Raging Moderates: Trump Ditches Ukraine and Cozies Up to Putin

27:17We'd be stupid not to continue making this investment. Well, I wish someone in a position of electoral power had articulated it that way, because I don't think that anyone thinks that they have a job or are making more money or that even they are safer at home, which is what they care about, versus lots of people who are abroad because we've been involved in this conflict. And they thought that it would end in a year, two years. Now we're at the third anniversary of this. And yes, there have been tons of accomplishments in terms of what the Ukrainians have pulled off. But Russia is not going away.

27:56Basically, everyone admits that there have to be some sort of concessions. And even Zelensky has talked about that, maybe not, you know, going back to, you know, a few years ago, but we're certainly not getting back to the pre-2014 lines by any stretch of the imagination. And nobody is making that case to an American public that at this moment cares first and foremost about what is happening at home, not just in terms of it being the United States, but in their actual home. We do. All right, let's take a quick break. Stay with us. Every day, millions of customers engage with AI agents like me.

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28:59From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and Heavyweight is back. The new season is bigger than ever. Bigger hopes. I keep waiting for this moment. When he says, Mom, I get it. I'm sorry. Bigger dreams. Tom Hanks wants to meet with you. This is a real chance. And bigger heartbreaks. I thought it would be my movie moment. And maybe he would even whisper in my ear, I've always been in love with you. Check out new episodes of Heavyweight on Apple Podcasts.

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30:19Welcome back. We're just one month into Trump's second term, although it feels like an eternity. Trump's approval is sinking. See above silver lining with polls showing him underwater and his aggressive budget cuts aren't helping. Doge is slashing jobs at the TSA, FEMA, and even the NIH unit researching Alzheimer's. Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson is cheering on Musk's crusade to shrink the government. But he's also throwing cold water on Musk and Trump's idea to send Americans$5 ,000 rebate checks with the supposed government savings. Some Republicans say it's unconstitutional. Others call it a political stunt, and budget experts warn it would need congressional approval if the savings even exist.

30:57But Trump and Musk are plowing ahead, promising that Doge dividend will put money in voters' pockets. Jess, the rebate idea is already causing a split within the GOP, with Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski calling parts of Doge unconstitutional and disastrous. Could this be the breaking point where Republicans finally push back on Trump? I feel like I'm old enough to think that there is never a breaking point with Republicans. There are, you know, little spurts of pushback or where you think someone still has their soul or their moral compass. But then generally they get in line. And I think the confirmation process has really elucidated that.

31:34You know, this is Trump's party. This is Trump's administration. And they will do things Trump's way. So I'm not waiting for any Republican to save us from this. It does seem like the American public, though, may be the ones to do it. And I've been surprised by how quickly Trump's image and approval rating has softened or decreased or gotten shittier in people's eyes. There are a few polls that show that his approval hasn't sunk. I should note that. But in general, the trend line is going in the negative direction. And these are all high-quality polls like Gallup, Quinnipiac, Reuters, Ipsos, CNN.

32:18And the thing that I think is most important in all of this, and it comes from a Gallup poll, is that only 20 percent think that the economy is excellent or good and 59 percent think that the economy is getting worse. So people wanted a pocketbook reversal in making their choice in electing Donald Trump on November 5th. They don't feel like they are getting it from him. And you're seeing that reflected in the market and people are well aware. I think tariffs are the second most least popular thing that he's done. Number one was partnering all the January Sixers. And folks know what the tariffs are going to do to the American economy.

32:58I also saw that the Democrats are now up double digits on the generic ballot. Think how quickly that changed, that we just lost an election. And we have the Republicans only have a slim majority in the House. But still, they won, right? They're in control, all three, right? They have the White House, Senate and House, and now Democrats are up double digits on a generic ballot. Yeah, with respect to Doge, again, I think, I mean, it sort of goes to, OK, what to do? A common psychological warfare technique is to overwhelm the opposition with so many different outrageous things and so many different aggressive topics, issues, inbound missiles that you're overwhelmed and become flat footed.

