11/6/25: Dems Blowout Elections, Economy Screws Republicans, Trump Panics Over Shutdown

23:05And then when you have the, you know, I think Israel is another certainly fault line, especially for young voters. And then you have, like you said, a total fixation on those sorts of issues over. Now Trump says he's going to work on affordability next year. OK, don't worry. Whenever you have time to get around to that. So all of those pieces come together where, you know, if you're someone who thought he seemed cool going into 2024, you're no longer necessarily feeling that way. If I think back to a year ago and if I think back to the vibe election from September to November, which was like the height of what it all was, ultimately, why did the podcast Young Guys Generation back Trump?

23:44I think it's because there is something exciting about anything revolutionary, which seems different. This is the same of the Zoran Mamdani phenomenon. It is different. You can't deny it, right? You can't say that a Kash Patel and a RFK Jr. and all these people, Tulsa, it was, you'd never seen anything like it. You'd never seen anything like, and then Biden was the physical embodiment of an ossified political establishment. Kamala Harris was the embodiment, again, of just being handed something because of the color of your skin and of your gender. There was no competitive primary. And it was just foolish.

24:23Everything that was vibes based around Kamala seemed utterly and totally manufactured. The Trump one was truly organic, I think, at a level of excitement. And that always was going to evaporate because that's the reality of colliding with power and of actually having to make decisions. Like, it turns out you can't appease Tulsi Gabbard and Marco Rubio in the same coalition. Shocker. If you knew anything about Washington, you knew they'd be dumb. But, I mean, a lot of people did believe it. And Trump also made a lot of promises. We've talked here about voters. Something – I checked the stats on this yesterday.

24:56Statistically, there are between 100 ,000 and 200 ,000 people who voted for Trump because of free IVF, which I wish you'd asked me. I told you you're an idiot. But, listen, they did it. And so how – I talked about this in our Zoran thing. It is so – I mean when you believe in something and when you get burned, there is truly nothing worse than that. Whenever you are a younger, especially probably lower propensity voter or you maybe have still some faith in the political system. So there's that times what? A million for housing, for trying to make things better, inflation, cost of living, foreign policy.

25:35I mean, nobody votes on foreign policy, but my true belief is that foreign policy matters because it like hovers in the ether. And if you watch the news. I don't agree that nobody votes on foreign policy. Think of the Iraq war. So that's kind of the thing is nobody in normal times votes on foreign policy. But when they do, they vote hard on it. And I will not say Israel is the number one reason that Trump lost yesterday or two days ago in the 2025. but I do think that there's just something sick about watching this obsession with the political elites of this foreign country while your life gets worse.

26:11That's why the Zoran answer, how much of it was, sure, him saying Netanyahu was a war criminal. There's a certain element of the DSA crowd which is gonna go wild for that shit but there's a certain element of an everyday New Yorker who really doesn't care and when Zoran says something like, I'm gonna stay here in New York, it's like, hey, fuck yeah, man. I'm in on this, right? And there's the reason I'm – that's the most viral moment of his whole campaign. The whole – nationally was I'm staying here in New York. Donald Trump and his people cannot credibly say that because of how they've governed over the last year.

26:48So I think there's a – I mean top to bottom, it's all baked in. You talk about vibes. The truth is, is like the vibe at that time is that it was physically exciting to try to see something new. Now we have what that new is. We've lived through it now for, what, 10 months approximately that he has been the president. Of that 10 months, nothing seems all that different. And if it does, it's worse. So it's like a worse Israel direction, worse economy direction and or flat, which in my opinion is worse because it means that nothing happened about it. And then also I talk about immigration. Remember during L.A.

27:23I was like, the warning is chaos, is the people who were pissed off about immigration were mad at the chaos of the border under Biden and of the uncontrolled, unlimited amount of migration into the U.S. But this time around, every fucking story that you read is about chaos. Oh, I said this. The video says that they're lying. I mean, how many TikToks are there floating around? I just saw this morning some ICE agent in Chicago charged with a DUI. This is what I'm saying. After he left the Broadview facility. Another one was out there bragging about what a good marksman he is after he shot a woman five times.

28:02Yeah, I mean, I think, and to that point, this is what I've been thinking about. I think people, not just Americans, I think people in general will accept a lot of authoritarianism if the trains run on time and their material conditions are in trouble. Yeah, it's called China. But, you know, they aren't in it for the authoritarianism's sake. And that's effectively what the Trump administration, instead of making your life better, right, dealing with health care prices, dealing with cost of groceries, dealing with education prices, dealing with just generally the sense that things are going to be harder for my kids than they were for me.

