Raging Moderates: Trump Has Completed Half of Project 2025

24:43And many of Project 2025 authors, despite Trump supposedly not knowing anything about it, have been nominated to work in the Trump administration, including Russell Vought, who leads the Office of Budget Management, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Brendan Carr, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Homan, the border czar, Paul Atkins, Chairman of the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, Peter Navarro, Counselor to the President of the United States. And the document, essentially, Project 2025 could be broken down into sort of four basic policy aims. One, restore the family as the centerpiece of American life.

25:17What would be interesting there is for them to define family. I think you know how they define family. Effectively, Ozzie and Harriet. Dismantle the administrative state. I think that means get rid of governments. Well, anyways, I don't know what they mean. Defend the nation's sovereignty. Fire everybody. Pretty much. Defend the nation's sovereignty and borders. Okay. Secure God-given individual rights to live freely. Again, big questions around what God are we talking about and what individual rights. I don't think those individual rights include things like bodily autonomy. But anyway, if you dig deeper, there are some more alarming stances in the document.

25:56It labels the FBI as a bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization. I think a lot of us would argue that the FBI is the premier agency upholding the law. Suggests that the Health and Human Services should open quote, maintain a biblically-based social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family. I find that very troubling. Proposes slashing federal money for research and investment in renewable energy. Suggests banning pornography and shutting down tech and telco companies that allow access to adult material. Okay. So this is, it sounds to me like this is pretty much a slow creep and it's happening or that it's a kind of a creeping takeover.

26:43And if I'd read these things nine months ago, I would have thought, oh, the American public will never put up with this. And it feels like Bannon called it flood the zone. I would argue that what's taking place here, a better term for it would be blitzkrieg. And that is there's just so much going on and progressive kind of liberal democratic values are being attacked on so many fronts that they're a bit flummoxed and flat-footed as to where to respond. And if you look at Project 2025, it feels as if they've made real progress against many of these objectives. Your thoughts? Yeah, they're feeling really good.

27:18And I've spoken to people who work in the administration. Obviously, I work with a lot of conservatives that are close to the administration. they're riding pretty high on this, even if Trump's approval ratings in key areas are down from where he started and substantially even, you know, down minus 15 on the economy. Republicans still leading on who the American public would rather manage the economy. But, you know, that's a big fall. Minus 16 on trade, minus 27 on inflation. You know, those are all really bad things. But I feel like there has to be a real focus on the tangible issues that Americans can see and feel in order to explain what's going on.

28:01And I do think that immigration is a linchpin of that. You know, the tariffs and what's going on with the economy as well. But the visuals of the troops going through our cities, peaceful protests in the face of, you know, being pepper sprayed by a CPP officer who has certainly no business being in Chicago, which is very, very, very far from the border, as Governor Pritzker pointed out to us last week when he joined, I think is meaningful. And also these stories of Americans that are getting detained are coming fast and furiously. Tim Miller, our pal over at the Bulwark, did a great interview with a U.S.

28:41citizen, George Redis, who's a veteran and was held for three days in detention. He said, they put me on suicide watch and they put me in a cell. I'm naked in like a hospital dress with just a concrete bed, the mattress, a thin mattress, and they leave the light on 24-7. There's a glass door and officers just always standing. Psychiatric nurse comes and checks on me once a day. And so from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon when I'm released, I'm literally in that cell naked just in that room with the light on. Like this is a nightmare. This is an American who served our country. We have a 39-year-old DACA recipient who was detained and died in ICE custody.

29:18And then you have the judges all over the country, a lot of them Republican appointees that are calling bullshit on the administration's claims that cities like Portland and Chicago are lawless messes. Portrayal of Portland from the administration is, quote, untethered to the facts. The judge that ruled against the deployment of troops to Chicago said that the Department of Homeland Security's version of events was simply unreliable and suffered from a lack of credibility and also noted that the deployment itself could fuel the civil unrest, which is the point, right? They're like, if there isn't a problem, I'm going to go and make one.

29:51And you're seeing, you know, the visuals of Kristi Noem standing on the roof of the ICE facility with all of the animals, the dress up that they're playing in Portland. The dinosaurs, yeah. You know, and then the naked bike ride. They're calling it Nude Tufa, I think maybe. Nudy Tufa or something like that. Portland, just keep being Portland, obviously. But, you know, we were skeptical of the idea that focusing on the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case was going to move the needle. And Senator Van Hollen basically just said, F it. Like, I'm going to Seacott and I'm going to check on my constituent. And it ended up being the first time that there was a real dent in Donald Trump's approval rating on immigration.

