Transcript
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to s Sips and Substance, where we distill politics down to its essence. I'm Justin. We have Jonathan here. Hello. And we were supposed to record last week, but Jonathan was sick, and i want to hear how RFK was involved.
Speaker: Yeah, there was... I don't think there's... um There's fortunately a... Vaccine for a cold yet, but if there was, we'd get rid of it. um So what we wanted to do originally was do a sort of year review of the Trump administration, and we were going to discuss foreign policy.
Speaker: Unfortunately, due to events in Minneapolis, we decided against the foreign policy aspect of things. We will get to that next week or maybe the week after. And Jonathan, why don't you go ahead? Sure. So to me, it kind of comes down to one overarching um issue right now. And when our government is sort of killing people in the streets, to me, pretty much everything else kind of falls away to noise. And that's the kind of thing we need to address.
Speaker: um And for me, again, this is sort of what got me sort of politically aware in the first part of my life was this sort of thing. I'm not old enough to remember Kent State.
Speaker: I'm not quite that old. But I am old enough to remember in 1977, when I was in elementary school, my mother signed me up for like a summer enrichment photography course at Kent State.
Speaker: We lived couple towns over. In any case, one day we came down to the place nearby, near right by where the shooting happened. And it turned out that there was a protest going on because Kent State wanted to build, believe it was a rec center over the parking lot.
Speaker: And as you might imagine, only seven years later, the the emotions were still kind of raw in the area. And a lot of students were protesting this and we talked to our instructor taught, had us, you know, had couple students come, you know talk to us, tell us what they were doing. Cause we were all curious. And they showed us the statue that that there's a big metal statue there that has a bullet hole from the shooting. And this just kind of, you know, blew my mind as a little kid. And I what do you mean? Our, our, our army is shooting with shooting students. How is this a thing? So asked my parents about it and they explained to me what happened. And turned out we're also good friends with people whose niece was Alison Krauss, one of the students killed there. And this always struck a nerve for me. It's like, no matter what you want to think, for me, what you want to think politically, if the government is killing citizens, something has gone drastically wrong.
Speaker: And that's my personal take on what's going on here. Something has gone drastically wrong. um And you can talk about the reasons, who's to blame and whatnot. But to me, when it comes down to it, our government should not be shooting citizens.
Speaker: And I can't get past that and to entertain, well, you know, these people know this shouldn't happen. Something is wrong when this is happening. Something needs to change. This kind of approach has gone off the rails.
Speaker: Yeah, and for those of you who may be unaware, ICE and CBP have been doing regular immigration raids, and they've been trying to make a spectacle out of things. In Minneapolis. In Minneapolis. And they've been targeting Minneapolis because, one, Governor Tim Walz ran against Trump, and two, there's a large Somali community there.
Speaker: Yeah, Trump doesn't like Ilhan Omar. He never has. Right. So this is just... your typical revenge tour, which we expected with the Trump administration.
Speaker: Now there are two incidents, one with Renee good. She was the woman who was backing out and then, you know, tried to make a turn and then may or may not have hit an officer. ah It's difficult to tell based on the footage and the officer killed her and you could, know,
Speaker: see that both sides were adamant that they were right. I think the other perspective, get get back getting back to what I was saying, is like, you can argue about it all you want. But the fact remains that an ICE agent, think was ICE, not Border Patrol. I can't remember which one. One was Border Patrol, one was ICE. What did you say, DHS? Sure. um Shot a an American citizen for being in her car in the street.
Speaker: And no matter what their excuse and explanation is, that kind of thing shouldn't happen. I think another thing we we should also point out in terms of the revenge tour business, it's not like Minnesota is overrun with undocumented immigrants. But I read an article that said basically they have half of the average population of illegal immigrants in Minneapolis as there as any other big city in the country. So not only is it just...
Speaker: a show, but it's a show that's clearly for completely political purposes, right? They've picked this place, not because it's being overrun by immigrants, right? That are, they're undocumented, but because, Hey, you know, it's, it's easy to pick out. And it's probably not a coincidence that the immigrants they've picked out are Africans.
Speaker: I don't imagine that's a coincidence at all. We could argue until the cows come home. about the legality of the shooting. ah But one thing that really struck me about the Renee Good shooting was the lack of remorse. And there are reports that say that a doctor tried to give her medical attention and they refused. Well, it was a video. I've seen that video. Have you seen that?
