Ceasefire On Life Support

Trump says the Iran ceasefire is on “life support,” and that single phrase tells you everything about how shaky the strategy is when the demands don’t overlap. John Faber, John Lovett, and Tommy Tork unpack why a one page memo blew up the talks, why “Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon” isn’t a plan, and what it means when the Strait of Hormuz becomes Iran’s most valuable leverage in the region. We get into the real stakes for U.S. foreign policy, global oil markets, and the ugly menu of options left when military escalation, blockade pressure, and a face saving “victory” all come with major costs.

From there, we follow the ripple effects into the rest of Trump world. The administration floats a federal gas tax holiday as prices rise, while also racking up taxpayer costs through flashy projects and “security” spending that looks a lot like grift. Trump even tosses out making Venezuela the 51st state, a proposal that’s equal parts imperial fantasy and oil obsession, and we talk through why it collapses under even basic scrutiny.

We also look ahead to Trump’s China trip and what could be on the table: Taiwan arms sales, bargaining leverage tied to the Strait of Hormuz, and the rare area where competition might still require cooperation, AI safety and crisis communication. The back half shifts to U.S. politics with Virginia redistricting fallout and how gerrymandering can tilt the House math, before closing on AOC, Jeff Bezos, billionaire influence, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s sponsor backed road trip reality show.

Subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review. What’s the most dangerous incentive you see driving all of this right now?

Transcript

Welcome And CrookedCon Presale

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Welcome to Platinum America. I'm John Faber. I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Tork. On today's show, Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is on quote life support. We'll talk about why and what comes next as he heads off to China. We'll also talk about his new plan to make Venezuela our 51st day. That's a perfect plan. Perfect plan. The follow-up from the Virginia Supreme Court's decision to throw out the Democrats' new maps, AOC taking on Jeff Bezos and what she might run for in 2028, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and his wife Rachel Campos Duffy getting back to their roots with a new reality television show. Yeah. Excited. Great. Uh quick note before we start. If you're a friend of the pod subscriber, which if you aren't, you should be. You can now buy tickets for this year's CrookedCon. Special presale just for subscribers. Just happening for you. May 12th, that is today when you're listening. But if you're not a subscriber, because you hate pro-democracy independent media and you love listening to podcast ads, you can still buy crooked con tickets, but you don't have to wait till next week, starting on May 19th. You might get a job at CBS. You might get a job in CBS. You might get to someday interview BB Netanyahu. Yeah, that's the answer. There's definitely a limited range of questions you can ask Netanyahu if you get the job at CBS versus if you interview him here at Ponte America, which I don't think's gonna happen anytime soon. Rhodes is gonna ask him. Anyway, either way, uh Cricket Count's gonna be a big fun party uh right after the midterms, uh, November 5th through 7th. Danny on me for saying big fun party, because he thought that was like jinxing in the midterms. I'm like, it's still gonna be a big fun party, even if we we're gonna still have a party, we're still gonna live. Yeah. I mean, you know, what choice do we have? Always humor is still humor. June in 2017. I did. I don't get it. And when Trump won. And when Trump won, I remember telling Emily there might not be a wedding now. Yeah. And she's like, Oh, well, she listened to the side.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

That did take you in through with it. Okay, I want to tell her.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

Don't worry about that.

SPEAKER_04 2:36

Don't put this under a comment of Emily's Instagram.

Iran Ceasefire Memo Falls Apart

SPEAKER_03 2:40

You know someone's gonna send this to her. Oh no, I hate the snitch tag. It's gonna turn up at your wedding, is what it's gonna turn up. Uh anyway, you should go subscribe. We're gonna talk about the friend of the five subscriber. Uh, no ads, for any of your favorite podcasts or cricket, and you get to support cricket media, and you get subscriber-only shows, and you get all of our substack newsletters. And by the way, you can start buying a ticket for CricketCon right now. They're going fast. Go get it, November 5th through 7th, Washington, DC. It's CricketCon.com, and you can uh become a subscriber at Cricket.com slash friends. All right. It appears that last week's uh siren emojis about the US and Iran closing in on a one-page memo to end the war have given way to this week's siren emojis about Trump possibly resuming military action in Iran. Live by the siren emoji, die by the siren emoji. Or sorry, no reporters. I mean, that's that's what usually gives. Well, actually, no, reporters do, but now also just random influencers and accounts that seal the report.

SPEAKER_04 3:24

It lends credibility. It does. And it starts with Trump. The sirens are judging, that's true. Siren doesn't make sense as a newsbreaker.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Then reporters started doing it, and then just random influencer, just you know, trying to gather information that's not in any way that just shows up in your for you algorithm.

SPEAKER_04 3:36

People with names like Joey Bloomberg. Bloomberg is reporting it.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

It is all caps, anyway. Um, anyway, uh, all of this comes after Trump rejected Iran's response to the one-page memo. Um just kept telling it was one page. So on one page. Um anyway, rejected, um, which Iran waited 10 days to send. Uh, it included demands for U.S. reparations and permanent Iranian control over the Strait of Four Moose. Uh, Trump called that quote totally unacceptable and inappropriate for elaborating on his initial reaction in the Oval on one day.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

I would say the C S5 is on massive life when the doctor walks in and says, sir, you loved one as a typically a 1% chance. Unbelievably weak. I would go with the weakest right now. After reading that piece of garbage, I said I didn't even finish reading it. It was just unexpected. You know, a lot of people say, Well, does he have a plan? I'm the best plan ever. I have a plan, you know. That's a very simple plan. I don't know why you don't say it like it is a run to not have a nuclear. Well, they did two days ago. They did. Okay. They did two days ago. They said, You're gonna have to take it. We were gonna go with them, but they changed their mind because they didn't put it in the face. I've had to deal with them four or five times. They changed their mind. They're very dishonorable people.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Uh exhaustive. Who to fuck it? He's learning a lot of lessons over and over and over again. Maybe not learning. It drives me crazy when he says I have a plan around cannot have a nuclear weapon. No, that's a goal. Yeah, that's what we all want. What a plan. The plan is how you get to that. Yeah, right. That's a destination. That's a thing. We need a we're to we need a root chain of journey. So far as we start week 11 of the war, it doesn't seem like that plan is um bearing fruit. It's also funny that he didn't read the whole one page of a month. Yeah, and finish. Well, yeah, get to the bottom of the thing. Maybe there's some good stuff at the end. Uh Tommy, why do you think the layout still fell apart? And uh, what other options does Trump have at this point? I mean, it just uh all the details weren't public, but I think that the US sent over a bunch of hard-line nuclear demands, and the Iranians were like, nah, we just want you to stop locating the straight-over moves and give us all the shit, and that's our take. And so now we're back. So all all the options are bad. I mean, he can restart the war, which is not extremely unlikely to lead to regime change, but uh will certainly lead to economic chaos in the region. He can keep the blockade going and hope that the economic pain breaks the Iranian regime before it breaks the global economy. I don't think that's gonna work either. And then he can find a way to declare a victory and slink away, which um seems like the most likely option to run while I control the street or moves in that case. I'm very interested in his uh how he keeps talking about the leaders in all these different ways. First, he likes the new leaders uh because they're better than the old leaders, they killed all the old leaders. Then uh he also does sometimes uh we don't know who the leaders are. And then this one was they're awful, they're dishonorable people, they're lunatics.

