Edan Alexander Release: Is the Trump/Netanyahu Split Becoming More Real? Are Republicans Moving Toward Populist Economics? With Matt Stoller
While it is still unclear whether the reported rift between Trump and Netanyahu will be lasting, Trump continues to deprioritize Israel, angering pro-Israel fanatics like Ben Shapiro. Plus: Trump issues an executive order cutting prescription drug prices. Journalist Matt Stoller explains why he's skeptical of the policy and discusses the significance of Republicans' economic populism movement. ------------------------ Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update: Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook LinkedIn
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every single Monday through Friday, no exceptions, at 7 p.m. Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, on our program last week, we asked whether there was anything really authentic or meaningful about various reports suggesting a growing rift between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
There was some evidence to substantiate that suspicion, but as we noted last week, far more than that would be required before believing that there has really been a split between any Israeli prime minister and any American president, let alone one as surrounded and The last time there was any real divergence, real split between the two governments was during the Bush 41 administration.
But all of that was quickly resolved by a smear campaign led by Bill Clinton, who was running against Bush 41, to brand the Bush administration "anti-Semitic" for daring to tell Israel that some of its behavior was contrary to American interests and therefore might jeopardize their loan guarantees if it continues.
This is still my view.
I want to see far more proof before concluding that this divergence or even animosity between the two governments is both real and enduring.
But the evidence for this view is now far more ample and concrete than it was when we reviewed it last week.
This split extends to several different Middle East regions and a variety of different agenda items for both Washington and Tel Aviv.
Both the American and Israeli press are reporting the anger on the part of Israeli officials for feeling abandoned by President Trump.
We'll show you all that evidence and also review the latest in the U.S.-Israel relationship, including what that might mean for Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, and beyond.
Then President Trump yesterday announced that he was about to post one of the most consequential and important decisions he had ever made.
Maybe even anyone has ever made.
A couple of hours later, he then posted that news.
Namely, he was issuing an executive order to achieve what Democrats have long said was one of their goals but never did anything about.
Namely, reducing the price of medication and other pharmaceutical products for Americans who have long paid significantly more than anyone else in the world for those same...
pharmaceutical products.
It is hard to find anyone in Washington willing to disparage Trump's goal.
I mean, there are plenty of people in Washington who are actually opposed to that goal, those funded by Big Pharma, and that is many of them in Washington, but they are unwilling to say so in such a brazen and shamelessly public way.
But there are questions about whether there is a more effective and guaranteed way to accomplish Trump's goals, such as having Congress enact the substance of its executive order in order to make it less vulnerable to judicial challenges by Big Pharma.
There are also questions surrounding whether the Republican Party is finally willing to embrace at least some of the economic populism it has long been promising.
To help us sort through these questions, as well as the latest and very significant developments in the U.S. government's fight against big tax antitrust violations, we will have with us one of the most knowledgeable analysts of all of these issues.
He's Matt Stoller.
He's a fellow at the Economic Liberties Institute.
He publishes Big by Matt Stoller on SUBSAC.
He's also the author of Goliath.
We'll be right back.
He's been working on these issues for a very long time, including a potential alliance between the Democratic and Republican economic populace.
And so he's really the perfect guest to help us review all of that.
Before we get to him and all of that, we have a few programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update.
after this quick message from our sponsor.
I was watching an interview the other day with a woman who was in her 40s, was married and had kids, and she was saying how she really wishes that she still could be in college, that she actually misses college.
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hillsdale.edu/clenn *music* In terms of the US role in the world and its foreign policy, there have been few aspects or components of the US government more significant than its relationship with Israel.
You can certainly make a case that that relationship with Israel, that inextricable link with Israel, has brought the US into Numerous different wars over the years.
It has also resulted in a contract of dependency where the United States not only gives Israel $4 billion every year in a deal negotiated by Obama on his way out the door with Netanyahu, some of which, most of which, is spent on buying U.S. weapons, so it's like a gift certificate to the Israelis, but not all of it.
And, of course, we are currently involved in the Middle East in several different conflicts, largely as a result of our relationship with Israel.
So if that were ever to change in any way...
It would be momentous.
The consequences would be difficult to overstate.
And yet, that's precisely why there's so much money and so much power and so much organized pressure brought to bear on American politicians to make sure that doesn't ever happen.
And it hasn't happened for decades.
As I said, the last time it happened was in the George Bush 41 administration.
You had Bush's Secretary of State, James Baker, who was just an old foreign policy hand and very much believed in a realist view that U.S. interests should come first.
He worked with the National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who was also a realist.
Obama once said that was one of his favorite foreign policy officials was Brent Scowcroft, because Obama wanted to adopt a realist view of foreign policy as well.
And both of them understood that One of the main problems for the United States in the Middle East, and generals have said this over the years, and all kinds of officials, national security officials, was the fact that the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is ongoing, and the United States is so overwhelmingly,
exclusively on one side of that conflict, namely fueling and funding Israel, that the entire Arab world always watches the Israelis killing innocent Palestinians, blowing up their children, Israel bombing Lebanon, Israel bombing Syria, taking land.
And that entire part of the world understands that we're at fault for that because we're the ones enabling it with our arms and money.
And so the position of the Bush 41 administration was we want a two-state solution.
And this was at a time when Israel started expanding West Bank settlements in a way that made it very obvious that very soon a two-state solution would be impossible.
Because the settlers will have taken up so much of the West Bank that there would be no more viable agreement to do between Israel and the Palestinians other than trying to remove the settlers.
And they're armed to the teeth and made very clear they're religious zealots.
They believe that land has been given to them by God and they would fight and die even against the Israeli government in order to keep that land.
So it became an untenable solution.
So the Bush administration said, you want all these loan guarantees from us that we keep giving you?
Well, we want something from you.
We want you to stop allowing expansion of settlements in the West Bank.
And the Israel lobby went ballistic.
Both the Republican and the Democratic Party, the establishment wings, there were huge numbers of pro-Israel fanatics from all parts of the country who were basically there just to guarantee the U.S.-Israeli relationship as there is now.
And lots of Republicans as well.
And they called Jim Baker before the Congress and they just bashed him and berated him and maligned him and constantly implied that he was an anti-Semite just for looking out for U.S. interests and not subordinating U.S. interests to Israeli interests.
And understanding as a foreign country, if they want something from the United States, they have to give something as well.
That is not allowed.
And Baker was vilified after, you know, 50 years of noble service in Washington and a...
Long-standing career as a respected lawyer going in and out of government, as anti-Semite.
And the person who led that campaign, to call him that, was Bill Clinton, who was running against Bush 41 in 1992, wanted to ensure the support of as many Jews as possible, as many evangelicals as possible.
And so he just went around saying the Bush 41 administration is stoking anti-Semitism by standing up to Israel.
That was the Democrats who had that campaign.
And ever since, no attempt to...
Separate, at least publicly, from Israel has ever been attempted by an American president.
I'm talking about 30 years since that happened.
35 years.
And that's why the growing evidence that there is some kind of a rift.
And I have a couple of friends and a couple, I've seen a couple of analysts saying, no, no, you're being completely deceived and fooled.
This is all a...
Staged plot on the part of Israel and the U.S. to make it seem like they have tension, to make it appear as though Trump really wants a deal with Iran, which they're just doing to soften up Iran's expectations so that they can attack them in a surprised way more easily.
Now, you can't prove something like that.
You can't prove a negative.
Like, hey, you can't prove that, hey, there's no conspiracy here.
Time will tell, but what is happening for certain...
Is the public discourse has changed in a way we haven't ever seen before.
With U.S. officials openly telling the Israelis, like, sorry, but you don't control our government.
And we don't have to get your permission to do things.
And you have Steve Whitcoff, Trump's very aggressive envoy, who's trying to get a diplomatic solution in Ukraine with Russia, as well as in Gaza, as well as with the Gulf states, as well as rescuing hostages.
Basically blaming Israel for the fact that there are still hostages there.
Something that, by the way, the hostages' families have done as well, saying Netanyahu doesn't care about the hostages, doesn't really want them there.
That's the pretext.
