Trump's Kabuki "Playtime" Whitehouse
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your task will not be an easy one your enemy is well trained well equipped and battle-hardened there is not a liberal any conservative america of america good night and good luck hey everybody it's rick you know this week there's a theme in washington i'm not sure if you've all picked up on it but the theme is kabuki kabuki is the elephant in the room this week

What's Kabuki? Some of you know, it's a stylized Japanese theater and dance performance where the characters in the play engage in very stylized ritualistic movements. I might even drop a clip in here to show you some. It's exaggerated. Like I said, it's stylized. It's over the top. And I discovered this week in watching the usual shit show unfolding in DC that Kabuki was really what they've got.

First off, President Musk had his cabinet meeting. He was very generous in inviting, as other folks have noted, his vice president, Donald Trump, to sit in on the cabinet meeting while he put on a show. Isn't it odd, once again, that we see the same strange power dynamic in that meeting? Trump sitting hunched over a little man and Elon Musk looking like he owns the place. Hold up. Hold up, y'all. I'm just making sure of something. Let's check in a setting for your viewing pleasure. But Trump is sitting...

Elon is standing. Elon is commanding the room. There was even a moment where Trump forced people to clap for Elon that had such strong Saddam Hussein callback energy. It was sort of absurd. Look, I want to say this kabuki dance that was engaged in there.

Donald Trump had to pretend to be the CEO for a little while. That was a familiar feeling for him. That was 15 years of The Apprentice. That was Donald Trump doing his thing, doing his show, doing his display of alpha male CEO vibe. But really, and I really recommend you go look at the transcript. Roll Call had the entire transcript, and other folks have it too. Donald Trump in that meeting...

Aside from the constant lying, I mean, like every number out of his mouth was a lie. Almost every assertion was a lie. But it was the same thing he's done before, and we should really be focused on it. This is Donald Trump doing the show, doing the CEO show, throwing out numbers and statements and facts that he knows are lies. He's absolutely clear that all those things are lies. He doesn't believe for a second that the things he's saying are true. But

That kabuki dance of trying to be the alpha guy in the room got really upset by Elon's presence. And it also got a little bit upset by people in the audience that were there as cabinet members making news the wrong way. For instance, Dr. Polio, RFK Jr.,

is they're sort of waving off a measles epidemic. No one's died of measles in the country for a decade. It's not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year. We haven't had an epidemic like this for ever. Why? Because vaccinations work and vaccinations are good. But the kabuki dance there is that RFK has to pretend to be like, well, we're treating it scientifically, even though they've largely dismantled the efforts to scientifically handle medical crises like measles. The other thing, by the way, if you go back to Elon for a second,

He is, of course, a fabulous in the same way Trump is. But yesterday there was a particularly interesting moment where he says, oh, well, you know, we accidentally shut off the money for Ebola coverage in Africa. One of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola, Ebola prevention. I think we all want Ebola prevention. Oh, did you? Ebola. Hey there, I'm recording the elephant in the room right now, so I'm going to send it to you on Riverside in a few minutes. Bye.

So that is my long-suffering producer and the hand of Rick Whitney, who keeps me on track. But I'm actually ahead of the curve right now with you guys. So let's have some more fun. Look, when Elon said, oh, we shut down the Ebola programs in Africa through USAID, oops, but we put them back right away. Well, it turns out that's another lie. It turns out if you look at the reporting today, that's another lie.

Now, I know that you guys sort of superficially know what Ebola is, but in one of my side hobbies, one of my side gigs, I love infectious disease research and I'm fascinated by it. Ebola is still extremely bad business. I don't care how much money you throw at Ebola. You should throw more. There's another hemorrhagic fever that's popping up in the Congo right now, but because we've stopped doing global health reporting from the CDC and the NIH because of Robert F. Kennedy, we're not really tracking that one.

We're seeing it through the World Health Organization, not through our own monitoring system. Good news, right? But that kabuki is Robert F. Kennedy pretending that the real problem in America is vaccines. The real problem in America is he thinks that doctors are in the pockets of big pharma to make sure kids get measles vaccines. Get the fuck out of here. And I know you think I obsess about RFK and vaccines and viruses, and I do. But again...

They're up there doing a dance where Trump is pretending that Bobby is a health expert. He's not. And that and Kennedy pretending that he's going to solve all this by by making America healthy again, by stopping vaccines. The next piece of kabuki this week that I think you'd be interested in was the House. Now, look, Mike Johnson is a slippery little fucker, and he managed to get one small iteration of a plan on how to get to the vote on the big, beautiful bill.

through the House this week by a vote. Now, here's where the kabuki comes in in multiple layers. First, Johnson, along with Trump and Musk, are pretending that what they're going to do is to cut the deficit. What they are really going to do, and we're seeing it right now playing out, they're going to cut Medicare, they're going to cut Medicaid, they're going to cut Social Security, not just the staff and the bureaucracy. They're going to cut the number.

that grandma gets. So folks, I hope you are ready to see past that little piece of theatrical bullshit from them. I hope you're ready to get that guest room set up for mom or grandma. I hope you're ready for that. I hope you're ready to start paying an outrageous sum of money for your prescription medications, especially insulin. All of the things that they've done in maneuvering to get a $10 billion tax cut

for guys like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is the biggest kabuki dance of all. None of this doge bullshit is about saving money. None of this doge bullshit is about cutting bureaucracy. It narrowly is for Elon because he wants to cut bureaucracy that regulates his various companies. We'll be right back.

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And now, back to the show. What it is about.

is causing pain and fear and damage and terror in the minds of Americans who depend on either some form of government services. And by the way, y'all, I am a free market conservative. I'm not some big government advocate. I think government should be smaller and smarter and better. And none of the things they're doing achieve any of those three things. Not even smaller, by the way. It's a long story, but what they're doing right now is to cause pain and fear. They want grandma out there to be terrified.

