Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down a story that should be dominating headlines but isn't: how Elon Musk and a group of insiders allegedly seized access to the U.S. Treasury’s payment systems, giving them unprecedented control over government funds and classified data. How did this happen? Who tried to stop it? And why isn’t this the biggest news in the country right now?
Then, we turn to the escalating trade war—Trump has slapped massive tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and now both countries are hitting back. What does this mean for consumers, businesses, and global stability? Spoiler: nothing good.
Finally, a chilling economic shift is underway. Hedge funds are making enormous bets on a U.S. market collapse. Do they know something the rest of us don’t? And if so, how bad could things really get?
Buckle up—this one’s big.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nick, I said to you off mic before we started recording, every one of these shows now is just packed to the gills.
And we have to talk about some stuff.
I texted you this weekend, and this is the closest I think that I have come to calling an emergency podcast in a long time.
What took place this weekend.
But before we get to all that, how are you doing?
I was wondering, you know, a show doesn't start really properly without checking in.
Checking in.
And we check in with everybody, too.
I'm doing fine.
And, you know, the only thing about interacting with you can be frustrating because when you ask somebody how they're doing...
You really want to know how they're doing.
I actually want to know how other people are doing.
Right.
It's not just like, hey, how you doing?
Whatever.
And so it puts pressure on other people like me.
Like, I have to now equally feel like I want to know how you're doing.
And I do want to know how you're doing.
I really do.
And I want to answer you in a way that has substance.
Absolutely.
These times, earnestness is important.
Yes, I agree.
I agree.
And I kind of feel good.
You know what?
Remember in the movie History of the World Part 1 when the Roman, they make a huge joint and they light it on fire and everyone's getting high and trailing them.
And so these two Roman soldiers are sitting there completely wasted.
And the guy's like, what do you think?
He goes, about what?
He goes, about the fall of the Roman Empire.
I think he goes...
Fuck it.
Start giggling.
That's kind of how I feel right now.
Like those guys just peering at what's happening to our country.
It's a lot, man.
I've not been feeling great.
And on top of it, there's been a thing, and as long as we're being earnest about this at the start of the show, there's a weird thing that's taken place here.
And I'm glad that you and I have been on this journey.
As somebody who's like chronicled this and like been like, hey.
This is what's happening and here's where we're going.
Reaching that point of here's where we're going sucks.
Right.
Here's where we're at.
Yeah, here's where we're at.
It sucks.
Yeah.
And there's a certain amount, and I'm sure a lot of people listening to this show because they've been on this journey with us.
They've been doing their own analysis of it.
They've heard us talk about it.
They've been informed about it.
I'm sure that there is a certain level of, my God, we tried to stop this.
You know what I mean?
Like, we tried to sound the alarm, we tried to stop it, and now we're here.
And then it's been like a weird psychological thing to have to sit with.
There's a lot of anger and frustration.
Part of me kind of want to get through it.
Like, okay, we're here.
Sure.
Get it done faster.
Because I think we all understand that, like, when it really gets to where we think it's going, it will crash and burn.
It will ultimately be a terrible thing for Trump and get him out.
So let's just, can we cut to that part?
Quicker.
I don't know.
Accelerationism.
Interesting tactic.
We'll see how it works.
Yeah.
But it is one of those things where I think there's a certain amount of grief and anger that has to be processed.
It hasn't stopped me from doing the work.
And it hasn't stopped me from organizing and pushing against this thing, but there are moments of like, oh my god, this is happening.
And I'm saying all this because I want to continue to pull back the curtain.
Like, we get on here, we talk about this, we give our analysis, and we try and do it as professionally as humanly possible.
Man, it takes a toll.
Yeah.
It does.
We got a whole lot to talk about.
A reminder, go to patreon.com slash muckraigpodcast.
It keeps us going.
It keeps us editorially independent.
And if you don't understand why that's important right now, I don't know what to tell you.
But that also gets you the weekender episode on Fridays.
We appreciate your support.
You're continuing to trust us.
Put your faith in us.
It's the best thing we could ever ask for.
Don't forget the Discord that you get, a chat privately with everybody on there, which is a great community as well.
People sharing information and going through this stuff together.
It's very, very important.
And speaking of going through things together, Nick, our top story today, starting on Friday and going through the weekend, there has been a coup being carried out by Elon Musk.
Musk and a team of Peter Thiel sickos have basically tried to enter every part of the federal government.
They've gained access to a thing called the Treasury Payment System.
They pushed out a bunch of federal employees.
They had a major, major member of the administration have to resign.
He got in the way.
There have been reports that they have accessed incredible confidential information, private information for everybody, as well as taken over the controls of the payment system of the federal government.
A reminder, this is an unelected, unaccountable person who also happens to be an oligarch who has expressed neo-Nazi, fascistic, authoritarian, anti-democratic sentiments.
And basically, he has now put within himself the type of power that you and I have been warning people that he was going to seize at some point.
And we're watching it play out in real time now.
Jared, remember when Jared Kushner couldn't get his security clearance during the first Trump administration?
I do.
On his FS86 forums a bunch of times, which is supposed to put you in prison.
You're supposed to go to jail.
Right.
So, you know, it's really great.
These guys are smart.
You know what the solution is?
Don't fill out the FS86 forum anymore.
Don't have any oversight.
You have to get, like, you know, to get this kind of access, you're supposed to have, like, the deepest level of security clearance.
And they have to know that you're not beholden to anybody else and you might not sell this information.
It's beyond that we've lost.
I think that might be the biggest issue.
It's not even the fact that Trump is in power.
