Mamdani and the Dueling Political Visions

Welcome to the Rest is Politics US. with me, Katdy Kay in Barmy London. No, hot London, actually, Anthony. Very hot London. Where are you? Well, I'm in my house in the Hamptdons, but I'm also in the land of Donald Trump where he's making AI generated mees of himself getting our players back on the playing field. So I know we have a lot to talk about, but I was watching his trruth social this morning And I'm like, this guy is really in another world, you know, and he's just and everyone around him is just like, hey, no problem. just let him do whatever he's doing. He's the president of the United States guys. I mean, you know, but go ahead, goo ahead guys. As well as saying Georgia Maloney needs a restraining order put on her as well. I mean he'ss he's really jumped the shark this weekend. Well, I'm a bit sad because I had a great july the fourth. I went to a super nice small town parade in Maine where there was no politics Everyone was very cheerful. It It was really it was quite moving actually, Anthony. I saw the hot dog. And I ate a hot dog. I want to confirm for everybody that you did eat the hot dog. Yes. well Am I allowed to make a confession since it's just between you and me and no one else is listening? I actually only had one bite and then I gave it to my son and he demolished it in about two seconds.. Yeah There's no know, you know what by the way, you didn't even have to tell me that, okay? I had the under on the full hot dog. okay. You didn't even have to tell me that, okay? That was like Captain obvious, misses Ovious I loved my july fourth. The parade in Maine was just the best and I felt very happy. And now I have to get back to politics and feel a little bit less happy. So here's what we're going to talk about We are going to talk about the World Cup and FIFA and Donald Trump meddling in everything, including soccer. and his ability his attempt to, no, his ability to overturn FIFA's ruling on the red card that had been given to an American player. We'll get into that. And then in the second half of the program, we are going to talk about the end of Doge, which by the way, happy july fourth, that was actually the end of Doge. You may have missed it and a little bit about Mam Dani's speech, which I thought was interesting too. So Anthony, first of all, before we get, I guess before we get into Donald Trump and the World Cup, we have to say it's coming home, right Well done England. Were you up all night watching? I was on the plane so I didn't manage to see it, but I wish I had done. Well, I didn't no,m I'm on this side of the pond. That was like that was like a primetime game over here. No that ended around eleven o'clock, but I watched the The whole game and obviously, I'm not as familiar with the game as you are, but super impressed with team England And I just wrote an op ed, which I'll share with everybody, mayaybe we'll put in a newsletter about how as Americans, we have a license to root for more than one team or to cheer for more than one team. And you know, so I would be chearing for the Italians, but they're not in it. They they haven't been in the last three times So I was wearing in Eng An adopted Brit. you're now cheering for England. Well ye, I was I was wearing the I was wearing the jersey. I took some heat from the Scots like Alistair Campbell, but I was You know, I, you know, I feel like England has been very good to me Katdy Kay. Okaykay. So I was wearing the jersey and cheering for them, but Americans because we're all hyphenated, we can cheer for two teams and get away with it. Okay. And by the way, Alistair is writing into our blog saying how upset he is and what a traitor I am. not happy. We're going talk we are actually going to talk about that in our episode for foundounding members in our question and answer if you'd like to hear about the beef that Alistair Campbell has with Anthony Scaramucci over the jersey that he was wearing at the England game, you can see that. Okay, so Donald Trump has now been meddling in the World Cup. America's top goal scorer Forein Ballagan was sent off during the World Cup match against Bosnia Herzegovina last week, which means that he would have been suspended for the next game, which is around a sixteen game against Belgium. but The White House, including Donald Trump called up FIFA President Janni Infantino to review the suspension and FIFA on Sunday announced that it was going to reverse the call and Ballo, as his name, Ballaggan, will be able to play in the game against Belgium. I think this raises a whole load of questions. First of all, I mean I know that there was controversy about the Rd card in the first place and did the VAR slow it down so much? And some people have said including Ria Ferdinand that actually he should never have been given a red card and that it was okay for the red card to be overturned. But I think it sets a terrible precedent, Anthony, that you can have the president of one country can call up the FIFA president and basically get a ruling overturned. I mean now every country that's had a red card called against them, England had a red card at the Aztecca Stadium. What we're going to get the king now calling up Donald Trump and saying, oh, you know that state visit, that unprecedented second state visit we gave you, it comes with a cost. And the cost is a get out of jail free card for our England players. I mean, I don't know where this is going to stop, but clearly all of that flattery that Infantino has done to the Trump administration has now somehow paid off for the White House because they've managed to get Ballo back on the pitch and maybe he should have been on the pitch anyway. Maybe that's but a red card is a red card and to have it overturned I think makes people start thinking, as you and Kara Sisha was saying, by the way, she was