11/18/24: Trump Taps RFK For HHS, Matt Gaetz Senate Showdown, Elon At War With Trump Transition, UFO Hearing Highlights, NYC Voters Sound Off On Kamala
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Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Glad to have you back, sir. Very glad to be back. We missed you on Thursday. I had a great time down in Austin. Lex Reuben podcast will come out soon. I believe the Matt and Shane secret podcast will come out as well. So you guys can enjoy that. Can we reveal how long the Lex Reuben podcast is? It clocks in around five hours. So something like that. There are multiple bathroom breaks that we had to take. For the Matt and Shane one, there are some great rants against marijuana and gambling. So I think people will enjoy it.

I genuinely, like, I think I would lose my voice after five hours. At five hours? I did actually lose my voice. I don't think I can do that. And it's funny. I had to, like, recharge it for the next day. But we made it through, and it was good. It was a great discussion. All right. Well, there are a bunch of things that I'm interested to hear your take on in the show since we haven't gotten you to weigh in on all of them.

all of the different Trump cabinet picks. We've got some updates for you there. RFK Jr. in as nominated for HHS secretary. We also have some updates on the Gates and Hegseth nominations as well. So we'll get into that. We've got some Elon Musk news, as we do pretty much every day at this point, where he is now going on Twitter to bash tariffs. Interesting, since his guy is really into tariffs. And also trying to put out there his choice of

for Treasury Secretary Jeff Stein from The Washington Post has been doing fantastic reporting on all of these things. So he's going to break down for us what is going on there. Obviously, there's also a lot of battles going on within the Democratic Party. Rahm Emanuel, blast from the past, who's, of course, never really in the past, is being floated as a potential future DNC chair. So I've got a lot to say about that and a lot of interesting sort of battles that are unfolding there.

Meanwhile, we don't want to lose sight of what's going on in terms of foreign policy. The Biden administration now authorizing the use of long-range U.S. missiles inside of Russia by Ukraine, obviously an extraordinary development. So huge implications there. We'll talk about that.

Sagar's got a UFO update for me and everyone else. I missed the hearing. I was so sad not to be there. So many good friends that were in town, but some interesting stuff happened, so I'll recap it. Yeah, and I'm taking a look at why working class New Yorkers voted for Trump in their own words. Actually, I was kind of surprised.

by some of the analysis that they offered for why they voted the way they did. So we'll break all of that down for you as well. That's awesome. All right, so go ahead and sign up for breakingpoints.com, premium subscribers. Obviously, we had all this incredible election coverage, but now we're really ramping up for the coverage of the administration. And I think...

You're going to really find both a shift in the way that we're able to look at and go deeper on what all is happening here in Washington. It's a very unique moment for the show, for podcasting, which of course has come out as a big winner in the election. There's a lot of interesting stuff happening behind the scenes. So if you can support us, BreakingPoints.com, we'll be able to give you the best coverage of the incoming Trump administration. And I think you guys will be very surprised and interested to see how it all goes.

Yep. And if you do not want to be a premium subscriber or you already are a premium subscriber, also help us out on YouTube by liking and sharing the videos there. That really helps us in terms of the algorithm. So thank you so much to all of you for your support throughout this entire season. All right. Let's get to the very latest RFK Jr.,

Being tapped for HHS secretary. Let's put this up on the screen. This is the official truth social from or truth from Donald Trump on truth social. Whatever. I'm thrilled to announce RFK Jr. as the U.S. secretary of health and human services. For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies have engaged in deception, misinformation and disinformation when it comes to public health.

So, you know, obviously...

It's been quite a journey for RFK Jr., once, you know, solidly liberal, environmental activist, was actually floated as a potential Obama administration cabinet pick. But that got spiked and then has sort of been...

part of this realignment to the right. So initially he runs as a Democrat in the Democratic primary. They shut him out as they shut down everybody. During that time, he'd already been kind of, you know, he'd go on with Steve Bannon. He was the right really liked him because at that point he was a useful weapon for them to use against Joe Biden. Then he decides to drop out of the Democratic primary and starts running as an independent. And the right does a complete 180, you

switch in terms of their tune. There's all these great clips now of Sean Hannity, like just lambasting him for all of his quote unquote liberal positions and Trump saying he's a radical and he wants the Green New Deal, blah, blah, blah. And then again, once Trump and him strike a deal and he drops out,

and is then in the Trump camp, then the tune changes once again, and he's the greatest thing ever again. So here we are with Trump basically baking good on what was probably pledged to RFK when he dropped out of the race and tapping him for secretary of HHS. We can't minimize RFK's endorsement and his role. Donald Trump only won the presidency by 254,000 votes in the blue wall states. I think it was determinative, to be honest with you. Yeah, I think it was determinative.

stays in the race, you know, when he dropped down, it was quite clear that he was taking more from Trump. He was much more of a problem for Trump than he was for Biden and then ultimately for Kamala Harris. When you look at those three blue wall states and you see how narrow the margin is, I think if he stays in the race, I think Trump loses. I agree with you. And especially if we look at Michigan, where we saw a lot of Muslim voters go to Donald Trump and they voted as a

protest vote, RFK Jr. I mean, look, it's not like Trump and RFK Jr. have particularly different stances on Israel, but if we're thinking of the Trump proxy vote as a protest for many of these Muslim voters, then RFK Jr. almost certainly would have gotten some percentage of that. Same if you look at the margin of victory in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Remember that outside of Pennsylvania, the Democrats were able to win those Senate seats.

in those two states. So they had some margin of strength. So I do think RFK Jr. was incredibly determinative in the race, in Nevada as well, actually, when we're starting to look at the final margins. One of the things that always happens after a presidential election is we actually minimize how narrow the gap was. We tried to talk about a lot here on the show about, what is it, 30-something thousand votes that made Joe Biden the presidency. Here, we're talking about 254,000 votes in those states. May sound like a lot. It's actually not

in terms of the overall tens of millions that were cast in the entire country. So it is something we should remember. And in that way, he did need to make an actual overture to RFK Jr. The question is about how much of this is gonna come into contention with the Trump coalition. And I've been thinking about this

a lot. Let's go ahead and put, for example, how Donald Trump is normally able to twist people into his own purposes. Let's put the image please up there on the screen. This is released yesterday and this was RFK Jr. forced to basically sit for a hostage photo aboard Trump Force One. This is Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson

The four of them, other than Mike Johnson, who are sitting down and eating McDonald's, you can actually see RFK Jr. there seated with McDonald's, a burger in his hand, and a full sugar high fructose corn syrup Coke sitting there next to him. Not even a Mexican Coke with the real sugar. This comes 24 hours, really, after a clip went viral

of recently of RFK Jr. talking about how the food on board Trump Force One is, quote, disgusting and how it is full of McDonald's. So you may speculate. I personally think that Trump was punishing him and forcing him to eat the food. And he was like, put the burger in your mouth, Robert. He's like, you have to do it if you want to serve as my HHS employee.

Secretary. The other big question is, is the RFK Jr., you know, despite endorsing Donald Trump, he is a liberal on many issues, issues that may come into major contention with the Republican coalition. So let's think about a couple of them. Number one is abortion. We're going to spend a lot of time on that later. But I actually really think that the

The big tension will be in make America healthy again. So there are really two parts of Maha, so-called Maha, as I can understand it. One is libertarian. I think this actually aligns quite well with the MAGA coalition. This is a barstool coalition of people who delivered the White House for Donald Trump. So these are people who are distrustful of institutions. So they want to burn down the FDA.

Great, they want to burn down NIH and get transparency about the COVID lab leak, about the COVID vaccine, release the data, all of the trials, fantastic. All that stuff, that's totally fine. But where I could see major tensions is really in like a Bloomberg nanny state style liberalism that comes from the European tradition

of banning certain chemicals. Now, I'm not saying I don't even advocate for this, but I'm saying if you look at the way that the American public has traditionally viewed efforts by Michelle Obama or Mike Bloomberg to ban, what was it, large sodas in the city of New York. I mean, there is like a deep nanny state element to this, that this actually happened under the Biden administration. The Biden administration, under the guise of like black health, wanted to ban menthol cigarettes.

And black groups were like, hey, don't tell us what we can and can't smoke. They're like, we like menthol cigarettes, leave us the hell alone. And eventually they were able to win that. Now, it's obvious that quote unquote banning menthol cigarettes would be definitely beneficial like public health wise. But we do live in a country where people very much value their freedoms. So that's one of those where I could really see

some elements, like for example, on Coca-Cola, like banning high fructose corn syrup in favor of cane sugar or reducing food dyes and all these other things. I mean, the truth is, is that while yes, it would definitely be quote unquote healthier, I guess, in somewhat of a balance, is that it still would probably drive up the price

And so that's a big question of like whether Americans, A, want to be told what and what is not in their food, and then two, whether they would actually accept whatever the consequences are. And like, look, my own person, my bias is there on the table. I'm pro-tariff and I'm pro-mass deportation. I am going to fully acknowledge to you that's going to increase our price, but I think it has an overall benefit. Now you can make that argument,

But for a lot of the libertarian coalition, and specifically, I mean, if we think about it, households under $100,000 who have majority voted for Donald Trump, these are the people who do eat McDonald's. And they eat McDonald's a lot. I mean, if you look at the statistics about the tens of millions of people in this country who eat fast food on an almost daily to weekly basis, you have to consider what fundamentally changing their menu, their food additives, and all of that would look like, the attendant price increase. You can make an argument for why it's good. I do think it would probably be good. But I could see some major pushback

So I think there's like a big libertarian, there's like a big libertarian kind of construct that will come up against MAGA. And that really, if it starts to, if you really think about it, you know, one of the reasons that Biden sunk was inflation. And every time somebody goes to order fat, I was at Taco Bell yesterday and I go, Wendy?

What if burrito costs $7? I was like, what? I remember 99 cents. Well, imagine if it goes from seven to 10 because of the changes in food regulations. Do I think that's good? Yes, I can afford it though. A lot of people, you know, that increase from what is it? 99 cents to $7. That's burned a lot. I know it's made it. So it's basically impossible to go to eat out and be affordable. Yeah. I mean, how much did like the, the price of the value menu at McDonald's figure into the political conversation? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was a huge part. The, the,

The greatest sensitivity, and this is if you ask voters, if you look at the polls, if you look at the dominant political conversation, like the biggest economic sensitivity they have right now is to prices.

So if you're talking about, you know, terraces, you're talking about stripping away agricultural supports that are the reason why corn is so cheap, which is the reason why you have high fructose corn syrup in all of these things. And if you go through like the middle aisles in the grocery store, everything is just basically like different ways of packaging corn. If you get rid of those supports, yeah, in a lot of ways, prices are going to go up. I'm not sure that there is as much tension, though, because...

My sense from talking to RFK, and we interviewed with him a number of times here, and we talked to him about health, and we talked to him about healthcare, and what his vision would be, etc.,

is that he basically is more on the libertarian front. So, you know, for example, on the left, like I support Medicare for all. I think that would be an incredibly important development in terms of, you know, health and combating chronic disease, because then you're taking some of the profit motive out of the health care system. You're taking the health insurers out of, you know, the middle between you and getting the care that you need. It would help incentivize preventive care. So it's not just people who, you know, only go to the doctor when they are

absolutely desperate because they can't afford to before that. And so I asked him about that and he wasn't in support of it. He's more of a tradition that I've actually been reading about, which is it's this back to the land movement of the 1970s, where after the 60s are over and, you know, RFKs

father has been killed and MLK has been killed and Nixon is ascendant. And there's this retrenchment among the like left countercultural movement. And you had a lot of people who rather than continuing to engage in like mass protests and trying to change the national conversation, they sort of retreated into these like communes and these different alternative lifestyles.

