202. Is Trump Rigging the World Cup?

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Listeners of The Rest Is Politics US can save over 40% on an annual digital subscription to the Financial Times by visiting ft.com slash tripus. That's ft.com slash tripus, T-R-I-P-U-S. Subject to terms and conditions. Offer expires October 28th. Every game day, you show up for your team. Now, it's your time. Ask your prescriber about WeGoVee. WeGoVee. WeGoVee. It's a maglutide injection, 2.4 milligrams, a GLP-1. Call 1-833-4-WEGOVEE or visit wegovee.com to view the medication guide and to learn more about WeGoVee. Why wait? WeGoVee. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphya is administered. It has injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tramphya, proper training is required. Tramphya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit tramphyaradio.com. Welcome to The Rest Is Politics U.S. with me, Katty Kay, in balmy London. No, hot London, actually, Anthony. Very hot London. Where are you? Well, I'm in my house in the Hamptons, but I'm also in the land of Donald Trump, where he's making AI-generated memes of himself, getting our players back on the playing field. So I know we have a lot to talk about, but I was watching his Truth Social this morning, and I'm like, this guy is really in another world, you know, and he's just, and everyone around him is just like, hey, no problem. Just let's. Just let him do whatever he's doing. He's the President of the United States, guys. I mean, you know, but go ahead. Go ahead, guys. As well as saying, Georgia Maloney needs a restraining order put on her as well. I mean, he's really jumped the shark this weekend. Well, I'm a bit sad because I had a great July the 4th. I went to a super nice small town parade in Maine, where there was no politics. Everyone was very cheerful. It was really, it was quite moving, actually, Anthony. I saw the hot dog. And I ate a hot dog. I want to confirm. I want to confirm for everybody that you did eat the hot dog. Yes. Well, am I allowed to make a confession since it's just between you and me and no one else is listening? I actually only had one bite, and then I gave it to my son, and he demolished it in about two seconds. But I did take a bite. You know what, by the way, you didn't even have to tell me that, okay? I had the under on the full hot dog, okay? You didn't even have to tell me that, okay? That was like Captain Obvious, Mrs. Obvious. I loved my July the 4th. The parade in Maine was just the best. And I felt very happy, and now I have to get back to politics and feel a little bit less happy. So here's what we're going to talk about. We are going to talk about the World Cup and FIFA and Donald Trump meddling in everything including soccer and his ability, his attempt to, no, his ability to overturn FIFA's ruling on the red card that had been given to an American player. We'll get into that. And then in the second half of the program, we are going to talk about the end of Doge, which by the way. Actually July 4th, that was actually the end of Doge. You may have missed it. And a little bit about Mamdani's speech, which I thought was interesting too. So Anthony, first of all, before we get, I guess before we get into Donald Trump and the World Cup, we have to say it's coming home, right? Well done, England. Were you up all night watching? I was on the plane, so I didn't manage to see it, but I wish I had done. Well, no, I'm on this side of the pond. That was like a primetime game over here. No, that ended around 11 o'clock. I watched the whole game and obviously I'm not as familiar with the game as you are, but super impressed with team England. And I just wrote an op-ed, which I'll share with everybody. Maybe we'll put it in the newsletter about how as Americans, we have a license to root for more than one team or to cheer for more than one team. And so I would be cheering for the Italians, but they're not in it. They haven't been in it the last three times. So I was wearing an English shirt. So it's not an adopted Brit. You're now cheering for England. Well, yeah, I was wearing the jersey. I took some heat from the Scots like Alistair Campbell, but I feel like England has been very good to me, Caddy K. So I was wearing the jersey and cheering for them. But Americans, because we're all hyphenated, we can cheer for two teams and get away with it. Okay. And by the way, Alistair's writing into our blog saying how upset he is and what a traitor I am. He's not happy. We're going to talk. We are actually going to talk about that in our episode one. It's going to be an episode for founding members in our question and answer if you'd like to hear about the beef that Alistair Campbell has with Anthony Scaramucci over the jersey that he was wearing at the England game. You can see that. Okay. So Donald Trump has now been meddling in the World Cup. America's top goal scorer, Follerin Balogun, was sent off during the World Cup match against Bosnia-Herzegovina last week, which means that he would have been suspended for the next game. Which is a round of 16 game against Belgium, but the White House, including Donald Trump, called up FIFA president Gianni Infantino to review the suspension and FIFA on Sunday announced that it was going to reverse the call and Balogun, as his name, will be able to play in the game against Belgium. I think this raises a whole load of questions. First of all, I mean, I know that there was controversy about the red card in the first place. They are slow it down so much, and some people have said, including Rio Ferdinand, that actually he should never have been given a red card and that it was okay for the red card to be overturned. But I think it sets a terrible precedent, Anthony, that you can have the president of one country can call up the FIFA president and basically get a ruling overturned. I mean, now every country that's had a red card called against them, England had a red card at the Azteca Stadium, what, we're going to get