SPEAKER_05 6:03

Yeah, it's also we've been through so many rounds of reporting in which we're which Trump felt we're on the precipice of a deal and then the talks fall apart. But if you take out the spending coming from the administration, is it possible that really they've just been far apart the whole time? Because the Venn diagram of on one side you have Trump requiring a deal that is better than the JCPOA, the Obama deal, because he said that deal was the worst deal ever made. On the other side, you have Iran in a stronger position than when the war began, wanting a better deal than that, including uh uh consequences to the US reparations for the cost of the war and uh the power it's gained from having control of the straight or remove. So those circles don't overlap. So what are we doing here? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 6:37

Uh oh we just we keep and then the reporting is so credulous, and so it feels like we're having this up or down, up and down roller coaster, but really we're just dealing with the like kind of strategic reality of this stupid fucking war. Yeah. It sounds like it bums me out personally. Well, it also sounds like, and you know, they said that they in all these plans and proposals that Iran keep sending back or responding to, it sounds like they just want to keep control of the straightforward moves. And why wouldn't we? Or they want sections relief or they want to do it. They need a financial lifeline. Right. It's also like they're they're sending over their maximum position, we send over our maximum position, and then we just get mad and walk away. That's not how negotiations work. Get in a room, hash it out, give a little on each side, and maybe we can come to some conclusion. But they're just like, they're not even trying. Trump's like, I didn't read the one-page memo all the way to the bottom. Um Bob Kagan, the uh the Hawkesh neocon Iraq war supporting Bob Kagan, that one, uh, just wrote a piece in the Atlantic. I'm not close, I can call him Bob. I just I call him Robert Bobby. Yeah. Uh he just wrote a piece in the Atlantic titled Uh Checkmate in Iran that starts, it's hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in the conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. Uh, he then texts through every conflict since Pearl Harbor and basically makes the case that Trump's fuck up in Iran will be more consequential than all of them. Okay, I would you guys think I just wanted to just before we get to the details of it.

SPEAKER_05 7:45

The neocon high dudgeon of the 2000s, I still do not miss. Like, look, this is a very big blunder. I think it's a little, it's a little premature to be saying it's ob it's worse than Pearl Harbor.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

I thought Pearl Harbor was actually one of the easier ones because Pearl Harbor is then it's like we came back and we won that one pretty decision. Sure, in hindsight, it looked pretty fucking good.

SPEAKER_04 8:02

But a year or so after Pearl Harbor things are pretty up in the easy.

SPEAKER_03 8:03

Yeah, we're gonna go to Iraq because that one was who was like, yeah, then we left then eventually we left Iraq to stay for state. A lot of like, oh, did we? Yada yada yada for Iraq. That was my big note too. Like, I want to build the biggest end possible, but um, his idea that Iraq was mitigated by like a strategic change and then all's well that ends well, because like Saddam's not there now. I, yeah, that was a little much of me.

SPEAKER_05 8:20

But this is all like throat clearing around what was truly a bracing and uh uh like just dismal read on the situation, including laying out like just how few options Trump has, because part of the reason he called off uh military strikes wanted a ceasefire is because of the leverage Iran had when it was striking uh uh you know oil and gas infrastructure in the reason in the region, how he can try to declare victory, but that still leaves the straight over moves. How like the that all the options that Trump has are fucking terrible.

Strait Of Hormuz And No Good Options

SPEAKER_03 8:46

Yeah, they're all terrible. The Israelis have also just been crystal clear that they don't make the war is over. I mean, if you watch that in 16 minutes, he said as much. There's also the war in Lebanon. If you have a weaker ceasefire, I could point you to one, but in Lebanon, where they're bombing each other all the time. There's constant fighting, like daily, there's casualties all the time. Um, yeah, so I agree with this assessment that that the Iranians are not going to give up the straightover moves unless they get sanctions relief or something like really big for it. Um, and that we look weak and we look kind of feckless and uh unreliable. It's also like the gall of Trump saying, oh, these people are dishonorable. Like you uh use previous talks as a smokescreen to uh attack to bomb a leadership. Um you have ripped up the previous uh agreement and you may not have liked it, but it was negotiated in good faith by the United States, which you can, you know, which uh uh uh whose authority came from Obama to you, so you undermined our credibility there. They have no confidence that Trump won't change his mind in a couple months or resume bombing if they accept a deal. They have no confidence that Israel uh won't uh uh bomb Iran if it uses it in its interest, even if there is a deal. So just like the the the kind of the the the the kind of the way in which we're like stuck in this morass because Trump went into this so half-cocked is just it's it's it's just a gruesome and it's when you step back and look at it. I think there were times in this conflict where people said, oh, you know, I remember thinking this at one point, oh, he could end up just going back to uh like Obama's Iran deal, right? And then call it a victory, but it's gonna be like around being like, oh, you know, you all criticized Obama for this. I think it's pretty clear now that there's no way he gets a deal that's better or even the same as the Iran deal. It's gonna be worse because when the Iran deal was made, uh Iran didn't control the straightforward movement. So like this piece made me think about the like not the string I knew about the strategic importance of the strait, but just from Iran's perspective now, they've got the control. Even they get some sanctions relief, they're gonna have to get a lot more sanctions relief and a lot more they're calling it reparations or whatever than they ever were before because they got the strait, they have full control over it now. Maybe they go for a deal where they charge some tolls, maybe they share control with other Gulf nations. But it seems like the the the scenario now where Iran willingly signed some kind of a deal where they fully give up the Strait of Hormuz and it goes back to being like an international waterway seems very slim. There's no chance. They just got this incredible toy and they're gonna play with it for as long as they want until it breaks or someone takes it away. There's just no chance. Also, um, it could get worse. Like if Trump decides to go back to war, the economic cost could be just a resumption of what we've seen. But also the Houthi rebels could get involved, they're in Yemen, they could start firing ships in the Red Sea. They should could choke off. You know, the Saudis have been sending a lot of their oil and gas, but they can't get out through the Strait of Hormuz west through a pipeline, and then it'll get up through the Red Sea or through the Suez Canal. If the Houthis get involved and they choke off those access points too, like prices could hit$300 a barrel. It's a disaster. And also, by the way, we're not even talking about the reason we're in we're there, which is the nuclear material. The 900 pounds of highly rich uranium. Sometimes it's dust, sometimes it's dust, it's terrible to get out. Um, it is still sitting in in Iran, and also all of that material was enriched after Trump pulled out of the JCOP, JCPOA. So it's a problem he created, and that was probably not gonna solve. I like the scenario that he he mentioned where they were all we were gonna go in together with the Iranians, like just a group field trip to uh to to dig under the rubble and to find all the nuclear dust together. I thought that was a real that's a show I'd watch. Um I also like and this is so this is around giving up the the strait like through some negotiation. Then there's the other option of trying to take it by force, but that that requires like you know, uh US Navy ships potentially getting fired on, um, and and around small boats firing on other ships too. And and then King points out in this piece too, even if they were not firing on the ships, they can retaliate against Gulf energy infrastructure like they did uh how many weeks ago before the ceasefire. So like they have plenty of options around, and clearly they are fine taking a whole bunch of punishment because, you know, as the Trump administration likes to point out, they don't take a shit about their own people, they kill protesters, like stuff. They surely are not going to care if they're gonna inflict a ton of economic pain on their country. Um it's not like they care a lot about their people. So yeah, they're gonna have they're gonna have the appetite for a lot of pain.

