

how terrible Russia has been in terms of our own interests, and hate the idea that America is surrendering to Putin, that we are surrendering to a gas station posing as an economy who is only taken seriously because it has so many nuclear weapons. I think the majority of Americans, as evidenced by that data, think, wow, this is just...

too much. I am not down. I don't understand why we are surrendering. It makes no sense. It is not good for the world. Even the far right is having trouble. I mean, okay, Tucker Carlson goes and gives Putin a lap dance and can't get over those amazing shopping carts at their grocery store. Folks, I have been to Russia.

I mean, we are not going to have an outflow of American citizens going to Russia. You can be sure of that. It is not a great place. They have nothing on us, folks. Nothing. This is not a society, an economy, or a leadership to look up to. And I wonder if the silver lining here is that Europe becomes a union again. NATO actually hopefully comes back stronger because I think it'll take some time even if the Americans try and unwind it. I don't think they're going to be able to

And Europe puts forward a more unified front against—and they've been doing it. They've been spending more than us. But I hope this is the wake-up call. And I was thinking about—

This blitzkrieg of information to try and confuse everybody, DEI, Doge. I read this morning they're trying to partner, bring back Andrew Tate. It's all a fucking sideshow to get you to look away from the fact that they are trying to recalibrate the world order. And this is unacceptable. And I think it's unacceptable to most Americans. And I hope...

this, people who do not want to be surrender monkeys show up at the ballot box in about, whatever, about 22 months and send their congressman a message that we are not down with this, that you need to speak up and say, this is not, this is not right. Anyways, I'm trying to think of what could go right. Well, let me put something out there, which is

All of that is true as someone who lived in London for a long time and was over there when Brexit was happening. I hope they backs it. I had not heard that term. You know, they had buyer's remorse about 20 minutes after the decision came down. And they were fed a lot of propaganda to make them make that choice. Thank you, Nigel Farage. But...

A stronger Europe and a less dependent Europe is to some degree Donald Trump fulfilling one of his promises, which is to get us out of the global order in the way that we have been. And his voters overwhelmingly don't think that we have a responsibility to help Ukraine.

He is actually being responsive to his own voters in saying that. And this has been going on for the last year or two. I think people were really jazzed about the conflict in the beginning where Ukraine was pulling off these incredible defeats.

And they seemed like they were going to win. And something changed. You know, Russia was not falling apart in the way that they expected. Donald Trump and co. were obviously amplifying that. But it brings up this larger question. If the people who sent you to Washington feel a certain way about something, is it your duty to then behave in such a way or make decisions that are aligned with that? Or do you go with...

what's actually the right thing to do in a historical sense. How do you think that manifests? Like, if you were to guess what the on-the-ground— how do you think that shows up in today's electoral politics? What do you think happens? Well, I just know. You know, I was looking at the data on what Republicans support for us—

continuing to support Ukraine is. And only 36% say that we should keep doing that. Nearly half say that we're giving too much aid to Ukraine. And a lot of people, and not just Republicans, have bought into the idea that we need help at home.

Right. We need that money to be spent on us rather than to be spent on a conflict abroad that, frankly, Democrats and Republicans have not effectively contextualized in the life of the average American. So you could say, yeah, there are tons of people showing up at town halls who have World War II vets in their families, but they're probably outliers from the average person that I, you know, walked down the street and passed. Right. And says, OK, well, we're going to send another 60 billion dollars or whatever it is. We're going to send long range missiles to

over there. And they're saying, you know, I can't put food on the table here. Yeah, this is a messaging issue in my view, because one, okay, it's 60, $65 billion. And what we've failed to do is show that the majority of this capital, a vast majority of it ends up back in the U.S. economy, back in red states. And the way I would position it is it's a stimulus program to help

manufacturing in the U.S., help create jobs, and that if, regardless of what you think of Ukraine, if we stop doing this, it's going to result in a dramatic reduction in money and jobs and prosperity across mostly red states. That this is no different than, okay, when we send grain abroad for food aid, if you stop doing that, it would hurt farmers in Iowa.

