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Unknown A
So let's get to some of the details about what Elon is up to and the disasters I think they are recording. So Trump has repeated. I mean Trump really positioned himself as a different kind of Republican who's not going to be like the Tea Party austerity obsessed deficit hawk. And he separated himself in the Republican primary, positioning himself as a populist who wouldn't touch Social Security or Medicare in particular. Now you've got Elon Musk, who has been granted by Trump all of this power within the administration. I would say that much more of the direction of the administration has been Elon's ideology then Trump's ideology. And Elon went on Joe Rogan's podcast for a lengthy conversation and as part of that reiterated his attacks on Social Security. Let's take a listen to that.
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Unknown B
Well, I mean the govern'one'big permit schem if you ask me.
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Unknown A
Yeah, well, talk.
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Unknown B
Social Security is the biggest policysi scheme of all time where I explain that oh so well. People pay into Social Security and the money goes out of Social Security immediately. But the obligation for Social Security is your entire retirement career. So you're, you're paying with your, the, you're paying like, like if you look at the future obligations of Social Security, it far exceeds the tax revenue far. Have you ever looked at the debt? The debt clock?
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Unknown C
Yes.
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Unknown B
Okay, there's our present day debt, but then there's our future obligations. So when you look at the future obligations of Social Security, the actual national debt is like double what people think it is because of the future obligations. So basically people are living way longer than expected and there are fewer babies being born. So you have more people who are retired and get live for a long time and get retirement payments. So the future obligations. So however bad the financial situation is right now for the federal government, it'be much worse in the future.
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Unknown A
Simple fix, you lift the cap so that rich people have to pay more into Social Security and it doesn't just cut off at 125 and then you would be good to go with regard to Social Security. But mean this is Elon's ideology, I think it is accurate to say as an anarcho capitalist, that means that he actually thinks every function of government should be privatized. That's why he talks about things like I think every government employee should take what he describes as a more productive job in the private sector. As Liz Frank said on Twitter though, you have to love the ideology in which Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and meme coins are strategic assets.
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Unknown C
I mean, that's what's insane about this is you have a multi, multi billionaire, obviously. I mean, arguably the most powerful person to walk the face of the earth right nowue in a T shirt on a podcast laughing at Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. And it gets to what we were just talking about in the last block, but reversed, which is Social Security does have problems. Like this is a quote from a Cato Institute analysis. So obviously Cato Institute is probably much more sympathetic with the anarcho capitalist than Milton Friedman famously had called Social Security Ponzi scheme for decades. But in 1950, there were about 16 workers paying into Social Security for every retiree. Today that number has is dwindled to just 2.7 workers per retiree and it's projected to fall further to 2.4 workers per retiree by 2035. So this is from a Cato Institute blog saying Social Security is a legal Ponzi scheme.
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Unknown C
Which is where people like Elon Musk get really comfortable tossing that around. Because ideological formulation of the right for.
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Unknown A
Decades since the advent of Social Security.
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Unknown C
And Milton Friedman again was like, he's very much popularized thinking of Social Security in this way. And there are significant structural problems with Social Security. But talking about it on a podcast so flippantly, a multi, multi billionaire, extremely powerful person talking about it where he's almost giggling is not it. That is not the politics that Donald Trump wants to advance for maga. If Steve Bannon were here watching this with us'be like, what the.
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Unknown A
Yeah, I would think so. I mean, especially they're going to pass a $4 trillion tax cut for people like Elon Muskow already. Tesla had multiple years where they paid $0 in tax.
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Unknown C
It's their top priority right now. Y tax cut is their top priority.
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Unknown A
Right. As it was in the first administration. Yes. And I mean in that way there's an ideological carryover, but from the first administration. But hey, if you just took that $4 trillion and put it into the Social Security trust fund, I think would'd be in good shape. But Bernie made a similar point to what I was making. Put this up on the screen just to lay out some of the numbers here. He says wrong. Elon Social Security, he has paid every benefit owed to every eligible American for 86 years. We can make it solvent for the next 75 years and expand benefits by scrapping the cap that allows billionaires like you to pay the same amount into Social Security as a truck driver. So yeah, I mean, the Specter of having this man who aspires to be the first trillionaire, who, as you said, is probably the most powerful person who ever walked the face of the planet.
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Unknown A
Snering at the most successful social safety net program and the most popular social safety net program in the history of America that has lifted literally millions and tens of millions of people out of poverty is just. I mean, it is just disgusting. It is just disgusting. And nobody needs me to tell them that there is a visceral reaction to seeing this alllgarch plutocrat who is plundering the government, saying, we don't have money. We've got money for endless wars. We've got money for my $4 trillion tax cut, but we don't have money for grandma Social Security check. Get out of here with that super.
