Re-Air: Crypto Conspiracy Exposed: Hidden Bribes Threaten U.S. Security - Jon Favreau

This month of November while voting season is still top of mind, we’re revisiting our episode with Jon Favreau, former Obama speechwriter, co-host of Pod Save America, and founder of Crooked Media and Vote Save America. He joins us to break down the most urgent issues in U. S. politics 2025. Mayim and Jonathan unpack what “The Big Beautiful Bill” means for health insurance, the dark side of crypto, and the role of political outsiders in undermining trust in government. Plus: Jon Favreau’s take on the 2024 election aftermath, and why Democrats and Republicans are more divided than ever. From political hope to stock scandals, this conversation exposes what’s broken—and where we might still find hope. For a limited time visit https://drinkag1.com/BREAKDOWN and get a FREE Immune Support Bundle, including Omega-3 Fish Oil and Vitamin D3+K2, with your first subscription of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. Go to https://helixsleep.com/breakdown to receive up to 30% off your Helix mattress. Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik and welcome to our Breakdown. It's the month of November and voting season is still top of mind for me. I don't know about you. We've decided to revisit our episode with Jon Favreau. Now, he's a former Obama speechwriter. He's also the co-host of Pod Save America and he's the founder of Crooked Media and Vote Save America. The reason we wanted to re-air this conversation is there's so much that is still really, really prescient right now. What are the most urgent issues in US politics? We're gonna cover it. What's the role of political outsiders in undermining the trust that we can even have in our government? Also, we talk a little bit about some of the nuances of the aftermath of the Trump election.

• 0:48Mayim Bialik?

  It's still very important as we are at this time of year. And also, why are Democrats and Republicans seemingly more divided than ever? And what are the places we can actually connect? And from political hope to stock scandals, this conversation really exposes what's broken and where we can find hope to try and fix it. Please check us out on Substack. Make sure you're subscribed. Bialikbreakdown.substack.com or just go to Substack and look up Mayim Bialik's Breakdown. There's content there you can't get anywhere else. There's content we only release over there and we also go live every week, which is super fun. Please enjoy taking a look back at our episode with Jon Favreau and we will see you over on Substack.

• 1:26Speaker 01

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• 1:28Mayim Bialik?

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• 2:11Mayim Bialik?

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• 2:36Speaker 02

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• 3:08Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 3:09Mayim Bialik?

  Why do you have Jon Favreau's name?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  I know. Why does he have my name?

• 3:13Mayim Bialik?

  Who came first?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  He definitely came first because I remember, the first time I realized it, I was watching Rudy.

• 3:21Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  And at the end of Rudy, I saw the credits.

• 3:23Mayim Bialik?

  You're like, that's my--

• 3:24Speaker 01

  I'm like, that's my name, but that's exactly how I spell my name.

• 3:27Mayim Bialik?

  The French way.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got introduced to him when I was still living in DC and working in the White House, but then when I moved out here, he was doing like a pop-up for chef at this restaurant and invited me and my family to come. And so it was my brother, my wife, and it was Jon and his wife, so we had like all the Favre's together.

• 3:49Mayim Bialik?

  Do your wives also have the same name?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  They don't, no. No, they don't. But I still get, I get his email once in a while.

• 3:55Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, anything good?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. I once got, I once received Bob Iger's notes on the second season of The Mandalorian.

• 4:05Mayim Bialik?

  What?

• 4:06Jonathan Cohen?

  That's amazing.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:09Jonathan Cohen?

  You're like, "Accept it. I will integrate all of these."

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Me and Kathy Kennedy on the email, yeah. And I was like, and I, you know, I've met Bob a few times, and so I was just like, I just responded and I'm like, "Great notes. Thank you very much." And then I forwarded it to Jon and I was like, "I got your mail again."

• 4:26Mayim Bialik?

  You are a Jonathan, I presume?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  I'm a Jonathan.

• 4:29Mayim Bialik?

  But you never were like, "I should be Jonathan Favreau because he's got the Jon Favreau thing there."

• 4:32Speaker 01

  No, I tried going by Jonathan when I was a kid and my mother always wanted that, but it just didn't take.

• 4:36Jonathan Cohen?

  I'll tell you, it's very effective.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  I know, you were either a Jonathan, yeah. I like being a Jonathan, though.

• 4:41Mayim Bialik?

  All right, sorry, I just had to ask. Where to begin? We're so appreciative of everything that you do in terms of information and in terms of education. I think it's important for us, we have people on many ends of all the spectrums here, politically, emotionally. And I think something that's really been lost is the ability to have dialogue or listen to people with possibly different opinions than you. And it seems that, and I've, I've lived a long time, I've seen a lot of presidents come and go, there's something about, and it could be the social media of it, I'm sure there's many reasons, there's something about this presidency that is so incredibly polarizing

• 5:24Mayim Bialik?

  that it has divided families, stopped conversations, and broken up friendships and relationships in a way that I've never seen. What is going on with this level of divisiveness from where you sit?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  A huge part of it is Trump as a figure. I think that, and basically, Trump and what the Republican Party has sort of transformed into during the Trump years, which I think is, like, I don't necessarily think politics now is on a liberal-conservative axis like it has been for some time. I think that the Trump Republican Party is much more anti-institution, anti-establishment, populist, in a sort of right-wing populism. Certainly, I would argue, shades of authoritarianism, if not outright authoritarianism.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  So we haven't, we haven't had a national political leader like this in the United States ever. I mean, George Wallace was like a regional candidate, so like, this is, this is new for the United States. I think that because he is a celebrity, an entertainer, a businessman that most of the country knows, I think half the country at least, a little under half the country, doesn't necessarily see him like obviously the other side. And so when people say, you know, "He's a dictator," or "He's scary," or "He's offensive," you know, I think he gets some leeway from the other part of the country because, one,

• 7:01Speaker 01

  they feel like they know him and they think he's not as scary as other people. Two, there is a real sort of grassroots rage, disappointment, anger towards all of our institutions-- government, business, media. And I think inequality plays a part in that, growing economic inequality. I think sort of America becoming a more diverse nation over the years plays into that. So there's a lot that goes into it, but I think that they, the, one of the reasons that we can't seem to get past the division, once you, aside from Trump, definitely has to do with the way that media and information are consumed now.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  And it's, it's social media, yes, but it's just, we don't have this, we don't get the same information anymore. You know, like, we used to watch three networks and, and, and you could disagree with your neighbors over what you heard in the news, but at least you were hearing the same thing on the news. You could disagree with what you read in The New York Times, but at least everyone was reading sort of similar news at least. And then it got sort of, you know, balkanized into different bubbles, and now it's like every individual has their own personal algorithmic IV drip of news and information.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  News is generous for some of it, information at least, that, that is making it really difficult to talk to each other. And those conversations don't happen in real life as much, offline. They happen online, where you don't see the person, you don't know the person, sometimes the person is anonymous, and so--

• 8:46Mayim Bialik?

  Sometimes the person's a robot.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Sometimes the person's a robot. And so it's easier to yell at people, be mean to people that you don't know, that you've never known before. You don't get the nuance of their political position. You don't get the subtlety, the complexity of someone's political positions. Maybe they're left on one issue, maybe they're right on the other, but you just sort of see them as a caricature. And, you know, and it's just, it just kind of snowballs.

• 9:11Jonathan Cohen?

  And more and more, we want people to be one thing or the other. Like, this idea of nuance, that they could have a position on one side for one issue and a position on the other side, like, it's like, "You're all in on one team or the other, so I know how to attack you."

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yes, and I think that-- Donald Trump thrives on this idea that everything has to be black and white, that you have to choose a side. And because that's because his project needs an us versus them for it to work. And

• 9:43Mayim Bialik?

  Can you say more about that?