Speaker: I have not seen that. Yeah. He's like i like, can I go check her pulse? And the guy's ordering her away. No, no, no. And it's, it's, it's, It's unbelievable. And not to mention the fucking bitch comment from the guy that shot her right after he shot her. a total lack of remorse.
Speaker: Yes. Usually if it's an accident, you know, oh my gosh, I did something wrong. Let's do everything we can to save the victim. And, you know, this was highly unusual because in basically every other cop shooting as of late.
Speaker: you know there is an effort to get medical attention. That's just standard operating procedure throughout the country. And you can see that a lot of law enforcement throughout the country whether it's you know state police, city police, sheriffs, whatever, they are all pointing out that ICE is so poorly trained and that they're not following procedures that they would have to follow.
Speaker: Sure. and And just in this shooting, for example, the guy who ended up shooting her positioned himself right in front of the car. Right. Which is a huge no-no. Don't ever do that. i mean, it's...
Speaker: But again, if you i would think if we were a rational, normal United States government, if this happened, somebody should say, hey, wow, this is kind out of control.
Speaker: We need to stop. um But obviously, the the response immediately has been the opposite. And now we have another shooting. Initially, ah the government from official Twitter accounts, they called her a domestic terrorist.
Speaker: good We're talking about good still. Yes. Yes. Good still. Now they thought they could double down on the pretty shooting, which was the second shooting. This was the one where there were something like six ice officers and they found his gun. and it looks like the, the pretty's gun had an accidental ditch charge. And then. they're seeing i haven't seen that at all.
Speaker: that that's Again, we don't know because there hasn't been an investigation that's been sure but shown to the public. All the videos that I've seen, the a a Border Patrol slash ICE agent or whatever is walking away with Preddy's gun. Right, and that gun is fired. Before the first shot is fired, that man emerges from the scrum.
Speaker: There is no gun on him when the first shot is fired. so Right, there isn't. But I'm saying that when the gun is being walked off, that gun... misfires. I haven't seen her. That's the first shot. But again, are we sure yes we are not sure because there has not been an official investigation, but that's what, that's what a lot of people are believing based off the footage that has been seen.
Speaker: bye But again, so so hold on to that point because it's really important that federal law enforcement cooperates with local law enforcement and state law enforcement. That's always been the case. So for instance, when Charlie Kirk got assassinated,
Speaker: You had Utah State Police working with the FBI. You had, i don't know what city that was in, in Utah, ah but campus police were certainly cooperating with the FBI. That's what you do as law enforcement. And we are not getting that at all.
Speaker: And so we also have Stephen Miller, the guy in charge of domestic policy. He is... saying that, oh, this was an armed assassin. And he wasn't alone. Christy Noem was out there saying the same thing. JD Vance tweeted it. JD Vance was saying the same thing. They're all blaming this guy who, all I've seen is this guy was trying to help a woman that was being attacked more or less by the Border Patrol.
Speaker: Then he got sprayed in the face with pepper spray, knocked down, beat with his canister. um Somebody saw that he had a gun. One agent grabbed the gun and walked away with it. And as he was walking away, two other agents shot him. um if maybe Maybe there was some sort of accidental discharge that I'm not aware of. I don't know.
Speaker: But in any case, the it's a clear picture of events that one agent is walking away with his gun before the other another agent starts to shoot him. And then a third agent decides later on as he's lying on the ground to shoot him a couple of times too. um And we have our government trying to tell us, you're not seeing what you think you're seeing.
Speaker: And youre what you're really seeing is this man came with intent to kill law enforcement, according to Kristi Noem and these others. And fortunately,
Speaker: People are still able to see what's going on and people are pushing back. Right. it's it's It's heartening that we're seeing some pushback.
Speaker: It's disgusting that it's taken this much, but we are seeing pushback and the administration seems to be thinking, hmm, maybe this has gone a little bit too far. I think because of the reaction, how quickly the right effectively condemned good, the administration basically tried to say, don't believe your lying eyes.
Speaker: And we are in the middle of a massive ice storm through through quite a bit of the eastern side of America. People are at home. They have nothing else to do. And so when they see this footage, it destroys the credibility of the administration because people can see the video.
Speaker: They saw the video of good and they see the way the administration is reacting. And if you look at polling, one of Trump's strongest issues has just plummeted. ICE was net positive by at least 10 points prior to the whole National Guard deployment into California a few months back.
Speaker: Now they're negative 30 last I checked. So Trump took his strongest issue and he let Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, have at it, and now he's going to pay the political consequences for it.