SPEAKER_05 12:13

Yeah, that's the part that's worth like chilling about where we're at because we're in this sort of stalemate in which Trump looks like a loser.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

He can try to declare a victory, but there'll still be the ongoing cost of us having kind of shown our might and Iran remaining in power and now controlling the street of Roman lose. Or there's escalation, and we've already done or we've already launched a massive uh campaign against Iran and the regime held together uh what escalation looks like, how far they'd have to go, because you the next the next escalation is toward the regime collapsing. That's a combination of economic pressure to squeeze them. That's more intense uh military action. And like it all and and while that is happening, in uh even if it were to happen relatively quickly, you're still talking about Iran unloading whatever it is it's willing to do in the Gulf. And so just there are terrible options in front of America's worst person. And this was so worth a book. Trump is a drunk guy at the bar who's been lifting a lot and decided to pick a fight with the crazy guy who is cauliflower here. And that guy is kicking the shit out of him and is willing to go a lot further to win this fight than Donald Trump is and take a lot more pain and it's not gonna win. Yeah, and by the way, you also killed his father, I guess.

SPEAKER_05 13:10

And there's no goal further for him. It is totally like there was something someone uh said once a long time ago, which is like, uh, if someone is willing to fight you, it means they have less to lose. Yeah. And uh I don't think Trump ever learned that, because I think they've been a refinery.

Gas Tax Holiday And Costly Grift

SPEAKER_03 13:27

Good news though, for all you drivers wondering if we're ever gonna see uh$3 a gallon gas again. Uh Trump said Monday he's considering suspending the federal gas tax to it, which is currently about 18 cents a gallon for gasoline and 24 cents a gallon for diesel. The president said he'd suspend the tax for as long as it takes, which seems like not that long if you believe Kevin has it, which of course you should, uh, who just said oil prices will drop quickly before the midterms once, quote, the gusher opens. Where's the gusher? I guess in the straight. Chuck Schumer's office now that you'd heard of the gas tax bill. He excites him. Sorry. Just because he loves it, you know, there's a press conference. No, for sure, for sure. Suspending the gas tax. Good idea or great idea. Yeah, suspend the gas tax, release all the strategic controlling reserve, get rid of all the sanctions on Iran, maybe Russia while you're at it. Just go nuts. Prices will stay high, but now we won't be able to pay for highways or mass transit. It's a great idea. Let's tip it. Uh yeah, we already can't pay for those things anyway.

SPEAKER_05 14:10

And over the last sort of half century, more and more of our roads are paid for without the gas. The ass is supplemental, but we still pay for it ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

I mean, uh, having a gas tax is a good idea. The politics of suspending it are great, just do it. This is this said said like someone who was on uh Hillary Clinton's primary campaign in 2008. Which you I don't even remember, we were forced to be. I had to think about that too, because it's like the mandate fight was no. You guys, when we did the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, Hillary was uh saying we should suspend the debt the gas tax, and and Obama was saying that's just a that's just a gimmick, and it's bad, and we shouldn't do it, and it's just it's not really gonna affect your prices that much. Is that when John McCain sent tire gauges to us? And that's on the different.

SPEAKER_05 14:42

That was that was when that was when we were just solved. That was when we were making we wanted people to check. He just suggested people check their tires. They're like you fucking piece of shit. People are moving on these soft tires. But the uh yeah, I'd love to.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

But the motor is it doesn't it doesn't actually bring down the price.

SPEAKER_05 14:56

No, it's what is it to 16 to 18 cents a gallon, and then some little bit more for diesel. I mean, it's a bigger deal for truck drivers commercial, but it does make a big difference uh for people in it like that.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

But it's also ridiculous that John said he would do this. Can't do it without Congress. Um, there's some bipartisan legislation that's floating around that might get a little more lift now that he said it, but he he can't do it on its up on his own. Or I guess he he's not supposed to do it on its own on his own, but knows he can try anyway. Um and yeah, of course, it robs the government of you know revenue it can't afford to lose because we have a lot of big ticket items that we need to pay for, like bombing Iran as cool down ballroom. And now apparently painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool American flag blue, which uh along with some other repairs is apparently gonna cost$13.1 million, according to David Farnvolt at the Times. This is an apparently an 88% jump in the cost of what it's gonna take to uh repaint the reflecting pool. And you know why it jumped so high? Because Donald Trump decided to give a no-big contract to the guy who did all his pools at Bedminster. Which is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_05 15:51

It's not a good thing. They're trying to sue it just to stop it. It was funny the guy that was suing, he's like, uh, we just look, it's a process thing, but also we just think they chose a bad color. Which you know they did. You know it's who the tackiest fucking thing is. The tackiest blue. Like, come on. It doesn't even look like a goddamn uh uh uh like splash mountain bank.

SPEAKER_03 16:05

Like just kind of best blue is North Carolina, Caroline blue. Just do that. You won't see colors. Pretty bright in the reflected pool. I don't know. I'm not I'm just making this up. Why is Kevin Hassett always? It looks like Dennis the Menace just took down the biggest nitrous balloon you've ever seen and just spouts like economic bullshit on you. It's like he's spouting. He's the best. Yeah, he's the best. Get him out more. Get him out there. Um,$13 million for the reflected pool. They're voting on the ballroom this week. I remember that's a billion dollars uh that they want to add in security. That's what a lot of security. Did you see what um what's he doing to that? Speaking of speaking of your boy Chuck Schumer, uh-huh. Uh he coined a new term for Republicans because the ballroom is you know what's I didn't know. Ballroom Republicans. He's calling a ballroom, he's calling the party Republicans, I guess. I know it's one of those, I'm like, it's uh it's definitely definitely not using a scalpel there, more of a Mark was sledgehammer, but maybe he he throws out ballroom Republicans and then everyone, it's like a signal and everyone says it in a better way, but everyone knows what the message is because he's shots made this point last week that because this billion dollars is in the budget, they're all gonna have to vote on it. I think that's great.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

It's a yes or no, yeah, on fucking ballroom.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

That's good.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Terrific.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

The idea that's like, oh, it's security, security. Secret service needs it. Well, would they need it if you didn't have the fucking ballroom? Probably not.

