Transcript:
Colin Seeberger: Hey, everyone. Welcome to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Colin Seeberger.
Daniella Gibbs Léger: And I’m Daniella Gibbs Léger. Colin, I always forget every year how insane the weather is during spring in D.C. It’s like, one day it’s cold, then it’s really hot, and then it’s raining for 100 days.
Seeberger: Yes, we have to be weather alert at all times—
Seeberger: —because you may get hail, you may get tornado warnings, you may get washed away on your commute home.
Seeberger: But thankfully it hasn’t been too, too bad over the weekends. I have a little one, so we are always keeping tabs on the weekend forecast.
Seeberger: So I will be thankful for that. But I’m also thankful for a great conversation that you had this week.
Gibbs Léger: You’re right, Colin. I spoke with Bharat Ramamurti, the former deputy director of President Biden’s National Economic Council. We chatted about what Donald Trump is doing to the economy—none of it good—and the drastic cuts Republicans on the Hill want to make to programs that Americans rely on.
Seeberger: Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely a timely and important conversation, so I’m looking forward to listening in. But first, we’ve got to get to some news.
Gibbs Léger: That we do. Because unfortunately, Trump’s tariffs are already starting to affect Americans’ everyday lives on a very fundamental level.
Seeberger: That’s right. We got some new data last week on GDP [gross domestic product] for the first quarter, and what we saw is actually the economy is now shrinking under Donald Trump.
Gibbs Léger: That’s not good.
Seeberger: Nope. While our economy had recently been the envy of the world, Trump came into office and enacted policies that made it shrink during the first quarter. That’s right: Donald Trump is not making America greater; he’s actually making our economy poorer.
And he’s isolating us from the world simultaneously. Britain and India just signed a landmark trade deal to protect themselves from the president’s reckless tariffs. America’s really on the outside looking in. No wonder we see that our trade deficit in the run-up to the president’s April 2 tariffs announcement actually reached a record high in March.
Trump’s trade wars are skyrocketing construction and remodeling costs, too, which is in turn raising the cost of housing. In March—also known as what’s normally the hot season for real estate in the United States—home sales saw their biggest monthly drop in over two years.
Construction spending also sunk across the board in the same month. And the rate it takes builders to break ground on new housing projects actually dropped by over 11 percent. Because of the economic uncertainty that Trump has created, builders are worried. Sixty percent actually said that their material suppliers are either increasing or planning to increase their prices because of the tariffs, according to Wells Fargo’s housing market index. Builders are also estimating that this could hike up the cost of a typical home by $11,000.
Seeberger: That’s right. $11,000 per home. Not to mention the increased cost of borrowing for a home mortgage, as we still see interest rates are sky high. For the past few weeks, businesses and consumers alike have been preparing for Trump’s trade war.
And those tariffs are already wreaking havoc on everyday lives of the American people, from higher prices to empty store shelves. And unless we change course dramatically in the coming weeks, it’s really only going to get worse from here.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah. You know, Colin, it’s really jaw-dropping how out of touch Donald Trump’s policies are with what Americans really want. I mean, voter survey after voter survey shows that the cost of living is the top issue for most of us, right?
Seeberger: I’ve heard a little about this.
Gibbs Léger: I know, what a surprise. And yet, here we have Trump jacking up costs on groceries, cars, and housing for no good reason. He even had the audacity to say recently that a short-term recession would be OK, and that the American children need to learn how to have less things, Colin, like pencils or toys.
No wonder Karl Rove, of all people, called Trump “Mr. Scrooge.” That’s, like, a lot. There’s a real “let them eat cake” vibe that’s happening here from this president that doesn’t understand the middle class at all. And I guess that’s why his Republican Party is gearing up to cut Medicaid services, which could have deadly consequences according to recent CAP [Center for American Progress] analysis, to pay for his tax cuts for the wealthy.
Seeberger: And I don’t know if you saw this, Daniella, but did you notice how he’s now inviting the people who bought the most of his meme coin to the White House for a gala? Let’s just be very clear: Donald Trump is trying to extract wealth for himself using this office, not trying to create prosperity for the American people.
Gibbs Léger: We need a word that’s stronger than “corrupt” at this point.
Seeberger: Truly. I mean, it’s just unprecedented. But as he rolls out charade after charade, he’s been distracting many people from the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. So I’m really pleased to have our friend Andrew Miller here to help us break it all down.
He’s a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and previously served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 2022 to 2024. Andrew Miller, welcome back to “The Tent.”
Andrew Miller: Thank you for having me again. I really need a shorter bio.
Seeberger: Hey, that’s a good problem to have, right?
Seeberger: So, Andrew, this week, mere months after a ceasefire was announced, Israel’s government actually approved a plan to capture the entire Gaza Strip. Can you talk about what’s transpired over the past few months and how we got here? Does international law not forbid Israel from forcibly removing people from their land?