And so we're seeing lots of different examples of things that would have been unthinkable even three months ago when it comes to Israel and the United States.
Here is the latest example.
Earlier today, it was announced that Hamas had released an American citizen who's also an Israeli citizen named Eden Alexander.
And though the media and the government, various politicians keep calling him, oh, an American from New Jersey, he's actually an Israeli citizen who went to Israel, not to sightsee, and then got...
Kidnapped by Hamas, but he was in the IDF.
He was in a foreign army fighting for a foreign country.
He was in uniform.
He was in a military base when he was detained by Hamas.
This isn't just some innocent civilian.
This is somebody who was fighting in a war.
But, obviously, anybody who's in captivity, who shouldn't be, and is released, that's something that is positive.
But the amazing thing was that Trump and Whitcoff negotiated the release of Alexander without...
The involvement of the Israelis.
They went around the Israelis, directly negotiated with Hamas, using Qatar and Egypt as their mediators, as their go-betweens.
And as a result, Hamas, as a good gesture of faith to Trump, released the last American hostage that's alive in Gaza.
Here you see from Axios Hamas to release Israeli-American hostage as a gesture to Trump.
Quote, Hamas said Sunday it will release Israeli-American hostage Eden Alexander, who has been held for over 550 days as part of an effort to reach a ceasefire deal and resume humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.
Alexander's release is also thought to be a gesture by Hamas to President Trump as he visits the Middle East later this week, sources said.
The Israeli's prime minister's office said American officials had informed Israel of Hamas'intention to release Alexander as a gesture to the U.S. without any conditions or anything in return.
Israel was preparing for the possibility that this move would materialize.
Per Israeli policy, there will be no ceasefire while negotiations take place and Israel remains committed to defeating Hamas.
So this is yet again, like Trump's decision to stop bombing the Houthis in exchange for A mere promise that the Houthis would stop bombing or attacking U.S. ships, but not insisting on any condition that they stop bombing Israeli ships, where this is something the Israelis weren't involved in, and they only learned about it afterwards.
I mean, this is unheard of for the U.S. to do anything in the Middle East without Israel right by its side, making sure that Israel is pleased with whatever it is that we're doing and has a veto power over it as well.
And in these two cases and others, as we'll show you, Trump has completely dispensed with that publicly.
Here from the Times of Israel, they're talking about this a lot in Israel as well.
Quote, source, U.S. didn't brief Israel on efforts to free Eden Alexander until after a deal was reached.
And I thought Trump's language that notified the world of this deal was extremely notable as well.
He said this, I am happy to announce that Eden Alexander...
An American citizen who has been held hostage since October 2023 is coming home to his family.
I'm grateful to all those involved in making this monumental news happen.
This was a step taken in good faith toward the United States and the efforts of the mediators, Qatar and Egypt.
To put an end to this very brutal war.
Put an end to this very brutal war and return all living hostages and their remains to their loved ones.
Hopefully this is the first step of those final steps necessary to end this brutal conflict.
I look very much forward to that day of celebration.
So you notice there that Trump in thinking the people who made it happen didn't mention Israel at all.
Even though this is an IDF soldier that the U.S. got released.
This is now Trump repeatedly calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
Now, again, Trump did facilitate a ceasefire that was meaningful at the time the Palestinians celebrated it.
And Netanyahu from the beginning was saying, it's not a real ceasefire deal.
We're not actually going to go through with it.
We're just going to get some of our hostages back and go back to fighting.
And that's what ended up happening.
But now you have Trump doing something Biden never did, which is saying this war has to end now.
Here was Netanyahu's announcement earlier today trying to make it seem as though he was okay with this, even though the Israeli media is reporting that he's enraged.
Here he is saying that he's just so very happy for the release of this American hostage.
This is a very emotional moment.
Alexander has returned home.
We embrace him.
And we embrace his family.
This was achieved thanks to our military pressure and the diplomatic pressure applied by President Trump.
This is a winning combination.
I spoke with President Trump today.
He told me, I am committed to Israel.
I am committed to continuing to work with you in close cooperation in order to achieve all of our war objectives, releasing all of the hostages and defeating Hamas.
That goes together.
They are combined with each other.
Now, Israel has been using the Incomprehensible military force against a largely civilian population of two million people for a year and six months.
And at no point did Hamas release Alexander.
They've often offered hostage deals, and as the Israeli press has reported continuously, In fact, there was a big news report on Channel 12 News, a mainstream Israeli television outlet that's very supportive of the government, that Netanyahu has constantly stood in the way of getting hostages released because he doesn't want the hostages released because the Israeli public has made clear that they want an end to the war in exchange for bringing the hostages back.
And so the minute the hostages are back, it's much more difficult for Netanyahu to justify the continuation of this war.
And therefore to keep himself out of prosecution and corruption trials and all the things that face him if he's finally out of office.
Here is Barak Ravid, the former IDF intelligence officer who now works as a journalist reporting on Israel for Axios, who said this on Twitter on X. Breaking.
After meeting with White House Envoy Steve Witkoff, Netanyahu is sending Israeli negotiators to Doha to resume talks on a broader hostage and ceasefire deal, Prime Minister Oph has said.
Now, this is something the Israelis have not really been doing in any sort of good faith.
The Israelis have said, Joe Biden, we're so grateful to him.
Never at any point did he tell us, I'm pressuring you to enter a ceasefire.
At no point did he even say that, even though Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and their lackeys in the press were saying, oh, they're working tirelessly on a ceasefire.
The Israelis say, no, actually, they never even pushed us to get a ceasefire.
And now you have Trump on his way to the Gulf states, where he'll visit Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, saying that we want the Israelis to go and meet with Negotiators and mediators of Hamas in Qatar, with Qatar mediating, and Trump could mediate as well to try and bring an end to this war.
Trump wants an end to this war.
In the Jerusalem Post yesterday, they quoted Trump's Middle Eastern envoy as saying, quote this, We want to bring hostages home, but Israel is not willing to end the war, Whitcoff says.
The Trump administration's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, criticized Israel in a meeting with hostage families.
According to a Sunday evening report by Channel 12, quote, We want to bring the hostages home, but Israel is not willing to end the war.
Israel is prolonging it, despite the fact that we don't see where else we can go and that an agreement must be reached, Witkoff commented during the meeting, according to sources present.
However, he added an optimistic message, saying, quote, There is currently an opportunity window that we hope Israel and all the mediators will take advantage of.
We are putting pressure.
Now, again, this is nothing more than a critique and a complaint that the families of these hostages have been making with increasing vehemence, blaming Netanyahu for passing on one opportunity after the next to bring their loved ones home, even though for— A few months, the idea was of Israel and its supporters in the U.S. Oh no, this war is about, just give us our hostages.
If Hamas released the hostages, the war would be over.
And they kept saying, no, that's not the goal of the war.
They could release all the hostages tomorrow, and this war will continue for a long time.
Obviously, they said that their goal was to destroy Hamas.
Their real goal, which they're now admitting, is to continuously expand the Israeli military footprint.
Inside Gaza, paid for by the United States.
They want to destroy every last standing building in Gaza, just completely turn it into a parking lot.
And they want to either force the Palestinians to leave, which is obviously the only reason why you would destroy all civilian life and infrastructure in Gaza, force them out of their land so that you can take it over, or they're going to build a concentration camp.
And that's what they call it.
They said there are going to be zones, concentrated zones.
That the Palestinians can stay in, inside those.
They cannot leave.
And maybe they'll get some food and water.
But the Israeli plan is obvious and explicit at this point.
It has nothing to do with any of the stated war aims at the beginning, which is true of most wars.
And the United States is paying for all of this in many, many ways, not just financially and militarily, but also in terms of its standing in the world.
Here from Haritz, on May 8th, quote, Israeli army places returning the hostages at the bottom of its Gaza war goals, despite promises to the families.
Quote, despite promises made to the public and the hostage families by Israeli army chief of staff, A.L. Zemir, that the return of the hostages is the top priority of the planned Gaza expansion campaign, the operational orders presented to commanders on Tuesday put that goal at the bottom of the list.