28:34The AI apocalypse, I mean, they're ushering in the AI, you know, taking all of your jobs. So instead of doing anything, they thought it would be enough to have these images of, you know, and this authoritarian crackdown. Like, that's what people really elected them for. No, people are actually willing to tolerate some of that if it's making their life better. But you can't have that for its own sake and think that that is going to appeal to people. People are going to fucking hate that, and they do. And so, you know, I think the the big verdict here is on the Trump economy. But I do. And but the authoritarian crackdown piece, first of all, that demotivates their own base who have been upset about the free speech abuses and some of those things as well.

29:17But even more importantly, you are going to energize the hell out of the opposition. They are going to come. They will crawl over broken glass to vote your ass out. They will that that don't tread on me instinct runs deep in America. And so if you are triggering that and you are not giving anything on the other side to compensate for it, and meanwhile, throwing yourself Great Gatsby Halloween parties while the food stamp benefits are being cut and air travel is chaos and federal government workers are furloughed, building yourself a multi-hundreds of millions of dollar ballroom, gilded ballroom, you know, and demolishing part of the historic, you know, nature of the White House.

29:57You know, it's like I actually saw voters reference that in their vote. Yeah, because I think those images do touch something deep. I mean, it does feel directly like this gilded age thing where they're out there partying in this incredibly opulent way in his gilded golden, you know, golden White House. And you're you're struggling to make ends meet. And there's zero sense that anyone is doing anything for you. yeah, people are going to vote your ass out. They are going to, in Mississippi, in Colorado, in Virginia, in New Jersey, wherever they can, they are going to go and say, this is not what I wanted.

30:38If I voted for you before, this is not what I voted for. And I'm going to do whatever I can to send a message that you have gone so far off track. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969.

31:03In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

31:49I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bowen. Hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

32:26What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, it's where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, and we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated.

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33:24So I really do think, you know, when you put all of those things together, look, I think the economy, that's a good transition to, you know, the economy piece that we could put a seven up on the screen here. I do think the economy is the central piece. But these other factors, whether it's Israel, whether it's the, you know, the just gaudy show of wealth and opulence sucking up to these tech oligarchs and handing them everything that they could possibly want. The crypto. Yeah, the smash and grab. I mean, all the corrupt deals and padding the pockets of you and your family and your aides, the insider trading, all of that sort of stuff.

33:58And you couple that with a dire economic landscape that feels like it's only getting worse and worse. Yeah, there's going to be a political reckoning there to pay. So this was a G. Elliott Morris wrote this up. And the astonishing thing here, if we can hold on this for a moment, is that you had a voters number one issue, as it usually is. was the economy. If you look at Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, 48 percent of voters said the economy was their number one issue. Of those, 63 percent voted for Abigail Spanberger. In New Jersey, similar numbers, 32 percent said that the economy was their number one issue.

34:37Taxes was another one that was a significant issue there as well. I think Cittarelli really put that on the table. But in any case, of those economy voters, Mikey Sherrill won 65 percent. Guys, this represents a 93 point swing away from the Republicans compared to the 2024 election. Economy voters went for Trump in the 60 percent. So it was the number one issue in 2024. And those voters overwhelmingly chose Trump. And now here we are a year later and Democrats are winning two thirds roughly of the voters who say the economy is their number one issue. Put a eight up on the screen here because I think this is also really important.

35:19I mentioned this before the election, but I just wanted to underscore this. This is incredibly telling. So right now in November 2025, 72 percent of Americans say economic conditions in the country today are poor. 72 percent only 28 percent say that they are good if you rewind back to trump's first term to the same period in trump's first term you had an almost complete flip of those numbers 68 percent at that point said actually the economy is good and only 30 percent said it was poor and i will remind you that even with those sorts of strong economic numbers you still had a backlash election in 2018 that was overall very positive for Democrats.

36:05So now with the economic numbers looking so dire and possible, you know, we're obviously tracking close to the AI bubble and what that means and all of these layoffs, some caused by AI as well, things could be worse by the time we get to the midterm elections. And so that reckoning happened in 2018. Just imagine what we could be in store for here in 2026, given that you have all kinds of upset over Trump and, you know, his authoritarian tactics and his foreign policy and all those sorts of things. And you also have incredibly dire economic conditions and very negative sentiment about the economy.