the king now calling up Donald Trump, saying, "Oh, you know that state visit, that unprecedented second state visit we gave you? It comes with a cost." And the cost is a get-out-of-jail-free card for our England players. I mean, I don't know where this is going to stop, but clearly all of that flattery that Infantino has done to the Trump administration has now somehow paid off for the White House because they've managed to get Balogun back on the pitch, and maybe he should have been on the pitch anyway. Maybe that's. But a red card is a red card, and to have it overturned. I don't know. I don't know. I think it makes people start thinking, as you and Cara Swisher were saying, by the way, she was great last week. Thank you, Cara, for filling in for me and letting me have some time with my family in Maine. But as you guys were talking about, it makes people think there's a two-tier system, and America now looks like there's one rule for America and one rule for the rest of the world that is playing at the World Cup. What do you think? Well, one rule for Trump. I mean, so let me channel him, because I think it's important for people to understand him. You know I made $2.2 billion. Do you want to know why? Well, why, Mr. Trump, Mr. President? Well, because I'm a genius, and all the other presidents are idiots. It would be stupid for me not to do this, and so therefore, that's why I did it. And all the other presidents are stupid, and so why didn't they have a money grab for themselves and their families at the tune of several billion dollars? You know, Kamala Harris wouldn't have called Infantino and asked for the red card dissolution, because. Well, because it's me. I'm Donald Trump. So, you see, not only am I a rule breaker, but this is a representation of my coolness. This is a representation of my efficiency. Power. My strength. Yes. Right? And getting things done. Okay? But what it does is it breaks down norms, and what it does is it puts the United States in a weirdly vulnerable position. And so the bully in the school year. your doesn't do well okay the the hench in the local town doesn't do well because you know what happens caddy the other kids get together or the other people in the town they go to the sheriff and they say okay we're going to all team up and form a posse and take out the henchmen or we're going to take out the bully in the uh in the high school cafeteria you see so we we literally have biff do you remember biff from back to the future yeah we really literally have biff running the american presidency and overseeing the american government and we have all these willing sycophants that are sitting around him allowing for this no no rubio doesn't go to him and say hey this is like really bad for us this is bad publicity for no trump is like no this is great for us you're right the kamala harris thing is interesting because online a whole load of kind of trump maga voices online immediately came out and said kamala harris wouldn't have done this you see she would never have managed to get this red card overturned and they were seeing it from a position of pride as opposed to yeah duh she would not have called up infantino in order to bend the rules to get a red card overturned but they saw it as a position of strength i suppose the only thing on the schoolyard bully thing i mean maybe it's interesting that we're having this conversation as trump flies off to nato having um put out incredibly disparaging truth social posts about georgia maloney but i think the problem is that everybody's kind of looking around saying where is the alternative sheriff i mean who's going to i mean who's who's the sheriff that they're going to call right i mean they in you've got uefa the european football association coming out and saying this is a red line and when i heard that this morning i thought well red line what red line so what are you actually going to do about it because again it's the we're living in stephen miller's world the world is kind of run by power and yes maybe the only way that america can win is by cheating in this case or by having rules bended in their favor and i don't know that that really helps the american team and let's say they do beat belgium in their match with belgium how great are they going to feel about it but we're in this weird world where one country is not really playing by the rules of the world and yet there isn't a sheriff to call yet so what does that red line even mean well again you know there's a there's a professor uh old school professor at uh the jfk kennedy school of government at harvard his name is stephen walt he wrote a book about 15 maybe 20 years ago now about unnatural alliances you're going to go to war in iraq well guess what's going to happen there's going to be unnatural alliances people that were once enemies are now going to be friends to turn against you uh you know the the chinese and the russians have been fighting over land in siberia for 300 years the the chinese claim it was taken from them they want it back the russians have it you know what they dialed that whole thing down uh and they're lovey-dovey together and they've got huge painted portraits of each other uh and they're they're strolling around together arm and arm why because the enemy of my enemy is my friend and what the united states did a brilliant job of is we're the most powerful country in the world we have you know three percent of the population at the time of the end of the second world war fifty percent of the world's gdp but we're not going to be dicks about it okay we're going to try to handle ourselves in the most benevolent and the most rules-based way so that you're not threatened by us if anything you're going to want to be us you're going to want to have an alliance with us and we're going to sell you our hollywood movies and you know you're going to buy products from us hopefully and your teenagers are going to grow up because there's a lot of freedom and a lot of craziness in our country your teenagers