And the ethos there was very libertarian. And it was also very just rejectionist of anything that was mainstream, good, bad or indifferent. If it was mainstream, they didn't want it, whether it was the nuclear family or modern medicine or using, you know, modern farming technology. They'd rather get on a horse than buggy and try to figure it out because it was just anything that's associated with modern life. I'm just going to reject it.

And, you know, that would that movement would have been in full effect when R.F.K. Jr. was a young man. And I think a lot of his ethos seems to come out of the instincts of that era. Now, part of what happened to obviously this movement didn't last all that long. Part of what happened is that when you have this purely libertarian, like, oh, every

everybody do what everybody wants to do. Next thing you know, you have people who aren't carrying their own weight. You have conflict between what are the values and the structure and the whole thing kind of crumbles. You also have outbreaks of preventable diseases like hepatitis and you have staph infections and all those sorts of things. So all this a long way of saying, like, as best as I can understand RFK's ideology based on what he said publicly and what he said in our discussions with him when we've we've pushed him on these things.

Like, I think he's much more of the direction of just burn down the FDA, not, in my opinion, what really needs to happen is you actually need to strengthen the FDA. You do need to break the corruption in terms of the revolving door and the way that's been incredibly destructive.

You need to take the profit motive out of healthcare for sure so that the primary impetus is people getting healthy and people being well. We do have a terrible chronic disease epidemic in this country. We have lifespan that is shortening. All these things are very real.

But just a strictly libertarian approach to that is not going to get the job done. And so, yeah, I think people will be like, you know, they'll probably push to like, OK, now you can drink raw milk. Sure, fine. That's all well and good. Is that going to really solve the problems that we have, though? Ultimately, no. So I think you're right that there is an instinct on the right just to like burn all of these institutions down when actually all that burning the government institutions down is

does is empower the corporate for-profit institutions which are not really being attacked on the other side. And that's the danger of the libertarianism. Not to mention, of course, like, you know,

And vaccines have been an incredibly important modern health development. And, you know, the research that has been funded by the federal government, actually one thing we've talked about a bunch, is that the drug companies by and large are not developing new drugs. In fact, all of the new drug molecules that have been developed have been developed over the past 20-some years with federal government funding.

funding. That piece is actually really important. So I think it would be quite disastrous if there's a rollback of that type of funding, if there's a rollback of that type of research, if there's an actual dismantling and destruction of those government agencies, not just stripping out the corruption and putting people's health first and foremost. Before we play what he said, again, I actually talked with some people who were in line to be FDA people under Donald Trump.

Last time. And there are multiple schools of thought. So there is what you just said, which is basically like ramp up the FDA, push out the corruption. I think there's also like a quasi-libertarian, almost capitalist element to this too. Yeah. Where the problem with the FDA is that it genuinely has been corporate captured. So one of the things that FDA, that...

RFK wants to do is to ban the pay for play model where the drug companies have to basically pay the bureaucrats to analyze their drugs. This actually keeps out new drug entrants and it keeps the big companies very, very large, which are able to basically push out and stifle all competition. So if you look at Silicon Valley biotech startups,

The FDA is the number one basically reason that many new drugs have not been able to be pushed from that way. Now, you could say that there is corruption and all that, and you would basically allow a new big pharma to arise. But the truth is we don't have competition in the pharma sector really at all. It's

completely rolled up and it's actually weirdly controlled by these European conglomerates. So that's one and I actually do think that'd be correct. One of the things we want to do is to change the drug development process and allow for more of less corporate capture that basically allows these big pharma companies do the pay for play FDA revolving door. And I think I do support that in terms of what he's looking at because I've been hearing it from people who are like biotech founders now for quite some time. The interesting part also on the vaccine now is aren't and we're going to play some of his comments here.

As I understand it, and this is the as reality, despite what R.K. has said many times in the past, including no vaccine is, quote, safe and effective. He believes that you should have transparency on the safety and the efficacy of childhood vaccinations, of which they currently are not allowed to release that did not even run the trials and that they are immune from what is it that they are immune from prosecution under the.

I forget the exact piece of legislation. The change in the guidance would basically allow both the safety and the efficacy data to be released. Now, after a while and looking at all this, I think I have come down to his position simply because here's the truth. COVID-vax broke all institutional trust in the entire public health infrastructure, not just COVID-vax,

masking, everything. The rise in vaccination and voluntary exemption has skyrocketed since COVID. People have legitimate questions because they genuinely don't trust the public health data and the infrastructure. At this point, and this is something that Emily Oster, who is a professor at the, I forget exactly which school, but she's written a couple of very interesting books about parenthood, et cetera. She's considered like the godmother of parenting. One of the things that she really did well is she's a health economist. And when you read her books,

what you see inside of them is everything is based on big longitudinal studies. Some of these do exist for the vaccine, however, or vaccines, MMR and many of these other that are included, but a lot of the safety and the efficacy data has not been actually released in terms of the trials. And actually many of them are not even allowed to be run.

So what he, I think in practice, what it would look like is effectively allowing that and giving quote unquote choice to parents. Now, obviously I understand that that is controversial because each state has to grapple with religious exemption, personal exemption, health exemption, the idea of herd immunity, et cetera. But the

The thing is, is that it's already happening. The vast majority of people do not trust the public health establishment after what happened under COVID. I personally include myself in them. I remember reading the approval process for the booster vaccine and I said, this is bullshit. I can't believe that you're allowed to be able to do this. And the justification was, oh, well, we do it every year for the flu vaccine. And I was like, okay, well, then I've got some questions about the flu vaccine.

And I never thought about the flu vaccine. I was just like, yeah, it's fine. But I never considered the actual backstory and all that that went into it. And, you know, it's one of those where the questions around it are now so mainstream, I actually don't really think we have a choice to basically pursue his own agenda. So, yeah.

I am, I, again, I think that his libertarian minded elements of wanting to break up the FDA cartel, how NIH works, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya apparently isn't in line to lead the NIH. I think he'd be a fantastic choice. He was a good contrarian voice under COVID. Basically vaccine transparency, safety and efficacy data. A lot of that stuff that could be released. I think it would be really good, but I'm not sure.

But I, again, think that the big tension will come with any sort of European-style liberalism, where this is, again, a big part of banning food dyes. These things would increase the price. Or everyone's like, oh, the McDonald's tastes better in Europe, which, by the way, is not true. But what they say is, if you go home and you look at Europe, they explicitly cap the amount of sodium they are allowed to put into meat. They have very different standards about the way things are. Now,

Again, I think that's great. But are we going to deny that grass-fed beef and all that is not exorbitantly more expensive? I buy it. I think it's definitely way healthier. But you really need to think about what that would impact the consumer on. That's why historically this has been a movement of like –

wealthy white liberals. Yes, yeah. In California. These are Erebon, California shoppers. Like, that's what they care about. Which is why you've also had, you know, it's been in like Hollywood where you've had people, you know, oh, vaccines are natural. So I'm not going to get my kids vaccinated. And then lo and behold, you've got a measles outbreak. I mean, that's the thing is like,

You know, RFK is not... I know he likes to use, oh, I'm not anti-vax, blah, blah, blah. He's anti-vax. Like, if you're going to go out and say there is no vaccine that is safe and effective, I think, definitionally, you are anti-vax. Now, the...

the COVID piece that you're talking about, I think that the way that public health officials didn't think that the American people could be trusted with the actual like nuances of what this vaccine could and couldn't do and what it was and all of that. I think you're absolutely correct that that broke a lot of public trust. There's no doubt about it. But you know, when we look at where RFK and his organization, um,

The children what's the name of it children's health health defense have been involved like they have left disasters in their wake the most prominent of which is they played into these fears around the measles vaccine in Samoa and Went in and basically misled people and fomented a whole panic that dropped measles vaccination rates down to something like 30% you had a big outbreak and

And 80 people died, 80 plus people died, most of them children under the age of five.

So this stuff has real life or death consequences. And when he's been, when people have trusted him in these critical arenas, it's been a disaster. So, you know, RFK is like endlessly skeptical of anything that is like mainstream settled science. And you know what? You should be skeptical of those things. You should ask questions. You should definitely look at like the monetary incentives and all that. Absolutely. But then he's endlessly like credulous

about any sort of, you know, natural seeming crackpot theory, conspiracy, et cetera. And you should be even more skeptical of that end of the spectrum. And so, you know, that's where I have a lot. Like, I think that the things that he did to stoke anti-vax sentiment and other health lies using his organization, I think they were devastating. And that example in Samoa is just one.

So no, I don't feel comfortable putting him in charge of this like massive federal bureaucracy where you have lots of power and this libertarian instinct because libertarianism is all well and good until you've got a massive measles outbreak and your kid is in the hospital with a easily preventable disease that we eradicated long ago.

So, you know, it's very likely, it's very possible that we have, there's already like an AV, some kind of avian flu that's spreading right now, monkeypox, whatever. Like it's very possible that we have some sort of significant outbreak. And RFK does not really accept modern medical science, which has been a miracle in many ways. And then the other piece of this is like,

You know, the, um, to me, the corruption is really the core part of the problem. But if you actually wanted to get like, and the chronic disease epidemic, first of all, it would take way more than the, you know, just making health food more natural and having fewer ingredients, blah, blah, blah. Like the availability of highly dense caloric foods, the total sedentary lifestyle of Americans like that plays all into it. But also the other thing you would

probably do is a lot more people would take Ozempic and he's anti-Ozempic. So I'm

I genuinely would love to see someone who has his instincts when it comes to being skeptical of the corruption of these companies and the impact they have throughout our healthcare system. But what I actually think he's likely to do is only to empower those forces more by undercutting the government agencies that are meant to regulate and serve as a check, a very imperfect check admittedly right now, on those massive forces of corporate power.

- I could understand that. I mean, the Samoa thing was bad. Like there's no getting around it. - Yeah, it's horrible. - And this is again though where I have to like put a little bit more trust in institutions and even just look at basically what in practice, what he would say. It's like, okay, safety and efficacy of MMR vaccine and then allowing parents a choice. I mean, I don't see the issue broadly.

If you're not banning the vaccine, if you're not underwriting it, people have a choice on what they can and can't do. I think the most liberating thing of the RFK quote unquote philosophy or even the whole like just asking questions thing is you do generally go, okay, so why do you give a child like four vaccines on the exact same day when they're two months old? When the Europeans do it differently, which is better? Should we compare this versus this? Why is the hepatitis, what is it, B vaccine delivered on birth

But that's not what he does. No, but no. He raises those things to then just be like, that's why vaccines are bad and cause autism, which is a bunch of which is like lies and bullshit. And it's not just on that. Like our friend Zedulani reported on a great piece about how his group also has backed this completely discredited mode of trying to communicate with people who are nonverbal autistics.

that involves using like, you know, a moderator who's supposedly helping them to be able to stabilize their hand so they can type out messages. And like I said, it's been like thoroughly debunked and discredited. His group pushed this as an actual model. And, you know, in some severe cases, there was an instance where, you know, a nonverbal autistic person was sexually assaulted because their facilitator claimed that they were in some romantic relationship. Like,

There are so many examples where whatever it is, he believes—

insane like crackpot things. And so, you know, it puts me in a difficult position trying to defend this because I have my own problems with these institutions. And I think part of why Democrats lost is because they were seen as being like the defenders of the institutions when people are like, fuck these institutions, basically. And RFK is also like, fuck these institutions. But the specifics of how you do it matter. And so if you're just taking a sledgehammer

to regulatory agencies, that just means that there are gonna be more snake oil salesmen. That just means there are gonna be more people hawking supplements that claim to do X and Y and Z for you that are just completely fake and bogus. That just means you're gonna have less regulation. That just means you're gonna have actually less investment in the type of research that generally has developed life-saving new drug molecules and treatments

which is what the federal government has done amazingly well, actually. I mean, again, the drug companies are basically just like buy up the research that our taxpayers' dollars fund and our distribution mechanism. And to me, what you would want is go in the exact opposite direction and have more of this actually owned by the government, having more government-like options and competition like they are doing in California with their own government-produced insulin.

reducing those costs. But I just, you know, so I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm very like skeptical that RFK Jr. is going to do anything good that's actually going to improve public health whatsoever. I'll put it this way, is that basically the reason why people like RFK or the reason why people voted for Trump at a very base level is they're like, things are so bad under the current system.

that blowing shit up is the only thing that's possible. So for me, I'm excited about the possibility. I think that safety efficacy standards choice and being informed consent is actually very important. I don't trust the public health establishment. In terms of blowing up the FDA and seeing what the new regulatory regime, yeah, I think it honestly, what else could come from it? For them, and if you look at the way that he, Callie and Casey Means, the way that they talk,

and the data that they have around autism, about childhood obesity, about cancer, the current trajectory is death. It is a dying and obese civilization where 75% of the population is currently overweight. On Ozempic, one of the things that I actually like about RFK Jr. is that he's not a prescriber first. He's not a prescription drug person.

