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June 6, 2025 - Straight White American Jesus
01:05:23
Weekly Roundup: The Real Significance of the Trump-Musk Breakup

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 800-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Brad and Dan unpack the unraveling alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and what it could mean for the future of right-wing politics and finance. They examine how Trump’s behavior may cost Musk billions and how the fallout could affect Trump's campaign. The conversation turns to the role of Russell Vought and his influence over the future of Doge, as well as the broader push to reshape American society along racial, religious, and ideological lines. Brad and Dan break down Trump’s plans to enforce a straight, white, Christian, patriarchal order through aggressive policy and staffing changes. They close with a roundup of key headlines and a reminder that fractures within the MAGA movement may be cause for cautious optimism. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 Check out BetterHelp and use my code SWA for a great deal: www.betterhelp.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Axis Mundi.
Axis Mundi.
Things change quickly.
In November, I wondered how long the Trump-Musk bromance would last.
I wondered aloud if it would take us to Inauguration Day.
Well, it did.
And the damage done since then has been enormous.
But this week, their feud erupted into public view.
Musk has left the government, but he's done so in a way where he has burned bridges everywhere behind him.
Today we talk about the timeline of the Trump-Musk breakdown and if there's any lasting consequences to it.
We discuss the ways that Trump could hurt Musk financially, the ways that Musk's departure may hurt Trump's attempts to bankroll primary challengers, and then we jump into what's going to happen with Doge now that Musk is gone.
Unfortunately, someone is taking over who is much more skilled and competent than Musk ever was.
That's Russell Vogt, someone we've talked about on this show before, but who now holds the keys to Doge and is really the mastermind behind Trump's administration.
We end with a rundown of the ways that Trump is trying to purify the country of anything he sees as impure.
That includes those who are not straight, white, Christian, or native-born.
We see that in the ways that he is ordering the military, renaming ships, the ways that he's banned those from 12 countries that are predominantly Muslim, and so on.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is Straight White American Jesus.
Straight White American Jesus Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
Great to be with you on this Friday.
As always, joined by my co-host.
I am Dan Miller, Brad Onishi.
I'm Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College, and I think everybody's losing their mind.
So, you know, here we are.
I did not say my name.
I apologize.
I said it for you.
I am Brad Onishi.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is not.
This is not an impersonator.
We make enough mistakes.
Everybody will know that we're not AI.
Yeah.
Brad's skin looks really good this week.
What's going on?
Okay.
I think today is pretty obvious, friends.
We're going to talk about the Musk-Trump meltdown, the breakup of our favorite oligarchic romance.
We'll get into the schadenfreude, but also why it matters.
We'll also then talk about how Musk is leaving and has left, it seems, the government and the Trump orbit in ways that we probably could have predicted.
But the work of Doge will continue, unfortunately, and it will do so with a much more competent leader.
And I think we want to make sure that all of you know the person.
who you should have on your radar going forward.
And we've tried to do this already, and that guy is Russell Vogt.
So we'll talk about him today.
He's in front of Congress this week and have a bunch there to break down.
Finally, we'll get into some ways that the Trump administration continues to try to purify the country of any element it takes to be a infection or a sign of disease.
And you're like, what does that mean?
It means that they're trying to make the American political body straight, white, Christian and patriarchal.
And if you don't believe us, there's a lot of examples of just how they're trying to do that, whether it is renaming the ship so that it no longer bears the name of Harvey Milk or other examples.
So we'll jump into that at the end as well.
So, Dan, there's a billion things to say about Trump and Musk.
I will start by saying back in November and December when...
I asked the question, will this make it to January?
When will they break up?
They will break up, and what will happen?
I also made the point that the stakes were high, different than if Trump breaks up with Scaramucci or Kelly or any of the others he dragged into the Oval Office the first time, because Musk is, A, the richest man in the world, B, the owner of Twitter, but see one of the most important, quote-unquote, at least funded and entangled members of our federal government in terms of federal contracts that there are.
And I think we'll talk about that today.
So your initial thoughts, though, on the breakup?
I mean, I feel like we had Kendrick and Drake.
We've had breakups in the past, Dan.
I mean, you know, Brad Pitt.
Angelina Jolie.
I mean, we saw the Johnny Depp saga.
There's been a lot of breakups that you and I have called each other late at night about and just be like, yo, did you see this?
But this one is one for the ages.
So, Dan, initial, when you saw all of it happening, what did you think?
Some of the same things you mentioned, like the kind of, oh, now is when it happens.
I think some of it is the same thing that I was just reading, you know, right before we got on, articles sort of speculating on this, on how acrimonious will it get?
We've got, like, lots of people in the Republican conference starting to be nervous about this, because another thing that we had talked about, I think you talked about it really effectively in the context of the election and the aftermath, was the kind of tech bro component of MAGA world.
And I think that also plays out with, you know, all these big tech companies that have sort of fallen in line with what the Trump administration wanted and so forth.
And we had said, and again, you would, I think, to your credit, had really said this effectively.
That piece of MAGA World sits kind of—it's like an ill-fitting piece with some of the just, you know, blue-collar, white nationalist sort of stuff.
And, you know, we wonder how that piece was going to fit.
What happens when that piece is now like a linchpin of it, if I'm going to try to stick with my metaphor, I guess, is coming out?
What does that do?
Who does that harm?
How many of those GOP members of Congress who voted for the big, beautiful bill— I really won't want to if an Elon Musk is opposed to it.
How many other tech companies are going to sort of peel off with Elon Musk if this turns out to be, you know, not just a break, but a break up?
And so I think that that's one of the things that I was sort of watching and am still watching is to see how far does this go?
The rhetoric's been nasty.
We'll talk about some of that, some nasty accusations and so on.
How much of a center of gravity, I guess my question is, is Musk with that wing of MAGA world when they have no allowance for, you know, slippage in either House of Congress to pass things, they won the election, you know, on a razor-thin margin, all of that kind of stuff.
So I'm curious maybe about the significance of this for what we might call the MAGA coalition as it was in 2024.
Yeah, and I'm writing a book that really does sort of look at how that tech piece fits into, like, the Catholic traditional piece, the Christian reconstruction piece, you know, all the threads that lead to Trump, whether that's Pete Hegseth and Doug Wilson, whether that is J.D. Vance and the common good conservative Catholic types, but the technocrats.
And so we'll get to J.D. in a minute.