Many of the commanders attending the briefing were also surprised that the Israeli Defense Forces had substituted the usual Hebrew word used to refer to the hostages, hatu fin, with the less politically charged term, b 'nai aruba, which also implies they're being used as leverage.
The briefing began with the presentation of the operations goal, which were listed in order as, quote, defeating Hamas, operational control of the territory, demilitarization of the territory, destroying sites of Hamas' rule, Concentration and movement of the population.
And last, returning the hostages.
Many of those attending the briefing were surprised at the list of priorities because they had been told in discussions with the chief of staff that bringing back the hostages was the main goal of the war.
It was never the main goal of the war.
It was the pretext for the war to play on people's emotions.
Netanyahu has had so many opportunities to get those hostages back.
And it's not me saying this.
It's the Israeli media saying this.
Mainstream pro Netanyahu television outlets that are just reporting and the hostages' family that he has no interest in getting those hostages back.
And that's why the U.S. went around Israel to get this one American citizen back, this Israeli-American IDF soldier back.
Because they knew Israel would impede it.
They had to get it done themselves, and they directly negotiated with Hamas without Israel.
Again, another unprecedented act that you would exclude Israel from participating in.
Here at the Times of Israel in March, said this, Netanyahu and Dermer worked to stop a U.S. Hamas deal to free only American captives.
This was in March, saying Netanyahu and his top aide impeded U.S. efforts to get American citizens out of Gaza.
The prime minister and senior minister said to have leaked the Bole or Hamas talk so Hamas would up the ante.
U.S. officials say they are, quote, "Afraid it will become clear who doesn't want a hostage deal." Fox News knows what's going on.
On May 12th, earlier today, they reported this.
Can you imagine any time in the last...
25 years where Fox News would say a Republican president, tensions between that president and Israeli are rising, and the Middle East policy of a Republican president, in this case Trump, is to increasingly isolate Israel.
They report, quote, A reviving hostage talks with Israel and Hamas, exploring an off-ramp for the Russia-Ukraine war and potentially a civil nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, even if the kingdom refuses to normalize ties with Israel.
However, an apparent chill between Trump and Netanyahu have grabbed the attention of Middle East watchers.
Yanir Kozin, a correspondent for Israeli Army Radio, claimed this week that Trump had, quote, cut contact with the Israeli leader.
That report has not been independently confirmed, but it aligns with an emerging perception in Israeli political circles that the Trump-Netanyahu axis may be fraying.
Meanwhile, frustration in Jerusalem grew this week when the U.S. reached a ceasefire agreement with the Yemen's Houthi militants.
The deal, brokered without Israeli input, required the Houthis to halt attacks on the Red Sea shipping lanes, but made no mention of their assaults on Israel.
And we showed you that video where a reporter...
Asked Trump when he announced the ceasefire, well, they say they're going to continue to attack Israel.
And Trump said, I don't know about that.
Basically, that's not my issue.
They promised to stop attacking American ships.
We believe that they're going to do that.
And based on that, we are stopping the war.
Now, there's a big New York Times article today about the fact that that bombing campaign was a complete failure.
We were using up our stockpile of precision munitions at a very alarming rate.
The U.S. had yet to achieve even air superiority.
The Houthis know how to disperse all their military assets, put them underground, put them all over Yemen.
People have tried to exterminate the Houthis before.
It's only made them stronger.
The U.S. lost aircraft, fighter jets, boats, and came very close to having fighter jets blown out of the sky by Houthi missiles.
But nonetheless, Trump stopped it, and he deserves credit for that.
He never should have restarted it.
It was Biden's campaign, Obama campaign.
But he restarted it, and then he ended it.
And here are the Times of Fox News goes on, quote, Trump, to a large extent, basically threw Israel under the bus, said Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and regional analyst, quote, I think the Israeli government is puzzled and embarrassed, particularly in the context of the Houthis.
Here is Trump at that White House briefing where he was asked about Israel when he announced the ceasefire in Yemen.
But you look at all of the things that we've done, and now today I'm heading over.
We'll see what we're going to do with respect to Iran.
I think you have very good things happening there, too, by the way.
Actually, let me set this up a little bit more precisely.
This is actually today, and Trump was asked about Iran and the likelihood that Iran may have to be bombed or have to be attacked.
And Trump made very clear that he doesn't think that it's necessary, and the signs he's giving are all very much that he thinks the talks are going quite well for a deal to be reached without any need to attack.
Iran.
Here's what he said.
But you look at all of the things that we've done, and now today, I'm heading over.
We'll see what we're going to do with respect to Iran.
I think you have very good things happening there, too, by the way.
They can't have a nuclear weapon, but I think that they are talking intelligently.
We're in the midst of talking to them, and they're right now acting very intelligent.
We want Iran to be wealthy and wonderful and happy and great, but they can't have a nuclear weapon.
It's very simple.
So I think they understand that I mean business, and I think they're being very reasonable thus far.
Now, the top Israeli goal by far, and they've made this very clear, is to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.
And they can't do that without some type of U.S. support.
And the minute the U.S. gets involved, there's a huge Retaliatory and escalation risk because there are so many different U.S. assets, including service members and bases, sitting in that region, but basically as open as sitting ducks.
They're not very fortified.
American service members have been killed by attacks on their bases in that region.
And so Trump knows that if the Israelis do it, they're going to demand and need the U.S. to do it with them.
And now he's saying, look, I don't— I don't think there's going to be any need for that.
The Iranians are behaving very reasonably.
They're acting very intelligently.
We've had very constructive talks.
We're making great progress to a deal.
And, of course, Netanyahu came to the White House trying to urge Trump to do an attack on Iran, and Trump basically said, no, we don't want to do an attack on Iran, and we're not going to allow you to do it if you need our help, because we think we can get a deal with Iran.
That will assure they don't get nuclear weapons while not having to get involved in a new Mideast war.
Here's the briefing at the White House that I mentioned when Trump announced his ceasefire with Yemen, and they said, yeah, but they still are going to attack Israel.
They say they're going to attack Israel.
What about that?
Mr. President, you said the Houthis are backing down.
We're seeing conflicting reports that they plan on continuing to attack Israel in support of Gaza.
Does that change the equation?
No, I don't know about that.
Frankly, but I know one thing, they want nothing to do with us, and they've let that be known through all of their surrogates and very strongly.
I mean, I'm so amazed by that.
And the body language, if you can't see it, is even more telling.
Trump just kind of shrugs when the reporter says, like, yeah, but they keep saying they're going to attack Israel.
Like, how can you do a ceasefire with them?
And Trump's like, I don't know about that.
What I know is that they're not going to attack us.
And since I'm the president of the United States and not the president of Israel, that's what my concern is.
And once the Houthis say they're not going to attack us anymore, we don't need to bond them anymore.
I can't imagine another president saying that, especially in that cavalier way, that very dismissive way about Israel.
And again, the Israelis absolutely perceive things to be this way.
They don't think this is some sort of stage plot or fraud to make the Iranians think that they're fine and there's going to be about to be a surprise attack between the two countries.
Here from CNN on May 8th, Israel vows to, quote, defend ourselves alone after Trump strikes truce with the Houthis.
And here is from Channel 13. Again, it is an Israeli mainstream outlet.
They have an image of Netanyahu in Hebrew with a quote, and what it says is, quote, I think we'll have to detox from U.S. security assistance.
So there definitely is this prevailing idea among the Israelis that Trump is not as trustworthy of an ally as they thought he would be.
And they realize that similar to other longstanding U.S. allies who thought that they were indispensable, who thought they could get whatever they want from the United States in perpetuity.
The Israelis are realizing they're not special.
They're getting treated the same way the Europeans have been treated, same way that Zelensky was treated.
And that meeting in the Oval Office with Netanyahu and Trump wasn't as overtly hostile or tense as the one with Zelensky, but Israelis are saying it wasn't that far away either.
Because Trump was just scoffing at the idea that they would go to war with Iran and say, we're not going to go to war with Iran.
We're going to absolutely directly negotiate with them.
Here from the Washington Post, a little bit more on, this is from today, a little bit more on the fraying of this relationship.