First, I have deep skepticism around statins, Ozempic, and all these other things in terms of their long-term overall effect and the general idea that you must rely for your entire life on a drug company to basically provide you with life because it's a very convenient economic relationship between you and said thing. We don't know what the overall impact is going to be on children who are taking Ozempic. I mean, we're talking about literally slowing down someone's gut at age 13 years old at the same time we're learning a lot about the

gut brain, you know, the, what is it? The gut brain barrier and the impact of the gut on mental health and depression and all these other things he likes and, you know, advocates for natural, uh, natural quote unquote remedies. I mean, even the whole raw milk thing. And this is where actually where I think he is generally correct on the public health establishment. There are some things like the public health people who are quote unquote banning raw milk and say, it's like, look, if you look at the data, is it slightly more like unsafe? Yeah. But it's at the same time, like there's,

There are so many other things that are out there which are not banned, which are 10, 15,000 times worse for you. If people want to drink raw milk, let them drink it. And get diarrhea, like be my guest. No, but it's not just that. It's like, look, if they believe in this, I mean, there are, like you just pointed out, under FDA does not look at any of these supplements. There are things you can buy over the counter, which are 10 to 15,000 times more dangerous. But that's kind of my point, Sagar, is that, so, obviously,

RFK and people with his mindset and a lot of his supporters are endlessly skeptical of like, you know, actually FDA approved drugs, which do have to go through a rigorous process. Is that process perfect? Is there? Of course. But there is a rigorous process in place to prove efficacy. Okay.

And then they're endlessly credulous about like some bullshit supplement because it's got like a natural health whatever or some weird remedy that they read on the internet that has absolutely no efficacy and is just being sold by a literal snake oil salesman. That's my issue. And, you know, I mean, with regard to

He has been skeptical over whether HIV actually causes AIDS. He thinks COVID was created by Jewish people and Chinese people and doesn't affect them. He thinks Wi-Fi causes cancer. He thinks different chemicals are making kids trans. He's anti-vax. I mean, it's just like he thinks antidepressants are the reason for mass shootings. There's just nothing. Well, actually, that one, there's the most efficacy for that one. No, there's not. Probably most mass shooters are actually...

probably need to be on more meds. No, the real problem. Actually, most of them are addicted to weed and antidepressants, but that's a whole other story that people aren't ready for. But this- No, no, no. On antidepressants and SSRIs, I think he's absolutely 100% correct. But I was critical of this when it was inside of the Democratic Party too. This complete rejection, like,

that anything that's natural, like weed, must inherently be less harmful and less bad for you, right? Like, oh, if nature provided it, it must be better for you. And that's just not true.

And I think it can lead to very damaging outcomes. As we've seen, like I said, when RFK Jr. has had impacts on people's health, you ended up with 80-some people in Samoa dying. Right. But the thing is, is that when you're talking about damaging outcomes, look at the damage of the public health infrastructure. And like it's 10, it's a million times worse. I think you have to,

ask yourself though, why, if your goal is to improve people's health outcomes and lower, like improve life expectancy, all of these things, why universal healthcare isn't a part of that at all. When that is the major thing that sets us apart from, you know, the rest of the developed world,

who have not seen these massive declines in terms of their life expectancy. And is it the only thing? No, but is it a critical part? Any honest conversation has to say that is a critical part, but that would require going after the health insurance, that would require something

other than libertarian, like you can drink your raw milk and whatever approach and just destroying the FDA and like destroying the NIH and just burning it all down, as you said. And I do think there is a bit, I think you're right that there's a big instinct among the public that just like screw all these institutions, let's just burn them all to the ground. And RFK channels a lot of that.

But if you don't, that's, I mean, this is sort of like a core problem with libertarianism is that if you don't do the work to check corporate power and to actually have a government that is strong enough to act that is, you know, not corrupt to act as a check on those corporate influences, then you're going to end up in a very bad place. And I think that's what his ideology is and certainly is what it's likely to be expressing

as through a Trump administration. I mean, look, possible in terms of corporate capture, cronyism, etc. He does also want to end a lot of the pharma corruption. And look, I have my own issues with RFK Jr., okay? In terms of his California 1970s liberalism and the way that it's applied to nuclear power and just like the general way that he's, like you just said, in terms of he's very accepting of what, Three Mile Island and the fact that it can't get a insurance policy. So I'm not saying he's a perfect person.

Yeah. But in a world where people have deep distrust of the medical establishment and of the healthcare system, RFK Jr. is the natural extension of this. Now, whether he gets confirmed or not, I don't know. But I have been thinking about it, and I think America actually deserves to see what it voted for. I've been thinking about this a lot.

America voted for a blow up the institutions option. I think Matt Gaetz should be picked. I think, or should get confirmed. Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., and all of it. America should see what it's actually like. For years, we've actually wanted to blow shit up. Let's see what it looks like. If it's chaos and if it's terrible, you're welcome to vote the other ways. But there is like a grotesque, weird thing happening here

where we don't, in some ways the Republicans are like trying to protect Trump from himself. It's like, no, he's a grown ass man and he knows exactly what it is. But I also think people know what they voted for in a certain sense and they want to see everything get burned to the ground. And I honestly, I'm excited to see it too. I wanna see like, are my instincts correct or am I totally wrong? And even on the universal healthcare front, and this is the fundamental problem. When you have lack of trust in institutions, nobody including me is signing up for government healthcare.

I'm not signing up for a COVID vaccine. You know, oh, you can't go get your cold, you know, flu appointment because you didn't take the COVID vaccine. No, no, no. And then that's the issue is that after a world where public health and all these other people have tried to impose a regime on our lives and they failed dramatically.

After their system has basically created them one of the most obese countries in the entire world, so what is it, where are we, second to Qatar? If we look at our childhood obesity and all these other things, our food system, why would we trust the government to take over it? So to solve that, you really do actually need the safety, the transparency, and a lot of the change in the system

that I think to arrive at that would require actually a fundamental revolution in the American people's trust in institutions. Right now, that's rock bottom. RFK, Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, all these other people, their choice to have one thing in common, what they want to burn the bureaucracy to the ground. And frankly, America voted for that.

Donald Trump himself, he doesn't care about anything except for that. So we should see it. We should actually see what it's like in practice. And people can complain. If you lose your, I don't know if no drug gets developed or whatever, it's like, okay, well, that is what you voted for. Let's be honest. That's actually what we voted for. If the Department of Justice gets gutted and nothing, whatever works for six years, but we get the Russiagate and all that stuff out of there, frankly, I'd be fine with

that, but the point is is that that is what people voted for. So to a certain point, we do have to respect quote unquote the will of the people and what they have been asking for under Donald Trump, but also over the last 20 years, and that is an erosion of trust to the point where these institutions don't work for them, they don't trust a word that they have to say. And whether it's good for them or not, I mean in a certain sense, people have their destiny in their hands.

That's what they decided to do at the ballot box. Donald Trump won the popular vote. I mean, at a certain point, we just have to say, okay, you get what you want, you know? And I really think that's where I'm at with RFK Jr. Look, like I said, I have my own problems with them. I have a very different vision of what the government would run like, not necessarily with RFK, but under what quote unquote Vance administration. But I'm not the median voter, you know? People voted for this and that's what they seem to want. I mean, I actually think that's fair.

The only thing I would say, like, you know, to read like a ideologically consistent mandate into any election result, I think is a fool's errand. Because, I mean, if you ask, people still, people are overwhelmingly in favor of universal health care. So, you know, to just say, oh, you know, what they just voted for was to burn it down. Yeah.

That's certainly one element of it. But I also think that there's a lot of ideological inconsistencies among the American people, to say the least. But the other thing that's funny to me, to your point, Sagar, is I think a lot of

especially the sort of like more like billionaire or Wall Street backers of Trump. I think they really convinced themselves that he didn't really mean. Yeah, no, they definitely did. And we're going to talk about that with Jeff. Yeah, we'll talk about that with Jeff. I mean, you even expressed like, I don't think he's going to do it. No, he, I think,

think the assumption should be at this point. He he meant the things that he said on the trail like he he meant it. And there was a clip of what's his name Howard Lutnick who's one of the co-chairs of the transition on CNN who was getting asked about RFK Jr. and Caitlin Collins is like

you know, isn't it going to be a problem if he's HHS secretary? And he's like, there's no way that's going to happen. And she's like, really? Because that's what's being floated. And he's like, no, not a chance. And this is one of the co-chairs of the transition. And here's RFK Jr. And I also think all the speculation on soccer, I'm curious your perspective on this of like, oh, the Gates-

nomination is just like a distraction to try to really get Hegs set through or whatever. Like, no, I think Trump wants these people. I think he wants all of them. And I think he plans to get them. And if, you know, and I think he probably will get almost all of them, whether it's through acting appointments or, you know, he's got a plan laid out where I don't want to get into all the technical minutiae right now, but where he can actually use the powers of the presidency to force the Senate into recess and

and then get whatever appointments he wants, and they don't have to face any sort of vote in a Senate. So, yeah, you've got a bunch of people out there who are like, RFK Jr. is not pro-life, and that's kind of a big problem for the pro-life community because the FDA is very important in terms of the Mifepristone regulation. You know, most abortions in this country at this point are medication abortions. Mifepristone, you know this, Sagar, is the number one drugstore.

way, like abortions have actually gone up post the overturning of Roe versus Wade because of the availability of Mifepristone, the FDA could roll back that authorization. So the pro-life community is not gonna be happy about the fact that RFK Jr. at least seems to be more or less pro-choice and is unlikely to use those agencies as a cudgel, which is something that I'm happy about with regard to the choice of RFK Jr. is not likely to use those agencies as a cudgel against abortion rights.

but they may not really have their say. I think Trump wants these people and I think he's probably gonna get them. - I think you are right and that's another reason why I really just think they should all be confirmed. And I mean, I guess to wrap things up, I think in the big, big picture, there are institutions that will check

Donald Trump, but also he is going to be the president of the United States imbued with immense power. So the cabinet officials and the appointees and all that stuff. Yeah, they should. And then, you know, and just in general, in like for what the Republicans and all these other people are saying, like, oh, maybe we'll vote against them. I'm like, listen, this is actually

Unironically, this is what America wanted. They don't want Bush 2.0. It's pretty clear. I think you're doing a whole monologue about why working class voters, I mean, not to give it away, but isn't it that a lot of them hate the system? Well, yes, but actually a lot of it had to do with Gaza. It was like a surprising number that were like, actually, Gaza was important to me, which even I was surprised by the number who have said that. Gotcha.