36:41It doesn't take a genius to figure it all out, does it? You know, to your point about authoritarianism or just generally like what is society in particular? Yeah. Sorry. Let's not go too deep. But everyone agrees that if somebody is threatening someone on the street, that their rights have to be at least somewhat deprived so that other people's rights are not deprived. Correct? Right. Everyone agrees with that. Now, when I think about the most authoritarian, but high functioning societies in the world, you can look at Singapore where you literally cannot enter the country with chewing gum. They do public canings.

37:16They have a rigid enforcement, but when you're in Singapore, it's awesome. Okay. That's the dirty little secret about it. People who live there, they like it. And honestly, why? Because it's clean. It functions. They have good jobs. They have an extremely high level of state functioning, and they buy into that. And they don't really care very much. In fact, they laugh at America and they say we are less free because of our freedoms. They're like, yeah, you are free to be assaulted by somebody. You're free to live in a shithole. You're free to have horrible public transit. When you ask the Chinese people who actually broadly support the Chinese Communist Party, they're like, yeah, I can't talk badly about Xi Jinping.

37:51But, you know, remember that video I showed you of Chengdu from 1980 to today? If you live through that, I mean, that's one of the most extraordinary economic and physical transformations in the history of mankind. So yeah, you're like, okay, whatever. But here, I mean, be honest. Have things gotten better? No. All right. And, you know, it's not the same. We don't have centralized control and there's local stuff and all of that. But at the end of the day, if you don't give somebody a lot of benefits and you see that happening, then obviously people are going to say, well, I'd rather at least not have to deal with that or to feel as if there is chaos in my country.

38:32And I think broadly that's where even the people who do support some of this are – they all admit the chaos, but they're saying that the chaos is the point. I think there is like a logical insanity to that, which is that it incites self-deportation. So you can say, OK, you know, it's net worth it or whatever in the end. But I don't think that's a gamble that 90 percent of people are willing to take, which is part of the issue is that broadly under Biden, it felt chaotic. This is just not just on immigration, but I think generally like because his his old age made it so that nobody was running the show.

39:02And, you know, under Trump here, there's there's kind of an element to that as well, because you have all these disparate parts of the government. They're not talking to one another and everybody's constantly beefing. I mean, I'm still knee deep in Venezuela. I'm getting calls every single day from, oh, he changed his mind. You know, by the way, I can currently update that he has changed his mind currently because of a more recent update. Oh, we're invading Nigeria now apparently. Well, we may bomb Nigeria. But my point around Venezuela, right, it's like one of those where everyone is kind of just willing, is under this, you know, this mafioso-like system where people who are vying for the ears of the boss.

39:38Remember my analogy of Trump is it's like Versailles, right? It's like whoever gets the ear of King Louis while he's taking a shit is ultimately the great victor. Well, I think he goes check down half the time, too. I mean, there's significant pores. Some of this ballroom shit. All the ice stuff, that's like all, you know, put into Stephen Miller's purview and Kristi Noem and whatever. But then even they're fighting, you know, like Stephen and Kisti are fighting. And then Corey Lewandowski, her alleged boyfriend, is the person who is underneath that. And then you've got the Border Patrol guy who's beefing with the head of ice.

40:09And then you got Tom Homan who's beefing with him. And it's like trying to explain this to a liberal doesn't make any sense because they don't actually understand the intra-party beef over. But it actually does matter because it manifests in where it is right now. In a lot of ways, ICE is losing because their image is being subsumed by Border Patrol. Now, again, trying to explain that to a defund, abolish ICE person. But it actually kind of matters because the ICE people are like, hey, we want to arrest criminals, drug dealers, rapists. And the Border Patrol people are like, no, we want to do these vast raids.

40:39Border Patrol, they're the ones who did like the apartment with the Black Hawk military helicopters. They actually are more militarized and have like they have their own like basically mini Air Force. They have drones. They have helicopters, whatever. And so, yeah, they in there. It looks like they're winning the battle right now. You had a huge, you know, ice, a bunch of ice guys who got fired and replaced with CBP type. So in any case, you're to your point. Yes. Even though there's a lot happening, but every week it's, you know, we're here, we're there. This is our focus. That's our focus. Now we're in this city.