are going to grow up and they're going to want to be us and they're going to be the top gun and they're going to hang out and say hey you know america's cool they're really trying generally to do the right thing did they screw up in vietnam have they misfired a few things in the middle east yeah but you know generally they're trying to do the right thing now it's like hey man who the hell are you guys you know we got we got people in canada that boo our national anthem right we've got people in florida you know my driver in florida you know because you know you know i love the disney cruise something you would never do by the way well if they had hot dogs on it maybe i would you never know no there's no chance i got the i got the under on that one as well but anyway that my driver picks me up at the airport he's like mooch there's nobody here what do you mean there's nobody here we're down 25 the canadians will not show up okay my business is suffering donald j trump donald j trump so now we're gonna upset the italians right they invited me to come to the 250th anniversary he's an american pope caddy did he accept the invitation no he did not accept the invitation he went to the shores where the immigrants were dying okay he went to the shores on the 4th of july and he said a prayer for the people that were trying to seek freedom in the west and they died on the shores uh from the crisis of those boats and those flotillas that's where the pope went right and that's where the pope went and that's right and if you read the pope's letter about america you know that's the that's you said well where's the leadership there's one american he happens to be the catholic head of the catholic church okay and rebooty wrote on the 4th of july it was it was a it was an american renewal message it was like guys are we going to really forget everything about where we've come from and and who we are and what we represent to the world i think this i think you're so right that we're at a moment where you've got some people in a moment where corruption is being normalized as you and cara spoke about last week and where you're seeing rules being bent in the way that mark carney has spoken about there was actually perhaps always one rule for one group of people in the so called rules based what are international rules based order that actually worked differently for some countries than for other countries but you have at in this moment you've got some people standing up like the pope and we're going to talk about the speeches that mamdani and trump gave over the weekend uh in the second half and mark carney who is clearly emerging as a kind of leader in nato trying to rally other countries to find another form of sheriff or another form of world order and then you have people like infantino who have decided to jump on the bandwagon and i think this is a moment where people's credentials and character are really being tested because this isn't a story about balagan and this isn't a story about the american team but they are getting sucked into the kind of muck here by infantino who is he's not running a football body he's he's running a favor exchange with a client list of one head of state donald trump and some people will play that game and think that they're benefiting and donald trump clearly thinks he's benefiting and and maga world clearly thinks that donald this is the way to do it you you exert strength you exert pressure you show how powerful you are and other people will have to bend to you okay so i don't know infantino but my guess is he's not your best friend no but he wants proximity to power which is obvious right he's hanging out with ludnick at the games he's gave trump the fifa peace prize i mean i don't even know what that is but he gave it to him and so he's like okay you know what you know this is a loyalty program okay and this isn't corruption to me this is me just wanting to be inside the circle of significance around the president united states you know you know caddy this is the irony of the whole thing i mean i'm not and everybody knows that listens to this podcast i'm not that familiar with football at least your version of football but you know when i looked at the play and i watched the repay five or six times you know i don't know did he deserve a red card for that somebody said he was mouthing off to the ref he was going to get a yellow and then ended up getting a red card but the point is that he he could have gotten a reprieve you know the the irony is he probably deserved a reprieve i'm not a fan of america i certainly would want the kid to play in the game but the way this went down is so bitter and it tastes so bitter yeah that's the problem is that trump has now ruined it for everybody you know and it's like and you know what ronaldo got a reprieve a few years back right um yeah i did a little bit of research right adamende got a reprieve i don't even know if i pronounced the guy's name right they got it without a presidential phone call i'm sort of loving the anthony scaramucci as football soccer pro i'm just saying this is so bad and that this is this is also to me it's you know daniel patrick morninghand said we have to be careful with our government we don't want to define deviancy downward where every every step is a downward step every step is a step in a way where this is the absence of leadership okay this level of cronyism is the absence of leadership like a real leader yeah would have let the chips fall where they fell okay but he's bragging to his buddies look at me and look how great i am i got i got this guy back into the team i'm the man you're not the man you're like a you're like a real overgrown 80 year old jerk off is what you actually are and what you're doing is you're embarrassing us on the world stage and you hurt the team now you hurt the team because that that's the point is you hurt everybody else there were a lot of people out there like hey the americans are having a good run here they probably won't win the