Speaker: I am heartened that people are pushing back because to me, this is sort of like another in the long history of the emperor's new clothes, right? For the entire time Trump has been in public life, he's been telling us stuff that is just simply not true.
Speaker: And people are bull people believe him and go along with it, which is one of the main reasons why he's president, certainly for a second time. um And just as recently as, say, January 6th, he changed the website for the White House to basically blame Nancy Pelosi for January 6th.
Speaker: um And Again, no put very little pushback there. um But here people are finally starting to think, oh wait a minute, the emperor doesn't actually have new clothes. The emperor is not wearing any clothes. And this just killing people that aren't trying to kill you is not what law enforcement ought to do. And then to be told that actually they were trying to kill law enforcement has suddenly become...
Speaker: to use a cliche, a bridge too far for Americans who were kind of willing to just sit back and and let it happen. And I think there's a lot of evidence through polling that Americans were somewhat okay with a lot of the immigration tactics prior to Minneapolis.
Speaker: Yeah, certainly. But when he he was elected, because people thought, and rightly so, I think, that the border was out of control. The the Biden administration just completely sort of abdicated that responsibility and then tried to blame the Democrats or Republicans when they wouldn't agree to a compromise, which, shocking, right? um And so Trump capitalized on that and had that issue, you know, propelling him quite a bit, that and the economy quite a bit.
Speaker: And it's gone completely otherwise because I don't think people understood. and again, we were, we can say we were out there warning about, hey, 2020, Project 2025 is pretty clear what they're going to try to do. People didn't believe it because again, he was telling us, oh no, don't even know what Project 2025 is. um But sure enough,
Speaker: This is what they're doing. And i mean you see these advertisements for the kind of people they're looking for for ICE. And you see what Stephen Miller tells them and J.D. Vance tells them absolute immunity, not going to tolerate. And it's like,
Speaker: I want to be surprised that this is happening and this is going to be one of my themes later on, but I really, I'm shocked, but it's it doesn't surprise me.
Speaker: And it's sad to say that it doesn't. is this This is what this administration is becoming. And it begs the question, if they're lying about things that are so easily debunked, right?
Speaker: What else are they doing behind the scenes? We've seen through multiple- Lying about everything? Fair enough. but But I'm specifically with, say, the immigration detention centers and other tactics that they're using. You know, it's it's really concerning if they're lying about this when there's tons of evidence suggesting that they're lying, proving that they're lying rather.
Speaker: it's It's a scary thought. You really don't want to go down that road. ah Well, we should, right? And we have to as a country, if we're going to try to get through this, to figure out what exactly they're doing. But everything they've done, they've tried to lie about.
Speaker: i mean, think about the alligator Alcatraz, right? Think about the flights to... ah El Salvador. They lie to judges. They sit there and they come to court and they lie in the face of judges and not just the activist liberal judges, but judges who have been around since the Reagan administration or the first Bush administration. And they don't care.
Speaker: They'll do whatever they want and they will tell people whatever they want. And for, all you know, when the administration first started and you hear about people complaining, oh, I was held in terrible conditions in the ice prisons or whatever they're called, right? um People were, you know, they weren't feeding us. It wasn't hot. It wasn't warm. um We were beaten and you think, yeah, it's people complaining, but I can't dismiss things like that out of hand now. Do you believe with 100% certainty that these people are being treated well in ice detention facilities?
Speaker: No, absolutely not. yeah the the The administration administration has no credibility on this issue at all, as far as I'm concerned. now Now, I will say this. If you're going to give Trump credit for anything, it's he has a really good nose for when the tide is turning against him and he really understands how media can manipulate the population. And i think he realizes that he stepped in it, or at least his administration has.
Speaker: And you know Trump is one of those people who doesn't give a direct command. He will always hire people who will execute for him what he wants.
Speaker: Kind of like a mob boss. Yeah, exactly. you can look at the whole Michael Cohen ah testimony and it's effectively that. And Noam and Miller and Bovino,
Speaker: who was, don't even want to get into his title because that's just ridiculous. Gestapo member in chief, I think, with the green coat. He was a good look to have.
Speaker: but But anyway, so Bovina's out and you know it's really bad when he lost his Twitter access. So that that's so about the strongest punishment. Do you think that Trump really understands the depth of this or he thinks he's in damage control?
Speaker: ah Probably a little bit of both. From a lot of the reporting I've seen, he really doesn't like when there's media involving people getting hurt.