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think because, look, he's done this from the beginning, right? Which is when he came down that escalator in 2015, it's, you know, there's real Americans, patriotic Americans, and then there's, you know, Mexico's not sending their best, and there's too many immigrants. And then the left is extreme. First, they were just extreme, then they're radicals, now they're anti-American, now they're, maybe they should be deported along with the immigrants as well. And if you tell people that all of their problems are the fault of some other group of people, then it's a pretty potent political message. And it's, it's not as easy to govern when you tell people that their problems are

• 10:30Speaker 01

  complex and caused by all kinds of different forces. And maybe it's no one's specific fault, but that we can come together and make life a little bit better through government, which is sort of the hope of, of the project of democratic governance. And that's just not as, it's not as a direct message, it's not as sexy a message, and it doesn't rile people up as much. And so, you know, and it's not just Donald Trump's project. Like, this is Viktor Orban in Hungary, Putin in Russia, Bolsonaro when he was in Brazil, like, all over the world, throughout history, more authoritarian autocratic regimes. They, you know, they gain power by pushing this narrative of us versus them.

• 11:14Jonathan Cohen?

  Solving complex problems does not work on a hat.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  No, it does not. It does not. And, and the frustration for why our problems aren't solved is real and legitimate. Because, you know, I was, I was in the White House for five years, and we arrived with the best of intentions. And I worked with people who, every single day, worked their asses off to try to do better for people and, and make life better for people. And they all had the right motivation. And we made all kinds of mistakes. And it was, progress was slower than we'd like on a whole host of issues. And that's, in some ways, that's the reality of governance. But it is that, it's that frustration and the slowness of democracy and democratic

• 11:59Speaker 01

  governance that, within it, contains the seeds of how a populist authoritarian project can thrive. Because the disenchantment with democratic governance and the progress that it delivers and the benefits it brings eventually builds and builds and builds. And look, in a country of over 300 million people, that is a multi-ethnic, multiracial democracy, that is even harder. That is a project that no one on earth throughout history has been able to achieve.

• 12:32Speaker 04

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• 13:02Mayim Bialik?

  Hey, everyone. We have really been loving this podcast we want to tell you about. It's called Dear Gabby. If you've ever wanted to learn how to actually connect with spirit guides and manifest with the universe, this is for you. The host is Gabrielle Bernstein. She is a number one New York Times bestselling author of The Universe Has Your Back, and she's one of the most trusted spiritual teachers out there. Every week, Gabby shares her own teachings, her spiritual tools. She's often joined by psychic mediums, angel experts, and other spiritual teachers who join together to channel spirit live on the show. You don't want to miss that. And they answer the questions that you've probably been asking yourself. Why aren't my manifestations working? How do I actually connect with spirit guides? Is the universe sending me signs?

• 13:46Mayim Bialik?

  And maybe you've already noticed signs, like synchronicities, that kind of like gut feeling, the moments that line up like a little bit too well. Now, you want to know what they mean and what to do with them, and this is where you get those answers. Every episode closes with a lovely guided practice, so you don't just walk away feeling inspired, you walk away with tools that you can actually use. New episodes of Dear Gabby drop every Monday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Catch the full video episodes at youtube.com/gabriellebernstein.

• 14:16Speaker 05

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• 14:32Speaker 02

  Millions across America are waiting for new breakthroughs.

• 14:36Speaker 05

  So we're waiting for an MRI right now, hoping that it's going to come back normal.

• 14:41Speaker 02

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• 14:57Mayim Bialik?

  Efficiency, and we heard this word in terms of Elon Musk's role, which like, I still don't, God's honest truth, don't really understand what happened. I don't, I don't follow that aspect of the news. Like, when I first saw the chainsaw thing, I thought it was a joke. Like, I saw a cartoon, and I was like, oh, that, oh, they were not, it's not a joke. So, but one of the words, though, that we heard, especially related to Elon Musk, was efficiency, that we're trying to increase. And I'll, I'll be honest, as blue of a person as I am, like, nothing seems to get done. And like, potholes never get filled. Like, I can't get a permit to, like, put a bathtub in. Like, everything seems to work slow on the city, state, and national level. So, what is it?

• 15:41Mayim Bialik?

  You know, is it that we just need to be more patient, or you just need to know, like, sucks to be you? My theory for years, and I'm going to, you're the closest I've ever gotten to pitching it to an actual political person, I think we need provinces. I think that there are too many people being governed. The country was not made for this many people, opinions, and places. And I just think that we're not made for this. So, anyway, that's my solution to efficiency, is that we need, you know, more and also less. What is it about efficiency that people ran out of patience for and seem to be ready to rush to Trump to solve?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  President Obama really cared about making government more efficient, modernizing government, bringing like, better technology to government when he came into office. And I think some people thought it was just sort of a political thing that sounds nice for folks who are either on the right or in the center, who want more efficient government. Obama was like, no, progressives should want more efficient government, too, because our whole promise is that government can improve people's lives. And if that's going to be our promise, then we need to actually do that. But it's hard, because, like, every, before every State of the Union, we would talk about, all right, this is the one where we're gonna, maybe we can consolidate some cabinet agencies. Maybe we can consolidate the Department of Education, Department of Labor.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Because, you know, in Congress, education and labor are like one committee, and maybe we could have that at the White House. So you start down that road, and then you get, like, 15 lawyers and 20 policy people who tell you, and political people who are like, that's not possible. Who are you going to get rid of? The Education Secretary or the Labor Secretary? That would cause all sorts of problems. So you can't fire one of them. And then also, there's all these laws and civil servant rules and blah, blah, blah. And pretty soon, you get some, like, smaller initiative that is not what you originally envisioned. And, or the Affordable Care Act, right? Which we started in, I don't know, I think his first speech on that was

• 17:34Mayim Bialik?

  I tweeted about it.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  There you go. March of 2009, I think was our first big speech on that. And of course, it doesn't, it barely passes. It almost does, it, it almost is dead many times.

• 17:46Mayim Bialik?

  Because it was a socialist plot.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Because it was a socialist plot. To this day, if you ask, you know, young people about it, they'll say socialist plot, it's a free market, it didn't do enough. Well, of course, it didn't do enough, because we had 60 senators for a little bit. Most of them, or a good chunk of them at the time, were from very red states, not very progressive. And every senator and every House member has a constituency that they care about. So they want this in the bill, but then someone else. So it's just a lot of people to deal with. And it's really hard. The system is designed to not do really big things. It is designed for slow incremental change. Like, that is the, the system that the founders, like, I think we'd be a lot better off, honestly,

• 18:32Speaker 01

  if we had like, a parliamentary system, right?

• 18:34Mayim Bialik?

  I was going to say parliament, but I went with province first. It would involve a parliament.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, a parliament system would make it easier, right? Like, if your party, you know, you're the leader of the party, you got the, you got a majority in, in the legislative branch, you implement your agenda, if it's good, great, people send you back. If not, they get you out, right? We don't have that system. And so, I think that, that makes it difficult for the left, the center-left, to, you know, continually make the progress that people expect. Why do people expect so much? One, a lot of people struggling, a lot of people who can't afford basic costs of living right now. And two, we also live in an information environment where everything is immediate.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  So, we're on social media all the time, and we're watching news happen. News cycles used to be, you know, 24 hours, now they're like, five minutes. And so, we expect things to happen fast. And government's not like that. So you put all that together, and then someone comes along and is like, oh, yeah, the system's not just broken and inefficient, it's corrupt. These people are screwing you over. I can fix it. Just me. I'm strong enough to fix it. I can, you know, smash some heads and break some, break some things and eliminate departments, and just trust me, and I'll fix it. And the way I'll fix it is to hurt or push aside these other people who are really the source of your problems. And so Elon

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Comes in and thinks it's like another company that he runs. And this is to your point about running things like business. And, you know, these tech startups, if you take Twitter down for a day because you fired half the staff and it's not operating, it's inconvenient for a lot of people, but it's not, you know, world ending. Or at least it doesn't like screw someone's life up. You shut government down or you eliminate parts of the National Weather Service or you install someone in FEMA who doesn't know the hurricane season or any of those things.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  You do that, then like you are jeopardizing people's lives.