Trump repeatedly bypasses Netanyahu, stoking dismay among Israelis.
Quote, Countries in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates without stopping in Jerusalem.
It's not the first time he has bypassed Israel or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
From embarking on nuclear talks with Iran to attempting hostage talks with Hamas without Israel's knowledge, Trump has increasingly sidelined Netanyahu, stoking anxieties in a country long accustomed to being consulted by successive US administrations.
I would say more than consulted.
Having permission sought by successive U.S. administrations.
Last week, Israelis believe they saw more cracks emerge between the, quote, America first president and Israel after Trump said he had struck a truce with Yemen's Houthi rebels that curbed the group's attacks on U.S. ships but did not cover Israel.
Days later, reports emerged that Trump was considering offering Saudi Arabia access to civil nuclear technology without first demanding that the kingdom normalize relations with Israel, a precondition that had been set by former President Joe Biden.
Just think about that for a minute.
This is what the U.S.-Israeli relationship had been, how extraordinary it is, how demeaning it is, how counterproductive it is from U.S. interests.
The U.S. government wants to do deals with these Persian Gulf dictatorships, these tyrannies, that they want to support and prop up and that they believe are important to U.S. interests.
And they were happy to do deals with Biden, but Biden said, I'm not doing any deal with you, no matter how much it benefits the United States, unless you first work out normalization with the Israelis.
You have to normalize your relationship with the Israelis.
And the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Qataris were saying, we can't normalize relations with Israel while they're destroying Gaza and occupying the West Bank.
We need a two-state solution.
Where the Palestinians have their own state, because even tyrants have to be concerned with public opinion.
History is filled with all sorts of autocratic tyrants, totalitarians, who just push too far against their people's desires and views and beliefs and values.
We're overthrown, met with great instability, revolution, and we're overthrown.
Everyone is worried about that, no matter how much you think you're in control of the country.
And the Saudis and Emiratis may not care about the Palestinians for real, but certainly the people in those countries do.
And you could destabilize Jordan as well, an important U.S. ally, where a significant part of the population in Jordan are Palestinians.
But Biden...
Said, I don't care what your deals are.
I'm not doing a deal that might benefit the United States unless Israel is first satisfied.
That is not putting Israel on the same plane as the United States.
That's putting Israel and its interest above the United States.
That's what Biden did.
And Trump is saying, I'm not willing to do that.
If I get a good deal with the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Qataris, I'm going to let Israel stop it.
And in fact, what they're basically saying is, we're going to do this deal.
And if the Israelis want to work on normalization with these countries, they can.
But knowing that the only way they can get normalization with those countries, which is an important Israeli goal, is to stop the war in Gaza and try and create a resolution and enduring peace with the Palestinians, putting it in Israel's corner on their backs to do that.
HERE THE POST GOES ON, QUOTE, "NOW MANY ISRAELIS ARE WONDERING "WHETHER ISRAEL IS THE NEXT U.S. "ALLLY TO BE LEFT BEHIND BY A "PREASED THEY CONSIDERED JUST "MOMENTS, MONTHS AGO TO BE THE "MOST PRO-ISRAEL PRESIDENT IN "HISTORY." QUOTE, "IT'S THE "It's disconcerting," said Michael Warren, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington.
"It's total panic," said Shalom Lipner, a former Netanyahu aide and a fellow at the Atlantic Council describing the mood in Jerusalem.
Israeli concerns about Trump's negotiations with Iran and other threats to Israel, "are not being taken into account," or if they are, they're being dismissed.
Said Dennis Ross, a former senior State Department official who served as Middle East envoy under both Democratic and Republican presidents.
One Trump advisor who described Trump's treatment of Netanyahu as, quote, one notch above his fractious White House meeting with Zelensky three months ago said influential MAGA voices have worked throughout the spring.
To resist efforts by pro-Israel lobbying groups and neoconservative Republicans to install Iran hawks and others seen as overly sympathetic to Netanyahu in key national security posts.
Former national security advisor Michael Waltz was removed from his position after he appeared to have engaged in intense coordination with Netanyahu about military operations against Iran, which angered Trump.
The Washington Post reported this last month, or this month.
Quote, in MAGA, we are not BB fans.
Said the Trump advisor, using NetNahu's nickname.
"Trump is adamant.
He wants people to put the guns down.
The advisors, like several others cited in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk friendly about relations between the two leaders." Now, I can assure you, I can tell you for an absolute fact, that there are people inside the Trump administration at high levels in the national security apparatus who absolutely believe that America first means Putting America first, even when it comes to Israel.
And that, principally, that means ending these wars so that the U.S. doesn't have to have its treasury drained and its stockpiles drained and its standing of the world eroded and its attention consumed by wars that have way more to do with Israel than the United States.
And you have seen a little bit of weakening on the part of the Hardest Corps Neocons and warmongers and Israel loyalists inside the administration, starting with Mike Waltz, but there have been others.
Now, again, I don't want to oversell this at all.
I think I've seen quotes and I've heard things that Trump believes that no one can attack him for not supporting Israel when we're giving billions of dollars a year to Israel.
So I'm not saying around the corner the U.S. is going to stop sending billions of dollars a year to Israel or cut them off.
That's almost impossible to imagine.
But any sort of reorienting of priorities where we're not placing Israel on an equal plane to U.S. interests or even above, as we've been doing, could have major positive repercussions in terms of war and other things.
Now, speaking of Israel loyalists, and by the way, my saying that would be outlawed and subject to punishment under this new expanded The anti-Semitism hate speech code that Trump is imposing on American colleges is an example that's something viewed as anti-Semitism to accuse any Jewish person of having greater loyalty to Israel than their own country.
But speaking of Israel loyalists, Ben Shapiro of The Ben Shapiro Show was petulantly complaining and whining throughout his show that Trump is not doing enough for Israel, Trump is deprioritizing Israel.
Here's just a little snippet of his rant this morning.
Clearly what Hamas is attempting to do is basically settle all outstanding business with the United States so as to then create separation between the United States and Israel in Iran negotiations.
That is what is happening with the Houthis as well.
It is not a coincidence that as the Houthis are basically forswearing attacks on American shipping and the United States is saying that the United States is no longer going to worry about the Houthis essentially.
Hamas is now trying to do the same by releasing the sole living American hostage in the Gaza Strip.
Trying to basically say that the United States now has no part in that conflict.
Well, okay, fine.
I mean if the United States has no part in that conflict then Israel should just go and do what they need to do.
That seems to me a proper solution with regard to the Gaza Strip.
Do you see how mad he is at the very notion that the US may not consider the war in Gaza to be our war?
And I think he's essentially saying that the reason Trump wanted that American out is so that no- More arguments could be mounted about why the U.S. has some responsibility to care about the war in Gaza because Americans are held hostage there.
Now, the whole thing, that whole premise is obscene from the start because this American hostage, as I said, is not just some innocent American civilian who decided to go visit Israel on a tourist trip and got kidnapped by Hamas.
He was in Israel because he went to Israel to fight in their army.
He became a soldier in the IDF.
And he was captured in uniform on active duty.
And this idea that if an American citizen goes to fight for some foreign country, like an American goes to fight for Ukraine and gets captured by Russia, or an American goes to fight for Russia and gets captured by Ukraine, or Iran and gets captured by whoever, whatever foreign country they...
Decide they want to go fight for and wear the uniform of a foreign country.
It doesn't become the U.S. government's responsibility to consider that war now our war, because one of our citizens went and enlisted in a foreign army and decided to fight that war.
But okay, let's assume that he's an American citizen, even though he's an Israeli IDF soldier too, and therefore the Trump administration should care about getting him out.
I think that's reasonable.
They should care, not necessarily make the war their war.
I think it's appropriate for the U.S. government to try and negotiate his release, as they did.
But now Ben Shapiro is saying, oh, this seems to have been done specifically because Trump wants to say that the war in Gaza is not our war.
It isn't our war.
It never was our war.
Hamas has never attacked the United States, has no aspirations to attack the United States, has no capabilities to attack the United States.