It's that we've lost anybody else who was supposed to be doing their jobs in terms of protecting the American people and their information.
Yeah, I'll go ahead and give a quick little hat tip to the Democratic Party who remembered that they're an opposition party.
And have done a couple of things in the past couple of days that have basically been for show and photo ops.
Congratulations, guys.
I'm glad you woke up a little bit.
Meanwhile, Nick, we have a group of people who basically went in and stripped Twitter of every bit of meat off of its carcass and turned it into not only a hell site, but a propaganda tool that doesn't...
Those people under the direction of Elon Musk and the other oligarchs who have put all this stuff together are now within the federal government.
God knows what they're doing with all this private information.
It's my information.
It's your information.
It's the information of Musk's competitors.
It's the information of businesses that he might very well try and undermine.
On top of that, classified information has reportedly been uploaded onto personal devices.
We don't know what that's going to do.
Meanwhile, I was telling everyone, and you might remember this, Nick, going back to last summer when Musk did his Twitter space with Donald Trump.
And we played these clips where Musk started floating the idea of being in control of something that would eventually become doge.
And basically, you brought up, by the way, History of the World Part 1, great pop culture reference.
I'm going to bring up another one that might help people understand this.
It's like in Lord of the Rings when you have the stricken king who's on a throne who isn't well, and you have the person whispering in his ear and controlling him.
We watch Doge get set up, and what do people say, Nick?
And there should be a soundboard that we have that...
Says this every time, which is, hey, they're saying what they're going to do, but they can't do it.
Like, they're not going to have control over the federal spending apparatus.
Like, there's no way that they could possibly do it.
Congress will get in their way.
And what are we now seeing?
They went in under the cover of darkness, away from the public eye.
And they muscled their way into this.
They intimidated people.
They forced people out.
They cost people their jobs.
God knows what else has happened that we haven't even heard about.
They now have control over this old arcane infrastructure that was put in place, Nick, as a nonpartisan way to get bills paid.
And now that they have control over it, we now have, with Elon Musk, he now has control over all of this information.
He has the keys to the system.
And, Nick, that means that he can intimidate people.
By withholding payments, he can basically carry out political terrorism against institutions and individuals, basically not getting them paid.
And we know that because Trump has control of this administration that they won't have any sort of a recourse in trying to make that happen.
So he now has not just the wealth of being the wealthiest person.
In the history of the modern world, but also the wealth of the most historically powerful state in the history of the world on his side to do whatever he wants with no explanation whatsoever.
I mean, he happens to be the most technocratic person on the planet as well.
You know, it kind of makes you start to really wonder about that report that he knew the results of the election hours and hours before they came out.
You know, Social Security information is now accessed by them.
And they're also leveraging this across the government itself.
And so they're having these questionnaires where they're trying to root out, you know, the non-Trump people.
And so all these things are rooted on trying to discover who you are and what the value is to that.
Because, A, there's a whole value to Trump or to Musk with his businesses and knowing that information anyway, which I have no doubt that there's into his databases as well.
But it's all there isn't any more oversight anymore.
And they've convinced enough people that The government doesn't run well, which I think everyone agrees with, but it allows the right to then buy into the fact that, well, we have to have these measures because nothing really works well.
We've just got to knock the whole thing down and restart it anyway.
But this is not the way to do it.
This is not a competent way to do it.
And these are not people who would give me any confidence that they're going to protect our stuff.
Because what if they're, you know, let's just pretend they're doing it in good faith.
You know, they really want to make the government work better.
What an assumption.
But sure, let's go.
But they're housing all this information in a way that what if it ends up getting hacked, like, by accident, though?
Well, now every single American and their social security number and all those different things that are going to end up being, you know, could be catastrophic to a lot of people are now completely vulnerable for no reason other than that these guys are, we're dumb.
Nick, let me just engage in a quick fever dream.
Are you ready?
I love it.
Let's just imagine a wealthy human being who has existed by fleecing everybody, who, by the way, is a car magnate who can't even make a car that doesn't kill people and or just explode into flames.
Let's say that this guy is over-leveraged in every way possible around the world because he can't help himself.
He owes money to dictatorships around the world who have invested in his businesses.
I mean, my God, this information is pretty good.
And on top of that, to go ahead and use it with those people and to leverage it against certain people and any sort of critics that could possibly come out of the woodwork, this is just a goldmine.
It's invaluable.
There's no way to even put a number on how much this is worth.
Add to that that Apple is now offering a link to Starlink, you know, his satellite network, to allow you to send text that way, which, again, you have durability there that people are already telling you to turn this thing off and whatever, which there's some settings about it.
But, like, that didn't happen.
Before Trump got in the White House and before Tim Cook and him were hanging out together and shooting the shit.
So all these things are creating these synergies here across different platforms that you wouldn't normally see.
And yeah, we're moving into that sort of big brother thing easily now.
Well, and I want to say, and there's another aspect to this I want to talk about in just a second, but I want to make one point and then I want to give some advice.
The first point I want to make, Nick, is why this is working.
And the first thing is, it's kind of hard to explain, right?
It's kind of, it's not an easy sort of a thing.
Like, even trying to talk about it in the media, it basically comes down to, I don't exactly know what's going on.
I don't exactly know what groups these are.
I don't know what these offices are.
Civic understanding in the United States of America is nil.
We have been taught to not pay attention to this.
Don't worry, the professionals and the adults have control over it.
You don't need to understand it.
It also sounds insane to talk about it, right?
Like, in order to properly explain to people what's going on, you have to get into Curtis Yarvin.
