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Unknown A
Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have? Crystal?
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Unknown B
Dvd. Glad to have you back, my friend.
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Unknown A
Thank you. Yeah, it was. It was a rough one out there. It's the worst flu season since 2009. So everybody out there, please take precautions. Stay away from anybody who tells you that they're feeling okay. It's not too bad. Stay away from them.
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Unknown B
Yes.
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Unknown A
So.
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Unknown B
Yes. Don't be afraid of breaking out the mask. I'm being so for real right now.
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Unknown A
Yeah. This will be the only time I will endorse mask wearing culture, especially for people who have children and all of that. It's a rough one. I know multiple people who've been inflicted, so stay away from them. And if you hear my voice crack, it's not my fault. I apologize.
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Unknown B
My daughter's second grade class has been absolutely decimated. It's horrible. We've gotten, I won't say unscathed, but we've escaped the worst of it so far this year. So fingers crossed the weather turns nicer and some of these things die down. Yes. But it's been a rough one.
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Unknown A
It's been bad.
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Unknown B
So in any case, glad you're back. We got a lot to talk about. Elon sent out a weekend ultimatum to all federal government employees. Interestingly though, a lot of the agencies are telling their workers, including, you know, FBI now under Cash Patel, Department of Defense, etcetera, don't respond to this email. So, very interesting dynamics playing out here. We got some new polls revealing the latest about how the public feels about Doge and Elon and all of these things that are unfolding. We also had a purge of some of the top brass at the Pentagon. We'll tell you what happened and what it potentially means. Elections in Germany. So the far right party there, AfD, which had been boosted by JD Vance and also prominently by Elon Musk, comes in second. Really interesting political dynamics there. Inflation, the war in Ukraine, immigration, economics, incumbent parties, all of these trends playing out in Germany.
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Unknown B
So we'll break that down for you as well. Bernie is out doing some barn burner town halls in Nebraska and Iowa in particular. Massive overflow crowds kind of leading the way for Democrats. He actually has a strategy that he is pursuing. Lo and behold, at least one person has some idea of what they're doing out there. Warren Buffett is hoarding the most amount of cash in Berkshire Hathaway that he ever has. So what does that indicate? There are also some other troubling economic indicators. We're going to take A look at all of that. And Luigi Mangioni made an appearance in court. Our own Spencer Snyder was there on the ground talking to people who are outside. Protesters and his supporters who were outside explaining what they thought about his case and why they were there to support him. So really interested to get that on the ground report as well.
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Unknown A
Yes, that's right. And continue to monitor the FAQ on his website with a lot of great interest. Did you watch that segment?
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Unknown B
No.
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Unknown A
Ryan and I did it. It was an FAQ all about how people can send him photographs. And to keep in mind that those photographs are screened by the police. Just in terms of the number of thirst traps Luigi finds himself receiving on.
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Unknown B
I mean, what can you say? He's a. He's a great man.
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Unknown A
I have to say, I told you guys on the call, I am absolutely in love with Luigi sweater. I'm in the market. So if anybody knows where he got it, please let me know. All right, let's go ahead and start with Doge. So actually a very interesting showdown happening here in Washington, and I would say the first major institutional pushback within the MAGA coalition, the government against Doge. Here, let's put this up there on the screen. It began with like an office space style meme email that Elon sent to the entire federal workforce on Saturday around 3pm and it says, what did you do last week? Please reply with approximately five bullets. Note the, like the weird pronunciation there. Five bullets of what you accomplished last week and CC your manager. Please do not send any class classified information, links or attachments. Deadline is this Monday at 11:59 EST.
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Unknown A
So let's go to Elon's explanation for that email. It says, consistent with President Trump's instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as resignation. So this appears to have been probably the most explicit example of Elon, Doge, quote, unquote, overreach with pushback because what it means immediately happened was their agencies telling them not to comply. Keep in mind, Trump has not spoken out about this at all. If anything's been encouraging him to go further. Put that next one, please, so we can show people. It says, Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him get more aggressive. Remember, we have a country to save, but ultimately to make greater than ever before. MAGA immediately, though, following that email, Cash Patel, the newly confirmed FBI director, directed his entire workforce not to respond to the email.
