The Death of DOGE and the Triumph of the Establishment: A Review of 2025
Summary
DOGE Failure: The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) overpromised and underdelivered despite Elon Musk’s involvement, yielding only marginal savings versus the touted $1T. The collapse is framed as a microcosm of Washington’s structural resistance to reform.
Spending & Inflation: Public support for “cuts” evaporates when specific programs are named, leaving deficits and inflation entrenched. Tariffs boosted tax receipts largely from Americans, not foreigners, underscoring inefficiency and higher consumer costs.
Co-option Strategy: MAGA rhetoric is used to sell status quo policies, especially in foreign affairs. The administration talks “America First” while broadly sustaining establishment priorities.
Foreign Policy Continuity: Limited movement on Ukraine peace contrasts with escalations and focus shifts to the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. Record arms sales to Taiwan and broader security-state spending persist.
Neoconism with Trump Characteristics: NATO is de-emphasized in favor of other theaters, but overall interventionism and defense outlays remain intact. The rhetoric changes, the policy substance largely does not.
Personnel vs. Policy: Even with some non-traditional appointees, outcomes resemble prior Republican administrations. DOJ/FBI conduct and episodes like the Epstein case reflect continuity over change.
Right-Wing Fractures: A split between MAGA principles and Trump loyalists intensifies, with figures like Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene challenging the White House. Complacency among some supporters reduces pressure for substantive reform.
Structural Limits: Elections are portrayed as insufficient to reverse long-term decline; decentralization and even secession are floated as more viable paths. Expectations reset toward potential personnel shifts in year two rather than sweeping policy change.
Transcript
Welcome back to the power and market podcast. I'm Ryan McMon, editor-inchief at the Mises Institute. And with me today, as usual, are two of our contributing editors. We have th Bishop and we have Connor O'Keefe. And every week or so, about 50 times a year now, we we get together and we talk about headlines, what's going on. We try to bring to it uh an analysis that pertains to what we do at the Mises Institute, which is to promote Austrian economics, freedom, and peace. And it's the end of the year, so we're going to talk a little bit about what we think are kind of the biggest themes of the year, the biggest news stories of the year in a certain sense, uh, and where that might point to in 2026. But we're not going to get too much into 2026 because we're going to do a predictions uh and upcoming themes uh episode next month. But we're after this there will be a couple of weeks where we're not doing an episode with Christmas and New Year's right in the middle of that. We're not going to be in the office very much during that time period. >> So Ryan, we're not debating Scrooge hero or villain next week. >> Well, you know, we should just really repromote our old episodes about Scrooge. It's not Christmas week without without Scrooge content on mises.org. >> They we've got well there are two kinds of Mises Institute followers. There are pro Scrooge people and anti- Scrooge people. I happen to be one of the anti Scrooge people. >> But yeah, people get pretty upset about it. Uh but that I need to go and watch some Christmas Carol. I I do I do like that uh that story. Um I don't know my I see I'm so old I like this old 1985 version with George C. got. But I don't know. I mean, Muppet Christmas Carol seems to be the more the most popular version, >> the best, >> which admittedly is pretty good. >> I got it in this week. It's It's so It still hits. >> Okay. Genius, >> guys. I saw that in the theater back in the 90s, just uh just so you know. Yeah. So, my my Muppet Christmas Carol is 100%. >> Uh >> OG. >> So, yeah. Let's talk about though 2025 and what's going on. Before we do that though, right, as I said, it's the end of the year though. It's our end of the year campaign. Um, so now is a great time to go on and donate, right? >> Yes, it is. Uh, again, if you are a member this year, you want to renew renew your membership for next year. If you've never been a member, now is a good time to do it. A lot of great perks, including uh a copy of the beautiful Mecessian magazine you get every other month. You get a free monthly audio book, which hey, you compare that to uh Audible. I that's pretty much pays for the entire membership right then and there. Store discounts at the ME of Mises bookstore and a free virtual Mises University package during the best week of the year every July. Um other goodies are included as well. You can also get if you renew till the end of the year a copy of Ryan's own the fight for liberty, a great strategy booklet looking at the past and future of the liberty cause. You can find all of this at uh the front page. We've got a number of of uh promos there, but it is our year-end drive. You've probably gotten a lot of ads for it either in your email, previous podcasts, but hey, this is what pays lights. This is what pays for content like this. We got a lot of big things planned for 2026. Hope to have you with us. >> And if you haven't ever subscribed, be sure and subscribe to our daily or weekly emails. Just it's right at the top of the page at mises.org. Click on subscribe there at the top. You'll get all sorts of stuff on upcoming events, on uh new publications, that sort of thing. So 2025, uh, we're just going to talk about what we think really is an indication of how the first year of the Trump administration has gone. Not really so much in terms of Trump. We we're not going to talk a whole lot about his personality or anything like that, but really policy. This is what we're mostly focused on here is actual uh the effects of what people think about economics about what they believe is good markets or socialism or whatever it else it is that they think is the right way to run a state or an economy. And Trump of course is a big factor in that. And so I predict he's going to come up more than once in our analysis today. So th why don't you go ahead and start us off and um you know really just tell us how should we be thinking about 2025? Well, to me, I think the biggest story of this year, and it's one that doesn't really come up a lot anymore, but to me, I think it's the perfect kind of symbol for the the hope and, you know, disappointment, if you will, of 2025. And that's the failure of Doge. Because if you're thinking about like what was the the big selling point of Trump 2.0, right? that he had four years um you know out of office surrounded by people that were serious this time. You people that weren't trying to uh steer him in other directions, right? That you know within this coalition that he had been able to build for 2024 and that that you know pretty major election. You know you had these tech bros and you had Elon Musk coming in. and you have these outside talent and and part of it is that Trump always wanted you he never wanted to touch he wanted to talk a big game in terms of economic policy obviously never wanted to touch social security entitlements you know all that sort of difficult stuff which you know no populist would want to do but he wanted to you know make you know disrupt things and and make big changes and and get the economy you know growing and and glowing and all that sort of good stuff and so here you had walk in which seemed to be the perfect sales pitch. We're going to bring in the richest man in the world with, you know, a a crapnut team of diehard, you know, autistic, you know, data people, and we are going to infiltrate using executive power, which is part of the selling points, right, of kind of the Trump doctrine, right? We're going to infiltrate with executive power. We're going to find all the ways, fraud, and abuse. We're going to find all the easy ways of cutting spending and we're going to be able to bypass Congress to a large extent within it. Right? you're you're you're bypassing the traditional processes and that hey look we can save a trillion dollars just by plugging in Elon Musk and his team into the administration utilizing the sort of backdoor you know sort of dynamic that Obama set up right for you know Obamacare websites and and early on like there's extreme excitement that okay he this is something completely new this is a new like that this is something that actually could work and you know what we've been talking about for months now right inflation's going up spending's out control, right? All these things like let's say they subtracted a trillion dollars, right? Spending problems are still still a thing, but like like removing a trillion dollars of easy spending would have been a massive uh change like that that would have depicted something real. It would have been something resembling actual problem solving relative to the rest of the world, right? You compare you know that to you know European countries that would have been a major probably had a major impact on the status of the dollar, financial markets, everything there, right? And I think there's two lessons from this. One is okay overlay promise something never happened whatever. The other side of it though is that given all of the you the runaway spending is that something this bold and bringing in outside people with a dedicated cause of trying to to do one simple thing, one big thing, but one simple thing and it could not get done right. Elon Musk has had success in just about everywhere else and whatever you feel about Elon Musk and his government subsidies, whatever. There's a guy that that that typically succeeds more often than he fails, comes in, you know, taking massive, you know, a massive amount of personal hits doing this thing in the first place, right? Completely, you know, having his his cars attacked and this sort of stuff like he he has real skin in this game and he can't do it, right? And so what does that tell you about the way the American government can function, right? Because like that's the ultimate outsider right in there, right? You you've got you've got the marauding, you know, return vengeance tour. You've got you've got billionaire people coming in to fix it. The this is the, you know, outsider big, you know, big power coming in here and they can't crack this nut, right? You you you get pitiful savings. You shouldn't have a few government agencies. You hey, great, you know, USAD, you know, wonderful. But but like that is that was the the big all-in pitch. That was one of the closing sales pitches of the 2024 campaign. That was something that was I think widely seen as needed to help justify everything else as a part of you kind of the broader domestic policy and for all that capital all that talent all that energy all of that skin in the game nothing comes of it nothing meaningful comes of it and I think it's a a a big reason why Trump's domestic agenda is where it is right now but I think it also goes to just how inexcapably broken Washington is so I think those are two stories that to me like I I think this is what the failure of Doge is one of the defining aspects of the first year of the Trump administration and I think a really defining chapter and where the modern American state truly is. >> So though is just the the whole Doge thing just dead. I mean by like year three is that just going to be ancient history? There's not going to be any attempt to do that with the next year's budget. >> Well now no pretty much it's dead. I mean they've they've there is no more you know government program that is Doge or whatever the whatever was classified. um some of these sort of initiatives um have been kind of broken up and you've got like rep dogey type people in various agencies and the like and but but the whole thing is like goes oh we're going to fight efficiency system that like you know whatever like I mean there's there's always been you know attempts on the side to cut this regulation here or cut this you know there's always been these very very marginal sort of stuff that you get from time to time but nothing in and nothing resembling the the massive systemic we're we're going to carve out $1 trillion of savings. That entire the the the true pitch of the plan, no matter how they try to package what exists right now, that the true promise of that plan is completely gone. And we'll never see anything attempted, I think, like this. Again, I I I very much doubt you're going to have anyone do the Elon Mus in the future on trying to ride in on a on a candidate they buy and and disrupt things because again, just look at the experience that he had. Um, so you know the entire project I think is you know from what it was sold as gone. >> Well it's like the opposite of what they tell software engineers which is to underpromise and overd deliver, right? We got way over promise underdeliver. >> Seems politics. >> Well yeah I mean it's the opposite all the time but even more so this time because there's always so much bombast uh from this administration and huge promises. And I guess that was just our big first important lesson about this administration was how quickly Doge just went away and fell on its face and how expectations were readjusted from a trillion dollars down to oh 50 billion of I mean just a remarkable change that but what was so I mean what really adds to the disappointment from my perspective is how much excitement there was as you said though and even like a couple of months into the administration I remember a poll coming out and it said that by far the most popular thing that the Trump administration was doing was cutting government and that is not something I expected to see. You know, I was kind of pessimistic going into the second Trump administration, which I and you know, I'm happy I went in with that mindset. But that was like that was kind of shocking to me and I thought that that was um that's like a data point that means you know at the time I thought it meant we were in a more uh in a better space than I had been anticipating. But I really think that um core to the problem with Doge as I saw it was just a complete misunderstanding with with of the nature of the problem here and it like they just from the name the Department of Government Efficiency. It was all about coming in and fixing things. But like the fundamental realization that they needed to have is what we've been talking about especially the last few weeks is that the system in Washington is not broken. It's working perfectly well. It's just not designed to do what they say it's designed to do. It's designed to rip the American people off, not work in the interest of the American people. But when you come in and say, "Oh, we're going to fix things up and make it more efficient." Then you're you're essentially shooting yourself in the foot from the beginning. And then like I was just reading a story earlier today about like one of the few things that Doge is actually doing um it looks like is they are making the selective service registration automatic. And I think that just encapsulates it perfectly. is that they're not actually changing course at all. They're probably, you know, bringing some technology into the 20th century or 21st century. Um, but when you go in not understanding the nature of the problem, it's not