SPEAKER_05 17:00

Hey, well, well, it's like you knocked down the East Wing and you gotta rebuild it. Did you did you not was it a different America in which there wasn't security? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

When you knock down a building. You knew the thing was gonna fucking cost.

SPEAKER_05 17:10

It's like it now it's like every fucking now, it's like a football stadium where uh, you know, this these donors are gonna have to go to the big unveiling because they're the ones responsible, but the vast majority of the cost of the taxpayers. Because the building that if the actual kind of construction is 300 million, but securing the facility is a billion dollars, costs that were inevitable and required in order to ever use it, it's a taxpayer ballroom, just 100%.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

Just trying to add it up here. We got there's the ballroom, there's the Trump candidate center, there's the arch. We haven't even started building the arch yet. Well, kick count. We got the and now the reflecting pool. Um, they're also that that UFC fight, that's gonna, that's gonna take some doing to uh put on that and take it down on the White House lawn. Now, some of this is like privately funded skating. It is, of course, the it's the it's the worst of all worlds for Trump, best of all worlds for us in the politics, but it's like some of it's being funded by major donors, corporate donors who now get special access to Trump because of their donation, and then the rest is the taxpayers for the bill. So it's like a good mix of shady influence of uh corporate allies of Trump and just you know good old-fashioned uh just you know uh corruption. The reflecting pool brings you back to me. So when you're reflecting on your life, you like to think of that.

Venezuela As A New US State

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Like, hey, we don't the reflecting pool wasn't a problem. No, I'm open to the possibility that they could use a ball or gun, I think it would be my priority, right? But the reflecting pool is just doing its thing. It was just it's not the wrong color. It looks great, it's classic. I do think, listen, I've said this before, no fast to see the Spielberg. I think that that World War II Memorial. Oh, yeah, you've seen it. I this is my position, which I think is I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't want the final design. Trickle down ballroom. Yeah, guys.

SPEAKER_05 20:24

Yeah, he was part of the class. Because it was part of the post uh saving private Ryan Tom. It was in that, it was part he was helped raise money for it. It's kind of a big booster of it. I don't know exactly what it's directed by. It was not the designer of it, but he was a big face of getting it done.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

So Democrats take software, we're gonna do uh bulldoze the ballroom. Yeah. Uh bulldoze the World War II. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want that. Listen, you can't take the reflecting pool. What are you doing in the reflecting pool? Is that where Jengy and Forrest got reunited? Was that in the reflecting pool? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

It's look, that this the the painting the reflecting pool, kind of undoing that, that's an easy one.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

Yeah, that that actually is. The writing on the outside of the oval, that's like cursive gold writing oval this way. Why do you think this house needs a fucking name tag? We all know everyone knows what it is. That's the whole idea of it. It'd be funny if they did a bit of gold like in this house we believe, kind of like the Mar-Lago, Avon Pont, uh, umbrellas, the yellow umbrellas, those are all gone. Uh those drive. It looks just like Mar-a Lago. Yeah, that's the silly color. So long list. Well, uh, if suspending the gas tax doesn't work um and the and the gusher of oil doesn't open, Trump does have one other. Yeah, the snap. Gusher. Uh it is a snappy, yes, Johnny. Uh Trump does have one other trick up his sleeve. President told Fox on Monday that he is, quote, seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st US state because there's quote$40 trillion in oil there, and quote, Venezuela loves Trump. Isn't this the MAGA fever dream? Isn't he president? Because Joe Biden led in too many people from Venezuelan prisons. What the hell where is Stephen Miller on this one? I don't understand.

China Trip Taiwan And AI Talks

SPEAKER_05 21:40

Like, every person in a Venezuelan prison would become American.

SPEAKER_04 21:45

You would actually make an unprecedented number of Venezuelan prisoners quit an amnesty. Every person in the asylum, the worst people in Venezuela, would all become American. It's a good question.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

Uh huh. But I wonder if um just to play this out, if this administration, Stephen Miller, would make sure that they are second-class citizens who have to say in Venezuela. We know how they treat the citizens of Puerto Rico, although Maduro's advocating race.

SPEAKER_05 22:03

But they're not a member, they're not there, they don't have state of that. Well, also, exactly. Just considering it. Oh, you're playing.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

So am I. You also need, I mean, I know that we don't care about international law or the UN anymore, but it's a flagrant violation of international law. The people of Venezuela would have to, of course, vote on this.

SPEAKER_05 22:16

That would be a flagrant violation of an international law, but Venezuelans don't choose to do much. That's right, I'm sorry. Yeah, have to have some sort of vote on that. Which would be like that's quite consumption. Also, also, boy, it creates a bunch of new interesting orders that presumably would also need walls for Mexico to pay for, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

Yeah, yeah. Also, he said that they love Trump. And I did like some polling on this. Uh, this is in the Miami Herald actually a couple weeks ago. They did a big poll in Venezuela. In January, 92% of Venezuelans said they felt grateful to Trump for capturing Maduro. That was like a couple days after the capture. And a few weeks ago, it's down to 47%. 89% of Venezuelans reject Trump's continued backing of uh Rodriguez, and 78% think the country's on the wrong track under her.

SPEAKER_05 22:50

Honestly, that him losing support for deposing Maduro that quickly, it's actually very American to me. It's like what have you done for me lately, bitch?

SPEAKER_03 22:56

I'm 100% sure that we've now officially thought about this longer and deeper than the certainly there's an easier way to just steal all their oil than to make those other stuff. Yeah, that's the end game. I'm doing that now already. The oil is not just like it's like in the Amazon. It's like very hard to access, actually. Real pain.

unknown 23:10

I know.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

I mean, you know, I was trying to not talk about this at all, but uh, we saw what happened with Greenland. There's there's you know, NATO had exercises, military exercises in Greenland, so we got pretty close on that one. Raphael Mark just wanted to shouted us about international law over here. Look at all Clooney over there. I'm all Clooney. I'm gonna get the first message here.

SPEAKER_04 23:24

Yeah, say that shit, Ben.