The Dizzler will make an appearance.
Don't worry, everyone.
Let's do a timeline, Dan.
You ready?
On Tuesday, 1.31, Elon Musk tweets, I'm sorry, but I can't stand it anymore.
Well, hold on.
I want to back up.
I want to back up.
The prequel to this was Musk in the Oval Office last week with a black eye looking high as a kite saying basically goodbye, everyone.
And that was the equivalent of like, yeah, we broke up, but I'm leaving, but it's all good.
We still care deeply for each other.
Yeah, like, I'm graduating, going to college, he's staying here.
It's just not, like, practical to, like, stay together with the distance.
Like, when I'm in town, we're still going to hang.
It's all love all the way down.
Where'd you get that black eye, bro?
Oh, my kid hit me.
It's funny, like, a four-year-old hit me and did that.
So, really?
A four-year-old?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Black.
Shined it up.
Interesting.
Because that's...
Never gotten close to that kind of damage.
And, you know, I'm sure that Musk's defenders there will be like, well, your kid doesn't have the supercharged chameleon DNA like his little kid does.
You don't have an alpha child.
You need an alpha child.
Yeah.
No, I don't.
I have a feta child, okay?
You know what that means?
We're a family that likes cheese.
So if you want to know where we land, I'm a feta male and I'm raising feta children.
Okay.
Now, all the gossip is that Elon Musk got in a physical fight with Scott Besson.
And that's who gave him the black eye.
Whatever.
Y 'all can go read about that.
If you want to know how he got his black eye, go check it out.
So that Oval Office thing happens.
And then Tuesday of this week, we get Elon saying that the big, beautiful bill, the terrible, awful, disgusting, inhumane bill that Trump wants to pass.
Is a massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill, and it's a disgusting abomination.
Shame on you if you voted for it.
Okay, the next day, a new spending bill should be drafted that doesn't increase the debt ceiling by $5 trillion.
Same day, hour later, call your senator, call your congressman.
Bankrupting America is not okay.
So this is full-on war now.
This is not like bad bill.
This is like call your people and kill the bill.
Next day, 11 in the morning.
He pulls up the old Trump tweets.
So Trump tweeted at one point, I can't believe the Republicans are extending the debt ceiling.
And Elon Musk is like, wise words.
Gotcha.
Pulls up another one.
No member of Congress should be eligible for re-election if our country's budget is not balanced.
Musk is like, I could not agree more.
He's doing the gotcha thing on Trump now.
Thursday, yesterday, Trump says, Elon and I had a great relationship.
I don't know if we will anymore.
He mentions that Trump's upset because there's no more EV subsidies.
real quick.
I just want to like...
we can maybe circle back around to this, but like, ooh, what a zinger, Trump.
Like, I mean, it's like...
It's like, oh, you got him.
You got him, Trump.
I mean, this is just one dimension to this, is Trump feels very flat-footed in all of this, but...
Like, are you still good?
And then it got back to him and he was like, well, you know, she said that.
Okay.
Trump says to the Oval Office reporters, Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody.
Elon Musk.
Shoots back.
Now we're in the war words.
Now we're talking to each other.
False.
This bill was never shown to me even once.
Okay.
So there it is.
Now, Musk yesterday keeps quoting Trump's old tweets.
It's amazing how much Elon Musk posts.
It's incredible.
Like, he does not seem to have a real job.
It's almost like he doesn't do anything else.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's almost like he's on drugs and online all the time, but whatever.
All right, he pulls up all these tweets about balanced budgets, whatever.
He keeps tweeting.
It's going to increase the deficit, whatever.
He just keeps going for it.
Now, Thursday at 2 o 'clock yesterday was really when things set off.
Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?
So, A, he's like, no more Republicans or Democrats.
Who's going to get into the, you know, Elmo-Musk party?
The Elmos, the Elmo-know-nothings.
Who wants to get in here?
B, 80% in the middle, bro?
Really?
All right.
I'm not even going to touch it, but you all can go laugh about that later.
Okay.
Then Trump starts posting on True Social.
They were posting on their own little accounts.
Not that we have an oligarch problem in this country, Dan, or like a New Gilded Age, but they were posting on their own social media platforms that they each own.
Yep.
So, you know, just going to leave that there.
Elon was wearing thin.
I asked him to leave.
I took away his EV mandate.
That forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted.
So I guess the whole, like, turning the White House into, like, a Tesla showroom was, you just, not a thing, Donald?
Okay.
The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts.
I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it.
Okay, so now we're just full, A, we're just as full mean girls.
This is full-on mean girl stuff.
I never thought you were pretty anyway.
You're a bad kisser.
Like, that's where we are.
But like, this is in a serious note.
If we had any accountability or demanded any integrity from Donald Trump or any of our political leaders at this point at all, if you in another age admitted that you had a government contractor.
And then that guy started criticizing you.
So then you just started basically saying all of the stuff that he gets from us, including with my approval, is a big waste.
Wouldn't you think that Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama would have just been swarmed?
If they had come out and been like, yeah, all of a sudden, I don't think that the billions of dollars we give that guy in contracts is good.
It's actually waste.
And I'd be like, oh, wait a minute.
You're using our tax money on waste now?
Do you think that?
But it doesn't matter because it's just two oligarchs fighting on their own social networks in a gilded age where there's no political accountability.
I'm going to get on a roll if you don't stop me, so jump in.
I'm actually waiting for Elon Musk to accuse Trump of eating carbs, and we'll just really see where it goes, because I'm pretty sure Trump does.
The other thing that I'm thinking about is, with this, we talked last week about the legal travails that the Trump administration has.
And they go into court and argue one thing, but then they've got this public statement.
And here it is again.
It's just basically like...
And it's just about rewarding people and targeting people.
There's no principle.
There's no policy.
And you see that and where all of a sudden it's like, you know, Trump's like, fine, well, I'll take my toys and go home then.
And, you know, and that's all that this is.
It's not about, you know, Again, policy or anything else, and you'll get to it, but Musk is then going to accuse Trump of being in the Epstein files, and it's just going to get, you know, sort of darker and worse from there.
But that's where I see the connections there is just the, what am I trying to say?
I guess the arbitrariness and the capriciousness of everything about the Trump administration and everything they understand about who gets funds and who doesn't and who gets to admit international students and who doesn't and who gets to, you know, be taken to court and who doesn't and who gets government subsidies and who doesn't and on and on.
and on.