a surprise when you're not able to actually address it, >> right? Well, anytime you're talking about making government more efficient, you always end up with stuff like, oh, uh, we should withhold taxes so that people aren't writing one big check a year because that's inefficient. It's much more efficient to just withhold a piece of it month by month. And look how smooth and streamlined it is. This is, of course, a horrible development in US tax policy. Uh, approved by Milton Freriedman, of course. And that's those are the sorts of quote unquote libertarians that we complain about all the time, right? Is you have two choices. You can be actually be against the regime or you can be a efficiency efficiency expert for the regime, right? Oh, let me help you do this in a more efficient way and it'll save a nickel and dime here and there. We got people who act like they're for lessening the burden of government on people. And what are they doing? most of their efforts are spent trying to help government do more things uh maybe with slightly fewer resources, but in the end, of course, it always ends up with more government spending anyway. And that seemed to be what a lot of the effort here was. And you could see that that philosophy at work in the fact that they would crow about collecting more tax revenue. That was something they were so so proud of is we're collecting more tax revenue through the tariff program. Now part of that was due to the lie that tariffs tariff revenue all comes from foreigners. So they had convinced a lot of people that oh all that revenues coming from uh outside the country. What we know from empirical studies is that at least 60% of tariff revenue comes from the American side of the equation. And of course, if you had principles of econ as an undergraduate, that sort of thing, you know that both sides whenever you're dealing with a sales tax, which is all a tariff is, that it's not totally paid by either the merchant or by the purchaser because the merchant is forced to pay in terms of diminishing sales. And that's what foreigners were paying in terms of people were buying fewer foreign products. Yep. Why? Because they were more expensive. And what that meant was Americans were paying more the higher expense and a lot of that was going into tax revenue. So I suppose they were banking on that. That's I guess that's the only way that bragging about more tax revenue makes sense is if foreigners are doing it. But in the end they were bragging about hey the government has more resources to do things to spend more to have more programs to pay more bureaucrats. I mean, they weren't going to like give that money to Americans and which would have made more sense, right? Oh, we're taking this money from foreigners in the form of tariffs and we're going to like give it to Americans somehow. And they did actually talk about that a little bit with those schemes to like we're going to give you more stimulus checks and everything, which people are starting to figure out that that just causes inflation uh because it's just deficit and money printing financed. Uh so that kind of went nowhere, too. And I guess that's all just part of the same disease that's behind Doge is is just all of these big programs that get floated and we're going to save all this money and in the end it amounts to basically nothing at all. So Doge seems like kind of a microcosm of the larger administration. >> And and to me it did seem like the one exception to what you're talking what you're talking about and what I was talking about was US A USA ID. They really did float that as like hey they were right. They were saying this is basically a crony regime change apparatus that you know at the absolute like side of it is a tiny they do a tiny bit of charity too globally and that's what we are supposed to think of and they were just honest about the actual uh nature of US aid but it's it's like and and of course they were able to basically shut it down as a result of that and so if they were just honest or maybe understood that that's the case with all these other government programs it's kind of it's sort of heartbreaking to think of the the counterfactual if they had actually gone into it with that mindset for all these Washington programs, uh, what it may have, how it may have turned out basically. >> And and of course, it was funny seeing again you including Republican senators who you, you know, stepped up to be champions of USD, USAD, you during that entire process, too. And that kind of goes to the broader problem is is that like we know the legislative process can't fix spending, right? There's there's too many like there there's absolutely no interest, right, of doing anything there. It has to come from some strong armed, you know, executive approach in my opinion. And this was a serious attempt at it or I I give him the benefit of the doubt. I thought there was a serious attempt at it. And even that came up to the wall where, you know, you you get Suzanne Collins and Lisa Marowski, you know, helping uh, you know, undercut, you know, things like this on on the most minimal level. And again, that's just exactly where we are when it comes to, you know, exactly how uh our our our domestic policy is directed in this country. I would back to something you said earlier, uh, Connor. I would express skepticism over the over the the real popularity of of government cutting spending because in every poll I've seen, what there's there's two parts of it. One is they ask the people, "How do you feel about government spending spending? Should the government cut spending?" And and like an overwhelming majority says yes. And then they're asked, "Okay, which program should be cut?" Right? >> Should they cut Social Security? And then it and then an overwhelming majority says, "No, no, don't cut that." Right? >> Should we cut Medicare? No, no, don't cut that. Should we cut military? No, no, don't cut that. So, whenever you start asking the public, which program should be cut? Should we cut XYZ program? It's always no. And so I think maybe a lot of the enthusiasm by Doge was based on this myth that there's just all of this stuff being being financed uh that there's all this government spending occurring that's going toward programs that you don't care about when in reality of course right the overwhelming majority of federal spending is going to programs people say they love >> social security Medicare uh Medicaid even because people love now their their government healthcare even if they're not over 65. Uh they love military spending, especially since Trump is always telling them how great military spending is. And yes, there's absolutely probably you could come up with hundreds of billions of dollars that are spent on things that people don't care about, but that's of course thousands of different little things and you just got to kind of go through it piece by piece. And they weren't even able to do that. But if people thought there was going to be any real significant cuts to federal budgets without also cutting into those other programs, especially since now a trillion dollars a year has to go toward maintenance of the federal debt. Where are you going to do all that cutting? is welfare is just too popular >> uh among people who receive it or even don't receive it but think that they should support it for whatever reason because they've been programmed by public school or whatever to support all these forms of federal spending. So it's just is the public support even really there for it? I think that's just another element of why Doge failed. It wasn't of course all of Trump's fault is the fact that the the public really just didn't offer that much support in terms of any particulars. Yeah, it's like easy to get excited when it's vague, but when you have to get specific, the support evaporates for it. But I, it comes back to what I was saying earlier, though. It's because they didn't talk about the government programs um in, you know, they didn't like actually lay out the truth here, which is that all of the spending is creating all the problems that, you know, they then want politicians to fix. And so, yeah, like you need all that excitement and then you need to direct that excitement in a productive way. But when they just the Republicans completely refuse to actually talk about the problem as it exists, of course the the support's going to evaporate once you have to get specific. >> Yeah. I'm not sure the level of sophistication for the average voter is high enough to even like do you go to them and you talk about how uh these these subsidies produce rising prices and how oh good luck explaining the mechanism of how deficit spending turns into price inflation. I you can't hold anyone's attention for more than 2 minutes. It just seems like a really thankless job. So, I could understand why the administration wouldn't even attempt it, assuming they even knew about it and believed that stuff. >> But, I do think US A is kind of a counterpoint to that. Like, they they were a they were able to get a lot of people to just snap to the whole idea that this is all a racket and it's all terrible. And yeah, it would be way harder to do with something like Social Security or Medicare, these big program programs like you're talking about. Um, but there's a lot of other stuff there. You know, we were talking about Obamacare um, last week. Like they could have been a lot more productive. I think um, if they just changed their rhetoric a little bit, but you know, at the end of the day, I think maybe not the Doge that the individuals in Doge, but a lot of the people in the Trump administration and certainly in the Republican party, they don't actually want to cut government. They just want to run on it, um, talk about it vaguely, get votes for it, and then not actually do it. Well, Connor, let's go ahead and go to your number one top theme for the year. Uh, what what should we be looking at there? >> Yeah. So, what I was really watching um closely this year is I wrote an article kind of laying this out. This is what I thought was the big dynamic uh of 2025 that I was watching. I uh looked back at the first Trump term when he comes in, he wins unexpectedly in 2016 and obviously, as everybody knows, the Washington establishment did not like that. They freaked out as a result of that. And I would argue that the defining dynamic of the first Trump term was the establishment trying to essentially either control him and force him to like, you know, start speaking and acting the way they want him to or to throw him out of office and disqualify him from ever holding power again if he refused to go along with it. And they really tried they really tried to do that. Obviously, there was the whole Russia gate thing at first. Um and then when that fell apart, they impeached him uh twice. He, you know, everything goes absolutely crazy during 2020. He leaves office and gets like completely deplatformed too after January 6th. He's basically kicked off of social media, which was another thing people had been working at for years up until that point, but they finally uh succeeded on that front. And then, you know, he's kind of he sort of strangely disappeared from public life for like a year and a half there. He was kind of on truth social, but like he was everybody was basically focused on the Biden administration and then they rolled out all those felonies they went after him like four big cases, whatever however many dozens of felonies. Um so they they were really trying to um stop him from holding office ever again. And I really think that you know this was a a long effort and it really culminated in 2024 the election. I think that really symbolized the complete and utter failure of that approach. But what I was sort of observing um a year ago now as I watched the campaign uh especially is that it really seemed like there was a lot of respect in those circles in that kind of permanent permanent Washington um for a new approach which um I called the co-option strategy. basically um come in and use MAGA sounding language to sell this same old Washington status quo. And I I really noticed that there was specifically a um I don't remember where where it was published, but there was a long article written by one of Trump's adviserss um just laying out what the Trump foreign policy was, what the America first foreign policy was. And I was just reading it and it was just mind-blowing to me how it was just the same thing as the Republican party had been running on for I mean years by this point. It was just the same old status quo foreign policy, but they were putting things like peace through strength and or like words that Trump likes. And Trump was of course like completely fine with this and was more than happy um to go along with it. And I just I thought that as 2024 as the as Trump's victory really um demonstrated that this old strategy that they were using wasn't working. I thought 2025 was the year where they were going to start um really trying to co-opt uh co-opt the MAGA movement and you know come in and sort of present themselves as uh fellow travelers and and control Trump in that way. So that's what I was watching for and it just seems like it was a complete success for them. I think especially foreign policy wise, there's just not really that much we can point to that's a big departure from previous administrations. Even the the thing that I was the most hopeful for was Ukraine. And yes, he like Trump and his team, they do seem to genuinely be trying to bring an end to that war, but it's, you know, we're going on months and months and now like he said it would be day one and it's we're still waiting on a deal. They just floated one out where they said, "Oh, like some big concession. They're gonna not offer Ukraine NATO membership, but we're gonna offer Ukraine all of like the de facto, you know, like the all the things like article 5 war guarantee, everything that you would get if you were in NATO. We're going to offer them that, but we're not going to say it's NATO." It's just like they're not actually that close to a deal there. I didn't expect them to be good on um the Middle East, but it's very disappointing. uh still nonetheless to see that we're just still um trapped there and obviously Venezuela like we've been talking about over the the last few weeks. It's just it's just been so frustrating to watch not just Trump but a lot of Trump's supporters just completely buy in to all this and not really see what's happening below the surface. I think it's it's striking to me that a lot of Trump's biggest um allies and supporters in kind of the the public intellectual space are people that started as never Trumpers. You like the Mark Lavines, the Ben Shapiro, like these people that are now his biggest defenders in the public square of, you know, Twitter and on the internet are the people that they started off completely opposing him because he wasn't good on wars. And it's just like it's frustrating that they can't see that. they just completely, you know, lock in to whatever they're all saying. Um they and they will then, you know, push back against anybody who's criticizing Trump. There's all this, you know, trust the plan stuff. And it's just it's uh very disappointing to watch. You know, I didn't have high hopes for Trump, but it's disappointing to watch some people that I thought would be at least a little bit aware of this dynamic um in, you know, on the right