30:39And I'm not saying it turned into a free fall moment, but it certainly was a bit of a dam breaking. And right now, a Maryland judge is actually on the verge of telling the government that they can't detain Abrego Garcia any longer because they haven't shown a compelling reason for him to continue to be. and also three African nations have told the Trump administration we're not taking him. Like this idea that you can just send people wherever you want or pay them off for it isn't going to fly. And I think the fact that that case is still percolating and it was such a symbol for the overreach and the cruelty of this administration and it remains salient is an indication that we really need to be leaning into what kind of lawless behavior they're engaging in, but also what kind of cruel behavior an American citizen who served the country spending three days in detention.

31:32I'm glad you brought it up. I think, look, the most influential person in America right now is the president and globally, I would argue. I think tied for second is Jeffrey Epstein and Jensen Huang. I think that essentially an attempt to keep Jeffrey Epstein's name out of the news has resulted in the Trump administration lobbying every 48 or 72 hours a series of actions and stories that just push. I mean, we saw it again with these ridiculous China tariffs, which he had no, there was massive market manipulation, a dramatic uptick in options activity. Just a few minutes before he announced these tariffs, a few people cashed out with multimillion dollars, sometimes over$100 million gains.

32:14And then he walks it back. I think that, again, my thesis is there's a group of people armed with AI that know every 71 to 74 hours, as soon as Epstein starts to creep back into the new cycle, come up with a series of ridiculous actions that will take the media's gaze off of Epstein. And then number two, Jensen Huang, essentially America is a giant bet on AI right now. And I continue to believe that the most dangerous metric ever invented was the NASDAQ and the Dow and the S &P index, because the S &P being up 14%, I believe, has provided cloud cover for Trump's actions. And that is America has become so much about stuff, specifically your ability to acquire stuff versus character versus family versus patriotism, that as long as the markets continue to go up and people are under the impression that they're going to have more money and access to cheap calories and access to Netflix, that if the market is up 14%, that must mean the president on the whole is doing something right.

33:14and essentially the reason the market is up 14 % is 75 % plus of the market's gains come from 10 companies led by NVIDIA. And if Jensen Huang wasn't, and now Jensen is implementing a series of circular kind of incestuous deals that feel very like late stage 99 to me, that if the market had been down 14%, I believe that Trump wouldn't have the cloud cover to go into Portland. And Some people would argue, well, we would have been more likely to do it to create a distraction. But the most powerful men outside of Trump right now are Epstein trying to keep anything, trying to keep him out of the new cyclist dictating, whether it's Mike Johnson dismissing Congress early or not swearing in an elected Congress person because he's worried about the number of votes to release the Epstein file.

34:02This guy is having a ton of power from the grave. And also, America is essentially a bet on AI right now. And if AI doesn't continue to garner and register the type of outrageous valuations it's garnered to date, you're just going to see the cloud cover disappear for Trump's activities here. So it's strange. I think that a dead man is influencing America and Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Sachin Nadella in the continued march of the Magnificent Ten is the cloud cover for this administration. Any thoughts? Well, I had Adelita Grijalva, the congresswoman that you mentioned, who's not getting sworn in.

34:43I interviewed her yesterday for the YouTube channel. I said, well, why do you think you're not getting sworn in? And she said, well, I'm the 218th vote. Yeah. I mean, the difference between myself and the three other members of Congress that have been sworn in since the special, they were all sworn in within 24 hours. And aside from them being three Caucasian men and I am a Chicana from Arizona, The only other issue is I am the 218th signer to the discharge petitions to release the Epstein files. And they have shown a willingness to do absolutely anything in their power and sometimes things not in their power to avoid doing that.

35:19And I'd recommend everyone check it out. She is she seems great and has a lot that she wants to accomplish. And she also is a representative of a border constituency. She has 700 ,000 constituents, 60 percent Latino. know, and the stories that she is telling about what it's like with Customs and Border Patrol officers and ICE there. And she saw someone just get pulled into a car. She was just pumping gas with her son, you know, out of an unmarked vehicle. They don't even have the resources. If they did want to be in properly marked vehicles, they couldn't because they are moving so fast and furiously that they haven't even, you know, waited for the right kind of gear, though it does suit their purposes for them to just look like scary men to carry out these kind of pickups.