This is just bringing that out into the foreground as well.
And you're right.
I don't hear the hue and cry from the Republican Party or the fiscal hawks or anybody else jumping all over that.
So let's just get to the real explosive stuff and then we'll analyze.
I don't want to go through every little tit for a while.
You've been here for a while.
Yeah.
Like this...
This junior high tech thread is very long.
So, basically, Elon Musk says something that we've known for a long time, but he does it in a way that his followers and others might be shocked by or not remember, whatever.
He says, real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.
That is the real reason they have not been made public.
So, this actually does hit at a MAGA conspiracy that is making its way through the right-wing ecosystem.
Because Don Bongino, Dan Bongino, I should say, and Cash Patel have not released the full files.
Pam Bondi.
And there's a lot of people on the conspiratorial who are like, that is why I'm here, for the Epstein files.
Why have they not been released?
What are you guys hiding?
And there is a tension there.
I don't think the fact that Trump's in the Epstein files is news, but this is one of those places where Musk actually brings up something that people in that orbit will care about, okay?
Musk also, there's a whole thing about how Musk's going to decommission his Dragon spacecraft.
He then seemed to change his mind when somebody said not to, and he was like, okay, so again, man on drugs seems to change mind quickly.
That's the story there.
But then this provocateur on the right who's terrible and awful, Ian Miles Chong, says, President versus Elon, who wins?
My money's on Elon.
Trump should be impeached, and J.D. Vance should replace him.
Yeah.
And Elon Musk just responds, yes.
Okay?
So that's big.
The internet had questions for Musk.
Like, if you knew he was in the Epstein files, why did you take your four-year-old to hang out with him at, like, take your kid to work day?
Not great parenting choices.
It's probably why his kid punched him, actually.
Because he doesn't like to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why did you take me to someone's house who is in the Epstein files?
The larger thing here is he's like impeached Donald Trump.
And now we're really at the place of like, what does this mean?
So I'll stop with the junior high stuff, Dan, and I want to ask the question, does this have any import?
And some of you are already frustrated.
You're like, you guys should be talking about the Muslim ban, not this.
And I want to say that on Tuesday, on One Nation Indivisible with Andrew Seidel, Andrew is going to be talking about that.
And Andrew is a constitutional attorney.
I think uniquely positioned to talk about what that is historically from the first Trump administration and now.
So tune into One Nation Indivisible on the Access Money Network on Tuesday and you will hear Andrew Seidel talking about that.
So it's not that I'm ignoring it.
It's that more like I know Andrew's going to tap in on Tuesday and Andrew's a constitutional attorney and an expert on the Supreme Court, an expert on things related to the law.
He will jump in.
That's the thing.
What does the Musk-Trump breakup have?
And then what's going to happen to Doge?
We'll answer those questions when we get back.
All right, Dan, I got a bunch of thoughts about why this will remain.
You want me to start or you want to jump in?
No, go ahead.
All right.
Go ahead.
You're on a roll.
I couldn't tell if that was like, go ahead there, dickhead.
Fine, just go.
Just go.
Just say what you want.
Fine.
Okay, a couple things here.
I don't think that Elon Musk has the advantage, regardless of what some of the incel white nationalist types might think.
I think that his stock, and people have made this point, okay?
I'll point to the bulwark and Jonathan Last, who had a good article about this.
Musk relies on Tesla stock for a lot of his valuation.
Tesla stock dropped 14% yesterday.
If Musk becomes a persona non grata in Trump world, Trump world is going to have to reckon with the loss of that awkward piece you mentioned, the technocrats.
What happens to the PayPal mafia?
What happens to Thiel, Sachs, J.D. Vance?
You know, poor J.D., Dan.
He's just caught in the middle of a divorce.
And, you know, what's he going to do?
You know, one of his daddies, Peter Thiel, is connected to Elon Musk, his other...
You know, he has not really been posting in favor of Donald Trump in this whole war, which he usually is.
He's usually the guy in the Oval Office when Zelensky comes in and he's just got a sour face.
He's like that Flavor Flav hype man of Donald Trump in the Oval.
And he's just like, have you even said thank you?
Where's J.D.?
He's not posting.
Interesting, huh, J.D.?
Like, it's kind of weird.
Okay.
So I think Musk has a lot to lose here.
Like, a lot in terms of Trump making him persona non grata.
And if the MAGA Christian types jump on board with the left and the progressives who already are boycotting Tesla, Musk is in a weird spot.
And it's not a good spot.
I don't think he can do that.
Now, Steve Bannon called for Musk to be deported.
And, like, are we there yet?
No.
Is Trump taco?
Does he always chicken out?
yes, if he went there, that would have...
If he went to, like, Musk out-of-the-country levels, we are in a really volatile place in terms of the technocrats.
Someone like Musk, who has sort of global reach along with all of his cohorts, that would be something.
That is a possibility.
And that is something you're going to hear from the MAGA nationalists, the MAGA nationalists who do not like the HB1, I always get that mixed up, visas, where folks are coming in as engineers and tech companies from South Asia and East Asia and other parts of the world.
Those who don't like the globalism of the tech world, the Christian traditionalists, they're going to be anti-Musk here quickly.
I don't see him as like a guy they won't turn on.
They have turned on everybody in the name of Trump.
Why would they not turn on Musk?
So I think that's going to happen.
However, okay, there's also SpaceX.
Musk is dependent on SpaceX.
So if SpaceX is no longer funded and contracted by the federal government, that's a thing.
That brings up another point, though, that I want to raise, which is Musk is the largest government contractor.
He's a welfare queen of the federal government.
The second most revenue he gets is from our government, is from us, the taxpayer.
It is not good to have a president just like warring with the largest contractor of the federal government, somebody who receives billions and billions of dollars in federal money every year.
That is not healthy.
It's not helpful.
There's so many ways, whether it's NASA or the U.S. military, Starlink, etc.
That this has ramifications.
One thing that I'll mention that Trump loses here, and it may not be a fatal blow, but Dan, it will matter, and I haven't really heard that many folks on Blue Sky and other places that I read and filter information talking about this, and then I'll throw it to you.
What you had two and three, four months ago was if you get out of line as a senator or as a congressperson, I'm going to call.
And I'm going to say, look, I'm speaking on the behalf of the president.
You need to vote for the president's bill.
You need to do what the president's asking.