world cup but they're having a good run good for america now you're gonna have 100 million people 200 million people i don't know you pick this thing is 10 times the size of the american superbowl so you tell me the hundreds of millions of people they're going to be rooting against or you know not cheering for america i think if you use the word root in australia it's a bad word so i gotta stop saying it but but you know the the point i'm making is this is so embarrassing but it's so indicative of where the country is now with its leadership and i gotta bring this up because larry david had rob reiner the late rob reiner in his last role ever playing george washington and they released this thing over the fourth of july weekend and it was literally some of the funniest shit that i've ever seen but it was it was larry and george washington in the town square and larry was basically saying to george well suppose you have an imbecile that runs the white house and you're going to be the leader of the white house suppose you have somebody that steals two billion dollars suppose you have somebody that ignores the the judicial judiciary suppose he's out there murdering his citizens in minneapolis as an example suppose we have a new state called me i mean and rob reiner sitting there as george washington with the hat on well that could never happen that could never happen but it it happened it happened but they they eviscerated trump you know and you know the guy's dead and of course trump went off on him etc you know when he died and he's dead and he's dead and he's dead and he's i mean it's just embarrassing murder it's just another embarrassing thing you and i lucky enough to know uh a world somebody who has actually played in a world cup who knows soccer better than either of us do certainly and i reached out to gary lineker who by the way on their netflix show the rest is football they had this uh soccer official saying i don't know so i've become kind of so transatlantic i'm now soccer and football my i'm a little my head is in a spin about it but this football official saying that if he was in the u.s um if the u.s football association had been involved in this fifa decision then he would resign over this because he thought it was so egregious but here's what gary said he texted me he said i hear sycophantino has gone into hiding deep inside the bowels of trump and that's what people do right yeah they they think it's going to pay them back and i think you're right i think this doesn't help the american team and that's what's sad about this and the in belgium i was talking to a friend of mine in brussels reaching out to a friend of mine in brussels who said the americans are already out of favor over the weekend because they commandeered what's meant to be a public park on a very hot weekend and they may put up a they had a party there for the 250th birthday but they made it private so people who actually live in brussels couldn't actually use the park and so they were already pissed off and then this happened and now they're super mad about it but let's see it's one thing to be bad let's see what the rest of the world's red line is when people talk about red lines and donald trump and america at the moment as they will do nato what do they actually mean and do they have an alternative because i'm not quite sure that they do yet but it doesn't you're right it doesn't help the team it doesn't help america's reputation long term just just just remember something about us and this is for my the americans that are listening in you know you're converting american soft power now into a liability and over 80 years american soft power was an asset we started out with a hershey bar to a kid as gi's were leaving world war ii and now we're bullying the most sacred game in the world the world cup football we're now bullying the leadership of the most sacred tournament in the most sacred game in the world to curry a obvious and transparent favor so you're turning our soft power into a liability and remember it taxes the things that we're selling caddy right you know we what are we selling we want people to buy our beer they want people to be tourists here and uh we've got the la olympics coming up in 2028 we want people to show up for it and uh and by the way and by the way we were getting very good press that's the point anthony this has actually been going super well you've got all these lovely videos of fans from around the world loving america being welcomed by americans you've got the kansas university band learning the algerian national anthem they could play it to the players when they came you've got german tourists crossing the country and posting really sweet videos on instagram actually america was doing well it didn't need i mean maybe they weren't going to win about with against belgium maybe they will win because ballo is in it'll change the whole thing and they'll get to the semi-finals or whatever and then they'll say see we were justified but it's going to leave a bitter taste in everybody's mouth and i think that's the problem because you play the bully in the schoolyard maybe everybody kowtows to you but nobody's going to love you for it they're not going to thank you for it listen i mean you didn't you didn't fix you didn't fix the game you just proved to people that things are fixable okay and that is again another chink in the armor of aspiration young people look at that and they're like oh wow i mean this thing everybody's on the take and how am i going to get ahead things are rigged things are rigged it's rigged against me there's a two-tier system i think you're right i think that's the really damaging thing here is that people lose their confidence in the system and institutions and it's not surprising okay we're going to take a break come back and talk about doge remember doge well it ended this weekend hey parents how do you make smarter choices for your kids college today that's where sally can help with sally you can find scholarships