And they should be. Seniors should be scared right now. You should be very worried. A lot of you MAGA seniors, I'm sure you are feeling like you are just, you guys have just hit the lottery, haven't you? You voted for Trump once, twice, maybe three times. Every time he said, I will never cut your Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. He said it every time. Specifically Medicare and Social Security. I'm going to skip Medicaid. I don't think he promised that. But every time he promised that, you pushed back on everybody else's critiques, didn't you?

Oh, no, you'll never cut my Social Security. You'll never cut my Medicare. It's cutting your Medicare. They're going to cut your Social Security. They view seniors as in a category of useless eaters. They view them as parasites. This is a big part of that whole Silicon Valley weirdo monarchy cult where they want to improve society. These guys...

You know, look, they look like tech bros on the surface, but I swear to God, some of them probably have like calipers to measure skull diameter for their phrenology hobby. The idea in their minds is that there are unproductive sectors of society that are not making money for them. And so they need to go.

So if life expectancy for seniors falls out in two, four, five, six years, you can make an argument if you're Russ Vaught or Elon Musk or one of these lunatics that it's going to save the government so much money. Forcing these seniors back into their children's homes, it's amazing. Politically, you know, they used to always joke that the Social Security was the third rail of American politics. They're not touching the third rail. They're licking the third rail. They're like tongue kissing the third rail. They're like getting naked in a hot tub with the third rail.

And I want to remind people that when these cuts come, they will not come back. You cannot unwind them. The damage will be instantaneous across society. Huge. Devastating. It will also cause, just so you guys are reminded, and I want you to remember this when the recession hits very soon now, if you fire a million plus people in the American economy, unlike what Glenn Youngkin says, unlike what Elon and these other idiots say,

Government workers do not necessarily just go out and get a quote unquote private sector better job. A lot of what they do is unique. A lot of what they do is bespoke. So when they cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and those seniors are dumped into the laps of families, the indigent on Medicaid are dumped to the states. And by the way, all you red states, I know you don't want to expand Medicaid, but the funny part is that in a few months, you're going to have literally starving people

In the streets, you're going to have literally you're going to you're going to see people in hospitals being turned away and dying outside of hospitals because you're cutting off a an expensive but unique way that America has decided that we're going to take care of sick people.

universal health care in this country, which as people point out, you know, and we'll set aside all the market questions on it for a second. But as somebody pointed out the other day, it's so complex and difficult and impossible. And America is so unique that only 32 of the 33 largest developed economies in the world have a universal health care system of some kind. I still think you could do it by and maintain private sector health care, just like most countries do. Long story short, we'll get out. We'll get away from that. We'll be right back. And now back to the show.

The next piece of kabuki is the town hall meetings. What are Republicans doing right now? They went to these town hall meetings all over the country last week and early this week. They got their asses whipped. They got spanked. They had people so pissed off about what's happening because, folks, it is sinking into America's consciousness now what's going on. That they're playing this new dance. They're playing this new line of, we're not doing town hall meetings anymore.

Because they're a waste of time because activists come to town hall meetings. Yes. Yes, activists do. They're called citizens. They're called your constituents. They're called your voters. And the fact that they disagree with you and suddenly your life doesn't look like a Fox TV hit or your life doesn't look like your timeline on Twitter is

You're shocked and you're appalled and you're thinking, why are these people mad at me? I love Doge and Trump loves Doge and Fox loves Doge and everybody loves Doge, right? No. No, in fact, America doesn't like Elon Musk and they're disliking him more by the minute. And they don't like Doge because it's chaotic and it's crazy and it's not doing what they claim it's doing. And it's basically a scheme to either enrich politics

I know. I know. Put the phone on mute for us, Rick. I get it. Elephant in the room is me not turning the phone off. Okay. So these people are going to these meetings now. And so Republicans are saying, well, we can't have town hall meetings anymore. We're so offended and appalled that people came and asked us hard questions. It's so outrageous that we were asked tough questions. So we now have to do teletown halls. Invitation only town halls. That is some theatrical bullshit.

Don't let any Republican member, and by the way, they all voted for the fucking bills, for the first step of the big, beautiful tax cut bill and this disastrous budget they're doing. They all voted for it. There are no moderate Republicans. Nick LaLotta and all these other guys and Don Bacon and blah, blah, blah. They're all still voting with Trump all the time. That's a subset of the kabuki dance that's been going on this week. And as you go forward,

As you keep up a focus on keeping all this chaos in context, keeping all this lunacy in context, keeping all these things that are happening and this zone flooding from the right and from Trump in context, learn to distinguish between the two. Sometimes they are doing actual shitty things that are actual and shitty. And they're not even pretending. Russia. Trump siding with Putin in Russia. That's real. That's what they're doing. It's exactly what's happening. Doge is kabuki.

immigration, deportations, and all the lurid video you're seeing and the AMSR ads the White House is putting out. That's kabuki. The real stuff is the bad stuff. Keep focused on that because the kabuki dance is the elephant in the room. Thanks, folks. See you next time.

The Lincoln Project Podcast is a Lincoln Project production. Executive produced by Whitney Hayes, Ben Howe, and Joey Wartner Cheney. Produced by Whitney Hayes. Edited by Riley Mayne. Hey folks, if you want to support The Lincoln Project's work against Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and this MAGA craziness...

Go to action.linkinproject.us slash help LP. If you'd like to get in touch or have suggestions for a guest or a show topic, or just want to say hi, our email is podcast at linkinproject.us. For our MAGA friends, please, no more nudes. Thanks so much, and we'll talk to you again next time. Good night, and good luck.