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Unknown A
Welcome, everybody. Crystal Kylan. Friends, we got an exciting show for you today. We're gonna be talking to Maxwell Frost, Democratic politician who's actually showing some backbone, actually leading, actually fighting. His name has becoming more and more prominent because he's somebody who's actually showing people how to fight back.
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Unknown B
Yeah.
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Unknown A
So very excited.
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Unknown B
Talked to him 28.
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Unknown A
28. 28 years old. Makes me. I'm 37. I'm almost a decade older than it was. Kind of wild to think about.
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Unknown B
I'm more than that. Yeah.
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Unknown A
So, anyway, excited to have that conversation. Everybody can sign up for subsack below if you want to see the full thing. Highly recommend doing that. You can sign up for free and get the audio version of the podcast a day later, or sign up for five bucars a month to get the video as soon as it drops, email directly to you. But before we get to that, I had a hard time like sort of narrowing down the stuff to talk about today because there's so much to get into.
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Unknown B
But this is every day now.
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Unknown A
Every day. It's just. It never. I get off air and I look at my phone and it's like, oh my God, I got seven more things. I got one after the otherither. I know, but this one is nice. So aoc in a committee hearing and she's again, just like Maxwell Frost's one of the few that's really taking the gloves off and has taking the fight to them and is staying current and on top of the news and fighting y. So she goes after Elon Musker here and she absolutely shreds him. Watch this.
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Unknown C
It has all of our support for folks following at home. Democrats supported it, Republicans supported it. So why isn't this moving? It's not because there's no substance for it. All four witnesses testifying today are in support of it. Republicans are in support, Democrats are in support. So what happened? Well, on December 17th, at 4:15 in the morning, Elon Musk began firing off a barrage of social media posts opposing pharmacy benefit manager reform, PBM reform. And all of a sudden, this bill that had almost unanimous support fell apart in a matter of hours and the vote was postponed. On that day, after he tweets, it gets canceled. Elon Musk tweets, We have nearly 435 members of Congress all on board of it. He sends one tweet, and all of a sudden everyone backs off and it kills. Drug pricing reform that saves people money on their insulin, on their.
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Unknown C
On their asthma inhalers, s, everything that they need. And then to kick it off. Five days after he kills pharmacy benefit manager reform, we get this tweet from Elon Musk. What is a pharmacy benefit manager? This was at 1:02am on December 31st of 2024, five days or so, a couple days after he kills the bill. So the problem here is not a substance issue. It's not a process issue. It's an oligarchy issue. It's a power issue. And this room is where the power of the people of the United States reside. Whether you're a Democrat or you're a Republican, everyone here was elected to be accountable to the people of the United States, not to be governed by tweet, but to be governed by their duly elected representation. And so we can get this done because there are more of us than there are of him.
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Unknown C
So I would love a commitment from our Republican counterparts who we agree with on this issue to just put it on the floor and let us vote for it where there is bipartisan agreement and we can actually get a result for the American people by booting this guy out from political influence. And with that, I yield back.
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Unknown A
I mean, she killed him. But my only takeaway from that is like, why aren't all of them saying this?
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Unknown B
I actually think she killed her Republican colleagues even harder than she killed Elon there, because she's just showing the power that he has. And it's humiliating for them that, like, you did all this stuff to get elected and represent your district, blah, blah, blah, and then none of it matters because you've just completely cut yourself to this unelected oligarch billionaire, handed him all of your power, and you're not lifting a finger to try to reclaim anything for yourself. I mean, with this budget bill that they're passing, it matters because of the cuts that are coming from it. But it's also like, you're just going to, if they decide to do something different in the executive branch, Trump and Elon, then you're just going to go along with that. It should be humiliating and embarrassing for them. And so really I see that as AOC putting her colleagues on blast for how much they're humiliating themselves and cucking themselves to power, even, versus for Elon.
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Unknown B
It's sort of like he gets to just run the show. And I'm sure he loves that feeling.
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Unknown A
So they were virtually all on board, according to aoc, with lowering drug prices by doing pharmacy benefit manager reform. These are like the parasite Mafia middlemen that jack up prices even more on your drugs. And they were ready to do Something about that. And then he kills it. And clearly doesn't even know what the fuck it is that he killed. Right. And humiliating doesn't even begin to describe it. You're talking about. And again, I want every Democrat to be on these talking points because this is such a fucking layup between the Trump executive order raising drug prices and this action from Elon and the Republicans which raised drug prices. This is what I'm talking about when I say this is an opportunity politically to say, look at what these fucking people are doing. Like, I don't even need to say anything. And that's why the polls are looking like they are right now too, by the way, for a potential midterm.
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Unknown A
Like, I don't even need to say anything. And you can see how disgusting these people are, how grotesque they are, how sold out to big money interest they are. Like, what the fuck, man? What the fuck? This is crazy.