great last week. Thank you, Kara, for filling in for me and letting me have some time in my family Maine. As you guys were talking about, it makes people think there's a two tier system. And America now looks like there's one rule for America and one rule for the rest of the world that is playing at the World Cup What do you think? Well, one rule for Trump. I mean, so let me channel him because I think it's important for people to understand him. You know I made two point two billion dollars. Do you want to know why Well why, Mr. Trump, Mr. President Well, because I'm a genius and all the other presidents are idiots. It would be stupid for me not to do this And so therefore, that's why they did it. And all the other presidents are stupid. And so why didn't they have a money grab for themselves and their families to the tune of several billion dollars Kamala Harris wouldn't have called infantino and ask for the red card dissolution because it's me, I'm Donald Trump. So you see Not only am I a rule breaker But this is a representation of my coldness. This is a representation of my efficiency getting strength. Yes and getting things done. Okaykay. What it does what it does is it breaks down norms. And what it does is it puts the United States in a weirdly vulnerable position. And so The bully on the in the school yard doesn't do well Okay, the the henchmen in the local town Do doesnn't do well because you know what happens, Katy? The other kids get together. or the other people in the town, they go to the sheriff And they said, okay, we're going to all team up and form a posse and take out the henchman or we're going to take out the bully in the high school cafeteria. You see? So we literally have Biff. do you remember Biff from Back to the Future? Yeah? We literally have Biff running the American presidency and overseeing the American government and We have all these willing sycophans that are sitting around him. allowing for this no no Rubiyo doesn't go to him and say, hey, this is like really bad for us This is bad publicity for no Trump has said, No, this is great for us. You're right. The Kamala Harris thing is interesting because online, a whole load of kind of Trump MAagA voices online immediately came out and said, Kamala Harris wouldn't have done this. You see, she would never have managed to get this red card overturned And they were seeing it from a position of pride as opposed to yah, d, she would not have called up infantino in order to bend the rules to get a red card overturned. but they saw it as a position of strength. I suppose the only thing on the Schoollyard. bully thing. I mean, maybe it's interesting that we'reving this conversation as Trump flies off to NATO having Um put out incredibly disparaging truth social posts about Georgia Maloney, but I think the problem is that everybody's kind of looking around saying, where is the alternative sheriff? I mean, who who's the sheriff? they're going to call, right? I mean, they You've got UFer, the European Football Association coming out and saying this is a red line. And when I heard that This morning, I thought, well, redline what Redline. So what are you actually going to do about it? Because again, it's the we're living in Stephen Miller's world. The world is kind of run by power. And yes, maybe the only way that America can win is by cheating in this case or by having rules bended in their favor. And I don't know that that really helps the American team. And let's say they do beat Belgium in their matro Belgium, how great are they going to feel about it, but We're in this weird world where one country is not really playing by the rules of the world and yet there isn't a sheriff to call yet So what does that red line even mean Well, again, you know, there's a there's a professor old school professor at JFK Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His name is Stephen Walt He wrote a book about fifteen, maybe twenty years ago now about unnatural alliances You're going to go to war in Iraq? Well, guess what's going to happen? There's going to be unnatural alliances. People that were once enemies are now going to be friends to turn against you. Uh, you know, the Chinese and the Russians had been fighting over land in Siberia for three hundred years. The Chinese claim it was taken from them. they want it back. The Russians have it. You know what? They dial that whole thing down. And they're lovey dovey together and they've got huge painted portraits of each other. and they're strolling around together arm in arm. Why? Because the enemy my enemy is my friend And what the United States did a brilliant job of is we're the most powerful country in the world we have You know, three percent of the population at the time of the end of the Second World War, fifty percent of the world's GDP but we're not going to be dicks about it Okay, We're going to try to handle ourselves in the most benevolent and the most rules based way so that you're not threatened by us, if anything, you're going to want to be us. You're going to want to have an alliance with us and we're going to sell you our Hollywood movies and you know, you're going to buy products from us hopefully. and your teenagers are going to grow up because there's a lot of freedom and a lot of Craziness in our country, your teenagers are going to grow up and they going want to be us. and they're going to watch Top Gun and they're going to hang out and say, hey, you know, America's cool. They're really trying generally to do the right thing. Did they screw up in Vietnam? Have they misfired a few things in the Middle East yet? But you know, generally, they're trying to do the right thing Now It's like, hey man Who the hell are you guys You know, we got we got people in Canada Boo our national anthem. Right We've got people in Florida, you know, my driver in Florida, you