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Unknown A
It just says all FBI personnel may have. I Love may have received an email from OPM requesting information. The FBI, through the Office of Director, is in charge of all of our review processes and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures. When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses. Thank you. Kash Patel, on the right is RFK Jr actually, who reversed his original policy telling his workforce to reply to the email, saying HHS leadership continues to work with OPM officials on how to best meet the intent of yesterday's notice. Employees are therefore directed to pause activities and answering the OPM email. Additional guidance will be provided on or around noon tomorrow. And then finally, the Pentagon also weighed in here. Let's go to a four, please. Just to show people, the Department of Defense, the entire Pentagon received the following email.
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Unknown A
When, if required, the department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from opm. So I do think this is very significant. Crystal. I think it's the very first time that you've seen Doge and or Elon, you know, send one of these mass emails, beyond even the, quote, unquote, fork in the road, the buyout, this one was one where the directors of the agencies really stepped forward and they're like, yeah, that's just not happening in terms of you trying to run my workforce. So I do find it actually very interesting. And I mean, I'm presuming that there's at least some Trump support or maybe the Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, somebody like this, because it's just obviously, like, overriding chain of command. You know, the Senate confirmed appointees in the workforce and others. So this could be a turning point. I'm actually curious to see how it goes.
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Unknown B
Yeah, we'll see. There's a lot that's interesting, interesting about this and the dynamics and the way that it played out. So, first of all, I didn't realize this, but apparently previously, like before Cash Patel was nominated to be Director of the FBI and certainly before he was confirmed, et cetera, he was quite critical of Elon. He went on a bunch of podcasts. Our friends over at Dropsite actually compiled all of this information. But he went on a bunch of podcasts where he was very critical of him. Kind of similar to, like the Steve Bannon style criticism. He was critical of him on his Twitter account. And you can just imagine for all these people who, like, got their spot as an agency head and went through Senate confirmation, did the whole thing, and then you get in there and on basically day one, you've got this goofball over Here, richest man on the planet who thinks he can just come in over your head and be like, yeah, I'm gonna fire a bunch of your workforce if they don't respond to my email in a couple days time.
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Unknown B
And so whereas Congressional Republicans seem to have been pretty comfortable just like ceding all of their power and authority to Elon and to Doge, these agency heads were like, wait a second, no, no, no, no, no. This is my workforce, I have some authority at this agency and you're not going to just completely bigfoot me on all of this. So we'll see. The RFK one was interesting as well because initially the guidance he put out was go ahead and respond to this email. And then they sort of backtracked and said like, well actually pause your work on that email was I think the way they phrased it in this sort of like awkward worded email. I'll tell you, I've mentioned this before. The town I live in, which is the town on which is not dc which is not even Northern Virginia. It really is this like, you know, rural community totally built around a naval base where they do a bunch of civilian research.
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Unknown B
So it's mostly like civilian. There are active duty military there as well. It was mostly like civilian scientists that work there. And so I was talking to some of my very non political like parent friends there about how all this is going down and I mean they're completely panicked. They have never seen anything like it. They're deeply confused about what to do. One of them showed me the communication that they got from the captain who runs their particular group at the base and it was like actually the phrasing of it was kind of funny cuz they were like, we're not sure this email is real, so while we're investigating, just go ahead and don't respond to this email. But you know, it really is for the federal government workforce, which by the way is, I think a majority of them actually work for the Department of Defense.
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Unknown B
It is not necessarily the like caricature ish view that people have of some like you know, super liberal political, political activist, bureaucrat. Many of them live and work outside of D.C. in rural areas, many of whom are Republicans by the way. I mean most of these people who work on this space, I know for a fact vote Republican. The town that I'm from is like 60 to 65% TRUMP supporting kind of a county. So anyway, there's a vast swath of people who are really being shaken by this approach from Elon and the chaos that it's injected into this entire workforce. Yeah.
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Unknown A
The numbers here from Claude. We have 4 million people who work for the federal government. It is the largest employer in the United States. Approximately 85% of federal employees, civil, civilian employees work outside of the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. The distribution exactly as you said. Military bases which are located throughout the country, Federal agencies, national parks, VA hospitals, Border Patrol, and the Social Security Administration, which has an office in most counties, I believe every county across the United States. So let's put a five up there on the screen just to show people even more so kind of what this is leading to. The OPM email has been met not only with some of the most high profile agencies saying not to comply, but you also have some of the largest unions of federal workers telling them as well to be cautious responding or not to respond at all.
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Unknown A
But I think most important it really is the State Department said not to do it. The ge, the N, the, the Commerce Department, specifically NOAA and NSA employees were told to the same not to. I guess, you know, theoretically they should have. Right.