And just to contextualize it, it's $62 billion. And what have we gotten? Let's put the moral arguments aside, because the moral argument is, why do we give a shit about trench warfare in Ukraine when my son can't find a job or I can't afford my diabetes medication? I think that's a fair argument. Okay.

Let's just look at it from an economic standpoint. For approximately 1% of our spending, we spend $7 trillion, so less than that, the majority of which comes back to red states, it comes back to U.S. manufacturing. We get to take out a third, or have so far taken out a third of Russia's kinetic power. We've destroyed a third of their tanks.

We have put their economy on its heels to a certain extent. We have defanged what was supposed to be one of the most ferocious armies in the world. We have reduced the likelihood of terrorism against Western allies and terrorism domestically because a lot of their proxies who they were supporting have been castrated. They do not have the bandwidth to wreak havoc, which they have done since the end of World War II across different satellite countries because they are bogged down in a war.

And it shows that essentially our enemy can be pushed back when the West gets attacked together and unifies without, by the way, without a single American boot on the ground. A manager's

charge at the end of the day is to allocate capital to its greatest return, to a greater return than your peer group. The president is the greatest allocator of capital in history, thereby the greatest manager in history. The best ROI, the best example of great management over the last 10, 20, 30 years is the $60 billion stimulus program in the U.S. that has resulted in the defanging of

the pushback of an enemy at very little cost to us. And that cost comes back to us in the form of jobs in the U.S. This is distinct of the moral argument. This is a great deal for us. It is a great deal. Would you rather have Russia

with this superior fighting force that the whole world is scared of, or to have a third of its army taken out, to have a ton of its soldiers, and I hate to say this, killed,

to have China thinking twice about invading Taiwan, saying what a small motivated army can do that's technically literate and backed by the West. The West is a much safer place with the pushback that the incredible Ukrainian army has provided kind of at very little cost to us. I mean, this is chump change. This is just not a lot of money when you think about the fact it ends up backing our economy. It's not as if... This is not the problem, folks.

Social Security is going to be $1.3 trillion this year. This is $60 billion.

Elon Musk has made $210 billion since the election. This is $60 billion to make the world a much safer place with a strong message that when the West comes together, is it an insurmountable fighting force and could push back on a murderous autocrat? This is about messaging. Do away with the moral arguments. I think those will be made on their own, but just say, this is a great investment. We'd be stupid not to continue making this investment. Well, I wish...

Yeah.

Lots of people who are abroad because we've been involved in this conflict. And they thought that it would end in a year, two years. Now we're at the third anniversary of this. And yes, there have been tons of accomplishments in terms of what the Ukrainians have pulled off. But Russia is not going away. Basically, everyone admits that there have to be some sort of concessions. Even Zelensky has talked about that. Maybe not, you know, going back to Russia.

you know, a few years ago, but we're certainly not getting back to the pre-2014 lines by any stretch of the imagination. And nobody is making that case to an American public that at this moment cares first and foremost about what is happening at home, not just in terms of it being the United States, but in their actual home. We do. All right. Let's take a quick break. Stay with us.

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Welcome back. We're just one month into Trump's second term, although it feels like an eternity.

Trump's approval is sinking, see above silver lining, with polls showing him underwater and his aggressive budget cuts aren't helping. Doge is slashing jobs at the TSA, FEMA, and even the NIH unit researching Alzheimer's. Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson is cheering on Musk's crusade to shrink the government, but he's also throwing cold water on Musk and Trump's idea to send Americans $5,000 rebate checks with the supposed government savings.

Some Republicans say it's unconstitutional. Others call it a political stunt. And budget experts warn it would need congressional approval if the savings even exist. But Trump and Musk are plowing ahead, promising the Doge dividend will put money in voters' pockets. Jess, the rebate idea is already causing a split within the GOP, with Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski calling parts of Doge unconstitutional and disastrous. Could this be the breaking point where Republicans finally push back on Trump? I...