more broadly. But I that to me seems to be um that's the major theme for this year is that this strategy is working very well and unless Trump and the people around him and his supporters kind of wake up to that um it's just we're just going to get the same old Republican administration. >> Well, I think a dynamic in the foreign policy issue. talked about this uh a couple of uh episodes ago on Radio Rothbart when we're talking about foreign policy and the situation in Ukraine because John Mirshimer gave a a great speech uh at the well was at a subcommittee of the European Parliament uh last month I think it was and he was talking about Europe's bleak future and uh how things were headed in a very bad direction for Ukraine and probably for Europe overall and as you noted, right? He Trump's been actually doing some good things in uh Ukraine. But I think, and we discussed this, how the what has enabled Trump to maybe make some progress with NATO and the Ukraine is the fact that the regime has turned its attention elsewhere. So the way that Mirshimer had actually framed it was that Europe is suffering from a lack of attention now from the US regime because the US regime has just become more interested in the Middle East in a pivot to Asia and as we've now more recently seen a pivot to Latin America as well. So I think Trump can can do to certain extent what he wants on foreign policy so long as he doesn't threaten the overall bank role in terms of the money that gets spent on weapons that supports the security state, that sort of thing. And so there may be a pivot away from Ukraine and that gives Trump some leeway to maybe push for an actual peace deal and that sort of thing. But of course, US involvement has greatly expanded in the Middle East. uh the belligerance toward Venezuela has uh greatly expanded and also just I saw today a headline about biggest ever arm sales to Taiwan as well. So there's also potential in in a pivot to Asia as well. So it doesn't look like there's any overall retrenchment in foreign policy that perhaps Trump can guide policy a little bit in terms of where the attention is given. And let's just face it, NATO just doesn't really have uh the allure that it used to have in terms of offering big spending opportunities in terms of offering the US much of anything in terms of expanding global hegemony. And so they're like, well, let's focus on the Middle East and the Americas, maybe Asia. Uh much easier to push, I think, pump an idea of a a cold war with China rather than reviving a cold war with Russia, that sort of thing. And so it's like um it's neoconism with Trump characteristics might be maybe to build on that old phrase about how China had uh communism with with Chinese characteristics, right? It was all it was always still socialism communism, but the Chinese did a little bit different. So Trump, he's he's got his own flavor of things, but in the end it's no threat whatsoever to the regime because as you I think as you correctly suggest, they've managed to co-opt it. But that is a great observation that I hadn't really thought about. But once I give it some thought, of course it's true. The the tone, the tenor, the language of MAGA is very much alive. It's just that it never goes anywhere. That just doesn't actually lead to anything meaningful. Well, the best of that, of course, is Lindsey Graham, who has worked himself into being, you know, one of you Trump's top guys and all sort of stuff. I know you remember it's like when when I think about the early days of the administration kind of like two real I think highlights um didn't mean much in the long run but like the two highlights were one was his um address in the Middle East where he was you know actively condemning neo neocons and and stupid regime change wars and you know basically you know very much with this great you know rhetoric um you know stating there's going to be some massive change and then you know two months later we're bombing Iran but but like that was a that that seemed at the time to be a very important speech um and a change of tone there and again of course you know it it paid off in the Middle East you know not that much long not that much later. Um and the second course is the was the the Zalinsky grilling um with JD Vance taking a leading role there and again you know nothing much has changed on that front ever ever since those sort those two things. And so, you know, it also kind of reminds me of u I think perhaps the better uh illustration of what we were getting this year is when uh you know, Trump was ending the 2024 campaign and uh recognizing Mike Pompeo in the audience and talking about how he's going to get a job there and then luckily that was shut down, right? Like Donald Trump Jr., you know, saying that no, we're not allowing Pompeo back in the administration. He was even giving some shout outs to Dave Smith and stuff. But but essentially right you know we've we've gotten very much that same sort of policy particularly right now in Venezuela and it was the was one of Pompeo's priorities last time around as well and and so it is this very interest interesting u very disappointing fact that you none of these things have changed at all and I I think this is one of those tensions that I do think will be lasting though in terms of the underlying Trump coalition it kind of feels like um because I remember like like Vance right Vance was trying to make a a a big point of emphasis on, you know, not just America's involvement uh in Europe relative to the Ukraine issue, but really coming down hard on the governments of Europe, right? Condemning them for their crackdowns on hate on on free speech and like really kind of pitting a EU versus America sort of dynamic within that sort of geopolitical realm there. And and it feels like that has kind of gone off, right? That's that's not what it used to be. Like I'm I'm interested to see like if it almost feels like Vance's role in terms of the foreign policy side of things has become far far reduced. What whatever else you think about Vance and Payeter and all those other you know connections out there. You know it seemed to me like that he was perhaps the the best voice within the administration the most prominent voice in the administration um articulating not just through rhetoric but in terms of general you know subsidive analysis of geopolitics. Here's where a shift could come. And of course, you know, some other highlights during this during this broader narrative was right, like the firing of Dan Caldwell. Um, some of the tension that's come over with with Tucker Carlson and the administration at times here. Um, and again, this this hits on, I think, a theme that's going to continue and perhaps be even a bigger issue in 2026 is this inner right divide amongst those who are kind, I think, very frustrated with with where foreign policy has been this past year. >> Yeah. And I I think that uh that point about like the rhetoric, it almost feels like the rhetoric is more alive this this term than the first time around because I think a lot of these regime characters are using it themselves because they realize, oh, if we just say peace through strength over and over again, we can essentially sell neoconservatism to uh to the MAGA base and they'll go they'll go crazy for it. I just think it's it's they really like the MAGA supporters, the everyday Trump people, they really need to notice that the regime is not trying to like remove Trump from power like they were the first time around. They're they don't seem anywhere near as worried about what Trump is going to do with foreign and I always thought that that whole effort was driven by foreign policy the first time around. Um, the regime seems completely comfortable with Trump in the White House this time around. And it's like I wonder why. Maybe we should like look into that a little bit. It's just it's just disappointing. Well, my my point, we can move on to my my theme for the year, which I think we could just call how the Trump admin how the second Trump term became the fourth George W. Bush term. Maybe it's the third George W. Bush term. It depends on how you classify the first Trump term. Uh but I would argue that in both terms, uh the if you just looked at it strictly in terms of political appointments overall, right, there have been some real outliers. Uh but overall in terms of like judicial appointments uh in terms of actual in effect foreign policy that was actually implemented if you ignore the rhetoric and the word usage and that sort of thing. I don't think there's really a big difference. And I remember seeing that and of course it always just makes me think of that that comment. I think it was Tom Woods who came up with this saying that no matter who you vote for you get John McCain. Uh I think maybe no matter who you vote for you get George W. Bush. uh nowadays cuz I remember even during the first term, people were like, "Oh, look at those great judicial appointments he made." Now, if you've been around a while, you could see that the judicial appointments being made by Trump were indistinguishable from standard Republican judicial appointments, many of which were often very, very good. Right? Uh many of Trump or maybe of Bush's judicial appointments were much better than Bush on a variety of issues um because he's trying to appeal to certain interest groups with these appointments and that sort of thing. and anyone that was going to replace Scalia was going to be kind of a Scalia clone. It didn't matter what Republican was in office. That's just what was expected. That was the patronage that was going to be expected out of that. And that's what we got out of Trump. We would have gotten that out of Jeb Bush as well. And so now though, we're even now starting to see contra. Now, I agree with you, Connor, that they've preserved a lot of the old rhetoric, but now we're even starting to see Bush era rhetoric and arguments creep in to this administration explicitly because what what Trump's out there now declaring drugs uh to be weapons of mass destruction. I mean, wow, what a remarkable development. And he's making some of the exact same arguments that the Bush administration was making, not not only in terms of weapons of mass destruction. Obviously, we know the point of doing that. It's to justify war, more aggressive foreign policy. That was the point of weapons of mass destruction during the Bush years. But, uh, a a often not remembered thing that the Bush administration was also doing was trying to connect everything the Bush administration didn't like to terrorism. I remember they were putting out public service announcements in say 2003 or so saying that if you buy drugs on the street that money goes back to terrorists uh several steps back, right? It's going to go back to we didn't talk about the cartels much back then, but it's going to go back to drug dealers. And those drug dealers are they going to like they're gun runners also for terrorists and so you're essentially funding terrorism. If you use any illegal drugs, the terrorists win. So this of course then justified a more aggressive war on drugs. So that's a very Bushian sort of thing to do and we're starting to see that now even in the Trump administration. >> Well, I'll push back a little bit because I I I because I in some parts I think it's even more depressing is that like I think the actual appointees this time around are are very much not Bush types, right? Like you know hire you know getting RFK Jr. in terms of at at a AHS or getting Jay Bactaria at his position or or I mean even someone like um >> Cash Patel. >> Yeah, I mean Cash I mean you know you you could pick these characters you here and there. I I don't think any of them would have passed a Bush screening profile one way or another. Um the problem is though is that they're still acting like I think that's the that's even the the bigger issue is that like the personnel's policy component to it. Well, here you have I think a meaningful change in personnel but you're still getting very similar policy. And I think part of that is is that you know the reason why for example like the the the the weapons of mass destruction um sort of rhetoric popping up again is that uh both were I think both administrations are and this has been the prevailing trend the last several years right there several terms is increase executive power right and so everything has to be a national crisis right to to to justify using those those muscles so everything ends up sounding the same because everything comes about justifying um executive power there and and on and so like you're and you know the the the the beast you know the the the swamp feeds the swamp and so like I I think the personnel is actually very different but you're still getting very similar results and I think that's even a more striking condemnation of exactly what this system is right now. I think a lot of those those few you named off though I think they're a bit outliers in terms of like the lower the down. >> Yeah. But but but but that's the sad thing is is is that like is is is does anyone really expect at this point AHS to be radically different >> than it was when and then that's the thing is like so so I mean those are perhaps cherrypicking some of the more extreme examples there but but even there like I don't think we're going to see the sort of radical change of personnel's policy sort of the the hopes and dreams and aspirations right of radical change at the end of the day you know it's it's the machine is not going to be changed like the the the regime is what it is >> well at mises org. We've run a couple of articles really challenging the notion that personnel is policy. Uh I know that's like Washington DC gospel, right? Is that whoever you put in that shows the way the administration is going to go. But to your point just now, yep, you're right. I agree. Some of the like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, obviously not a likely Bush appointee. And they've managed to, you know, trim around the edges a little bit on those sorts of things. And I and so much of it comes down to well we'll allow you to do these little things as long as it never addresses the core issues that we care about in the warfare war welfare state. Uh right we can we can change around foreign policy a little bit but the end commitment has to be equal to or greater than what came before. So we do see a little of that for sure. Uh but overall when you're just looking at okay what is the end result of any of this stuff? Yeah, you're right. It's different sort of personnel, but the policies it's it seems to to be more and more following standard Bush sort of stuff. I mean, heck, we've got Elliot Abrams back uh talking about stuff, right? I mean, this is old school. This is going back to Ronald Reagan level stuff. So, yeah, those guys have not been killed, the old Republican guard, and they are definitely still putting up a fight. And you're seeing that, I think, in terms of policy in a variety of places. >> It's interesting. I think there's a similar dynamic uh that we were talking about earlier with um the Doge stuff because it's like you looked at how he was was talking about the changes he was going to make at the Pentagon or especially Cash Patel and Benino at the uh FBI. They were talking about the FBI as if it was the it used to be this great, you know, law enforcement mechanism in DC that just worked exclusively in the interest of