Virginia Maps And Midterm Math

SPEAKER_03 23:28

Take it to the world of us. Yeah. Okay. All right, so Trump saying on this subject, Trump's cook spent some quality time this week with uh fellow imperialist Xi Jinping when he takes his first trip to China uh since 2017. Uh naturally, uh Trump will be rolling a few billionaires deep. Elon Musk and Tim Cook are joining, among others, probably because of their diplomatic skills. Uh, hey Tim, you're resigning. You don't have to do this anymore, Tim Cook. You know what? You're just absolutely just likes Donald Trump. I think he did. I really do. I think anyone in Dr. Tim Cook was just like, do I think Dr. Tim Cook's the colour? I figured he just likes fucking screens. No, fuck Tim Cook. He sucks. Uh drop your iPhone. Okay. See it right, Tim, I guess. Okay, anyway, uh so tell me an Asian diplomat DC told Lincoln they're worried that China might offer to help reopen the strait in exchange for American concessions on Taiwan, which I'm sure if Trump read that would be like a good idea. Uh how big of a deal would that be? How concern are you? I mean, I I'm first of all, I'm just skeptical that China could actually force Iran to reopen the strait and kind of go back to the before times. Because if you're like China buys 90% of Iran's oil, but still, if you're Iran, you're thinking, well, we get a couple million worth of Bitcoin after every boat that goes by, we find any buyer for that oil. Like, I don't know. I'm I'm skeptical. I I asked um uh a China expert friend about this quote in Politico, and his take was like it would like. Be more like, how can you expect me to help you with Australia from moves and not sell my Iranian friends any more weapons when you're selling weapons to the Taiwanese and giving them diplomatic cover? Um that could certainly happen. And Trump, I think, basically said today that Taiwan armed sales are up for negotiation, which is a huge deviation from terms of foreign policy, but that's just not a thing that is discussed with the Chinese. It's you know congressional mandated uh law. So he's not which he signed, like, right? Yeah, okay. Well, this is an interesting thing. Is like I've always assumed Trump could give a shit about Taiwan. He cares insofar as losing access to their semiconductors would be an economic calamity, right? And it would be a historic, it would be a historic ego ego wound. Yeah, but like he doesn't give a shit about freedom, democracy, human rights, uh religious freedom, hating communism, all the traditional like things that want to animate Republicans on this. So I assume he would trade away uh Taiwan in a heartbeat for a good trade deal. But even but she didn't think like he doesn't need Trump to be to make some historic shift even rhetorically. Like I think if he gets what he if he hears what he wants to hear behind the scenes, that's more than enough. Like, yeah, you do what you gotta do. I'm not gonna go after you. I mean, so we'll see. All that said, the Trump administration has greenlit a huge amount of sales packages to Taiwan. Now, the the rug here is that those haven't delivered it. Uh they're like 20 billion behind in delivery of those weapons, but like people like Marco Rubio is making sure the packages get authorized. So I don't know. And then they're gonna be talking about AI uh a lot as well. Apparently it seems like a good outcome on AI, it seems like it could be um there's reports that they may open a channel of communication to make sure that like Cold War style, like nuclear weapons, like make sure there's no. She gives them a chat button. Yeah, I just make it talk about it. I would like our country cooperating with China on uh on making sure that uh we are keeping the line open on uh AI when you get scale. Yeah, I don't agree about it, was it last week? Time's last. But uh like there's obviously a space between like hamstringing whatever edge we think we have and allowing sort of unfettered development. Like there clearly would be some kind of there's a way to have an agreement about some kind of limits uh uh to prevent sort of catastrophic outcomes with AI. That seems like exactly what we would want them to be working for. And they said they were gonna talk about it. So I do think that's good. Sure they don't know that place. It's not AI, the nukes, the nuclear decision-making process, no AI in the yeah. And they have both agreed so far to split that off. But there's a lot more. We lock that down. Plenty of other problems that they could end the world, uh, you know, bioweapons and pressure. Um, we haven't had a chance to talk about the uh shitty news we got on Friday about Virginia, where the state Supreme Court overturned the referendum that voters just passed to create new congressional maps ahead of the midterms. Uh Tommy did come to the news when it broke on the PSA YouTube channel. I have to say I'd crushed it. That's why you should go subscribe for free. Subscribe to America's YouTube. If you want to see Dan looking spicy on Friday.

unknown 26:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 26:57

He does most of the YouTubes. Uh he does. Monopoly's YouTube is that Friday. Yeah, for Friday.

SPEAKER_04 27:03

That's for that's what it's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 27:04

That's for the sucks. I'm talking about a polar coaster. You're a Donald Curry.

unknown 27:09

Nice.

SPEAKER_04 27:10

Anyway, nobody put this in the comments on the message box. That's the only way Dan will know this happened. Shug we'd be fucking cool. Fucking narcs.

SPEAKER_03 27:19

Oh. Anyway, what was I gonna say? Oh, yeah. There's been some more developments on the potential redistricting fallout in Virginia and other states ahead of the midterms. Uh here's glass half empty. Nate Cohn, of course, uh calculated that Republicans could now lose the popular vote by uh more than two points and still keep control of the House. Uh there's glass half full. Jonathan Martin is out with the column, arguing that Republicans still might lose many of the newly drawn districts, uh, which by definition will be more competitive. Um political basically said the same thing. I think you guys probably talked about that on Friday. Um, I think she thinks that when all said done the realistic gain, it's probably like five seats um in a in a good scenario. Uh yeah, they couldn't net like 11 or 12, but probably more take. And then that's because of the uh Democrats still winning those tough districts, not because they were so weak to withdraw them. Um and uh J. Martin argues that their hand gave Democrats a generational opportunity to mobilize outraged black voters. Case in point, uh Republican Representative Ralph Norman said on Monday about the state's mono Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn, who's one of the longest serving black members in the House. Quote, I like him personally, but he does not represent the rest of South Carolina. Well, that's uh that is part of the point of representing one district in the state. So you represent some people in the state and not all the people in the state. Um how are you guys processing the news generally and specifically on the question of whether this is all as bad as people think? And on that point, some breaking news while we were recording this, the U.S. Supreme Court uh did rule they lifted the injunction on Alabama that they had uh in place before, now allowing them to um uh pursue their uh their new maps. So the dickheads uh they voted for their new you know map proposal in the middle of a tornado bully. I think they doesn't have going. There's lots of evacuated, they're gonna start away black people's uh uh voting rights in more borderless. Um so what do you guys think? How bad?

SPEAKER_05 28:45

So I've seen a couple different numbers, but basically, even with these new maps, if we have you know, if we went on say four percent right nationally, the the the house the house market is four percent, uh then we still win the house.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

I get that's an important one, just to just like put an exclamation point on that, because um that was if if Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina all done, which now seems like we are definitely that scenario, and if we won the popular vote by four in that scenario, Democrats still pass.

SPEAKER_02 29:07

Right.

SPEAKER_03 29:07

And so I'm all for doing a round of worry and and recrimination, but I would say that in this political environment, the deeper, the deeper problem would be not having confidence that against a president with disapproval rating, with both on the politics and on the policy, has been as bad a president as you could ever imagine, as destructive of force as you could ever imagine, enabled directly by Republicans who deserve to be held responsible for this president's misadventures. Uh, we ought to be able to beat that 4%. We should focus on that.