33:37I suffer from this. I don't even know where to start. and the way you respond is the following is, okay, you don't need to respond to everything online. You don't need to take up everything with emotion and anger. You should cite experts. You should bring in data and then pare down what you're gonna focus on in terms of your pushback. So for example, I think Doge is a giant fucking weapon of mass distraction. $50 billion, fine. They wanna try and right-size government. People are understandably concerned that there's a lot of waste. Government needs to be right-sized. I think the wrong messaging is all this, quote-unquote, injustice.

34:16I get these national forestry people are wonderful and that there's going to be diapers on the side of your favorite trail, and that they got an email and they've been fired after 18 years of service. But I think a lot of Americans say, welcome to the fucking work week. This happened to me or it happened to my cousin. Private equity came in and bought out our chiropractic clinic and we got our phone shut off. I think what is happening to a lot of these workers, has happened to a lot of people in the private sector. And to be blunt, there isn't a groundswell of sympathy, I think, or empathy they were hoping for.

34:46And people think the government needs to be reined back in as it has been on a regular basis, including under Clinton and Gore. Now, having said that, what I would focus on is the incompetence. I would focus on the fact that, okay, they didn't save$8 billion here. They saved$8 million. Oh, they fired the people overseeing our nuclear stockpile only to rehire them, which makes it more expensive. Oh, you can be clear that the people regulating Tesla's self-autonomous driving unit, they've all been fired, right? That this is essentially corruption and incompetence at very little money. And the thing they should link this to is, okay, while they're off here playing Keystone Cops and playing incompetence girls gone wild here, they want you to look over here at$50 billion in savings.

35:38Okay. They're planning with the tax cuts that will benefit me. I looked at the new tax proposal and I ran my W-2 through it. I'm going to save a million dollars a year with Trump's tax cuts, right? Fine. Government's too big. Save us that$50 billion. But be clear, you're not fooling anybody. You're planning to increase taxes on future generations by the biggest tax increase in history, it's$900 billion. Let's just come together and agree on somewhere between 12 and 18 times the amount of the $50 billion we're arguing over in terms of Doge. While everyone is obsessed with Doge, because it makes for a good TikTok and people know people in the government, the real story here is somewhere between$600 and$900 billion a year increase in taxes on future generations.

36:29I think that's what we should be focused on. I agree with you. And I would add to it that there have been several analyses of what Doge has actually cut, including from the conservative Wall Street Journal. So while Musk is out there saying we found$55 billion in cuts, they say it's$2.6 billion actually. And over a multi-year period, only 2 % are related to quote-unquote DEI efforts. And the rest of it is just stuff that like maybe he doesn't want to do, like, you know, develop a drug to help cure Alzheimer's, for instance. But they're doing this thing where because they're controlling the conversation on social media that they're shitposting at such a rapid rate that you can't figure out what's true and what's not true.

37:12And they're essentially telling people that contracts or bits of information about how the federal government are doing things that they've unearthed it when it's all publicly available information. But guess what? To your point, you need subject matter experts, people who actually deal in this data all the time, to comb through it and to tell you, no, actually, this is publicly available on X site, right? Or you go here and that's where you would know about that contract, for instance. And so the flooding the zone has been wildly effective, I think, in terms of controlling the discourse, but they have not been able to control the American people when it comes to this because the people, two to one ratio, don't approve of Musk's outsized role in the government or what Doge is doing.

37:55And in these town halls, which you cited, which are happening in Republican districts, everyone who's a swing district Republican, down to people in very safe seats, these constituents are showing up. And they're not only talking about doge to the brass tacks stuff that you're discussing. They are losing their minds over this$880 billion cut to Medicaid. They didn't think that this was going to have practical implications for them. Because guess what? It's not popular to sit around and say, oh, I love the federal government so much, right? And don't touch a single, you know, hair on the head of anyone who works at USAID.

38:31I mean, that's something that feels so foreign and detached from the average American's daily life. But what isn't detached from it is Medicaid. Head start. The 9-11 Health Initiative, I mean, 9-11 was one of the more unifying moments in American history, right? No matter where you lived in this country, no matter how you voted, you were horrified that we had a terrorist attack on American soil, that we lost 3 ,500 American lives and millions since then in terms of the repercussions with the air quality and the cancers that people developed from that. My dad died of a 9-11 cancer. You know, we're part of that 9-11 health initiative world because of the implications.

