JD Vance and the Nixon Rehabilitation

This episode is brought to you by eight Sleep. Summer is here and while midterm election campaigns dominate American politics, the rest of us are actually trying to enjoy the sun and survive those terribly hot, sleepless nights. And you know, Katy, how much I love air conditioning and this ate sleep for me and my family is an absolute game changer. If you want to wake up, not groggy for your morning meetings, that's where the Pod five by eight sleep helps. It's a smart mattress cover that uses AI to track your health and sleep patterns. Even when it's hot out, you can manage the process. So if your spouse is cold, she can be warm on one side, you can be cold on the other side. It's just a fantastic thing. Use the code trip US at eightsleep com dot slash trip US for up to three hundred and fifty pounds off the pod five That's tripUS at eight sleep dot com slash trip US You even get thirty days to try at home and return it if you don't love it, but I'm confident you will. Hello and welcome to the Rest is Politics US with me, Katy Kay and me on the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of America, Anthony Scaramucci. And by the way, Katy , I have lived twenty four point eight percent of Americ a's life. How about that? It's scary actually when you think about it. I haven't done the calculation in scaramucis, but you know, that just speaks about how young this country is. If you're sixty years old in the country, you've been here for twenty four percent of the time. That's amazing. So what are you doing for the fourth of July, Anthony? You know, I'm hanging at home, you know, I think the I think we're no fireworks no parade . Well, I'm going to go to the fireworks, but I mean when I was I'm wearing the shirt from the last big movement. This is the bicentennial shirt. I remember the bicentennial. That star was created. You probably can't see it if you're not on YouTube. That star was created as togetherness. You see the interconnectivity of the star . And I was twelve years old, Caddy, and my father had a twenty foot motorboat. He was a big fisherman, and he took us New York Harbor and we got to watch what was called Operation Sail , which were all the large ships that entered the harbor in celebration of the two hundredth anniversary. But there's no wind in anybody's sail here related to this right now. And I think we should talk a little bit about that because my kids are like NFW . I'm not going to a Trump rally on the birthday. I'd rather go eat hot dogs in the backyard. But go ahead, Katy. So on the two hundredth anniversary, I was in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and I have my first ever hot dog at the American Embassy birthday party. I thought it was fantastic. Was that also your last ever hot dog? It was your first ever dog? It was pretty much my last ever, but it was not my last ever Betty Crocker's Devil's Food Cake. I thought any country that had food like that, I had to go and live there. So that was a great celebration. You know what? I'm in Maine , hence the sweater and I will be going to the local fourth of July parade and the fireworks and you never know Anthony Scaramucci, I may be found with a hot dog in my hand on july the fourth. But yes , if you have a hot dog, I want to see a picture of it. Okay, okay, you'll get the picture. Okay, Antony, I want to discuss the huge wins that Trump is having for his anti immigration agenda. And with Trump's approval ratings at record lows and inequality in America on the rise, we're going to talk about if America is falling apart on its two hundred fiftieth birthday. Let's dive in. One person in the White House who is particularly happy who we have done a series about before is Mr. Stephen Miller , we M knowill thater has immigration at the top of his list of things that he wants to change in America. Well, he got two wins last week on june twenty fifth, the Supreme Court's Conservative Majority handed President Trump two big victories around immigration policies. They were both six to three decisions, both authored by the Conservative Justice Samuel Elito , and they clear the path for the administration to remove something like a million people from the United States. One of them , the decision is to end temporary protected status known as TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and about six thousand Syrians who are currently living in America legally under this humanitarian program while their asylum claims go through, they have this temporary protected status. The Supreme Court has said that the administration can do it away with that. And then the second ruling decided that migrants arriving at the border of America are not entitled to apply for asylum until they step foot on U. S. soil . This will This will severely limit the number of people who come into America applying for asylum could cut it right back down . So the thinking is this is probably all in all about a million people who could be deported and, we do know that in the past week or two deportation numbers much more quietly than we've seen around Minneapolis and the ice crack down there, but we do know that deportation numbers have been picking up . So Anthony, this is what Stephen Miller wanted. This is what he spent years campaigning for. Suddenly we saw him back on television after the Supreme Court ruling saying that America is no longer open for asylum s for asylum seekers anymore . Basically that America's doors are closed fully to asylum seekers was what he said on television. So what do you what do you make of these rulings? Well, I mean to me because I read the decision and I also read the dissent because I'm a little bit of a wonk when it comes to this stuff