And if you don't, I just saw Elon, and he told me that he would pledge $50 million to primary you in 2026.
So are we good here?
Like, it's kind of easy to see that phone call, right?
To the low-level congressperson from Georgia.
Or the senator who's having second thoughts and is up for re-election in 2026?
That Musk slush fund, the $250 million he got for the presidency, all that money they poured into the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, $20 million, that's gone.
Now, there's plenty of money.
There's plenty of dark money in the American right.
But, Dan, that was just a very easy threat to make.
President wants you to do this.
If you don't, he's going to be mad at you and you don't want that.
In addition, Musk is going to put in 50 million.
We'll find some Joe Blow to run in your place.
You're done.
Make a choice.
Finally, the technocrats.
What happens to Teal, Musk?
What happens to Sachs?
What happens to the Silicon Valley set?
They are always volatile.
And they think they are gods on earth.
So are they going to...
Is this a new war with manga?
Is this a new way that we're gonna see That remains to be seen.
All right.
Sorry.
You told me to keep going, so I did.
I apologize.
It's all yours.
So I want to pick up on that technocrat piece, because here's the other piece.
And I guess for me, I just keep trying to link this to these other things that are going on with the MAGA war on everything.
but like let's take the war on higher ed.
We've known for a long time that...
What has stood in as this kind of quasi-intellectual, you know, bona fides kind of thing that MAGA world will look at?
Business success.
You know, businessmen who are successful.
Entrepreneurs, they are viewed as smart.
They are viewed as capable.
They are viewed as brilliant.
The more money you have, the smarter you must have been to be able to earn it.
And so there's this kind of quasi-intellectualism, I think, that comes with the technocrats.
The other piece of it that you've highlighted so well is the traditional Catholic kind of social thought piece.
But those are like the two wings, I think, that for many— These are smart, capable people.
That's the kind of quote-unquote intellectual that I think matters.
So Musk and people like him, I think for a wing, a segment of MAGA world, it's not just the money.
The money is there.
But it's that it represents a kind of legitimizing of this movement as something that is smart, as people who are capable and so forth.
And when you start peeling that away, that's when I think that there is, you know, that wing, that part of the MAGA movement that is drawn to that, what happens to them?
The ones who are not going to be reading, you know, all the kind of radical, traditional Catholic interpretation of Augustine's City of God.
They are not going to be out railing about maybe immigration in the same way that some other people are.
For them, what this does potentially is delegitimize the movement.
And I bring that up because, as we've talked about and everybody is recognizing, 2026 is not that far away.
Everybody in MAGA world knows that.
Article after article after article, the media kind of jumps too quickly on things.
Immediately after 2024, they talked about the new powerful coalition that Republicans had built, and this is going to be with us for a generation.
And now it's like all these polls come out and be like, well, actually, it turns out they're already losing support among those slivers of communities of color that voted for them, the more women who voted for them and so forth, because they're not doing what they said they would do, or they're doing what they said they wouldn't do, what have you.
That's where I think this matters, is for a certain wing that views technical competence as brilliance.
That views business success as acumen and skill.
And that's what let them kind of sign on to MAGA with a clear conscience as it was.
Because they're like, no, it's not just the dude down the street, you know, who like has a Nazi, you know, paraphernalia room in his basement.
Nope, it's not just him.
It's these technocrats who we think are really smart.
So what happens when they take their toys and go home, like you say?
Or at least you get this spat.
So I guess to sum it up.
I don't think it has to do a lot of damage to do damage if we're looking to, you know, a year and a half from now or the next few months even.
Yeah, and so I'll just point to one example of what you're talking about.
In 2024, right before the election, in the summer, there was a Reboot 2024 conference in San Francisco.
And this is a Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin-backed conference.
They had a special guest.
And I've talked about this on the show, and I'm writing about it in my book.
They had a special guest that they didn't reveal.
And it was like, hey, there's going to be a special guest on the first afternoon of the conference.
You don't want to miss it.
You ever been to a conference where they have that, Dan?
And, you know, if you're a tech guy, you're a tech person, you're a tech whoever in Silicon Valley, your idols and demigods are...
They are the leaders of Meta and Alphabet and Google, the founders, and so on.
The special guest was Kevin Roberts, the leader of the Heritage Foundation.
And because I'm writing this book and I have made really poor career choices, I have watched the video of Kevin Roberts talking to Patel, who's like a 20-something exuberant Gen Z tech person, thinks tech is going to, we're going to upload our consciousness and take over the universe and the whole thing.
And Dan, it is awkward as hell.
It's awkward as hell.
Because Kevin Roberts is a traditional cowboy Catholic, straight out of the Heritage Foundation.
And these people in this audience are like wearing dockers and vests, and they are full believers in the gods of Elon, Steve Jobs, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, on down the road.
And it just never works.
It's like a first date that's supposed to work, because everyone was like, you two would be great together.
And then, like, they go on the date, and there's no chemistry, and it's awkward, and it kind of ends up not working out.
That's what it feels like.
And that is what's going to fall apart here.
And what does that mean?
We'll have to see.
One thing I want to make a point about, and then we'll move on to Russ Vogt, is there is something that I think, don't get me wrong, I do not want Elon Musk near anything in our country.
He did get stuff out of his time in government.
Doge only, quote-unquote, cut 100 or whatever billion.
And if you dig into that, there's some really sketchy math and we don't have time for that today.
He was under investigation by 11 different federal agencies before Trump took office.
And all of that is wiped.
Like 2. billion of investigations wiped.
So he got some wins.
Starlink contract, no more investigation, no more oversight, no more regulation to his business.
There's some wins there.
Don't get it wrong.
As defeated and sullen as he looks.
Don't think that he didn't get some stuff out of his five months in government.
However, one thing that is sort of on my mind, and it's not because I want Elon around and I don't.
Elon was a suck on Trump's image and his polling.
He may not be part of the national discourse when it comes to Trump and Republicans when we get to the midterms.
And so the Democrats are not going to be able to hang Elon.
On Donald and the Republicans when it comes time.
That sounds like pure political strategery at this point, but I do think it's worth mentioning because Elon was becoming more and more unpopular and becoming more and more associated with Trump.
And with that divorce, the divorce might have happened early enough that 2026 will not, Elon will not be a factor in that.
Does that make sense to you?
Does that, you know, does that feel like I'm reaching or what do you think?
Feels like you're reaching.