Speaker: Sure. so So he might not be, say, pro-intervention in terms of trying to help out Ukraine or Syria or whatever country it is. But if he sees footage of the horrors of war, it actually affects him.
Speaker: Right. But I mean, I i still think that he that he thinks he's smart enough that he can manipulate, like you're saying, around this. And I don't think that mean I think we're going to see some ah a useful and important.
Speaker: aspect of whether or not he's remorseful and wants to change based on what comes up with the Democrats. when We'll get to in a minute in terms of that this i this the Democratic pushback. Because the Democrats are pushing back, hey, we need the Iranian ice. And he hasn't agreed to any of that yet.
Speaker: Right? um So we'll... it's everything that he's done so far, to me, has kind of been window washing. right he hasn't done it He hasn't done anything substantive other than ship Bovino out, but I don't know how important really that was. as as As important as Bovino seemed to style himself. right i think yeah We'll see. It remains to be seen.
Speaker: It does. um But i I would like to see some substantive changes right based rather than just, hey, we need to phrase this, you know spin this better. Right.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think you're going to be able to sweep this under the rug. Hakeem Jeffries has basically said that if Noam doesn't resign, they are going to impeach her.
Speaker: You know well, except if and when they take the majority. yeah Exactly. Yeah. Which they should. But again, it's not her fault. She's the same. it It is. She's she's doing exactly what they want him to do. If they're going impeach anybody, it ought to be Donald Trump for doing this for any number of reasons. um But yes, she is. She's completely unqualified in her job.
Speaker: But that's not a short list. It's justs not a short list. So one thing that really struck me was how quickly the White House agreed to the Democrats' demands of decoupling DHS funding from the rest of the budget. So the Republicans, their plan was to just fund everything in a giant omnibus bill. And that's it.
Speaker: and basically dare Democrats to stop that. And because of this incident, the White House, along with the majority leader Thune, they came up with a framework where everything would be funded except for DHS through September.
Speaker: And then DHS is going to get funding for just two additional weeks. And that's going to allow, you know, negotiations for, you know, reforms and, you know There are a few demands that Schumer Jeffries want. So one of them is like no more masks, ah having identification so that we know who these people are.
Speaker: And i think no arrests without warrants. Yeah, that goes without saying. cra And Jeffries is saying that he doesn't want any U.S. citizens deported, which on its face sounds good, but it does run into some issues where you have illegal immigrant parents, but then their kids are US citizens. So it's like, what do you do about that? um you know i I would hope that is solved in negotiations where- you know So that's just traffic what I mentioned before. Do you think that there will be good faith compromise on Trump's part?
Speaker: Probably, again, i have no expectations that the emaci administration will do the right thing. We'll see what comes out in two weeks. because because If I game this out a little bit, right?
Speaker: DHS is not funded. That includes TSA, right? FEMA, yeah. And the the public fit most public-facing one is TSA. If the Democrats won't agree to fund DHS, then TSA doesn't get paid.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden the airports are a cluster again. And then you'll see Trump administration people see this is what the Democrats are doing to protect illegal immigrants.
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly the message. I could see that being their entire plan, honestly, if they're smart enough to figure that out. Because how do you counter that the Democrats? Do you still say, no, no, we're doing it for good reasons?
Speaker: I'm very skeptical that that that the administration is going to negotiate in good faith. i don't I hope to be disappointed. I really do.
Speaker: But I'm not going hold breath. Let's say that. And this is why, you know, the Democrats just, they're, unfortunately for them, the starting negotiating position just has to be completely reasonable.
Speaker: You can't have any sort of... Yeah, you can't say we're going to defund ICE. That's not going to work. But you can't, you can certainly say you can't have masked... mass Right. Everyone agrees that you shouldn't have masked agents and no badges.
Speaker: Everyone reasonable. I mean... If the U.S. military has to have identification in a combat zone, there's no justification for ICE to not have badges in their faces.
Speaker: It's called accountability. So the problem I'd see with that, right, in addition to they have to bargain through it, is that there has been, again, I think it's useful that we talk about the types of pushback we've seen. And we're we're also seeing pushback from a lot of the ah district judges.
Speaker: or what Yeah, I'm using the right term now. The main trial judges, the federal trial judges. In particular, the guy who's in charge of the Minnesota, the the chief judge, who is as pure a Scalia disciple as you can find.