the American people, but it got corrupted into this what is basically a domestic intelligence agency um working for, you know, whoever is in power at the time. And that's just not wrong. It's always been a domestic intelligence agency that's running working for the powerful. And so, like, it's not like it's once again, it's not broken. And so, it doesn't need to be fixed. that needs to be completely changed. It's working as it's designed to work. And so when they go in with like the the false assumptions, then yeah, there it was just so embarrassing to watch them trying to basically turn the FBI into like these into the super cops we see on TV as if like the, you know, the American people. They just really wanted the FBI to be a lot more active. And yeah, of there's all all these, you know, political considerations there. But yeah, it's like um there there is uh I completely agree with what you're saying. It's very disturbing to watch these these figures come in that seem to be, you know, changes in direction. They're not able to change anything. They I do think they're shooting themselves in the foot um from from the get-go. Uh but yeah, >> well of course bringing up the FBI and the whole DOJ situation is that you know one of the best examples of Trump shooting himself in the foot was the way the administration handled the entire Epstein case. So again, so much of the animating spirit of 2024, Maggo, call it whatever you will, was retribution against, you know, corrupt political dealers. And here you have the FBI, you know, acting like a a Bush era sort of uh DOJ and doing cover up on on that situation and and going to war with those members of Congress trying to to increase transparency there. People like, you know, Massie and Marie Taylor Green and the like. And so again, these were the things that I think motivated so much of the Trump coalition, right? people wanted uh uh you know big solutions to you know things like the debt and deficit. People wanted changes of foreign policy. People wanted accountability for for corrupt elected officials. I mean now now we're giving them pardons instead. And so like that's and and what I I do think is interesting, this is I think another one of those kind of minor stories that hits some of these things is the fact that you have actually seen, you know, you know, when you have Marjorie Taylor Green, you know, leaving the coalition. Um, you know, when you have, you know, Thomas Massie going further against Trump than he ever did the first time around and and just as interesting is the people that are actually backing Massie in spite of Trump's opposition opposition to him, right? Like there are aspects of that kind of pure MAGA wing that rather than simply being subservient whatever um you know this time around are actually no like these these are exact this is exactly why we you know were running the first time. This is what drew people in our direction. It'll be interesting very interesting to see how over the course of the next year three years the next two election cycles you know what does that MAGA coalition really look like? Is it, you know, MAGA is whatever Trump says, what MAGA is whatever Trump does or is it, no, here's all the actual principles that that, you know, have not been lived up to and, you know, here are people that are still going to continue making those arguments. Now, whether or not, you know, anything ever happens, you say M Taylor Green was elected president tomorrow when she ended up being indifferent. I mean, I think we kind of identified some of the systemic problems that again, you can come in with the best of intentions and I think that's an aspect of it. you know, a lot of these people in these positions, right? Like they they might have had the best aspirations to really change things, right? Don Benino might have gone to the FBI thinking, "God, gosh darn, we're really gonna, you know, you knock some heads." And and this is just what Washington does. Like this is this is what the system is built to do. The system is, you know, the end results are what the system is built to do. And so these are the challenges that we face so long as we work within a constrained box of like elections are going to, you know, radically change the direction of American politics. Well, and of course, my hope is that all of this just makes voters even more cynical and realizing that guys, there's a ruling oligarchy in the United States and you can't even really see it. You're not even sure quite who's running it. We have a sense of which interest groups are are behind it. And you don't you don't get a say. It doesn't matter how you vote. And look at foreign policy. it so doesn't matter how you vote uh in as a determination of how foreign policy ends up and that's been true at least since 1945 that the stakes have been deemed by the ruling oligarchy that uh that the stakes are too high and so it doesn't matter how the what the voters think we're not going to let you do what you want for your own good of course voters we're not going to let you get what you want uh for your own good and so I think maybe people are waking up a little bit to that and uh I think maybe the people who see that are are the reason we now have to make a distinction between Trump supporters and MAGA that you have a growing section of MAGA that has basically figured out that uh Trump abandoned them and that didn't isn't delivering on this stuff. And and you see this a ton in social media and other places where they're like, "Hey, I voted for Trump and I had high hopes and clearly that my my continued hope in him is a lost cause." And I'm like, "MJ Taylor, great. She should be declared the leader of MAGA. She's way clearly way more MAGA than Donald Trump is." And when you talk to also like just your reflexive Trump supporter, they don't have any principles. They don't care. They just support Trump in whatever he does. And if you ever point out disappointment or you say that what Trump is doing isn't enough, they become very angry. If you just point out how Trump has done very little about government spending, that he's actually encouraging more inflation, that foreign policy is actually getting worse in many areas. Uh they they don't resort as much to the 5D chess claim anymore because that's just been so ridiculous to claim that anymore. Uh that Trump has a secret plan that's unfolding. They don't even try to do that anymore. What they now try and do is say, I mean, they're content with scraps from Trump's table, the tiniest little bit of sustenance, and they want you to be satisfied, too. It seems that the the number one strategy of of the the the remaining Trump supporter uh faction of what used to be MAGA. Um, now their their position is complacency. Their position is satisfaction. be pleased with what you got. Yeah, you hardly got anything, but stop complaining. You should be happy. You should be thanking Trump for what he's imagine if your view of politics is to vote somebody and once they get in, just thank them repeatedly for whatever tiny little crumbs they throw you. That's just pathetic. But there seems to be a very large number of American voters who think that way now. >> Well, I think a lot of them are motivated by they they want a sense of hope. you know, they they want to sense that some that things be fixed and so like they put so much energy and and trust into like doing this one big thing, right, which is the 244 election. They just want it's like, okay, everything's gonna be okay now. And the and the problem is that these these problems are not like you know one elections was never going to solve this even if even if even bigger gains were made and like I think that's that's the problem is that people are wanting easy political solutions and and they want to just be able to to connect hope with you know a single candidate on the ballot box rather than you know recognizing the very real problem systemic problems. Um, and and I think that's probably I and I think the person you're describing is more likely to be older as well, right? Right. And so I I think that's another interesting divide here is that there's also a generational divide where again you're seeing with polling right now is that you know I think younger Trump voters you know are are not very happy or not very content are you know a lot of them have you something resembling anger in terms of the past past year but like you know your your your older Trump voter is you still so relieved and that they want to believe that you know America's be made a be made a again a great again because Trump is in the White House again. And so I think there's that there's a psychological component too which is kind of the the problems of a society where again we're looking for politics to be solution to all these things. >> Ironically I think that they're like the biggest threat to the actual MAGA movement because it's yeah I I agree with what you're saying. I think it comes from like this desire for things to just work out like this kind of we did it. We we won the election and it's all gonna be good now. But there's so they just lash out so much if there's any criticism at the president. There's such a effort to shut everybody up that's saying Trump's not doing good enough. And the result of that is that the only pressure Trump is getting are from people that want him to completely abandon the things that he ran on. He's not getting enough people pushing him from like the MAGA poll. And so it just actually starts um working directly against what what these uh Trump supporters I like that distinction, MAGA versus Trump supporters. The Trump supporters are shooting themselves in the foot here. And the left doesn't do that. The the left always pushes for more movement to the left forever. Now they now they will say, "Okay, right. When Obama did stuff that wasn't nearly far-left enough, they just b their time, but they never in private conversation would say, "Yep, it's gone far enough, you know, time to be satisfied with how much progressivism we've been we've achieved." No, it's always more. Always, always pressure for more movement farther and farther left at all times. Always. They hide it sometimes so that mainstream sane people don't catch on to what their real agenda is. But if you know these people, you know that they're never satisfied. They would never tell people to, oh yeah, just, you know, just thank uh thank Biden or whatever for what little crumbs he's given you. It's always push more, more more. Conservatives always want to give up. They always want to be satisfied. They always are looking for an excuse to quit pushing in the right direction. And I think we see a lot of that now. Stop complaining about Trump. Just be happy with what you got. It's time to give up. But I do think you're right, though. I think a lot of it is this need for hope. Um I can tell you that in the realm of politics, present hope is future despair. I mean, all you're doing is putting off the despair. Either that or you're just so dumb, you just keep hoping over and over again based on nothing. But I think some people, you know, most people learn eventually. And so if they put their hope in politicians now, they despair later. And that's just the way it's going. And clearly it's a generational thing, right? My generation, the people who are now around 50, never had hope. Always expected things to get worse and worse. And here we are. Things turned out just the way we always expected. Uh but I think older people were taught wrongly uh as they were growing up that things just get better all the time, that progress is non-stop, that America's headed in the right direction all the time. Nonsense. Uh there was never any guarantee of that. And I think the US was already in decline by the 50s. Clearly, it was continuing to show great progress based on the hard work of Americans. The late 19th and early 20th century was kind of riding the coattales of that. But you just look at the social decline that was already deeply embedded uh by the 1960s and the 70s and 80s were just a mess uh in terms of family breakdown um divorce rates uh educ the oh man the the reality of education and higher ed. It's all decline everywhere. And so to think that now after decades of that we're going to turn this ship around and everything's going to get better is delusional. And uh so yeah, putting putting your hope in that I do not recommend it friends. >> At least with one election, it doesn't take one up or down vote for all this stuff to get fixed. >> Well, this is all the if we are going to turn the ship around, this has to come from, you know, deep cultural changes that have to take place. Um preferably, and I think that process could be sped up by breaking the United States up into smaller pieces. Uh, by the way, there's a reason we hit the uh the secession issue so so hard is because the the established political framework in the United States is so morabund, so hidebound, so frozen in place that you you can't move that ship even with a change. It would lag a change in culture by decades. It would take so long to move that around. You need a smaller, more responsive government. And the only way to do that is to break up this monstrosity that is the US government. >> Well, I think an overarching theme of what we've talked about today is you can't drain the swamp, but you can leave the swamp. >> Yes. >> And I think that's that's where I think we need to go. >> The swamp can have the swamp. Hey, Maryland, Virginia, Eastern United States, whatever. The swamp is yours, right? Just uh those of How about everyone who lives more than 500 miles away from Washington DC get something else? Uh I mean I don't know why we need to be hitched to this sinking ship but uh that's what it is and both Americans left and right hate the idea at least at least for now. So although polls show something like 25% of Americans like secession, >> I mean positive trends, >> we're not working from nothing here, but uh yeah, uh a lot of change has to take place. And it's just so misplaced, so shortsighted to think that this current politician that we elected, especially when he's very much part of that establishment going back decades. It's not like Trump came out of some sort of like anti-establishment part of the world. he was hobnobbing with all these people for decades before he was president. So, uh to expect any significant change just is is nonsensical. Um so, I guess it's just not a shock that we ended up where we are uh with Trump about a year out is he got co-opted. Uh the movement uh seems satisfied with just what tiny bushian changes we're getting and I think the poster boy for that is Doge. So, >> yeah. And not again, we're not making predictions here, but it will be interesting to see you typically get significant personnel changes after the first year. And so it'll be very interesting to see, you know, what that trend looks like one way or another, but uh you we'll see like is the chief of staff going to be there next year after the Vanity Fair profile this this week and some certain things like that. So there still still some interesting uh storylines going forward, but uh yeah, that's that's 2025 right there. Well, and with that, we'll go ahead and uh wrap up this episode of uh Power and Market. Uh thank you all of you out there for listening. We'll be back in a couple of weeks uh with new programming. Uh and so until then, uh merry Christmas, happy new year. We'll see you next time.