• 20:49Mayim Bialik?

  Like even I knew there is a hurricane.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  There is a hurricane.

• 20:51Mayim Bialik?

  I couldn't tell you when it is, but I'm not in that job.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Right, right. There's like a meteorologist in South Florida telling people like, last year I was able to tell you when the hurricane would turn. This year, there's been so many cuts, I don't even, I can't even tell you anymore. Cause we don't, we don't know where things are.

• 21:07Jonathan Cohen?

  And that's important because people's houses are in the way of these hurricanes.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:11Mayim Bialik?

  Well, yes, and, yes, and that's the, the sort of practical, the, the practical essence of it. The, the more conceptual complexity is you want to believe that people in government know what they're doing and that someone's in charge that is moving things in a direction that hopefully will benefit people. I mean, I, I've spoken as a bleeding heart liberal, you know, like I'm.

• 21:38Jonathan Cohen?

  You, you want to believe that, but then government moves so slowly. There's no alternative. If you live in one of the blue states, New York or California, you see that endless red tape makes almost anything impossible. You can't build new houses. You can't redo the house that you have. You can't, you know, like you're just mired in nonsense. And so we don't have the parliamentary system, which is why it makes sense when someone says, I'm going to fix this. But the reality of them actually fixing it. Now we're into some nuance as to what's happening. And the media sphere is challenging that reality, making it very difficult to even understand. Like, go back to Elon on Doge.

• 22:22Jonathan Cohen?

  We're supposed to say, what was the, I don't know what the number was that was quoted, but.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  First he said 2 trillion, then he went down to 1 trillion. Then he actually saved, he says 165 billion. It's probably less than that. And then the bill that's coming to Congress to codify the actual cuts that they made is 9 billion. So it went from 2 trillion to 9 billion.

• 22:40Jonathan Cohen?

  So 2 trillion to 9 billion. And then there's rumors that, you know, there's all the secondary costs that reducing these people will have, such as lack of tax collection, which is estimated at $400 million or more. And so like the, is it just impossible to have a balance sheet and do any accounting for a country this big? And we should just give up like, because people are making pretty significant decisions based on math that seems totally made up. And like the goalposts are moving all the time. How does anyone make any sense of this?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  This is what happens when you have only outsiders coming into government, believing that everyone in government is either an idiot or corrupt. And anyone could actually do this and anyone could fix this. And we run businesses and we're entrepreneurs. And so like, these people don't know what the hell they're doing. And so we're going to come in and fix things. And then you get there and you realize how complex it is. And that's not to defend the lack of progress, but it's a little more complex than you think. But then there's basics, like people were telling Elon Musk and Donald Trump and all the people who run Washington, and many of them know this, that the real money, like if you're going to cut the deficit, if you're going to, you know, make government more efficient, you're going to go where the money is if you're going to do cuts.

• 24:00Jonathan Cohen?

  Defense.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  And yeah, the, the most of our budget, most of the United States budget is a defense budget, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, and the interest that we pay on the debt. That's it. That's, that's most of the country. And all the other stuff that Elon was doing is like, just that represents a tiny percentage of the budget anyway. And he didn't even make that more efficient. He just fired a bunch of people, cut a bunch of government services and then.

• 24:26Mayim Bialik?

  Created some chaos.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Created some chaos and that was that.

• 24:29Mayim Bialik?

  One of the things that I think, you know, I find so confusing is you can get people saying two completely opposite things simply because of what party they're registered to vote under. So you can have someone say, this is a total disaster. And then you can have someone say, it's a total success. And this makes me kind of cuckoo. Like it makes me crazy because it feels like, why are we even talking about this? If, if you're just gonna, if you, the generic you, if you're just going to make your decision based specifically on the position you want to hold because it's who you want to vote for, then I don't really need to talk to you about it. Right? But if we're having practical conversations, then I do want to know.

• 25:11Mayim Bialik?

  You know, I want to know why, why the Democratic Party, you know, hasn't stepped up in the ways that so many of us wanted them to, right? I want to know if I'm really trying to understand what's happening. And I am allowed to have a perspective that I'm a liberal person. I believe in supporting poor people, you know, all the things that I believe. But when it comes down to it, how do you engage in honest conversations without just shouting in a matchbox?

• 25:39Speaker 01

  I don't, look, I don't think it's difficult if people are sort of all operating on the same set of facts. I think it's, it's tough to do that now. I know like personally, you know, our podcast is liberal. People know, we're not hiding it because we are former Obama staffers. People know where we come from. But I try very hard, our staff does, our, our other hosts do, to make sure that even as we are offering our opinion about politics, we are doing so based on facts and what is true. And we're, we are willing to, if there is a success from the other side, I'll say it's a success.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  I, I think that there should be some kind of a Doge, you know, in government. I, I, when we got to the White House in 2009, we had gateway desktops. There weren't even laptops. And there was, because of the way the West Wing is, it was hard to even get a signal on your phone. And so as a speechwriter who had to work a lot, I couldn't even go home and work on anything. I would just like sit in the office and the technology is so old. And it's like, it's infuriating. You're like, this is the federal government. This is the White House. We should have the best technology. We should have the best everything, right? We should, in that way, it should be run like a business. So I, and I do think that there are federal agencies all over the country

• 27:05Speaker 01

  with people who probably aren't doing as much work as they could be doing or positions that we don't need.

• 27:10Mayim Bialik?

  There's not enough people answering the phone at social security.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Certainly not.

• 27:13Mayim Bialik?

  I wait a long time to talk to them.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Right. Well, and like, you know, they're doing these Medicaid work requirements now. And they're like, well, you know, you should, you should work if you're going to get Medicaid. And fine, but the reporting requirements are designed to kick people off Medicaid. And the reason they're designed to kick people off is because these websites, some of these websites for Medicaid, like they stop working at 9:00 PM. You can't go, like an office is, if you're in a rural area, it's like 30 miles away. So you do, I, I deeply believe that you need to make government more efficient, work for people, more nimble, more technologically adept. So like, I'm willing to say those things and I'm like, and I'm also willing to say that if we're going to have a really hard conversation about how to reduce the deficit,

• 27:57Speaker 01

  we're going to figure out, we're going to have to figure out how to slow the rate of growth in healthcare. Because that's what's driving growth in Medicare and Medicaid, right? And I don't want to cut benefits for people to do that, but we do need to figure out how to make it sustainable for the long term.

• 28:13Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, we're big fans of also not facilitating people getting sick in the first place the way the government subsidizes.

• 28:19Jonathan Cohen?

  In terms of cutting the deficit and Medicare spending, both of those are wrapped up in the big, beautiful bill. And I, just driving here today, was listening to two very different versions of reality about what is in this bill and what the impacts of this bill will be.

• 28:37Mayim Bialik?

  This is the bill that Elon Musk left the government over in theory.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:40Jonathan Cohen?

  Correct.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Or is, or, yeah, and is now, is now very mad at, at least we know about that.

• 28:44Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, he's so mad.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's very mad now.

• 28:46Jonathan Cohen?

  So does it?

• 28:49Jonathan Cohen?

  Increase the deficit?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:51Jonathan Cohen?

  Does it not increase the deficit, which we've also heard?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  This should be simple.

• 28:57Mayim Bialik?

  Yes, I want something to be simple.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  This should not be one side says and the other side says and where do we? So, the Congress has something called the Congressional Budget Office. So, we would say they are the nonpartisan scorekeepers for Congress. So, both parties-

• 29:10Jonathan Cohen?

  That's exactly what we need, a scorekeeper.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  A scorekeeper. So, both parties, send them legislation and then they score it for how much it's going to cost, how much it's going to increase the deficit, what are the effects going to be on the budget.

• 29:23Jonathan Cohen?