from constitutional law , it says that the court is in the pocket of the Republicans and that the court is basically going to more or less do what the administration wants to the extent that it can it couldn't get there on the tax issue because that's like the whole cent ral thesis of the Constitution. And so there was some originalist thinking around that and they said, Okay, we can't break the entire Constitution, but there's a lot of loose things that we can do that 's right up the alley of Stephen Miller. But I want to want to ask you a social engineering question because if you are Li Kuan Yu and you say that America is going to always be okay because it's teeming with immigrants. Rich and poor can show up and some of the poor people are very smart. They go on to create multibillion dollar businesses and lots of different colors of people show up , lots of different sexual orientations and religions. And this is really the backbone of the country . And now we're being told no , we're going to take a very xenophobic and someone would potentially say white supremacist stance . How is that going to help the country? And you tell me, you be the social engineer here thinking about the future of America in its next two hundred fif andty years . And tell me if this works for America. And by the way, be fair, Katy, channel some Stephen Miller for us. Give us some of the aging , well dressed lollipop and tell us what he's thinking and so forth. Go ahead. So long as I'm well dressed, which we know that Mr. Miller is a fashion easter . Who's ever taking fashion advice from Stephen Miller should be deported alongside all the other people that St epillhener B would like to dep ort. But go ahead. I think that both Obama and even more so Biden landed America in this situation by having those scenes of people rushing across the border and not appreciating that there were Americans who actually welcomed migrants into their communities, saw the economic benefits of migrants , but at the same time wanted a secure border. And somehow they weren't able to hold those two thoughts in their brains at the same time, that dichotomy and they didn't do enough. I don't know why was Joe Biden asleep at the switch? Were his people around him just not informing him properly ? But they lost control of that story and understandably, you had people right across this country even very far away from the Mexican border who saw those scenes night after night after night on television and said to themselves, we are losing control of our country. I mean the scenes we should play the scenes on YouTube again because it's worth remembering them. They were shocking. You literally had streams of people coming across the border. That is not the way to run a country and that's not the way to make the case for immigration. There is a case to be made for immigration and it's a demographic case. Do we want to become Japan? Do we want to become South Korea? Do we want to become Europe with aging populations that we will have to support? Because that is the way America is heading right now. For the first time since the nineteen thirties , America is simultaneously seeing low migration and near record low birth rates. Well, what does that do to your country ? It shrinks your country. It shrinks your tax base, it shrinks your worker pool . It adds to the burden of young people who are trying to look after old people, who are the people that actually use up your social services , the idea that it's these young migrants who are using up social services is just a misnomer. They're actually contributing tax dollars into the system, billions of dollars of tax dollars into the system . The easy way out of this, I mean, this is what's absurd about what there is a solution to this demographic problem that America faces, but unfortunately, it's the same solution that Trump has spent decades denigrating. And I think they've got themselves into a real pickle here. I mean, if you can't out policy demographic, what's actually being won here? Is it just the optics of being in control ? Are they actually slowing down the change of an aging population? I don't think so. So are they doing this? Is Stephen Miller doing this purely to be able to say we're stronger and tougher than the Biden administr ation, and we've shut the borders and we're sending asylum seekers home? Or is this a race issue, which is what many people on the left believe it is? I think this is a problem, an economic problem for the country . I think it's a race issue. O coursef, you know , I'll be first one to tell you that. Katty , when I when this happens in the country, I always think of the Einstein Letter . And so what is the Einstein Letter for viewers and listeners? So Einstein wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt and he said, Okay, we think we know how to make the bomb . Okay, but we got to get the hell out of Germany and we want to come and help you make the bomb. Okay, so we started the Manhattan project . And if you watch the man in the High Castle, which is sort of this alternative timeline where the Nazis win and them and the Japanese take over the United States and of course they control Europe and are killing all the people that they don't like , including people that just have birth defects and other deformities . I think about that and I think, oh my God, you know, if we go in this direction , is the next American president if there's a big global crisis going to get the Einstein Letter and who's going to get that Einstein Letter if anybody catty? And that's the thing I always worry about. I want America to always be the place where Albert Einstein is willing to write the letter to the generally open minded, not perfect, but generally