39:16And when they go after something like that, you live in rural Iowa. You say, excuse me? How is it possible that that's on the chopping block? And Jon Stewart has always been such an effective messenger on this subject. He'll show up in Congress to say, you're going after absolutely the wrong things. You have something that has, what, a 90 percent approval rating, let's say, the folks that went down there and cleaned up after that terrorist attack or have worked in the support system, the family members of the heroes that died that day, and that's who you want to be coming out after. after. Like, we heard all of these fantasies about$50 million for condoms for people in Gaza or, you know, supporting the arts for transgender people in Liberia or whatever lies they were telling us.

40:03And they're just not being borne out by the data. And people are getting that message. And Democrats really have to stick to the script on this. There is a budget that will be being brought to the floor. It's going through the Rules Committee today. So when this is released tomorrow Tuesday. It's supposed to be coming there and Republicans are going to have to vote on it. And it has an$880 billion cut to Medicaid in it. And there are conservative lawmakers that are begging leadership to take it out. Josh Hawley, someone who I really have, I don't think ever had anything nice to say about, wants to add an amendment to it on the Senate side to make sure that these cuts can't go through because they understand it'll decimate the lives of their constituents.

40:49So there is plenty in here to be going after. But I think it is important to say time and time again that what Elon Musk is telling you they are doing, they are not. He is saying $55 billion. It is at most$2.6 billion. Yeah, like Medicaid, you know, 80 million people, one in six households or one in six kids, 40 percent of births, the elderly who are disabled. I mean, this is, and also, it is actually a really well-run cost-effective program. It provides health coverage for low-income Americans at a lower per-person cost than private insurance. So Medicaid actually helps the economy because unless you're going to decide you're going to let people die of, you know, their cystic fibrosis or you're going to let old people, the disabled, you know, wither away, what is the most cost-effective way to give people some dignity to make sure that kids can't actually, you know, we can provide their medication, we can provide their in-home, you know, physical therapy for the disabled.

41:59Well, this is a lower-cost way to do it. And it is very popular. and the fact that they're, you know, hey, look over here at 50 billion in Doge savings and we'll give you a$5 ,000 check, but we're gonna cut what, six to$800 billion from Medicaid? I mean, this really is, it is, in my opinion, showing their true colors. And that is at the end of the day, the most remarkable thing about the Republican Party is that it serves not the 1%, it serves the 0.1%. And the fact this is all a giant ruse to say, look over here while we cut taxes on the very wealthiest Americans. And I do think this is probably a bridge too far.

42:44I think they will probably check back on Medicaid. I hope they don't, because I think this could probably be the beginning of a pretty serious clean sweep or close to a clean sweep once we have the midterm elections. But Medicaid is, I would say, maybe with the exception of Social Security, is the most popular social program in America, maybe even more popular when you look at its effectiveness. But this is great messaging for the Democrats that, okay, do you know anyone on Medicaid? This is who they're coming for. And if you think, if they can cut 16 times what they say they're gonna cut in doves, that's what they're planning to cut from Medicaid.

43:25It's not like that. It's like at some point is somebody and we needs to be a Republican going to give them a do you have no sense of decency speech. Right. At some point, somebody needs to stand up. And I think someone is going to find their backbone here. The budget proposed just endorsed cuts to Medicaid by nine hundred billion dollars. This is just this is extraordinary. I want to talk about the rebate checks for a second, though, because this has over the last few years actually been a really important point in terms of our electoral outcomes, because we did checks at the beginning of COVID because of the CARES Act, which Republicans opposed.

44:05Donald Trump opposed, but it was passed and it went through while Trump was still president. And he signed those checks himself. Right. It said Donald J. Trump gave you money. And then we did a couple more rounds of checks during the Biden administration. But of course, you know, Joe Biden didn't want to put his name on those checks. So they had a career Treasury official's name on it. And when people went and voted, they didn't know that Joe Biden ever gave them money. Right. It was that Donald Trump gave me money. And then I had a really crappy four years. And now Donald Trump is going to come back.