funding options tools and guidance all in one place and if you need a loan sally has options for different families and different situations college is only worth it if you do it right so don't just help your kid go help them go smarter sally.com go parents this podcast is supported by anthropic the public benefit corporation behind claude everyone's got a hard question about ai your job your kids where it's going anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way because there's hope in hard questions ask yours at claude.ai slash spotify and keep thinking that's claude.ai slash spotify the right window treatments change everything your sleep your privacy the way every room looks and feels at blinds.com we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to 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there's a real impact on the midterm elections but this isn't a midterms that's being watched obviously around the world and in the united states it's going to be close certainly in the senate um and it's going to be an exciting race for the house so it's fun for us to get out and come and meet you all we'll be taking your questions uh so get a ticket and come and say hi we'd love to meet you so caddy let's talk about you know there's one thing about america that is never defeated okay and america marches on and this is government spending caddy k okay so we ended supposedly doge on the 4th of july 2026 we're supposed to have two trillion dollars of savings we're going to come into the government with a chainsaw and we're going to cut all the programs and we're going to find all the waste and destroy all the waste did that happen caddy well you know you texted me and said let's talk about doge um last at the end of last week or over the weekend i was like why are we talking about doge and it was because i had completely forgotten anthony that doge uh was even ending on july the 4th i mean it just it we haven't heard anything the doge website i think has been dormant since january we have heard nothing about those young kids who are running around washington taking a chainsaw to everything it it's sort of one of those organizations that just went to sleep on itself it's like a kid that stops doing at homework and and hopes the teachers won't notice that's what it feels like but no i mean that if let we can run through the numbers what was meant to save two trillion the doge website says it saved about 215 billion through job cuts and contract cancellations that even that 215 billion figure has been very disputed and i think when you put that in the context of a federal budget which is seven trillion it feels like a drop in the ocean and i think even that number i think that 215 billion number on the doge website i i don't believe it i've seen lots of reporting to suggest that that's not true no it's not it's not it's not believable because they they fired people and then they had to quietly walk the people back into their offices they cut programs and then they quietly had to restore them doge did do tremendous this damage to USAID. And they did cut those programs. We probably have 800,000 people that have died as a result of those programs being cut. You're right. Atul Gawande, who's a fantastic doctor from Harvard, is citing numbers a bit like that, 600,000 to 800,000. I mean, that's a phenomenal number of people. And the USAID budget was not very big to start with. I know Americans think it's big, but it was not very big to start with. So that number is chilling, right? 600,000 people dead. Yeah. I wanted to bring this up to viewers and listeners because I want them to understand the beast of the American government. I want them to understand the processes in place. There was a great book. You remember the legendary broadcaster, David Brinkley? Yes, of course. Remember he had that television show on WABC, and then he was Huntley Brinkley for NBC. He wrote a book about 35 years ago, Washington Ghosts. War. And in the book, he explained that we switched the way the income taxes were done, where we now have to take a deduction on our payroll. So it's an immediate payroll deduction. So if you make a dollar in the United States, the United States government takes a sliver of their taxes, and then you get a net on your payroll. That didn't happen prior to the Second World War. And this transformed the ability of the government to flex on people with their taxes. Because under the psychological theory that you never got the money, you just got the net. And so they were able to always skim off the top successfully. And guess what happened? They created this colossal spending, and they created these colossal programs, and this huge, huge government. And Cady, what ended up happening was every time you go into the budgetary process, you want to prove your chops. And so you ask for, three, five, 7% increase. And then because we now don't have a process anymore, I mean, that went away with Obama when he was fighting with Paul Ryan way back in 2011. We have all these continuing resolutions now. So what used to happen was the president would submit its budget to the Congress. Congress would then make some changes, bring it back to the president. They would wrangle over it, they would approve it, and then the president would sign the budget, and the Congress would pass it. And so we're not going to do that anymore. So all we do now is have these continuing resolutions. And so Cady, your department is going to get a 3% increase this year. The War Department or the Department of Defense is going to get a 7% increase. And this bloatation has caused a runaway train of spending in the United States. Moreover, there's no accountability on the spending. And so the Doge thing was never going to happen. It would have been like a mouse, standing in front of a bullet train, Cady. My question for you then, Anthony, is if Doge came in and didn't exactly the things that you're talking about, the military spending, the big entitlements programs, and they