36:07And that's really interesting about, you know, we're all just a big bet on AI because I know Andrew Ross Sorkin was interviewed and asked about, will there be a crash? You know, it feels like the stock market is just completely impervious to what's going on on the ground or what people are feeling about their lives. And if it is being propped up by these 10 companies, do you think that a crash does come ever or will just continue on this kind of, you know, fast food diet or whatever, you know, the fake calories of it all and manage to keep going like this. I mean, I'm enjoying it in terms of the returns, but it does feel fake.

36:48Well, first off, just to lighten the mood a little bit, if you want to enjoy yourself, take an edible and watch a very talented Andrew Ross Sorkin and explain to an 83-year-old Leslie Stahl the stock market, and ask yourself, oh, it's really surprising that broadcast news or cable news is dying. We're always being undone by bubbles. There was the internet bubble in 2000, housing in 2008. Are we in another bubble, an AI bubble or something like that? I think it's hard to say we're not in a bubble of some sort. The question is always, when is the bubble going to pop? One symptom of a bubble is when the market goes up and up, but the underlying economy, the real economy, goes soft.

37:36And that appears to be happening right now. All this hullabaloo about CBS and who's going to run it. Folks, regarding CBS, nobody fucking cares. CBS is irrelevant. Like Margaret Brennan and Face the Nation has some relevance within the Beltway. 60 Minutes continues to get a lot of clips. They continue to do a great job. CBS Sunday Morning is really nice to see two squirrels who come back and ride a bear to go see some old lady in Alaska who feeds them hamburger helper. I like that show. But it's just so hilarious that we think CBS has any fucking meaning in this economy, in this society. Anyways, the question around AI, there's this notion of fragility or what makes a robust economy.

38:21And essentially it comes back to diversification. So the fast food industry is a robust industry. If McDonald's goes out of business, the biggest player, you're gonna have no problem getting a lot of calories for a fairly low price. It is a robust, and the banking industry in the United States is not robust. If JP Morgan has some rogue trader in Singapore who figures out a way to bypass all compliance in their pursuit for returns, and Jamie Dimon calls Trump and says, oh, gosh, you're not going to believe this. Some rogue 28-year-old has put us under and we need a bailout. They're too big to fail at this point.

38:54That means the U.S. banking sector is probably not that robust. Some people would argue it is looking at Silicon Valley Bank going out of business, and the market was fine. It was pretty resilient. I would argue that it's probably not that robust. And what we have now is an economy that is looking increasingly fragile because you have 10 companies representing 40 % of the S &P by value. The S &P represents 50 % of total market capitalization. And I'm writing about it this week for my No Mercy, No Malice newsletter. And I think the kind of how the end begins is the following. And that is all of these circular deals.

39:31So NVIDIA invests$100 billion in OpenAI with the agreement they're going to take that $100 billion and invested back in NVIDIA chips. $100 billion in incremental business to NVIDIA creates$55 billion in operating margin. They have 55 points of operating margin or$55 billion in earnings times a PE of 50. That's like a$1.25 trillion technical increase in notional valuation off of$100 billion investment. So AOL was pulling this sleight of hand back in the late 90s, investing in e-commerce companies in exchange for them spending all that money on AOL, such that they could continue to report growth that justified what was an exceptional artificially inflated valuation.

40:13This is late stage 99 circular deals. There's an amazing graph pulled together by Bloomberg showing that these deals have now become very, very popular. So what happens here, the string or the rope that gets pulled is there's more reports from big companies saying the adoption layer, if you will, is not taking off the way we thought. And that is companies have signed up for AI, made huge investments, but they're not seeing the ROI they had expected. They're announcing a pullback in spending. NVIDIA gets cut in half. And effectively, if you have the Magnificent 10 get cut in half, the Magnificent 10 could get cut in half and they still wouldn't look cheap.

40:50That would be a 20 % decline in the value of the S &P, a 10 % decline in the total market cap of all stocks globally. And then it would disproportionately, I don't wanna say hurt because they're pretty resilient, but it would disproportionately affect the top 10 % who are now responsible for 50 % of consumer spending, which again, see above a fragile economy or anti-resilient. And the thing about rich people is that when they make money, it's great because they can spend a lot more because they feel wealthy because of the effect of the stock market. But the downside is that wealthy people can take their spending down 20, 30, 40%.