You have to get into techno-feudalistic, fascistic authoritarianism.
It's what they're actually doing, and to discuss it, you have to say things that are absolutely...
Nuts.
And all of a sudden you're talking about the total capture of the United States government.
People are like, well, why aren't people talking about it?
Because it's hard to talk about.
And on top of that, we have a segment coming up about massive tariffs that are being taken out against our allies.
We have economic problems.
We have all these cultural clashes that are being exploited by these people.
What I want to say very quickly to people listening before we get to the next aspect of this giant story, I want to say this.
If you feel powerless and afraid right now, keep talking to the people around you, the people that you trust.
In your communities, you need to reach out to local leaders.
You need to reach out to people at your schools, at government-affiliated organizations.
And you need to ask them what they're doing to prepare for this when the shit slides downhill.
Because it starts up top at the national, and then it gets regional, and then it gets local.
You need to talk to those people now.
And, for the record, Nick, would you agree?
That this is the kind of thing that we should be in the streets over.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
And in order to do that, you need to talk to other people to get them in the streets.
You need to start...
We're organizing with other people and saying, when are we going to do this?
When is the red line going to get crossed?
Because it feels very large.
Nick, I can't go to Washington, D.C. and stop Musk from doing this.
I can't go carry out a citizen's arrest.
The only thing that I can do is take care of things locally and hope that it builds and grows.
That's it.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, I think the reason why it feels insane or improbable or impossible is that, you know, when we watch the TV shows like this, it's always like one rogue government.
The government is threatening legal action if they continue naming the people who are playing a role of this, who are, for the record, government employees at this point.
Right.
Yes.
And there won't be anybody left pretty soon.
They're going to end up firing everybody who would have been the heroes of that TV show.
They're going to be gone.
And what's startling is that there's a lot of people who are gladly willing to take those jobs and follow whatever they're trying to tell them.
It flies in the face of how the Constitution works or what you're supposed to be doing in your job for the government.
It is a real problem.
You only have to hope, you know, the new version of that TV show now is the person comes in as that full-throated, mag-up thing, but ends up as a mole, right?
And he's, like, doing it behind the scenes and he's going to expose it, right?
We hope that happens, too.
I mean, that will happen.
There will be whistleblowers.
There will be, like, people, you know, like Snowden or whatever who will release stuff maybe that they shouldn't.
And maybe we'll feel thankful that we got to see behind the curtain.
But this is not going to be what takes him down.
I will say, just as an individual for as modest of a platform as I have, I've been inundated with whistleblowers.
I have been inundated with people within the federal apparatus who want to say, here are the things that we're being told.
So I have to imagine that that is everywhere.
By the way, Nick...
A wealthy oligarch, the most powerful, richest man in the world has taken over the United States government effectively.
It'd be cool to hear what the president of the United States has to say about this, right?
Like the guy who's supposed to be this guy's boss.
Can we just check in very, very quickly and maybe see what the president of the United States of America has to contribute to this conversation?
Why is it important for Elon Musk to have access to the payment systems at Treasury?
Well, he's got access only to letting people go that he thinks are no good, if we agree with him.
And it's only if we agree with him.
He's a very talented guy from the standpoint of management and costs.
And we put him in charge of seeing what he can do with certain groups and certain numbers.
Some of the numbers are horrible, what he's found.
A hundred, think of it, a hundred million dollars on condoms to Hamas.
Condoms to Hamas.
And many other things that are, frankly, even more ridiculous.
And they're finding tremendous waste, really waste, more than anything else, I think you could say.
Probably fraud and abuse could be added to it.
The more standard waste, fraud and abuse.
But they're finding tremendous amounts of really...
How about that, Nick?
How do you feel about that?
The President of the United States of America on top of his game?
I mean, let's just put this to rest right now.
It was supposedly $50 million of condoms to Hamas, not $100 million.
And that wasn't real.
And it's not real at all.
And by the way, $50 million worth of condoms at five cents each.
It would be like you can go to the moon stacking them on top of each other.
But at any rate, it's what he does.
It's what he does, and it sounds great.
Everybody thinks and everybody knows there's lots of waste, and there is.
I'm sure there's lots of waste you can find in the government.
Sure.
Right?
This is not a business.
This is a government.
But, you know, he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
He doesn't know what Musk is doing at all.
And Musk never tried to explain it to him.
He would be lost within five seconds.
And he's like, just do it.
I don't care.
I don't know.
Money.
Cut money.
I don't care.
Goodbye.
Wait, hold on a second, Nick.
I hate to put a pause on the recording of this podcast.
Are you telling me that the President of the United States of America doesn't understand what's happening?
I really have a hard time wrapping my head around that.
You're not even taking a week off, Jared.
Not even a pause.
Listen, this is a guy who has no clue what the hell is going on.
At all.
And we've talked about this over and over.
It's not just that Donald Trump is an older man.
It's the fact that he is historically stupid and historically lazy and historically uncurious.
All he does is he gets fed this stuff constantly, and that's a thing that people need to readjust themselves on.
It's not that Donald Trump is just coming up with all this stuff off the top of his head, right?
The Greenland thing, he didn't imagine it.
The Panama Canal thing, he didn't just imagine it.
He didn't just bring these things up.
These are things that are being fed to him by a group of people who have not only bought him, but take advantage of him.
We have the most powerful, richest man in the world who has bought the American presidency and one of the two major political parties and has effectively taken control of the federal government while the president of the United States of America has no idea what's going on in any way, shape, or form.
He doesn't know what he's signing.
He doesn't know what he's passing.