They're exclusively a militia of resistance designed to fight against Israeli occupation of their territory, of their land.
That's what they are.
That's in their charter.
That's historically what they've done.
That's what they do.
That's their function.
I can see why Israel would consider them to be in their own interest, but not the United States.
Same argument about Ukraine.
Ukraine is definitely in Russia's interest.
It's right on the other side of their border.
But how is it?
In the U.S. interest to fight a war to determine who governs various provinces in eastern Ukraine.
Like, what difference does that make to American citizens?
And, of course, the same is true for the war in Gaza, but Ben Shapiro cannot abide the notion that the wars of the United States should be fought for American interests and not Israeli interests because he sees no distinction between those two things.
And also when he says, like, Oh, well, fine.
If the Americans want to consider Gaza only Israel's war, then the Israelis should go do what they have to do.
First of all, Israel is doing what they quote-unquote have to do.
Ben Shapiro's like a tough guy.
Like, yeah, then they're going to go in and do what they have to do.
They're committing genocide.
They're ethnically cleansing Gaza right out in the open.
They've destroyed all civilian life in Gaza.
They've killed tens of thousands of people, including...
20,000 children.
And there's a report in The Lancet suggesting that that count is much higher.
I think clearly that's the minimum count.
People are still buried under the rubble and like.
But also, the Israelis can't do anything without American assistance.
They could never be fighting all these wars in Lebanon and Syria and taking land and occupying the West Bank and bombing the West Bank and cleaning it out and then also fighting the war in Gaza without the U.S. Lavishing it with aid and money.
So if Ben Shapiro really wants to say, "Okay, fine, Gaza's not America's war, then Israel should do what they have to do," then argue that the U.S. should cut off Israel's aid.
Why should the U.S. keep paying for these wars?
Forcing the American worker to subsidize Israel.
Forcing our armed service members to be deployed in the region to protect Israel.
Possibly going to a war with Iran to help Israel.
Here's an NBC report, also on these, what they call the strained Trump-Netanyahu relationship.
Quote, disagreements on Iran and Gaza are straining Trump-Netanyahu relationship.
Israel is, quote, worried about any deal Trump might strike with Iran, one source told NBC.
Quote, Netanyahu is blindsided and infuriated.
This past week, by Trump's announcement that the U.S. was halting its military campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen after the Houthis agreed to stop firing on U.S. ships in the Red Sea.
The Houthis had just attacked Israel with a missile that hit close to Ben-Gurion, Israel's main airport.
When Netanyahu visited the White House last month for the second time since Trump took office, he hoped the president would pledge U.S. air support for a possible Israeli operation against Iran's nuclear facilities.
The Israeli leader was taken aback when the president instead announced he would agree to direct talks with Tehran, the diplomat said.
Quote, I think what you're seeing is the Israelis recognizing that as much as they welcomed the election of President Trump and thought that would really give them a blank check to pursue whatever agenda they wanted, Trump has his own agenda.
Frank Lowenstein, a former Middle East envoy under the Obama administration, said during a virtual briefing organized by J Street, An advocacy organization that describes itself as both pro-Israel and pro-peace.
Although Trump's diplomacy with Iran and the U.S. deal with the Houthis are, quote, anathema to Netanyahu, the prime minister does not have the political leverage in Washington or in Israel to enter into a direct confrontation with Trump, who was popular with Netanyahu's base in Israel, said Ilion Goldenberg, who worked in Middle East Policy as a senior official during the Biden and Obama administrations.
And that's why you see Netanyahu pretending that the U.S. and the Yemenis are working, the U.S. and the Israelis are working together when, of course, nothing can be further from the truth.
Here is Khalil Sayeg, who is a political analyst and kind of a popular Twitter pundit, but who covers the Middle East very extensively, and I think in a knowledgeable way.
He reports, "Right-wing Israeli WhatsApp groups are circulating this picture of President Donald Trump portraying him as a Hamas fighter.
And then here you see the image they're all passing around of Trump with a Hamas headband and in a Hamas uniform, which is unsurprising in Israeli discourse.
Now, I do want to return to the issue for a second of Eden Alexander because I think the whole issue of these hostages, as we've been calling them, and the prisoners who are in Israeli dungeons with no charges, Palestinian prisoners, is an important one to consider.
Here from the Times of Israel reporting on this case, quote, Eden Alexander will be the first male soldier freed since October 7th.
First male soldier.
Alexander, a dual citizen who grew up in New Jersey, was serving in the IDF's Golani Brigade at the time of his abduction.
He was kidnapped from his base near the Gaza border community of Niram, known as the White House Post, during the October 7th onslaught.
On October 7th, Hamas took 19 male soldiers hostage.
Not all of them on duty and several female surveillance soldiers, the latter of whom have all since been returned to Israel.
Five were released in a deal with Hamas.
One was rescued and the body of one was recovered by troops.
So I've never heard of active duty soldiers in a war who get taken and kidnapped or abducted or detained or whatever you want to call it, referred to as hostages.
That's usually a legitimate conduct of war, to capture the enemy soldiers and place them in some place where they can't continue to fight.
Every country does that.
And yet there's never been any distinctions drawn between the IDF soldiers who were taken hostage and the civilians who were.
There were civilian hostages taken, and those people should never have been taken.
And I think it's correct to call them hostages, but not IDF soldiers.
There's been no attempt to distinguish between active duty military soldiers who were killed on October 7th versus civilians.
We kept, and you keep hearing to this day, 1,200 innocents killed on October 7th, when in fact, at least something like half of them are even more than half.
We're active duty soldiers or police officers on bases or armed agents of the state.
The Times of Israel says, quote, Eden Alexander's release will mean no Gaza brigade soldiers or Golani brigade soldiers are held in Gaza for the first time in over a decade.
Now, Steve Woodcock is the one who negotiated, who led the negotiations of this.
So he was in Israel and the family of Alexander came there.
To welcome him back.
And there's video of him being released.
I want you to take a look at the condition in which he appears.
There he is walking with IDF soldiers, laughing, smiling.
And I should say this is not unusual for Israelis released by Hamas.
They've all looked quite good, well-fed.
There was one group of, I think, three Israelis who were released who seemed to have been thin.
That's because there's now masturbation in Gaza.
The ones who got released early all said, oh, yeah, whatever food they had, they would share with us.
And over time, they got concerned that these people were coming back and talking well about the conditions of their captivity.
And so it got...
Much darker as they were coached, but you can just see them in these videos.
I'm not saying they're doing well.
Obviously, being held in captivity anywhere for a year and a half is going to be unpleasant, probably isn't good for your health, especially when you're in the middle of a place that's being massively bombed by your own government's military indiscriminately.
You're probably constantly petrified of dying in an Israeli airstrike, as many of these people did.
And obviously the diet isn't going to be great either because they are in a place where the Israelis are blocking any food from entering.
But you can see, I mean, that was a healthy person you just looked at, physically, certainly.
And so many of the Israeli hostages, their vast, vast majority have come back in that shape.
Now, you compare that to the Palestinian civilians who have been Abducted from Gaza or the West Bank and detained with no charges.
The Israelis call it administrative detention.
They put them in these dungeons where there's reports, widespread reports, of them barely eating anything.
A 17-year-old prisoner who was both Palestinian and Brazilian ended up just dying about a month ago, and he was in a condition of starvation.
And vulnerable to all kinds of viruses and infections.
And the Brazilian government is demanding answers, but none are forthcoming.
17-year-old kid, totally healthy, dying in an Israeli dungeon.
And again, these are not people convicted of crimes.
I mean, some of them are, but the vast majority are just picked up and held there.
These are civilians.
These are people not convicted of anything.
And yet we call...
Even the soldiers, the IDF soldiers in Gaza, we call them hostages.
And we call the civilians, the Palestinian civilians, in these hideous prisons where there's been documented rapes.
Remember members of the Knesset actually went and protested in favor of the soldiers who got caught on video gang raping a prisoner?
And then Israeli media argued, no, gang raping is a legitimate weapon of war to use against Palestinians.