know, because, you know, you know, I love the Disney Cruise, something you would never do by the way. Well if they had hot dogs on it, maybe I would. You never know. No, there's no chance. I got the I got the underun that one as well. But anyway, my driver picks me up at the airport. He's like, Mooch, there's nobody here What do you mean?'s nobody here down twenty five percent. The Canadians will not show up. Okay, my business is suffering Donald J. Trump Donald J. Trump. So now we're going to upset the Italians, right They invited the Pope to come to the two hundred fiftieth anniversary. He's an American Pope, Katdy Did he accept the invitation? No, he did not accept the invitation. He went to the shores where the immigrants were dying Okay, He went to the shores on the fourth of July And he said a prayer for the people that were trying to seek freedom in the West and they died on the shores from the crisis of those boats and those floatillas. That's where the pope point And if you read the Pope's letter about America, You know, that's the that's you you say, well, where's the leadership There's one American He happens to be the Catholic head of the Catholic Church. Okay, and Rboty wrote on the fourth of July. It was was a It was an American renewal message. It was like, guys, are we going really forget everything about where we've come from and who we are and what we represent to the world? I think this I think you're so right that we're at a moment where you've got some people in a moment where Corruption is being normalized, as you and Cara spoke about last week, and where you're seeing rules being bent in the way that Mark Carney has spoken about, there was actually perhaps always one rule for one group of people in the so called rules based what international rules based order. worked differently for some countries than for other countries. But you have in this moment, you've got some people standing up like the Pope and we're going to talk about the speeches that Manddani and Trump gave over the weekend in the second half, And Mark Karney, who is clearly emerging as a kind of leader in NATO trying to rally other countries to find another form of shariff or another form of world order And then you have people like Infantino who have decided to jump on the bandwagon. And I think this is a moment where people's credentials and character are really being tested ' this isn't a story about Balligan and this isn't a story about the American team, but they are getting sucked into the kind of muck here by infantina, who he's not running a football body. he's running a favor exchange with a client list of one head of state, Donald Trump And some people will play that game and think that they're benefiting and Donald Trump clearly thinks he's benefiting. and MagGa Wld clearly thinks that Donald this is the way to do it. You exert strength, you exert pressure, you show how powerful you are and other people will have to bend to you. Okay, so I don't know in Fintino, but my guess is he's not your best friend? No. But he wants proximity to power, which is obvious,? He's hanging me out with Ludnik at the games gave Trump the FIFA peeace Priz. I mean, I don't even know what that is, but he gave it to him And so he's like, okay, you know what You know, this is a loyalty program Okay, and this isn't corruption to me. This is me just wanting to be inside the circle of significance. around the president of the United States, you know You know, Katy, this is the irony of the whole thing. I mean I'm not and everybody knows that listens this podcast. I'm not that familiar with football At least your version of football You know, when I looked at the play and I watched the repay five or six times, you know, I don't know. Did he deserve a red card for that? Somebody said he was mouthing off to the ref He was going to get a yellow and then end up getting a red card. point is He could have gotten a reprieve. you know, the irony is he probably deserved a reprieve. I'm not a fan of America. I certainly would want the kid to play in the game. But the way this went down is so bitter And it tastes so bitter. Yeah. That's the problem is that Trump has now ruined it for everybody. You know, and it's and you know what, Ronaldo got a repeve a few years back, right? Yeah. I did a little bit of research right A Mende got a reprive. I don't even pronounce the guy's name right? They got it without a presidential phone. I'm sort of loving the Anthony Scaramucci as ball soccer proro. I'm just saying this is so bad And that this is this is also to me, it's, you know, Daniel Patrick Mornihan said, have to be careful with our government. We don't want to define deviiancy downward where every Every step is a downward step Every step is a step in a way where This is the absence of leadership Okay, this level of cronyism is the absence of leadership. Like a real leader would have let the chips fall where they fell. Okay, but he's bragging to his buddies. Look at me. and look how great I am. I got I got this guy back into the team. I'm the man You're not the man.re like you're like a real overgrown eighty year old jerk offff is what you actually are. And what you're doing is you're embarrassing us on the world stage and you hurt the team now hurt the team because that point is you hurt everybody else. There were a lot of people out there like, Hey, the Americans are having a good run here. They probably won't win the World Cup they're having a good run. goodood for America. Now you're going to have hundred million people, two hundred million people. I don't know. you pick This thing is ten times the size of the American Super Bowl. So you tell me the hundreds of millions of people They're going to be rooting against or you know, not cheering for America. I think if you use the word root in Australia, it's a bad word. so I