- Got it. I mean, look, of course that's a big part of it, but I would say like in general, this feeling of this system is broken and we have to blow it up completely is the major through line between Tulsi. I mean, really think about it. You know, you asked me once, you're like, how can we put together people who are warmongers and Tulsi Gabbard or whatever, who are up there on the same stage? And I was like, it's about grievance. It's about blowing shit up.

At the end of the day, MSG, that's what they wanted. That's what people actually voted for. So I say that's what you should give them and then see if they like the consequences or not. I'm curious, too. I've always wanted to know, like, what would it actually look like? It's exciting. And so I think in general, just like looking at all of this, you know, and look, the real reason you should also want all these people to come through is if it's a total disaster, then honestly, you can finally say it's been tried and it didn't work.

And I think that's another reason why, you know, people in certain sense, like who are trying to continue the permanent bureaucracy, you're actually undermining any counter case you could ever give to why these things won't work. You'll finally get to see what it's actually like in practice. We saw a little bit last time, but this time for real, like in the actual mechanisms of the government. So anyway, I know it's a long winded way. We do have Jeff Stein standing by. So yeah, yeah, let's go and jump to Jeff.

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Thanks, Kevin. Back on. Absolutely. All right, let's go and put this up there on the screen. You've been doing some incredible reporting about inside the Trump transition team and some tension between Elon Musk and some of Trump's advisors, including Trump himself. So Elon apparently has not left Mar-a-Lago. Trump even name checked him in a speech and was like, I can't get him to get out of here. He won't leave me alone. You saw a clip of Trump actually smacking Elon while he's using his phone at the UFC. So there's some stuff going on.

on behind the scenes. But for our purposes, it appears that Elon has intervened directly in a fight around tariffs and specifically the Treasury Secretary. So what can you tell us about what's going on inside right now? So just outside quickly, Elon Musk

tweeted yesterday that he thinks that it's really good that Argentina massively slashed tariffs. And that was the first, like, what is going on? We have that, actually. Can we put that on the screen? Continue to talk, Jeff, so people can see it. He's going to be like the Trump co-president. You can't go around saying, actually, the number one domestic policy priority of the president is stupid. Like, it seemed like an incredible thing for him to be saying. Mm-hmm.

And then a few hours later, he went on X again and said something that even more annoyed the people I talked to in the Trump orbit, which was that Trump should pick Howard Lutnick, one of the two candidates for Treasury secretary up until really that point. Musk, you know, he is around Mar-a-Lago all the time. He's around Trump all the time. There's a sense, you know, it's hard to tell with Trump personally, but Trump's

And certainly among Trump advisers that I've spoken to, they are already fed up with Musk. They think he doesn't really understand Washington. They think he doesn't really know what he's doing. Maybe, you know, from the perspective of people who want, you know, massive changes, that that is maybe an asset. That's what he's bringing, sort of fresh eyes, fresh perspective, not, you know, burdened by...

by what has been. But, but so two moves by Musk in one day that said, you know, I have strong views that, that are not sort of just falling in line with what the leader of this train is saying. And it's still early and there's, I still think they're in the honeymoon bromance period, but how long that goes on for when Musk is sort of famous to sort of drop pet fascinations after a few months of getting tired of them.

It's true. It will be a fascinating story. Trump also known for dropping those pet fascinations, at least when they're human beings. Tell us, though, about these different potential Treasury choices and how they differ ideologically and what some of the policy implications could be. Yeah, it's a little tricky because I think some of this gets a little overdetermined where it's like because a candidate –

not as strong on one thing, it becomes that they're weak on this thing. And so you sort of get these like over-dramatized in the press and frankly, in some of my stories, versions of what each of the candidates represents when it's much more sort of contingent and hard to tell. The two candidates, as we were discussing, I feel like most people like go to sleep when a

I start talking about this, but Scott Bessons is this hedge fund executive who, despite working for George Soros, which is kind of an amazing thing, has become one of Trump's most trusted economic advisors, as Sagar and I were discussing before the show started. He is not just quite a normal Wall Street guy. He is quite strong on a lot of the trade stuff that Trump people have long wanted. But I think it's fair to say that they also worry that he's

not quite as into, let's say, universal tariffs, which would create huge import duties on every U.S. trading partner. And Besson's, I think it's fair to say, or fair to wonder about his commitment to that cause. And then the second candidate is this guy, Howard Lutnick. He's been co-chair of the Trump transition team. Lutnick is also a Wall Street guy. So I think it's a little unfair to be like he is the trade hawk in the race. But he has been, I think it's fair to say, more involved

willing to embrace tariffs than Bassett, and more sort of forthright in that. But I think possibly even more importantly, Lutnick doesn't really have sort of the independent power base. Like if we're thinking of analogs to other Trump cabinet positions, I think

Lutnick is much more similar to Matt Gaetz in that he is kind of with Trump or he's no one. Yes. Besson is a mega billionaire who has clout abroad, who has constituencies on the Hill, who has sort of

you know, people that he can turn to to back them up that aren't just Trump. And I think there's a sense that while Lutnik has the endorsement of Musk and some others, he is more of a sort of loyalist surrogate, you know, critics would say lapdog crony type person.

And so that's how this race has broken down. And Trump seems to be just getting annoyed that these people just keep sniping at each other, taking potshots, criticizing each other. I heard we reported a broker over the weekend that Besson's people went to Trump and were saying, hey, look, Lutnick hosted a Hillary Clinton fundraiser in 2016.

A lot of people were coming back and saying Besson works for Soros. He's friends with people in the deep state. He's not that serious about your trade stuff. And Trump seems to be like, you know what, screw both you guys. I'm going to look for a third candidate. The fundamental, as Chris Lee alluded to, the fundamental structural problem for Trump is that he wants massive tariffs to rebalance global trade, which I think is an expression of a genuine popular sentiment in

in the country, but he also wants the line to go up. He loves stonks. Trump is a Wall Street guy. Those visions are fundamentally incompatible. Someone who is very strong on trade

will be someone who the markets freak out about and someone who the markets won't freak out about will be weak on trade. So how Trump reconciles both of those, I think is going to be really hard to say. And getting to that, Jeff, you know, what are the tensions already in the economic team? So Larry Kudlow, it appears, is back.

National Economic Council. Larry could not be more anti-tariff in terms of all of his personal commentary and his background. Now we have two Treasury Secretary candidates that are talking here about tariffs. And then Bob Lighthizer, who is probably one of the most legitimate pro-tariffs former U.S. trade representative, is allegedly in the mix either for trade representative or possibly for trade secretary. So is it basically a repeat of last time around? How do you think it will happen this time?

You know, if Trump had come out and picked Besant right away, I think you could see him playing the same role essentially as Mnuchin, which was, you know, to kind of rein in Trump's impulses on tariffs and say, OK, let's like basically preserve the global financial order without like literally overturning the table. And the fact that Trump hasn't gone down that route, I think based on my reporting, I mean, this this reporting is really hard because, you

You talk to people who say, Trump said this, and then he likes this candidate. And then you ask them like,

You call your editors and you say, oh, I got this great intel. Like this guy is supporting this candidate. Like Trump is looking at him closely. And then you think about it more and then you're like, wait, who do you support? And then that person will often be supporting the candidate that they're leaking is in the mix. So it's this like weird delicate dance you have to do as a reporter. But my I think the evidence that the evidence I've gathered suggests that Trump Trump does not want a repeat election.

of his first administration when they really just kind of tinkered around the edges of the global trade system. I think he wants to go big. And I think the Gates pick, I think other things he's done suggest that he like, as you guys were discussing before I came on, he's serious about this new world order, this like very transformative moment and wants to pursue that. And, you know, is

Is he willing to do that at the expense of the Wall Street, of the stock market? Like that we're going to have to see. But but he's he's definitely thinking about it. He's definitely torn with it. Yeah, that was something I wanted to ask you about, Jeff, because you for a while have been saying the Wall Street backers of Trump or or those even who just were sort of comfortable with another Trump term. They just didn't really.

take him seriously when he was like, no, guys, I'm serious. I want an across the board import tax on everything. 10%, 20%, maybe 200%. Like, I want to do this. And they're like, yeah, but Trump says a lot of things. And to your point, I think we now have every indication that like, no, the things that he said, he genuinely is inclined to do. So, um,

You know, do you think that there is what is the sense on Wall Street now that that's becoming increasingly clear? And if there is, what are some of the mechanisms he could use to not have to go through Congress to have a massive implementation of some sort of tariff program? And what do you think the impacts of that would likely be?

Yeah, there are people in Washington, as you guys know, who get paid, you know, two or three times what I get paid. And their job is like to gather corporate intelligence for their clients. And I talked to them and I think they are totally wrong about this, because as you as you were alluding to.

congressional Republicans and corporate leaders and donors have been very convinced that Trump is bluffing with all this tariff stuff. They think it's a negotiating tactic to scare other foreign countries into doing what we want to do. They think that Trump is throwing red meat on the campaign trail to his voters. If you listen to him, if you listen to what Trump says,

I mean, again, I could be wrong, but if you listen to the words coming out of his mouth, he says tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented. He called them the best word in the dictionary. He said that there are no downsides to them. He said that they could pay off the national debt, fund a national child care program and allow us maybe to abolish the income tax.

this is not a guy who is looking at this tool in a maybe it'll have some upside, maybe it'll have some downside way. If the reality proves to be that way, which I think it would, maybe he'll pull back from the brink. But the reality is every piece of evidence that he's giving us suggests that he's dead serious to me about this. And

A lot of the business leaders and big donors, they see Trump as a vehicle for tax cuts and are hoping that this is just kind of overstated. And that has always seemed to me to be like an incredibly risky bet. I mean, I don't have millions of dollars to give away on the campaign, but like it does seem like like like he's very serious. And to your legal question, yes.

Trump has national security authority under IEPA, the law that governs sanctions, to declare a national security emergency and impose tariffs on whatever country he wants. And that is something that the courts could adjudicate, but it could take years, by which point all of the trade measures that Trump wants would already be in effect. Right. One more for you, Jeff, from me, and I don't know if Sagar has anything else, but I'm

Another piece of analysis that I've questioned, and I think maybe you've questioned as well, is that the Doge agency that was given to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, which is kind of giving like, you know, blue ribbon commission, like here's a thing for you to play with and go away, that it may not be as meaningless as it has been portrayed at

at times and that also this administration has explored ways that they could avoid having to, you know, go through a filibuster, et cetera, to institute massive government spending cuts. That's something that most of the Republican Party would also be on board with. So what is your reading of the import of Doge?

Yeah, this is another thing I spoke to someone who works for a military defense contractor last week who was saying, like, we're going to be fine, right? Like, Congress needs to approve whatever Elon and Vivek come up with. And I was like, how do you guys get paid so much to do this work? This is not necessarily true.

If you look at Trump's OMB chief, this is the person who oversees the budget. His name is Russ Vogt in the first term. It's a little unclear because he was associated with Project 2025, whether he'll get that spot back. But assuming he does, which I think he will,

he has spent the last several years in the Biden administration working on legal theories related to something called impoundment. Impoundment is the president's ability to say, I don't want this spending program to continue because I think the original purpose that Congress authorized is no longer valid. And

Russ Vogt and some of the lawyers close to him who are already on the Trump team have spent a lot of time thinking about how do we use this legal theory of impoundment to stop spending on federal programs we don't like? And that is a huge potential constitutional showdown here, because what it means is that the president could say, Congress approved this, but I don't want to do it. And so I'm going to stop this federal program. And that

That means Vivek and Elon, if that's real, if they either win in the courts or just want to try, that could change the entire complexion of a blue ribbon commission that puts up non-binding recommendations to the Hill that the Hill just says, like, F off. I already authorized these programs. And so I think people are really sleeping on the possibility that

Elon and Vivek do much more than I think the conventional wisdom even among well-paid lobbyists in Washington. I think that's a really important point on both of those, which is that it's possible and it would require novel legal theories. I know and I've heard very similar about the pursuit of this. That said, last time around, Jeff, he did say many things about tariffs. He did back down.