I feel like I'm old enough to think that there is never a breaking point with Republicans. There are, you know, little spurts of pushback or where you think someone still has their soul or their moral compass. But then generally they get in line. And I think the confirmation process has really elucidated that, you know, this is Trump's party. This is Trump's administration and they will do things Trump's way. So I'm not

for any Republican to save us from this. It does seem like the American public, though, may be the ones to do it. And I've been surprised by how quickly Trump's image and approval rating has increased

softened or decreased or gotten shittier in people's eyes. There are a few polls that show that his approval hasn't sunk. I should note that. But in general, the trend line is going in the negative direction. And these are all high quality polls like Gallup, Quinnipiac, Reuters, and

Ipsos, CNN. The thing that I think is most important in all of this, and it comes from a Gallup poll, is that only 20% think that the economy is excellent or good and 59% think that the economy is getting worse.

So people wanted a pocketbook reversal in making their choice in electing Donald Trump on November 5th. They don't feel like they are getting it from him. And you're seeing that reflected in the market and people are well aware. I think tariffs are the second most least popular thing that he's done. Number one was partnering all the January Sixers.

And folks know what the tariffs are going to do to the American economy. I also saw that the Democrats are now up double digits on the generic ballot. Think how quickly that changed, that we just lost an election and we have—the Republicans only have a slim majority in the House, but still, they won, right? They're in control, all three, right? They have the White House, Senate, and House, and now Democrats are up double digits on a generic ballot. Yeah, with respect to Doge—

Again, I think, I mean, it sort of goes to, okay, what to do. A common psychological warfare technique is to overwhelm the opposition with so many different outrageous things and so many different aggressive topics, issues, inbound missiles, that you're overwhelmed and become flat-footed. I suffer from this. I don't even know where to start. And the way you respond is the following, is, okay, you don't need to respond to everything online. You don't need to take up everything with emotion and anger.

You should cite experts. You should bring in data. And then pare down what you're going to focus on in terms of your pushback. So, for example, I think Doge is a giant fucking weapon of mass distraction. $50 billion. $50 billion.

They want to try and right-size government. People are understandably concerned that there's a lot of waste. Government needs to be right-sized. I think the wrong messaging is all this quote-unquote injustice that I get these national forestry people are wonderful and that there's going to be diapers on the side of your favorite trail, and that they got an email and they've been fired after 18 years of service. But I think a lot of Americans say, welcome to the fucking work week. This happened to me or it happened to my cousin.

Private equity came in and bought out our chiropractic clinic, and we got our phone shut off. I think what is happening to a lot of these workers has happened to a lot of people in the private sector. And to be blunt, there isn't a groundswell of sympathy, I think, or empathy they were hoping for. And people think the government needs to be reined back in as it has been on a regular basis, including under Clinton and Gore. Now, having said that, what I would focus on is the incompetence.

I would focus on the fact that, okay, they didn't save $8 billion here. They saved $8 million. Oh, they fired the nuclear, the people overseeing our nuclear stockpile, only to rehire them, which makes it more expensive. Oh, you can be clear that the people regulating Tesla's self-reliance

autonomous driving unit, they've all been fired, right? That this is essentially corruption and incompetence at very little money. And the thing they should link this to is, okay, while they're off here playing Keystone Cops and playing incompetence, you know, incompetence girls gone wild here, they want you to look over here at $50 billion in savings. Okay.

They're planning with the tax cuts that will benefit me. I ran, I looked at the new tax proposal and I ran my W-2 through it. I'm going to save a million dollars a year with Trump's tax cuts, right? Fine. Government's too big. Save us that 50 billion. But be clear.