got to stop saying it. But you know the point I'm making is This is so embarrassing but it's so indicative of where the country is now with its leadership. And I got to bring this up because Larry David had Rob Reiner the late Rob Biner in his last role ever Pling George Washington And they released this thing over the fourth of July weekend. And it was literally some of the funniest shit that I've ever seen, but it was it was Larry and George Washington in the town square And Larry was basically saying to George Well, suppose you have an imbeciole that runs the White House. Suppose you have somebody that steals billion dollars. Suppose you have somebody that ignores the the judicial judiciary. Suppose he's out there murdering his citizens in Minneapolis as an example. suppuppose we have a new state called me I mean, and Rob Reiner sitting there is George Washington with the hat on Well, that could never happen. that could never happen. But it happened. it happened they eviscerated Trump You know, and, you know, the guy's dead and of course, Trump went off on them, et cetera You know, when he died. I mean, it's just embarr a murdered. It's just another embarrassing thing. You and I are lucky enough to know somebody who has actually played in a World Cup who knows soccer better than either of us do, certainly. And I reached out to Gary Linaka, who by the way, on their Netflix show, The restest is foootball, they had this Soccer officials say I don't know. I've become kind of so transatlantic. I'm now soccer and football. I'm a little head is in a spin about it, but this football official saying that if he was in the U S If the US Football Association had been involved in this FIFA decision, then he would resign over this because he thought it was so egregious. But here's what Gary said. He texted me, He said, I hear Sica Fantino has gone into hiding deep inside the bowels of Trump. And that's what people do, right? Yeah. They think it's going to pay them back. I think you're right, I think this doesn't help the American team and that's what's sad about this. And in Belgium, I was talking to a friend of mine in Brussels, reaching out to a friend of mine in Brussels, who said the Americans had already out of favor over the weekend because they commented what's meant to be a public park on a very hot weekend and they put up they had a party there for the two hundred fiftieth birthday, but they made it private peopleeople who actually live in Brussels couldn't actually use the park and so they were already pissed off and then this happened and now they're super mad about it. But let's see It's one thing to be bad, let's see what the rest of the world's red line is. When people talk about red lines in Donald Trump and America at the moment, As they will do in NATO, what do they actually mean? And do they have an alternative? Be I'm not quite sure that they do yet. But it doesn't you're right. It doesn't help the team. It doesn't help America's reputation long term. Just remember something about us and this is for the Americans that are listening in, you know, you're converting American soft power now into a liability And over eighty years, American Soft Power was an asset. We started out with a Hershey bar to a kid as GIs were leaving World War two And now we're bullying The most sacred game in the world, the World Cup We're now bullying the leadership of the most sacred tournament in the most sacred game in the world. Hurry a obvious and transparent favor So you're turning our soft power into a liability. And remember taxes the things that we're selling, Kaddy, right? You know, what are we selling? We want peoplee to buy our beer or they want people to tourists here and we've got the LA Olympics coming up in twenty twenty eight. We want people to show up for it And by the way by the way, we were getting very good press. We were exly the point, Anthony. this has actually been going super well. You've got all these lovely videos of fans from around the world loving America, being welcomed by Americans. You've got the Kansas University band learning the Algerian National anthem so they could play it to the players when they came. You've got German tourists crossing the country and posting really sweet videos on Instagram, actuallyually America was doing well, it didn't need, I mean, maybe they weren't going to win about against Belgium. Maybe they will win because Ballo is in it'll change the whole thing and they'll get to the semifinals or whatever. and then they'll say, see, we were justified, but it's going to leave a bitter taste in everybody's mouth And I think that's the problem because you play the bully in the schoollyard, maybe everybody cowtows to you, but nobody's going to love you for it. They're not going to thank you for it Listen, I mean, you didn' didn't fix you didn't fix the game. You just proved to people that things are fixable Okay, and that is y another chink in the armor of aspiration. Young people look at that and they're like, oh, wow, man, this thing everybody's on the take and How am I going to get ahead? Things are rigged. thingsings are rigged. It's rigged against me. There's a two tier system. I think you're right. I think that's the really damaging thing here is that people lose their confidence in the system and institutions, and it's not surprising. Okay, we're going take a break, come back and talk about Doge. Remember Dojge? Well it ended this weekend Welcome back to the Rest ofolitics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci and Katy Kay. Katdy, before we jump back in, don't forget to get your tickets to our live shows in October. That's right. We're going to be in a lot of fun plac in Chicago Minneapolis, Atlanta, Boston, Toronto, DC. And of course my hometown New York City don't miss out Go to the rest is pololitics US. comot get your tickets