He did, you know, ultimately carry through some national security tariffs on soybeans, you know, et cetera, and a few other things. But by and large, there was a huge war with congressional Republicans day one, as you said, about trying to divert funds. He tried to do that on the border wall. It was a colossal failure, got struck down by the court. So there are several systems in place which could seriously throw a wrench into his plans here now.

No, that's totally true. And and, you know, it's hard to know how to weight these things. I think the impoundment thing, you know, they got a shot with the conservative Supreme Court. My understanding is, you know, from people close to this, that they're looking at sort of like what what is a example of an obviously wasteful program that like is spending money that the White House clearly has an interest in stopping? Can they get the Supreme Court to approve this?

their theory in that case and then go and implement all these other ones that are maybe like more edge cases. In terms of the tariffs, whether he does an automatic 20 percent tariff on every country, again, as you're saying, there is a lot of resistance among congressional Republicans to going down that route. My understanding from Trump transition officials is that they are working on proposals to do that. So

If they back down when the rubber hits the road, like maybe they will and we'll hopefully talk about it then. But I think they're going to try. Yeah, they certainly might. Jeff, we always appreciate your analysis, sir. Thank you for joining us. Great to see you, Jeff. Love being on. Thanks, guys. Yeah, our pleasure.

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All right, so let's get back to some of the nominations that have already been made and curious for Sagar's reaction to these as well. So we have Matt Gaetz, who has been nominated to serve as Attorney General of the United States. Let's put this up on the screen. There are some questions.

over whether or not Mr. Gates would be confirmed as attorney general. He has been himself investigated by the Department of Justice for alleged sex trafficking. They dropped that investigation. He's also been investigated by a Republican-led House Ethics Committee into similar allegations. And we can get into a little bit more of the specifics. But in any case, he's also

He's also just not really particularly well-liked on Capitol Hill amongst anyone. I just hate him. Yeah. And it has nothing to do with policy. It has almost all to do with all the Kevin McCarthy thing and being a grandstander. He's a hard person to get along with. Yeah.

In my personal experience, he is a difficult person to like as a human being. So anyway, according to NBC's reporting, I've seen some other reporting to this effect as well. More than half of Senate Republicans, including some in senior leadership, privately say they do not see a path for Matt Gaetz to be confirmed as attorney general, would not support him to lead the Department of Justice.

While Gates' ability to be confirmed, they write, appears on the rocks among Senate Republicans. President-elect Trump's team remains confident he will eventually be confirmed even if it's after an ugly battle. NBC News spoke to more than 15 additional Republican sources who agreed there are not enough votes in the Senate to confirm Gates and some estimated that closer to 30 Republicans consider him unqualified. Your thoughts? Well,

I mean, this relates to the RFK Jr. discussion. I think this is what America voted for. I think Donald Trump was serious whenever he said, Schedule F, fire everybody. The Department of Justice is going to, what did J.D. say? He's going to be the most important part of it. Yeah, that's what Gates is. Gates is a loyalist.

On policy, I mean, he's actually an interesting guy, right? I mean, he's, I don't like that he's very pro-weed, but he is very consistently pro-weed. He's a lot more libertarian. What is he? He wants to pardon Julian Assange, to pardon Edward Snowden. He is genuinely anti-war, has been worked with Ro Khanna previously in the past. So, I mean, if you were to ask me, like relative to some of the other picks, I actually don't think he's bad.

Will he get through? That is an open question. But this is actually one, too, where we were talking about this on the phone, and I still, it really remains to be seen. If Trump wants somebody through, I do feel like he's going to get it. And the question around Gates is, was this all some jujitsu maneuver to, like,

the House Ethics Committee? I mean, that's certainly possible. Kevin McCarthy has been insinuating from the very beginning that this entire McCarthy coup was revenge against Kevin McCarthy because he's like, I've seen the text messages. I've seen the ethics report. I'm, you know, whether any of that's going to come to fruition. I mean, the charges against Gates, like the image of it is not great. I mean, I will say in his defense, the charges genuinely were dropped by the DOJ and all the allegations and stuff were leaked immediately.

against him that's that even if what he's doing was legal like honestly let's be honest like it's skeevy and it's gross right and even in terms of even the legality of like what he was up to at that time uh will it be enough to sink him come on you know in the age where uh

first of all, you know, what did RFK tell me about skeletons in his closet? Like, in the age where these people are knowingly put up, and especially in a backlash against Me Too and in the post-Kavanaugh era, I don't see some sexual harassment allegation or whatever against somebody sinking anymore. I mean, I really don't. Well,

Well, there's a few things to say about that. First of all, the allegations we could put, let's put A7 up on the screen, which has some of the details here of the allegations. A woman told the House Ethics Committee that she saw Matt Gaetz have sex with a minor, that minor alleged to be 17 years old. You have both the minor herself and the client who allegedly witnessed this testifying to these events.

You know, it is something that the Republican Party has been running around for years now talking endlessly about the Democratic Party being filled with pedophiles and the whole QAnon conspiracy theory and obsessed with Epstein, et cetera, et cetera. And then your literal candidate for attorney general, chief law enforcement officer of the United States is credibly accused of

of sleeping with a minor. So there's that. Okay, on this front though, and I'm not diminishing the accusation, the DOJ investigated it, right? They dropped the allegation. They dropped the charges. Like if it was true, wouldn't they have prosecuted? Look, nobody hates Matt Gaetz more than the permanent bureaucracy. I mean, it's very difficult to...

It's very difficult to acquire enough evidence to say with beyond a reasonable doubt. But you can I don't think that you would deny that if you had a similar fact pattern about a Democrat. Yeah, sure. Republicans would be running wild with it. But the other point to be made here is, you know, all of these men we're talking about Trump, RFK Jr. RFK Jr. doesn't even really deny the sexual assault.

sexual assault allegations against him in the interview with you. He did not really deny them. It was a wild answer. So anyway, RFK Jr., Trump himself, Gates, and Hegseth, all of them at least somewhat credibly accused of sexual assault. And part of it is what you said, like the post-MeToo era, like that is part of what makes this not an accident, that these men would all be put up. But it's also, you know, with Trump, a lot of his picks are about

and his ability to dominate and control them and guarantee that no matter what he wants them to do or what bridge he wants them to cross, that they're not going to, you know, they're going to maintain their loyalty and they're going to do whatever he ultimately wants them to do, no matter what that is.

And having a lot of dirt on someone or having someone who is, you know, compromised so much that the rest of like the mainstream world wouldn't accept them or who's burned their bridges as RFK Jr. and Tulsi did with, you know, the other political party where they're never going to be accepted back across that bridge. Mm-hmm.

those are all insurance policies that those people are going to, even if you ask them to do something illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, whatever, that they're going to stay the course and stand by you. So in that way, I don't think it's an accident that you have all of these individuals who have, you know, who are kind of deeply compromised in different ways. Uh, maybe that's part of it. Uh, honestly, I think that, look, there,

their own personal stuff and all that aside. And by the way, on the Gates case, we did a lot of our stuff on the Gates stuff, but something Glenn Greenwald genuinely did convince me of is like, you know, when we are just talking about allegations or whatever that were leaked from the DOJ and then they end up dropping the case, like that is kind of a miscarriage, at least of the way that the public has to look at this stuff. He was accused of sex trafficking minors. I mean, these are heinous, horrible charges that will lock you up for a long time. And at the end of the day, they dropped

it because of lack of evidence and people do deserve due process. And I think we should actually preserve that for a lot of people. And this is actually a big part of the backlash to the whole Me Too era and like what really constitutes sexual harassment, cancellation and all of that. So I'll just put that out there specifically on Gates. Whether this woman is lying or not, I have no idea. But, you know, in general, when politicians are involved, like I'm skeptical. And if the Department of Justice will be multiple women that are lying, but.

OK, but if the if the Justice Department says we don't have the evidence to prosecute you, I mean, I'm inclined to go with it and just say, well, clearly there's not enough to back that up. So you think we should see the House Ethics Committee report? Yes, I actually do. And see, this will put me on the other side of MAGA and all those people. Let's see it. Look, I mean, is it going to be good for Gates? Probably not. And that's what I meant. I mean, that's what's very noteworthy is you did not he did not have to resign his seat.

He resigned two days before this report was set to be released. Yes, because it prohibited the report from coming out. And so that – the fact that he resigned, then they canceled the meeting where they were supposed to deliberate whether or not to release this report. So, OK, if there's a lack of evidence and there's no there there, then people should be able to see the report. I agree with releasing the report. The reason they don't want the report released is because, like I just said, it's – even if what he was doing – this is like when we were talking about Dave Portman.

It was like Dave Portnoy was, you know, he had the Me Too allegation or whatever against him. And it's like in his defense was that he was sleeping with girls who were 20 years younger than him who were DMing him on Instagram. Legal? Yeah. Creepy? Weird? Yeah.

Yeah. And so that's the defense of Matt Gaetz is that he was knowingly engaged in like in like sex parties on boats with rich people while doing drugs and getting drunk, like straight up DGN behavior. And it's like that's not something that a public official wants out of with very young girls, with young women. People were like 18, 19 years old. So, yeah, I mean, that's sketchy and gross, but.

This one allegedly 17. It's like technically legal. So it's one of those in the ethics report. I get why he doesn't want it out there. You know, he's married now and all of it. No politician would want. He probably shouldn't be engaging in that behavior. But I agree with you, actually. I think the report should be released. If you want to be the top law enforcement officer, first of all, I mean, you got to think about this in terms of black

and compromise and compromise. - Exactly, yes. - You know, what people used to talk about a lot during the Trump era. You kind of do want all of your skeletons out at this point. And to be honest, again, in the Trump era, like this stuff is not going to sink you. Will it be bad? But for Trump himself, will it really lead to him withdrawing his nomination? No, I don't think so at all. - No, I don't think so. And I do think like,

I do think if he wants Gates, he's going to get Gates. And, you know, I mean, you made the point about like he genuinely on economics is like had said something like Lena Khan and whatever. But I also don't think we should fool ourselves that that's why he got picked. He got picked because he's a loyalist. He got picked because whoever Trump wants Gates to go after Gates is going to go after.

And, you know, so that's why he's put in the position. And that is what Donald Trump talked about on the campaign trail. I disagree that that's really what people voted for. I think people voted more for like, hey, the economy was kind of good with him more so than like, you know, I want Matt Gaetz to be attorney general of the United States. But you're right. It's not like he didn't.

It's not like his statements on the campaign trail are inconsistent with this type of a choice for Attorney General of the United States. I do think his statements on the campaign trail are inconsistent with Marco Rubio and other neocons being selected for key foreign policy positions. But no one should have been surprised about that either if you look at how inconsistent Trump himself has been, what his first term was like, et cetera, et cetera. So the other person we referenced here is Pete Hegseth.

who has his own allegations that have just emerged against him. Let's go and put this up on the screen. He's, of course, picked for secretary of defense. Again, very important to know these things in terms of potential blackmail. And so the allegations here are that, so we know that he did pay an accuser who

said that he had sexually assaulted her. The story goes that he was at some conference in California and there was a woman who was, she's a, you know, conservative Republican who was staying at the hotel there with her small children and her husband, who was tasked with the unenviable task of trying to get Pete, a drunken Pete Hegseth back to his hotel room. Uh,

Apparently, a couple of other women that he was at the bar with were becoming kind of uncomfortable with him and his overtures that they were making to him.