open minded American president who's thinking about these things the way America has long thought about them , which is that the border , I get the fact that we have to have legal immigration , but the border is generally for people that want to come through legally . So when this ruling came down, Anthony, I don't know if you saw it, I texted you that little clip from Megan Kelly, who's on the right , has her own show, pretty influential. Here is what Meghan Kelly says and I think the problem is that the rhetoric around these rulings has gotten I mean, it's almost uglier than the policy itself and that shows you where our politics is heading. Here's what Meghan Kelly said, Go home, get out. We know our country is better than yours . That's because we filled it with our work, ethic, culture and values . You being here only dilutes it for us. Go back to fucking Haiti . I mean you may believe that America needs to get rid of people who are here on temporary protected status. You may be not looking at the long term demograph ics of the declining birth rate , but there's no room for empathy for people who may be going back to a country that is incredibly violent. And by the way , the people who are employing Haitians in the town of Springfield , where there was the famous awful story about their eating the dogs and they're eating the cats are saying, We want more Haitians. They work harder , they don't do drugs. There was there was the manager of a factory who was being interviewed saying they don't do drugs. They turn up on time and they work harder than native born Americans, please give us more of these people. What why is she doing that? Why is she doing that? Well, I mean, she's doing that because her audience likes that. That's like red meat for her audience. She's doing that because a lot of these right wing undits , they gravitate these people that feel this level of nativism and feel this level of tribalism . And so it's almost like she's feeding them candy or cocaine. They love it. And so if she's saying that to them, then they pass that on to their friend and say, yeah, go Megan . And but I think she hurts herself. She's she's, you know, I've I know her. I've been on her show . She was Megan News. I don't yeah, I don't think she's even totally believes any of that, you know, and I've caught some of these guys where you know,, I'm having a beer with them or something like that. You don't really eff and believe that, do you? Oh, no , I say that for the audience, you know? I don't ever want to be that person, Katy, you know? The trouble is in our world that we live in, when you say it for the audience, you start driving things, right? You whip people up. And that's why it's good to hear. I mean, there are Republicans. You've got your friend, Congressman Mike Lawler, who we both know, who warned that ending the temporary protected status could create a real crisis in the country. You've had the Republican governor of Ohio, Mike Divine saying that the policy, the ruling is a mistake and that you need these people in the country. So you have got some Republicans saying, look, we need migrants in this country. We've got a declining birth rate. My question for the Democrats, Antony, and for you would be, does this give Democrats a chance to actually move this debate onto the economic territory and win some ground on it. Could Democrats make something out of this? Not as a kind of necessarily as a cultural issue but as an economic one, not a culture war one? They won't do it. You know, somebody said to me in the UK last week, I did somebody's podcast and they said, Well, who runs the Democratic Party? I said, Well, I know who runs the Democratic Party. Oh, if you do, okay, who is it? I said Donald J. Trump runs the Democratic Party. That's who runs the party because he is a cue ball and he's at the one side of the billiard table and he smashes into them and they go in fifteen different directions as a result of his behavior, which if they were smarter, they'd get together and they say, Okay, Gavin, we don't like you. We're going to hold our nose . We're going to support you. Or who is the one person in this party? Let's all be honest with each other , you know, there's a divide going on, Katy between the left and the hard left and then there's a group that , hey, man, we didn't get the communism pure enough in San Francisco. Let's make it more pure. Guys, knock it off. Country's not ready for any of that culturally . Get together , subordinate your personal interest one attractive candidate . But they won't do that, you know, and Trump, Trump runs them . He runs them. Okay, you know how Putin runs Trump? Well, Tr wellump runs the Democrats. And that's the irony. I wish they would stop doing that, you know? Because we need a fortified opposition and a coordinated opposition to Donald Trump. And he has them very uncordinated right now. Okay, some breaking news just as we go on the Supreme Court because they have declined. He's won on immigration, but he has lost on the sexual harassment case ab,use case from Egene Carroll. You remember we spoke about Egene Carroll a lot. Donald Trump was found guilty of sexually abusing her. And the Supreme Court, Donald Trump went to the Supreme Court and said overturn the case for me and the Supreme Court without any reasoning and no public notices, no public dissents has declined the president's request to have that case reviewed so, he owes Egene Carroll five million. So you win some you lose some Donald Trump. Hi, this is Gary Linka from Goldhangers. The rest is football. This episode is brought to you by wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate and easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than one hundred six