now before they sell out. Cadyw, we've actually sold a lot of tickets so far. and it's still early. U, but You're excited for thevent super excited. Look, it's going to be ahead of the midterms. We're going to places where There's a real impact on the midterm elections, but this isn't a midterms that's being watched obviously around the world and in the United States. It's going to be close certainly in the Senate, and it's going to be an exciting race for the House. So it's fun for us to get out and come and meet you all. We'll be taking your questions. So get a ticket and come and say hi. We'd love to meet you So Katy, let's talk about, you know, there's one thing about America that is never defeated. Okay and America marches on And this is government spending, Katy K Okay, so we ended supposedly Doge on the fourth of july twenty twenty six. was' supposed to have two trillion dollars of savings. We're going to come into the government with a chainsaw and we were going to cut all the programs and we're going to find all the waste and destroy all the waste. Did that happen, Katdy You know, you texted me and said, let's talk about Doge at the end of last week or over the weekend. I was like, why are we talking about Doge And it was because I had completely forgotten Anthony that Doge was even ending on july the fourth. I mean it just we haven't heard anything. The Doge website, I think has been dormant since January. We have heard nothing about those young kids who are running around Washington taking a chainsaw to everything. It's sort of one of those organizations that just went to sleep on itself. It's like a kid that stops doing it homework and hopes the teachers won't notice. That's what it feels like No. I mean, then if let we can run through the numbers. what it was meant to save two trillion, the Doge website says it saved about two hundred fifteen billion do through job cuts and contract cancellations. That Even that two hundred fifteen billion figure has been very disputed. And I think when you put that in the context of a federal budget, which is seven trillion, it feels like a drop in the ocean. And I think even that number, I think that two hundred fifteen billion number on the Doa website, I don't believe it. I've seen lots of reporting to suggest that that's not true. No, it's not it's not believable because they they fired people and then they had to quietly walk the people back into their offices programs and then they quietly had to restore them. those did do tremendous damage to USAID And they did cut those programs. We probably have eight hundred thousand people that have died. as a result of.'re right. being cut. Natol Ga Wendy, who's a fantastic doctor from Harvard, is citing numbers a bit like that. six hundred to eight hundred thousand. I mean, that's a phenomenal number of people. and the USAID budget was not very big to start with. I know Americans think it's big, but it was not very big to start with. So that number is chilling, right? six hundred thousand people dead Yeah want I wanted to bring this up to viewers and listeners because I want them to understand the beast of the American government. I want them to understand processes in place. You know, there was a great book. You remember the legendary broadcaster, David Brinkley He had that television show on WABC and then he was Huntley, Brinklely and for NBC. He wrote a book about thirty five years ago, Washington Goes to War. And in the book, he explained that we switched the way the income taxes were done, where we now have to take a deduction on our payroll. So it's an immediate payroll deduction. So if you make a dollar in the United States, the United States government takes a sliver of their taxes and then you get a net on your payroll. That didn't happen prior to the Second World War And this transformed the ability of the government to flex on people with their taxes. because you know, you under the psychological theory that you never got the money, right? You know just, you know, you just got the net and so they were able to always skim off the top successfully And guess what happened? They created this colossal spending and they created these colossal programs And this huge huge government And Katy, what ended up happening was every time you go into the budgetary process You want to prove your chops. and so you ask for a three, five, seven percent increase Okay And then because we now donon't have a process anymore. I mean, that went away with Obama when he was fighting with Paul Ryan way back in twenty eleven, we have all these continuing resolutions now. So what used to happen was The Pident would submit its budget to the Congress Congress would then make some changes, bring it back to the president. They would rankle over it, they would approve it, and then the president would sign the budget, and the Congress would pass it. We don't do that anymore So all we do now is have these continuing resolutions and so Katdy, your department is going to get a three percent increase this year. The W deepartment or the Department of Defense is going to get a seven percent increase. And this blotation caused a runaway train of spending in the United States. Mover, there's no accountability on the spending. And so the Doge thing was never going to happen. It would have been like a mouse standing in front of a bullet train My question for you then, Anthony is if Doge came in and didn't exactly the things that you're talking about, the military spending, the big entitlements programs, and they clearly made a decision that they were not going to touch those. I think probably Elon Musk thought maybe in his most grandiose moments that he could touch those things, but he quickly realized those were third rails that he couldn't go near So My question to you is, what was the point of Do really? Was it really just