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Unknown C
I mean, just super bad politics. And they're about to, I think, see that more and more show up in polling. And the more that Elon goes out and talks like this, it's going to be genuinely problematic for them because they've actually really tried. We were talking. Yday is we're prepping for the show. What did Project 2025 have to say about Social Security? And I went back and looked because I remembered vaguely in my mind being like they had done something that was sort of new righty meaning not old school Con Inc. And I went back and looked. And the reason I remember that is because it basically doesn't talk about Social Security. It talks about Social Security in a couple of different programs, like through the lens of abortion and that sort of thing. But there's no big plan for Social Security, which is fascinating because if this was still Paul Ryan's Republican Party, that would have been a focal point of Project 2025.
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Unknown C
But the reason that it wasn't is that people on the right have said, you're allowed to still believe this stuff. Let's just turn the volume down. We may have to do all these tweaks to Social Security at some point. And I'm of the perspective that there are desperately structural changes that have to happen in Social Security. But politically, Trump World has said, you guys got to turn down the volume on that. We cannot be out here talking about it. You can do that in 10 or 15 years. You can't do it right now. And then you have Elon Musk going out on Rogue at and big like it's a punzi scheme, and then you can't explain why it's a Ponzi scheme with any persuasive answer that would resonate with Average Americans who, to your point, are going to see Grandma's Social Security cut or'going to about that. I mean, that's good luck.
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Unknown A
Well, the worries are already here. I can put this up on the screen. So DO is just making massive cuts to Social Security Administration. They're saying they plan to cut some 7,000 jobs. The number I saw was that this was roughly half the workforce that they're planning on cutting. Some of those cuts have already come. Ryan actually tweeted on a list of some of the people who have already been fired, and they have names like regional commissioner for New York, deputy regional commissioner for Kansas City, Assistant deputy commissioner for Ohio. So.
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Unknown C
And Ryan confirmed that they actually were fired because the administration was saying that we've mutually agreed to part ways. But Ryan confirmed with his sources that this was like an actual purge.
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Unknown A
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And I saw a bunch of local newspapers across the country that are covering the fact that their local Social Security offices are being shuttered. And these are really important resources for if you have some sort of an issue with Social Security and you need to go to the office, then that's your local resource that you go to and to see those shuttered. Again, to your point about how these cuts are not just being felt in Washington, D.C. among some Ukraine flag liberals or whatever, these are really across the country in critical ways that are going to show up in every community in some way across the country. People like to be able to go to their Social Security office. They like that they have a regional commissioner so that things can be taken care of. I also think you record disaster to Think list.
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Unknown A
We know when Elon came in and slash n burn Twitter, things broke. Things still break. My DMs aren't working on my fraking phone right now. Right now. And when it's Twitter, it's like, oh, well, whatever, I'll just get them later. I'll do it on my laptop, et cetera. When it's your Social Security check, it's a little bit more important. Or when it's airplanes falling out of the sky, it's a little more important. When it's food safety and we don't have the regulators to be able to make sure that the standards are being upheld or baby formula. Where we've already had issues in the past, these things are more consequential and there is not the same margin for error of like, oh, oops, our Ron DeSantis spaces was a total and complete disaster, but no one's going to die from that.
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Unknown C
To be Fair, your Twitter DMs, they're probably hacked by Mossad.
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Unknown A
That is possible.
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Unknown C
Probably not Elon's fault.
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Unknown A
Although they are. Also I read that some Doge staffer is figuring out ways to download everybody's DMs as well and I've probably run some AI program through it etc. So it could be that too. Who knows.
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Unknown C
Seems perfectly legal. What is the very legal. Very cool. That's how Trump describes something once.
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Unknown A
That's righte.
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Unknown C
Very cool.
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Unknown A
That's exactly right. I was mentioning the some of the air safety pieces. Let's just put this next piece up on the screen to the point of the self dealing that has been going on. So last week I talked about how Elon's SpaceX people had gone in and were like this 2.1 billion dollar contract that was going to Verizon. It's going to go to Starlink now. Well they apparently that hasn't been made official yet, but they are already ordering staff to root around to find millions of dollars in funding for Elon's Starlink. So tens of millions of dollars they say for a Starlink deal. According to sources here with Rolling Stone. Again, I think people have two ways they can look at billionaires. I wish people just had an auto negative on billionaires Americ, but they don't. They have two ways they can look at it.
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Unknown A
One is like oh he's so brilliant and he's so successful and he's such a changeus, we're so lucky to have him and rooting around in the government. The other is that that this is an arrogant prick who is just self interested and is a robber baron. And the reason he's so rich is because he steals things for himself. And when you have situations like this unfolding it is clear the way that people are going to if they don't already view Elon Musk in the context of all the power he has in our government.