clearly made a decision that they were not going to touch those. I think probably Elon Musk thought maybe in his most grandiose moments that he could touch those things, but he quickly realized those were third rails that he couldn't go near. So my question to you is, what was the point of Doge really? Was it really just to go after political grievances that Musk and the president and other people around Donald Trump had around things like DEI and USAID and programs like that? In which case, I suppose they would argue that they succeeded because they did cut DEI. People are very, very concerned about trying to do anything around diversity and inclusion. They're terrified of being on the wrong side of the law. And they did manage to do this incredible damage. I think it's something that's not talked about enough. I'm so glad you brought it up, the number of deaths there have been because of the cutting of USAID. Is that really what this was about? Was it just politics? Was it never about trying to really get away with waste, fraud, and abuse, and excess, and what did you call it? Blotation? That was a good word, by the way. Probably not a word, but it's George Bush's 80th birthday today. I'd like making up words. We'll put it in. We'll put it into the Scrabble Dictary. I was playing a lot of Bananagrams and Scrabble over my vacation with my kids, and I think we'll put that in the Scrabble Dictary. It was a good one. Happy birthday to President Bush today, a term in 80. So is that what it was about, politics, not really about economics? I actually think it's the holy trinity of lies. And let me just give you the three lies. Okay, ready? Lie number one, we're going to end forever wars. Lie number two, we're going to divulge the Epstein files. And as correctly predicted, on this program, you ain't ever seeing those files, and good luck to you, and Trump's going to get away with it. Okay? And then lie number three, we're going to make the government more efficient, and we're talking about a man who spent $8.1 trillion in his first term, and he's now, if you add up the stuff that he's done in his second term, he's 28.1% of the overall budget deficit of the entire nation's 250 years. So he's been president for six years, okay? And I'm not blaming that on him, by the way. I think it's very important people to understand this is the system. I would imagine if Joe Biden were president right now, or Kamala Harris, we would have this aggressive spending. But you see, what Doge could have done, Caddy, is they could have returned to the pay-as-you-go rules way back in the 1990s. And basically, what happened was we had guardrails on the system. The big, beautiful spending bill could have done that. Could have said, okay, listen, Dick Gephardt got together with George Herbert Walker Bush and Dick Darman, the OMB director, and we created these guardrails where if you wanted to have a tax cut, no problem. You had to find something in the budget to cut. If you wanted more social spending, well, then guess what? You had to increase taxes, right? This got Bush in trouble, the first Bush, because we went into a recession and he wanted more social spending. So he raised taxes, even though he promised no more taxes. So the point is, this worked. It got Bill Clinton. Clinton adhered to it, and we're printing a, we're printing a budget surplus in 2000. We had a $240 billion surplus. But the Doge thing is important to bring up because you're on a path of unfixability if you're not going to handle it in a way that governments work. See, Elon went in there and said, well, I'm a business guy. I cut 80% of the costs at Twitter, and Twitter survived. He didn't bother to learn the subject. Yes, exactly. This is the government. You can't run the, when I hear a business guy say, I'm going to come into the government and I'm going to run the government like a business and business leaders know more and blah, blah, blah, it's not a business caddy. So it's just a further leg in the stool of our general incompetence about how we're running the things that could be run more properly and run with like good diligence and policy execution. I feel a little bit more cynical about it than you do, because I know that when Musk, sometime around the middle of last year, when Doge was wrapping up and after he had left, he did Katie Miller, Stephen Miller's wife's podcast. And he said that it was only a little bit successful and they wouldn't do it again. But I think that's because Elon Musk had one agenda, which was end waste, fraud and abuse. But actually the politicos around Donald Trump and in Magaland and Stephen Miller had another agenda, which was to end, you know, wokery. And under the kind of broad umbrella of wokery, they put diversity and inclusion programs, and they also put anything to do with international development. I was with my daughter who I've spoken about on the podcast before, Maya, I'm sure she wouldn't mind me saying this, but she had a malaria research grant that was cut through the Doge cuts when she finished her PhD program. And she was saying this week up in Maine that actually it's interesting, exactly what you say now, the state department is trying to ramp up its research around, infectious diseases, global infectious diseases, because they realized when the Ebola breakout happened in Africa, oh my goodness, this could come to us. And guess what we've done? Doge cut all of our research into things like malaria and Ebola, and it's actually going to come back and hurt us. So even though they may have felt in the kind of MAGA universe that this was great, we don't need to help the rest of the world. America's been had, which is a constant refrain of Donald Trump's, whether it's to do with defense spending or to do with, international development, why should they be leeching off us? Actually, these are the kind of things that in very practical ways to protect American citizens, it actually helps to have an Ebola research program or a malaria research program. But they cut the