But you compare the people who are coming out of Gaza, being released by Hamas to Israel, and the relatively healthy state they are in, to the utterly broken, hallowed out, emaciated, disease-ridden people, Palestinians, civilians, who are turned over to Gaza as part of these deals.
They barely resemble human beings.
Here is a Palestinian teacher who was...
Picked up in December of 2023 by the IDF, thrown into one of these dungeons, these Israeli dungeons.
And here he is when he was released about a year and a half later, in February of 2025.
I am a citizen, resident of North Gaza, Beit Harman.
I was arrested from a displacement shelter in North on the 10th of December of 2023.
I was detained in the first place in what was called the barracks on the border.
Those barracks had forms of torture that were indescribable, indescribable, indescribable.
For 45 days, I was blindfolded and on my knees, and there you see pictures of his scabies-ridden skin, the same posture one would have praying to God Almighty, blindfolded and shackled.
One would sleep with shackles on your hands.
After that, I was transported to Negev prison.
In Negev prison, all kinds of tortures are there.
Whatever form of torture you can think of is there.
I told you they would use electric shocks on us.
Electricity was used in torture.
In addition, dogs were used in torture.
That is all.
If you look at his face, for those of you who are listening and not watching, he looks like someone liberated from Auschwitz.
He's somebody who, I mean, is barely a person any longer.
And this is not an aberration.
There is no question that people in Gaza with Hamas are treated better than the people coming out of these Israeli prisons who are there on no charges, no convictions.
It's just a fact.
And there's been ample documentation.
I mean, they got caught on video gang-raping Palestinians, including just recently.
And they come out with scabies all over them, all over their skin, and emaciated.
Just today in the Israeli newspaper Heretz, the writer Jonathan Pollack wrote a letter in the form of a column to an Arab friend of his named Nadal.
And it says, Nadal, you're dying in an Israeli prison, and I don't know how to save your life.
Quote, you are dying of hunger and colitis in Magneto prison, where you're held without charges or a trial.
May your captor starvers be damned.
That's from an Israeli Jew who is a journalist.
And again, there have been all kinds of independent human rights organizations that have issued documented reports on the abuse.
Horrific torture endured by Palestinians and sometimes even death.
And yet we call those prisoners, even though they're convicted of nothing, but we call Israeli soldiers on active duty at military bases and in tanks who are taken by Hamas.
We call those hostages, just to give you a sense for how we value the humanity of one side and don't value the humanity of the other at all.
And it just makes no sense from the perspective of just basic words.
But it's all embedded in the propaganda of how we think about this conflict.
And we'll see whether this split between Trump and Netanyahu is real.
I think it's real right now that there's some tension.
But we'll see whether it reflects a sort of dogmatic shift in how Trump thinks about Israel.
I don't think he's ever going to be anti-Israel.
I don't think that's what this is about.
I think Trump perceives benefits for the United States in reaching a deal with Iran.
In stopping the bombing campaign against the Houthi, in reaching deals in these Gulf tyrannies that he loves, that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his son, Eric Trump, on behalf of the Trump Organization, have been exploiting for billions of dollars.
He likes these people.
He likes that region.
He thinks there's good agreements to be had for his family, for himself, and for the country.
And I think his view is, like, I'm not going to let Netanyahu stand in the way any more than I will anybody else of...
My pursuing and advancing American interests.
And although that seems like that should be so blatant and obvious to come out of every president's mouth, it hasn't and doesn't.
And it is now.
And that might mean nothing in the long run or even the midterm or even the short term.
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Matt Stoller is the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project.
He is also the author of the widely acclaimed book, Goliath, The Hundred-Year War Between Monopoly, Power, and Democracy, and he publishes the newsletter Big on Substack, which focuses on monopoly power and economic policy.
He previously served as a policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee and worked in the House of Representatives during the financial crisis.
His writing has appeared...
Everywhere, he's a good friend of the show.
He's appeared many times because I don't think there are many people more qualified to talk both about antitrust developments as well as the attempt to find a strain of economic populism that might become bipartisan, both of which we want to talk about tonight.
And we're happy to have him.
Welcome, Matt.
Good evening.
How are you?
Hey, thanks for having me.
Thanks for being here.
So, it's so interesting to me because Democrats have been saying for as long as I can remember, I mean, going back, you know, decades, that...
Prescription drug prices are too high, that we're being gouged by pharmaceutical companies.
You know, this has been basically an article of faith among everybody, you know, left of center for forever, and yet very little has been done about it.
And there's excuses why, we don't have majorities, we're stopped by the filibuster, whatever, but not much has been done about it.
And then Trump comes out and basically reads from exactly that script.
He's saying Americans are getting gouged by pharmaceutical companies.
He says the reason we're always told prices are so high is because it goes into research and development, but in fact, we're getting gouged because people around the world pay for our last, and here's an executive order that tries to fix that, and we can talk about the mechanics of that in a minute.
But a lot of Democrats have come out and said, look, if you really mean this, like, if you mean this, first of all, we're happy you mean it, and we want to work with you to make this measure It's a great question.
There's a lot of context here, but 2003 is when Medicare Part D, which is the part of Medicare that lets old people...
Get drugs paid for by the government.
That was passed.
And one of the big scandals in that passage was that the government was not allowed to negotiate for drug prices.
It was just a price taker, even though it buys a ton of drugs.
And that provision was modified a little bit under Biden in 2022 with the Inflation Reduction Act, but it wasn't that much.
And now Trump is saying, I'm just going to issue an executive order mandating international reference pricing.
The problem is it's pretty clear in the law that the president doesn't have the authority to do that.
So it will lose.
When he tried it in 2022, it lost in the courts.
It will lose again unless some sort of changes gets passed into law.
And the Democrats are coming out and saying, hey, let us—or some of them are saying, let us pass this into law so you have the authority to do this.
And actually, in the press conference today when Trump announced this, He kind of went back and forth, but one of the things that he did say is, look, this is the kind of thing that I'm going to put in my one big, beautiful tax bill, and I want to see the Democrats vote against that.
So that's kind of the dynamic here.
It's a little bit hard to tell what's really going on, because I think the Republicans in Congress have said they don't want this, they won't pass this legislation, or they don't want this legislation.
So it's a very weird dynamic.
It isn't necessarily...
Partisan, but it's definitely being played as partisan by Donald Trump and the Republicans and somewhat the Democrats.
I just want to ask for a little bit about delving in a bit to the political reading of this, even though I know it can be somewhat speculative.
It seems to me like between just hardcore Trump loyalists who pretty much do what he wants on issues that he considers very important, and he touted this as one of the greatest, most important announcements ever, combined with the growing economic populism in the Republican Party, at least in rhetoric, if not in action, and the fact that this is an incredibly popular, I mean, every American, pretty much.
Trump is burdened by and angered by the enormous price of medications and pharmaceutical companies that bear no relation to its cost.
Trump told this story.
I don't know if you saw it.
It was told in absolutely high-grade Trump camp and humor about, he said he knows this extremely rich, extremely rich, very neurotic and very successful, very rich businessman in New York who he said is also disgustingly obese.
And he went to London and he saw that Ozempic, or whatever Trump called it, like the fat drug shot.
The fat shot.
The fat shot.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was, you know, in London it cost something like $80, and in New York it cost something like $1,400.
Now, I don't know how many billionaires actually go around noticing.
Minimal price differences.
I mean, they're billionaires.
It's hard to imagine.
But I'm sure there are some.
That's how they got to be billionaires in the first place.
They care about every dollar.
They like money.
What's that?
They like money.
They like money.
They don't like giving away their money.
They don't like spending more than they have to.
And they like getting as much as possible.
That's kind of a prerequisite for being a billionaire.
So, you know, I think the story Trump was telling is one that...
Americans very commonly understand and feel like they're getting gouged.
So between the political popularity, the MAGA kind of loyalist to Trump, and the economic populism, I would think he could gin up a decent amount of votes, certainly in the House, in the Republican caucus.
I guess I'm wondering, would the Democrats want to join hands with Trump on an initiative that he announced, that he kind of sponsored?
Would they be willing to do that Even for a goal that they've long said is so important to them?
I think so.