You're not fooling anybody. You're planning to increase taxes on future generations by the biggest tax increase in history. It's $900 billion. Let's just come together and agree on somewhere between 12 and 18 times the amount of the $50 billion we're arguing over in terms of Doge. While everyone is obsessed with Doge because it makes for good TikTok and people know people in the government,

The real story here is somewhere between six and $900 billion a year increase in taxes on future generations. I think that's what we should be focused on. I agree with you. And I would add to it that there have been several analyses of what Doge has actually cut, including from the conservative Wall Street Journal. So while Musk is out there saying we found $55 billion in cuts, they say it's $2.6 billion, actually. And over a multi-year period, only 2% are related to quote-unquote

quote, DEI efforts. And the rest of it is just stuff that, like, maybe he doesn't want to do, like, you know, develop a drug to help cure Alzheimer's, for instance. But they're doing this thing where, because they're controlling the conversation on social media, that they're

shitposting at such a rapid rate that you can't figure out what's true and what's not true. And they're essentially telling people that contracts or bits of information about how the federal government are doing things, that they've unearthed it when it's all publicly available information. But guess what? To your point, you need subject matter experts, people who actually deal in this data all the time, to comb through it and to tell you, no, actually, this is

publicly available on X site, right? Or you go here and that's where you would know about that contract, for instance. And so the flooding the zone has been wildly effective, I think, in terms of controlling the discourse, but they have not been able to control the American people when it comes to this because the

The people, two to one ratio, don't approve of Musk's outsized role in the government or what Doge is doing. And in these town halls, which you cited, which are happening in Republican districts, everyone who's a swing district Republican down to people in very safe seats, these constituents are showing up and they're not only talking about Doge to the brass tacks stuff that you're discussing, they are losing their minds over this $880 billion cut to Medicaid. Right.

They didn't think that this was going to have practical implications for them because guess what? It's not popular to sit around and say, oh, I love the federal government so much. Right. And don't touch a single hair on the head of anyone who works at USAID. I mean, that's something that feels so foreign to.

And detached from the average American's daily life. But what isn't detached from it is Medicaid. Head Start. The 9-11 health initiative. I mean, 9-11 was one of the more unifying moments in American history, right? No matter where you lived in this country, no matter how you voted, you were horrified.

that we had a terrorist attack on American soil, that we lost 3,500 American lives and millions since then in terms of the repercussions with the air quality and the cancers that people developed from that. My dad died of a 9-11 cancer. You know, we're part of that 9-11 health initiative world because of the implications. And when they go after something like that, when you live in rural Iowa, you say, excuse me?

How is it possible that that's on the chopping block? And Jon Stewart has always been such an effective messenger on this subject because he'll show up in Congress to say, you're going after absolutely the wrong things. You have something that has, what, a 90 percent approval rating, let's say, the folks that went down there and cleaned up after that terrorist attack or have worked in the support system, the family members of the heroes that died that day, and that's who you want to be coming out —

Like, we heard all of these fantasies about $50 million for condoms for people in Gaza or, you know, supporting the arts for transgender people in Liberia or whatever lies they were telling us. And they're just not being borne out by the data. And people are getting that message.

And Democrats really have to stick to the script on this. There is a budget that will be being brought to the floor. It's going through the Rules Committee today. So when this is released tomorrow, Tuesday, it's supposed to be coming there and Republicans are going to have to vote on it. And it has an $880 billion cut to Medicaid in it. And there are conservative lawmakers that are begging leadership to

to take it out. Josh Hawley, someone who I really have, I don't think ever had anything nice to say about, wants to add an amendment to it on the Senate side to make sure that these cuts can't go through because they understand it'll decimate the lives of their constituents.

So there is plenty in here to be going after. But I think it is important to say time and time again that what Elon Musk is telling you they are doing, they are not. He is saying $55 billion. It is at most $2.6 billion. Yeah, like Medicaid, you know, 80 million people, one in six households or one in six kids, 40% of births, the elderly who are disabled. I mean, this is—and also—

It is actually a really well-run, cost-effective program. It provides health coverage for low-income Americans at a lower per-person cost than private insurance. So Medicaid actually helps the economy because unless you're going to decide you're going to let people die of their cystic fibrosis or you're going to let old people, the disabled, wither away—

What is the most cost-effective way to give people some dignity to make sure that kids can't actually, you know, we can provide their medication, we can provide their in-home physical therapy for the disabled? Well, this is a lower-cost way to do it.