money, now they have to hire people back again and it ended up costing twice as much, just like you said. What a dumb example, right? It's just general incompetence, but it's also born from the idea of what I call Potomac fever. And again, as a mea culpa, I had Potomac fever, so I understand Potomac fever. I'm smarter than you. I'm richer than you. I'm going to come into the government and do things better than you. See, if Elon had said, "Hey, listen, I went out and I've got 25 year veterans of the GAO, the government administrative office. I went to old Bush people. I went to old Clinton people. I went to old, even Biden people, for that matter. I made a bipartisan committee. They know all the tricks in Washington about spending. Everybody wants to heal this thing and make it better. I'm going to come back to you in about what their game plan would be. And maybe it was a hybrid thing. Maybe it was reintroduction of the pay-as-you-go laws. And maybe here are some of the tricks that go on in Washington. All of these people here are former tricksters, okay? Let's untrick the budget, and I'm not going to save $2 trillion. You mean if he hadn't just got on stage with a chainsaw, took your route as opposed to the chainsaw route on stage, which is the image he wanted? By his own admission, he's admitted to his buddies that the chainsaw was a moment of hysteria. Was not his best moment. And not understanding things. But again, remember, you could like Bill Clinton, dislike Bill Clinton. He did actually balance the budget. He got it. He and Bob Rubin. Yes, his people were fighting with him over it. Bob Rubin told him to hold to pay-as-you-go, even though it was a Bush idea. Clinton did it. You also have to remember that Clinton and Gore had this thing called reinventing government, and you had 426,000 positions in the government eliminated under their, watch, okay? And, you know, they did it in a bipartisan way, and they did it with a general consensus. If you went to Washington right now, and you said to anybody, and you live in Washington, let me ask you the question. You went to Washington and said, guys, do we have a spending problem here in Washington? Even the people that are doing the spending, what would they say, Kat? Clearly, yes, absolutely. Okay, we have a spending problem. So are there incremental things that we could do to shave off some points here and there to reduce the spending? And the answer is also yes. And my point is we could have handled it with that level of gradualism and put a 25-year plan in place instead of a 25-minute one. And without putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work, which they did kind of overnight, which decimated Washington as a city. I mean, it's really hurt the economy of Washington, but more importantly, it's hurt people around the world because of the way they cut this. I agree with you. They could have done it. They could have done it the right way, but that would have taken, they could have done it the right way, but that would have taken, We're going to cut the money from the disadvantage. We're going to culturally send a message of DAI, and we're going to allow the president of the United States to take between $2 and $4 billion for himself while we're doing this. And we're going to have rampant insider trading by the elected officials that are legal. And if they don't file the disclosure on time, which Trump didn't, we'll have a $200 fine. We'll slap them with a $200 fine on their road to making $2 billion. And then you wonder why people have lost the plot as it relates to their government, or they've lost the faith as it relates to their government. But again, the reason I wanted to bring all of this up, this is going to get worse, Kat. There's going to be a 2028 presidential candidate that is going to also blow this off. It's the time bomb America is sitting on. We're going to be facing a $50 trillion budget deficit. And that means, and the only way we're going to pay for it, Katty, is through the pernicious, regressive form of taxation known as inflation. Because these cowards are not going to tax the people. They're just going to steal the money out of their bank accounts. So that $1,000 you have in your bank account, I'm really sorry. It only has $800 worth of purchasing power now. And to me, this has to be fixed. This 100% has to be fixed. And the American people have to be told the truth. And they have to be explained, yes, it is fixable, but it's a 25-year plan of fixability. The only way you can fix it is with some sort of bipartisan cooperation. Because otherwise, a party comes in, tries to fix it, and the other party runs ads saying they're trying to steal money from seniors. They're going to introduce death panels. They're going to do the hard stuff. And politically, it's undoable. So you have to have some kind of bipartisan cooperation to do this thing, which is very hard to do and is going to take some kind of restraint. And probably a little bit of pain. And nobody wants to cooperate at the moment. So I don't know that it's actually feasible. It would be nice if that was July the 4th's present to America. So, Katty, let me just ask you this question, if you don't mind. So we're not going to fix it. There was rhetoric over the weekend. The mayor of New York gave a speech. And the speech was very polarizing, Katty. And I watched the speech three times because I really wanted to understand what he was doing. And my old nemesis, Steve Bannon, said something about the speech, which, by the way, I agreed with. Look out. This guy gets it. He's coming for everybody. And I'm going to tell the people listening, if you like the system, Mondani and his people are going to blow the system up. I'm just letting you know. If you don't want to fix the current system, which made America prosperous and deepened the well of the middle class, and you want to go in the current system that we're going in, where there's more have-nots than haves, and there's a lot of anxiety, then people like