I think it's still really uncertain because I still am not sure how much either one of these guys actually want that full divorce because of the entanglement you're talking about.
I think Trump, to use your example, he loved having the, as you call it, the slush fund to be able to promise that we're going to run primary contenders against you and so forth.
And so I think it all, not all, but a lot of it depends on which of those impulses went out.
Will they both be willing to walk away and shut the hell up?
Because that's the other piece of it.
The way that you don't make somebody disappear is to keep engaging them on social media.
As everybody who's ever engaged anybody on social media knows, you never shut anybody down by actually engaging them on social media.
I don't think Trump or Musk, either one of them, has the constitution to just stop talking or responding and let the other one, you know, kind of fade away.
So I think what you're saying makes sense if they can actually pull the plug.
And I'm not...
But I could see the thing, like you're saying, where, you know, a year from now, it was like, Musk who?
Oh, God, that was so long ago, I barely remember that guy.
It was weird.
He was there for like, it wasn't like two days that he worked for the government or something, and we got rid of him?
Or I can see them still having like a tit-for-tat kind of thing, or I can see some thing where Musk shows up again back in the Oval Office, and then they fall out again, and then, you know.
Whatever.
Or he starts tweeting about the Chinese president or whatever, whatever it is.
If that happens, I think he can remain a problem for the GOP in the midterms.
And I just, I don't.
Anybody's a betting person, like maybe they would know what the line on that is.
I don't know which direction it'll go, but I think it's really, really volatile.
And so I could see it unfolding either way.
Let me ask you one more question, and that is, J.D. Vance, you know, I was being facilitated.
And here's the reason why, and I think most of you listening already know this, but he is a traditional Catholic.
He has deep ties to Kevin Roberts and the traditional Catholic world, Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule.
He also is a favorite of the Christian Reconstructionists.
So if you ask people in the Doug Wilson universe, They're pretty stoked about JD, even though, A, he's Catholic, and B, his wife is South Asian.
He's also a Peter Thiel acolyte, and all of you know this already.
I don't need to rehearse this.
You all are smart, and you read articles, and you know all the history.
Peter Thiel is a huge patron and backer of J.D. Vance.
J.D. Vance would not be where he is without Peter Thiel, A, raising him politically and some backroom hashing out going on earlier or a year and a half ago to get J.D. on the ticket.
Thank you.
Because if you get situations, like, we are starting to get some of these murmurs.
Now, I don't think they're going to win, but you are hearing some of these voices of, like, impeach Trump, 25th Amendment Trump.
Hey, why doesn't J.D., 25th Amendment Trump, put himself in there?
That way Elon is still on board, Peter Thiel's still on board, but also the traditional Catholic, right?
Like, J.D., take your rightful place as the Venn diagram center of the Christian Reconstruction Protestant wing, the Catholic traditional wing, and the technocrat wing, not to speak really in any substantive way of the charismatic Christian cosmos.
Nonetheless, J.D., you're the prince in waiting.
The question is, is the prince a viable candidate for the throne at this point?
And will he ever be?
I don't know.
He has no aura.
He has no charisma.
He has no force like Trump does on any stage.
But maybe there is a world where J.D. feels like he can go from reply guy vice president to making a political backstab for the ages.
Once again, am I just too far in the weeds of my book, Dan, getting up at 5 a.m., pounding on my keyboard with no one to talk to?
Or what do you see here?
I don't, right now, I don't think he, I don't, I think the reasons you're hitting the charisma and stuff, I don't think he can step into that role.
think, no, I think he might think that he can.
Like, what JD is to me is the guy...
Quarterback goes down midway through the season.
You get the backup guy who comes in.
He plays great and has some great games and whatever.
And the next season, he's overvalued and he kind of overestimates himself.
And he gets the big contract and he goes out to some other team.
And it turns out that, guess what?
He was a really good backup.
He's not a starter.
Dick Cheney?
Really nasty vice president.
Really good attack dog.
Was Dick Cheney ever going to be a viable candidate for president?
Like, was he ever going to actually win over the Republican Party and be that person?
No.
And Gore.
Say again?
Al Gore.
He tried.
He failed.
Sorry, Al.
Yeah.
I don't think that Vance has that.
And part of the reason is, I think Vance is very, very skilled at writing.
The prevailing winds, and sort of hitching his wagon to the right people at the right time.
And right now, that's like all of these different currents that you're highlighting, the radical traditional Catholics, the Reconstructionists, that.
But I don't see him being able to pull those people anywhere.
I see him being able to draw them together.
And under the guidance of somebody like Trump, who has a—Trump is a charismatic figure.
And I don't use the word charisma here as a positive statement.
Many people can have what I call a dark charisma.
That is Trump.
That's why his followers are like rabid, rabidly supportive of him.
I don't think that we see that with Vance.
I don't see...
We've seen him speak.
We've seen him try to hold rallies.
We've seen him try to...
And he doesn't generate that energy or that exuberance or anything else.
And so if it was like...
If he was given the keys to the car, I don't think it...
I just don't think it goes very far.
I think it runs into a tree or into a ditch.
And I think long-term...
Short term, sure, but I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't think he's that person.
He also has a South Asian wife.
As an Asian American, I can tell you, there are a lot of people in this country who hate Asian people.
Okay?
Asian hate is real.
Let me let you in on a secret, guys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let me on a secret here as an Asian American.
A lot of people do not like Asians, as it turns out.
That's pretty terrible.
So that's always going to be a thing for J.D. and his MAGA aspirations.
Let's take a break.
We'll come back, talk about Russ Vogt and then American Purity.
Be right back.
All right, Dan, I'm going to do this quickly.
And there's a piece here from Timothy Noah at The New Republic.
The worst kept secret in Washington is that Russell Vogt from day one was pulling Musk's marionette strings at Doge.
That lends some irony to news reports that Vogt will inherit Musk's Doge portfolio.
In truth, that portfolio has been sitting atop Vogt's desk since January.
Elon Musk is the face of Doge, said Bloomberg Businessweek last month.
But Russell Vogt is the brains.
Russell Vogt, friends, is somebody I've talked about on this show and I think many of you are familiar with.
Just to give you a quick primer, Russell Vogt is the head of the Office of Municipality.
He was that in the first Trump administration.
I interviewed David Graham two weeks ago from The Atlantic, who wrote a book about Project 2025, and he talked about how Russell Vogt, during the four years Biden was in office, basically spent that time masterminding and planning.