The Death of DOGE and the Triumph of the Establishment: A Review of 2025
Summary
Transcript
Welcome back to the power and market podcast. I'm Ryan McMon, editor-inchief at the Mises Institute. And with me today, as usual, are two of our contributing editors. We have th Bishop and we have Connor O'Keefe. And every week or so, about 50 times a year now, we we get together and we talk about headlines, what's going on. We try to bring to it uh an analysis that pertains to what we do at the Mises Institute, which is to promote Austrian economics, freedom, and peace. And it's the end of the year, so we're going to talk a little bit about what we think are kind of the biggest themes of the year, the biggest news stories of the year in a certain sense, uh, and where that might point to in 2026. But we're not going to get too much into 2026 because we're going to do a predictions uh and upcoming themes uh episode next month. But we're after this there will be a couple of weeks where we're not doing an episode with Christmas and New Year's right in the middle of that. We're not going to be in the office very much during that time period. >> So Ryan, we're not debating Scrooge hero or villain next week. >> Well, you know, we should just really repromote our old episodes about Scrooge. It's not Christmas week without without Scrooge content on mises.org. >> They we've got well there are two kinds of Mises Institute followers. There are pro Scrooge people and anti- Scrooge people. I happen to be one of the anti Scrooge people. >> But yeah, people get pretty upset about it. Uh but that I need to go and watch some Christmas Carol. I I do I do like that uh that story. Um I don't know my I see I'm so old I like this old 1985 version with George C. got. But I don't know. I mean, Muppet Christmas Carol seems to be the more the most popular version, >> the best, >> which admittedly is pretty good. >> I got it in this week. It's It's so It still hits. >> Okay. Genius, >> guys. I saw that in the theater back in the 90s, just uh just so you know. Yeah. So, my my Muppet Christmas Carol is 100%. >> Uh >> OG. >> So, yeah. Let's talk about though 2025 and what's going on. Before we do that though, right, as I said, it's the end of the year though. It's our end of the year campaign. Um, so now is a great time to go on and donate, right? >> Yes, it is. Uh, again, if you are a member this year, you want to renew renew your membership for next year. If you've never been a member, now is a good time to do it. A lot of great perks, including uh a copy of the beautiful Mecessian magazine you get every other month. You get a free monthly audio book, which hey, you compare that to uh Audible. I that's pretty much pays for the entire membership right then and there. Store discounts at the ME of Mises bookstore and a free virtual Mises University package during the best week of the year every July. Um other goodies are included as well. You can also get if you renew till the end of the year a copy of Ryan's own the fight for liberty, a great strategy booklet looking at the past and future of the liberty cause. You can find all of this at uh the front page. We've got a number of of uh promos there, but it is our year-end drive. You've probably gotten a lot of ads for it either in your email, previous podcasts, but hey, this is what pays lights. This is what pays for content like this. We got a lot of big things planned for 2026. Hope to have you with us. >> And if you haven't ever subscribed, be sure and subscribe to our daily or weekly emails. Just it's right at the top of the page at mises.org. Click on subscribe there at the top. You'll get all sorts of stuff on upcoming events, on uh new publications, that sort of thing. So 2025, uh, we're just going to talk about what we think really is an indication of how the first year of the Trump administration has gone. Not really so much in terms of Trump. We we're not going to talk a whole lot about his personality or anything like that, but really policy. This is what we're mostly focused on here is actual uh the effects of what people think about economics about what they believe is good markets or socialism or whatever it else it is that they think is the right way to run a state or an economy. And Trump of course is a big factor in that. And so I predict he's going to come up more than once in our analysis today. So th why don't you go ahead and start us off and um you know really just tell us how should we be thinking about 2025? Well, to me, I think the biggest story of this year, and it's one that doesn't really come up a lot anymore, but to me, I think it's the perfect kind of symbol for the the hope and, you know, disappointment, if you will, of 2025. And that's the failure of Doge. Because if you're thinking about like what was the the big selling point of Trump 2.0, right? that he had four years um you know out of office surrounded by people that were serious this time. You people that weren't trying to uh steer him in other directions, right? That you know within this coalition that he had been able to build for 2024 and that that you know pretty major election. You know you had these tech bros and you had Elon Musk coming in. and you have these outside talent and and part of it is that Trump always wanted you he never wanted to touch he wanted to talk a big game in terms of economic policy obviously never wanted to touch social security entitlements you know all that sort of difficult stuff which you know no populist would want to do but he wanted to you know make you know disrupt things and and make big changes and and get the economy you know growing and and glowing and all that sort of good stuff and so here you had walk in which seemed to be the perfect sales pitch. We're going to bring in the richest man in the world with, you know, a a crapnut team of diehard, you know, autistic, you know, data people, and we are going to infiltrate using executive power, which is part of the selling points, right, of kind of the Trump doctrine, right? We're going to infiltrate with executive power. We're going to find all the ways, fraud, and abuse. We're going to find all the easy ways of cutting spending and we're going to be able to bypass Congress to a large extent within it. Right? you're you're you're bypassing the traditional processes and that hey look we can save a trillion dollars just by plugging in Elon Musk and his team into the administration utilizing the sort of backdoor you know sort of dynamic that Obama set up right for you know Obamacare websites and and early on like there's extreme excitement that okay he this is something completely new this is a new like that this is something that actually could work and you know what we've been talking about for months now right inflation's going up spending's out control, right? All these things like let's say they subtracted a trillion dollars, right? Spending problems are still still a thing, but like like removing a trillion dollars of easy spending would have been a massive uh change like that that would have depicted something real. It would have been something resembling actual problem solving relative to the rest of the world, right? You compare you know that to you know European countries that would have been a major probably had a major impact on the status of the dollar, financial markets, everything there, right? And I think there's two lessons from this. One is okay overlay promise something never happened whatever. The other side of it though is that given all of the you the runaway spending is that something this bold and bringing in outside people with a dedicated cause of trying to to do one simple thing, one big thing, but one simple thing and it could not get done right. Elon Musk has had success in just about everywhere else and whatever you feel about Elon Musk and his government subsidies, whatever. There's a guy that that that typically succeeds more often than he fails, comes in, you know, taking massive, you know, a massive amount of personal hits doing this thing in the first place, right? Completely, you know, having his his cars attacked and this sort of stuff like he he has real skin in this game and he can't do it, right? And so what does that tell you about the way the American government can function, right? Because like that's the ultimate outsider right in there, right? You you've got you've got the marauding, you know, return vengeance tour. You've got you've got billionaire people coming in to fix it. The this is the, you know, outsider big, you know, big power coming in here and they can't crack this nut, right? You you you get pitiful savings. You shouldn't have a few government agencies. You hey, great, you know, USAD, you know, wonderful. But but like that is that was the the big all-in pitch. That was one of the closing sales pitches of the 2024 campaign. That was something that was I think widely seen as needed to help justify everything else as a part of you kind of the broader domestic policy and for all that capital all that talent all that energy all of that skin in the game nothing comes of it nothing meaningful comes of it and I think it's a a a big reason why Trump's domestic agenda is where it is right now but I think it also goes to just how inexcapably broken Washington is so I think those are two stories that to me like I I think this is what the failure of Doge is one of the defining aspects of the first year of the Trump administration and I think a really defining chapter and where the modern American state truly is. >> So though is just the the whole Doge thing just dead. I mean by like year three is that just going to be ancient history? There's not going to be any attempt to do that with the next year's budget. >> Well now no pretty much it's dead. I mean they've they've there is no more you know government program that is Doge or whatever the whatever was classified. um some of these sort of initiatives um have been kind of broken up and you've got like rep dogey type people in various agencies and the like and but but the whole thing is like goes oh we're going to fight efficiency system that like you know whatever like I mean there's there's always been you know attempts on the side to cut this regulation here or cut this you know there's always been these very very marginal sort of stuff that you get from time to time but nothing in and nothing resembling the the massive systemic we're we're going to carve out $1 trillion of savings. That entire the the the true pitch of the plan, no matter how they try to package what exists right now, that the true promise of that plan is completely gone. And we'll never see anything attempted, I think, like this. Again, I I I very much doubt you're going to have anyone do the Elon Mus in the future on trying to ride in on a on a candidate they buy and and disrupt things because again, just look at the experience that he had. Um, so you know the entire project I think is you know from what it was sold as gone. >> Well it's like the opposite of what they tell software engineers which is to underpromise and overd deliver, right? We got way over promise underdeliver. >> Seems politics. >> Well yeah I mean it's the opposite all the time but even more so this time because there's always so much bombast uh from this administration and huge promises. And I guess that was just our big first important lesson about this administration was how quickly Doge just went away and fell on its face and how expectations were readjusted from a trillion dollars down to oh 50 billion of I mean just a remarkable change that but what was so I mean what really adds to the disappointment from my perspective is how much excitement there was as you said though and even like a couple of months into the administration I remember a poll coming out and it said that by far the most popular thing that the Trump administration was doing was cutting government and that is not something I expected to see. You know, I was kind of pessimistic going into the second Trump administration, which I and you know, I'm happy I went in with that mindset. But that was like that was kind of shocking to me and I thought that that was um that's like a data point that means you know at the time I thought it meant we were in a more uh in a better space than I had been anticipating. But I really think that um core to the problem with Doge as I saw it was just a complete misunderstanding with with of the nature of the problem here and it like they just from the name the Department of Government Efficiency. It was all about coming in and fixing things. But like the fundamental realization that they needed to have is what we've been talking about especially the last few weeks is that the system in Washington is not broken. It's working perfectly well. It's just not designed to do what they say it's designed to do. It's designed to rip the American people off, not work in the interest of the American people. But when you come in and say, "Oh, we're going to fix things up and make it more efficient." Then you're you're essentially shooting yourself in the foot from the beginning. And then like I was just reading a story earlier today about like one of the few things that Doge is actually doing um it looks like is they are making the selective service registration automatic. And I think that just encapsulates it perfectly. is that they're not actually changing course at all. They're probably, you know, bringing some technology into the 20th century or 21st century. Um, but when you go in not understanding the nature of the problem, it's not a surprise when you're not able to actually address it, >> right? Well, anytime you're talking about making government more efficient, you always end up with stuff like, oh, uh, we should withhold taxes so that people aren't writing one big check a year because that's inefficient. It's much more efficient to just withhold a piece of it month by month. And look how smooth and streamlined it is. This is, of course, a horrible development in US tax policy. Uh, approved by Milton Freriedman, of course. And that's those are the sorts of quote unquote libertarians that we complain about all the time, right? Is you have two choices. You can be actually be against the regime or you can be a efficiency efficiency expert for the regime, right? Oh, let me help you do this in a more efficient way and it'll save a nickel and dime here and there. We got people who act like they're for lessening the burden of government on people. And what are they doing? most of their efforts are spent trying to help government do more things uh maybe with slightly fewer resources, but in the end, of course, it always ends up with more government spending anyway. And that seemed to be what a lot of the effort here was. And you could see that that philosophy at work in the fact that they would crow about collecting more tax revenue. That was something they were so so proud of is we're collecting more tax revenue through the tariff