SPEAKER_05 29:30

Because if we do that, uh not only do we overcome their advantages in the gerrymander, we can win those Virginia seats that that on the old map, and we can actually prove that some of their maps were drawn too aggressively and make them make them more nervous the next time they look at doing this to try to redraw the maps because the Republican incumbents will start to think, oh, there's even a slight wave, I can lose my seat.

How Democrats Fight Back On Maps

SPEAKER_03 29:45

I mean, Democrats won the host popular vote by eight in 2018. So if we're thinking and hoping and expecting um this cycle to be uh better than even 2018, then we should have no problem in the House. And look, if we're not winning by eight, if we're only running by four, then something else went wrong. Exactly. More than redistricting. If we're if after all this, Democrats went by four or five or six in this kind of year, and so we're doing worse than we did in 2018. Maybe they like the ball. Maybe they like the ball. Maybe they like the ball. Maybe they like five dollar gas. Yeah. Or six. Maybe people are like a person that had so much money left over after they fully did care. Yeah, people hate it. They have all the options with what to do with the money.

SPEAKER_05 30:19

But yeah, and I would also say if also this does galvanize people and we are able to win the house, suddenly there are people showing up uh in these Senate races that might not have otherwise, and it's sort of, you know, Republicans can be hoisted by their own guitars.

SPEAKER_03 30:29

Yeah, yeah. Uh in the country will have voted for Trump by five and a half points. Um so that means to your window majority, you're winning a lot of not all, but you're have to win some significant amount of seats that you know Trump won by five and a half points. Look, it's we've already been doing it every buttons. Yeah, the swings from 24 to these festivals have been like on average, I think, 13 points. You know, like these are base elections. Democrats are already well motivated. Hopefully they'll all learn about this, be angry about it, even more motivated turnout. And the the good thing about Trump is he just things are as bad as they've ever been for him politically, and he's like, give me a shuffle, I'm not done digging billion dollar ballroom,$1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, let me drive my stupid car on the fountain for some reason. Just like wasting his time on stupid shit. And look, the bigger long-term problem here uh that will outlast Trump is the concentrated power of the state legislatures in red states, which they have because they have gerrymandered their state legislative districts in such a crazy fashion. And in many cases, like in North Carolina, um, know that if the full state elects a Democrat as governor, which happens in places like North Carolina, Wisconsin, then the state legislature, which never has to worry about competitive elections or Republicans losing, just takes all the power away from the power. So like it's simple. Whatever project 2029, whatever long-term thing we're doing, like we have to figure out a way to win back power in some of these state legislatures in some of these southern states and other heavily Republican states that have gerrymanded themselves on the state level, forget about the federal level, into such a player. And we know from the Constitution, right, that it it you know endows state legislatures with a lot of power when it comes with elections, certainly illegal rights, like that. Yeah. But the the fact um and on that though, Democrats do control Virginia, I don't know if you guys saw the mini news cycle about Virginia Democrats considering whether to uh was the mini news cycle. Yeah, so it was like a mini war, which we're talking about this morning's already over. Um anyway, they were considering uh whether to change the retirement age for state supreme court justices. Uh so to bring it down in order to get rid of all the state supreme court justices on the Virginia Supreme Court and appoint new ones in time to uh change the maps and then have the new democratically appointed uh Democratic party appointed uh state democratic uh state supreme court justices approve the new maps and in time for the midterms.

SPEAKER_04 32:25

Well, first they'd have to get a bunch of new, they have to replace those justices because they've been retired by the government at the age of, I think, in decorped 54. I mean, first of all, shout out for create. Uh, real dog did not make sense that the golden retriever can't be speaker in the house situation.

SPEAKER_03 32:42

It's without a doubt an undemocratic, terrible precedent. The kind of thing that voters would absolutely despise in this climate, absolutely would do it. You know, the governor of Louisiana is just talking about on TV having thrown out ballots and he's like, it's not my fault, it's from court's fault. Yeah, you could cancel the election. Do we really think Abigail Spanberger, Governor Spanberger, would have wanted to, you know, kind of hemorrhage all the political capital she'd built up with independent Republican voters doing this early on? I doubt it. I bet she has other things she wants to do. Did you see Greg Sargent's piece in the New Republican on this or whatever the reason they're not doing it? So May 12th, which is the day you're listening to this, that is the deadline set by the Department of Elections for having congressional maps in the system in time for early voting in June ahead of the August primary, so they couldn't pass the law to lower the retirement age to get rid of all the judges to appoint all the new judges to reach other maps to send it back to court because the technology is.

SPEAKER_05 33:28

Yeah, is it punch cards? Like, I don't know what we're doing. Like, how big is it? Is it a room? Is it overheat? Like, I don't understand. Can you clog? But the idea that we could potentially lose the house.

SPEAKER_04 33:36

Can you help in Virginia?

SPEAKER_05 33:38

If called a punch in Virginia, the Virginia government's computers are too slow to be a democracy.

SPEAKER_03 33:42

That's what the potential is. I think it was like the guy that runs the state center.

SPEAKER_04 33:49

Yeah, no, no, he got a real guy on the phone. He should have reversed it.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

But that guy was like, hang with me. It was rock. Love the idea was love your idea. Yeah, I mean, look, my my take on it was okay.

SPEAKER_04 34:04

All the districts have just magnified magnificent Yamos. Look at these campaigns. Look at these.

SPEAKER_03 34:08

Okay, it's it's just don't be Virginia State Senate Majority Leader Scott Sorva. Yeah, I think what's he bold and doesn't know computers. I refuse to jump up.

SPEAKER_04 34:17

I'm calling him the Jim Comey of fucking pain. No, I don't think that's fair. No, look, the thing about it is 86.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Don't make that. She didn't pick up the phone. Yeah, well, smart. No, she's governor.

SPEAKER_04 34:28

I'm not taking that fucking call. I will get rid of all the judge jud judges because of democracy. Okay. All the judges. They're worse than us. Everybody can find me. We're going. Come on. Gavin Newsom's breathing down her neck. Yeah. Gavin Newsome. We can run, we can have a couple of things. That's the institutional fucking fan. We could have all democratic districts. All democratic districts. What kind of cowards? Why is Gavin Newsom such a coward? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:52

Put that up there.

SPEAKER_04 34:53

No, but put that out.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Just kidding.

AOC Bezos And The Billionaire Debate

SPEAKER_05 34:55

If you told me right now, there's no time issue. We don't know what the future holds. We can still win the house. We should fight them in the house. Yes, it's made it harder. But the idea that if we knew what with with certainty had our only path to having some check on Trump was doing it. With updating the machines. With updating the machines.

SPEAKER_04 35:12

Updating to see area 15.2 so we can upload the map so the new judges that are young and vital, just the 32-year-old new Democratic judges could have proven them out.