andty countries and with over forty currencies, most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid market exchange rate like the one you see on Google with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the wise app today. Be smart, get wise, T's and Ts apply. Welcome back to the rest is politics US Happy Birthday America Anthony I think we should start with what the polling shows us about not just Donald Trump because the polls on Trump are terrible , but I found a poll that also talked about the American dream more broadly . And as income inequality has grown in America, people's belief in the prospects for American dream has also grown. I mean, basically this idea that America was a country of potential and prosperity. And if you worked hard and played by the rules you could get ahead and you could have a life that was better than your parents as you have done . And your grandparents, that notion kind of peaked in the nineteen fifties and sixties, which is also when people believed in government. And it's sort of been declining ever since, but it really dropped off the cliff in two thousand eight. And today only fifty one percent of American adults think there is an American dream for them . And I think that's a very sad way for America to be celebrating its two hundred fiftieth birthday because in a way that was the whole point of the country, right? That if you came here and you worked hard and you played by the rules and you believed in the Constitution , you could progress from wherever you started and it was not like Europe, it was not like Britain where you were stuck in a kind of rigid class bound structure. That didn't exist and yet today we have a system in America where there is more social mobility in the UK than there is in the U. S. And where does that leave this young country that you were talking about? Well, I mean, I'm bombed out because the sentiment is something that you feel locally too. Why you live? I was expecting a sort of, you know , a kind of a moment of great eloquence and I got the perfect long island answer. Yeah, I'm bummed out. How could you now be bummed out? The perfect scaramuchi eloquence. You know, I wanted to take my kids like my father did to go see the sailboats that are going to be in the harbor. They're like, no way. We're going to have no interest in that. Because it has become this celebration has become Trump's celebration, right? He's he's made it he made it a he made it a campaign rally, okay, and he made it a celebration about me the person as opposed to we the people. You see, I don't understand a great leader would be like, Hey, we got to get everybody together and whether you like me or dislike me, we're unified. The first name of the country is united. It's not the dis mer, you know, but Gatty, the numbers that you gave, I want to give a few more numbers and I want you to react to them . twenty nine percent, this is from the Pew Research Polls, you know, the cross steps, twenty nine percent of the U . S. adults say that they are satisfied with how the country's going. Okay, sixty nine percent say that they're unsatisfied. Two percent don't care . nineteen percent of the Americans think the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased by the way the U. S. has turned out. Seventy seven percent say disappointed , but the one that gets me is from Fox. This is a Fox Nsew poll , and it's really not a poll as much as it is Word association described the United States today Two thirds of the people polled decided to go with a negative word, ready? Failing , divided , struggling , corrupt . My God, Katy. Okay, so to me, I'm bummed out about that. Yeah, that isn't a long island expression . But then last but not least, when people are asked , well, okay, you're bummed out, but would you want to leave? Two thirds of the American voters describe the United States in negative terms but eighty, one percent say they still want to live here. So I'm in that camp. I want to fix it, Katy. But why such malaise on what should be a celebration? And by the way, this is the longest lasting government, as everybody knows in the world . You know, this is the one that 's stood the test of two and a half centuries. I mean, first of all, shout out to Pew Research. If you ever want to really understand what's happening in Americ a Pew just to the best. And on big moments, they do these big demographic studies of the country and how the country is feeling and how the country is doing . And they're always objective, they're totally nonpartis an, and it's a very good way to try and get a kind of read on the country. And I thought those numbers, I looked at the Pugh's sort of two hundred fiftieth take on America too and I found it equally depressing. The shrinking middle class story very real . And in a way, it's not really the story of the shrinking middle class, it's a story of a growing working class and a growing upper class in terms of income. And it doesn't feel particularly like America. I think we have actually seen record numbers of people leaving the country . Now, of course, they are the people that can afford to go and live in Portugal or go and live in Spain or wherever it is . But a lot of people still feel patriotic. I think a lot of Americans think this too shall pass and this period of Trump and corruption and this kind of pres idency that we spoke about last week that Jonathan Swann and Maggie Haberman described so well as this incredibly powerful presidency that doesn't look like kind of presidency that the founding fathers had in mind with this huge power grab and money grab for people around him, that that will pass. But I think actually what interests me more about the state of the country, that America has