program. Now part of that was due to the lie that tariffs tariff revenue all comes from foreigners. So they had convinced a lot of people that oh all that revenues coming from uh outside the country. What we know from empirical studies is that at least 60% of tariff revenue comes from the American side of the equation. And of course, if you had principles of econ as an undergraduate, that sort of thing, you know that both sides whenever you're dealing with a sales tax, which is all a tariff is, that it's not totally paid by either the merchant or by the purchaser because the merchant is forced to pay in terms of diminishing sales. And that's what foreigners were paying in terms of people were buying fewer foreign products. Yep. Why? Because they were more expensive. And what that meant was Americans were paying more the higher expense and a lot of that was going into tax revenue. So I suppose they were banking on that. That's I guess that's the only way that bragging about more tax revenue makes sense is if foreigners are doing it. But in the end they were bragging about hey the government has more resources to do things to spend more to have more programs to pay more bureaucrats. I mean, they weren't going to like give that money to Americans and which would have made more sense, right? Oh, we're taking this money from foreigners in the form of tariffs and we're going to like give it to Americans somehow. And they did actually talk about that a little bit with those schemes to like we're going to give you more stimulus checks and everything, which people are starting to figure out that that just causes inflation uh because it's just deficit and money printing financed. Uh so that kind of went nowhere, too. And I guess that's all just part of the same disease that's behind Doge is is just all of these big programs that get floated and we're going to save all this money and in the end it amounts to basically nothing at all. So Doge seems like kind of a microcosm of the larger administration. >> And and to me it did seem like the one exception to what you're talking what you're talking about and what I was talking about was US A USA ID. They really did float that as like hey they were right. They were saying this is basically a crony regime change apparatus that you know at the absolute like side of it is a tiny they do a tiny bit of charity too globally and that's what we are supposed to think of and they were just honest about the actual uh nature of US aid but it's it's like and and of course they were able to basically shut it down as a result of that and so if they were just honest or maybe understood that that's the case with all these other government programs it's kind of it's sort of heartbreaking to think of the the counterfactual if they had actually gone into it with that mindset for all these Washington programs, uh, what it may have, how it may have turned out basically. >> And and of course, it was funny seeing again you including Republican senators who you, you know, stepped up to be champions of USD, USAD, you during that entire process, too. And that kind of goes to the broader problem is is that like we know the legislative process can't fix spending, right? There's there's too many like there there's absolutely no interest, right, of doing anything there. It has to come from some strong armed, you know, executive approach in my opinion. And this was a serious attempt at it or I I give him the benefit of the doubt. I thought there was a serious attempt at it. And even that came up to the wall where, you know, you you get Suzanne Collins and Lisa Marowski, you know, helping uh, you know, undercut, you know, things like this on on the most minimal level. And again, that's just exactly where we are when it comes to, you know, exactly how uh our our our domestic policy is directed in this country. I would back to something you said earlier, uh, Connor. I would express skepticism over the over the the real popularity of of government cutting spending because in every poll I've seen, what there's there's two parts of it. One is they ask the people, "How do you feel about government spending spending? Should the government cut spending?" And and like an overwhelming majority says yes. And then they're asked, "Okay, which program should be cut?" Right? >> Should they cut Social Security? And then it and then an overwhelming majority says, "No, no, don't cut that." Right? >> Should we cut Medicare? No, no, don't cut that. Should we cut military? No, no, don't cut that. So, whenever you start asking the public, which program should be cut? Should we cut XYZ program? It's always no. And so I think maybe a lot of the enthusiasm by Doge was based on this myth that there's just all of this stuff being being financed uh that there's all this government spending occurring that's going toward programs that you don't care about when in reality of course right the overwhelming majority of federal spending is going to programs people say they love >> social security Medicare uh Medicaid even because people love now their their government healthcare even if they're not over 65. Uh they love military spending, especially since Trump is always telling them how great military spending is. And yes, there's absolutely probably you could come up with hundreds of billions of dollars that are spent on things that people don't care about, but that's of course thousands of different little things and you just got to kind of go through it piece by piece. And they weren't even able to do that. But if people thought there was going to be any real significant cuts to federal budgets without also cutting into those other programs, especially since now a trillion dollars a year has to go toward maintenance of the federal debt. Where are you going to do all that cutting? is welfare is just too popular >> uh among people who receive it or even don't receive it but think that they should support it for whatever reason because they've been programmed by public school or whatever to support all these forms of federal spending. So it's just is the public support even really there for it? I think that's just another element of why Doge failed. It wasn't of course all of Trump's fault is the fact that the the public really just didn't offer that much support in terms of any particulars. Yeah, it's like easy to get excited when it's vague, but when you have to get specific, the support evaporates for it. But I, it comes back to what I was saying earlier, though. It's because they didn't talk about the government programs um in, you know, they didn't like actually lay out the truth here, which is that all of the spending is creating all the problems that, you know, they then want politicians to fix. And so, yeah, like you need all that excitement and then you need to direct that excitement in a productive way. But when they just the Republicans completely refuse to actually talk about the problem as it exists, of course the the support's going to evaporate once you have to get specific. >> Yeah. I'm not sure the level of sophistication for the average voter is high enough to even like do you go to them and you talk about how uh these these subsidies produce rising prices and how oh good luck explaining the mechanism of how deficit spending turns into price inflation. I you can't hold anyone's attention for more than 2 minutes. It just seems like a really thankless job. So, I could understand why the administration wouldn't even attempt it, assuming they even knew about it and believed that stuff. >> But, I do think US A is kind of a counterpoint to that. Like, they they were a they were able to get a lot of people to just snap to the whole idea that this is all a racket and it's all terrible. And yeah, it would be way harder to do with something like Social Security or Medicare, these big program programs like you're talking about. Um, but there's a lot of other stuff there. You know, we were talking about Obamacare um, last week. Like they could have been a lot more productive. I think um, if they just changed their rhetoric a little bit, but you know, at the end of the day, I think maybe not the Doge that the individuals in Doge, but a lot of the people in the Trump administration and certainly in the Republican party, they don't actually want to cut government. They just want to run on it, um, talk about it vaguely, get votes for it, and then not actually do it. Well, Connor, let's go ahead and go to your number one top theme for the year. Uh, what what should we be looking at there? >> Yeah. So, what I was really watching um closely this year is I wrote an article kind of laying this out. This is what I thought was the big dynamic uh of 2025 that I was watching. I uh looked back at the first Trump term when he comes in, he wins unexpectedly in 2016 and obviously, as everybody knows, the Washington establishment did not like that. They freaked out as a result of that. And I would argue that the defining dynamic of the first Trump term was the establishment trying to essentially either control him and force him to like, you know, start speaking and acting the way they want him to or to throw him out of office and disqualify him from ever holding power again if he refused to go along with it. And they really tried they really tried to do that. Obviously, there was the whole Russia gate thing at first. Um and then when that fell apart, they impeached him uh twice. He, you know, everything goes absolutely crazy during 2020. He leaves office and gets like completely deplatformed too after January 6th. He's basically kicked off of social media, which was another thing people had been working at for years up until that point, but they finally uh succeeded on that front. And then, you know, he's kind of he sort of strangely disappeared from public life for like a year and a half there. He was kind of on truth social, but like he was everybody was basically focused on the Biden administration and then they rolled out all those felonies they went after him like four big cases, whatever however many dozens of felonies. Um so they they were really trying to um stop him from holding office ever again. And I really think that you know this was a a long effort and it really culminated in 2024 the election. I think that really symbolized the complete and utter failure of that approach. But what I was sort of observing um a year ago now as I watched the campaign uh especially is that it really seemed like there was a lot of respect in those circles in that kind of permanent permanent Washington um for a new approach which um I called the co-option strategy. basically um come in and use MAGA sounding language to sell this same old Washington status quo. And I I really noticed that there was specifically a um I don't remember where where it was published, but there was a long article written by one of Trump's adviserss um just laying out what the Trump foreign policy was, what the America first foreign policy was. And I was just reading it and it was just mind-blowing to me how it was just the same thing as the Republican party had been running on for I mean years by this point. It was just the same old status quo foreign policy, but they were putting things like peace through strength and or like words that Trump likes. And Trump was of course like completely fine with this and was more than happy um to go along with it. And I just I thought that as 2024 as the as Trump's victory really um demonstrated that this old strategy that they were using wasn't working. I thought 2025 was the year where they were going to start um really trying to co-opt uh co-opt the MAGA movement and you know come in and sort of present themselves as uh fellow travelers and and control Trump in that way. So that's what I was watching for and it just seems like it was a complete success for them. I think especially foreign policy wise, there's just not really that much we can point to that's a big departure from previous administrations. Even the the thing that I was the most hopeful for was Ukraine. And yes, he like Trump and his team, they do seem to genuinely be trying to bring an end to that war, but it's, you know, we're going on months and months and now like he said it would be day one and it's we're still waiting on a deal. They just floated one out where they said, "Oh, like some big concession. They're gonna not offer Ukraine NATO membership, but we're gonna offer Ukraine all of like the de facto, you know, like the all the things like article 5 war guarantee, everything that you would get if you were in NATO. We're going to offer them that, but we're not going to say it's NATO." It's just like they're not actually that close to a deal there. I didn't expect them to be good on um the Middle East, but it's very disappointing. uh still nonetheless to see that we're just still um trapped there and obviously Venezuela like we've been talking about over the the last few weeks. It's just it's just been so frustrating to watch not just Trump but a lot of Trump's supporters just completely buy in to all this and not really see what's happening below the surface. I think it's it's striking to me that a lot of Trump's biggest um allies and supporters in kind of the the public intellectual space are people that started as never Trumpers. You like the Mark Lavines, the Ben Shapiro, like these people that are now his biggest defenders in the public square of, you know, Twitter and on the internet are the people that they started off completely opposing him because he wasn't good on wars. And it's just like it's frustrating that they can't see that. they just completely, you know, lock in to whatever they're all saying. Um they and they will then, you know, push back against anybody who's criticizing Trump. There's all this, you know, trust the plan stuff. And it's just it's uh very disappointing to watch. You know, I didn't have high hopes for Trump, but it's disappointing to watch some people that I thought would be at least a little bit aware of this dynamic um in, you know, on the right more broadly. But I that to me seems to be um that's the major theme for this year is that this strategy is working very well and unless Trump and the people around him and his supporters kind of wake up to that um it's just we're just going to get the same old Republican administration. >> Well, I think a dynamic in the foreign policy issue. talked about this uh a couple of uh episodes ago on Radio Rothbart when we're talking about foreign policy and the situation in Ukraine because John Mirshimer gave a a great speech uh at the well was at a subcommittee of the European Parliament uh last month I think it was and he was talking about Europe's bleak future and uh how things were headed in a very bad direction for Ukraine and probably for Europe overall and as you noted, right? He Trump's been actually doing some good things in uh Ukraine. But I think, and we discussed this, how the what has enabled Trump to maybe make some progress with