Yeah, I think they'd vote for—it depends.
I mean, if he put it together with a bill that did a bunch of stuff they didn't like, maybe they wouldn't.
But if it was a standalone bill to cap or lower pharmaceutical drug prices by the pharmaceutical companies, they'd probably go for it.
I will say one thing that's important to understand.
Pharmaceutical stocks today went up.
Why is that?
I saw that too.
Well, it's because there's no real authority.
The president doesn't have price-setting authority.
Biden fought for price-setting authority.
He wanted to do what Trump did, but he lost that fight in Congress.
So that authority just doesn't exist.
And so I guess people on Wall Street just assume, well, Trump is going to tell HHS to do a bunch of stuff, and then it'll get struck down by courts.
And that's a pretty good bet.
So he has to get it through.
I think he's going to have to get it through Congress, or he won't, and it'll sort of stay the way it is now, which is very high prices.
I mean, there are middlemen, too.
There's a complicated, weird pricing thing, which I can geek out on if you want, but that's the gist of it.
Yeah, and I guess Trump's proposal—and if you want to just add to this, feel free or talk about it—is basically saying that For a long time, Americans have paid more for pharmaceutical products, even the ones that are made by American pharmaceutical companies, than any other country in the world.
And he wants to give most favored nation status to the United States so that whatever the lowest price that anyone in the world is paying for this medication is the price that the pharmaceutical companies would have to sell to Americans as well.
Now, let's assume that gets codified into law or gets upheld by the courts.
Would that be really a mechanism for keeping prices lower?
I mean, would pharmaceutical companies just jack up prices in the rest of the world?
Or do you think that is an effective way to deal with high pharmaceutical products?
That is the idea.
Trump's argument, and it's an argument from a number of economists as well, is that America pays too much for drugs.
To subsidize the rest of the world.
So the idea is high prices generate high profits, which then the pharmaceutical companies plow back into research.
And you need that money to discover drugs.
And so you're either going to get it from the US or you're going to get it from foreigners.
And they've been getting it from the US.
And so what we need to do is lower prices here and raise prices abroad.
And that way, those profits will continue.
And then they can continue to do the research and we'll get a better deal.
So that's the theory.
I don't think that's right, because I think that pharmaceutical companies spend a lot more money on, say, advertising and patent litigation than they actually do on discovering drugs.
You can put a billion dollars into trying to discover a drug.
You know, what you'd probably want to do, this is a company called AbbVie did it.
They had a best-selling drug that brought in about 20, 30 billion dollars a year.
And what they did is they brought in McKinsey to say, okay, how do we extend our patent on this drug?
And McKinsey's recommendation is, oh, go to your scientists and offer them free iPads if they can come up with additional things about the drug that they could patent.
And that drug...
I forget which one it is, but it's one of the blockbuster ones.
But that was originally patented in 1991, and it finally came off patent like 2023, 2022, something like that.
So that's crazy.
It shouldn't last nearly that long.
But that's what the incentive system in the pharmaceutical industry is not actually to discover drugs.
It's actually to try to use all sorts of cheating to extend your patent so you can raise prices.
So you can attack this problem in lots of different ways.
You could definitely use international reference pricing, which is something Trump wants to do, and some Democrats in Congress want to do.
You can attack it through the patent system.
There are middlemen which increase the price of drugs.
So, for example, when you buy insulin, about half of what you pay goes to these companies that are—they're supposed to be bargaining for lower prices, but we've screwed up the incentive, so they're actually—they want higher prices so they can get their cut.
Those companies, that's like CVS and UnitedHealth Group and Cigna, so that you could go after those middlemen.
There's some action on that front.
There's a lot of ways to address, to take on lower drug pricing.
I'm pretty skeptical that this executive order is that meaningful.
There's a couple of executive orders he's done on pharmaceutical prices.
I mean, I guess raising the issue in and of itself might be helpful in terms of just bringing attention to the problem and the need to combat it.
But I also think there's this, like, part of the reason for maybe not wanting it codified in the Congress, and I think we've seen this many times with other presidents, too, especially with the ones trying to claim very robust theories of executive power, which obviously Trump is claiming, is they don't want to acknowledge that their power is limited in any way, that they need Congress for anything.
In fact, I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War, the Bush-Cheney theory was, we don't need Congress.
Like, they have some executive...
Article 2 executive power theory about why they can do it without Congress.
And Congress was left begging, like, please let us vote on it.
We promise we'll pass it, but let us vote on it.
And they kind of just did as this like meaningful, meaningless concession, knowing that they were begging and promising to vote on it.
And they were, you know, the whole time Bush and Cheney were making clear, this doesn't matter, the outcome.
But they voted for it overwhelmingly anyway.
And so I wonder if...
It's hard to believe that Trump would just do this on purpose to sink his own proposal that he touted very loudly, although who knows?
But I wonder if you think it might have something to do with the fact that they're trying to consolidate all the power in the executive branch and don't want to concede that they need Congress to do it.
Well, I think that's possible.
I would cabin that to national security and policing matters.
I think when you're talking about these kinds of questions, the courts generally...
Give a lot more deference to corporate power than they do to these kind of broad claims of executive authority.
I think, but that's possible.
Another possibility, though, and this might sound partisan, but, you know, whatever.
I think that the Republicans in Congress—you know, there's a lot of anger from the MAGA base towards the establishment Republicans, and this is why.
Republicans in Congress just won't pass this kind of thing.
And so they fought the Democrats aggressively when the Democrats tried to do it a couple of years ago.
Their relationships with the pharmaceutical industry have not changed.
And it's not just a money thing.
It's not just corruption.
They believe that you need— Pharmaceutical companies need really high profits in order to reinvest and do R&D.
So there's some good faith policy disagreement here as well.
But what no one is really talking about is the fact that the Republicans in Congress just don't want to pass this kind of thing.
Well, let me talk about that in connection with a different issue.
So when Steve Bannon was the architect of Trump 2016, he had a very kind of economic populist approach that really was economically populist.
The first thing we should do when we get into office is do a bipartisan infrastructure deal with the Democrats so that we spend all this money to rebuild America's infrastructure and put tons of people back to work.
And then we build the wall.
And then to pay for that wall, we increase taxes on the wealthy, on the rich.
That was Bannon's vision.
And still is his vision.
And there has been some talk about...
Whether the Republicans would be willing to increase taxes on the wealthy in the way that the populist, sort of right-wing populism might call for.
And they asked Trump about it, and he said, look, if they want to do it, I don't think they will, I don't think they should, but if they want to, it would be fine with me.
I'd be okay with it.
And the Republicans in Congress, other than Josh Hawley, pretty much immediately made clear that we're Republicans.
We don't raise taxes.
Is the tax issue kind of specific in the sense that it has been religious dogma forever that Republicans don't raise taxes?
And the last time they did was under Bush 41. The whole read my lips, I won't raise taxes.
Then he did, and then he lost in 1992, and they got even more averse to it.
Or is this just reflective of this overall Republican unwillingness to actually...
Implement populist economic policies that would benefit the people they promised to help and who voted them into office.
I think it's the latter.
You have some very populist Republicans.
Josh Hawley is one of them.
Steve Bannon is one of them.
Donald Trump sometimes is.
J.D. Vance.
J.D. Vance, yeah.
Matt Gaetz, there's a bunch.
Well, not that many, but they're very aggressive, and they have a lot of pulling with the base.
But I think the problem—well, not the problem, but the Republican Party is a coalition, and the coalition of sort of 80 percent of the establishment, 90 percent of the establishment, it's not just taxes, it's not just things like pharmaceutical companies.
It's also big tech.
It's a whole bunch of trade, a bunch of other stuff.
Their allegiance is to international financial capital.
That's what they care about.
That's what they nurture and seek to protect.
And so anything that might touch that, whether it's something that would help workers get more money in their paychecks, whether it's taxes on—they don't mind taxes on poor people, but they don't want taxes on anyone that manages international capital.
Things like patents, pharmaceuticals, even these middlemen, it's really hard to get.
You know, to sort of break through that.
That's not to say that this is on Trump or anything.
