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Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal, anti-conservative America, face of America. Good night, and good luck. Hey everybody, it's Rick, and welcome back to another week where there's something happening that is going to be very consequential. And this week, the elephant in the room is that Trump is really fucking up.
I know you think that is obviously sort of self-evident. You think, oh my God, of course Trump's fucking up. Of course he's making every mistake in the book. But I don't know if you've thought it through as much as you should, because there's actually some good news here this week. There is a growing sense of awareness
that the impacts of turning Elon Musk and a bunch of weird incel dudes loose in the government is like, you know, coating yourself with barbecue sauce and running through a party of wolves. People are starting to figure out that's not a great idea. In the red states, a great story this week out of Wisconsin, dairy farmers suddenly shocked at the multi-billion dollar contracts that
that they had to sell cheese to the government. It's just, I'm not just going to sell warehouse somewhere. It was going to USAID by, not anymore, farmers in the Midwest, farmers in the South, realizing the same thing. Peanut farmers. I, soybean farmer in North Florida, who reached out to me, friend of a family member of a family, or a friend of a friend of a family member. We sort of know each other vaguely. He's not really a fan. Big Trumper reached out to me and said, well, shit.
A lot of my soy product was going to USAID contracts. I didn't really think that through. You know what? I really resisted. I was going to say, yeah, no shit. But I said, I'm so sorry, man. That's really tough. Maybe you should write the congressman. Maybe you should tell him how you feel. Maybe you should call him. You're a donor. You're a rich guy, relatively speaking, for the part of the state he's in. The shock is rippling through MAGA.
I'd like to point out that hurricane season is going to start in a few weeks or a few months. And in Florida and North Carolina and Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and South Carolina, all states that have recently been hit with devastating tornadoes and hurricanes, they're going to take FEMA out of the budget. The House is taking FEMA out of the budget. This is a mistake.
The House is trying to cut these programs post hoc, trying to clean up Elon's mess. But the things the government is supposed to do, we can all argue about how many things they should be doing and what they should be doing and what degree they should be doing them. But let's say something. As a pilot, I'm okay paying taxes so I get air traffic controllers that keep my plane from hitting somebody else's plane. As an American citizen, I'm okay paying
having the National Nuclear Assurity Administration make sure that our nuclear weapons don't fall into the hands of some idiot, or that they don't get left laying around by mistake somewhere, or that they're not unsafe in some way. I'm okay paying taxes for that. That's okay. But that's a mistake Trump is making. This teardown of the government is a mistake he's making. Calling himself a king actually triggered a lot more people than I thought.
It would. On the right, we're like, come on. You can't. You can't. You can't do that, man. That's too much. That's a bridge too far. It's not a joke, Donald. I want to say that the stuff you're seeing from Trump's bubble that he's living in, it's starting to break the numbers. You should be optimistic about this. This is a big elephant in the room that these mistakes are causing. Trump is down 11 points in his approval rating. 11.
In three and a half weeks, this is not bad news, guys. This is actually good news. The things he's doing are having a very direct impact on the way he is perceived. Creepy wingman Elon Musk is about as popular as drug-resistant syphilis with most of the American voters. He's about a 25% to 28% approval rating, about a 55% to 60% disapproval.
That has to mean, because math is real, that about 40% of Republicans at the minimum don't like the shenanigans, don't like the BS, don't like the idea of turning loose into the government a bunch of creepy, incel guys who normally would be home wanking to anime. That's a callback, y'all.
Instead of spreading them loose in the government and giving them access to your Social Security information, your banking information, the Treasury's information. And this week, they're getting your Internal Revenue Service information. And by the way, just as a quick aside, if you're a member of Congress, Elon Musk has your tax returns now. How are you feeling? You feel good? All you guys on Wall Street, Elon Musk has your tax returns now. You feeling good? Next time he goes to raise money, he's going to walk in that room and know exactly what all you made.
Next time he goes to do a financing round, he's going to have every bit of information about every financial transaction that you and your companies have made, whether you're in the Valley or on Wall Street. Feel good? You feel safe? Because you shouldn't. We'll be right back.
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Get an expert now on TurboTax.com. Only available with TurboTax Live Full Service. Real-time updates are only in iOS mobile app. See guarantee details at TurboTax.com slash guarantees. And now, back to the show. Now, the biggest mistake I think this week, obviously, and you've heard me talk about this a lot this week. I'm not going to belabor this point. The historic elephant in the room is the capitulation to Putin. Unbelievable.
And I have talked about it on my sub stack. I've talked about it on TV. I've talked about it on the podcast for Lincoln and for Enemies List. I've said a lot about it. But the polls that are out this week show you how badly Donald Trump has misread this situation. Vladimir Putin is not popular. Vladimir Putin is not considered a good guy. He's not considered someone we can trust or do business with. In fact, about 70% of Americans think he's a dictator.