SPEAKER_05 35:18

I'd be like, okay, I get it. Maybe it's worth the risk for thinking you're like evil. But everything can get worse.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

And look, I believe Republicans are leading us down all these escalatory paths all along the way, every step of the way. But this would be a new one, and it would be on the idea. It is clear that any uh state where Democrats have control, either of the governorship or the governorship, and ideally the state legislature, if we do not act to maximize the number of seats that we win between now and 28, because the cycle passes.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Which Virginia will have a chance to do.

SPEAKER_03 35:47

Right, which we're gonna have to do. If you decide to take a pass on that, yeah, then you're fucked. But like I expect New York, Virginia, and Colorado are going to get in the act. Minnesota can, I believe, Wisconsin can be Illinois and can squeeze out another one at Illinois. But JP Prisker probably will be bulldozing the courthouses, you know. You're guessing that's not going to be bad. The problem is the Virginia State Constitution, Commonwealth. Um, that's that's that gives, you know, the legislature the authority to appoint the judges uh and and give them certain terms so that you get a bunch of Republicans. I mean, it's actually probably fair for democracy.

SPEAKER_04 36:13

It's probably great for the great for the country, but they can't they can expand from seven to eleven seats as you need actually like a big supermajority in the legislature, I think, to present prevent exactly this exact same thing.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

Sounds like a good model for America, actually. Right. Yeah, yeah. But again, we have to do things as a country, yeah, and not as individual states, which is why you need to eliminate gerrymandering as a country.

SPEAKER_05 36:31

The U.S. Constitution does not require any specifics on expanding uh the number of justices on the Supreme Court, and that is just uh custom. And I'm now I are we have we ever did uh the Biden administration ever finish that report?

SPEAKER_03 36:40

Whether we're good for that report, yeah. You know, I think they just it's on it on American to-do list. All right, anyway, why were why worry about 2026 when we can speculate about 2028? Nice. Uh AOC made some news over the weekend when she sat down with our pal David Axarat at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Boy, was there an event that's just designed for us? Asked the IOP with interviewing AOC. Good times. We reviewed the IOP tape and tell you all that. No? Yeah, 2017 joke. Where she provided uh the terminally online among us, plenty of content to engage with, as people have been over the last couple days. There was one response in particular she gave uh to the age-old question of whether she's planning on running for president or senate in 2028, uh, which you talk about in which she answered by pivoting to a Washington Post editorial last week, going after her for saying that it's impossible to become a billionaire without breaking rules and abusing workers or paying them not what they're worth. Uh take a listen.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

It was very clear this is a veiled threat, right? So the elite saying if you want this job, you just stepped out of line. They assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat. And my ambition is way bigger than that. Um, my ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go, but single parent health care is forever. Living wages forever, biggest running care forever, women's running a common.

SPEAKER_03 38:11

Which this part they would come and go a little faster. Yeah. What'd you guys think? I thought it was a um, in terms of non-answers to questions about are you gonna run for president? It's one of the best.

SPEAKER_05 38:19

They went to the crowd to a guy named Chuck Tumer who was like, Brangular.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

Yeah, like we've all heard of like a million apologies and tuck that question. And usually in some version of like, I'm not thinking about that right now. My priorities are on the state of Virginia. You know it's like she made it bigger. She made it about what she wanted to do, the people she wanted to help. I think that was that was nice, it was well done. Now, uh the nitpicking response that we kind of hinted at is legislative accomplishments are more durable, but not they're not forever just from core turnovers. Wait, I think that's a little too literal. Yeah, yeah. Uh we on the thing. I feel like we would have written the line forever, and then and then like the policy areas of the lawyers would have been like more durable, is more accurate, which is correct, yeah, it would be more accurate to say that. Almost ACS, AC is still hanging on. Yeah, yeah, by the skin of its teeth. That's right. I just think it was completely wild to have a Washington Post editorial, not a column, but uh an entire editorial from the Edboard owned by Jeff Bezos, being like, hey, stop picking on billionaires.

SPEAKER_05 39:07

So if I'm like, I'm gonna redo the editorial board so that it focuses on free markets and and uh uh like you know not attacking success. It's like you know, promises made promises kept, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 39:15

And we'll have editorial boarding deal. Yeah. Uh I watched the whole thing. I never turned heard her talk about the specific experience of going from candidate to overnight celebrity. That was a really interesting story. That's a um uh and how just like head spinning and insane that was. And then the part about what uh did you hear the story about why she didn't go to med school, like her dad got sick, passed away actually, and her mom's starting to work on the job. I mean, it's not just like the bartending story that makes her feel like more of a human being than any other politician. It's the very recent past and economic hardship. Oh no, it's still a very compelling event. It was worth watching the full hour. Yeah. I will say that the whole conversation about should billionaires exist, uh, to me is not the most productive use of time on either side of the debate, because it's like here's the thing about billionaires, I just want to make sure that they are taxed appropriately. I want to make sure that they can't use their influence and power to uh change the laws uh and have a bigger megaphone than everyone else in the country just because they're rich. But like it seems like an academic dorm room debate to be like, should they exist, should they not exist? If they exist, does that mean that they broke the law or not broke the law? Like, I don't know why we need to be debating that.

SPEAKER_05 40:07

So it's just I I feel like it's um I was thinking about there was something about the online debate that was very frustrating to me because a lot of people talking power.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

There are a few aspects of the online debate we get into, but we'll speak to start with the billionaires.

SPEAKER_05 40:15

And I and I was trying to figure out what was bugging me about it, and it and this I think because you end up in this conversation in which the terms are moral and fuzzy, terms like earned, legitimate, deserved, and those it's moral language.

SPEAKER_03 40:26

And I actually think the debate over the kind of morality of who's gonna amass sums of wealth and how they do it is not like I don't think it's I think it's more than academic.

SPEAKER_05 40:32

I think the way we have it is academic. But the what was interesting to me is the response. Like, it is absurd that Jeff Bezos' paper is writing a defense of billionaires. And and what's interesting about the defense is it they always land on celebrities like Taylor Swift and Seinfeld and and people. Like Bible people. Well, like old people and people that like, you know, nobody had a pee in a bottle for Taylor Swift to write the music, right? Like nobody had to sew sneakers with their little hands, right? So, like they didn't see that documentary about the air store.

SPEAKER_03 40:57

How many children were working those gears? It seems like she has a peanut few bottles. Maybe she couldn't. Is that girl?

Sean Duffy’s Sponsored Road Trip Show

SPEAKER_05 41:03

But like, but then so it's like, oh, because they really earned it. And and what the the kind of underlying defense of it is like, well, Taylor Swift, by dent of talent without exploitation, created more than a billion dollars worth of value. And like I think I I largely agree with that, but where I kind of what but they they are talking past the deeper argument, which is a system in which one person can accrue all that wealth. Like, even Taylor Swift, like she's protected by intellectual property law, she's been able to take her vehicles on the roads and all the rest. And it's not about like the the righteousness or the morality to me, like that's just not what I care about. I think it matters a lot in politics. It's like a system in which those benefits accrue so much, is both wrong on the front end and the back end, the incentive structure and power structure of the economy, and then the tax structure on the back end. And so whether billionaires should or should not exist, if a lot of them do, is because something is fundamentally broken in the system and they have the ability to exploit that wealth that has a kind of also wrecked our politics.