44:36And these rebate checks, which if you look at the money, it obviously doesn't add up because those savings are a fantasy in all of this. But if people receive a$5 ,000 check that says Donald J. Trump on it, that will be meaningful. And we need to be very careful around this. Now, I don't know if that's going to go through. That seems like a muskism versus something that might actually happen on the federal level. But I'm concerned about that because those are the types of tangibles that people remember when they go and vote. And they will also provide further smoke to this smoke screen that's going on and what's actually happening in the federal government versus the reality on the ground.

45:17It's just so insane. And I think the messaging so far has been pretty good around this, but the notion that, okay, we're a household that makes$50 ,000 a year. That's our tax receipts. We spend$70 ,000. That's our government expenditures,$7 trillion on$5 trillion in tax receipts. And we are$350 ,000 or$35 trillion in debt. But we're going to cut our expenditures by$500 and send a check to people rather than paying down our debt? I mean, it's just, does anyone do math anymore? Have citizens gotten to the point where it's like, you know, I just give it up. My kids are fucked. Just run up their credit card.

45:58I don't care. I do think there's going to be enough people who are going to go on social and say, this is just stupid to start sending checks. When we're planning to run up the deficit, another$900 billion a year to send checks to people for$5 ,000 rather than paying down the debt, that absolutely, again, to your point, that just makes no sense. All right. One more quick break. Stay with us. The pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. Crafted with our signature espresso and real pumpkin sauce. Then topped with whipped cream, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The PSL. Get it while it's hot. or iced only at starbucks support for this show comes from airbus it took 100 years for electric vehicles to catch on modern solar panels half a century lithium batteries decades to go from their debut to daily use it's a pattern energy tech breaks through stalls and then something tips the scales, but for every success, there are even more almosts.

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49:04Welcome back. Before we wrap, last week, Senator Mitch McConnell announced he won't seek re-election in 2026, marking the end of a four-decade career that reshaped American politics. As Senate GOP leader, he cemented a conservative judiciary, steered his party through shifting ideological tides, and clashed with Donald Trump in recent years. His exit raises questions about the future of the GOP and the battle for his Kentucky seat, with former Attorney General Daniel Cameron and Rep. Andy Barr already in the race. Jess, what do you think McConnell's legacy will be? Oh, and the obvious one is the reshaping of the courts.

49:36Biden did really well and had an almost breakneck pace in terms of judicial confirmations. It doesn't compare. to the damage that McConnell has done with the Supreme Court being, you know, the cherry on top of all of this. And his ruthlessness and refusing to give Merrick Garland a hearing will be remembered throughout history. That was the beginning of this. But he slowed down judicial confirmations during the Obama era to a trickle at best and took advantage of Harry Reid blowing up the filibuster in 2013. And we ended up in this position where, you know, the courts are stacked against us. I say us as Democrats are left-leaning people for generations to come.

50:20And so I think that's probably the biggest one. I think there's an image that folks saw last week, which will also stick with us. And this doesn't just apply to McConnell, but this crop of 80-something legislators, 70-something legislators. You know, it's McConnell and Jim Justice, who's the new senator from West Virginia, was the governor. And they're both in wheelchairs. And they're passing each other. And they're high-fiving. And it just—I understand, you know, people have accidents. And McConnell had fallen. Justice has had trouble walking for a very long time. But you just, you look at this and you think we have to be able to do better, not in an ageist way.

51:05I hate to think of myself as someone who is ageist, but it doesn't feel right that the folks that have these rarefied jobs, there are only 100 of them, right, in a country of 330 million, that we have people who are that old, who are refusing at that level to pass the torch. And yes, I know McConnell is retiring, but it's a problem across the board that we've really got to address. So I'm a full-blown ageist. And do you know who else is ageist? Biology. My son had a Halloween party. He was 14. There were 15-year-old girls in my house that are more qualified to be senator than Senator Feinstein was in the last year of her Senate.

51:47They would have done a much better job. They would have had a much broader grasp and understanding of the issues than Senator Feinstein did. Put these people on a fucking ice flow. Enough already. You have to be 30 years of age to become a senator. Why? Because a 29-year-old, they believe, does not have the experience, the maturity, or the cognitive ability to make decisions on behalf of a country. But someone who doesn't know where the fuck they are and freezes on a stage when asking questions, someone who literally – there is a – I believe it's a Republican female representative who literally doesn't know where she is.