a real demographic problem . It has this middle class that is shrinking. And you've written a whole book about this that we will talk about later, but it's I think that is where the mallaise comes from. That's where when you ask people, are you satisfied only twenty nine percent , only nineteen percent, say the founding fathers signers of the Constitution would be satisfied with would be happy with the way the country is developed. I think it's that, isn't it? America, Antony, it's this where has the middle class of this country gone? Where can they find their home ? And we see no signs of that reversing. I don't see how that reverses itself . That is the number that needs to grow in America , not decline. The top twenty percent control eighty seven percent of the wealth. Does that sound right? I mean, and by the way, I'm all about capitalism and I'm all about unlimited upside for people. I believe in unequal outcomes, Katy, I'm all about that. You want to work ten times harder than some body else. You can earn ten times more , but that's not really what's going on now. There's a circle. There's a feedback loop between the very rich and the federal government and citizens United campaign contributions , ploughing into the country's elected officials . And then they're doing the bidding of the people. They're giving them tax cuts. They've got corporate welfare. You know, when Gavin, which I think was the stupidest thing he's done so far. Gavin Newsom says he wants a national wealth tax , okay, very stupid. Well likely not get the nomination because of that. And if they run on that, they will one hundred percent lose to the Republican candidate because people don't want that. But I understand why he's saying it. Why do you think he's saying Anton? That's interesting. You understand why is he saying it to catch up with the move of the Democratic Party or is he saying it for kind of practical reasons? We can't have a national state wealth tax in California, but not in Texas and Florida because we're going to lose our rich people to those states. Those are two reasons why he's saying it, but the mega reason is a social engineering reason. He's looking around saying, Oh my God, the system's gotten wildly unfair . I got to send a message to people that the way we're going to make the system fair is to take a l ayer of wealth away from all these people. Okay, but that's not the right way to do it. Okay, Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't have done it that way . You know, you you break up the trust, you defeat the monopolies, you splinter these special interest groups. How about unplugging the money from the system via Citizens United ? Okay, there's so many different ways you could do this . You know, by doing it that way, you're telling people that the government's going to be in the confiscation business. And by the way, I'm going to tell you something about how Americans think. So give me thirty seconds . I've made my money. Okay, but I have to pay a fifty percent tax. Maybe that's not a high tax in Europe, but that's American think it's a high tax. Now I'm going to go to the store and I'm going to buy something for myself. Well, there's an extra ten percent that you have to pay in sales taxes. Okay, no problem. And then I own a house, but my annual property taxes are quite high . And I can go through all the different layers of taxes in the country. It turns out if you make a dollar, you're able to keep about thirty four cents of the dollar. And so let's say that I'm the an t and I'm not the grasshopper and I say, okay, I'm going to take this money and I'm going to save it for my family . And now why are you laughing, Kat? Because I'm just quickly trying to get into the ant and the grasshopper. I'm like, I've had to do I had to do a little bit of a fable turn there. Yeah, the ant is out there working away, saving food for his family. The grasshopper's playing all summer long and the ant comes along and eats the ants . Yeah , and then the grasshopper's knocking on the door and saying, Hey, man, I'm starving out here. You know, he's looking at me going, Look, you were partying the whole summer. I'm here making the making the money, you know? In my family , I've been the aunt, but I fed every grasshopper. That's the whole all topic. for me I know this is totally the ant . This could be the rest, it's therapy, okay? I'm gonna teach you how to be a little bit more of a grasshopper, you know, a little bit more European actually take a look at the ant and the grabop shpers always not . Why am I still working? But just hear me out for a second. You got the guy makes the money or the woman makes the money and now the government's saying, well, you know, you were a saver, you're a very good investor, now we're going to take the money from . And they start out with saying, well, we're only going to do it to the billionaires . Okay, but then it's creeping, right? It's like the payer to tear tax. We're only going to do it for the five million , the second home or the five million dollars. Then it's going to creep down or inflation's going to push those smaller homes up. You see what I mean? And so to me, the Americans don't like it, stupid, and it's going to cost them the election. There is a huge debate going on clearly that we have spoken about on the program in the Democratic Party. And I have always maintained that America does not have a socialist bent, as Joe Scarborough said , but I actually think maybe we're seeing a shift. And we are seeing young er Americans. Look, in those same polls, only twenty two percent of people under thirty believe that the American dream still holds for them. There is this big generational shift happening of disappointment in the country