41:13No, we're not getting into that city. And meanwhile, you've got, you know, these images of like mass thugs, tear gassing kids going to a Halloween parade. I don't think it's making people feel like, oh, you've got this under control and I'm going to get some actual benefit out of this. another example of the authoritarianism that you know hasn't been popular but kelly right down in el salvador and but what did he do he you know through i'm glad to hear you admit that through i mean it's true through his first of all they had much worse crime than we had right in terms of the level of lawlessness and he genuinely through horrific tactics that i would never support he has brought the crime rate down yeah but you might support support you might support that if you had people getting beheaded in the streets and marisol whatever you call it I can't say because I've never, you know, I've never lived in that.

41:58I mean, I remember thinking about that. But do what do do do do here? Oh, it's horrific. I'm like, yeah, well, yeah. Drug dealers everywhere shooting people. I don't know. You know, maybe I'm going to get to a point, too, where I'm like, yeah, kill them. Right. And you've never lived through that. You have no idea. Extra judicial assassinations of random people in the ocean. And, you know, and meanwhile, the actual number of indictments of drug traffickers, human traffickers, like those sorts of things. the actual, even the deportation of violent criminals is down because instead they're just going after your Home Depot guys and your lady selling tamales on the street or whatever.

42:35In any case, the bigger point that I said before is the one that I've been thinking about, which is that, yes, people will tolerate authoritarianism, but only if it's actually benefiting them and only if it comes along with some sort of market increase in their material well-being. They're not going to take mass thugs in the street and I can't afford steak anymore. And I can't make rent at the end of the month and rent is going up. And my health care premiums are going up 100 percent this year and you shut down the government, can't bother to do anything about it. No, they're not going to take that.

43:05And so, you know, your own supporters are going to be demoralized. The opposition is going to be incredibly, incredibly energized and will do whatever it takes to send that message. And so, you know, one of the things I've been very worried about the midterm elections and like the, you know, the gerrymandering and the Supreme Court coming in and them seizing all the voter rolls and, you know, all the executive orders. And I've been very obviously tracking that very closely. What's heartening to me about this is it does look like things are going to be too big to rig and that the very likely the Latino voters, you know, that have shifted and all of these demographics that they counted on to still be in their camp are going to screw their gerrymandering ambitions.

43:44And it's going to be too much for them to be able to overcome. Now, what's going to be interesting to see is how do they respond? So, you know, what, first of all, one option is they just bury their head in the sand. Publicly, we're seeing a lot of that. You know, J.D. Vance saying, oh, these were just New Jersey and Virginia blue states. We can't really read anything into that, which is, he knows that's not true. He knows because he's looking at these same results of freaking Mississippi and like, you know, all of the Georgia and Pennsylvania. He knows. But I see a lot of that of basically like, yeah, it's no big deal.

44:16This doesn't mean anything. We're not going to read anything into it. So one possibility is you just stay the course and you don't really do anything. Another possibility is you try to adjust. You take the message of like, okay, people are sending us this message on affordability. Trump is now talking about affordability nonstop. I saw Ryan say on Twitter, he is like, by the end of the week, he's going to be talking about fast and free public buses and just totally taking the Zoran mantle. But in any case. We also have, you know, one of his who is this guy campaign political director from 2024 talking about how Trump plans to refocus his messaging on cost of living.

44:51Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. Seventy five percent of Mickey Sherald's ads were positive, overwhelmingly talking about cost of living and and heavily talking about lowering power costs. Jack didn't really talk about that. He talked about taxes and he won the tax vote, but he didn't address those key issues of affordability very effectively. He was mostly talking generically about change Juzerzian. I'm not denigrating Jack, but it was not in line necessarily with what voters were saying. Two, in Virginia, over half of Winsome Sears ads talked about transgender. And it's not even the top five issues, according to voters.

45:22Why did Zohan Mondani do so well last night? He relentlessly focused on affordability. People talk about communists. They can say all these things. But the fact is, he was talking about the cost of living. Folks that I'm talking to privately who are supporters of President Trump think that he needs to be talking about cost of living a whole lot more. I think you'll see the president talk a lot about cost of living as we turn the year and into the new year. The president is very keyed into what's going on, and he recognizes, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there.

45:52And I think you'll see him be very, very focused on prices. Sagar, can you give me a view into the White House and how they think about the economy right now? Yeah. Look, none of them are stupid. They did win an election, a popular vote, man, The first since 2004, OK, of a Republican. So that's one thing where we shouldn't always discount necessarily the political skill of the comeback. This happened to Bill Clinton. This happened to I mean, multiply. I could go on forever. Obama. Right. All of these people who did seriously get checked in the first two years of their presidency adjusted course, maybe not to the benefit of the country, but to their own political benefit.