And it is very popular. And the fact that they're, you know, hey, look over here at $50 billion in Doge savings and we'll give you a $5,000 check, but we're going to cut, what, $600 to $800 billion from Medicaid? I mean, this really is, it is, in my opinion, showing their true colors. And that is, at the end of the day, the most remarkable thing about the Republican Party is that it serves not the 1%, it serves the 0.1%.

And the fact this is all a giant ruse to say, look over here while we cut taxes on the very wealthiest Americans. And I do think this is probably a bridge too far. I think they will probably check back on Medicaid. I hope they don't, because I think this could probably be the beginning of a pretty serious clean sweep or, you know, close to a clean sweep once we have the midterm elections coming.

But Medicaid is, I would say, maybe with the exception of Social Security, is the most popular social program in America, maybe even more popular when you look at its effectiveness. But this is great messaging for the Democrats that, okay, do you know anyone on Medicaid? This is who they're coming for. And if you think if they can cut...

you know, 16 times what they say they're going to cut in DOJ. That's what they're planning to cut from Medicaid. It's not like that. It's like at some point is somebody, and we need to be a Republican, going to give them a, do you have no sense of decency speech, right? At some point, somebody needs to stand up. And I think someone is going to find their backbone here. The budget proposed just endorsed cuts to Medicaid by $900 billion. And

This is just this is extraordinary. I want to talk about the rebate checks for a second, though, because this has over the last few years actually been a really important point in terms of our electoral outcomes, because we did checks at the beginning of COVID because of the CARES Act, which Republicans opposed. Donald Trump opposed, but it was passed and it went through while Trump was still president. And he signed those checks himself. It's a Donald J. Trump.

gave you money. And then we did a couple more rounds of checks during the Biden administration. But of course, you know, Joe Biden didn't want to put his name on those checks. So they had a career treasury official's name on it. And when people went and voted, they didn't know that Joe Biden ever gave them money. Right. It was that Donald Trump gave me money. And then I had a really crappy four years. And now Donald Trump is going to come back.

And these rebate checks, which if you look at the money, it obviously doesn't add up because those savings are a fantasy in all of this. But if people receive a $5,000 check that says Donald J. Trump on it, that will be meaningful because

And we need to be very careful around this. Now, I don't know if that's going to go through. That seems like a muskism versus something that might actually happen on the federal level. But I'm concerned about that because those are the types of tangibles that people remember when they go and vote.

And they will also provide further smoke to this smoke screen that's going on and what's actually happening in the federal government versus the reality on the ground. It's just so insane. And I think the messaging so far has been pretty good around this. But the notion that, OK, we're a household that makes $50,000 a year. That's our tax receipts. We spend $70,000. That's our government expenditures.

$7 trillion on $5 trillion in tax receipts, and we are $350,000 or $35 trillion in debt, but we're going to cut our expenditures by $500 and send a check to people rather than paying down our debt? I mean, it's just...

Does anyone do math anymore? Have citizens gotten to the point where it's like, you know, I just give it up. My kids are fucked. Just run up their credit card. I don't care. I do think there's going to be enough people who are going to go on social and say, this is just stupid to start sending checks when we're planning to run up the deficit another $900 billion a year to send checks to people for $5,000 rather than paying down the debt.

That absolutely, again, to your point, that just makes no sense. All right. One more quick break. Stay with us. We're taking Vox Media Podcasts on the road and heading back to Austin for the South by Southwest Festival, March 8th through the 10th. What a thrill. Chicken fajitas, queso, strawberry margarita, extra shot of tequila. There you'll be able to see special live episodes of hit shows, including our show, Pivot.

Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel, A Touch More with Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe, Not Just Football with Cam Hayward, and more presented by Smartsheet. The Vox Media Podcast stage at South by Southwest is open to all South by Southwest badge holders. We hope to see you at the Austin Convention Center soon.

I'm not joking. I love South by Southwest. The people are a ton of fun. It's a great time. If you do come, come up and say hi. Visit voxmedia.com slash SXSW to learn more. That's voxmedia.com slash SXSW.