This one was tasked with, okay, let's get drunken Pete Hegseth back up to his room because he's got to make his flight tomorrow. And then according to her, at some point in the evening, she received these texts from the bar. She says that she sensed Hegseth was irritated. What happened next is in dispute, they write. According to the memo, Jane Doe did not remember anything until she was in his hotel room and stumbling to find her hotel room. Her memory of six to nine hours was very hazy. Her husband was searching for her and was relieved when she finally showed up.

Hegseth says this is all a lie that she concocted to try to save her marriage and that the

the encounter was consensual. Obviously, her version of events is very different from that. We do know that he paid her some undisclosed settlement amount to keep this whole thing quiet. And then the other thing that we know, we can put A9 up on the screen, is that apparently the Trump team was caught off guard by this. They didn't know about this particular allegation. There is a police record that was recorded at the time of the alleged incident.

And so they were kind of caught off guard and had some meetings about this and how serious it was, blah, blah, blah. But like they seem to be standing by him and that doesn't surprise me. No, look, I mean, again, with Pete Hextath, it's his own personal life. It's not exactly like he was an angel. Yeah, and this is the guy that runs around with all kind of, you know, ultra Christian tattoos and whatever. But it's just...

- See, even on that, it's like, you know, everyone, what is it, Dose, Volt, that everyone's making? It's like, guys, in the 2010s, that was huge in military culture. It has nothing to do with- - He's got like a crusader's cross on his chest. - Yeah, which he got in Israel. That's actually a little weird if you ask me, but that's a separate conversation.

The same thing about Pete Hegseth that I think about RFK and Tulsi and all these people. These people want to blow shit up. Pete Hegseth is an anti-DEI warrior. People should go and listen to him on the Sean Ryan podcast, which he gave, it was a couple of weeks ago, where he talked about his book. He's made it pretty clear what he wants to do, and that's why Trump picked him. I would also say there's a huge part of revenge

And I was texting you guys whenever I was on the plane, whenever he got picked, because I was like, people forget. They tried to pick him for VA secretary last time in 2018. The Pentagon and the bureaucracy hate Pete

Pete Hegseth. Pete, specifically the Pentagon hates him because he circumvented the UCMJ or whatever and got Eddie Gallagher and those people out of prison and to get Trump to pardon them while he was in the military. So the brass despises him more than anything. Those are the war criminals that he got pardoned? Allegedly. Well, he pardoned them. So look, actually the case is complicated.

There's a good book called Alpha Platoon. They were found guilty. People should go and read about it. No, I'm saying the book itself. So it's not a legend. No, I'm saying the book, basically, it's questionable, at least in Eddie's case. It's a weird case. You should go and read about it. Alpha Platoon by a New York Times reporter. He, by the way, thinks Eddie is guilty, but at least he goes into the details.

My point is, is that on Hegstead specifically, the bureaucracy hates his guts. He himself, though, is I think he will be very popular with the rank and file. But really what it is, is if you combine this with the quote unquote, like anti woke, anti four star agenda.

and people who are genuinely loyal to Trump, Hegsath is the correct choice. Hegsath is a former Fox News contributor. He, if we're being honest on ideology, this dude is all over the damn map. He's pro-Israel. He was pro-Iraq war. Then he was against the Iraq war. He was pro-Russia. Well, he wasn't just

- He was pro-Iraq war. He led an organization that was pushing the Iraq war. He was a cheerleader. - I'm not gonna sit here and defend Pete Hegstead's pro-Iraq. The best case I can give for you is Pete is a MAGA dude. And for people who know him, including some people I've spoken to, he fundamentally changed his mind when Donald Trump became the person who was in charge.

He became a major Trump booster when he was on Fox and Friends. On Ukraine, he has had a complete 180 from an interview that I saw that he gave just a few months ago. So I can at least tell you on that front, he's good to go. But really what it is, is that I actually don't think he's ideological on foreign policy as much as he is just a Trump yes. Yeah. And I mean, to be honest, like, you know, that's frankly best case scenario. Whenever you're thinking about somebody like Marco Rubio or Mike Waltz, who are for real ideologues.

who really do have an agenda, who have people, an entire national security generation of people who are committed neocons, who they will bring in under their team. A key part that I talked about on the Lex Riemann podcast, so I'll give away some of it here for free, is I was like, Trump misunderstands bureaucracy and also his own

role. So like Trump on Rogan, very interesting part of it, where he was like, oh, I hired John Bolton because he makes people afraid. And people were like, oh, see, he hires the hawks strategically. And it's like, well, first of all, what you don't understand is that when Trump is not paying attention and watching Fox and Friends in the Oval Office is that John Bolton's in the situation room and he's running all that shit. So Bolton, there's a million things that are all happening that Donald Trump

never ever touches, right? His desk, the interagency process, that ideology, that spreads through the government. Government is not one person, it's 5,000 people. And you want all 5,000 of those people to be united on an agenda. So when you intentionally pick people who don't agree with you,

or even maybe they do agree with you, whatever the scary part of that is, but who have a real ideological agenda, you will have consequences for your actions that you may not even knowingly sign up for. So Marco Rubio, will Trump really give a shit about South America policy? Almost certainly not, right? Zero, in terms of its...

importance. You think Marco Rubio, the guy who literally wanted like a putsch in Venezuela for Juan Guaido and wants like a return to 1980s style South American revolutionary or whatever stuff under Ronald Reagan? Yeah, I think he will care under the State Department.

And he will install people under his term, you know, in his office who Donald Trump never even thinks about, but could have tremendous consequence for policy. So that is my big problem with a lot of Trump's big ideological picks is he does not understand government at a fundamental level because he thinks that it's all about him.

which of course like serves his role. But the interagency process of the people that you hire and others, when they are really ideological, it's a big problem. And they can cause colossal damage on the inside.

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I just think Trump isn't really making these choices for...

primarily ideological reasons outside of, I know that they'll be loyal to me and when push comes to shove, they're gonna do what I want them to do. And I'm not talking about like, you know, trade policy or whatever. I think that when, you know, he wanted to overturn the last election and he met resistance from the Department of Justice, met resistance from military, met resistance from the Senate,

and his own vice president, he made sure, he wanted to make sure that that would never happen again. So you put in Gates at the Department of Justice. Gates is gonna do whatever Donald Trump wants him to do. You get J.D. Vance for vice president instead of Mike Pence. And part of that audition process for J.D. was making sure you're gonna backstop this deal and you're gonna say you would've done what Mike Pence wouldn't do, period, end of story. Pete Hegseth at Department of Defense.

Like very similar vibe. Like I'm going to make sure that these major institutions that stood in my way last time are not going to stand in my way this time. And same thing with the Senate. Like in some ways, all of these confirmations are a test of let me put up like in Matt Gaetz specifically, let me put up the person that you all literally hate like the most, like that you find to be like the most odious person.

And I'm going to force it through. And whether it's you all voting for it or me just doing it anyway, you're going to see you will not resist me this time. And I'm and this was also important with the power play that he pulled with the advising consent process. Right.

Because this is an important part of the Senate powers. They're very proud of their role in this. Like, this is a big deal for them, right? And you got John Thune now in there who is going to be the Senate majority leader, who is not the pick of MAGA, not who Donald Trump wanted. He's like a Mitch McConnell type acolyte. But even with him, when Trump was like, we're going to do recess appointments and I'm going to get my picks, John Thune was right away like, yes, okay, we will do that. So a lot of these movements

Yes, there are different ideologies that he likes in this way or likes this piece or whatever, but

The consistent through line to me is any institution that was an obstacle to my ambitions on not again, not really policy, but on like overturning the election. If you are an obstacle, then I'm going to make sure that those institutions are bent to my will this time. And, you know, that's that's what I see primarily in these picks, because there isn't an ideological consistency between Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard. Yes. Right.

That literally it literally makes no sense. Yeah, that is the you know, that is the even between like a Pete Hexeth and RFK Jr. There's not ideological consistency. You know, it's about who is going to be there in these institutions that were previously an obstacle to me being able to, you know, do everything I wanted to do.

How am I going to make sure that that doesn't stand in my way this time around? And, you know, you've already got the Supreme Court in a lot of ways, you know, not fully, but in many ways kind of, you know, it's shaped by his choices that are on the court. He's likely to get at least one more Supreme Court pick. The Supreme Court has already said that he's immune for any, quote unquote, official acts.

What exactly that means is yet to be adjudicated, but, you know, wide bandwidth there for his own personal immunity. So I think there's going to be very little that stands in his way in terms of getting what he wants and when he wants it. I think yes and no in terms of this. For example, it gets down to what are we actually talking about here? So for let's say the DEI, like

woke thing, right? That's an area where Pete Hegsath is going to have the total backing of the president. Let's see also in terms of, I think it really is just going to depend on a case-by-case basis. Because even for what you said about recess appointments, it may be true that John Thune said, yeah, let's do recess appointments. Guess what Mitch McConnell said today? We're not doing any recess appointments. And John Thune was like, we don't have the support in the conference to do any recess appointments.

The basically they don't want to cave to the precedent because in the future they don't want Democrats when they have power to reach those appointments, too. Right. Which is funny, but it's, you know, but it does show you that they still have some authority. But the Trump people have worked out this provision that they think that they could use where there's this technicality. If the House and the Senate are in dispute about whether or not they're adjourned and in a recess, then the president can come in and say we're in a recess.

And so that's the power that they plan to use to basically have this led from the White House where it's like, we don't really care, John Thune and Mitch McConnell, whether you have the votes to go into recess. We're going to do it. And maybe ultimately through the courts and blah, blah, blah, maybe there's some pushback. But, you know, who knows? Trump's got a lot of his own judges on the bench at this point and a Supreme Court that's quite amenable to him as well. But, you know, they have power.

plans in place to get even someone like a Matt Gaetz or an RFK Jr. or Tulsi, whoever you think is the most difficult to confirm, to get them through, which is why I just think that, you know, I think that there is an

I think there is a concerted plan to make sure that there is no institutional obstacle to Trump doing whatever Trump wants to do. What does that mean? I don't think we really know because it's not like we could have predicted stop the stealing of bands. It's not like we could have predicted, you know, the Black Lives Matter protests and Trump saying, hey, let's just go and shoot the protesters in the legs. Like, I don't know that we know what that's ultimately going to mean in terms of how he uses these.

you know, the powers of the government and the military and whatever. But that, to me, getting all of those roadblocks that previously irked him out of the way is the primary thrust of both the sort of policy thinking that's going into the transition and certainly into these personnel choices. Well, I don't think there's any policy.