46:31their sense generally is that the president does need to talk more about the white house but or about the economy but complaining about the white house he's talking too much about the what but this is what always belies the problem is this is not a normal white house trump is a singular figure who actually doesn't have to run for re-election again that's part of the reason he's doing the ballroom and labeling the oval office in gilded script that you may see at a Mar-a-Lago resort. That's kind of the stuff he has always cared about, right? And then you have all of these disparate other people.

47:04You have the cash grab section, which includes like his son and his own family. Then you have the people who are pursuing their own ideological agenda. Let's say Marco Rubio, who's trying to push regime change in Venezuela. JD, who has to try and balance being good to his boss and wanting to run in 2028. So he's probably in the worst position because He's defend all this shit and he has potentially run on it. Again, then you've got the secretaries of Scott Besson who are – Scott is ultimately a creature of Wall Street. He does not want to be humiliated in his job because he eventually has to go back.

47:38That's what these people all do. Look at Steve Mnuchin and others. And by the way, Mnuchin, part of what guided his behavior when he was the secretary of the treasury is he's currently still back on Wall Street. They need to maintain some credibility. So, you know, that's why he's bailing out his friends on Argentina. OK, like it's it's all pay for play, like in terms of what the future is. So there's no one sense of the White House at any one moment. My phone is blowing up from a different contingent of the White House who are pissed at their other colleagues in the White House. I can look, I've only ever covered really Trump.

48:10Like I had no real insight into the Biden administration or leaking to a very different. But everything I've ever read, that's not all that common in a White House. So, yes, there's a huge contingent of his White House, which is upset with the direction that they are taking. But I think the demonstration is that they don't have a lot of power to compel a change in behavior because they're all playing the same game. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they don't. So on the affordability piece, generally, did you notice the language that he said? We're going to talk more about it. Talk is cheap, bro. It's not a messaging problem.

48:46It's all. Yeah, it's like Biden. No. After the gas prices went up to$5, everyone's like, fuck you. All right? I don't want to hear a word you have to say. It's not a messaging problem. Exactly. And this is the problem that they have right now. Their heads were far up their ass, and they believed the vibe shift. I actually think that more than anything, it's an information bubble. You can see this with a huge amount of Republicans. Twitter, Elon buying Twitter is one of the worst things that ever happened to them because it definitely helped them win the election. But there's no question in the world that a lot of them huff their own bullshit.

49:15And there's also a huge perverse incentive in MAGA world to make suck up to the White House. Right. So no one's inviting me back to the briefing room anytime soon. Nobody is pitching me Scott Besant or whatever. It's not happening. OK, because they demand total fealty. Like the days of me trying to get a Trump interview or whatever, it's over. It's not going to happen. But that's the issue is that these people all suck up to them. And so they don't really tell them what they want to hear. So the White House is in a situation where they don't trust mainstream media and they don't even really believe anything that they say.

49:49You know, to be fair, they won two elections out of three. So or in their mind, three out of three, but whatever. The point, though, is that the stuff that they're consuming, there's one person, one Tucker Carlson, who is willing to be like, yeah, I think what you guys are doing is wrong. But turn on Fox News. Turn on Glenn Beck. Turn on any, you know, right wing aligned podcast. It's all propaganda all the time. Go on Twitter. You can follow entire accounts, which a lot of these people in the White House do. They're more online than anybody who are just mainlining propaganda about how great they are.

50:23So imagine the information environment that they're swimming in. That's really dangerous, actually, when you're in power. And that's why I think some of them were really shocked at the election results. I really do. I mean, I think they knew they were going to lose. But there's all this down-ballot stuff that nobody else cares about except for people like me, Like the Bucks County School Board, which was like a harbinger of the young kin, you know, revolution, anti-CRT, trans stuff. Like the trans mafia is fully back in control if you live in any of these places. Woke us back, y 'all. Yeah, no, we're fucked.

50:55If you're a parent, it's not good right now. To your point, someone shared the stat. You know these Moms for Liberty School Board candidates who are like, you know, conservative, whatever. There were 31 contested races involving Moms for Liberty candidates. You know how many they won? Zero. Yeah, I know. All 31 lost. Every one. And that's why it was such a reckoning. I mean, even look, I was expecting it to be bad for Republicans. I was not expecting the coast to coast, everything from Georgia and Mississippi. And I mean, every single whether it's a local level or a state level or somewhere in between at every single level.