And what Vogt cuts his teeth on is a couple of things.
One is the idea that the executive branch should exist under a unified, He wrote the chapter in Project 2025 about the executive branch, okay?
Now, if you read about Russell Vogt, you're going to get a lot of wind about how he's a fiscal conservative and a budget hawk.
But I would actually take that another way.
He works for Donald Trump.
He was part of an administration, Dan, that did tax cuts for the rich and added a ton of money to our debt in Trump's first term.
He is also not standing in the way of Trump's bill that will add trillions of dollars to our debt this time, in addition to taking away funding from important things.
Vogt is not, to me, a fiscal hawk.
He is a fiscal crusader.
He wants to weaponize the budget for things he think will Re-Christianize society and create a social order based on white Christian patriarchy.
So the reason that's scary is because Elon Musk is a drug-addicted person who did allegedly, allegedly, according to the New York Times.
Okay?
If you're like Brad, be careful.
That comes from the New York Times big article last week.
Okay?
Allegedly, allegedly.
Okay?
Did you hear that, YouTube?
Did you hear that, everyone trying to sue me?
Allegedly.
Okay.
Elon Musk is erratic.
Elon Musk was on stage, like, holding chainsaws.
He was doing weird and crazy things.
Russell Vogt, Dan, knows how the U.S. government works procedurally.
Perhaps better than anyone on Earth right now.
Like he is that budget government process wonk.
He knows how every lever works.
He is the one who's going to take over Doge.
And so if there is somebody that needs to become the face of ire for people who oppose Trump, it should be Russ Vogt.
I'll give you an example.
He's in front of Congress this week because Trump wants to basically withhold $9.4 billion in funding for various things.
And those things include public broadcasting and foreign aid.
Vote.
Now, there's a lot of Republicans who are nervous about this and we're not sure it's going to go through.
But what has Russ Vogt's reaction to that been?
He's like, well, we may not even need Congress.
We have executive tools.
We have impoundment that 200 years of presidents had the ability and the recognition that they had the ability to spend less than the ceiling.
He's basically like...
We do.
So if Congress doesn't give us permission, we'll just do what we want anyway.
Okay?
If you want a campaign ad, Russ Vogt is exactly who the Trump campaign said you should be afraid of.
Russ Vogt is an unelected bureaucrat who is a radical extremist crusader and is going to use his position as an unelected bureaucrat who no one has ever voted for in order to fundamentally change the American government.
He is a proponent of unified executive theory, meaning he thinks that the executive should have no checks on his power, believes that the executive can remove officials, can centralize power in the executive and not need Congress to spend money or perhaps wage war.
Checks and balances is nothing more than ceremonial.
This is the unelected bureaucrat who is an extremist who wants to change your government.
It is not the people working at national parks.
It is not the people working at desk jobs at the State Department.
It is not people working at the Small Business Association just trying to survive.
It is Russ Vogt who should become the face of everything we should be concerned about when it comes to crusading unelected bureaucrats trying to change your life.
He is lying about whether or not the bill will take Medicaid away from people.
It will take away 770,000 people off of Medicaid in just Ohio, not to mention others.
He's lying about the ways it won't change people's lives.
I'll shut up.
What do you got?
Yeah, so I think vote's an interesting figure for all the reasons you said.
I agree with everything that you just said.
But what is interesting to me is I think that with Musk gone, even with vote there, with the way that things have been seen, and yes, they talk about, you know, we have other executive tools and impoundment and so on and so forth.
I think that he is, in some ways, really the personification of the dilemma that I think is confronting the Trump administration right now with these things is, we've seen this, right?
And I've talked about this, that they want to rule, not govern.
That's part of the executive theory, unified executive theory, I think, rationale is that we can just dictate whatever's going to happen, and it happens.
We don't have to actually govern and work with other people and so on and so forth.
He has...
And we've seen that as they've sent this really, in terms of actual numbers, pretty small package to Congress to try to get them to defund PBS and NPR and things like that.
And even that is not facing smooth sailing.
I think Vogt is the person who could do that kind of work and make it so it has a lasting impact.
Could.
The dilemma the Trump administration faces and he faces is, number one, that means you have to acknowledge that the executive needs the legislative branch.
Number two, that takes time.
And I think more and more, the Trump administration and part of the shock and awe tactics and everything, I mean, if we think about it, you know, in terms of till the midterms, we're a quarter of the way there, folks.
We're like through the first quarter of the midterm, you know.
Like, it doesn't take long.
They don't have that long left, if they have.
And I think that they are calculating in 2026, we're probably going to lose one of the houses of Congress and, like, that window's closed.
We need to do as much as we can.
Having to actually play by those rules takes time.
I think the impulse is to keep doing what they've been doing, which is to break stuff and to break it hard and to break it fast and to, you know, deal with the courts trying to put it back together and deal with Congress later and so forth.
And we've seen that.
Bog down.
And so we'll see.
So I think that there is a real dilemma that is there.
But I think the vote is the face of all the dynamics of MAGA right now, with, on one hand, better credentials, better experience, the connections that he could actually make things happen, but also still the kind of ideological purity that right now dominates within, you know, Trump land.
And I think that you see within him the conflicting interests of those.
And I think you see that with him, him even being before Congress, right?
It's like there's a sense that by even being there, he's acknowledging the role for Congress, even if it's to sit there and tell them that they don't have a role and we don't owe you any explanation, as I sit before you giving an explanation that I supposedly don't owe you.
It shows all the contradictions.
And I think it is a real tension and dilemma that the Trump administration is facing right now.
Yeah, Russ Vogt has been profiled like five times over the last month.
Max Schafkin at Bloomberg, McKay Coppins at The Atlantic.
Noah at The New Republic.
There's one at Jacobin.
I'm going to forget a bunch.
He needs to be profiled by Jimmy Kimmel and John Oliver.
He needs to become that thing out front that the average person is like, and Jon Stewart and everyone, they need to turn their eyes on Russ Vogt.
So the average person who isn't reading profiles in Bloomberg about Russ Vogt is like, who is this guy again?
No one voted for this dude.
He needs the J.D. Van Street.
Right?
That's what he needs.
Speaking of purity, you just mentioned purity.
Let's talk about purity and the ways that the Trump administration is basically trying to, quote-unquote, purify this nation of anyone and anything that is not straight, white, Christian, or patriarchal, or native-born.