No, but I'm talking about like for example the thing about the how that how we could use policy to get into recess Yes, you know those sorts of things how Jeff talked about, you know, actually there's you can use a National security emergency to institute all of your tariffs like there is there is thinking about how they can basically bypass any sort of thing That was a check previously and get done whatever the hell it is that they want to get done

I don't think that's an incorrect view of it. I think it will really come down. But first of all, Trump is a deeply capricious person who changes his mind literally constantly and depending on the last person that he spoke to. So anybody who thinks he has some concerted grand plan or any of that, I don't think any of that is true. I do think it's correct that

the picks that he has gone with are based upon personal loyalty and basically nothing else. I think that could have great, you know, it can have a lot of pluses and minuses. In some cases, when he wants to do good things, it'll be fantastic. In some cases, whenever he wants to follow through on stop the steal or some other bullshit like that, it can be very detrimental to the American system. The question really will come down to what the institutional pushback

within the permanent bureaucracy will look like, what Congress and its immense powers will be able to flex, and then, of course, the Supreme Court. I do think people overestimate the loyalty that the Supreme Court will give Donald Trump. Don't forget, while they did give him immunity, under the last Roberts term, they shot down numerous attempts by him to bypass the interagency process.

from the census, the so-called travel like Muslim ban, and I can go on forever. I'm into the Obamacare thing even before that. So there are many examples of Trump trying to use this new legal authority where – and this is where I think Jeff is also underestimating what the legal system and the Ninth Circuit and the way our entire appellate courts work.

and the rents that they can throw in. You can, you know, theorize all day long. Joe Biden tried to do a lot of things under executive order, like this, you know, student loan and all that other stuff. This shit gets struck down constantly. You know, the appellate courts can come in and they can change things. So I wouldn't underestimate on the other side what the institutional checks are, although it will be a much more of a loyalist administration. But I think we knew that going in. I think we also knew that going in. I knew that going in. Certainly, but I think other people do. I knew that going in. I don't, like, I don't know if that's what, like...

I do think that there is a significant frustration with democracy in the public where the idea of like he's just going to be a strong man and come in and, you know, his like I'm going to be a dictator on day one. Like for some people, for some people, that was something they had to overcome to vote for him. And for some people, that was a feature, not a bug.

That was an affirmative part of the pitch of like, hey, democracy, like this doesn't seem so great. Let's just get someone in there who's going to like, you know, do whatever he wants to do. So, yeah, in that sense, I think there is a chunk of the public that basically voted for like

authoritarian power taking and I think that's I mean, I think that's the the plan and what we're seeing um effectuated here, which yeah, it doesn't I mean It's entirely consistent with what he was saying and with the way he wanted to operate in the first term and the other thing is um, and then we'll We you can respond if you want we'll move on because we've been talking about this for a while. But um you also see uh

number of previously like bastions of quote-unquote resistance that have really out of fear or necessity or whatever have really capitulated to Trump. So even before the election, you saw Bezos and

Being like, you know, Washington Post, we're not going to do an endorsement. You saw Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, Tim Apple as Trump calls him. All of them calling Trump, hey, big guy, just calling to check in. Really? Yeah.

excited for the next administration trying to make nice with him because they know that the way that he was going to get his loyals in place and he was going to use the federal government to go after, whether it's like Amazon, which has tons of government contracts or cracked down on Facebook for any sort of like...

political speech on there that he doesn't like, et cetera, et cetera, like the powers of the federal government are vast and he's not afraid to weaponize them. So there was a lot of already capitulation to that. And then one funny and annoying indicator of this as well, you had Morning Joe, Joe and Mika. We're going to cover it tomorrow.

I think we have to. But just to tease it for now, Joe and Mika making the trek down to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee and kiss the ring. And Steve Bannon is out there saying, hey, Matt Gaetz, he literally said Matt Gaetz is going to prosecute MSNBC host like Ari Melber, he named specifically. Don't get my hopes up. So you think Joe and Mika are thinking like, hey, you know, maybe.

well, maybe we need to get on the other side of this just to be sure and hedge our bets. So I also think that some of the previous bastions of resistance in 2016, we already know are not going to be there this time around as well. And, you know, I think the courts could also be part of that. It's certainly possible. I would see the thing is, is that this time around, the grounds for resistance are just not there. Trump is not a one off. He's the democratically elected twice elect.

Well, there's always grounds for resistance. No, but I'm saying like the Russiagate shock, the lack of the popular vote, all that stuff last time around, it's gone. And I mean, it should be gone. Trump has been literally elected with a popular vote, with a mandate to govern. Not for the first time for Republicans since 2004. So you have to adjust your priors just like dramatically. And a lot of liberals have the view basically that you expressed, Soccer, of like, hey, you people voted for this.

get you are going to get what you deserve is the attitude. It's not like I think that that reframe it, not I think that's outrageous. But that is that is what, you know, there's like, OK, you know, Latinos, you voted for mass deportation. Like, OK, now you're this is what Joy Reid said. Like now you're responsible for your mixed statuses.

status family getting deported. Like, okay, Muslim Americans, you voted for Trump. Like, enjoy as your family members are slaughtered in Gaza and the West Bank is, you know, permanently annexed, et cetera, et cetera. I think that that's personally, from the liberal perspective, I know you, like,

come at this from a different angle. But from the liberal perspective, I think that that is disgusting to just like, you know, okay, you deserve what you get, et cetera, et cetera. But that's part of the capitulation to this view is like, we're not going to fight it. Like, enjoy it.

you know, enjoy your new Muslim ban, enjoy your mass deportation. If you all voted for this, you get what you deserve. Yeah, well, and mine is more of an affirmation. I'm like, look, I think they actually want it and I think they should get it. And I also think that people for so long have been wondering, like, what's it like to actually blow stuff up? And it's like, let's find out. Let's see what happens. You know, it's not like the current system is working all that well. And

And look, here's the craziest and most dangerous thing. What if it works? What if America likes it? I mean, you were talking about our authoritarian tendencies. I wouldn't put it that way. I think people like a strong executive. People have wanted that for a long time. You know, America does like a monarch in name, but only they liked it under FDR. They liked it under LBJ. They liked it under Nixon. The crazy thing in America is we just get to change, you know, who are immensely powerful politicians.

And I think people genuinely do want to see a serious version of what they actually voted for in practice. The other side of this, and I could be totally wrong too, is that there are all these swing voters out there who believe in checks and balances. I want a Democratic senator and we'll have a Republican senator.

Republican president. I'm like, well, that's fucking stupid if you ask me, because it's like that means that you're just going to get nothing done and you're actually voting for the status quo. But, you know, you do what you want. So I do think, though, that there are a large percentage of people, dramatic percentages,

of people who did swing, especially in these swing coalitions who voted for Donald Trump, who want to like light the match and put it on the fire and just see what happens. And so in this respect, like this, you know, you would, you may call it authoritarian. I think he's like the vehicle. I mean, what did he say in his 2016 inauguration? I'm forgetting the exact, I am your retribution, right? I am your retribution. I

I think that's a that's a real reason why a lot of people voted for Trump and how it will manifest itself. I mean, that's still a big and an open question. It's almost here. The next Black Friday sale, the biggest sale of the year, starts this Thursday at KNIX dot com. Don't miss your chance to save up to 60 percent on innovative intimates like leak proof underwear, wireless bras, shapewear and more. Everything will be on sale.

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All right, everybody, we had to skip ahead to UFO. We just talked way too much. So the DNC and the Ukraine sections will be pushed to tomorrow. So Tuesday, don't worry, we'll have a nice full show already of stuff that we're going to discuss. But I did want to get into the show a little bit of a recap of the UFO hearing. There were some very interesting moments that happened there. So we've collated a few of them for you. The first that we want to start with is testimony and questioning from Lou Elizondo,

who was a part of the Pentagon, one of the people chiefly responsible for bringing to light the public, to the public, the existence of a lot of these UFO videos that existed inside of the Pentagon and for some of the transparency movement behind it. So he gave some really shocking testimony under questioning from Ana Paulina Luna. Let's take a listen.

Would you agree that it's likely that they are being piloted by some mind-body connection? Ma'am, I think it is safe to presume here that they are being intelligently controlled because some cases seem to anticipate our maneuvers, and in other cases they seem to... I came across an email where the word stalked was used in a very secure email statement.

between Navy officers discussing their ships being pursued by a UAP. In our previous panel, we had Grush, and he had testified to say that some of these were interdimensional beings. Can you speak on that at all?

Ma'am, I'm not qualified, certainly as a scientist or otherwise, to speculate points of origin. I looked at everything from a scientific perspective. So if you look at, for example, instantaneous acceleration, which was one of the observables of the program that I belong to, AATIP, the human body can withstand about 9G forces for a short period of time before you suffer negative biological consequences, blackouts and ultimately redouts and even death.

Comparison, our best technology, the F-16, which is one of this older platform, but one of our most highly maneuverable aircraft, manned aircraft made by General Dynamics can perform about 17 or 18 G forces before you start having structural failure, meaning that the airframe begins to disintegrate where you're flying. The vehicles we're talking about are performing in excess of 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 Gs.

So are you, I guess, would it be safe to infer that they're living craft? Um,

I'm not prepared at this point to state for the record is something alive or not, because even that definition is right. There was a time in science we thought that life required oxygen, and we now know that's not true. There are anaerobic bacteria that thrive in oxygen environments that lack oxygen. And also the same with photosynthesis. When I was in college, it was told everything is derived from photosynthesis as a form of energy.

In reality, that's not true. There are things that live off of chemosynthesis. So we're constantly having to reevaluate our understanding of what the definition of life is. 3,000 Gs. Let that one sink in there. And there's been some discussion previously, especially in regards to the Tic Tac incident. Let's also go to the next one here because this is a really critical part of it. This is specifically about the GOP oversight and about some of the previous allegations that were happening in terms of budgeting and how previous...

ways that the Department of Defense can get around transparency and others is by piloting and pushing them through military contractors to avoid transparency, to avoid disclosure. It's also part of the reason the Pentagon literally cannot pass an audit. Let's take a listen to that section. To your knowledge, any communication with a non-human life form

So the term communication is a bit of a trick word because there's verbal communication like we're having now. The problem is you also have nonverbal communication. And so I would say definitively, yes, but from a nonverbal meaning. When a Russian reconnaissance aircraft comes into U.S. airspace, we scramble two F-22s, and we are certainly communicating intent and capability. I think the same goes with this. We have these things that are being observed over controlled U.S. airspace,

And they're not really doing a good job hiding themselves. They're making it pretty obvious they have the ability to even interfere with our nuclear equities and our nuclear readiness. So two pretty interesting allegations there. So there was – look, in terms of the hearing, it was a lot about getting stuff on the record. There were some issues, as I was told, in terms of the Immaculate Constellation document, the 12-page document that was put into the congressional record. I won't go into all of that just yet because we're about to play –

video. But overall, this was about getting Lou Elizondo in questioning, getting some of the things on the record, going into the Trump administration. And that's one thing where, look, Trump and RFK, actually Gates as well, have all said that they are at least in favor of UFO transparency, of disclosure. There is some sort of horseshoe MAGA crossover currently with UFOs.

So the question is, is that are we going to get some of this to be released? Considering that Tulsi Gabbard is now going up for the ODNI position, it's certainly possible in some sort of transparency-laden effort to actually declassify a lot of these documents and actually just give it out to the general public. The other option is the permanent bureaucracy only burrows even further in, and you're not going to get any.

thing. But nonetheless, it was very interesting to see some of this go on the record. Was there an effort during the first Trump administration to get him to release this document? And why has he said that he didn't? So he said he did it at the request of Mike Pompeo, just like with the JFK. So let's, you know, first with that. Also, look, Trump doesn't care about the issue. And this is unfortunate. He's not somebody who has ever expressed a deep interest. The whole UFO thing has taken years to enter the public consciousness.

Lou Elizondo is one of those people who's chiefly responsible for getting these videos out to the public. He was there and name checked in the 2017 New York Times article that started this whole thing. That's when people were like, holy shit, are UFOs actually real? In those videos, I can say that for myself. The problem with the legitimization is people kind of just saw it and then just moved past. Lou Elizondo himself was out of the government.

Then what happened in the interim period of years is people like David Fravor came out and gave interviews. You had people now like David Grush who have come forward. You've had almost eight years of the public reconciling himself to both the lies and the transparency and people like Christopher Miller and others who have come forward and have spoken about this program. So I would say it is more primed, I think, both for the public, for the military bureaucracy, and also even members of Congress. These people thought it was all a joke. Isn't Rubio also a joke?