51:35It was a uniform shift and reckoning against the Republicans. And so I'm sure they are shell shocked. And so, yeah. So, you know, the interesting thing will be to see if they do more than just say like, oh, next year we're going to get around to talking about affordability. As to your point, talking about it is not. I mean, they would have to do a total 180 on what they've been doing. And this will be a good transition actually into the tariffs. Well, we've got tariffs later on. We'll talk about how the Supreme Court is going to, you know, going to probably rescue them from their tariff insanity.

52:05But you have to do a total 180 on the economy. You have to actually deliver on health care. You have to actually make people feel like their lives are getting better. And you've got to pull the mass thugs out of the neighborhoods. You've got to take back the National Guard. Like, you have to do a complete, complete 180 on the way that they've been running this administration thus far. Or you have to really try to go full authoritarian and make it so that votes don't matter. And I just don't know if there is enough that they can do at this point to truly make sure that, you know, come 2026, there's no meaningful elections whatsoever.

52:38I think it's sort of too far gone for, you know, it would take too much and spark too much of a backlash if they were to do what it would take to make it so that there were really no meaningful elections. Yeah. Can it be fixed? I'm not so sure. I'm I'm of the belief that Biden was dead by October of 2021. I don't think there was any world where a Democrat could have won after that period because of the way that he ran the country up to that time with the inflation and the spike that eventually happened and then his eventual deterioration. I really – I don't see a world where a Democrat could have ever won 2024.

53:14Maybe that's a little bit too reductive, but I don't know. I mean if I just think – A lot of the cake was baked. Let's think about it. I mean think about the approval, the vibe. Everything was – I mean if you think back to that, that's what Youngkin happened. and they were given a tiny little savior with Roe versus Wade, which gave them a lot of hope. And then they were dead. I mean, it was literally over. So I'm starting to feel a lot of the same way. We're right around the same time. Obviously a lot could change, but on the horizon, I see much less chance of success and many more pitfalls for things.

53:47I see an AI bubble on the horizon. I see a tariff problem on the horizon. I see an international crisis with Taiwan on the horizon. I see regime change in Venezuela. I see Israel and Iran just sitting there, just waiting for something to happen, for some sort of international crisis. Ukraine, not, you know, still going on. There's a reason we don't want these things to happen, because it doesn't take a genius to read a book and say, at any moment, at any time, the globe can explode and gas prices can explode, right? And could go all the way up like they did under Biden. They can sink your presidency.

54:19So this is, and that's why it's to your benefit to try to get these things all wrapped up. I mean, if you asked me when the vibe turned against Trump, what would you say? I would say March. And by the way, see, I disagree. I think they turned before that. I think it was March, March of 20, what was that? March of 2025. And if we think back, the vibe was with Doge. They were winning, I think, the vibe wars in the original war. There was the ceasefire that initially happened in February under Steve Witkoff. A lot of the promises made, promises kept stuff was there. The revolution still felt as if it had energy.

54:53And right around March, something began to change where the doge reality started to hit. The opposition started to start to flare up. The sheer stupidity of a lot of the White House's statements and things falling apart. I believe Seacott was around that time as well. So if you think about all that together, that is when people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And that's exactly when I started to see a few dissident comments. Yeah. And then things exploded by, I would say, May of 2025. You know, if you actually look at his approval rating, one of the hits he took was on Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Yeah.

55:27Because that wrapped up and lawlessness and all of that sort of stuff. And Democrats, a few of them actually got around to like making a point about it. And it sort of focused people's minds on, you know, what was going on in this administration, what it actually looked like. But I do actually feel like the Epstein files were a critical turning point, too, because that's when you got some MAGA voices being like, dude, what the hell? And when you have your own side. They all shut up, didn't they? When you have your own side. Yeah, they sure did. But when you have your own side chirping at you, that's always a difficult thing.

56:00Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America was at a breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

56:45This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bowen. Hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway. We are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

57:37What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, it's where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, and we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated.