41:26Middle-class homes can't take their spending down that much because they're spending money on essentials. But if the wealthy all of a sudden feel less wealthy because the stock market, they wake up and the market is down 20 % and some of the tech they're in is down 40%, they can take their spending down 30, 40%, which would immediately take us into a recession or a global recession. So I think that we have what is becoming an increasingly concentrated economy, an increasingly fragile or anti-resilient economy. And again, I come back to the statement, America has become a gigantic bet on AI and it is fueling everything.

42:05It's fueling the markets. It's fueling cloud cover for Trump. But I do believe, and I want to be clear, when guys like me are saying that we're on the precipice of the bubble popping, that usually means the market's going to go up another 20 or 30 percent the next two years. But I am, and this This is not financial advice because it's a political show. But what I am actually doing with my own personal finances is I'm rotating out of U.S. and tech stocks into European and Latin American stocks. So you always want to be in the market. You want to be in low cost funds. But America, the largest economy in the world right now, I think it's accurate to say it's a bet on AI and the sustained, crazy, frothy market valuations.

42:39I definitely think we could see a significant drawdown here that would have global implications. Anyways, with that, let's take one more quick break.

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44:17Okay, welcome back. Before we go, the No Kings protests are back and the GOP is already sounding the alarm. Speaker Mike Johnson described the upcoming rallies as hate America and pro-Hamas. The organizers just dismissed this as fear-mongering. Backed by labor unions and progressive groups, the movement says it's a peaceful protest against authoritarianism and a government shutdown. Jess, are you going to participate in the No Kings movement? What do you think of these protests? I think it's a very good thing. And I am thinking about going on Saturday. I was talking to one of the organizers about whether he thought that it would be peaceful, first of all, and then also good for kids.

45:00You know, you do always see the cutest posters, right, with a little kid holding up, you know, a sign that's either funny or saying, like, what about my rights? Right. Like, I'm going to be here for a long time. You guys are aging out of the process, but we are the ones that are left behind with the messes that are created. So I would put it above 50 percent odds that I will be there on Saturday in the main one in Manhattan. So scheduled already over 2 ,000 of these protests. Something that is very different, though, from the first time this happened during the summer is that there will be a D.C.

45:37protest. And remember how it was like the counter-programming to Trump's military parade. So they didn't have a D.C. version. That won't be the case. And we do know how aggravated Trump gets when something is going on in his backyard. So I'm sure that that will make an impact on him. It seems like the administration is very scared about this. Listening to Mike Johnson and Secretary Duffy was also talking about it, you know, already telling you, like, these are paid protesters or they're Antifa or, you know, whatever excuse they can come up with. It's been long enough that we know that the people who show up at these town halls are not partisan plants.

46:14And we know that people that are going to come out for no kings protests are real Americans that are concerned about the direction of the country and this authoritarian overreach. I don't know how many millions. It was estimated between four and six million participated over the summer. We'll see where that kind of comes out. I would imagine that it would be more and hopefully much more. And I think to our ongoing conversation about not seeing as much outrage as you would expect, especially considering how mad people were about Jimmy Kimmel versus, right, like an American army ranger that's held in a cell for three days, that if we don't see a really massive turnout, that it portends something very bad for what's going to go on over the course of the next three years.

47:00I'm not talking about violence. I would never condone any sort of violence. But if the American populace isn't moved to participate in their First Amendment right to peacefully protest and to make their voices heard, I think that we have an even bigger uphill battle than we thought. And it will further embolden the administration to carry down the path that they're on. As I've been talking, I psych myself up. I'm going. I'll be at the No Kings protest on Saturday. I don't know if I'll have any children with me or if I'll have a good sign. Yeah, it's just so hypocritical, oxymoronic, stupid to somehow justify sending troops into American cities, but somehow finding a way to disparage peaceful protests.

47:48And these protests are just, I mean, I can tell you there's going to be a lot of music, a lot of people handing out food. I think these protests are going to be some of the safest places in America. You're around a group of people who are, generally speaking, politically engaged, care about America, out with their kids, out with their loved ones. They're just not in a mood to, like, you know, commit violence. It just don't. Any violence here will be a confrontation that is inspired by, quite frankly, the administration. I just don't. And also, this is a semi-serious question. I understand what the Heritage Foundation is.

48:25We mentioned them. I understand what Hamas is. I understand what the IDF is. I literally have no fucking idea what Antifa is. Like, who is it? Is there an office? Is there a leadership? It feels like a poltergeist or like a total snuffleupagus meant to scare people. Does Antifa even really exist as an organization? So this is difficult. This has been going on for years. and he just had a box somewhere like if i wanted to write a letter to it if we wanted to invite to the king of antifa if we wanted to invite someone to interview them about antifa who would we even reach out to i don't know about their organizing office there are definitely people who are members or kind of associate with it but it's such a broad thing you know antifa is just anti-fascist and we know that there are a lot of reasons marines that's the united states marines That's Antifa.