Speaker: right He clerked for Scalia as a judge. He helped prepare Scalia for his confirmation hearings in the Supreme Court. And then he clerked for Scalia in the Supreme Court. right He is basically Scalia Jr. And he came out the other day saying 100 cases where, 100 times, where the government has ignored court orders in terms of what's going on with ICE. And the pushback here, though, is the administration is calling him a radical leftist judge.
Speaker: so How much remorse and lesson learning has there been? i'm unfortunately very skeptical about this. Some, but probably not enough.
Speaker: Yeah. and I really, really think that the remorse is about the publicity. Sure. And I hope that somebody in there has enough fortitude and morality left to say, you know what?
Speaker: We can't be killing our own citizens. Something's wrong when we're killing our own citizens. Let's rethink. Well, that's a very happy transition into beer talk. so well certainly What are we drinking before we yeah celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Trump administration? I don't think we've had this before. I think we've had a beer from Westbound and Down. It's a local Lafayette brewery. They're really good. They've won a number of medals at the Great American Beer Festival, including a gold for this one. This is Infinity Pills.
Speaker: It's a Hoppy Pilsner, which is... Obviously, a different it's not a traditional beer. Usually in Pilsners, you get a Noble hops, like a Saz or something like that. And it's very kind of mild. But this one is with citra and mosaic hops. Yeah. And so you might remember me talking about those from like West Coast IPAs. and IPAs use citra and mosaic hops. You get a lot more floral, dank,
Speaker: resiny, some subtle fruit hints, but a lot more depth of hops. And I like a lager well enough, a pilsner and lagers well enough in certain circumstances, but this one has a lot of a really good flavor. And I've been having more pilsners of late because one of my friends, hoppy beers don't, really hoppy beers like IPAs don't really sit well with him. They're too acidic. So he likes a good pilsner and whatnot. So he brought this over. This is really this is a really solid beer. I've had it before. First time had it in a while. Remind me how good it is.
Speaker: All right, so let's get into our year in review. Now, if you look at the podcasts that we've done, I like to think that we hit the nail on the head.
Speaker: and We talked about tariffs, and that's basically been the chief economic policy of the Trump administration. Unfortunately, or I guess fortunately, depends on who you are, they've been on again and off again. And we have this acronym called TACO, which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out.
Speaker: And that's how the market has been somewhat stable, all things considered. We've talked about DOGE. And how it took a you know decent idea of trying to cut waste and it was just a spectacular failure.
Speaker: And I want to give a special shout out to New York Times reporter, Nicholas Kristof. He's done a lot of good journalism about the USAID impacts in Africa. So if you want to learn more about that, those are that's in the show notes.
Speaker: We had the longest shutdown in government history. One thing that we didn't talk about was the Epstein files. And honestly, I just don't think that's really what our show is. Yeah. um I put that in the in the realm of like Pizzagate stuff.
Speaker: Like, okay. it's It's horrible for these women that went through this. But... It seems to have been resolved. And i don't know what we're digging into any deeper. For me, it's not, it's looking at that to me is sort of kind of like, well, the house is on fire. I think I'll go weed the garden.
Speaker: ah We've had ah Trump's mob boss foreign policy. We've had extrajudicial killings throughout the Caribbean. One thing, and we'll talk about this next week, was we captured Nicolas Maduro through a pretty spectacular military operation. But what happens after the fact remains to be seen.
Speaker: We attempted to take out Iran's nuclear facilities. Again, Remains to be seen what happens there. As of this recording, we have moved a significant amount of firepower into the Middle East because they were all in the Caribbean before.
Speaker: And it wouldn't surprise me if we hit Iran tonight. So... We're getting ready to wag the dog again, yes. um yeah and and And again, we shouldn't, I don't think, beat ourselves you know bloody trying to pat ourselves on the back um because I don't think a lot of this stuff was particularly hard to forecast, unfortunately. um Although at the same time, it was fairly hard for the average voter to forecast, which is how we got into this situation. um But in any case, right things haven't gone
Speaker: That surprisingly, I think one of the things that we did, we both done, which is, I think, kind of interesting, um is we've looked at what are the biggest surprises of the year? And what is the silver? Is there any silver lining that we can identify?