58:15Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

58:35Let's get to the shutdown. I know we're still a bit tight on time. So shutdown, we need to focus here on Trump and kind of his view of where things are. He kind of said the quiet part out loud, which you're never supposed to do in the shutdown. By the way, we are now officially in the longest shutdown in American history. And he was like, well, the Republicans, he's like, it didn't have anything to do the midterms with the shutdown, but also maybe it did have to do with the shutdown. Here's what he had to say. But I thought we'd have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented and what we should do about it and also about the shutdown, how that relates to last night.

59:10I think if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans. And that was a big factor. And they say that I wasn't on the ballot was the biggest factor. But I don't know about that, but I was honored that they said that. So you can see what he's saying there. Well, you know, if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for Republicans. But I wasn't on the ballot. And also, don't worry, the shutdown didn't have too much to do with it. That's why we need to nuke the filibuster. And that's, you know, obviously that's gaining some steam, although I don't think that's really going to happen with a lot of these Republicans.

59:46Well, reportedly behind closed doors, he was much more like, we've got to open the freaking government. Oh, yeah. I mean, look, he's not stupid. I mean, anybody who's looking right now. In a sense, I feel like that is cope. Because if you think that these election results were just about the shutdown, I think they actually had pretty little to do with the shutdown. I totally agree, but nothing is worse than chaos. I mean, what did I just say? We're feeling out of control. Actually, let me just go and put that up at the top. B7, please. Put that up here on the screen, the last element. The FAA just today announced it's cutting thousands of flights starting tomorrow due to the shutdown.

1:00:1710 % of air traffic at 40 major airports. I cannot even quantify the billions of dollars in lost profit, productivity, and more as a result of this. Airline stocks are going to take a dive. I mean, just the sheer amount of chaos that that is going to cause. I cannot be the only person who's going into Thanksgiving. Genuinely, if the shutdown is going to happen, I'm probably going to cancel it because the airport, Houston, that I would have flown in and out of had a three-and-a-half-hour line for security. For pre-check. For pre-check, for three-and-a-half-hour line. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not subjecting my kid to that.

1:00:53Like, it's having a six month. It's not happening. Like, I would rather die than experience that. I would rather walk to Houston. Yeah, I would walk from Houston to Washington, D.C. I'm not the only person. I bet you who's tracking that. Like, you know, most of the year, it's mostly like business travel. Like Thanksgiving is the time when normal people are traveling with their kids and they are planning far in advance. So they're looking now at these headlines and going, I don't know if this is going to happen. Like, I may pull my trip. I may not make those plans. I'm sorry, Grandma, it's not happening this year.

1:01:29I mean, those sorts of things are already happening with where we are in the shutdown right now. Yeah, exactly. So there's that with the shutdown. And then there's the politics of the shutdown with Mike Johnson speaking out, saying, actually, the shutdown had nothing to do with what happened. Take a listen to that. I don't think the loss last night was any reflection about Republicans at all. I think people are frustrated and angry as we are. I am. The president is. And we express that different ways. No reflection on Republicans. Okay. Oh, did it? Did it? Okay. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Then you've got some of the stuff going on right now with the Democrats where no shit, they're hardening their position.

1:02:08Wouldn't you? After you just won this election, let's put the next one, please, on the screen. The Democrats warned of hell to pay if they cut the, quote, week post-election shutdown deal. So they showing that they are absolutely ironclad. They don't want to budge because of the health care premiums. I mean, you know, actually, you know, it's interesting. My tweet about my in-laws went massively viral. Really? Yeah, because I tweeted their insurance premium. It wasn't even a political statement. I just said my in-laws Obamacare premiums went from eighteen hundred to forty two hundred a month. And I mean, it got like thousands of retweets and it was shared like all over the health spectrum.

1:02:45Republicans were like, yeah, see, that's why there shouldn't be any subsidies. And then Democrats were like, see, this is what happened. But I was like, that's just the reality, OK? And as you and I have discussed, Obamacare is a horrible system. No one should even be paying$1 ,800. No one should be trying to subsidize$1 ,800 to$4 ,200. By the way, it's not that they're the early retirees of Mike and Shelley. They're self-employed, OK, just for everybody's information. And they just happen to live in this little state called Pennsylvania, if you've ever heard of it. Maybe it's electoral important.

1:03:16Somebody else can enlighten me as to what it is. But that's happening to a lot of people. And no matter who you are, really on the political spectrum, if you go from$1 ,800 to$4 ,200 a month in health care, you are just going to start asking a lot of questions about whose fault is that. Again, I think Obamacare is a horrible system. I think the subsidies are incredibly stupid and they just subsidize the health care companies. I think it actually inflates health care prices. I could go on forever about the critics. but at the end of the day, you're still probably going to be in a more politically popular position to say, hey, hey, hey, let's not make it so people have to pay$4 ,200 a month for healthcare, right?