to go after political grievances that Musk and the president and other people around Donald Trump had around things like DI and USAID and programs like that. in which case, I suppose they would argue that they succeeded because They did cut DI. You know it' people are very, very concerned about trying to do anything around diversity and inclusion. They're terrified of being on the wrong side of the law And they did manage to do this incredible damage. I think it's something that's not talked about enough was and I'm so glad you brought it up. the number of deaths there have been because of the cutting of USAID. Is that really what this was about? Was it just politics? Was it never about trying to really get away with waste fraud and abuse? and excess and What did you call it bloatation? That was a good word, by the way. Probably not a word, but it's George Bush's eightieth birthday today. I'd like making up words. We'll put it into the sccrabble dictory. I was playing a lot of banana grabs and scrabble over my vacation with my kids, and I think we'll put that in the scrabble Dictory. It was a good one Happy birthday to President Bush today or eighti. So is that what it was about politics, not really about economics? I actually think it's the holy Trinity of lies. And let me just give you the three lies, okay, ready Line number one, we're going to end forever worse Line number two, we're going to divulge the Epstein files And as correctly predicted on this program, you ain't ever seeing those files and good luck to you and Trump's going to get away with it. Okay? And then lie number three, we're going to make the government more efficient And we're talking about a man who spent eight point one trillion dollars in his first term And he's now if you add up the stuff that he's done at his second term He's twenty eight point one percent of the overall budget deficit of the entire nation's two hundred and fifty years. So he's been president for six years Okay, and I'm not blaming that on him, by the way. I think it's very important people to understand this is the system. I would imagine if Joe Biden were president right now or Kamalaaras We would have this aggressive spending. But you see what Doge could have done, Kaddy is they could have returned to the pay as you go rules way back in the nineteen nineties. and basically what happened was we had guardrails on the system. The big beautiful spending bill could have done that. Could have said, Okaykay, listen, Dick Geephart got together with George Herbert Walker Bush and Dick Darmin, the OMB director. and we created these guardrails where If you wanted to have a tax cut, no problem. you had to find something in the budget to cut. If you wanted more social spending, well, then guess what? you had to increase taxes. right? This got Bush in trouble, the first Bush because we went into a recession and he wanted more social spending. So he raised taxes even though he promised no more taxes. So so the point is this worked. it got Bill Clinton Clinton adhered to it, and we werere printing a budget surplus in two thousand. We had a two hundred forty billion dollars surplus, but the Doge thing is important to bring up Because you're on a path of unfixability if you're not going to handle it in a way that governments work. See Elon went in there and said, Well, I'm a business guy. I cut eighty percent of the costs at Twitter and Twitter survivive. You didn't bother to learn the subject. Yes, exactly. This is the government can't run When I hear a business guy say, I'm going to come into the government and I'm going to run the government like a business and business leaders know more and blah blahah, It's not a business Caddy So it's just a further leg in the stool of our general incompetence about how we're running the things that could be run more properly and run with like d diligence and policy execution. I feel a little bit more cynical about it than you do because I know that when Musk sometime around the middle of last year, when Dozer was wrapping up and after he'd left, he did Katie Miller, Steven Miller's wife's podcast and he said that it was only a little bit successful and they wouldn't do it again. But I think that's because Elon Musk had one agenda, which was end waste fraud and abuse, but actually the politicos around Donald Trump and in MGAand and Stephen Miller had another agenda, which was to end, you know Wokery. And under the kind of broad umbrella of Wokerry, they put diversity and inclusion programs and they also put anything to do with international development. I was with my daughter who I've spoken about on the podcast before Mer, I'm sure she wouldn't Mind me saying this, but she had a malaria research grant that was cut through the Doge cuts when she finished her PhD program. And she was saying this week up in Maine that actually it's interesting. exactly what you say now, the State Department is trying to ramp up It's research around infectious diseases, global infectious diseases, because they realized when the Ebola breakout happened in Africa, oh my goodness, this could come to us and guess what we've done, doge cut all of our research into things like malaria and Ebola. and it's actually going to come back and hurt us. So even though they may have felt in the kind of MAGA universe that this was great. We don't need to help the rest of the world. America's been had, which is a constant refrain of Donald Trump's, whether it's to do with defense spending or to do with international development, why should they be lechhing off us? Actually, these are the kind of things that in very practical ways protect American citizens, it actually helps to have an Ebola research program or a malaria research program But They cut the money, now they have to hire people back again and it end up costing twice as much, just like you