He doesn't even know what he's advocating when he speaks.
This is, and I said this earlier in an interview, This is Ronald McDonald being the head of the McDonald's Corporation, right?
This is literally a clown who is there to take up oxygen and to take advantage of the personality cult that has been built around him and bought by the wealth class that is now carrying out this coup.
Well, don't forget, Jared, in the darkest of days, just say to yourself that you deserve a break today.
Don't forget that, okay?
Catchphrases ago.
You just made me realize how many catchphrases that dumb corporation has gone through.
I know, but it's a good one.
You deserve a break today.
You deserve a break.
And yeah, you know, right.
Would it be worse if he was younger and more with it and understood technology and actually had his finger on the pulse of all these things?
I mean, if J.D. Vance was the one sitting behind that desk, and Nick, just a quick little reminder.
Just a heartbeat away or the wrong food or standing next to an open window, you know, on a second or third floor away from being president.
It would be even more sinister.
Do you know what I mean?
Like somebody who is actually working with these people and understands what they're doing.
This has a really disturbing feeling to it.
It feels like weirdly more dangerous because they can pull anything they want over on him.
And it's simply the hatred and the ugliness and the self-dealing that this man has.
The only thing he cares about, Nick, is not...
It isn't even at this point the over a quarter of a billion dollars that Musk gave his campaign.
It's the tens of billions of dollars that they created through his meme stock.
And for the record, the people who are basically calling the shots, Nick...
this point, they kind of understand the crypto market and they can collapse that at any given moment.
So not only is it his financial wealth, it's his political fortunes.
They have complete control over this guy.
And I really, truly don't think that he understands what's going on at this point.
Right.
And for what it's worth, his coin is, you know, Going down hour by hour as they're probably dumping it as we speak.
So, yeah, it's, you know, the other problem is that, you know, with Doge and what they're trying to do and impose, you know, sort of the power of the purse, which is supposed to be with Congress.
And they're making these wholesale decisions.
Oh, and by the way, they're not hiding it anymore.
Trump, in that quote that we shared in that clip, says, as long as they agree with us, we'll let them continue working in the government.
There's some sort of litmus test.
And someone shared on Twitter, it looks legit enough to me, what this questionnaire looks like to try and dig deep into what they believe because that is what they care about versus anybody who is a nonpolitical worker for the government in these very important jobs and they're experts.
That won't apply anymore.
And we've already seen the dangers of that when you're talking about something like the FAA. And how about this is the dangers of what Trump was saying?
We kind of went over it last episode, but just how they're trying to characterize any kind of mishap as, you know, and then who they're vilifying off all this.
It just continues to grow this, you know, mindset that we have to somehow reverse.
And I don't know how you reverse it.
It's really difficult because it seems like a lot of people are ready to cast as villains, you know, people who are simply just trying to get along.
Well, and it's a really hard thing because one of the things that builds into this, there's an earned distrust of our government.
Our government has screwed us.
And in a lot of ways, our government does not deserve our trust.
And we'll talk more about that in a second.
So it is hard to say this thing doesn't necessarily work the way it's supposed to.
I think it should be reformed or changed as opposed to burnt to the ground, right?
And then basically we have someone like Musk.
And people will say, well, what can you do with this?
Well, Nick, we're recording this on Monday.
Currently right now, if you want to get a hold of the group USAID, which is the largest food assistance program in the world, and also fights diseases, brings medicine to people, tries to actually help the people of the world.
The United States of America, for all of its faults, has tried to help people.
I will talk about the downside of all this in a second.
If you tried to get a hold of the U.S. Agency for International Development today, you couldn't.
And why?
Because Elon Musk has personally destroyed the agency.
There's a possibility that it will be wiped off the map.
It will be brought into the State Department, which has its own problems.
But they've already said that they want to shut it down.
They want to kill it.
And I have to remind people, we're talking about things that are happening within the government.
This will kill people.
People will die because of this, simply because one man with his finger on the switch decided that he wanted to get rid of this agency.
When you look at the criticism of this agency, it's like people are so offended that we're actually trying to help people.
That's part of it, right?
There are problems with it, which I'll get to in a second.
But the idea that the United States should just wipe out aid is wild.
Right.
I mean, it's like, you know, even Musk on Twitter was saying, well, does anybody else know if it's another country that pays taxes and they send it to America?
Like, they're looking at this so transactionally, which is so problematic.
It does echo a little bit of the Clinton Foundation stuff, because remember, that was their huge sounding board where they could hammer Hillary, aside from emails, that was the next biggest one they could hammer her with.
What that ignored was that the Clinton Foundation actually did do a lot of really good work.
Whether or not they want to insist it was corrupt, I don't think we ever saw evidence of that.
But they funded terrific things.
So, by the way, though, when we send aid to different countries, is that a possibility we can now get some help CIA-style information from while they're there?
Yeah.
But why would someone like Trump be against that?
That's what's so fascinating to me, because in reality, listen, I bet you, listen, some of it is, let's try and go, we'll send money to Iran to try and change the hearts and minds and get the democracy in there instead of what's there now.
Well, I don't think anyone would argue with that.
Like, that's sort of a thing that everybody does, and it's transparent.
Like, they'll open these offices to do that.
But to see it vilified on the right like this as wasteful spending is just bizarre, because it seems like a lot of these things align with their Cold War.
So there's so much to get into because you just brought up so many points.
First things first, the Clinton Foundation, the Gates Foundation, all these groups, can you make an argument that they've helped people?
Absolutely.
I would counter with this.
They shouldn't exist.
Period.