52:21It's tragic. She's suffering from late-stage Alzheimer's. Biology says, hold my beer, when mostly Democrats talk about scream ageism. And because we have a system with Citizens United where the incumbent almost always wins, and these people must get great reservations at great restaurants in D.C., and they decide to never leave, we need age limits for both the Supreme Court and for our elected representatives. Enough already. I mean, make it something low, like 80 or something like that. But at some point, it is time to go. His legacy will be the following, in my view. Showing to the world just how much Senator Schumer sucks.

53:03And that is this guy, call him Machiavellian, call him evil. He outplayed Democrats every step of the way. While our leadership decided to send a strongly worded letter around all these outrage around Merrick Garland, he always won. He managed to pack the courts up and down. And when a 14-year-old girl has to carry a child from incest to term, when a woman is bleeding out in an emergency room parking lot from sepsis because a doctor is worried about going to jail, it is because our leadership were fucking neutered and didn't want to go gangster the way McConnell did. McConnell was shameless. He is the graveyard digger for democracy, and he was highly effective.

53:55We need more Democrats like that. I want to see the same sort of shamelessness that Speaker Emerita Pelosi brings to her fucking corrupt insider trading. I want to see some of that gangster corruption, some of that gangster backbone, some of those big fucking balls to negotiations with Republicans. His legacy, maybe he was right, maybe he wasn't, but he sure as hell was effective. And this is the problem that the Democrats suffer from. and what I have suffered from my entire career is they cannot discern the difference between being right and being effective. He was much more effective than Democratic leadership.

54:35Yeah, can we disparage him and say that he was evil and that he did the wrong thing? Yeah, hold my beer, bitches. He outplayed us days one, two, and three. I totally agree. I love how he was even embracing of the kind of pop culture characterizations of him, like Cocaine Mitch or the Grim Reaper. You know, he leaned into all of that, or at least a staffer did for him and embraced that role. We need to be more cutthroat in the way that we do politics. But he also is very much representative of the type of Washington that led us to having Donald Trump. And there, you know, people will spend generations talking about, you know, how did we end up with Trump?

55:23And they'll talk about what went on in the Obama era and this, you know, latent racism that spilled out, right? And then people started voting for Trump, etc. But people like Mitch McConnell, who are Washington creatures, who have been there forever, who folks didn't feel like they were responsive to trends in American society, to how they were feeling about their lives, how they were feeling about foreign entanglements. He was a poster child for that. And we would not have had Trump without there being so many Mitch McConnells there. And I think, you know, the image of him not voting to convict Donald Trump in the second impeachment, even though he said that he was guilty of it, right, and saying this is something that will leave to the courts, will certainly stick with us.

56:14but also flies in the face of this notion that there were anybody on the right that stood up to Trump. Because I think that they like to say that, that these are the guys with the backbone. Maybe Mitt Romney is the exception to that, and I should shout him out for that. But Mitch McConnell is such a central piece in the complete takeover of the Republican Party by Donald Trump, and I think that's an important element of his legacy. Yeah, Senator McConnell voting against Hegseth and Patel is like Hannibal Lecter deciding he's a vegan on his deathbed. He voted for Patel, actually. Oh, he did? He voted against Tulsi.

56:50Oh, that's right. He voted against Hegseth and Gabbard. You know, great. These folks seem to develop a conscience after they leave Congress and then go on Bill Maher or when they decide they're resigning. That doesn't—I don't think he deserves any, quite frankly, any props for that. All right. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. Jess, by the way, I hope for you this week that at some point in the park with your kids, someone comes up to you and says the following. Got MILF? Oh, that's good. I like it. Were you brewing that one for the whole hour of us? That's good.

57:25I've been waiting. I haven't been able to focus on anything else. Our producers are David Toledo and Chenenye Onike. Our technical director is Drew Burrows. You can now find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday. That's right. What is real? our own feed. There you'll get exclusive interviews with smart voices in politics and ours. Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Just have a great rest of the week. I hope you have a ton of inappropriate comments coming your way. I can't wait. That's all you crave in your 40s.

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