And that's something that we've talked about a lot in the show.
You wrote a whole book about that.
I think it's time to kind of rehash some of those principles because they are...
So run us through a couple of those.
Yeah, so if somebody asks me, well, people do ask, like, you know, what is Christian nationalism about?
One answer that you get, one way of thinking about it is about having a pure nation.
And what does pure mean?
It means free, as you alluded to earlier, free from contamination or free from disease or free, you know, whatever it is that would quote-unquote pollute the nation.
And what that looks like in every different context is going to be different.
People define...
But in America and within the MAGA world, it is straight, white, patriarchal, Christian, all of those kinds of things.
And people often hear the language of purity.
They think sexual purity, but it bleeds into all kinds of other things, and it's linked to other things.
Our friend Sarah Mosliner talks about this and links this so effectively on so many different topics.
But what stood out to me this week is just there was like a litany of things that people might not notice.
They would get a line here, a line there.
They're not directly connected.
Or if people were to say, well, what's the connection between all these things?
They all look unconnected.
For me, it's this notion of, in very, very concrete terms, we are seeing the effort to purify America at every level and to make sure that it is the nation that the white Christian nationalists believe that it should be.
So what I want to do is I just want to run through some of these.
I want you to jump in whenever, wherever you want.
People might have heard of some of these things, might not.
But on the surface, again, There's no connection between them.
But for me, it's this notion of purity, because if you take this sort of common denominator in all of them, it is the felt sense of what is a real American?
What would a real America be?
You know, if you talk to Christian nationalist folks, if you talk to MAGA folks, if you read, you know, the books that people write about them, where they go out and they spend time talking to them, if you read surveys, what do they say oftentimes?
It's that language of we're losing our nation.
This isn't the nation I grew up in.
There's no place for me in this nation anymore.
That felt sense that the nation is just, it's composed wrong and we need to fix it.
So a few things.
One, you mentioned this, and Andrew Seidel, as we say, will tackle this, I think, in a much more full-fledged way coming up this week.
But Trump reinitiates his travel ban.
And everybody can remember one of the most botched rollouts maybe ever of anything in presidential history was the so-called Muslim ban in the first Trump administration.
Well, this week, Trump announced a ban of people, I think, from 12 countries, just an outright ban, and, like, another seven that have restrictions.
And they didn't call it a Muslim ban this time.
They at least learned that.
It's to keep out terrorists and other dangerous people.
Trump said, we will not allow people to enter our country who wish to do us harm, end quote.
No real evidence of what that harm is.
There's no, like, oh, here's the FBI that's uncovered lots of plots to, you know, I don't know, bomb more buildings or whatever.
Quickly, Brad, look at the countries.
What are they?
Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen.
You go on and on.
And guess what they all have in common, among other things?
They're all nations that, by the standards of MAGA, they don't have white people in them.
It's people of color.
Many of them are nations where they are not Christians.
And so we have the national ban.
What is it?
For me, it's an effort to purify, to continue purifying the nation and make sure that it has the right competition.
Something that feels completely unrelated, but I'm going to try to relate it.
David Richardson, acting head of FEMA this week.
They have apparently, as lots of people probably do in their jobs, they have a daily operational briefing, and apparently at the one on Monday, he made a comment about being unaware that the U.S. had a hurricane season.
Nobody seems to know if this was a joke.
Nobody seems to know if he meant that.
Either way, it's bad.
If it's a joke, it's incredibly poorly aimed in time when hurricanes destroy real lives and property and everything else.
If he didn't know, and I lean toward the he literally didn't know, what does this bring up?
We talked about this before.
He's another one of the MAGA-style DEI hires.
He's a loyal white guy, so he gets to be put in charge of FEMA, an organization that Doge and others are busy trying to tear apart.
It's hard to keep up, Dan.
Look, you're not allowed to wear skinny jeans anymore.
And people are wearing crop tops again.
I don't know.
It's just a lot.
I mean, yeah, he didn't know that, like, the whole southeast region of our country is going through catastrophic climate change and that the hurricane season has been overwhelmingly damaging to Florida and other places, Asheville, North Carolina.
For, like, going back how long?
I mean, it's just, there's a lot happening.
There's a lot.
It's a lot to keep track of.
You know, the Indiana Pacers are in the NBA Finals.
Who knows, Stan?
I can't read everything.
Jeez, get off his back.
Yeah.
What is it?
And we've talked about this.
We've talked about this in the military.
We've talked about this in other organizations.
It's purifying the leadership.
Make sure, like, what is the measure of purity?
The measure of purity is MAGA.
And what is MAGA?
It means white.
It means loyal.
It means Christian.
It means all of that.
At the cost of real lives and real livelihoods and real safety, the head of FEMA, at the best, joking around about not knowing that there's a hurricane season.
Another one, again, on the surface, not connected, but it's about purity.
You mentioned this earlier.
The Trump administration, during Pride Month, like no less, stripping the U.S. Navy ship.
It's an oiler, I believe.
It's the USNS Harvey Milk, obviously named after the well-known advocate and icon of the gay rights movement, somebody who died for that movement.
They are changing the name of the ship.
Why?
It's the extension of the anti-DEI, whatever.
We're going to eradicate all references to diversity, all references to just—let's not call it diversity.
Let's just say to Americans who are queer, to Americans who are not all the same gender or the same sexuality or— Or the same racial makeup or whatever.
We're going to erase all references to those.
It's an effort to purify.
It's going to bring us into Hegseth, and it's going to bring us into the military.
It can bring you into everything else that Hegseth is doing to purify the military.
It can bring us into removing senior military leadership.
Anybody who was believed to support diversity too much, anybody who was believed to not tout, you know, pick up the MAGA line, what have you, it ties in with all of those.
What is it?
It's purifying the nation, and it's purifying the military.
Tied in with that, Air Force cadets this week met all the requirements for graduation, get their degree.
They will not get a commission.
Because why?
Because they're transgender.
Fulfilling promises the Trump administration did to keep transgender folks out of the military.
Follows a SCOTUS ruling that allowed the military trans band to stand while legal challenges in lower courts unfolded.
So we have that this week, purifying the nation.
Again, Hegseth, Trump, everybody.
We've talked about The last one that I want to highlight here, and then just get any reflections that you have on this, guidance that was given by basically, you know, the federal HR agency that any new hires have to be, quote-unquote, patriotic Americans who promise—and what does that mean?