They exist because of an unequal society that has created all these NGOs that the wealthy can fund, and they have control over aid, and they have control over these things.
It's trying, as I've talked about over and over, to create this new feudal situation where the government's not helping people.
It's individuals with historic wealth and power who decide who deserves help.
And by the way, you can also go ahead and use that to enrich yourself and gain access to politicians and resources.
So basically, this is trying to put more power in the hands of people like Elon Musk.
The second part, Nick, why is it that the United States gives its money to other countries?
I would like to introduce everybody to a little something called the Marshall Plan.
After World War II, the entire reason the United States of America became the center of hegemonic power in the world is because it decided that it wanted to ascend to the top of the ladder of capitalism and it would become the organ that fluctuated capitalism through the rest of the world.
So now we're trying to go back into isolationism.
We're trying to manage the quote-unquote decline of American empire with disastrous consequences.
I think that should happen, but not necessarily the way this is occurring.
Third, what you just brought up is right, which is this agency has done a lot of good.
It's also done a lot of bad, which is that it has worked with things like the Central Intelligence Agency.
It has manipulated other countries.
It has engaged in some things that have hurt a lot of people.
The reason for this, and this is the larger sort of context of all of this, which is when you have a hegemonic power like the United States of America, even the good things that it does are intertwined with power moves, with manipulating people, with putting people in places where it benefits America and gives them more power and more control.
The problem here, it's...
It's the difference between an infected limb that needs to be lopped off and something that needs to be treated, right?
We need to stop doing those things.
We need to stop engaging in those power plays, and we need to become a more benevolent country that starts to move away from these hegemonic actions.
What they're doing at this point, it goes back to what I was saying, which is putting more money in the pockets of the wealthy and allowing them to control the movement and directions of the world, which is...
For the record, Nick, historically, why the United States of America...
Why the Enlightenment happened?
Why liberal democracy happened?
It was to take away those sort of unaccountable power blocks of wealthy people who handed money down and created kingdoms and feudalistic fiefdoms, and to go ahead and create a better system that was more democratic.
They failed, they had a bunch of problems with it, but that is what it's trying to do, it's trying to wind back time, and they basically have just delivered a pretty strong blow to that.
So I guess you're going to think there's something wrong with me if I aspire to be one of those people who has so much money that they could give it away and run an NGO like that.
You should not want that.
It's a fantasy of mine.
I don't know why.
So I work with a nonprofit, Nick.
And every meeting with a nonprofit that I have, I'm like, hey, before we start this meeting, I need you to know...
You shouldn't exist.
And you exist because of faults and limitations within the government and because of this unequal system.
Your entire purpose should be to eliminate your need to exist, right?
So you can want to help people based on the system that it is, but we have to move beyond the system because it is beyond destructive.
Right.
I can't help but think of perhaps what I'm really fantasizing about is just being that wealthy.
Well, don't we all?
I mean, there's something that pops off in the brain in this current environment.
You want to win that Powerball, right?
I mean, you want to be the one who somehow or another scuttles above everybody else in the bucket.
For sure.
And to add on to the Marshall Plan idea, the notion of soft power is a real significant thing, which, you know, it turns out if you give money to people, they might like you a little bit more than if you kill them and kill them.
Okay, and it's where those two intersect.
If you help people, you can go ahead and win them over.
When you're helping them, but also you're, like, killing them and, like, taking on coups and sterilizing, that's where the problem comes in.
Right, right.
But U.S. aid...
You know, they're not performing in the coup, necessarily.
I don't think, when you look at...
No, the CIA and other capitalistic sort of organisms sort of ride on the back of it and use it to move through.
By the way, while you're there, can you just hand this package to somebody?
I don't know.
Whatever they're doing, I'm sure they're doing that kind of stuff.
And there is a value in terms of needing to have intelligence.
And a lot of times it's easier, or the only way to get it is by leveraging some of these...
Listen, this is the dirty world we live in.
This is the difference between...
Between being a liberal and a progressive and being a leftist.
I think you can change the paradigm.
Right.
I hear you.
I mean, until then, then we need to give aid.
And that aid does help.
I completely agree.
And the idea they're going through it, the way they're going through it.
And by the way, Doge does not have any...
I know it was an executive order that created it, but you can't dissolve government agencies without Congress.
USAID is a sort of independent government agency, so I suppose they might be out of the bounds or out of the protections, but they have their eyesight on a lot of different things that they do not have jurisdiction over legally, where you'd say, okay, AOC or whoever it's going to be, we need the lawsuits filed, we need to start blocking these things.
There's already been a little bit of that going on, some traction in the judiciary.
I mean, we're having 14th Amendment arguments now.
It's ridiculous.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
And that is, instead of just like leaving the context by itself, it is incredible cruelty and incredible greed that is leading to this.
And it's going to hurt people quite a bit.
I do not think that it needs to be shut down.
It's reform.
Right?
Like, instead of just getting rid of it.
But they can make this argument because they use all this stuff.
Also, Musk has a bunch of, like, petty grievances against it, which causes it.
So, Nick, as all of this is taking place, and there's a reason why we attack these stories in this order, because we continually have to try and put all this into context.
As Musk is carrying out this coup against the federal government, Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
An update on this, Mexico has supposedly reached a quote-unquote agreement, which is its own farce to delay these things.
But we have now seen the beginnings of a trade war, which we'll talk more about in just a second.
It has spurred incredible outrage in Canada.
This is a quote from Justin Trudeau, and I have my problems with Trudeau, but this quote is quite good.
He says, Quote, we have fought and died alongside you during your darkest hours.