NATO and the Ukraine is the fact that the regime has turned its attention elsewhere. So the way that Mirshimer had actually framed it was that Europe is suffering from a lack of attention now from the US regime because the US regime has just become more interested in the Middle East in a pivot to Asia and as we've now more recently seen a pivot to Latin America as well. So I think Trump can can do to certain extent what he wants on foreign policy so long as he doesn't threaten the overall bank role in terms of the money that gets spent on weapons that supports the security state, that sort of thing. And so there may be a pivot away from Ukraine and that gives Trump some leeway to maybe push for an actual peace deal and that sort of thing. But of course, US involvement has greatly expanded in the Middle East. uh the belligerance toward Venezuela has uh greatly expanded and also just I saw today a headline about biggest ever arm sales to Taiwan as well. So there's also potential in in a pivot to Asia as well. So it doesn't look like there's any overall retrenchment in foreign policy that perhaps Trump can guide policy a little bit in terms of where the attention is given. And let's just face it, NATO just doesn't really have uh the allure that it used to have in terms of offering big spending opportunities in terms of offering the US much of anything in terms of expanding global hegemony. And so they're like, well, let's focus on the Middle East and the Americas, maybe Asia. Uh much easier to push, I think, pump an idea of a a cold war with China rather than reviving a cold war with Russia, that sort of thing. And so it's like um it's neoconism with Trump characteristics might be maybe to build on that old phrase about how China had uh communism with with Chinese characteristics, right? It was all it was always still socialism communism, but the Chinese did a little bit different. So Trump, he's he's got his own flavor of things, but in the end it's no threat whatsoever to the regime because as you I think as you correctly suggest, they've managed to co-opt it. But that is a great observation that I hadn't really thought about. But once I give it some thought, of course it's true. The the tone, the tenor, the language of MAGA is very much alive. It's just that it never goes anywhere. That just doesn't actually lead to anything meaningful. Well, the best of that, of course, is Lindsey Graham, who has worked himself into being, you know, one of you Trump's top guys and all sort of stuff. I know you remember it's like when when I think about the early days of the administration kind of like two real I think highlights um didn't mean much in the long run but like the two highlights were one was his um address in the Middle East where he was you know actively condemning neo neocons and and stupid regime change wars and you know basically you know very much with this great you know rhetoric um you know stating there's going to be some massive change and then you know two months later we're bombing Iran but but like that was a that that seemed at the time to be a very important speech um and a change of tone there and again of course you know it it paid off in the Middle East you know not that much long not that much later. Um and the second course is the was the the Zalinsky grilling um with JD Vance taking a leading role there and again you know nothing much has changed on that front ever ever since those sort those two things. And so, you know, it also kind of reminds me of u I think perhaps the better uh illustration of what we were getting this year is when uh you know, Trump was ending the 2024 campaign and uh recognizing Mike Pompeo in the audience and talking about how he's going to get a job there and then luckily that was shut down, right? Like Donald Trump Jr., you know, saying that no, we're not allowing Pompeo back in the administration. He was even giving some shout outs to Dave Smith and stuff. But but essentially right you know we've we've gotten very much that same sort of policy particularly right now in Venezuela and it was the was one of Pompeo's priorities last time around as well and and so it is this very interest interesting u very disappointing fact that you none of these things have changed at all and I I think this is one of those tensions that I do think will be lasting though in terms of the underlying Trump coalition it kind of feels like um because I remember like like Vance right Vance was trying to make a a a big point of emphasis on, you know, not just America's involvement uh in Europe relative to the Ukraine issue, but really coming down hard on the governments of Europe, right? Condemning them for their crackdowns on hate on on free speech and like really kind of pitting a EU versus America sort of dynamic within that sort of geopolitical realm there. And and it feels like that has kind of gone off, right? That's that's not what it used to be. Like I'm I'm interested to see like if it almost feels like Vance's role in terms of the foreign policy side of things has become far far reduced. What whatever else you think about Vance and Payeter and all those other you know connections out there. You know it seemed to me like that he was perhaps the the best voice within the administration the most prominent voice in the administration um articulating not just through rhetoric but in terms of general you know subsidive analysis of geopolitics. Here's where a shift could come. And of course, you know, some other highlights during this during this broader narrative was right, like the firing of Dan Caldwell. Um, some of the tension that's come over with with Tucker Carlson and the administration at times here. Um, and again, this this hits on, I think, a theme that's going to continue and perhaps be even a bigger issue in 2026 is this inner right divide amongst those who are kind, I think, very frustrated with with where foreign policy has been this past year. >> Yeah. And I I think that uh that point about like the rhetoric, it almost feels like the rhetoric is more alive this this term than the first time around because I think a lot of these regime characters are using it themselves because they realize, oh, if we just say peace through strength over and over again, we can essentially sell neoconservatism to uh to the MAGA base and they'll go they'll go crazy for it. I just think it's it's they really like the MAGA supporters, the everyday Trump people, they really need to notice that the regime is not trying to like remove Trump from power like they were the first time around. They're they don't seem anywhere near as worried about what Trump is going to do with foreign and I always thought that that whole effort was driven by foreign policy the first time around. Um, the regime seems completely comfortable with Trump in the White House this time around. And it's like I wonder why. Maybe we should like look into that a little bit. It's just it's just disappointing. Well, my my point, we can move on to my my theme for the year, which I think we could just call how the Trump admin how the second Trump term became the fourth George W. Bush term. Maybe it's the third George W. Bush term. It depends on how you classify the first Trump term. Uh but I would argue that in both terms, uh the if you just looked at it strictly in terms of political appointments overall, right, there have been some real outliers. Uh but overall in terms of like judicial appointments uh in terms of actual in effect foreign policy that was actually implemented if you ignore the rhetoric and the word usage and that sort of thing. I don't think there's really a big difference. And I remember seeing that and of course it always just makes me think of that that comment. I think it was Tom Woods who came up with this saying that no matter who you vote for you get John McCain. Uh I think maybe no matter who you vote for you get George W. Bush. uh nowadays cuz I remember even during the first term, people were like, "Oh, look at those great judicial appointments he made." Now, if you've been around a while, you could see that the judicial appointments being made by Trump were indistinguishable from standard Republican judicial appointments, many of which were often very, very good. Right? Uh many of Trump or maybe of Bush's judicial appointments were much better than Bush on a variety of issues um because he's trying to appeal to certain interest groups with these appointments and that sort of thing. and anyone that was going to replace Scalia was going to be kind of a Scalia clone. It didn't matter what Republican was in office. That's just what was expected. That was the patronage that was going to be expected out of that. And that's what we got out of Trump. We would have gotten that out of Jeb Bush as well. And so now though, we're even now starting to see contra. Now, I agree with you, Connor, that they've preserved a lot of the old rhetoric, but now we're even starting to see Bush era rhetoric and arguments creep in to this administration explicitly because what what Trump's out there now declaring drugs uh to be weapons of mass destruction. I mean, wow, what a remarkable development. And he's making some of the exact same arguments that the Bush administration was making, not not only in terms of weapons of mass destruction. Obviously, we know the point of doing that. It's to justify war, more aggressive foreign policy. That was the point of weapons of mass destruction during the Bush years. But, uh, a a often not remembered thing that the Bush administration was also doing was trying to connect everything the Bush administration didn't like to terrorism. I remember they were putting out public service announcements in say 2003 or so saying that if you buy drugs on the street that money goes back to terrorists uh several steps back, right? It's going to go back to we didn't talk about the cartels much back then, but it's going to go back to drug dealers. And those drug dealers are they going to like they're gun runners also for terrorists and so you're essentially funding terrorism. If you use any illegal drugs, the terrorists win. So this of course then justified a more aggressive war on drugs. So that's a very Bushian sort of thing to do and we're starting to see that now even in the Trump administration. >> Well, I'll push back a little bit because I I I because I in some parts I think it's even more depressing is that like I think the actual appointees this time around are are very much not Bush types, right? Like you know hire you know getting RFK Jr. in terms of at at a AHS or getting Jay Bactaria at his position or or I mean even someone like um >> Cash Patel. >> Yeah, I mean Cash I mean you know you you could pick these characters you here and there. I I don't think any of them would have passed a Bush screening profile one way or another. Um the problem is though is that they're still acting like I think that's the that's even the the bigger issue is that like the personnel's policy component to it. Well, here you have I think a meaningful change in personnel but you're still getting very similar policy. And I think part of that is is that you know the reason why for example like the the the the weapons of mass destruction um sort of rhetoric popping up again is that uh both were I think both administrations are and this has been the prevailing trend the last several years right there several terms is increase executive power right and so everything has to be a national crisis right to to to justify using those those muscles so everything ends up sounding the same because everything comes about justifying um executive power there and and on and so like you're and you know the the the the beast you know the the the swamp feeds the swamp and so like I I think the personnel is actually very different but you're still getting very similar results and I think that's even a more striking condemnation of exactly what this system is right now. I think a lot of those those few you named off though I think they're a bit outliers in terms of like the lower the down. >> Yeah. But but but but that's the sad thing is is is that like is is is does anyone really expect at this point AHS to be radically different >> than it was when and then that's the thing is like so so I mean those are perhaps cherrypicking some of the more extreme examples there but but even there like I don't think we're going to see the sort of radical change of personnel's policy sort of the the hopes and dreams and aspirations right of radical change at the end of the day you know it's it's the machine is not going to be changed like the the the regime is what it is >> well at mises org. We've run a couple of articles really challenging the notion that personnel is policy. Uh I know that's like Washington DC gospel, right? Is that whoever you put in that shows the way the administration is going to go. But to your point just now, yep, you're right. I agree. Some of the like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, obviously not a likely Bush appointee. And they've managed to, you know, trim around the edges a little bit on those sorts of things. And I and so much of it comes down to well we'll allow you to do these little things as long as it never addresses the core issues that we care about in the warfare war welfare state. Uh right we can we can change around foreign policy a little bit but the end commitment has to be equal to or greater than what came before. So we do see a little of that for sure. Uh but overall when you're just looking at okay what is the end result of any of this stuff? Yeah, you're right. It's different sort of personnel, but the policies it's it seems to to be more and more following standard Bush sort of stuff. I mean, heck, we've got Elliot Abrams back uh talking about stuff, right? I mean, this is old school. This is going back to Ronald Reagan level stuff. So, yeah, those guys have not been killed, the old Republican guard, and they are definitely still putting up a fight. And you're seeing that, I think, in terms of policy in a variety of places. >> It's interesting. I think there's a similar dynamic uh that we were talking about earlier with um the Doge stuff because it's like you looked at how he was was talking about the changes he was going to make at the Pentagon or especially Cash Patel and Benino at the uh FBI. They were talking about the FBI as if it was the it used to be this great, you know, law enforcement mechanism in DC that just worked exclusively in the interest of the American people, but it got corrupted into this what is basically a domestic intelligence agency um working for, you know, whoever is in power at the time. And that's just not wrong. It's always been a domestic intelligence agency that's running working for the powerful. And so, like, it's not like it's once again, it's not broken. And so, it doesn't need to be fixed. that needs to be completely changed. It's working as it's designed to work. And so when they go in with