Speaker: And for me, i honestly, I think I can say that I haven't been particularly surprised. Like I mentioned a little bit ago, I've been more shocked. Right. Everything that he's done, it's not like, oh well, that doesn't sound like the Trump administration. And I've never heard of something he's done. as like, wow, that sounds like something Lincoln would have done or something Churchill would have done or something. if it this to Everything he's done has been in a piece with what he said he was going to do and who he's been his entire public life. So i I'm not going to say so much that I'm surprised, but they did manage to shock with a lot of the things that they've done. um And I think part of that is just a natural outgrowth of him.
Speaker: right The guy in charge prides himself on having a wandering mind. He doesn't say that. He's like, oh, I do the weave. I talk with you here and I talk. and He governs that way. it's like, let's do this. And we've been doing, let's do this now. And and that's what we do. And it it does keep you sort of off balanced and guessing on what's coming next.
Speaker: But when it does come, it's like, yeah, I can i see where that came from. um And it's just a perfect storm is set up for Trump to run wild. And he is.
Speaker: Right. um And in terms of sort of one last time patting myself on the back. Right. When I when we talked about um appointees and I told you it doesn't matter who he appoints. Right. um There are any one of anybody who he appoints is going to be just as bad as anyone else.
Speaker: um With the exception of RFK, I think he's probably the single worst person in the world to have his position right now. I really do. The combination of name recognition and ridiculous beliefs and and ah approaches, I don't know that you could find a worse person to put in charge of American health. But beyond that, right every single person who has a role in the Trump administration is doing exactly what Trump wants them to do at every single opportunity.
Speaker: And it's just it's very disheartening to think that there's absolutely zero pushback. I mean, you if you think back to the way the government is kind of supposed to work, right I always thought 13 Days, that that memoir, a little self-serving by Bobby Kennedy about what happened um with Trump.
Speaker: the Cuban Missile Crisis, but there's a lot of dissenting voices that come through and people are are this, hey, what about this? What about that? There doesn't seem to be any of that in the in the administration right now. Everybody is like, sure, whatever you want, Mr. President, that would be great.
Speaker: um The silver lining, as you were poking fun at me about ah RFK, that the RFK hasn't killed millions yet, um but only hundreds, I guess, have died so far, was your line. I couldn't laugh, but I mean... It's not yet. it's true theres funny ah Let's say funny odd rather than funny ha-ha. Dark humor. But beyond that, we are one year down, so barring ridiculous...
Speaker: completely usurpation of the constitution. There's only three to go. um We are, as we mentioned above, getting some district level GOP judge pushback to go along with some of the the the liberal judges pushback. And I hate to break things up into liberal you know Democrat and Republican judges, but when we see sort of uniformity among them, that's a good sign.
Speaker: yeah Although the Supreme Court hasn't really been helping out with that there still. yet to ah give Trump any sort of real setbacks. We'll see what happens with the tariff stuff. I think that'll be interesting to see. Yeah, we're still waiting on that.
Speaker: We are. And we are starting to see some meaningful backlash, right, both from citizens, which is good to see, but now actually something from Democrats, as we were mentioning in terms of holding up the government funding for DHS to try to get some concessions about what's going on with ICE. um And the other silver lining, I think it's hard to keep wagging the dog. You get more and more um opportunities for the emperor's new clothes to kind of show through. If we keep having these conflicts, which are to me in a lot of ways are designed to distract from what's going on, both with our economy and with now with ICE, you know there's only so much bombing and blowing stuff up without really any purpose that we can do, any larger purpose that we can do, hopefully.
Speaker: So for me, i think the biggest surprise was the capitulation of institutions to this administration. think that's a good point.
Speaker: You have entities that are worth billions and billions of dollars, media, academic institutions, law firms, and they've just rolled over.
Speaker: And it's it's just strange to me because it's like they don't understand that they have power. And, you know, you and I were discussing offline that a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that they don't think that Democrats are going to attack them like this administration has threatened them.
Speaker: And so they're just going with the flow and they're going to wait out the administration. And so if to them, this is the cost of doing business and it's only to last three more years.
Speaker: And so why not just roll over? That raises an interesting issue that this whole thing is like, should the Democrats punish everybody that knuckled under to Trump? And the sort of the primordial reaction is, well, yeah, of course, screw those people. But then we just get into so a stupid cycle of,
Speaker: back and forth, everybody going either way whenever we have a change in president. So I think we we need to figure out a way to get beyond that. I think there ought to be some sort of calling people to account for completely knuckling under, but in a way that maybe hopefully can kind of insulate the private sector a little bit from presidential whim going forward.
Speaker: Yeah. And another thing I was kind of surprised about was Project 2025.