We're standing with you, grieving with you, and we are a little perplexed as to why our closest friends and neighbors are choosing to target us.
This is a completely unnecessary trade war.
It will do incredible damage to not just international relationships but also the individual consumer within the United States of America.
At what point did the fentanyl epidemic start coming in from the north?
It's the caravan, man.
They're eating the dogs in Ohio.
It's just whatever they want.
They'll just throw whatever fake bullshit they want at it in order to tell you why they're doing it.
And it's not to be cryptic.
That's what they're trying to say, that there's some sort of fentanyl crisis in the northern border.
And until they do something about that, we are putting these tariffs on it.
That's a big talking point.
And they literally are just appropriating it from the southern border.
You know, CNN does the fact check that, like, 0.2% of all fentanyl comes in from the northern border.
It's never been a thing.
And I would feel concerned.
You know, we've already heard Musk sort of threaten to make Canada another state of the union.
And, you know, would that be...
Would he actually send troops in to take over?
I would be really, really concerned.
I almost feel like one of their biggest issues is that Canada gets this good rep about having cheaper drugs.
I feel like they're so threatened by that and they get so pissed off about that that this is what they're doing.
They're trying to retaliate that way in some weird way.
I don't know what else to make of it other than that.
Or to think that when Trump hears drugs, kind of like when he says asylums and he thinks that people are I don't know what to make of it, and they're just going to impose tariffs on us, and that's going to be really brutal.
And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, Jared, but wars have been fought over less than tariff wars, right?
Oh, yeah.
No, I mean, this is like, it's economic warfare, but it's also a shakedown.
Again, like, you brought up...
For years, we have talked about the psychology of Donald Trump and going into his head and figuring out what he's doing.
At this point, it would be like going into a hall of mirrors.
There's no telling what he thinks is going on.
Is that how you picture his brain?
Like a hall of mirrors?
Just a real disgusting, smudged up hall of mirrors.
Just filled.
Like being John Malkovich, but like Trump.
Oh, that's interesting.
I don't think that the smell...
I need more smell.
It's bad.
It's really, really bad.
And basically what this is...
There's a couple of things happening here.
One, absolutely, it's just Donald Trump carrying out whatever he thinks should be happening.
It is in part a distraction that will actually affect people, but it's also the unwinding of the era of free trade.
Like, we are seeing a crack-up in the world right now.
The entire neoliberal global thing was built on America, Canada, and Mexico, and other trading partners going into a place where they can just easily trade things.
We're seeing the crack-up of globalism, American hegemony, which we've talked about already.
This is one of the first signs that this is starting to happen.
We've already seen it with Trump attacking allies and all that stuff.
For the individual, Nick, This is going to be disastrous for businesses.
I mean, Canada and Mexico are both importing so many American goods.
They're going to put their own tariffs in it.
Mexico, by the way, has announced that they created this work around the troops that they say they're going to send to the border were already there.
So this was just like a PR win.
The same thing that happened the other day with Colombia.
But more or less, we are now tearing down the structures that...
Helped individual consumers and leaving everything that actually helps the larger international corporations and the wealthy.
And you know who else it helps in all of this, Nick?
BRICS. It helps the China sort of alternative power system because if they're not going to get these deals with America, they're going to get them from China and the associated countries.
So we're watching that authoritarian push that we've talked about.
And on top of it, which we'll talk about in just a second.
Nick, this is an intentional demolishing of the American economy, period.
And we'll get into why that's happening and other factors there showing this, but this is nothing except for a self-inflicted wound, and a lot of people are going to suffer from this as well.
Oh, the soybean farmers had seen this before, and again, it's remarkable that someone who pretends to understand how the economy works and economics in general...
He doesn't seem to understand that yet because I think in his adult mind, Trump, it's like suddenly the businesses that we're going to have to pay so much more to import the goods from will just start popping up on every corner in America and then those won't be taxed because they're American companies.
Good luck.
That takes years to build up any kind of infrastructure of an industry when you're taxing like that.
And those other countries...
There's newsflash, a lot of other countries in this great wide world of ours that will gladly buy those goods from them at lower prices.
Dude, the structure that they created got rid of those businesses.
Like, those businesses got supplanted by international corporations that produce things basically in every country that...
Don't have to deal with those things.
They evolved beyond it, and now the remaining companies that were still remaining after that demolition you just talked about, they're the ones who are going to suffer this, not the very, very large corporations.
Right.
And Mexico, by the way, is really smart to delay this for a month because, Lord knows, Trump could change his mind in a month easily.
And all of a sudden they say, well, maybe this isn't a good idea.
Maybe the stock market will crash.
It's pretty much been resilient as of Monday afternoon today.
But, you know, it had a little bit of a hiccup a few days ago in the face of this.
But, you know, it shrugs and goes right back to where it was.
So, you know, that's an interesting thing to do.
Any kind of delay you can do with a guy like Trump is probably good because you get a sense he'll change his mind in that interim and go back to the way it was.
Well, and a lot of this is like A-B testing.
They're seeing what's going to happen and they don't really care about the results.
And what you just spoke about, Nick, this is something that is not getting a lot of coverage.
One of the things you can do in analysis to understand where things are going is to start paying attention to who's investing in what, where the smart money, quote unquote, is going.
And right now, Goldman Sachs, its data is revealing that hedge funds are starting to bet billions upon billions of dollars.
There's been a 10% uptick on these hedge funds betting on the United States economy collapsing.
This is unfortunately something that you can bet on, this thing starting to take this fall.