  Just one point on this. Is it at all possible to be nonpartisan? Who appoints these people and aren't they going to get some form of kickback to then go to be a consultant somewhere?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  They're, no, they're like-

• 29:33Jonathan Cohen?

  These are the most squeaky clean people that have been-

• 29:35Speaker 01

  These are the most, they're just economists, they're like, they're civil servants, right? And I think both parties get oversight over the CBO. They're not, they're like just non-political people, right? And, and forever, both parties have been like, alright, we wait for the CBO score and we, that's, that's what it is. You know, we did that with the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, done that through, you know, I think the first Trump administration accepted the CBO score for their tax bill in 2017, 2018. This one comes out and it's like, yeah, it's going to increase the deficit by a couple trillion dollars. And Republicans are just like, no, that's not real. And then, uh, the White House Press Secretary, Caroline Levitt, today said, well, if you

• 30:19Speaker 01

  go back and look, uh, not one CBO member has voted for a single Republican since 2000, which is technically true because not one CBO member has voted for a Democrat since 2000 either because they're not allowed to, they're, they're nonpartisan and they don't support Democrats or Republicans. So, again, she, what she said is technically true, but not really true in the spirit of what she was trying to say, right? So, and then, look, the, the healthcare coverage thing is also kind of easy because the Republicans are claiming that they have about $400 billion of the savings that's going to ostensibly reduce the deficit is coming from Medicaid.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  So, how do you get $400 billion in savings from Medicaid without cutting Medicaid? Cutting the coverage in Medicaid? They talk about work requirements. About 92% of the people who currently get Medicaid are either working or not working because they are a caregiver, because they're in school, because they have a disability. So, there's like 8% of people who aren't, who are maybe able-bodied and aren't working on Medicaid. You want to tighten up a work requirement for those people, you probably save a couple billion dollars, probably less. So, the only way they're going to save as much money as they're claiming to save is by cutting all these people off of Medicare. And sure enough, the CBO says, uh, 10 and a half million will lose insurance because

• 31:47Speaker 01

  of Medicaid cuts and another 5 million will lose insurance because they are not, they are cutting the subsidies people get for buying health insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

• 31:58Jonathan Cohen?

  So, the nonpartisan agency doesn't have a media outlet to communicate these findings directly. So, they get interpreted through whatever partisan channels then communicate. And so, then everyone is left to say either lie blatantly and disregard the agency entirely or spout the quote-unquote "truth" from these agencies and then be accused of being liberal bias and, you know, you have Trump derangements in Durham and you don't know what you're talking about.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Regular media outlets will just report the CBO score. You can go to the CBO website and they have the score right there. So, you can go see the score. You could also sort of suss this out by, um, looking at who is objecting from within the Republican Party to various parts of the bill. So, you have a number of Republican senators right now and members in the House who are like, no, no, no, no, they're lying, this is going to increase the deficit and we want to make deeper Medicaid cuts, right? Because they're, they just care about the debt more than anything else. So, they want deeper cuts. So, you have a bunch of Republicans who are acknowledging that it does increase the deficit. And then you have some Republicans, like your Lisa Murkowski's from Alaska, Susan Collins

• 33:07Speaker 01

  from Maine, a bunch of House members, Republicans in the House who are in very competitive races, who are like, we don't like these Medicaid cuts. And they are Medicaid cuts. So, you do, you know, you can at least look to, if you are following the news, you can at least pay attention to some Republican members of Congress who have objections to this bill that are based in the reality of the numbers in the bill.

• 33:30Jonathan Cohen?

  And if you had to put your money down, are they going to fold under the pressure anyway?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Uh, most of them, I think, will. We don't know because, look, it's very hard to satisfy the concerns of the people who want deeper Medicaid cuts and the people who think that the Medicaid cuts that are there are already too deep. So, you have to satisfy both those people and they can only lose three Republicans in the Senate. So, if they lose four, the bill doesn't pass. I think that because it's Trump's, like, only legislation, it's his biggest piece of legislation and the way that it's set up, if they don't pass anything, uh, the tax cuts that Trump passed in 2017 will expire and taxes go up on everyone. So, there is a cliff at the end of the year where all these people know, like, if we

• 34:17Speaker 01

  don't pass any, now, they might end up passing something that's just like, oh, we'll extend some of the tax cuts for everyone, for some people, we won't do any of the Medicaid cuts and we won't do many other cuts and we'll, it'll raise the deficit and whatever, at least we stopped a tax hike. Maybe that's like their, you know, if, if things really go badly for them, that's their sort of like out.

• 34:37Jonathan Cohen?

  And this is the talking point that we hear. Everyone is going to, 67% of people are going to have their taxes increased. It's not that if, it's because you will reverse the tax cuts that had previously gone into effect.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they're trying to say like Democrat, if we don't do this, Democrats will-

• 34:53Jonathan Cohen?

  Are raising taxes.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Because the Democrats will raise the taxes. And the truth is, if it got to that point, every Democrat would come together to say, alright, let's extend the tax cuts for everyone making under, I don't know, $500,000? And let's just get rid of the tax cuts for everyone above that and then, you know, we'll, we'll be fine with that.

• 35:13Jonathan Cohen?

  The theme is that there's nuance. It's not that everyone's going to have their taxes increased, 67% of people. There is another option, that's not being spoken about, it's back to the black and white. If you don't do this, it's a threat.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, these people, they, they are not even trying to negotiate with Democrats on this legislation in any way. No meetings, no offers, no nothing.

• 35:34Jonathan Cohen?

  It's, let's do this, let's scare as many people, let's rally-

• 35:38Speaker 01

  We have the numbers, we have slim majorities, but we have enough, so let's just ram it through and not even bother getting the Democrats' advice or ideas on this and then that's that.

• 35:48Jonathan Cohen?

  A lot of people, when you say these types of things, like, they're not even talking to us. They, the rebuttal to that is, well, when the left was in power, they just did whatever they wanted and they wouldn't negotiate either. Is that substantially different now and if so, how?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Well, you know, when Joe Biden was president, they passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill that Mitch McConnell, like, appeared with Joe Biden and, at, at the bridge in Cincinnati at the, at the ceremony after they passed it and said, this is a miracle, this legislation. So, you know, they, we, we did, we were, now, there's plenty of legislation we passed along party lines, just Democrats for sure. But I think when possible, you're more likely to see Democrats sort of reach out to at least try to get Republicans on board than the other way around, certainly in this administration. Maybe, I think even in the first Trump administration, you saw more attempts to at least try to work with Democrats on some legislation.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Now, they just don't seem to care at all.

• 36:51Mayim Bialik?

  It's funny that, that general theme came up a lot in the last election, you know, the, the joke, I don't know if I'm the first one who said it, but I, the movies that were out at that time were Barbie and Oppenheimer, remember? And I said, that's the, like, that's literally, who do you want to vote for? Do you want Barbie or do you want Oppenheimer? Because one was very, like, optimistic and it was, it was bubbly, some might say too effervescent. And then the other, you know, choice was, was really this messaging, which, I mean, you know, I'm a Hillary person, so, you know, like, I had Hillary vibes of like, what if we go high, right? What if we say, um, we can work together and the country's not in the garbage?

• 37:36Mayim Bialik?

  This country is made of incredible people with amazing stories. Uh, you know, I'm only here because this country allowed my grandparents in, right? So, many of us have these stories of like, this land is full of so much opportunity and while it's flawed and we knew it, it, it's a place where so many things are possible, right? That was sort of like one message. And then on the other side, it was like, America's in the dumpster. And like, you're a nation of people who need a new dad and I'm going to spank you into submission. And a lot of people responded to that, but I think that, that's sort of something that I remain confused about. I wanted to and I want to continue to come at this from some sort of optimistic, positive

• 38:18Mayim Bialik?

  lens and it makes me really sad that, not just that my person didn't win, right? Or however people want to frame it, but that the sort of notion is like, we're a mess, it's all a mess. What is that framing like and how do we see that then impacting kind of every decision and every conversation?