We talk about it in whispers. Hey, my name, I'm not going to say it. I would like to remain anonymous if any of this is being used. Hi, I would like to stay anonymous. And my parents did recently buy me a house.

We inquire about it gently. How can you afford this neighborhood or that school? My dad used to pay off my credit card every month up until pretty recently. My parents did pay for my rent. They paid for some of my credit card bills, kind of my emergency money, groceries as well. I am in my mid-20s. I've received about $1.3 million over the course of 14 years, including about $500,000.

Trillions of dollars are flowing from baby boomers to their adult kids and upending American norms and housing prices. We're talking through it on Today Explained every weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, this is Kara Swisher, host of On with Kara Swisher. Over the past few weeks, I've been covering President Trump and Elon Musk as they continue to attack the federal government and dismantle our democracy. At least that's my opinion. I hosted a panel on Elon's takeover with Anne Applebaum, Owen Higgins, and Ryan Mack. I had a conversation on the constitutional crisis we may or may not be in with Preet Bharara, George Conway, Jamie Gangel, and Jonathan Cantor.

And I took a look at Trumponomics with economists Oren Kass, Paul Krugman, and Mariana Mazzucato.

But life is too short to only talk politics. And honestly, politics may make our lives shorter these days. It's important to find moments of levity, too. So I've also interviewed brilliant actors like Laverne Cox, Ben Stiller and Cynthia Erivo. We've talked about their work and what it's like to make art in these new times. And to listen to any and all of these conversations, search for On with Kara Swisher wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to follow On with Kara Swisher for more.

Welcome back. Before we wrap, last week, Senator Mitch McConnell announced he won't seek re-election in 2026, marking the end of a four-decade career that reshaped American politics. As Senate GOP leader, he cemented a conservative judiciary, steered his party through shifting ideological tides, and clashed with Donald Trump in recent years. His exit raises questions about the future of the GOP and the battle for his Kentucky seat, with former Attorney General Daniel Cameron and Rep. Andy Barr already in the race.

Jess, what do you think McConnell's legacy will be? I mean, the obvious one is the reshaping of the courts. Biden did really well and had an almost breakneck pace in terms of judicial confirmations. It doesn't compare to the damage that McConnell has done with the Supreme Court being, you know, the cherry on top of all of this and his ruthlessness and refusing to give Merrick Garland a

a hearing will be remembered throughout history. That was the beginning of this. But he slowed down judicial confirmations during the Obama era to a trickle at best and took advantage of Harry Reid blowing up the filibuster in 2013. And we ended up in this position where, you know, the courts are stacked against us, I say us as Democrats or left-leaning people, for a

generations to come. And so I think that's probably the biggest one. I think there's an image that folks saw last week, which will also stick with us. And this doesn't just apply to McConnell, but this crop of 80-something legislators, 70-something legislators. You know, it's McConnell and Jim Justice, who's the new senator from West Virginia, was the governor, and they're both in wheelchairs and they're passing each other and they're high-fiving.

And it just—I understand, you know, people have accidents and McConnell had fallen. Justice has had trouble walking for a very long time. But you just—you look at this and you think we have to be able—

to do better, not in an ageist way. I hate to think of myself as someone who is ageist, but it doesn't feel right that the folks that have these rarefied jobs, there are only 100 of them, right, in a country of 330 million, that we have people who are that old, who are refusing at that level to pass the torch. And yes, I know McConnell is retiring.

But it's a problem across the board that we've really got to address. So I'm a full-blown ageist. And do you know who else is ageist? Biology. My son had a Halloween party. He's 14. There were 15-year-old girls in my house that are more qualified to be senator than Senator Feinstein was in the last year of her Senate. They would have done a much better job. They would have had a much broader grasp and understanding of the issues than Senator Feinstein did.

Put these people on a fucking ice floe. Enough already. You have to be 30 years of age to become a senator. Why? Because a 29-year-old, they believe, does not have the experience, the maturity, or the cognitive ability to make decisions on behalf of a country. But someone who doesn't know where the fuck they are and freezes on a stage when asking questions, someone who—someone who literally—there is a—I believe it's a Republican female representative who literally doesn't know where she is. It's tragic. She's suffering from late-stage Alzheimer's.