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Unknown C
Well I mean you described him earlier in the show as an anarcho capitalist and I think that's how he sees himself. But the better way to describe that as a crony capitalist because he doesn't believe in the anarcho part of that. He still believes that there should be a government to give him contracts. That's the coerced content.
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Unknown A
That is a really important priority. Yeah, yeah.
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Unknown C
I mean the thing with I think two things to be true. He can be brilliant on the one hand and also be a robber baron. And that's the interesting thing about Elon Musk is that Republicans for a long time, I mean, he had a decent bit of pop cultural credibility like baked in before he started going full Doge. And we're starting to see that sort of crumble to an extent. Republicans were not used to having someone from Silicon Valley where they had been really cozy with Democrats since the Obama administration. They were not used to having somebody that had pop cultural cache and from Silicon Valley and lots and lots of money be so nice to them. And that was very exciting. And he could go into a Rogan and talk about all these things with the government that are broken. But that has a flip side and that is increasingly becoming very, very clear that there's another side of this coin, politically at least.
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Unknown C
So it's similar to what we were saying with Democrats in Doge. And one of the things I feel with Democrats in Doge is that they need to have a better answer. Because if the public is asked to say government is the government inefficient and are you going to vote based on this? You may have some people genuinely continuing to vote Republican even if they're upset with those and feel like some of the stuff isn't going well. Because Democrats answer is USAID is wonderful and there's never been any problems with it. And just shut up. If you're talking about this, you're wrong. They need to have a better answer. On the other hand, Republicans need to have a better answer. You can't just Sen. Elon Musk out to talk about how Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Have to. It's like repeal and replace. The politics of repeal and replace fell apart when they didn't have a good replacement.
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Unknown A
Yeah, that's true. I mean, one of the things Democrats could do is just insist on the return of inspectors general who job it is to look into waste Rodten abuse and to not cut the gao, which is the government office, and to beef those things up. But you're absolutely. And going beyond the plan for government efficiency or whatever, which I do think the conception of trying to run government like a business is just. It doesn't make ideological sense because the goal of government isn't to turn a profit. The goal of government is to do things like protect our food and protect our children and make sure that airplanes aren't crashing out of the sky and make sure that grandma's able to eat and not be eating cat food or whatever. But I think more broadly they need to have an explanation of the world of what went wrong, of what led people to feel so stressed and be truly so stressed and how prices have gotten so out of control they need to be able to point their finger at villains, the oligarchs and billionaires of the world who even before Doge werert robbing us
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Unknown A
all blind, but in perhaps more subtle ways. And they can't really do that until they clean up their own house in that regard. And we'll talk more about that once we get into the block about what the Democrats are up to and what they are thinking and complaining about, etc. Just to real quickly through the last few updates with regard to Doge before we get to this crypto mess. So put the next piece up on the screen. We have a new iteration of the what did you do last week TPS report email. This time Heet is saying ok, no, actually I do want everybody to respond to this thing with I guess looming potential firing. If you don't. This has been obviously huge back and forth. Elon put this thing out. A bunch of agency heads, including Hagseet, resisted and Rubio and RFK said yes, respond, and then said don't respond.
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Unknown A
Now this email is supposed to be going out today and DoD civilians, of which there are millions, that's the largest employer in the workforce. I think you said like 30%, 30 of the federal government civilian workforce are under Department of Defense. So this is extremely consequential in terms of that workforce. And then the last piece is a legal update. Here we have I mentioned the inspectors general that had been fired. Put C6 up on the screen. We had a judge rule that it is constitutional for the Office of Special Counsel to assert independence from the President, has legitimate authority to act free of removal by the President without causary rules. Next up, scotus. So this is one of the court battles that's playing out over who can be fired under what circumstances, because there are laws that govern with some of these individuals. There has to be a time period.
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Unknown A
Congress has to be alerted. It has to be for cause. It can't just be capricious because we feel like it. So this one is likely headed up to the Supreme Court for a consequential ruling about whether the executive has total and complete control over hirings and firings or whether Congress can say no for things like inspectors general. You have to give us a reason why you're getting rid of them, because you could see how this could be used in a bad Whoa. This person was investigating me in a way I didn't like. Now they're gone, et cetera. So they try to insulate them from.
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Unknown C
Those sorts of political, yeah, just one of those decisions where the Trump administration would say maybe facially it's against the statute but the statute is unconstitutional. So they're trying to we've talked about this. They trying to push it into the Supreme Court to get decisions that would centralize power essentially with the executive because they don't want bureaucrats to be able to subvert the executive. It's an interesting ideological conversation but this is a part of that.
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Unknown A
Yeah. So we'll see that one's headed up to the Supreme Court so we'll see what direction they go into with that.
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Unknown D
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Unknown A
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Unknown D
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