Speaker: And contrasting that with the incompetence that we're seeing right now, because during the first Trump administration, Trump wanted to do something. And the people who knew better said, no, no, no, we're not going to do that.
Speaker: And obviously Trump did not like it. And so part of Project 2025 was to get people who were competent, but also wanted to execute on Trump's vision. That's limited sample size, I think.
Speaker: Right. And I think that's why we have this discrepancy here, because you and I were analyzing Russ vote. We've went through quite a bit of project 2025. And it was clear that they understood how the government worked. They knew about all the visas. They knew about ah the structures of all the agencies.
Speaker: And we figured, OK, they're going to get stuff done. And as you said, clearly there's just a lack of talent because you might have a handful of competent people, but then you have a ton of incompetent people. And that's prevented them from fully executing on their vision.
Speaker: And I also expected that we would govern through executive orders to some degree. But because the Republicans have a trifecta, I figured there'd be some legislation.
Speaker: And this has been the least productive Congress in my lifetime, probably your lifetime. yeah I don't have all the data, but it's incredibly unproductive from a legislative standpoint. actually kind of expected the other. i'm Given the trifecta, right, but without a veto-proof majority or a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, I figured there wouldn't be a whole lot of legislation.
Speaker: I thought it would go by ah mostly executive order because then the Congress will not check the president, which they haven't done at all. um And the Supreme Court, I didn't think, would check the president, which they really haven't done at all.
Speaker: So they are the the the Republican trifecta has allowed this lack of... complete and total lack of sort of bipartisan approach to anything, and has allowed sort of a very minimal kind of skeleton crew to kind of run the country, because it doesn't take a whole lot of people to make up some executive orders. So they keep churning these things out. Now, they're having harder times necessarily carrying some of the stuff out, because, again,
Speaker: People like Kristi Noem, I don't know if she could find her hat in a in a bedroom. um But even the big hat that she likes to wear around, right? Which may might explain why it's such a big hat, I suppose. But you've got all these people that can't necessarily carry it out, but theyre the the governing aspect of it is just churning right through in a way that I actually kind of expected to see that.
Speaker: Yeah, to that point... I sort of envisioned the deportations going differently. I figured that the numbers would be much, much higher. Now, obviously there was going to be some sort of spectacle. I think we both knew that, but I figured we would have way more people deported. And instead you just kind of have this unscalable, i don't want to call it a terror campaign because that's pretty strong words, but I mean, let's just go with that for now.
Speaker: And they're just going from city to city. And again, they're not scaling their operations. So i' read the statistic that there's maybe like somewhere between 100,000 200,000 undocumented immigrants in Minnesota, whereas Texas has around 2 million. and I wonder why they're not in Texas. I can't i can't put my finger.
Speaker: Exactly. I'm curious, though. why How did you think they would end up deporting more? I figured that they would have someone competent to some degree who would know how to scale these operations.
Speaker: And they don't have that. so So that's all. I expected a little less city by city, you know, bullying and just more large scale at the national level deporting people.
Speaker: OK, so I mean, the one thing that I've noticed, I thought from the start is all these numbers and these quotas that Stephen Miller was turning out seemed ridiculously pie in the sky to me. I didn't think that there were going to be any way to do that, certainly without going beyond, oh, we're just going to deport criminals. I didn't buy that at all.
Speaker: Right. Sure. And I i think it's pretty it's kind of progressing how I thought it would. um i didn't I didn't have minute Minneapolis in the office pool. I thought that they would go to, I really actually thought they'd probably go to democratic cities like Houston and things like that. Although Houston isn't really that democratic, I guess, is it? It's fairly democratic and you have a governor who would play ball with you. And that's what's kind of strange. Yes.
Speaker: They don't care about the numbers. They care about making a point. Yes. And if they can rile up the Democrats and and liberals to come out and protest, um basically, they love the conflicts, right? They're just unhappy that it went so far as to kill a couple people and now people are pushing back.
Speaker: If people were just getting beat up, right, I don't think it would bother them at all. Yeah. think that's fair. um And The last thing, actually, I should say second last thing.
Speaker: Mike Johnson, still Speaker of the House. That is shocking to me. That is kind of surprising. I'll give you that one. I didn't think about that. But yeah, that surprising. um But it's the Epstein files. As you mentioned earlier, you know it's something that we don't really care that much about, not because it's not a horrible thing, but we just didn't think it would stay in the news for very long because Trump has done a ton of horrible things. So why would this particular thing move the needle one way or the other?