• 38:38Speaker 01

  I have come to think that the most salient divide in American politics right now is not necessarily left and right, Republican, Democrat, but the small minority of people in this country who, uh, follow politics closely and the, uh, large majority of people who do not. And, um, and this again is-

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Partly a consequence of people becoming fed up with both parties and politics in general, and a politics that doesn't seem to be delivering for them. And it's partly because of the information environment that we're in. And people just sort of turn away from the news because they don't know who to trust. And so they're like, and after almost a decade of Trump, it's like, I just don't want to pay attention to this anymore. So I'm just gonna go live my life. So for those voters, which is most voters, even if they're registered Democrats or registered Republicans, the way they approach voting in politics is they're not even listening to those messages. And they're just saying like, okay, well, I feel like over the last four years of Joe

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Biden, everything got more expensive. And I don't like Donald Trump, but I don't know. I think I had more money in my pocket when he was president. And I know he says a lot of crazy things and probably does some bad things, but I think I'll be fine. And what's more important to me is that I don't pay so much for groceries, that I can afford a home, that I can afford rent. And I think maybe he'll be better on that. That's like the thought process of the median voter that flipped, right? From Biden to Trump. And I'm not saying that's everyone. It isn't. But enough of, there's enough of those people that that's what matters.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  And so, politics becomes what matters to you personally, what affects you personally, right? And it can be economic, mostly it is. It can also be availability of healthcare, availability of abortion care. It can be, is your community safe? Do you feel safe walking down the street? Are you worried that there's gonna be a mass shooting in your kid's school, right? Things that really affect your life.

• 40:58Mayim Bialik?

  Why are you talking all about me right now?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Things that really affect your life. And then, when you hear, if you hear politicians talking about democracy, hope, and/or even Donald Trump and all the crazy things he says at rallies, that doesn't register or impact you as much as just basic, here's how I want to live a better life and who's gonna help me live a better life.

• 41:20Mayim Bialik?

  That's helpful, because I think it also, it removes some of the steam from the conversation, right? To be able to realize, and I think that's, you know, also it's a challenge, you know, living in Los Angeles where there's a real homogeneity, you know, in many cases. And, you know, there really was and has been this sort of notion of all those people must be evil or crazy, or we shouldn't talk to them, or we can't deal with them. But what you're presenting is, I think, a much more sobering and humble perspective on what is actually going on in this country, which is that a lot of people are not constantly on social media scouring Trump's Twitter for this or that, or looking at this or that.

• 42:04Mayim Bialik?

  They're just kind of trying to get a sense of what's gonna be right, and they're willing to overlook a lot of things.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  If you look at polls of who won and why certain people voted different ways, people who follow politics closely, Kamala Harris won them overwhelmingly. People who get their news from traditional media sources and even like digital news sites, she wins those people. People who get their news from social media only, Trump wins them by a couple points. People who don't follow the news or don't follow politics at all, Trump wins by a significant margin. So Democrats, we are all, all the media that we're doing, and I do this for a living, right? We're all talking to people whose minds are pretty much made up.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  And it doesn't seem like that, because we also hear the other side, and because there's a small minority on the Republican side who's following politics closely and engaging on social media and yelling at us.

• 43:03Mayim Bialik?

  They have their own network, I see.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  They have their own network. And by the way, those people are much more extreme than the median Trump voter.

• 43:09Mayim Bialik?

  What's interesting is so many people had these sweeping statements about the groups of people who were, and were trying to analyze, why were they so fed up with the Democratic Party that they switched? Like, what was it about Trump that spoke to this population of people? And basically, it's people who were like, I don't really want to follow it, and just, I'd like more money in my pocket, and he may say crazy things, but like, I need to feed my kids and have insurance.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yep. And I, so I, for the last couple of years, I do a podcast called The Wilderness about the Democratic Party. We're still there. Just gonna have to do another season now. And what I do for that is, I would talk to people who do focus groups of voters, and then I was like, I should just do these myself. So I started going around the country and doing focus groups and sitting down with voters. And it's wild. And it's a hard listen for people who are sometimes, for liberals and Democrats, because they listen to episodes where I'm talking to these voters, and they're like, how did you not scream at them? How can you stand these people that are saying such stupid? But they're not, I like, I really enjoy sitting down with them, because these are people

• 44:14Speaker 01

  who are like, just living their lives, and they're very busy. And some of them are working multiple jobs, and they don't have time to watch CNN or Fox or MSNBC all day, or they don't have time to read the New York Times, they don't have time to even be on social media a lot. Some of them genuinely want to pay attention to the news, but where they get their news now is from like bits and pieces, and maybe there's a TikTok that pops up that has some news in it, or maybe YouTube algorithm takes them to something that's new, right?

• 44:44Mayim Bialik?

  This is not how we decide who should be the President of the United States, but apparently it is.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  It is, it is. But when you hear these people's political views, you realize that like, voters are extremely complicated people, and the ones who don't pay attention are even more complicated. I was in Vegas with, let's see, I was talking to Latino men, a group of Latino men in Vegas, who had voted for both parties before. This was before the 22 midterms. And at one point, I always ask every group, like, so who, what politicians do you like? Who do you like? One guy was like, you know who I like? I like Ron DeSantis, and I also like AOC.

• 45:19Mayim Bialik?

  Oh.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  This was before DeSantis ran, of course, against Trump, but it was like, you know, Florida, anti-establishment, outside the system, and so, and he's not afraid to maybe say negative things about Trump once in a while or his party, and AOC's not afraid to like, speak up and speak truth to power with Nancy Pelosi, and she's outside the system, and I kind of like, you know? And I'm like, okay, I kind of, I kind of get that.

• 45:42Jonathan Cohen?

  That's the new ticket.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  That's the new ticket. DeSantis, AOC.

• 45:45Mayim Bialik?

  Well, but, but what it speaks to, and I think you can probably speak to this, you know, best in this room, and I'm sure many rooms, what it speaks to is people have a deep desire to feel empowered and to have a voice in what's happening, and also want people in power who can speak to that, right? Like, that's a, that's kind of like a human need that is devoid of political affiliation.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Yes. And I think that in this information environment, people got very used to, after the first Trump presidency, having a president, for better or worse, and I would say worse, who was in their face all the time.

• 46:27Mayim Bialik?

  I said, I don't want to know what he's fricking doing. When I was a kid, I never knew what the president was doing.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  He was communicating all the time. And he was on Twitter all the time, he was on TV all the time, you couldn't get away from him.

• 46:38Mayim Bialik?

  The middle of the night, I would wake up to be like, what happened while I slept?

• 46:41Speaker 01

  But what's, I think what Democrats need to realize is, like, that's what people now expect from their leaders, is constant communication. And the question is though, can you have a Democratic politician, hopefully several, who can communicate constantly, but not in a reality show style?

• 47:01Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and this was sort of the challenge for Kamala. I didn't want to know that much about what she was doing or thinking either. But you have to compete with that, and it became really complicated. And then, people are like, she's tripping over her words, and she's saying the same thing, and why is she saying that? Because the level, that's not what politicians are bred for, also. You know who's bred for that? Actors. Like, I am one. We're taught to bullshit for pay. Like, we're taught to make shit up, and make it sound really real and convincing, and grab you and hold you. And I understand politicians have always been like, you know, I grew up with like, the image of Richard Nixon, of like, don't be anyone but this, right? Like, I grew up with dreams of Clinton, and then the fall of Clinton in my house, because we're socially conservative, you know, bleeding heart liberals. So it was like, how could he do that to his wife, right?

• 47:46Mayim Bialik?

  So, I mean, I've seen like, all of these kind of like, hills and valleys, but also, that's not what, that's not what I want from them.

• 47:54Jonathan Cohen?