It means that they promise to advance the president's policy priorities.
The statement said that, quote, that it would ensure that, quote, We've already seen that for the Trump administration, the most talented, capable are always the white people.
That's why you remove every time there's a person of color, every time there's somebody who's not a white man in a position of authority, you say that they were a DEI hire, you put a white guy into that position.
But in this case now, unpatriotic as well.
So what are the conclusions here?
It's about purity.
It's about compliance, and purity here means It's white.
It's straight.
It's patriarchal.
It supports everything that MAGA supports.
And we see this effort from the top down and bleeding into all segments of society to try to purify the nation.
And I think we need to recognize that when we hear stories about universities closing DEI offices or companies, you know, capitulating to right-wing pressure to, you know, not have diversity hiring preferences anymore or whatever it is.
That's what it is.
It's an effort to purify the nation.
And if that language makes people nervous, if we hear the language of purifying the nation and we think of things that we know about that happen in other parts of the world, if we think of things that happened in Europe in World War II and that language of purity is chilling to us, I think it should be because that is the effort to make sure that America is a country of real Americans, the right kind of Americans, and only those kind of people holding positions of authority or power.
Or recognition, military positions, what have you.
So I'm just going to say one thing about this.
You mentioned the patriotic hiring.
A, when you hire for the president's priorities, that's the least American thing you can do.
You hire for people who will serve in recognition of the Constitution and everything it demands.
They'll serve the country, not the president.
To help the people, exactly.
Who did they hire this week?
They hired Thomas Fugate.
Thomas Fugate?
I don't know.
Thomas Fugate.
Who is he, Dan?
Well, he is going to...
He's going to be overseeing the Department of Homeland Security, main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.
That's a pretty big job, Dan.
Department of Homeland Security.
Overseeing the government's main hub for terrorism prevention.
That sounds important.
He is 22 years old.
He literally just graduated from college.
He was an intern at the Heritage Foundation.
That is his only experience.
Now, he's a rabid Trump supporter and full-on MAGA, but if you read the article from PubPublica and others, they're just like...
No law enforcement background.
This is not somebody who, I don't know, was a career FBI agent investigating counterterrorism who is now in this position.
This is not somebody who, like, went and, I don't know, has a master's degree or a PhD in national security and has, like, advised different administrations or any of that kind of stuff that you would expect the qualifications for this person.
It's a kid straight out of college who's there because he's a Trump loyalist.
Nope.
Did not serve in Iraq.
Did not serve overseas.
Is not a military veteran, from what I can tell.
No intelligence community anything.
No intelligence community alphabet soup.
CIA, DNI, FBI, wherever you want to look.
None of that.
Not even an egghead.
Not even like a 29-year-old with a PhD who's kind of like a rising theorist, you know, egghead type.
Nope.
Just a loyalist.
That's where we are.
The point you're making, that is DEI.
That is a dead end into oblivion.
That is what that is.
And so that is what they would rather have a 22-year-old with no experience who's going to destroy this desk rather than anyone.
A woman, a person of color, a gay person, a trans person, a non-Christian, an immigrant.
It does not matter.
They would rather have a guy who doesn't know there's a hurricane season.
That's what this is.
It's everything we've warned about.
It's everything we've talked about on this show for seven years now.
So, all right.
Reasons for hope.
You go first.
Mine is the Trump-Hard turn.
Trump-Musk feud.
I know there's a lot of uncertainty and things in it, but I've said since 2024 that this coalition is more at risk than I think people realize that it was.
I've said that Democrats...
And we're beginning to see a movement that now that it has power, kind of doesn't know what to do or how to wield it effectively, and those fracture points are coming.
And I think that that is a reason for hope.
Uncertainty and risky and dangerous, and I wish we weren't in a world where we've got to take hope from things falling apart, but I was hopeful by what this could portend.
A couple of reasons for hope in our Discord.
Dawson notes that Judge halts Trump's proclamation to suspend new international students at Harvard.
The South Korea election result is a good one.
The South Korea election result is a good one.
Great.
San Diegans chased ICE officials away, yelling shame.
In Massachusetts.
Yeah.
There's folks in Jacksonville who lit up the bridge there for Pride Month, despite Governor Uncle Ron DeSantis telling them not to.
More pushback on ICE in Delaware and places like that.
There's a whole bunch.
I will just say, too, along the lines of the must-Trump thing.
I'm not like a super fan of the Rocky franchise anymore, but I will tell you that the Onishi brothers, as children of the 80s and 90s, watched Rocky 1, 2, 3, and 4, 8 of 500 times.
We did a lot of Rocky.
Rocky 4, he fights Ivan Drago, the Russian, who is taking steroids and- Dolph Lundgren.
Yeah, Dolph Lundgren.
Do you know Dolph Lundgren?
It doesn't matter.
Look, everyone Wikipedia Dolph Lundgren later.
He's in a wildly inappropriate relationship right now.
But before that, he's got a...
There's a moment in Rocky IV where Rocky hits Ivan Drago and he starts to bleed.
And up until then, Rocky's been getting his face beat in.
And he goes back to his corner and his corner man is like, Do you see?
He's not a machine.
He's a man.
He's a man.
He's not a machine.
And my brothers and I?
You want to get us hyped up?
We love that.
It has felt for months like we have been on the other end of an onslaught and with no idea of how to stop it.
And this week, you see the fracture, you see the idiocy, you see the volatility, you see the breakdown.
You see two ungrown men fighting.
You see two immature oligarchs feuding.
This is not a machine that is unstoppable.
And we have to feel that.
It's one thing to think it.
We have to feel it.
And we have to now fight back and keep fighting back.
Just to tie in with your point, I think, it's an internal fracture.
This can't be blamed on activist judges.
This can't be, you know, go impeach the judges.
This can't be viewed as anything on the outside.
It's something internal.
It's an internal dysfunction that's showing the limits of this movement.
The only machine is Dan Miller working out.
That's the only machine.
Get Dan Miller on the bike, in the weight room.
He's the machine, not Yvonne Drago.
I'm like a souped-up Honda Civic.
I'm just, you know, nothing but energy.
I am sorry, Dolph Lundgren.
You have to pass the torch.
That's it for us today.
We'll be back Monday with a great interview on how to talk to your son about fascism.
Wednesday with It's in the Code, Friday with the Weekly Roundup.
For now, we'll say thanks for being here.
Have a good day.
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