like the the false assumptions, then yeah, there it was just so embarrassing to watch them trying to basically turn the FBI into like these into the super cops we see on TV as if like the, you know, the American people. They just really wanted the FBI to be a lot more active. And yeah, of there's all all these, you know, political considerations there. But yeah, it's like um there there is uh I completely agree with what you're saying. It's very disturbing to watch these these figures come in that seem to be, you know, changes in direction. They're not able to change anything. They I do think they're shooting themselves in the foot um from from the get-go. Uh but yeah, >> well of course bringing up the FBI and the whole DOJ situation is that you know one of the best examples of Trump shooting himself in the foot was the way the administration handled the entire Epstein case. So again, so much of the animating spirit of 2024, Maggo, call it whatever you will, was retribution against, you know, corrupt political dealers. And here you have the FBI, you know, acting like a a Bush era sort of uh DOJ and doing cover up on on that situation and and going to war with those members of Congress trying to to increase transparency there. People like, you know, Massie and Marie Taylor Green and the like. And so again, these were the things that I think motivated so much of the Trump coalition, right? people wanted uh uh you know big solutions to you know things like the debt and deficit. People wanted changes of foreign policy. People wanted accountability for for corrupt elected officials. I mean now now we're giving them pardons instead. And so like that's and and what I I do think is interesting, this is I think another one of those kind of minor stories that hits some of these things is the fact that you have actually seen, you know, you know, when you have Marjorie Taylor Green, you know, leaving the coalition. Um, you know, when you have, you know, Thomas Massie going further against Trump than he ever did the first time around and and just as interesting is the people that are actually backing Massie in spite of Trump's opposition opposition to him, right? Like there are aspects of that kind of pure MAGA wing that rather than simply being subservient whatever um you know this time around are actually no like these these are exact this is exactly why we you know were running the first time. This is what drew people in our direction. It'll be interesting very interesting to see how over the course of the next year three years the next two election cycles you know what does that MAGA coalition really look like? Is it, you know, MAGA is whatever Trump says, what MAGA is whatever Trump does or is it, no, here's all the actual principles that that, you know, have not been lived up to and, you know, here are people that are still going to continue making those arguments. Now, whether or not, you know, anything ever happens, you say M Taylor Green was elected president tomorrow when she ended up being indifferent. I mean, I think we kind of identified some of the systemic problems that again, you can come in with the best of intentions and I think that's an aspect of it. you know, a lot of these people in these positions, right? Like they they might have had the best aspirations to really change things, right? Don Benino might have gone to the FBI thinking, "God, gosh darn, we're really gonna, you know, you knock some heads." And and this is just what Washington does. Like this is this is what the system is built to do. The system is, you know, the end results are what the system is built to do. And so these are the challenges that we face so long as we work within a constrained box of like elections are going to, you know, radically change the direction of American politics. Well, and of course, my hope is that all of this just makes voters even more cynical and realizing that guys, there's a ruling oligarchy in the United States and you can't even really see it. You're not even sure quite who's running it. We have a sense of which interest groups are are behind it. And you don't you don't get a say. It doesn't matter how you vote. And look at foreign policy. it so doesn't matter how you vote uh in as a determination of how foreign policy ends up and that's been true at least since 1945 that the stakes have been deemed by the ruling oligarchy that uh that the stakes are too high and so it doesn't matter how the what the voters think we're not going to let you do what you want for your own good of course voters we're not going to let you get what you want uh for your own good and so I think maybe people are waking up a little bit to that and uh I think maybe the people who see that are are the reason we now have to make a distinction between Trump supporters and MAGA that you have a growing section of MAGA that has basically figured out that uh Trump abandoned them and that didn't isn't delivering on this stuff. And and you see this a ton in social media and other places where they're like, "Hey, I voted for Trump and I had high hopes and clearly that my my continued hope in him is a lost cause." And I'm like, "MJ Taylor, great. She should be declared the leader of MAGA. She's way clearly way more MAGA than Donald Trump is." And when you talk to also like just your reflexive Trump supporter, they don't have any principles. They don't care. They just support Trump in whatever he does. And if you ever point out disappointment or you say that what Trump is doing isn't enough, they become very angry. If you just point out how Trump has done very little about government spending, that he's actually encouraging more inflation, that foreign policy is actually getting worse in many areas. Uh they they don't resort as much to the 5D chess claim anymore because that's just been so ridiculous to claim that anymore. Uh that Trump has a secret plan that's unfolding. They don't even try to do that anymore. What they now try and do is say, I mean, they're content with scraps from Trump's table, the tiniest little bit of sustenance, and they want you to be satisfied, too. It seems that the the number one strategy of of the the the remaining Trump supporter uh faction of what used to be MAGA. Um, now their their position is complacency. Their position is satisfaction. be pleased with what you got. Yeah, you hardly got anything, but stop complaining. You should be happy. You should be thanking Trump for what he's imagine if your view of politics is to vote somebody and once they get in, just thank them repeatedly for whatever tiny little crumbs they throw you. That's just pathetic. But there seems to be a very large number of American voters who think that way now. >> Well, I think a lot of them are motivated by they they want a sense of hope. you know, they they want to sense that some that things be fixed and so like they put so much energy and and trust into like doing this one big thing, right, which is the 244 election. They just want it's like, okay, everything's gonna be okay now. And the and the problem is that these these problems are not like you know one elections was never going to solve this even if even if even bigger gains were made and like I think that's that's the problem is that people are wanting easy political solutions and and they want to just be able to to connect hope with you know a single candidate on the ballot box rather than you know recognizing the very real problem systemic problems. Um, and and I think that's probably I and I think the person you're describing is more likely to be older as well, right? Right. And so I I think that's another interesting divide here is that there's also a generational divide where again you're seeing with polling right now is that you know I think younger Trump voters you know are are not very happy or not very content are you know a lot of them have you something resembling anger in terms of the past past year but like you know your your your older Trump voter is you still so relieved and that they want to believe that you know America's be made a be made a again a great again because Trump is in the White House again. And so I think there's that there's a psychological component too which is kind of the the problems of a society where again we're looking for politics to be solution to all these things. >> Ironically I think that they're like the biggest threat to the actual MAGA movement because it's yeah I I agree with what you're saying. I think it comes from like this desire for things to just work out like this kind of we did it. We we won the election and it's all gonna be good now. But there's so they just lash out so much if there's any criticism at the president. There's such a effort to shut everybody up that's saying Trump's not doing good enough. And the result of that is that the only pressure Trump is getting are from people that want him to completely abandon the things that he ran on. He's not getting enough people pushing him from like the MAGA poll. And so it just actually starts um working directly against what what these uh Trump supporters I like that distinction, MAGA versus Trump supporters. The Trump supporters are shooting themselves in the foot here. And the left doesn't do that. The the left always pushes for more movement to the left forever. Now they now they will say, "Okay, right. When Obama did stuff that wasn't nearly far-left enough, they just b their time, but they never in private conversation would say, "Yep, it's gone far enough, you know, time to be satisfied with how much progressivism we've been we've achieved." No, it's always more. Always, always pressure for more movement farther and farther left at all times. Always. They hide it sometimes so that mainstream sane people don't catch on to what their real agenda is. But if you know these people, you know that they're never satisfied. They would never tell people to, oh yeah, just, you know, just thank uh thank Biden or whatever for what little crumbs he's given you. It's always push more, more more. Conservatives always want to give up. They always want to be satisfied. They always are looking for an excuse to quit pushing in the right direction. And I think we see a lot of that now. Stop complaining about Trump. Just be happy with what you got. It's time to give up. But I do think you're right, though. I think a lot of it is this need for hope. Um I can tell you that in the realm of politics, present hope is future despair. I mean, all you're doing is putting off the despair. Either that or you're just so dumb, you just keep hoping over and over again based on nothing. But I think some people, you know, most people learn eventually. And so if they put their hope in politicians now, they despair later. And that's just the way it's going. And clearly it's a generational thing, right? My generation, the people who are now around 50, never had hope. Always expected things to get worse and worse. And here we are. Things turned out just the way we always expected. Uh but I think older people were taught wrongly uh as they were growing up that things just get better all the time, that progress is non-stop, that America's headed in the right direction all the time. Nonsense. Uh there was never any guarantee of that. And I think the US was already in decline by the 50s. Clearly, it was continuing to show great progress based on the hard work of Americans. The late 19th and early 20th century was kind of riding the coattales of that. But you just look at the social decline that was already deeply embedded uh by the 1960s and the 70s and 80s were just a mess uh in terms of family breakdown um divorce rates uh educ the oh man the the reality of education and higher ed. It's all decline everywhere. And so to think that now after decades of that we're going to turn this ship around and everything's going to get better is delusional. And uh so yeah, putting putting your hope in that I do not recommend it friends. >> At least with one election, it doesn't take one up or down vote for all this stuff to get fixed. >> Well, this is all the if we are going to turn the ship around, this has to come from, you know, deep cultural changes that have to take place. Um preferably, and I think that process could be sped up by breaking the United States up into smaller pieces. Uh, by the way, there's a reason we hit the uh the secession issue so so hard is because the the established political framework in the United States is so morabund, so hidebound, so frozen in place that you you can't move that ship even with a change. It would lag a change in culture by decades. It would take so long to move that around. You need a smaller, more responsive government. And the only way to do that is to break up this monstrosity that is the US government. >> Well, I think an overarching theme of what we've talked about today is you can't drain the swamp, but you can leave the swamp. >> Yes. >> And I think that's that's where I think we need to go. >> The swamp can have the swamp. Hey, Maryland, Virginia, Eastern United States, whatever. The swamp is yours, right? Just uh those of How about everyone who lives more than 500 miles away from Washington DC get something else? Uh I mean I don't know why we need to be hitched to this sinking ship but uh that's what it is and both Americans left and right hate the idea at least at least for now. So although polls show something like 25% of Americans like secession, >> I mean positive trends, >> we're not working from nothing here, but uh yeah, uh a lot of change has to take place. And it's just so misplaced, so shortsighted to think that this current politician that we elected, especially when he's very much part of that establishment going back decades. It's not like Trump came out of some sort of like anti-establishment part of the world. he was hobnobbing with all these people for decades before he was president. So, uh to expect any significant change just is is nonsensical. Um so, I guess it's just not a shock that we ended up where we are uh with Trump about a year out is he got co-opted. Uh the movement uh seems satisfied with just what tiny bushian changes we're getting and I think the poster boy for that is Doge. So, >> yeah. And not again, we're not making predictions here, but it will be interesting to see you typically get significant personnel changes after the first year. And so it'll be very interesting to see, you know, what that trend looks like one way or another, but uh you we'll see like is the chief of staff going to be there next year after the Vanity Fair profile this this week and some certain things like that. So there still still some interesting uh storylines going forward, but uh yeah, that's that's 2025 right there. Well, and with that, we'll go ahead and uh wrap up this episode of uh Power and Market. Uh thank you all of you out there for listening. We'll be back in a couple of weeks uh with new programming. Uh and so until then, uh merry Christmas, happy new year. We'll see you next time.