  But pitch me the alternative, because if they have to communicate constantly, and the algorithm needs it to be inflammatory, how do you do anything else?

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so inflammatory works, fear and anger work, right? I also think, think about the other things that go viral. Humor, inspiration, hope, right? And I only, I think fear and anger are-

• 48:18Mayim Bialik?

  Why are you saying the hope word? You're gonna make me cry.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  I was gonna say. I think, I think fear and anger are more likely to go viral than hope and inspiration, but I do think there is, there is a market for that.

• 48:30Jonathan Cohen?

  You did say hope with a question mark. It was the least-

• 48:33Speaker 01

  I know, it's hard.

• 48:34Jonathan Cohen?

  Convincing of all the words you mentioned.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  I also think that, I think that harnessing anger, fear, I think, harnessing fear is bad. Harnessing anger, if it is anger on behalf of people who feel that the government has let them down, or hasn't seen them or ignored them, I think that's important anger. I wouldn't, I think tipping that towards rage is a problem, but I think having anger on behalf of people is good to express in that. But I think that requires, like, again, constant community, and someone who can communicate. Like, we, even, and before you had this need for constant communication, when Obama was in the White House, like, every time we got into a jam- I know because I would be most annoyed since I was the speechwriter. But every time we were in a jam, someone would inevitably propose in a meeting,

• 49:19Speaker 01

  I think you should give a big speech on this. And then you'd get the like, we need a race speech for the economy. Or we need a race speech for whatever, because that was how he. And so, but he could do that, right? And he could go up and give a big speech. A, we don't have a Barack Obama. B, it's not an environment where you just go and give one speech and it fixes things, because not everyone's going to see that speech, right?

• 49:42Jonathan Cohen?

  So now you just need to control the news cycle.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Or like, I mean, AOC does this well, right? Like, she is someone who, you go on Instagram Live for, you know, an hour. She's unfiltered. She doesn't seem like she's reading from a, because she's not.

• 49:56Mayim Bialik?

  No, she's a very authentic politician. I mean, love her or hate her, that's an authentic, that's an authentic person. That's the kind of person, you know, that, that many of us saw in Obama. Meaning, I saw an authenticity, you know, when you said, "hope." Like, there was a feeling in this country of, at least, sorry, I shouldn't say that. There was a feeling among certain people in this country that something was rising. And there was a mobilization of people who were hopeful. This was the perspective. This was the angle that we were all gearing towards.

• 50:34Mayim Bialik?

  What, and I hate to ask you these things, because like, you're not responsible for the entire administration, but you are responsible for understanding a time in history.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 50:44Mayim Bialik?

  What, what happened when we could not galvanize that hope into a larger, sustainable movement?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is the promises of a campaign collide with the realities of governing in a polarized time, now much more, but even then. And, you know, Republicans decided that Barack Obama was, at least some of them decided he was an illegitimate president. You had the, and look, I also think some of this is not just on the Republicans. I think we had a financial crisis that was incredibly difficult to recover from and slow to recover from. And I don't think that those, that was necessarily because of policy choices by Barack Obama.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  I mean, everyone talks about the bank bailouts, but like, George Bush started those. And we just tried to keep the financial system afloat. But for a myriad of reasons, like, we just, it was a slow recovery, and that's hard. And it goes back to, yes, people are hopeful and they're excited and they, you know, Barack Obama ended his presidency very well-liked. And, you know, even by some Republicans. But that doesn't change the fact that a lot of people still hadn't, you know, their finances still hadn't recovered. And there's a lot of kids who graduated around then who didn't get jobs.

• 52:12Mayim Bialik?

  And that's almost always, right, the predictor is, is finances and the economy and things that many of us don't really know how to even wrap our heads around. Meaning, we're just, we know what rent is, we know what our budget is, we know, we know what our personal sort of needs are, but not necessarily how to balance that with those of the entire nation.

• 52:34Jonathan Cohen?

  This brings me to another very complex issue that I think is painful to talk about, that has a tail to it. So the idea that when Obama left office, the economy hadn't recovered, that's a very complex number of inputs that are going to impact whether I get a job or not, when I get out of school, that is, cannot only be attributed to the actions of one human being. So another thing at play right now is crypto. People don't have the time to either understand new technology, or the implication of this, or the fact that the president now has multiple coins and a coin-selling operation and like,

• 53:15Jonathan Cohen?

  the, let's slow this all down for a second, because here's why we need to talk about it, in my opinion, is that it has a long tail with many implications that can come. And we could be three, five, seven years in the future and realize the worst version of this is that the economy no longer has the trust of the general public and investors don't want to put their money in markets, because the level of corruption and people getting rich off of insider trading has exploded. So like, that's the long tail?

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:48Jonathan Cohen?

  Can you walk us back and start to someone who hasn't been following this, to sort of ease us into what the risk is here, or what's happening and what the risk is here?

• 53:58Speaker 01

  I'll try to separate it out, because they're sort of the crypto industry writ large, which there are, you know, good arguments for, we got to regulate it way more than it is. There's also arguments for like, this is why crypto is valuable and at least one form of banking and currency that we, people should be able to use, right? So like, I think there are fair arguments on both sides there. But the meme coin that Donald Trump has.

• 54:29Jonathan Cohen?

  And the exchange?

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Right, that he, yeah, that they have created. Basically, this, Donald Trump is, Donald Trump's family has created this meme coin, this Trump coin, that has no intrinsic value. It is basically just what investors decide the value is. It's like a trading card, basically. And.

• 54:50Jonathan Cohen?

  And the art was potentially developed for someone else before he got it? Is there any truth to this?

• 54:56Speaker 01

  I heard this, but I don't know enough about that story to really, but yeah, I heard it, it was like, I think it was Sylvester Stallone?

• 55:02Jonathan Cohen?

  Correct.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  That's what I heard.

• 55:02Jonathan Cohen?

  And I haven't even gone deep into what the art is, but supposedly there's pictures of him like, with just all manner of action hero poses that you would be like, you could slap on Sylvester's face to that, and you'd be like, that would make sense.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  So the Trump family owns most of the Trump coins. They also make money every time there's an exchange of the coins, on the transactions, right? And so, if you are, if you want to curry favor with the Trump family, you can buy a bunch of Trump coins. And now, the Trump people will say, well, we don't know. True, but the people who are buying them, tell them. And in fact, say it very publicly. And the way this works on a policy level, when, I believe there was like, a lumber

• 55:59Speaker 01

  company that was trying to avoid, that didn't, that was going to get hit pretty hard with the tariffs on trucking. And they decided to buy a bunch of Trump coin and then put out a press release saying that they bought a bunch of Trump coin, and that also that they hope that the tariffs can come down. Now, I don't, it didn't work for them, because they want other tariffs. But like, this is what's happening, that's like, one example.

• 56:25Jonathan Cohen?

  But it did work for Jesse Powell.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  It did, right. And it worked for, who was the Binance guy? Yeah, this guy who was, Justin Sink, who I believe was under investigation, SEC investigation, and then he bought a bunch of.

• 56:42Jonathan Cohen?

  Seventy-five million. I forget if it was Jesse or the Binance.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're seeing this happen now, right? Which is, people who are either in trouble, or want to, or need a policy from the Trump administration, or need some kind of a favor, will either buy the Trump coin, or, or just go to a dinner, pay a bunch of money to go to a dinner with Trump.

• 57:05Mayim Bialik?

  Trump does a lot of things that other people do. He just does them without caring what people will think about it. Meaning, that is something that happens. He says a lot of things, he believes a lot of things. Like, anyone who thinks that, you know, their political party has a squeaky-clean, you know, untarnished candidate is mistaken, you know? And even those of us who believe so devoutly in Hillary or in Obama, like, that's true too, they're humans and they're human politicians, right? So what do you say to people who would say, okay, Trump is doing a disgusting, blatant thing, but other politicians do it in other ways, they're just sneaky about it?