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Unknown B
Well, that was actually another point that one of the parents in King George county, where I live, made as well, is like, he's like, you know, we all have like really high levels of classification clearance.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
And so if you're just like mass firing a bunch of people who have some of the highest security clearances in the government, he's like, how loyal do you think they're gonna be feeling to the country after that?
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Unknown A
I only don't like that because that's.
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Unknown B
Like a risk as well to all of this because it is done in such a, like, you know, there's, it's just such a blanket across the board. No thought into how many years of service you've put in, how effective an employee you've been, how significant you've been into the organization. Just like zero loyalty whatsoever.
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Unknown A
Yeah. The only reason I don't like that is cause it's presumed that it's like, oh, if we don't pay them then they're gonna go work for somebo else. It's like why that might be true in theory. It's just it kind of, you know, hits against the idea.
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Unknown B
I mean, I'm not ultra loyal, not like advocating to it, but I am saying like these are human beings, you know.
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Unknown A
Right.
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Unknown B
And if you've shown, if you put in 20 years of loyal service to the government as a civil servant and then you're just booted down unceremoniously for literally no reason, I think that's probably Going to impact how loyal you feel to your government.
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Unknown A
Maybe the Russians and the Chinese are just rubbing their hands.
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Unknown B
They may be. They may be.
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Unknown A
Let's go to a six. Here we have. This was flagged by Ken Klippenstein. He's Jerry Connolly, who is. What is he, the head of the Dem Oversight Committee? That's correct, yeah. He's currently battling cancer. But Ken has really mounted a war against him just for. Not because of his illness, just to show, like, Gerontocracy and who the Democratic Party chooses.
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Unknown B
They chose this guy over aoc.
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Unknown A
Right. So here was his response on the federal email. Let's take a listen. What are you recommending federal workers should do? When they turn on the news today, they hear this and they're like, I got a deadline by tomorrow night. What should I do? This. Yeah. I hesitate to give personal advice. I guess if you can cover yourself and do the five things you did last week just to be able to say, well, I did it. So. Yeah, he's like, well, maybe just respond to the email.
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Unknown B
We were.
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Unknown A
You and I are willing to cut the guy off.
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Unknown B
I'm a little sympathetic. Well, first of all, background on Gerry Connolly. He. Before he was in Congress, he was the chair of the Board of Supervisors in Fairfax County. Yeah, he had. And his district represents Fairfax county and the environs. He probably has more federal government workers in his district than any other district in the country, or certainly among the top. So this is very. Like, he knows these people. So he's thinking about. He's not thinking about, like, how do you make a political point? He's thinking about, like, you know, Susie who works in wherever wants to keep her job. She's not trying to make some political stance. And so I'm actually sympathetic to this because if somebody in my county just asked me, like, what should I do? I don't know what I'd say. I don't know what I'd tell them to put them at risk to, like, get fired out of some stupid.
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Unknown B
Over some stupid email. So, you know, a better response would have been talk to your union, talk to your supervisor. Like, figure out what the coordinated response is versus, like, I don't know. I guess just respond to the email and cover yourself. But I am a little bit sympathetic to him here on this one.
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Unknown A
I think you're. I think we're willing to cut a little bit of slack. I have also taken a personal census of some of the federal employees who I know, and they're not happy right now. I'm sure there's some mag people who are cheering about it, but really what it is is about chaos and people just not really knowing what to do. How this will manifest politically, I genuinely have no idea. I have been thinking about that statistic about the number of people employed by the federal government. Just because as we know formula people work for the government, then if we think about family, then everybody probably has a cousin or a friend or daughter, son, whatever. Somebody who works for the feds who is currently experiencing this. And what we know from COVID is that the reason why I think that the 2020 election is the highest turnout election in modern history is because it was the first time that government really touched people's lives in an ultra tangible way.
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Unknown A
Be it checks, be it lockdowns, be it vaccine mandates, like the government policy had never been more directly intervention in your bank account and in your life. And so in this case, you know, if the government is seen as being axing your job or causing stress or any of that, it could certainly activate and give people a reason to turn out. Hey, if you like that video, hit the like button or leave a comment below. It really helps get the show to more people.
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Unknown B
And if you'd like to get the full show ad free and in your inbox every morning, you can sign up@breakingpoints.com.
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Unknown A
That'S right, get the full show. Help support the future of independent media@breakingpoints.com.