Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
I'm your host, Will Walden, and if you're new here, this is a
show all about Elon Musk and his groundbreaking work that he's
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SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neurolink, and of course, X.
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for the show Elon Musk News. President, do you recognize the
Senator from Vermont? Thank you.
We live in difficult times, in times where people throughout
our country are experiencing a great deal of anxiety for a
number of reasons. And in the midst of all of that,
it is important that we not forget what is taking place not
only in Ukraine, but back home here in the United States and
back home right now, 10s of millions of Americans are
struggling economically to keep their heads above water. 60% of
our people a living paycheck to paycheck, 85 millionaire,
uninsured or underinsured. And we have the highest rate of
childhood poverty of almost any major nation on earth.
And as someone who has visited senior centers throughout the
state of Vermont and has spoken to seniors throughout our
country, I can tell you that there is a significant level of
fear and anxiety among the older people in this country with
regard to what's happening right here in DC.
When we have a president of the United States and Republicans
who are talking about massive cuts to Medicaid.
Let's understand, and seniors do understand that we are not just
talking about throwing millions of kids off the health care that
they have at a time when we are the only major country enough
not to provide health care to all people, not just kids off of
health care. We're talking about massive cuts
to community health centers, which receive over 40% of their
funding from Medicaid, and where millions of seniors go to get
the primary care they need. And at a time when we already
have a major crisis in nursing home availability, let us
understand that Medicaid provides funding for two out of
every three seniors who live in nursing homes.
In other words, massive cuts to Medicaid would be a disaster for
senior citizens throughout this country.
But it is not just Medicaid cuts that worry our seniors today.
Quite unbelievably, and we don't talk about this anywhere near
enough, 25% of people in our country who are 65 years of age
or older are trying to survive on incomes of $15,000 a year or
less. I myself do not know how
anybody, let alone a senior with healthcare needs, can survive on
$15,000 a year, but that is what 25% of our seniors are trying to
do. Mr. President, this issue of so
many seniors struggling to get by, struggling to heat their
homes, struggling to buy the food or the prescription drugs
they need, this is an issue we must address and it is a crisis
that is unacceptable in the richest country in the history
of the world. And that is why, Mr. President,
I am proud to tell you that within the next several weeks,
I, along with a number of Co sponsors, will be introducing
legislation that expands Social Security benefits and extends
the solvency of Social Security for decades.
You know, we're hearing a lot of talk about cutting Social
Security. We should not be talking about
cutting Social Security. We must be talking about
expanding Social Security benefits.
And the legislation that I will introduce would do just that.
It would expand Social Security benefits by $2400 a year, and it
would not raise taxes by 1 penny on the bottom 93% of Americans,
those who make less than $250,000 a year.
And how do we do that? By lifting the cap and applying
the Social Security payroll tax on all income above 250,000.
Unbelievably, on the current law, a billionaire pays the same
amount of money into Social Security as someone who makes
$176,000 a year. Elon Musk, worth 400 billion,
pays the same amount into Social Security as somebody who makes
176,000. That is because under Social
Security there is an absurd cap on taxable income.
If we lifted that cap and made sure that millionaires and
billionaires paid the same percentage of their income into
Social Security as the working class of this country, we could
extend the life of Social Security for generations to come
and lift millions of seniors out of poverty.
Further, Mr. President, when we talk about the needs of senior
citizens in this country, I want to mention that I will also be
introducing legislation to expand Medicare to cover dental,
vision and hearing. It is unacceptable that millions
of seniors are unable to read a newspaper because they cannot
afford eyeglasses, can't have conversations with their
grandchildren because they can't afford hearing aids, and have
trouble eating because they cannot afford dentures.
That should not be happening in the United States of America in
the year 2025. Expanding Medicare to cover
dental, vision and hearing is an extremely popular concept.
Poll after poll shows that 80% of the American people,
Democrats, Republicans, independents support doing just
that. Mr. President, when we talk
about the anxieties that the American people are now
experiencing, it is not, just to say the least, senior citizens
all across this country. There is a growing fear that the
Trump administration is undermining the Constitution of
our country, a Constitution which has kept us a free nation
and an example, a model for the rest of the world for the last
250 years. During the last month alone,
President Trump has attempted to usurp the powers of Congress
illegally and unconstitutionally, refusing to
fund programs passed by Congress.