said. What a dumb example, right? It's just general incompetence, but it's also born from the idea of what I call potomac fever And again, as a maya Culpa, I had potomac fever. so I understand potomac fever. I'm smarter than you. I'm richer than you. I'm going to come into the government and do things better than you See if Elon had said, hey, listen, I went out and I've got twenty five year veterans. of the GAO, the government administrative office. I went to old Bush people, I went to old Clinton people, I went to old even Biden people for that matter. I made a bipartisan committee. They know all the tricks in Washington about spending. Everybody wants to heal this thing and make it better. I'm going to come back to you in two months about what their game plan would be. And maybe it was a hybrid thing, Maybe it was reintroduction of the page ago laws. And maybe here are some of the tricks that go on in Washington All of these people here are former tricksters, okay, let's untrick the budget. and I'm not going to save two trillion dollars. You mean if he hadn't just got on stage with a chainsaw, took your route as opposed to the chainsaw route on stage, which is the image he wanted. By his own admission, he's admitted to his buddies that the chainsaw was a moment of hysterereia. It was not his best moment and not understand things. But again, remember You could like Bill Clinton, dislike Bill Clinton. He did actually balance the budget. He got it. He and Bob Rubin. Yes, his people were fighting with him over it. Bob Rubin told him to hold to pay as you go, even though it was a busush idea. Clinton did it. You also have to remember that Clinton and Gore had this thing called reinventing government And you had four hundred twenty six thousand positions in the government eliminated. under their watch. okay. and You know, they did it in a bipartisan way and they did it with a general consensus. If you went to Washington right now And you said to anybody, and you live in Washington, let me ask you the question. You went to Washington said Guys, do we have a spending problem here in Washington? Even the people that are doing the spending? what would they say, Gy? Clearly, yes, absolutely. Okay, we have a spending problem. Okay. So are there incremental things that we could do to shave off some points here and there to reduce the spending And the answer is also yes. And my point is we could have handled it with that level of gradualism and put a twenty five year plan in place instead of a twenty five minute one and without putting Hundreds of thousands of people out of work which they did kind of overnight, which decimated Washington as a city. I mean, it's really hurt the economy of Washington, but more importantly it's hurt people around the world because of the way they cut this. I agree with you. they could have done it. They could have done it the right way, but that would have taken studying We're going to cut the money from the disadvantage. We're going to culturally send a message of DAI and we're going to allow the president of the United States to take between two and four billion dollars for himself while we're doing this And we're going to have rampant insider trading by the elected officials that are legal. And if they don't file the disclosure on time, which Trump didn't. We'll have a two hundred dollars fine. will slap them with a two hundred dollars fine on their road. to making two billion dollars And then you wonder why people have lost plot as it relates to their government or they've lost the faith. as it relates to their government. But again, the reason I wanted to bring all of this up This is going to get worse. There's going to be a twenty twenty eight presidential candidate that is going to also blow this off. It's the time bomb America is sitting on. We're going to be facing a fifty trillion dollars budget deficit. and that means and the only way we're going to pay for it, Kaddy, is through the pernicious regressive form of taxation known as inflation because these cowards are not going tax the people They're just going to steal the money out of their bank accounts. So that one thousand dollars you have in your bank account, I'm really sorry. It only has eight hundred dollars worth of purchasing power now And to me, this has to be fixed This one hundred percent has to be fixed and the American people have to be told the truth. And they have to be explained. Yes, it is fixable But it's a twenty five year plan of fixability. The only way you can fix it is with some sort of bipartisan cooperation because otherwise a party comes in, tries to fix it and the other party runs ads saying they're trying to steal money from seniors, they're going to introduce death panels, they're going to do the hard stuff and politically it's undoable. So you have to have some kind of bipartisan cooperation to do this thing which is very hard to do and is going to take some kind of restraint and probably a little bit of pain and Nobody wants to cooperate at the moment. So I don't know that it's actually feasible. It would be nice if that was july the fourth's present to America. So Katy, let me just ask you this question if you don't mind. So we're not going to fix it There was rhetoric over the weekend. The mayor of New York gave a speech And the speech was very polarizing caty. And I watched the speech three times because I really wanted to understand what he was doing and My old nemesis, Steve Bannon said something about the speech, which by the way, I agreed with, look out This guy gets it. He's coming for everybody. And I'm going to tell the people listening, if you like the system And Doni and his people are going to blow the system up. I'll'm just letting you know. If you don't want to fix the current system, which made America prosperous and deepened the well of the middle class, And