And everything from tariffs to Trump's leadership to what has happened recently with the deep seek thing that we talked about in a recent episode that wiped out over a trillion dollars worth of wealth out of the U.S. economy.
It does seem as if the smart money right now is on the U.S. economy cratering at some point in the near future.
You know, what's fascinating to me is like, and it makes sense, if you raise the tariffs like he wants to do and cause all sorts of economic pain to everyday Americans, that's a really easy, quick way to crash the economy.
And using options to do so is a great way to hedge against this.
It all makes sense.
It's almost like the A-B testing is supposed to be a thing where we don't know what might happen, so we've got to kind of try either way and see.
But, like, what happens when everyone who's saying it's going to crash the economy are right?
And it seemed clear way before that there was no need to do this.
But then you realize that that's sort of the feature of the whole thing, because to someone like Trump, it's just cheaper prices for him when the whole thing crashes, right?
Like, that's what it ends up being.
Yeah.
And just to get people up to date on this, because this isn't really widely available knowledge, we all should know this.
But basically, the stock market in the American economy has always existed.
And capitalism, you know, is sort of defined by this boom and bust periods, periods of incredible wealth and growth in which people are amassing huge fortunes.
And then they push the issue.
And Nick, we were not so young.
We lived through the 2008 collapse, right?
We saw that happen.
So we've had the boom period after that.
And what do they do during boom periods?
In order to create boom periods, they take away all the regulation, all the oversight.
They get rid of every lesson that we learned from the previous crash.
It grows and grows and grows until it collapses again.
And people would say, well, what about the wealthy?
Aren't they going to suffer as well?
Yeah, they'll take a little bit of a hit, but then there's a fire sale.
When the economy collapses, the people who have gained the most money, they're able to gobble up as much as humanly possible.
There in Los Angeles, after your giant fire, that's what's happening.
Every wealthy person is coming in and getting as much real estate as they possibly can at the lowest price that they possibly can.
Of course, you and I and everyone listening to this, probably, except for some of the wealthy people who like to listen in on our conversations, their 401ks are going to suffer.
Their homes are going to lose value.
Jobs are going to be lost.
Then we're going to have political radicalization and instability, which, by the way, serves the bottom line of the people who are doing this in the first place.
To give people an idea of where we are right now, and if you want to look through history, you will see all the things I'm getting ready to say.
Debt is at its highest saturation.
Which means people can't afford to live.
They can't afford to get the things that they need.
They've relied on more and more accruing debt in order to stay apace, right?
Eventually, you reach the top level of debt where people aren't getting paid enough.
They don't have enough wealth.
They can't afford the things that are happening.
Then you have a period of underconsumption and also it reaches a point of defaulting on things.
We also, this goes along with it too, it's like how you build a fire.
Nick, you know, you have to have a spark.
You have to have fuel and you have to have air.
The next one, bubbles.
Speculative bubbles.
And I don't know about you, but I look at a trillion dollars wiped off of the market in one day and you start to realize that tech...
And crypto and all these things, they are their own speculative bubbles.
And the moment that that gets wiped out, it's one domino after another.
And the instability when it comes to Trump and people being afraid of what's going on and not knowing what's coming next, all these things start to grow and grow and grow until you end up having this collapse.
And I have to tell you, Nick, from everything I've studied, from these tech guys, these oligarch guys, they've all wanted this.
They think that this is what needs to happen in order to decrease wages, in order to get rid of regulation, to basically have a blank check to do whatever they want while also gobbling up resources on the cheap.
For sure.
When you get into dire financial straits, you hunker down.
You're not as connected to politics.
You don't pay attention to that as much.
You're just trying to survive.
And that gives them that vacuum to take over.
You know, the thing with crypto, which is interesting, was that we've talked about this before.
You know, what made the stock market so impenetrable was how confusing it was.
And there was huge walls and barriers for any normal day-to-day person to try and get involved in it.
And it suddenly, our new economy has opened that up.
And one of the threats we talked about with AI, and especially with DeepSeek we didn't talk about, though, it's popping up everywhere now, is you can create microtraders out of AI. I'm asking for a friend, Jared.
Is it a good idea to have an AI bot that can have control over your money?
Nick, one of the things that isn't understood largely about the 2008 collapse is how much of it had to do with automation.
And because all these places are absolutely linked up with automated machines that make trades that they don't even understand, on top of that, they then create things like we've seen, like crater these markets because they're always looking for these opportunities.
That mixed with everything from, we're in a smash and grab moment.
It's literally, it's getting late at the party.
You know what I mean?
And it's time to grab whatever you can and head for the door.
That's what these people are counting on.
But some of these people, and listen, the only problem is how much of it is a scam or not.
But I'm choosing to believe that there are some people out there that have figured out how to create these bots that are micro-trading crypto.
And the reason why micro-trading is an important term is that you can do it so quickly ahead of the other orders in a way that it's almost like cheating.
Almost.
Crypto, it is.
I mean, they had a thing on 60 Minutes not long ago, but it was just great.
And so the point being that, like, you might have some normal, everyday people, you know, who are struggling to get by, just finish college, have all this debt, whatever, who are going to...
Create generational wealth off the back of this stuff.
And obviously what ends up killing you is that you do that and the next day you lose twice as much as you made the day before.
You make $75,000 one day and you lose $100 the next day, right?
But I'm extremely intrigued by this in the sense that maybe there is going to be a way to manipulate this even more for everyday people.
And again, I think I've gotten over my ethical issues now when I see the possibilities of what you can do if you utilize these tools.