Speaker: He's already been found liable for sexual assault. We knew before he was elected for the first time how much of a pig he was. So this was priced in, at least as far as I'm and concerned.
Speaker: And yet here we are. We're still talking about it. The attorney general is on thin ice, and it's just kind of a strange thing. i guess if you live by the ah QAnon, you die by the QAnon, right? Yeah.
Speaker: Clearly. and And honestly, like those folks are really upset. And you have Marjorie Taylor Greene effectively of resigning from Congress due to this. And she's going against the administration.
Speaker: So in a way, she's kind of like the true believer in all this stuff. But it's just like a really odd thing. I don't particularly understand it, but you know. i agree I do think, I mean, part of it is people that are obsessed with sort of the sexual misconduct aspect of like QAnon have are kind of monofocused. And hey, here's another one. We better focus on that too.
Speaker: I imagine it has something to do with that. But like you said, it's it's hard to really understand sort of the pathology of all these people that are obsessed with this. Yeah. Silver lining. We haven't completely abandoned Ukraine yet.
Speaker: ah that That was sort of like one of my predictions where Ukraine would just be completely fucked. And they're still hanging in there. And know what i know that Trump is trying to get a peace deal and Putin is walking all over him, but I'm glad that they're ah holding strong. And I think we'll be able to talk more about this next week or whenever we do our foreign policy episode, because i think what's happening in Ukraine is part of the puzzle for Carney speech.
Speaker: um sure Another thing, Yeah. Another thing that, uh, is silver lining is how resilient our economy is. You know, I remember how much our economy was affected by COVID. We had the supply chain crisis and you and i predicted that terrorists would have a pretty dire effect on our economy, but you know, the business community is fairly innovative. They somewhat insulated themselves by buying a bunch of inventory beforehand and holding onto it. Uh,
Speaker: They've been pretty clever. The taco aspect, as you mentioned before, yeah at a big has a big part to play in that too. right We keep threatening these massive tariffs and then stepping back from the massive tariffs and then threatening more tariffs and stepping back from those. um if our economy But I do think there are some strains going on in the economy. This is simply anecdotal evidence, but three of my good friends have been laid off from fairly high-end white-collar jobs recently.
Speaker: Right. And I don't I don't you might think I have thousands of friends, but I really don't. um three friends Three friends laid off in a short period of time is fairly unusual.
Speaker: Right. In my lifetime. And it doesn't necessarily bode well for the economy. Just again, anecdotal evidence. um So. I especially if we if Trump goes ahead and gets this new guy in the Fed who does go through and cut interest rates to down to one percent, that could really mess things up.
Speaker: Yeah. And I guess ah this is sort tangential. But given that Pete Hegseth is in charge of our military, I have to say,
Speaker: we are still very professional, even though they've done all this weird anti-DEI stuff. I think a lot of the generals and... you do realize we're blowing up more or less civilian drug dealer boats just... Understood. No, no, no. but I understand. But it could be a lot worse.
Speaker: And I'm glad that we have we have a military that is pretty resilient to change. And it's going to take a while for the nonsense of Pete Hegseth to trickle down all the way down.
Speaker: That's all I'm saying. So we're lying there. we We are only one year in. you know I could be singing a different tune year two, year three. And the the last thing, um I've pushed for recognizing the Syrian government.
Speaker: ah They've been through... a horrific time over the past decade and more than that, actually. And yes, the Kurds are getting shit on. um That is how it always goes for them, unfortunately. And I wish we did more. But again, you got to have hope somewhere. And I think the administration working with the new Syrian government and the new Syrian government working with the Israelis, that is a very good thing.
Speaker: It's a very good thing. Yeah, and anything I think that would would help have more stability in the Middle East is obviously going to be useful. But my I guess my optimism in the Middle East is not particularly high right now either.
Speaker: Again, that will be for the next show. Anyways, um to conclude, stuff in Minneapolis, horrible.
Speaker: We are glad that the people are speaking out because ultimately our leaders aren't going to save us. We have to save ourselves. So that's number one. And number two, we survived ah one year.
Speaker: a lot of our predictions came true. But again, we are a resilient country. So i let's keep being resilient. Let's hope we can keep that up. And let's hope next year around this time we have better things to report. All right.
Speaker: With that said, make sure you like, subscribe, tell your friends about this podcast. And we'll see you when we see you. Bye-bye.