around all of the things that we've spoken about , housing being too high, jobs not being available, insecurity about AI . And they are saying the Democrats have not delivered that system of playing by the rules , even if you tax people at fifty percent, it hasn't delivered for me. And I think you're seeing that backlash happen around the country. It's going to be very interesting to see how it plays out and to see actually whether America is and particularly younger Americans are having a moment where socialism or something that looks more like socialism, even if it's hard to define , is going to make an appearance in this country having not done so for two hundred and fifty years. Yeah, I think it's just dangerous. And I think I think they fixed these things before. Go look at what the two Roosevelts did. You can create a bedrock of the middle class and some safety nets. You can break up some of the trust , you can tell people, hey, I'm sorry, you can't have two and a half percent of the GDP of the country as your net worth. Okay, because we know that that forces out competition. The reason why the Medici adopted monopoly laws and even the government of England adopted monopoly laws is because what monopolies do is they control price and then they reduce competition and then they sit on top of innovation. Katie, when AT and T was broken up in the mid eighties by Judge Harold Green with the support of Ronald Reagan, it was the largest monopoly in the history of the country. They were sitting on the great irony is that they were sitting on all the technology that led to these big Mag seven companies like Netflix and Facebook and all this internet interactivity, they were sitting on the stuff. They didn't want it because they were charging people four dollars a minute for long distance phone calls. Why do they need to do any of that? And so so and we're doing that again right now and these guys are paying the government to keep them from getting broken up. It's it's it's it's just stupid and so and and doing it the way Gavin wants to do it is going to just piss off the average American. It's not it's not going to people can look around and say, wait a minute, I want to I want unlimited upside in this country . My grandmother got here, my grandfather got here, willing to work with uncapped upside , Gavin knock it off. I was thinking of you last week as I often do. And I was having a conversation with John Meatram, the famous presidential historian. And he said this very interesting line and he said that no republic has survived in history without a middle class. And I think when we look at that pew data about the shrinking middle class in America and the levels of dissatisfaction , what Meetchim is saying isn't just a soundbite, but it's actually the stakes . It's the stakes of all of that pew data that this is going to be a real problem for America. So my question for you is if Meichem is right , is this a structural warning for the country going forward? Is this experiment that America has done for two hundred fifty years survivable , can it defeat can it beat the odds of what Meetchem is saying has been true of history ? Because I don't see this middle class, I don't see how this middle class grows with politicians acting the way they are at the moment on either side . It's such a great question. And obviously none of us know the answer, but we did survive a revolution . We did survive a civil war . We survived the Great Depression and two global wars , ancillary. We survived Watergate and the tension around departing a president , Vietnam , we've survived political assassinations . We survived nine hundred eleven, several financial crises , nineteen oh seven, nineteen twenty nine, two thousand eight . So yes, I think we can survive. The question is what do you want to do for the people ? Because when you interview the cartel and let me tell you who the cartel is, those are that's a duopoly . It's not a monopoly. See, a duopoly doesn't want to break up the monopolies, but the duopoly are the Republicans and the Democrats. They're the demo publicans . They're the Republic s . It is a ruling class in the society that is generally indifferent to the plight of the average American. They'll pay lip service to it, but they offer no policy solutions. So to me, I believe and maybe I'm wrong in believing this, but I'll tell you what I believe, I believe there's going to be a younger crop of politicians that come in that are more data dependent, that are less ideological than the AOCs or the Mondanis or the even the JD Vance , and they're going to say, guys, this is what could work for everybody . All right, this is the system that could work for. You've got to end citizens United . You got to knock off the gerry mandering or at least limit it make it more structured and codified . You got to stop an American president from taking twenty billion dollars , which is a conflict of interest, a gross conflict of interest . You got to create a more independent department of justice so it doesn't become the law , the family law firm of whoever the next American president is . And if you do these things , the people will think that the system is actually fairer and more merit based . And then Katy, you got to give the working poor earned income tax credits so that they have enough disposable income without the additional burden of taxation. So those are things you could do that could fix the country. Meetham's right , if you just stay on this course, forget about it. We're like Thelma and Louise, we're going to run right over the cliff. Great scene, by the way. I have questions about where those politicians are because I'm not hearing them. I think we may be a cycle or two away from that