Mayor Mondani are going to come in and they're going to explain the way they're going to change the system. So what was your reaction to his speech? And what was your reaction to the polarity of reactions to his speech? Well, I mean, look, thinking about what you've just said about budget deficits, obviously one of the routes to helping the budget deficit or to shrink the budget deficit is to grow your tax base. Well, one of the routes to growing the tax base is to have more people. Americans are not having more babies. So actually, having some more immigrants is one of the ways that you could do that. So there's an economic argument for what he was saying, which is we should be opening our doors, which is how he started the speech. I listened to the speech and I saw what you had sent me about how some people in MAGA world are saying he's, you know, he's screwed up because his tone was too angry. I think you can make critiques of the country. And I thought the speech was very interesting. It was not the kind of smiley Mamdani of FIFA and the Knicks. This was a, much more serious Mamdani. He made some very interesting points about the people in the country who don't have anything and those who think who have power. I mean, it was a real power and powerless speech and the two sides of America and the people who have power think that only people should be allowed into the country who have the right skin color and the right tone of voice and the right accent and that that is unoriginal of them and weak of them. But he did it in a very serious way. And although he never mentioned Trump's name and Trump never mentioned his name in a way, Trump's speech at Mount Rushmore and Mamdani's speech sitting there behind George Washington desk in New York City were the kind of dueling closing arguments. I think for 2028 is what we're going to hear a lot of from whether it's J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio or whoever it is. And we even heard it from Donald Trump. The communists are coming. The socialists are coming. It's never going to work in America against people like Mamdani who are saying, we have tried everything else. We cannot afford rent. The prices are too high. Groceries are too high. Jobs are disappearing to AI. What do you want us to do? It's the kind of break glass and reach for the emergency lever moment. And I think that's what he's doing. The only thing I would say is I still think I know they've had successes. They had successes last week in Colorado, the Democratic Socialists of America. I think Mamdani is in a communications league of his own. And for this to really take root, across the country, this movement, I know how frustrated people are. It's very rare to have the communications ability of Mamdani. And I haven't seen any of the other candidates. And by the way, they are still a tiny minority of the candidates who are winning around the country in the Democratic primaries. It tends to be more of the normie type of candidates who are winning. But I haven't seen other Democratic Socialists of America have candidates from that party have the same communication skills as Mamdani. I don't know. I know they've had successes. Let's see how much influence they have on 2028. Listen, this kid is a very talented politician, you know, and I'm not in agreement with him. I would love to debate him intellectually, but he's doing something that has worked in America. And he's channeling Frederick Douglass. Barack Obama channeled Frederick Douglass. You remember he was the great African American self-taught orator who influenced the Reconstruction and tried to make the country fairer. And something that Douglass said that Mamdani is capturing, which is this flawed but redeemable patriotism. You see, you know, this white supremacy patriotism is America white and right and love it or leave it, get out of the country if you don't love it. I thought the symbolism was important. He's at Washington's desk, which is in his office, okay? And remember, that's where the Declaration of Independence was first read to the continent. It was a presidential army, okay, right from Washington's desk. And I don't know, I thought the symbolism was really important. In a world of trillionaires and monopolies now and oligarchs that are controlling the government, we're off the mark. We're off the mark of what was making America great after the war. We're way off the mark. I'm not convinced that his style is going to bring us back to the mark, but I'm telling you, it's going to resonate with people. And to have not space in America, his influence is going to grow. It may not be democratic socialist, Caddy, but he'll end up becoming a kingmaker in that party. Interestingly, Anthony, one of our journalists, Izzy, from our newsletter who works at Goldhanger, has been in America speaking to people from across the country over the last week and asking what they think about Trump and the state of politics on this anniversary period. And she found it was very moving. Some people cried. There were Latinos who were scared to give their names. names, others who described the demise of the American Dream And you can read that piece if you sign up via the link in the episode description. Happy 4th again, everybody. I had a great weekend. I hope you had fun with your families too. And Anthony, I will see you this week for a very big event. We're going to have fun. We're going to Wimbledon together. I'll be with you at Wimbledon tomorrow. Hopefully, I can put my contacts back in. I'm looking forward to it. Okay, everybody. Thanks so much for listening. And if you'd like to get our members-only episode, we're going to be answering your questions. You can sign up at TheRestIsPoliticsUS.com to become a founding member. Bye, guys. Thanks, guys. Have a great day. $15 a month. And unlike most people, it's not just for you. It's for everyone. And unlike ice cream, it won't drip down your wrist or look nothing like the picture. 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