He has illegally destroyed agencies like USAID and the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that were created by
Congress and under the leadership of Mr. Musk.
They have illegally and inappropriately gained access to
tax data and Social Security data of millions of Americans,
etcetera, etcetera. Every day they are acting in an
illegal and unconstitutional manner.
And I would say this, and I don't know if people take it
seriously or not I do. Just this week, President Trump
tweeted, quote, he who saves his country does not violate any
law. End of quote.
Wow. In other words, Mr. Trump sees
himself, the president of the United States as above the law
and immune from the basic rules of the Constitution and the
separation of powers that have governed this country since the
founding. OK, anything I want to do, I'm
president. I can't do.
It doesn't matter what Congress says, doesn't matter what the
Constitution says. That doesn't matter with the
rule of law is about, hey, I'm the president.
I'm trying to save the country. I don't need to hear from
anybody else. That's not what Americans fought
and died to preserve. That's not what this country is
about. And with regard to the movement
toward authoritarianism, let me say a few words about an area
that I think has not gotten much attention at all, and that is
Trump's attack on the Free Press, which is protected by the
1st Amendment for the Constitution.
Founding fathers of this country considered freedom of speech and
Free Press to be enormously important.
That was the First Amendment. Mr. Trump has sued CBS and its
current company Paramount for $20 billion because he didn't
like how they edited an interview with Vice President
Kamala Harris. The company is now reportedly
considering settling the lawsuit.
And I certainly hope they do not do that out of fear of
retaliation from Trump's FCC. He did not like a television
program on CBS, while many of us don't like television programs
on CBS or NBC or Fox or ABC. But you don't sue somebody for
$20 billion because you didn't like the program.
And obviously, the intention of that lawsuit is clear, and that
is that CBS and every other network and media outlook will
now have to look over their shoulder.
Oh, my goodness, we're saying something critical of Donald
Trump. Is he going to sue us for 5
billion, for ten billion? Is he going to drive us out of
business? Maybe we should not run that
program. Maybe we should not do that
investigative report. Not just CBS.
In recent times, he has sued ABC.
He has sued Mehta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
He has sued the Des Moines Register.
What crime did a little newspaper in Iowa make?
What was their crime? They ran a poll which turned out
in retrospect to be inaccurate. So posters all over America, be
careful. There was a poll coming out
yesterday. I saw it that Trump's
unfavorables are going up. Hey, you may be sued.
Pull that pole. I mean, how absurd is that?
And what kind of threat is it to freedom of speech and expression
in this country? And Mr. President, when we talk
about the Trump administration's movement toward
authoritarianism, we should take note of another remarkable and
troubling set of events that happened just this weekend.
My colleague from Colorado spoke at length on that.
We saw the president of the United States openly aligning
himself with the dictator of Russia, dictator of Russia,
Vladimir Putin, to undermine the independence of Ukraine and
abandoned our closest democratic allies in Europe.
Trump made it clear that he sees one of the world's most brutal
dictators as his pal and our long time democratic allies as
his enemies. It appears that Mister Trump
wants a world that is safe for authoritarians and oligarchs,
but dangerous and unstable for democracies.
And when we talk about authoritarianism, we have got to
mention the growing phenomenon in this country of the Big Lie,
the Big Lie. Say something that is blatantly
untrue, repeat it over and over again, and then blast that lie
out on social media until people actually believe it.
And let me mention one are the very big lies that Trump said
recently regarding the war in Ukraine.
Earlier this week, President said that Ukraine started the
war. Trump said that Ukraine started
the war. Really.
That is, as I hope every member of the Senate knows, an absolute
lie. Russia invaded Ukraine twice,
first in 2014 and then again on February 24th, 2022.
And on that date, February 24th, 2022, Putin's tanks and troops
rolled into Ukraine. And on that day, Russian
aircraft began bombing targets all over Ukraine.
Russia started the war, period. End of discussion.
Trump is lying. Since Putin's invasion, over
1,000,000 people have been killed or injured every single
day. Russia continues to rain down
hundreds of missiles and drones in Ukrainian cities.
Putin's forces have massacred civilians and kidnapped
thousands of Ukrainian children, bringing them back to Russian RE
education camps. These atrocities led the
International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for
Vladimir Putin in 2023 as a war criminal.