because I think the Democrats are going to go through a cycle of nominating candidates who are on the left of the political struct um and it's not even just that they're on the left of the spectrum, they are in a kind of blow the house up . We've tried everything else. We're going to just burn it all down, mixing my metaphors there, but we're going to burn it all down and they're in a kind of a narket mood. I'm up here in Maine there are Platina signs everywhere that I've been and I've been going through working class neighborhoods. I have been going through more affluent neighborhoods, there are platina signs everywhere. And he is a blow up it guy. He's not necessarily an economics policy wonk guy. I haven't really heard much in the way of economics policy wonkery from him . So I think I think they're a little way away from that, but I also think there's something else that is happening here because I actually look at those pew numbers and went over them like you did and particularly the numbers on the American Dream, they're not really about economics , they're about tribalism. People are looking at exactly the same sets of data and taking very different conclusions. So you've actually got fifty seven percent of Republicans believing the dream holds true, but only seventeen percent of Democrats. That's a forty point gap based on the same facts . And I think it's that kind of and themism. You know, maybe Republicans are thinking, Well, the American dream is alive because it's still happening for me and Democrats are thinking it's dead because it stopped happening for migrants and poor people and people of color and they've gone to identity politics. But I think that division in the country around you're either on my team or you're on their team and my team is not necessary. It's about fighting the other team rather than proposing solutions that will make you the country better. And I think that's that and the algorithms. When people go back to history and they did this around the time of the killing of Charlie Kirk , the thing I would point to that's different and I'm holding up my phone here guys is this and I don't know that we are strong enough to beat those algorithms that have a vested interest in dividing us. And you're seeing those divisions in almost every statistic in America that reflects how people feel about the country. I'm going to take the over. I think you're right and, I think that in the average scenario in the average country, that's the trajectory . But I'm going to take the over because I've seen this happen. I've seen this happen in American history. I've also seen it happen in companies. You know, my I'll give you an example. My company should have been dead four times, okay? Skybridge due to various calamities. And what we did was we innovated or we switched plans or we built a conference business or we moved into some other area of the Wall Street product line. I think that we are and again, I could be wrong, I think we are at a crisis moment where there's some very, very smart people getting together saying, Whoa, we can't let this happen. And there are even billionaires saying, wait a minute , maybe Henry Ford was right. Maybe I got to pay these people more and maybe I got to elect some politicians that are market based politicians they're going to allow me to keep what I've made, but they're going to come up with solutions to help other people feel better about themselves . Because this Mandani let',s wreck it, let's take a wrecking ball into it, smash it. It never ends well. You were very up on Mandani the other day, Anthony. What happened? Listen, I get a lot of criticism, by the way, from my elder New Yorkers listen to p ourodcast. I like Madonna. He jumped into a swimming pool the other day with his full suit on. This kid gets politics and this kid has the best smile since Barack Obama in American politics and this kid understands something that other politicians should listen to. He understands the politics of joy . He's using joy as a political currency . And so he's creating a lot of popularity. It's the policies that thankfully so far he's been restrained on , okay, or the things that I'm happy about, because let me tell you something, Kaddy, if he invokes those policies in the city, he'll finish the city. Now he just he just put a rent his rent stabilization board went in for an increase of zero. Okay. Well, let well me ask you a quest ion. What about the property taxes guys? The property tax is not going to get increased. It's also going to be zero . Oh, no, they're not going to be zero. Okay, so now what's the landlord going to do? So the landlord's trying to save money on the boiler. He's going to let the paint chip in the apartment. He's going to skip a trash removal. Guys, you're not it's not market based. What you're talking about, okay, well the landlord's rich. He owns the building , so let's let the building guy pay. That's not how it works you have to deal with the animals, what did Cain say? You have to deal with the animal spirits of the human being and you got to get the policies so that they're conjoined with those , but they can restrain those , but they can't destroy those . And so yeah, Mandani to me is a brilliant politician . I just wish he had more common sense policies that I know would work for the working class. Again, study Teddy Roosevelt, study Franklin Roosevelt. These guys got it, you know, even Reagan Caddy, okay, even Reagan who is supposedly mister Right wing in nineteen eighty two, he put through two tax increases and he put a commission he put a commission together with Alan Greenspan to stop the bleeding out of social security. Remember the Social Security Commission? I have to ask you about another