Miller: Well I think the context is incredibly important. When President Trump assumed office for the second time, a ceasefire—a temporary ceasefire at least—was in place that had a pathway toward becoming permanent. And instead of aggressively pursuing the negotiations that would’ve converted this temporary ceasefire into an arrangement that would last, that would result in the return of all hostages, that would allow for the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip, the Trump administration more or less deferred to Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, who was very clear all along he only wanted a temporary ceasefire. He wanted to resume the military campaign against Hamas.
And the views of Prime Minister Netanyahu in that regard were not only inconsistent with those of us in the Biden administration, they were inconsistent with the Israeli public, which has overwhelmingly said that they prioritize the return of the hostages over the continuation of the war against Hamas. Over 70 percent of the population of Israel has indicated that. So not only is President Trump catering to Prime Minister Netanyahu, he’s catering to Prime Minister Netanyahu against the expressed wishes of the Israeli people—let alone the impact on the Palestinian people.
The ceasefire ultimately fell apart on March 18, and Israel has renewed this campaign. Along with this campaign, Israel has established a siege on the Gaza Strip. And they have not allowed any aid to enter since March 2—that’s, I think, nine weeks at this point.
Miller: And according to the UN [United Nations] and independent human rights or humanitarian assistance organizations, they indicate that the food has basically run out and that over 60 percent of the population is facing at least acute levels of food insecurity. Substantial percentages of the Palestinian population in Gaza are facing emergency or even catastrophic, which means famine in those cases.
So we’re back where we were toward the end of the Biden administration. And while I fully admit we did not handle things as well as we would’ve liked—and our performance on negotiating a ceasefire, on ensuring aid flowed was not optimal—we nevertheless never had an extended period of time in which aid was not entering at some level. And this ceasefire, which the Biden administration helped negotiate, still represents the best opportunity to end this war after 20 months.
Gibbs Léger: So can you talk a little bit about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political standings at home? And are those motivations driving his actions in terms of taking over the strip right now?
Miller: Given the Israeli public’s strong desire and strong prioritization of the hostages, it’s hard not to conclude that there is a political dimension to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s actions. The Israeli public views Prime Minister Netanyahu’s politics as the primary driver. And with Israel’s population, which does lean heavily toward the right, you have over 70 percent of the population saying, “We don’t support this.” That means people of Netanyahu’s own ideological ilk are also uncomfortable with this.
This isn’t just the leftists that he decries in public statements. People from his own camp are uncomfortable with it. And Netanyahu remains trapped in the same political situation he’s been in since he took office in December [20]22, which is he is dependent on this coalition government—which is the most extremist in Israeli history—in order to give him protection from potential prosecution or conviction on corruption and other charges related to a breach of public faith.
And given the presence of the most extremist elements, who not only want to take Gaza, they want to kick out the Palestinians—which, yes, forcible displacement is a war crime. There is no question about that. That’s not an edge case. That would clearly fall into that category. They also want to reestablish the settlements that Israel had in Gaza and that were removed by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon 20 years ago. So this really is a major regression in Israeli policy. And again, one that isn’t good for Palestinians, it’s not desired by the Israelis, and it’s not good for U.S. interest.
Seeberger: You talked about the really precarious humanitarian conditions on the ground. You mentioned that this is the worst that things have been since the Biden administration left office.
I mean, it seems to me that this is even worse, where we are today, in terms of the posture of where this actually goes to next, than we have been in quite some time, if not throughout the entirety of this conflict over the course of the last, what, nearly 20 months or so.
I’m curious to get your take on: How do you see this new campaign from Israel potentially fomenting an even greater regional conflict—which, of course, was always a worry throughout the course of the first year or so of this conflict? Are you worried that this ends up breaking into a larger theater than just Israel and Gaza?
Miller: First, I’d draw viewers’ attention to an article I published in Foreign Policy with Phil Gordon, Vice President Harris’ former national security adviser, where we essentially made the argument you just did, that although we are not satisfied with our performance on the humanitarian front during the Biden administration, it is objectively worse under the Trump administration—and categorically worse.
This is not a matter of parsing legalese and provisions. There was a debate, some viewed it as more legitimate than others, about whether the level of assistance that entered Gaza during the Biden administration was consistent with U.S. law, was consistent with international law. Now, with zero aid entering and Trump at least implicitly, if not explicitly, endorsing this policy of starvation, this policy of depriving aid, he is approving of a policy that is either a war crime or a crime against humanity. And that is inconsistent, a violation of U.S. law.
There’s this provision in the Foreign Assistance Act that we labored over during the Biden administration, 620I, that would force us to cut off military assistance to any country that restricted U.S. aid to another country. And ultimately, the lawyers determined during the Biden administration, “Well, aid is getting through, so it hasn’t been triggered.” Now nothing is getting through. No matter how good of a lawyer you are, you can’t argue that this is an acceptable outcome.