Oh, oh, I'm sorry. You can't rebrand evil that quickly. You can't rebrand evil that transparently and easily, Donald. You know, it's why if World War II had ended and Hitler had offed himself, he couldn't have formed like Hitler's house of delicious sausages. The branding is bad. Being a war criminal is bad for your brand. And Putin is a war criminal. Trump has embraced him.
There are a lot of scenarios where, as I've said, that World War III started this week. And I honestly believe that we may well have had that. Not the shooting part. But when historians look back 100 years from now, they're going to go, yeah, that was the week that Donald Trump triggered World War III because he didn't know what he was doing. The idea that we were going to go and dictate to Ukraine without having Ukraine in the room, and that we were going to treat Russia as the good guy in a war that Russia started
in a war where Donald Trump says over and over, "We need peace." Okay, call your boy. Call Vlad and say, "Hey, motherfucker, no more. Done. Set it down. You get nothing." But Donald Trump can't do that because people are seeing he's weak and stupid. This is something we underestimate about Trump. People think Trump is smart. Trump is not smart. Trump is crafty. He is sly, but he's not smart.
And the degree of his not smartness right now is really on display with the way he's handling Putin. And Americans are seeing it in the – and we're seeing the results of it in the polling. This is not a guy who is a good negotiator. Putin is a good negotiator. You know what we've got out of Russia so far? Jack and shit.
A combination of zero jack and zero shit. Nothing. We've got nothing out of Russia. No concessions, no admissions, no walk back, no nothing. Okay? And the idea, sorry, my dogs are barking. You know what happens around this place. Okay. All right. All right. We're going to go mobile. We're going to go mobile. We're in Rick's house. We're going mobile. I don't know where they, I don't know what door they're at.
Let's go see. Let's go see if they're in the front. Anyway, look, the idea that this guy has some sort of magical negotiating ability has always been BS.
And Putin is proving it one more time. We know that Putin is rooking Trump. We know Putin is playing him like a damn fiddle. We know that there's nothing that this guy loves more than to manipulate Donald Trump. I mean, it is his pride and joy to manipulate Donald Trump. He loves playing this guy for a fool. We'll be right back.
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Learn more at phrma.org slash IPWorksWonders. And now, back to the show. I don't know where the dogs went, but here we are. We're upstairs. But the real elephant in the room of the week, and the biggest part of this, is that the overreach in this administration is going faster and faster. The things they're doing are giving people less and less confidence that he's good at this work.
The economic numbers are starting to get queasy. The markets are getting kind of nervous. The idea about tariffs is getting very nerve-wracking. The idea that they're going to take over the Federal Reserve and let Donald Trump run it is super nerve-wracking. None of this is good stuff for Donald Trump. None of this works for Trump. I know it is easy to be scared of him right now, and it's easy to be scared of the things they're doing. And the things they're doing are horrific, guys. I'm not soft-pedaling that. I'm not minimizing that at all.
But he is not immortal. He is not covered with steel. He is not politically speaking bulletproof. He is a guy who is making mistakes. And the mistakes he's making are because he's not that smart. The mistakes he's making are because he's got a creepy wingman named Elon Musk who has now become the president in all but name. The mistakes he's making are because Congress has been passive and now they're scared.
Because they see what's starting to happen with their constituents. They're getting hurt every day. They're angry about it. They haven't said anything publicly because they're afraid of Trump. But their survival is now at stake. Their political survival is now at stake. Folks, the elephant in the room is that Donald Trump's making a lot of mistakes. A lot. And they're going to hurt him. I know it's easy to get down right now. I know it's easy to feel like you've been beaten and there's nothing we can do about it. Keep talking.
Keep being active. Keep reaching out to your member of Congress, Republican or Democrat. Beat them over the head every day to fight this. Do not hesitate to appeal to your elected leaders. In the Senate, we have a very, very, very narrow margin. In the House, we have a narrow margin. There's nothing these Republicans can do right now
in the House without some Democratic help. Tell your Democratic reps, not a goddamn thing for these people. Freeze the line. Do not pass a budget. Make Trump own it. Because that budget they're trying to pass is going to codify a lot of the poison that Elon wants to put in the American system.
Don't do it. Stay strong. We'll be back next week with another elephant in the room. We appreciate all of you. You can follow me, of course, on the Lincoln Project podcast. You can follow me, of course, on the Enemies List podcast. Check out my sub stack. Follow us at the Lincoln Project at lincolnproject.us. And if you want to support the work we do here at the Lincoln Project, go to lincolnproject.us slash helpLP. Thanks for everything, everybody. Appreciate you. We'll see you next week.
The Lincoln Project Podcast is a Lincoln Project production. Executive produced by Whitney Hayes, Ben Howe, and Joey Wartner Cheney. Produced by Whitney Hayes. Edited by Riley Mayne. Hey folks, if you want to support the Lincoln Project's work against Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and this MAGA craziness,
Go to action.linkinproject.us slash help LP. If you'd like to get in touch or have suggestions for a guest or a show topic, or just want to say hi, our email is podcast at linkinproject.us. For our MAGA friends, please, no more nudes. Thanks so much, and we'll talk to you again next time. Good night, and good luck.