Further, Trump called Ukrainian President Zelensky not Putin,
but Zelensky a a dictator. And that obviously is not true
either. Zelensky won 75% of the vote in
free elections and in the midst of a brutal war, Ukraine's
parliament continues to function and open.
An unfettered political debate takes place.
Trump recently claimed that our European allies have done little
to support Ukraine in its fight against Putin's invasion.
He said the US has contributed three times more than Europe,
but that is another lie. In fact, Europe has provided
more aid to Ukraine than the United States.
But it's not just that Trump is lying.
Again, that is not new. It's what this all reveals about
where we want to take our country and where we want the
world to be moving. What direction Trump is cozying
up to Vladimir Putin. So who is Putin?
And what kind of world does Putin want to build?
Putin is a dictator who crushed Russia's movement toward
democracy after the end of the Cold War Russia now holds sham
elections where Putin wins 90% of the vote, and authorities
there do not even try to hide their ballot stuffing.
There is no freedom of speech or free media in Putin's Russia.
Protests are violently suppressed. 10s of thousands of
people are in prison for protesting Putin's invasion of
Ukraine. Political dissidents are
harassed or thrown into jail. The bravest people like Alexei
Navalny are killed outright. Hundreds of thousands of
Russians have fled Putin's Russia since his invasion of
Ukraine. That, Mr. President, is the
Russian leader that Donald Trump admires.
But Mr. President, my Republican colleagues know all of this.
And what is particularly disturbing to me, and I believe
the American people, is my colleagues.
My Republican colleagues understand and know that Trump
is lying. They know that Russia started
the war, not Ukraine. They know that Putin is a
dictator, not Zelensky, Zelensky.
But their silence has been overwhelming on this issue.
I cannot tell you how many times I have sat here on the floor and
I have listened to my Republican colleagues come to the Senate to
condemn Vladimir Putin and his brutal invasion of Ukraine.
And many of their remarks were right on the money.
They were perceptive, and they were right.
And my simple question to my Republican colleagues right now
is, where are you now? Last I heard, Mr. President,
this is still a democracy. Last I heard, we are still
allowed to disagree with the President of the United States,
even if he is a member of your own party.
Last I heard, we are allowed to call out the President when he
lies, blatantly lies, even if he is a member of our own party.
And what really bothers me is I know that many of my Republican
colleagues understand all of this, and I just want to give
you an example of what is going on right now.
Let me just quote a few of my Republican colleagues in
statements they have made since Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
These are Republican members of the United States Senate.
And I'm not going to mention names right now.
Don't want to embarrass anybody, put anybody on the spot.
But these are quotes. One leading Republican said,
quote, we must remember that the instigator of this war was
Russia. It was President Putin who
launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine, end of quote.
And that Republican colleague was obviously right, another
Republican said, I quote, I think Vladimir Putin started the
war. I also believe through bitter
experience that Vladimir Putin is a gangster.
That's a Republican colleague. A third Republican colleague
said, quote, there is no equivalency between Vladimir
Putin and President Zelensky. President Putin is evil and he
has to be stopped. End Quote.
Fourth Republican, and this is just a few of the quotes.
I could probably come up with dozens of quotes.
Fourth Republican said when the war began, quote, today's
invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a premeditated and flagrant act
of law. Putin has violated the border of
a sovereign country. And that senator later said
anyone who is surprised by Putin's deadly attack on a
sovereign nation has not been paying attention.
These are the actions of a madman, end of quote.
And just recently, that very same senator said, quote, Putin
is not going to stop with Ukraine.
If we abandoned Ukraine and throw in the towel as some would
like us to do, that is going to drastically change how people
view the United States and how people rely on the United
States. And there will be major
consequences. End of 4th.
And a fifth Republican, fifth Republican colleague here in the
Senate called Putin a, quote, UN quote, thug and compared him to
Hitler. He said, quote, Vladimir Putin
is not a legitimate leader. He is a war criminal that needs
to be dealt with, end of quote. That is what my Republican
colleagues have said time and time again.
And the question is now, do you have the courage to continue
telling the truth when the president of the United States
is lying? This is an extraordinarily
pivotal moment in American history, and all of us must have
the courage to stand up for truth, to stand up for
democracy, to oppose authoritarianism.
This is the moment. Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor. Hey, thank you so much for
listening today. I really do appreciate your
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