• 57:45Jonathan Cohen?

  It's widely known that Nancy Pelosi and her husband beat the market in ways that could never possibly.

• 57:52Mayim Bialik?

  And you're buying favors left and right? Like, is it, is, I mean, I'm happy to be wrong here, but is that just politics? And he's just so unabashed about it?

• 58:01Jonathan Cohen?

  He's better at it.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  It is, it is not politics. It, we, I mean, some of the things that they do in this White House, like, we get to the White House, we had ethics trainings that was like, you can't even accept a lunch that's over fifty dollars.

• 58:15Jonathan Cohen?

  But is that just for staffers, who they're trying to put a nice mask on everyone else? And then the people who are actually in positions of power are just stuffing money in their pocket?

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Well, they have to do financial disclosures and, right? If you're running for office, and so, you're very public. And in fact, I think if you are an elected official, you are, it's easier to know if someone, look, because you're just so public and your finances have to be public, right? Or at least a lot of them, there's disclosure. But here's a good example, Bob Menendez, former senator from New Jersey. The Biden Justice Department, Democratic President, Justice Department, investigated him and found him guilty of just like, accepting bribes, gold bars.

• 58:55Mayim Bialik?

  It's really crazy.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Just really corrupt.

• 58:56Mayim Bialik?

  It was really, really nuts.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Super, super corrupt. And he gets convicted, right? So that's justice. Democrats go after one of their own, right? And this week, Bob Menendez is like, you know what? I just want to say, I think that, I agree with Donald, with Donald Trump, that the Justice Department under Democrats is weaponized, because I think Joe Biden's Justice Department went after me, because I didn't support Barack Obama on the Iran deal. And I didn't support his Cuba opening. And I think that that carried over to the Biden administration. And he's doing it, because he knows that it doesn't matter if you're, Donald Trump is bipartisan when it comes to pardoning corrupt politicians.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  All you have to do is tell Donald Trump he's wonderful, pay him, do some favor for him, pledge loyalty to him, and you'll get a pardon. This is what, I mean, this is what they did to the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, right? Was like, and the way they did it with him is, okay, we won't prosecute you, and, but, we're not going to dismiss the charges altogether so that they can't come back. We're going to have them hanging over your head. And now, basically, they own him.

• 1:00:07Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean, it's very effective.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  It's very, well, because the only thing that really stops this, in the Constitution, the mechanism to stop this kind of thing is impeachment.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:00:20Jonathan Cohen?

  It doesn't seem to work anymore.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  We're just, Republicans are not gonna, they're protecting him. They can't, they won't impeach him. And the Supreme Court said that any act that you do that could be construed as potentially an official act, even if it's criminal, you know, you get a pass.

• 1:00:35Jonathan Cohen?

  Another argument people make is that, how different is it than just large donors used to be? You know, these dinners, politicians spend most of their time going around trying to collect money for the campaign, even when they're not campaigning. So it's not that different. I want you to answer that question, but also just a few other examples. Pam Bondi has reportedly sold one to $5 million of Trump's stock right before the liberation day tariffs happened. So, and there's a handful of others that have sold stock at very specific times, right before announcements hit, that would be almost unprecedented in terms of the accuracy of their timing to either short Tesla or gain favor in ways that have enriched them.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the solution there is, members of Congress and their families just shouldn't be able to just trade stocks while they hold public office. Just, that's it.

• 1:01:30Jonathan Cohen?

  Bipartisan agreement.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Bipartisan, that would take care of the Pelosi thing, that would take care of the Pam, or if you're a cabinet official like Pam Bondi or in the administration like that, should just be banned.

• 1:01:38Jonathan Cohen?

  Just increase their salary. Make it a very enticing salary so that you're just unable to make money outside of the office.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  And there is a bipartisan bill to do that, and just not enough support right now. But it should absolutely happen.

• 1:01:55Mayim Bialik?

  Where is the place for you of hope? You know, even the title of your book, right, Democracy or Else? I was.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  We're firmly in the, or else camp right now.

• 1:02:07Mayim Bialik?

  Right, so that's what I was, that's what I was wondering. Where is sort of your, you know, where's your framework for the work and advocacy that you do, and also your kind of personal perspective on, is there still hope?

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll be honest, I am, you know, I've been a very hopeful person for a long time, and part of it is working for Obama, part of it is just the reason I went to work for Obama in the first place, that's just how I am. I feel like that's being tested now in a way that it hasn't been in 44 years I've been alive. But, I still think that for all the damage that's being done right now, for the threats that we face right now, you know, this goes back to that, the focus groups I was talking about, like, people are, most people in this country are just like, good people, flawed people, trying to go about their lives, trying to like, help their families, raise their families, and want to be good

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  neighbors, want to be good friends, want to be good citizens. And I think that people are persuadable if we can somehow get out of these online spaces that are very unhealthy, and start, you know, like, I'm a firm believer in grassroots organizing. And if you've ever been on doors for a campaign, it can be like, really frustrating, and it's harder and harder. But, those types of conversations, and I don't even know if door knocking is the best way to do it anymore, but those types of in-person, real-life conversations, I've had them with people who were from the other party, and I've seen people change their

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  minds, right? It can happen. And, I also, but I think what it takes is, people who are willing to step up and get involved in public life, and be willing to show some courage in how they communicate. Like, I, my challenge now with a lot of Democratic politicians is, because everyone has been so shaken by what has happened over the last 10 years, people have stopped trusting their instincts, and they are so looking for the solution, the answer, the right slogan, the policy that will unlock the majority, that

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  it sounds like Democrats are like, Democratic politicians are like, reading the stage directions all the time, doing a lot of like, analysis of the voters, of different messages here and there, and they're afraid, everyone's afraid. And so they're not just saying what they believe. And what I, what I want people to do, people in power especially, something happens in the news, Donald Trump does something, someone else does something, like, don't read social media first, don't turn on the news, don't talk to your advisors, just like, sit with it yourself, and think about how it makes you feel and what you want to say about it. And then just like, operate from there. Because, people have very finely honed

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  bullshit detectors in this country, and people have every reason to be skeptical and even cynical, because of politics, not just because of Trump, but because of everyone else. And to break through that, you've really got to just speak from a place of authenticity, and what you actually really believe. And, you know, you get that a lot from younger generations, and I just hope that, I have hope that people in this country can, can still make a difference, can still like, persuade people.

• 1:05:46Mayim Bialik?

  One of the things that I appreciate that hope, and I also know that one of the things that has been so divisive for the Democratic Party in particular, is something that I really think, you know, Trump kind of incubated, this notion that the far-left speaks for all of us, or all of the Democratic Party, or all liberals, right? Can you talk a little bit about the conflation of the far-left, and, you know, in many cases, things that are quite extreme, you know, meaning, just like you said, that Fox News is really an extreme end of the spectrum for Republican voters, it seems that a lot of the things

• 1:06:27Mayim Bialik?

  that are really on a pretty extreme, you know, end of the spectrum for those on the other side, really got, you know, first of all, incubated, I think, by Trump, and really exploited. And I also don't feel like the Democratic Party did its best to distinguish itself from some of that. Can you speak to that? Because that's a place where a lot of people feel like, I had hope, but if this is what they think of us, right, how can I align with this?

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  When you have, and this is the case throughout history, when you have an authoritarian threat, right, the only way to beat that back is with the broadest possible coalition. And you, and, and countries fail, and democratic governments fall, when the center-right is divided from the center-left, is divided from the far-left, and they're all fighting amongst each other, and then, you know, the authoritarians' party, which usually does not have majority support at all, ends up winning. And so, for, since 2016, 2017, the

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Democratic project has been to build a coalition that spans from AOC and even further left, to Joe Manchin and the Never Trumpers, who used to be Republicans, and that is a big, big coalition. And it's really hard to keep it together. And so, when you have people on the extreme far-left, oftentimes, the instinct from folks on the center-left is not to push them out of the coalition, or call them out, because it will increase divisiveness. That said, you've got to have your lines, right? And, and I do, this is also an online

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  phenomenon, right, which is like, I have come to know organizers, people who've actually knocked on doors, been on campaigns, worked for causes, who are from the far-left to the center-right. And the big division is not ideological, it's with the people who've actually done the work of trying to knock on doors and persuade people, versus people who perform politics online mostly, and have never really had to sit down with someone and try to convince them. And it also, also the difference between, like, there's a place for marching and protest, but marching and protest also doesn't require you to sit with someone.