politician who has mastered the art of joy . Your favorite vice president , JD Vance , who is out there rehabilitating was a little birthday gift for everybody. He's out rehabilitating Nixon's image. He was at the Nixon Library this week and he said that Nixon's legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance. There is actually some truth in that. You've got foreign policy experts who look at the way Nixon handled China, for example, and actually some conservatives were saying, well, at least Nixon was a real conservative around policies unlike what we have in the White House at the moment. But then he went on to say that if Watergate had happened , it would be a nothing burger a twelve hour news story , and he has drawn the parallel between himself calling the deep state takedown of Nixon not all that different from what he said has happened to Donald Trump. Why is the vice president out there pre shrinking Watergate at the moment? And I think that's what he's doing. I think he's trying to make Trump scandals look smaller by comparison. Is he kind of just talking to an aud ience of one and trying to tell Donald Trump, don't worry, corruption doesn't matter. What's going on here? Is this a kind of Nixon rehab strategy ? Is it confidence or is it not confidence? Okay, such a great question, but I'm going to give you some a personal story here. Okay. So I'm going to take you back to the Trump campaign and Trump talking about Nixon. So now we're flying around Trump would be saying, I like Richard Nix on. You know, Roger Stone liked Richard Nixon, but Richard Nixon was a fall guy. Richard Nixon wasn't tough enough. Richard Nixon needed to ride out the storm and he needed to threaten all those senators that were threatening him. And he needed to browbeat these people into submission and to stay in office no matter what . And so Trump has said that and that is right in the vein of where's my Roy Cohn, Katy Kay? If you go to people that have worked for Donald Trump and they have spent at least two hours with him, they have listened to one stream of consciousness monologue about Richard Nixon, that what he did wasn't that big of a deal . So when I hear Vance saying it, I'm like, oh, he's just channeling that stream of consciousness monologue that Trump has been spouting for the last twenty five years. But there's something else going on with Vance that I think is . He went into certain territory and faced the music. Okay. So he went on the Bill Moore show. I watched the nine minute interview and people can dislike me for this. I thought he did well in the interview. I don't like Vance. I don't want him to become the president , but he went on the interview. AOC invited on Billmore, won't go on. Kamala Harris invited on Billmore, won't go on . I can name a lot of liberal politicians won't go on . Okay, but he went on and he was getting blistered by Bill Moore and he faced the music. And so you know, don't underestimate that. Okay, Trump did that. Trump, you know, he doesn't do it anymore , but he used to sixteen. He was good . He was showing up on he went everywhere. Exactly. So went everywhere. So to me , another big message and this is something we couldn't get Vice President Narris to do, go face the music. She went on Fox News once. She should have went on Fox N ews thirty times, once every day for the last thirty days of the campaign, but she wouldn't do it. And by the way, when you do that, you soften people up, Katie, you know, you open the minds of independence , you know? I mean, I don't know that going for a Republican vice president to go to the Nixon Library is not quite the same as going on the Bill Marshall, obviously that no, no, he was in friendly territory there . Yeah. And I think he is trying to do something specific , which is he sees post midterms where if the Democrats win, we are going to have a slew of investigations into corruption around the Trump family and around the Trump White House . Trump can survive a corruption story . I mean, he'll pardon himself anyway, and he'll pardon JD Vance anyway, but I think the question is whether Vance can survive being the guy who says corruption doesn't matter, which is what he went and said effectively. The message he was making in the Nixon Library was Watergate, no big deal, twenty four hour news story, guys corruption doesn't really matter . Well , ask Victor Orban how that worked out because actually quite a lot of voters, I suspect, particularly if we have a post mid temp two years with lots of these investigations and everything that we have been talking about the middle class in America, people might start to think that corruption does matter. And I think JD Vance went and said all of that at the Nixon Library because he realizes if he's going to run , he's going to have to somehow find a way to answer the corruption stuff. Listen, I think you're making really good points. I just see this guy in a huge identity crisis. Absolutely read both of his books and will listen to his interviews . He wants to be a good guy , but his amb is over whelming out of control. The ability to be a good guy. You see what I mean? And that makes him to me very dangerous. That's why we're going to do series on him guys for our founding members . You can listen to that. It's coming out in a few weeks time. We will be back for our founding members later on in the week with our questions and answers. We're going to be talking about voting rights and what the administration in particular is trying to do to suppress voting rights ahead of the midterm elections. You can listen to that by becoming a founding member. Join us at the rest of politics . com . But for now , have birthday America. We'll see you guys later on in the week.