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Unknown B
Yeah. This was one of the things that was in the original bill that they had all negotiated and agreed on, and we're gonna vote on the, like, omnibus bill in December.
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Unknown A
And then El killed it.
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Unknown B
Elon kills it. And then the new bill doesn't have the pharmacy benefit manager reforms. Lot of there were some other things that were consumer protections with regard to, like, hotel fees and other things that were genuinely beneficial. That was gone. And probably the reason why he wanted to mess with this bill in particular, there are some restrictions on investment in China or technology sharing in China that he didn't want because of his business in China with regard to Tesla. And so I think that's the real reason why he wanted to mess around with this bill and that park get stripped out, and then he's like, okay, now you can vote for it. And then they all fall in line and do. I mean, it really is between his money, his power with Twitter, the position that Trump has handed him as the ruler of the world, and Trump's cult of personality.
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Unknown B
They're not gonna descend an inch. I mean, it. He got all. Trump put up some of the craziest nominees for cabinet positions you've ever seen in your life. And they all got through. All of them, like the Susan Collins of the world. Mercau. Whoever. Enough people voted for every single one of them to get them across the finish line. I mean, that tells you everything that he, and especially Elon, since Elon really runs the show at this point, they will get from these people whatever it is that they want. And one little storyline this week was, oh, maybe the cabinet secretaries are going to push back to them because they'senate confirmed. And Elon sends out this email, you got to send in your five bullet points, blah, blah, blah. And if you don't, you're fired. There was a little bit of dissent there. Of, no, we're actually going to handle our own business within the agencies.
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Unknown B
That's dead and gone now, too. Because Trump summoned all the Cabinet secretaries into that meeting, had them sit there and then told them, said, hey, does anyone have a problem with Elon? Because if you do, you can get out. That's it. Like they. On camera. I think this was very intentional, sort of like on camera humiliation of all these cabinets. Secretary is saying, no, no, no, you don't run these agencies. This guy does, and you're going to do whatever it is that he wants you to do.
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Unknown A
This is class war. And I think everybody needs to acknowledge that, and I think Democrats needs to start saying it.
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Unknown B
It's like class nuclear war.
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Unknown A
I mean, look, the budget framework they just passed. $880 billion cut to Medicaid. That ablutely destroys Medicaid. $230 billion cut to the SNAP program, which is food stamps. When you talk about the killing of the PBM reform, so that'll give people higher drug prices. This is class war. And you have Elon Musk is on the side of the billionaires, the oligarchs, the robber barons, the multinational corporations, the price, gougers, all of the biggest assholes who make the most money, who want to price gouge you even more. That is who Elon is representing. That is who Trump is representing. And like I said, it should be the easiest fight in the world to harness the will of the American people, tell people the truth, get people rallied, get people ready to fight. I mean, we're talking about prime Mike Tyson versus a kindergartner with, like, how much you can kill them over this.
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Unknown A
Right. But it requires the fight. And there's, you know, there's only a handful that really know how to do it in this moment. Yeah, right. And AOC is demonstrating to here. Maxwell Frost is demonstrated at times. Jasmin Crocket, same thing. So you just. They all need to, like, we need. We need to stop having the hierarchical thinking on the Democratic side, where they go by seniority and shit like that with Jerry Connolly, the head of the Oversight Committee. So you got to throw that out, bro. You got to be all about, like, hey, who actually is making the most noise? Who makes the best arguments? Who gets the most eyeballs on them, like, it's time to Tool up and become efficient at this shit, you know, because this is, this is class war. This is class war. If they have their way, poor people are gonna die because they don't have access to health care.
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Unknown A
People are notnna be able to afford their drugs. Like, it's not enough. It's not enough to say, hey, 74 year old with esophageal cancer, you lead the way on the oversight committee.
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Unknown B
It is so incredibly naked, like the oligarch agenda. I mean, you are cutting Medicaid and food stamps to give Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos attacks Gu Insane. Insane. And they everybody with Thomas Massey voted for. The only reason Thomas Massey did is because it didn't cut enough. They're 100%, all of them on board that Trump said this was what, one big beautiful bill. He's on board with it. It raises, it increases the spending at the Pentagon. So more money for war, 4 trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich, and health care and food taken out of the moh of babes.
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Unknown A
So the average tax cut for the top 1% is they get an extra $36,000 thereabouts. And for somebody who makes $55,000 under Trump's plans, you end up having to pay about $1,500 more in taxes. So that shows you what this is.
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Unknown B
Yeah.
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Unknown A
All right, guys. Today we talk to Congressman Maxwell Frost, who's been leading the way in fighting back against Trump and MAGA and Elon Musk. He just got censored and nearly kicked out of hearing the other day. So you're not gonna want to miss him talking about that. You're not gonna want to miss him talking about fighting back against the right. He's one of the few that's really leading the charge. So sign up below on substack if you want to see the entire interview, which I highly recommend.