Well, and Nick, just to go ahead and explain this a little bit further, I want you and everyone else to think about all of these things that have emerged in the past few years.
You cover basketball.
That's part of your career.
How much gambling has taken over sporting events?
100%.
Never the movie The Thing.
It's like that.
It's like the thing when it takes over the body and becomes the host.
How many young men are doing that?
Oh, I mean, listen, I advertise, full disclosure, I advertise for one of them.
It's fantasy, but it's the same.
It's not gambling, it's fantasy.
Would you agree that that also mirrors gambling on the stock market and crypto?
Yes.
So, right, so either the stock market is a legitimate thing, right, and then you can make money.
And if you believe that, then I believe gambling is a legitimate thing.
How many people have now moved to existing off of things like subscription services?
How many people are making money off of, like, ad campaigns based on social media stardom?
How much of America right now is based on an influencer economy?
Well, I mean, listen, there's probably not like millions of people who are making money off of ads in their social media points.
There's a good amount, though, is there not?
But by the reason why they exist, because of all people who are willing to buy them or click on those links and become consumers of those things.
What happens when the people who pay those things don't have the money to pay for them?
Well, then all of a sudden there's no more advertising for that either, I guess.
What happens to all the crypto whenever people who need the money from their crypto are no longer invested in their crypto?
Okay.
I think the answer you're looking for is it goes down.
It craters.
But I got to tell you, I've been playing with crypto for a little while.
It doesn't behave necessarily like that.
Exactly until the rug gets pulled from certain things.
And this has to do with everything from meme stocks to these big giant scams that are constantly happening.
The entire point is this.
If you were to imagine the United States of America like a house, right?
It's a tinderbox.
It's like every plug has like two extension cords with like the power bricks on them.
All of them have extension cords.
Like the fire hazards are building up and up and up.
You haven't had it inspected.
There's no longer a fire code.
There's no more fire extinguisher in the house.
It's already been used.
It's out.
The entire point is this thing is like primed for really bad things to occur.
And that's not just in my opinion, Nick.
That's Goldman Sachs.
That's hedge funds.
Those are the people who are looking to bet on the smart things.
And people need to pay attention to where they're putting their money and where things are happening.
Right.
And if you're listening to what I'm saying carefully, you're hearing what I'm saying is, oh, that won't happen to me.
Oh, yeah.
No.
No way that happens to me.
That just happens to other people.
Right.
And that's it.
That's the American dream.
That's literally the American dream.
It goes back to that arrested development thing.
These people are so self-deluded, and they think it will always work for them, and it never does.
And then they say, well, what about us?
Well, it might just work for us.
In this economy that the United States has built over all these years, there's plenty of money for everybody.
Sure.
So that's really, and I think that that's a fundamental disconnect for a lot of people like Trump.
They don't believe that.
They would never buy into that.
We can't give people money.
They'll never be productive.
They won't slave for what we need, for us rich people need.
But in reality, that's how they're getting their money.
There's no incentive for them to see the problem because they already know that they'll be not only bailed out, which we saw, but on top...
And by the way, it wasn't just 2008. It's been every financial crash.
Those people have been made whole every time.
get crushed, right?
So there's no incentive for them to see the problem.
It's just like they're playing the game on easy and they have all of the help in the world.
So there's no fear for them.
And they have every incentive to burn it down and then take advantage of the burn.
Right.
And don't forget the 2008 crisis was particularly nefarious because It also created a class of people who didn't lose everything, but will spend the rest of their lives paying down that debt that they incurred from those houses.
And they'll be indentured servants, basically, for the rest of their lives.
And hope maybe their kids or something like that.
So that's what got even worse.
It didn't just sort of wipe people out completely, whatever.
It put people in situations that are really difficult to get out of for a long, long time.
That's exactly right.
And we're going to keep an eye on that.
And just a reminder to anybody listening, my advice to everybody, Take care of your finances.
The party will not last forever.
And these people, Nick, do you agree?
They seem hell-bent on cratering this economy, do they not?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, right.
Because in theory, when you listen to what they're talking about, it almost feels like they'd be surprised.
Right?
They're not.
I mean, certainly the guys in charge should not be surprised.
We've already seen this movie.
We've seen terrorists and what they do to the economy back when he's describing the robbery.
They've already said, expect there to be pain.
Yeah.
They know.
They know full and well that this thing is not going to end well.
So I just want people to keep an eye on it.
I want people to take care of themselves.
I do not want them to be caught unaware when this thing has negative effects.
You know, and I lament that I'm ringing up now, but I had a whole point about this, which was, what if this is the new deep state?
Because if the economy cratering pulls Trump down with him and he becomes a pariah and ultimately loses that whole thing because of that, what if it was like, yeah, we've got to do that?
Almost like what Mark Felt was doing behind the scenes with Woodward and Bernstein to bring down Nixon.
Maybe there's a really bizarre, strange way of like, yeah, let's do all these things because we know what's going to happen and it's going to get him out once and for all.
Unfortunately, it's the oligarchs who are doing it.
Right.
Well, and Elon Musk is accusing other people of being oligarchs themselves.
They're the ones.
Yeah, it's a fun time.
Yeah.
All right, everybody.
We will be back with the Weekender Edition on Friday.
Reminder, go to patreon.com slash mygreatpodcast.
It does help us and keeps this going.
And keep telling people that we're talking about this stuff because, my God, is mainstream media not just failing, Nick.
It's on life support.
Yeah, it's unwatchable.
It's unwatchable.
There's nothing to be gained from it.
If you need us before that weekend or episode, you can find Nick on Blue Sky and Nick Halsman.