1:03:51In the immediate term. So yeah, that's kind of a winning position, especially if that's what you're generally going to offer people. Put it all together. It's not good. And there's like maybe one Republican who is speaking out against it. Yeah, that would be Steve Bannon. We can put the next element up on the screen who, you know, I think Republicans, I think Emily shared this one thing they were saying the only silver lining for us as Zoran getting elected. And he's like, Bannon's like, listen, not so fast. This guy's got some things going for him. You know, he's compelling. And he and, you know, he and some of the other politicians who are kind of in the same vein, they are not to be trifled with.

1:04:30Like, you have to take it seriously. And, you know, this also has some layers of cope in it too. But he basically gets down to also, OK, Trump's really got to deliver on cost of living. And, And, you know, Bannon is one. He'll sound the alarm before something. He'll say, you know what? You actually in the big, beautiful bill should raise taxes on the rich. And then it won't happen. And then we'll never hear about it again. He'll say, you know what? This whole dalliance with Elon and like throwing in with the tech oligarchs, maybe not the best idea. But then once it happens again, you don't hear anything more about it.

1:04:58He warned about the Medicaid cuts, right? He's like, listen, a lot of MAGA is on Medicaid now. Same food stamps. A lot of MAGA is on food stamps as well. And, you know, even though court said you have to pay out, they said they're going to do 50 percent. That even that is not forthcoming whatsoever. I mean, that's you guys. That's a huge number of people who are really going to be immediately suffering right now because of those food stamp cuts. So, yeah, he's he's sounding the alarm. He's not sounding like J.D. Vance saying, oh, nothing to see here. It was just, you know, blue states. He's saying, no, you know, the Soran guy is something you should be taking seriously.

1:05:33and you better get to work on the economy or else you're gonna be in a very dire situation. Well, let's pull over an element which we didn't end up using. Per the NBC News exit polls, Mamdani lost immigration voters by 26 points, crime by 41, but he won cost of living by 36 and they represented 55 % of the electorate. That's the whole ballgame. It's all cost of living, 100 % period. So that's why if you think about 2024, it was an economy election, but it was also an immigration election. It was also a crime election. And so, yeah, that's why the Republicans probably fared better in aggregate.

1:06:05But if the entire discussion is going to come down to cost of living, the Democrats as the opposition party, they're going to beat your ass, even if they have much less popular positions on trans, on crime, whatever, immigration, et cetera. This is where – I just talked about the school board stuff. How many people were even there voting for school board who were like, well, what's their position on gender-affirming care? Nobody. They were like, screw the Republicans. Screw Trump. So they voted for him. Now, you know, I think that's going to reap a lot of destruction in the future, but so be it.

1:06:36That's the way the politics works here in our country. That is the issue right now with the shutdown and with the chaos. And the fact is, is that, yes, SNAP, you know, is being held up by both parties at this time with shutdown. When you run the government, you will bear the blame, period. Especially whenever you're like, no, we're not going to pay it, even though maybe we can kind of, you know, if we wanted to. as the people in the government. That's the issue that you have here. Same with Governor Youngkin. Recently, he was asked specifically about Virginia and the elections. He talked about the shutdown.

1:07:11So he's not stupid. Let's go and take a listen to him. A lot of Republicans, including Lieutenant Governor, ran on the idea of keeping the good times going, referring to the successes of your administration. Given the fact that Lieutenant Governor lost by 15 points, Republicans are on track to lose more than a dozen House seats. Is it possible that Virginians don't see your administration the same way that you do? Well, I believe that Virginians thoroughly support what we've been doing. I mean, at the end of the day, when people say, is the state heading in the right direction? People say yes.

1:07:42As I said, I firmly believe that particularly the government shutdown was a very, very big challenge as we ran into this election. We have 330 ,000 government workers here that weren't getting paid. That is a real challenge heading into an election. And therefore, I, again, encourage the Senate to please open the government because Virginians are hurting and it's time for the government to get back open and then for you all to do your work.

1:08:21Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama? This Black History Month, the podcast Selective Ignorance with Mandy B unpacks Black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:08:55I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Nat Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bowen. Hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

1:09:33Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle? A shady hypnosis scam? Or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.