SPEAKER_03 41:50

And that to me is what makes it worth having. Yeah, and and for me, that brings us to like, all right, so what are the policy considerations here? What are we going to? What rules and laws are we going to put into place to make sure that the system is more fair? How do we tax wealth? How do we tax wealth? And it goes into regulations and lobbying influence and all that and all the corruption stuff as well, right? There's all that. Um, but and I also think I think about Ruben Gallego and what he would always say after the 2024 election is that Democrats with Latina voters failed the big ass Trump test, and then people, people in this country want to be rich, working-class people want to be rich. And do they all want to be billionaires? Or do they think they're billionaires? No. But they want to be wealthy. And what they just want is to like have a you know fair playing field, whatever you want to call it, whatever cliche you want to bring out. But like people want to make a lot of money. And they also want to make sure that people who are absurdly rich like pay their fair share of taxes and don't have more power and influence than everyone else.

SPEAKER_05 42:34

Yeah, I but I think like Democrats end up focusing on the tax side of it and not as much on like the deeper kind of uh like structures that mean individuals, like whether they have whether they have a union or not, whether they have other protections like let's say non-competes and things like that, all of which like kind of mean as and as like more like all the productivity gains are sort of going up to the top, which means the individual has less negotiating and bargaining power than they used to, and their dollar doesn't go as far because of all of our failures across the housing and all the rest. And to me, like those are the questions that I think Democrats struggle the most to answer. We have the least compelling answer on like upriver from the taxes.

SPEAKER_03 43:06

Uh, one last thing we have to talk about. Uh gas prices may be$4.50 a gallon, but transportation secretary and Road Rules All-Star's veteran, Sean Duffy, really wants you to get up and take a road trip. So much so that he and his wife and nine children have been apparently doing their own road trip over the last several months, which they've documented in a Ghazi documentary series premiering soon on YouTube. Duffy's wife, Fox News host and fellow Real World and Road Rules star Rachel Campos Duffy, that's how that's where they met, uh, described the project as really wholesome, good family stuff that's an antidote to the quote, Pornhub world we're living in. What kind of road trip did she go? Well, she wasn't real world, real real. I can never say real world road rules family. Yeah, it's hard to turn it. Anyway, uh, here's the uh here's the clip.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

What a beautiful family.

SPEAKER_05 43:50

The deputy said you have tons of kids, and we have like 11 kids. You turn all of the country here.

Final Thoughts And Credits

SPEAKER_03 43:58

Basically, the air's kind of lived in this house, none of you would be here. Was that still boring? Was that antidote support number number? Um, I mean you got a lot of kids. So that's so many. First of all, you can't road trip with nine kids. What are we driving to the schools? Because that looked like a little car. All the bullshit that they're really driving around the country, they're flying places and then driving around and filming it, right? We assume that he was paying. No. You might be wondering who paid for this massive boondoggle. Um, 501c4 called the Great American Road Trip, uh, Inc., which says it fully funds its own efforts to celebrate and share America's story, and uh whose sponsors happen to be industries with uh business in front of uh the Department of Transportation. So that's all um and the Department later confirmed that taxpayer dollars paying for the secretary's travel to a bunch of the stops, but not his families, and the whole thing is official business anyway, because he's the transportation secretary and he was doing some transportation there, I guess. Dude, remember when the planes were all crashing and like Sean Duffy was a guy who was gonna fix it? Well, I just watched a guy get hit on the runway in Denver the other day. I don't know, maybe don't run a trip around so much. Look, you know, this first of all, this would bug me less if a didn't have a bunch of uh sponsors who have business in front of the Department of Transportation that's a good thing. And if they were Democrats, right, John? Well, no, I was gonna say, I was actually gonna say classic. You know, you know who fucking wouldn't stop talking about Pete Buddig criticizing Pete and Caston? Rachel Campos Duffy. Rachel Campos Duffy when they spent two months when Pete took two months maternity leave because the twins were in the NICU. Yeah, they were. And she criticized him for that. And so it's like, okay, and now you're gonna go do this. It's crazy to the seven-month reality show. When did they think that he like popped in for a day here and a day there? So it's like whatever. If he wants to do it on his days off, it's all none of these people are fucking doing a good job anyway in the cabinet. It's all grift.

SPEAKER_05 45:32

He's one guy where it's like, dude, like you got like real, legitimate, ongoing management problems at your department.

SPEAKER_03 45:38

Yeah, and if and if buttrocket Duffy can't fix it, who can? You know, that's what his nickname was in the in the real world. Um But Rocket. Why was it that? Because he uh would run around the house streaking and mooning people. I remember they did a front moon, I think, too, at a window in one of the episodes. Rachel Rachel was, yeah, French Campos is.

SPEAKER_05 46:16

And that remains the case. It means the bar. It's a couple of things. But this is tough. I also look, as a rule, like if someone's producing their own reality show, it's just more boring. That's just how it goes.

SPEAKER_02 46:24

You got the only the reality show is like, oh, it's wholesome. Like, what would you think? That's why people go to BravoCon? No, they want to watch these bitches throw shit, you know, and get he was also a lumberjack.

SPEAKER_03 46:32

Yeah, we're gonna chop some wood. That's part of the lumber thing. He was a lumberjack? Oh, yeah. Oh, I know that. That was part of the real Boston thing, yeah. That's right. That was his that was his shtick. That butt rocket. I don't remember butt rocket. I thought I thought that was an old jump that was gonna be like I said too many times. Um lagging that he was briefly NASA administrator, he doesn't remember that. Yeah, get some other rockets up there. You know? He's got the expertise. He has a history of he's worked with he's worked with all kinds of rockets. Anyway, is that it? That's it. Uh that's our show for today, everyone. Yeah. It was a good one. Was it a closure of a show? Dan and I are gonna be back with the new show on Friday, so I want to check that out.

SPEAKER_05 47:10

I think we started. This is a new ending. This is a new end segment of Bonti America. I want to apologize for calling Gavin News and the low f uh. I want to apologize for suggesting that removing the gas tax would cause Chuck Shuber to come. Uh I think I regret saying that or applying it now, I regret saying it.

SPEAKER_03 47:21

Um, it was Ass rocket, sorry. Oh now same thing. I was just being family-friendly pickup. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 47:30

Oh, real rump rocket. That's something different. Speaking of Tim Cocoa in China. What? Oh fuck. And the show. We're out.

SPEAKER_03 47:40

Credits. America is a pretty media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, Rekkenna Roberts, and Faris Safari with Reed Churling, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGrope, Ben Hethco, Jordan Cancer, Charlotte Landis, Kiro Kellavy, David Tolls, Media Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers' Guild of America East.