A UFO guy?

to care about is like, hey, we literally have things that are flying around up there and we have no idea what they are, including being able to disable nuclear missile silos and submarines, and people have no clue what's actually happening. So I think that's how I would contextualize this hearing.

I will end with this part, but again, I have to note that there were some issues with the enter of this into the record. So let's go ahead and get to Nancy Mace's questioning about the Immaculate Constellation program entered in the congressional record. Let's take a listen. There is a document.

That will be entered into the congressional record today. Mr. Tim Burchett from Tennessee has this document, and we just distributed it to every member up here on the dais of this document. But this is going to be the original document from the Pentagon about Immaculate Conception.

constellation that Michael Shellenberger delivered to Congress today. So thank you, Mr. Shellenberger, for this information. We are all reading it in real time now, and Mr. Burchett will enter it into the record, but 12 pages about this unacknowledged special access program that your government says does not exist.

Like I said, in terms of that – basically it's entered in the congressional record, but as I understand it, like I said, there were some issues regarding the enter of that into the record, and this is part of the controversy and things that have come out of it.

My point just being that on the program itself in terms of getting things into the congressional effort, this was an effort to try and to enter Michael Schellenberger's original report in there so that people can read for itself. And because you want to get this stuff into the record, it allows for investigation, public transparency, which is the ultimate goal of the project.

Overall, I would not call the hearing like a tremendous success or anything like that because nothing other than actual disclosure is – I think it was just pushing the ball forward and setting things up for the next Trump administration and what that will look like. It's going to be interesting. I know it's complicated. Listen, if I'm going to get Trump, at least I can get like JFK files and alien files. JFK and aliens? That's right. I mean think about it. If you ever wanted someone to meet an alien, wouldn't it be Donald Trump in terms of the president? Yeah.

Who would you want? Which commander in chief? I'm sure this is something that I've really thought that I'm prepared to opine on. I haven't really thought it through. If you want to go deep, there is a theory that Dwight Eisenhower once had a conference with aliens, but we won't get to that today.

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A socialist candidate for mayor of New York City took a unique approach to finding out why non-white working class voters in the Bronx and in Queens decided to vote how they did. He actually went and asked them. Did you get a chance to vote on Tuesday? I didn't vote. And why did you not vote? Because I don't believe in the system anymore. Did you get a chance to vote on Tuesday? Yes! And who did you vote for? Trump!

The million dollar question: Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Well, I actually early voted. I voted for Trump. Honestly, I didn't vote. Oh! She voted for Trump. I voted for Trump. I voted for Trump. Me too. Before I voted Democrat, at this moment I voted Donald Trump. Hillside Avenue in Queens and Fordham Road in the Bronx are two areas that saw the biggest shift towards Trump in last week's election. Even more residents didn't vote at all. They like Trump because they don't want the Palestinian brothers to be killed.

The war in Ukraine, the Democrats giving all the money in the war, it's no good. The swing is because people want lower prices. They probably believe that Trump will give them that. Market price, all of that. Energy, gas. La comida.

Food. Most of these people are working families. They're working one to two, three jobs. And rent is expensive. Foods are going up. Utility bills are up. And that's your hope, to see a little bit more of an affordable life? Absolutely. What Trump did in the first four years, Fordham Road saw something where Kamala couldn't do that. There were young voters who didn't vote for her because of the genocide, and I wouldn't have voted

I did vote for her, obviously, because I have common sense. Can you tell me a little bit more about why you didn't vote? Since you're out here, you know, Gaza. Who should I vote? Either side will go ahead, send bombs from here to kill my brothers and sisters. Palestine issue and then other issues like Russia and then Ukraine. He stopped the war. That's why I voted. You can't say you're a Democrat and stand for the genocide that's going on in Gaza.

Period. Have you voted for Democrats in the past? I have.

And what would it take for you to vote for a Democrat in the future? Being able to pay attention to the regular Americans and their economic needs. They should make economics the forefront of their campaign. People were not really feeling it in their pocket. I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. I voted against Trump also in the 2018 midterms.

insulting us, playing on our emotions. All they do is shame you and they just want to use like glitzy campaigns and they get celebrities. Like if you're speaking the things that people want to hear about, I don't care what color you are, I'll vote for you. So obviously quite a number of voters there expressing concerns about prices, the economy, etc. But I was actually genuinely surprised by how many brought up the issue of Gaza.

"The Democrats are giving all the money in the war." "Either side will go ahead and send bombs from here to kill my brothers and sisters." "You can't say you're a Democrat and stand for the genocide that's going on in Gaza, period."

This actually echoes what AOC heard from her own constituents who had backed her and Trump on the same ballot. A number of these AOC Trump voters said they felt she and Trump were both authentic or anti-establishment. But again, Gaza came up a number of times in these responses. Quote, voted for Trump and you, not genocide Harris. Democrats became the party that supports war and simply because of Gaza.

None of this is scientific, of course, but there are some other indications that Gaza really was a significant part of Kamala Harris's loss. Remember, black and brown voters have always had more sympathy towards Palestine and supported a ceasefire by larger numbers than white voters in general. It's plausible to think,

Some of Trump's gains with these groups had to do with disgust with war in general and Gaza in particular. The other demographic group, of course, most disgusted with the Biden-Harris genocidal policy was young people. And sure enough, this election saw a turnout collapse among the youngest group of voters.

A lot of the post-election conversation has been understandably centered around how much Trump improved his margins among young voters. All true, young men in particular. But the more significant phenomenon may actually be how many of these young voters just simply decided to stay home. As Eric Blank points out, when you look at the total number of 18 to 29 years old who are eligible to vote, Trump...

ever so slightly improved his standing from 2020. In 2020, he received 18% of the total eligible population. This time, he edged that number up by a single percentage point to about 19%. On the other side of the ledger, however, Democrats collapsed. They went from receiving about 30% of the eligible youth vote in 2020 to only about 22% this time around. So Trump held on to his young voters and marginally even improved while the Democratic share plummeted.

Was this a Gaza effect? When you consider the youth activism around the issue and Kamala's absolute unwillingness to take a moral stand against genocide, you gotta think that disgust with her approach was a significant factor in this drop in turnout. Her choice of Liz Cheney over Rashida Tlaib spoke volumes about her moral commitments of note on that choice. By the way, the Palestinian American who was blocked from speaking at the DNC actually improved her

winning margin in her Georgia Statehouse district. As she wrote on Twitter, quote,

And it wasn't just Rua who was rejected. On a podcast with Ronnie Kallik, Congressman Jamal Bowman revealed that his offer to campaign for Kamala in Michigan was also rejected. Listen to what they chose to do instead. I then told them, I can share text with you so you have evidence of this. I am ready to be dispatched to any parts of the country. Let me know. I want to go to Michigan in particular. Right? I told them this. They never get back to me.

Even worse, they send Richie Torres, Bill Clinton, and Liz Cheney to Michigan. So again, and not only that, Bill Clinton is scolding Arab Americans. Yeah. Like, yo, they were there first. Pretty much they were there first. Y'all got to just deal with it or leave. Right.

This is what their campaign decided to do. Let's not send Jamal Bowman there, who, again, I have, thank God, you know, Alhamdulillah, right? Like so much support in Michigan where like my opponent attacked me for it. Like he literally was like, you don't represent your district. You represent California and Dearborn, Michigan. My opponent said this shit in a debate.

Wow. Okay? So that is how, and he said that because he knows that's an Arab American community. Yeah, Dan. That's like a rat race. So I tell him I want to go there. Yeah. Right? Y'all ignore me, which tells me who you have around you in your campaign, but you send Bill Clinton and Richie Torres. So that was the choice, basically. Bill Clinton, Liz Cheney, Richie Torres, and not Joe Biden.

not Jamal Bowman or anyone else who might have been able to help with the Muslim American or Arab American community. The results, of course, speak to this being an utter political catastrophe, not to mention a moral one. So what's the counter argument here? Well, if you look at exit polls, very few voters say that foreign policy actually drove their decision. Even among young voters, only 4% attributed their vote to foreign policy concerns. As with all voters, the top concern by far was the economy.

But I've always suspected this was kind of the wrong way to think about the electoral consequences of the genocide in Gaza. There's a way in which Gaza undermines literally every argument that Kamala and the Democrats were attempting to make against Donald Trump. How can you posture as a clear moral alternative to Trump and Trumpism when you are backing a war in which 70% of those killed are women and children? When starvation is being deployed systematically as a weapon of war?

When we saw things this year like a child having their leg amputated with no anesthetic on a kitchen table, a body crushed like a bag of tomatoes under a bulldozer, an endless, ever-expanding churn of death, carnage, disease, rubble, but you want people to believe Trump's the unique evil? At the very least, his evil, it's not looking so unique.

How can you position yourself as the big tent party building a large, unified coalition when your tent wasn't big enough for a single Palestinian-American speaker at the DNC? When you couldn't do the basics of outreach to a Muslim community that was horror-struck and utterly disgusted? That the big tent has room for Liz Cheney, but not young people protesting a genocide? Or Arab Americans, some of whom had family members who were slaughtered in Gaza,

doesn't exactly send the open arms everyone's welcome that you think that you're sending. The party is open to you so long as you agree not to breathe a word about these taxpayer-funded whores. And how can people trust that you're going to pay attention to their economic needs here at home when you seem way more eager, way more interested in sending money abroad for wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and the entire Middle East?

I heard something similar to that sentiment from any number of voters this cycle. Basically, why are you focused on all these global conflicts rather than our needs right here at home? Biden really leaned into this dynamic in a bad way, in particular with all his obsession with NATO and AUKUS and inability to talk about the actually decent things that his administration did accomplish on antitrust labor and industrial policy. Kamala was, of course, saddled with this legacy and did nothing to break it.

Even Trump's infamous "they/them" ad plays into this sentiment that Kamala and the Democrats are not really paying attention to what you care about. AOC herself made a version of this point. Take a listen. All of this debate that people are talking about with this woke thing, right? Yeah. Oh my gosh.

It's because we care about trans people, and that's why there's a backlash. And by the way, only Donald Trump cared about trans people because he was the one running under the $30 million worth of ads. The Harris campaign said nothing about this issue. That's right. That's right. And listen, the ads, it's not to even deny the fact that these ads were effective in certain areas. What I think people are paying too much attention to is the first half of that ad.

which says Kamala Harris is, or that said Kamala Harris is for they, them. Everyone's focusing on that. They're not focusing on the second half of that ad where he said, Donald Trump is for you. Yeah. Yeah. And Democrats very often in their messaging, they speak and in this, in terms and in concepts and not in the second person.

I care about you. And political races are not about one candidate versus another candidate. Too often it gets pigeonholed like that.

It is a race to convince a person about who cares about you more. In a lot of ways, Gaza is emblematic of Democratic hypocrisy, moral collapse, and working class disengagement. Is it possible that Gaza alone cost the Democrats the election? I mean, if you think about it, Trump won Wisconsin by about 30,000 votes, Michigan by only about 80,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by about 120,000 votes. In the grand scheme of things, that's really not a lot.

How many young people stayed home? How many Muslims switched to Trump in a vain hope that he'd make good on his pandering? How many working class voters could not shake the nagging sense that these wars were more important to Democrats than the price of eggs?

Trump didn't deserve to win and has already nominated a bunch of neocon, war hawk, Israel for psychos to key foreign policy positions. But for this and many other reasons, the Democrats, they absolutely deserved to lose. And Sagar, I was initially- And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching. We appreciate you. Sorry that we talked so much. We're going to talk even more tomorrow. We'll see you then.

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