49:15It's a bit of where the wind blows. But Republicans have been hot and bothered about Antifa for years. And is this like the basement in that pizza place? It just doesn't exist. Yeah. Where Hillary is slinging pizzas and holding children hostage. Yeah. She has been looking fabulous. she does someone's on the glp one someone's no someone's single and ready to mingle don't do that oh my god she's so glp wanting and i'm here for it she looks great i didn't really think that she looks great they just had their 50th wedding anniversary i know i saw those single and ready i know um there is actually a very funny i don't even know if it counts as a meme but there's a side by side of her when she's young and sydney sweeney and they look a lot alike And it's driving the right crazy.

50:07I am not going to even comment on that. OK, you don't want to comment on that. You comment on everything else. Dangerous territory even for me. Yeah. Step it back. Let's put Secretary Clinton in an American Eagle commercial and see what happens to the stock. She has good genes. She does. Smart, impressive woman. So you're not weird for not knowing what Antifa is. And I'm someone who even has to follow this and really struggles to talk about it definitively. But Donald Trump did just host a roundtable with journalists that cover Antifa and have had confrontations with them. And it basically comes down to like anyone that they don't like at the moment.

50:48And you see how it's thrown around. You know, Mike Johnson, it'll be Antifa. Secretary Duffy, it'll be Antifa. You know, Tyler Robinson, the guy who allegedly killed Charlie Kirk, Antifa. So it's broad and unspecific and is used to scare people, which is the administration's absolute favorite thing. And it takes the heat off the fact that there are actually very organized groups with ideologies that you can point to that are committing terrible acts of violence. And we don't want to talk about those kinds of things. We want to talk about rando leftists that don't like Elon Musk and Molotov cocktailed some Teslas or are trying to, you know, get the ice facility in Portland closed down.

51:32So ask me what my favorite horror film is. What's your favorite horror film? Well, I'm glad you asked. It's actually a toss-up. Aliens, which is probably my favorite sci-fi and the best sequel ever made. James Cameron took the reins elegantly and deftly from Ridley Scott of the original Alien. But my favorite horror film ever is The Sixth Sense. And it calls on all these emotions, being raised by a single mother. I just think the thing is genius. And it was supposed to, it's supposed to crown the new Steven Spielberg, a guy named M. Night Shyamalan. I see dead people. And he went on to make a series of really mediocre films.

52:07Signs was a good film, but he made a film called The Village. And The Village is a story of these group of people who decide they want to sequester from society and live a more traditional family values life. And they swear off all medicine and modern technology. and the way they keep anyone from wanting to leave, especially the young people, this little village or this area, is they create these monsters and they have, essentially they find out that the monsters are just, you know, villagers dressed up to scare the shit out of everyone and keep them in line. And I feel like Antifa is the monsters in the village.

52:39And that is, it's a total fake, illusory thing propped up. I think the administration is literally hoping that Antifa shows up somewhere and does something mean or, you know, non-patriotic or violent, because they need something to scare people to keep them, to keep them thinking backward and to keep them in sort of a primitive society. Or to say, you need me. That's what they're hoping. Like what happened with D.C., frankly. That's again. Socialism is this notion of equality, liberalism, this notion that everyone should have the right to pursue liberty. And the juice of fascism is trying to convince people that the enemy is within that oh it's it's your neighbor who's a secret member of antifa and mike's senator warren you know that that's the threat which is what he told the generals right get ready yeah you got to help us out with the enemy within that's there you go which makes i texted you the picture of hillary clinton and sydney sweeney can you look at it oh really yeah i just have a lot of mixed emotions here i'm gonna have a lot i'm pulling it up i don't I don't want to make you uncomfortable and you are still on camera, but I see it.

53:46Yeah. Look, Secretary Clinton looks great. Beautiful. Yeah, she does. She looks beautiful. All right. I'm not sure how to respond to this. We got to go anyway. There you go. All right. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. This is a production of Prop G Media. Our producer is David Toledo. Our associate producer is Eric Jenicus. Our technical director is Drew Burrows. Our engineer is William Flynn. And our executive producer is Catherine Dillon. Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode. Jess, have a great rest of the week.

54:22You too.