Biology says hold my beer when mostly Democrats talk about scream ageism.

And because we have a system with Citizens United where the incumbent almost always wins and these people must get great reservations at great restaurants in D.C. and they decide to never leave, we need age limits for both the Supreme Court and for our elected representatives. Enough already. I mean, make it something low like 80 or something like that. But at some point, it is time to go. His legacy will be the following, in my view.

Showing to the world just how much Senator Schumer sucks. And that is this guy, call him Machiavellian, call him evil. He outplayed Democrats every step of the way. While our leadership decided to send a strongly worded letter around all these outrage around Merrick Garland, he always won.

He managed to pack the courts up and down. And when a 14-year-old girl has to carry a child from incest to term, when a woman is bleeding out in an emergency room parking lot from sepsis because a doctor is worried about going to jail, it is because our leadership were fucking neutered and didn't want to go gangster the way McConnell did. McConnell was shameless enough

He is the graveyard digger for democracy, and he was highly effective. We need more Democrats like that. I want to see the same sort of shamelessness that Speaker Emerita Pelosi brings to her fucking corrupt insider trading. I want to see some of that gangster corruption, some of that gangster backbone, some of those big fucking balls to negotiations with Republicans. His legacy is

Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn't, but he sure as hell was effective. And this is the problem that the Democrats suffer from and what I have suffered from my entire career is they cannot discern the difference between being right and being effective.

He was much more effective than Democratic leadership. Yeah. Can we can we disparage him and say that he was evil and that he did the wrong thing? Yeah. Hold my beer, bitches. He outplayed us days one, two and three. I totally agree. I love how he was even embracing of the kind of pop culture characterizations of him, like Cocaine Mitch.

Or the Grim Reaper. You know, he leaned into all of that, or at least a staffer did for him and embraced that role. We need to be more cutthroat in the way that we do politics. But he also is very much representative of the type of Washington that

that led us to having Donald Trump. And there, you know, people will spend generations talking about, you know, how did we end up with Trump? And they'll talk about what went on in the Obama era and this, you know, latent racism that spilled out, right? And then people started voting for Trump, et cetera. But people like Mitch McConnell, who are Washington creatures, who have been there forever, who folks didn't feel like they were responsive to Trump,

trends in American society, to how they were feeling about their lives, how they were feeling about foreign entanglements. He was a poster child for that. And we would not have had Trump without there being so many Mitch McConnells there. And I think, you know, the image of him not voting

to convict Donald Trump in the second impeachment, even though he said that he was guilty of it, right, and saying this is something that we'll leave to the courts, will certainly stick with us, but also flies in the face of this notion that there were anybody on the right that stood up to Trump. Because I think that they like to say that, that these are the guys with the backbone. Maybe Mitt Romney is the exception to that, and I should shout him out for that.

But Mitch McConnell is such a central piece in the complete takeover of the Republican Party by Donald Trump. And I think that's an important element of his legacy. Yeah, Senator McConnell voting against Hegseth and Patel is like Hannibal Lecter deciding he's a vegan on his deathbed. He voted for Patel, actually. Oh, he did? He voted against Tulsi. Oh, that's right. He voted against Hegseth and Gabbert. You know, great.

These folks seem to develop a conscience after they leave Congress and then go on Bill Maher or when they decide they're resigning. I don't think he deserves any, quite frankly, any props for that. All right. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. Jess, by the way, I hope for you this week that at some point in the park with your kids, someone comes up to you and says the following. God milf?

Oh, that's good. I like it. Were you brewing that one for the whole hour of us chatting? That's good. I've been waiting. I haven't been able to focus on anything else. Our producers are David Toledo and Chenenye Onike, our technical director is Drew Burrows. You can now find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday. That's right.

What is real? Our own feed. There you'll get exclusive interviews with smart voices in politics and ours. Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Just have a great rest of the week. I hope you have a ton of inappropriate comments coming your way. I can't wait. That's all you crave in your 40s.