This is just to say that the Republican establishment that I think Trump fought against is definitely not on board higher taxes on the wealthy, higher taxes on sort of big business or international capital, constraints on pharmaceutical, those kinds of things.
And so this is sort of a shadow boxing contest that we're seeing play out right now between Trump, Bannon, Hawley, and kind of the Republican establishment in Congress.
So speaking of Hawley, Senator Hawley from Missouri, he had an op-ed in the New York Times today.
I assume you probably read it since you are always more aware of anyone than what Josh Hawley is doing.
That's right.
The basic thesis of it is that...
It's like, look, there's so much talk about the identity problem that the Democrats have.
Like, who are the Democrats?
What do they stand for?
What do they represent?
Whose interests do they serve?
That it's overshadowed what he said is a similar problem with Republicans having to figure out their identity.
Like, are they still this corporatist party, you know, using like Reagan-ass supply-side economics from the 80s, where you just like, you know, cut taxes on the rich and then tell poor people and most of the last people it's going to flow down to them, even though it doesn't and it hasn't?
He says we are now trying to be a working class party.
That's the key to our future.
If we want to be a working class party, we have to make sure that the people who vote for us in the working class are seeing actual benefits.
The thing he raised in this op-ed was not taxes, because I think he understands it's a lost cause.
But instead, the prospect that Republicans might cut Medicaid, on which working class people, poor people as well, heavily rely.
I mean, that's the way they get health care, and cutting it would be devastating to the very base that the Republican Party has so successfully built.
Is there any sense at all in the Republican Party?
Like, hey...
The strength of our voting bloc now, of our voting base, the reason we win elections is because working class voters have turned away from Democrats and vote for us, and so we better start caring about them.
Or is that still just a kind of political lip service they're willing to pay while continuing to stick to the economic dogma that has only helped rich people and corporations at the expense of pretty much everyone else, including the working class?
Wow, that is a great question.
Two out of my four questions so far have been great.
My first one and this one.
They're long and I remember them, which is why I'm impressed, really with myself, actually.
I think the answer is that the Republicans are— Aware that they have a big working class voting base and that they have to do something for them.
But the thing is, is that the Republican Party is, again, it's a coalition.
And politics, when you're dealing with a coalition, you're dealing with people who were elected decades ago.
And you're also dealing with people who were elected last year.
And so they have different instincts.
And I think a lot of the Republicans, their instinct is that they're the party of rich people.
And so what do they care if they, you know, cut Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security or whatever?
You need to do that, again, to take care of international financial capital.
That is so important.
And then you have younger members and newer members and fresher members like Josh Hawley who are saying, no, actually, a lot of people in Missouri are reliant on Medicare.
And so we have to protect that and we have to deliver for the working people that voted for us.
And so there's two different strategies at work here.
And I'll say one other thing, which I think is really—I thought about this today, and I think it's really interesting how the Trump administration is saying we need to deregulate, right?
We need to get rid of rules because it's constraining business.
One of the proposals that just came out of the House Republicans today would put work requirements on Medicaid recipients.
So these are basically poor and working class people that get access to this healthcare program.
And what the Republican proposal is, well, we need to put sorts of intrusive rules to make sure that they're working.
And whether you say that that's a good policy or not, it does reflect a sort of certain sense that they want rules to exist on the poor.
They want to harshly regulate the poor for their own—they have moral reasons for that.
But then for people in big business, they want to remove constraints or remove rules.
And so I think, again, that's another place where you would see newer, younger, more populist members saying, no, we want to be a working-class party, and sort of the traditional Republican establishment saying, no, no, we're the party of big business and the rich.
And that's kind of the subtext for a lot of what's going on.
It's true on the Democratic side as well.
It's just that it's kind of inverted.
Last question, which I want to make about antitrust.
Make sure it's great.
I know, I know.
I feel that pressure now that I'm 50 /50.
Two of them were not great, apparently.
I don't know.
So I'm going to try to make this last one great.
But usually we spend most of our time talking about antitrust, so I'm just going to have one question at the end because I want to talk about other things.
I had an expectation, or at least a suspicion, I think a lot of people did, that when we saw this union of Trump on the one hand and big tech oligarchs on the other, donating to his inaugural parade or whatever, and then kind of appearing at the inauguration very close to Trump on the stage, that part of their motive was that they wanted to get Trump and the administration to dilute.
These antitrust actions against Google that were brought by Trump, against Facebook, that's now going to trial.
And, you know, kind of just get a really good deal that you pay a few hundred million dollars and, you know, whatever, and then it's gone.
And at least so far, that doesn't seem to be happening.
I mean, it seems like the DOJ is very aggressively pursuing the cases against both Google and Facebook.
They are serious.
And I realize you've been pointing out a lot of Republican Party fraud.
We've been doing that forever.
Jim Dorden going on Fox and saying he hates big tech and then working as hard as possible to make sure their interests are protected.
But in terms of the Trump administration, do you think they have this sustained conviction from the first Trump term, at least with respect to these big check giants, that they need to be broken up?
Or do you think at some point Trump's going to express some gratitude to what they did and give them good deals to get out of those cases?
Well, I don't—I think—so that was an awful question, okay?
I'm just going to tell you right off the bat.
I hate that.
Sorry.
No, because I'll say that it's—no, stop laughing.
No, no, I'm sad.
I'm sad.
I'm just covering up my sadness with the laughter.
It's a defense mechanism.
Okay, good, good.
As long as you hate yourself, that's what I want.
So I think it's both, right?
Because— So let's roll back to 2001.
Okay, normally what you would see with a changeover from a Democratic to a Republican administration, like Clinton had a very aggressive antitrust case against Microsoft.
And then George W. Bush came in and he settled it on terms that were pretty favorable to Microsoft.
So that's a normal kind of turnover when you have these big kinds of cases.
Somebody who is aggressive to somebody—well, I'm not saying Clinton was aggressive.
He was aggressive to Microsoft.
But that is a standard sort of— Now, we have a situation where you have a bunch of antitrust cases against Meta, against Google.
Biden also brought one against Apple.
He brought one against Amazon.
Ticketmaster, like a whole suite.
And so far, the Trump administration has continued them and kept them very aggressive.
And so it is certainly not a standard turnover from an aggressive regime to a weak regime.
It is a turnover like Trump had these two cases.
Biden took them over, strengthened them, brought more.
And now what we're seeing is Trump took them over from Biden.
And I think J.D. Vance has a lot of influence in the antitrust world of the Trump administration.
And so they're continuing them very strong.
Now, that said, Trump could at any point.
Deal away these cases.
That is his model.
He thought about doing that with Meta.
He liked a lot of what Mark Zuckerberg did in terms of changing his content moderation policies, offering money, and so on and so forth.
He didn't end up settling, but I think he's open to it.
The other thing is that you have a problem where Doge has gone in and has really fired a lot of people in a bunch of different agencies, and the Justice Department has lost a lot of lawyers.
There might be good reason for that from a Republican point of view.
There's a deep state, et cetera, et cetera.
The Justice Department is highly bureaucratic.
I think there is a lot of problems there.
What I would say, though, is that just on a logistical level, you do need lawyers to litigate these cases.
And if you lose your lawyers over time, I'm afraid that the antitrust agencies will have to make choices about which cases to settle and which cases to keep going.
So I think there is a possibility that Trump settles.
But I also think it could keep going strong.
But there you're going to run into the fact that they're just weakening our government institutions.
All that is fixable.
It's not inherent, not inevitable.
Generally speaking, I'm very surprised and pleased with where Trump has gone on antitrust.
But those are kind of my observations about where we are and where we might be going.
So I do have to observe that for a supposedly awful, crappy question, you seem very animated and very excited to talk about it and to answer it.
So I don't know, maybe by the end you actually thought it was quite a good question because I saw this smirking on your face, this grinning, this movement that I hadn't quite seen before.
You really summoned a lot of energy to answer that crappy question.
I had to clean up your mess.
That's the issue.
I appreciate it.
I definitely appreciate it.
I enjoy doing that.
I know you do.
All right, Matt, that's a major reason why we have you on, to clean up my messes.