• 1:08:58Mayim Bialik?

  No, in many cases, there's a refusal to sit with someone that.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:02Mayim Bialik?

  They, you know, presume does not agree with them.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  And, I think that's a problem on the left, not just, not just strategically, but...

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  It has to do with like how we view the world. Like it has to do with our ideology. Because part of, I think, being progressive or liberal is believing in pluralism. And pluralism requires you to, you know, we talk a lot about diversity of identity and race and religion and socioeconomic diversity. But we also have to respect diversity of ideas and politics and ideology. And we don't have to play nice with every Republican or people that we don't agree with. But we have to learn to live with them in this country of over 300 million people.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Because even if we win, they're not going away. We don't want them to. Maybe Donald Trump and his party wants people to go away and is trying to deport them. But that's not our view of the world. Because if we start picking and choosing who, you know, who needs to get out of the coalition? Who can't be here? Who's not American? Then we're like them. And we're not just like them in style. That's their ideology. Our ideology is we can have a country with this many people who are this different and believe different things and come from different places. And yet somehow, even with all these differing views and people, like we can live together in peace and relative prosperity. That's it. That's the project.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  And so if that's our North Star, then we have to make sure our actions reflect that. And if, whether you're far left or center-left or center-right, if your actions and the way you approach politics doesn't reflect that ideal of what this country should be, then you should think about whether you're really living up to the ideology and the values that you profess.

• 1:11:02Jonathan Cohen?

  And it's not only about rejecting the right. It's also about rejecting factions of the left who may not use the right terms or have the same ideology like the far, far left has become so divisive as to divide amongst themselves.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  I think that we went through a period of that that is now waning. I think that's a good thing. Because, you know, there is a difference between trying to persuade people that, you know, trying to open people's minds to experiences, identities, people that they have not encountered before. And to get them to accept those people, right? Like, there's a difference between that and if you encounter someone who hasn't had those experiences, shouting them down or scolding them or making them feel bad. And not just from like a people should be nicer kind of stance, but like just brass tax politics.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  Like, no one ever convinced anyone to join a movement by yelling at them or scolding them.

• 1:12:09Jonathan Cohen?

  Give them snacks.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  You're right. Like, the point is to expand your movement and expand your coalition. That's how you win power. And you don't do that by just screaming at people and yelling at people and challenging their motivations and calling them evil and accusing them of things like that. It might feel good to you. It might feel good to the people who are in your movement. But it is self-defeating as a political strategy. And it always has been.

• 1:12:39Jonathan Cohen?

  Was there anything that you learned out, you know, by sitting down with people that sort of was beyond the fact that most people aren't thinking about these things? Were there insights to be gleaned there?

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  The other thing that you hear in these focus groups, right? When you hear, when you sit down with voters. And it's interesting because you get this whether, you know, I sat down with Latino men in Vegas and young black professionals in Atlanta and Obama-Trump voters in Milwaukee. And the common thread is just this feeling that the government has left them behind and that government is not listening. And that the people who represent them don't care and that they are either stupid or corrupt. And when you hear this enough, you start to understand where Trump came from.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  And you start to understand where, you know, RFK Jr. and all of these sort of anti-institutional, maybe seem like cranks to us. But for a lot of people, it's just like, look, I don't trust the system right now. And I think Democrats, for a long time, have responded to that by saying, no, no, no, no. Trust the system, please. It's important. Instead of saying, you're right not to trust the system. We're going to reform it. They want to tear it down.

• 1:14:02Mayim Bialik?

  Well, that was a huge challenge with Joe Biden at all. Meaning so many people were kind of like, what's happening here? Why is this our candidate, right? And what it was met with was, you're a bad patriot, you know? You're not, you know, supporting your party and your country. And I think that was some of the confusion that a lot of people had was not so much me wanting to analyze why people didn't or weren't ready for a woman president or a president of color, you know, in the form of Kamala Harris.

• 1:14:42Mayim Bialik?

  But to be able to say, if I don't feel like I'm being told the truth, what else can I not trust? And it's almost like many people chose the unknown that they couldn't trust over what they knew they couldn't trust.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  I think the problem is a lot of Democrats, a lot of people who don't want Donald Trump to be president and are very concerned that he represents an existential threat to America, right? Have been driven by fear for the last decade. And as I mentioned earlier, you want this, you want this big coalition, this big tent coalition to be, and so we all got to keep it together. And if you're driven by fear, then you are likely to tell yourself that maybe saying, you know what, Joe Biden, he's fine. You're just be, he's not that old. He's OK. Inflation, it's not real. That's just the media talking about inflation. Look at these economic statistics. They're great. I don't know what you're talking about.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  That's just a media invention. That's a Republican invention. You're more willing to do that because you're like, well, the most important thing is that we beat Donald Trump. My view is, yes, the most important thing is that we beat Donald Trump. To do that, people have to trust you. And you cannot tell people that they are seeing something or not seeing something that they see or not hearing something that they hear or not experiencing something that they are experiencing in real life. You cannot argue people out of their feelings or out of their reality. And I think that the Democratic Party over the last several years tried very hard, or at least some people, Biden officials and some Democratic Party insiders felt,

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  tried very hard to convince people that Joe Biden was fine when most of the country was saying, no, no, no, he's too old to run again. Even people who liked him. And same thing with inflation, right? And so going forward, I think you're right. Like, anyone who wants to defeat Donald Trump or defeat his movement or win, you have to start from, yes, it's scary and you can be driven by fear. But that fear can't lead you to a place where you are willing to lie or not be, forget about lie, just not be forthright about the reality of the situation and what people are actually seeing and hearing in their own lives.

• 1:17:01Jonathan Cohen?

  When you're not focused on politics and producing 15 podcasts a week, how do you spend your time?

• 1:17:07Mayim Bialik?

  He was hopeful enough that he had children.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  That was it. That's it. I used to have hobbies. I don't have any hobbies anymore. When I am not working or thinking about politics, I'm with my four-year-old and my one-year-old and my wife. And just, you know, we're in it with a one and a four-year-old. So we're just trying to get through that. And honestly, it's a great break from politics because I have learned to sort of put my phone, like I come home from work, I put my phone in my office at home, and then I go have dinner with the family and just try not to, not to think about politics, which is nice.

• 1:17:40Jonathan Cohen?

  It's a very nice break. Thank you for helping us think about politics.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

• 1:17:44Jonathan Cohen?

  Very helpful to sort out everything from both sides. And we appreciate your perspective.

• 1:17:49Mayim Bialik?

  Also, really, really great reference book to have to keep coming back to. Meaning like, it was a great read, but I also really, really enjoy being able to use it as a reference point and really great conversation starters also for young people. I have an almost 17-year-old and a 19-year-old. And so very helpful to be able to frame it. So appreciate that. And also, if you have not checked it out, check out Pod Save America. Where else can people find you?

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  I also have a podcast called Offline with Jon Favreau about the internet breaking our brains and the wilderness we talked about. And then we're on YouTube, Pod Save America, so check it out.

• 1:18:23Mayim Bialik?

  Amazing. Thank you.

• 1:18:27Mayim Bialik?

  If you follow us on Substack, you'll be able to hear a little bit more analysis from this episode. So we recommend you go over to MyBioX Breakdown on Substack so we can continue the conversation with you over there. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.