you want to go in the current system that we're going in where there's more have nots then haves and there's a lot of anxiety people like Mor Mandani are going come in and they're going to explain the way they're going to change the system So what was your reaction to his speech? And what was your reaction to the polarity of reactions to his speech. Well, I mean, look, thinking about what you've just said about budget deficits, obviously one of the routes to helping the budget deficit or to shrink the budget deficit is to grow your tax base. Well, one of the routes to growing the tax base is to have more people. Americans are not having more babies. So actually having some more immigrants is one of the ways that you could do that. So there's an economic argument for what he was saying, which is we should be opening our doors, which is how he started the speech. I listened to the speech and I saw what you had sent me about how some people in MGA World are sayings you know, he's screwed up because his tone was too angry. I think you can make critiques of the country and I thought the speech was veryer interesting. It was not the kind of smiley Mamdani of FIFA and the Ks. This was a much more serious Mamdani. He made some very interesting points about the people in the country who don't have anything and those who think who have power. I mean, it was a real power and power less speech. two sides of America and the people who have power think that only people should be allowed into the country who have the right skin color and the right tone of voice and the right accent, and that that is unorigginal of them and weak of them. But he did it in a very serious way. And although he never mentioned Trump's name and Trump never mentioned his name in a way Trump' spech at Mount Rushmore and Mamdani's speech sitting there behind George Washington desk in New York City were the kind of dueling closing arguments, I think, for twenty twenty eight is what we're going to hear lot of from whether it's JadD Vance or Marco Rubio, whoever it is. and we' even heard it from Donald Trump. The communists are coming, the socialists are coming, It's never going to work in America against People like Mam Donny who are saying, we have tried everything else. We cannot afford rent the prices are too high, groceries are too high, jobs are disappearing to AI. What do you want us to do It's the kind of break glass and reach for the emergency lever moment. and I think that's what he's doing. The only thing I would say is I still think I know they've had successes. they had successes last week in Colorado, the Democratic Socialists of America. I think Mamdani is Communications League of his own And for this to really take root across the country, this movement, I know how frustrated people are. It's very rare to have the communications ability of Memdani. and I don't I haven't seen any of the others candidates And by the way, there are still a tiny minority of the candidates who are winning around the country in the Democratic primaries. It tends to be more of the normy type of candidates who are winning But I haven't seen other democratic socialists of America have candidates from that party have the same communication skills as Mamdani. I don't know. I know they've had successes Let's see how much influence they have on twenty twenty eight. Listen, this kid is a very talented politician, you know I'm not in agreement with him. I would love to debate him intellectually doing something that has worked in America and he's channeling Frederick Douglas. Barack Obama, channeled Frederick Douglas Youem remember he was the great African American self taught orator who influenced the reconstruction and tried to make the country fairer And something that Douglas said that Mondani is capturing, which is this flawed redeemable patriotism. You see, you know this this white supremacy patriotism is America white and white and love it or leave it. getet out of the country if you don't love it. I thought the symbolism was important. He's at Washington's desk What is in in his office, okay? And remember, that's where the Declaration of Independence was first read to the continental Army Okay, right from Washington's desk. And I don't know. I thought the symbolism was really important. In a world of trillionaires And monopolies now and oligarchs that are controlling the government U We're off the mark. We're off the mark of what was making America great after the war. We're way off the mark. I'm not convinced that his style is going to bring us back to the mark But I'm telling you it's going to resonate with people in the have not space in America. His influence is going to grow. may not be deemocratic socialist dy, but he'll end up becoming a kingmaker in that party. Interestingly, Anthony, one of our journalists, Izzy from our newsletter who works at Gullhanger has been in America speaking to people from across the country. over the last week and asking what they think about Trump and the state of politics on this anniversary period. And she found it was very moving. Some people cried. There were Latinos who were scared to give their names, others who described the demise of the American dream. And you can read that piece if you sign up via the link in the episode description. Happy fourth again, everybody I had a great weekend. I hope you had fun with your families too. And Anthony, I will see you this week for a very big event. We're going to have fun. We're going to Wimbledton together. I'll be with you Wimbledton tomorrow. Hopefully I can put my contacts back in. I'm looking forward to it. Okay everybody. thanks so much for listening. And if you would like to get our members only episode, we're going to be answering your questions, you can sign up at the rest is politics, US. com to become a founding member Bye guys. Thanks guys