And of course, morally, it’s completely indefensible to use civilians. And we have 2.1 million people—the vast majority of them, probably 2 million, are civilians—are the ones who are suffering. And that is not an acceptable way to conduct war. No military that is rights-respecting, that operates according to the Geneva Conventions, would consider giving their approbation to that approach.
Gibbs Léger: So switching topics on our last question here. Yesterday, President Trump announced that the U.S. would stop bombing the Houthis in Yemen because the Houthis had agreed to stop attacking U.S. ships in the Red Sea. So the administration is claiming this as a big victory, but can you tell our listeners what the reality is here?
Miller: Yes. As usual, this is a lot of theater on the Trump administration’s part.
Gibbs Léger: I know, shocking.
Miller: I know, it’s not true to type in any way. Really dealing with an unprecedented case. But again, the context, the history is important. When the ceasefire that the Biden administration negotiated was in effect, the Houthis conducted no attacks on Israel, on the United States, on international shipping. They only resumed the attacks once the ceasefire broke down, which, as I mentioned before, was blessed by President Trump.
So the situation was partly of his own creation. I’m in no way suggesting that the Houthis’ conduct is acceptable. It’s not. And it does warrant a response. But as long as the ceasefire was in effect, we had more or less managed the problem. And since the Houthis have resumed their operations, they’ve targeted Israel and American naval vessels, official vessels. They’ve not targeted commercial shipping. So this idea that they got the Houthis to agree to stop targeting commercial shipping is completely baseless because they weren’t doing that. They were trying to hit the Israelis. They were trying to hit the Americans.
Now, there is an impact still on commercial shipping. Anytime you’re firing missiles, they can miss or they can hit the wrong target.
Miller: And that’s part of the problem with this so-called victory. The Houthis have only agreed to stop attacks on the United States, which is of course a good thing.
But they’ve explicitly said we are going to continue our attacks on Israel. Just a few days ago, there was an attack that nearly hit Ben Gurion Airport and caused major airlines to suspend their commercial traffic there. And the major shipping companies, major companies have indicated that as long as rockets and missiles are flying, it’s not going to affect insurance rates. It’s not going to affect shipping patterns.
And all of this does directly matter for the American people. This isn’t just a foreign concern. Shipping costs are a major input for any number of products. So the increased cost of shipping has contributed to the inflationary pressure in the U.S. economy and in other economies.
So this is hurting Americans, whether they know it or not. And this solution is not going to address the fundamental problem. We’re still going to see companies choosing to send their goods around the southern tip of Africa instead of through the Suez Canal. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing for American companies because the shippers are profiting off of this. But the consumers are the ones who suffer.
So once again, we see another instance where President Trump coming in focused on inflation, on consumers, has completely abandoned the policies or consideration of the policies that are necessary to relieve pressure on hardworking Americans who are just trying to pay for the most basic of goods.
Gibbs Léger: Well, Andrew, I want to thank you for coming on “The Tent” again and for setting the record straight.
Miller: Thank you so much.
Seeberger: Yes, your expertise is invaluable. And with that, that’s all the time we have for today. If there’s anything you’d like us to cover on the pod, hit us up on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, and Threads @TheTentPod. That’s @TheTentPod.
Gibbs Léger: And stick around for my interview with Bharat Ramamurti in just a beat.
Gibbs Léger: Bharat Ramamurti served as deputy director of the National Economic Council from 2021 through 2023. He helped shape the administration’s economic message and policy and worked with Congress to enact landmark legislation. He previously served as a top banking and economic policy advisor for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
Bharat, thank you so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
Bharat Ramamurti: Thank you so much.
Gibbs Léger: I hear you’re a Celtics fan. I’m a Knicks fan, so we’re just going to leave that there and I’ll jump into the questions.
Ramamurti: Thanks. Thank you for not talking about the first game.
Gibbs Léger: You’re welcome. So speaking of games, Trump has obviously been playing games with tariffs, and it’s affecting American consumers. Consumer confidence has taken its steepest dive in three and a half decades, and JP Morgan projected a 60 percent risk of a recession last month.
So, give us a state of the play of the economy. What’s going on here?
Ramamurti: Yeah. When I think about the economy right now, I think about, if you’ve seen old cartoons with Wiley Coyote chasing the road runner—
Ramamurti: —in that moment when he’s chased him over a cliff and he’s pedaling his legs furiously and is about to drop?
Ramamurti: That’s kind of where I think we are in the economy right now, where if you look at the hard data, the types of things that we would look at in the White House, the jobs report, economic growth, and so on, it’s OK. It’s not in a recession right now.
But all of the soft data points—in other words, there’s surveys that are conducted of manufacturers, of different types of businesses in different parts of the country. And all of that survey data is blinking red lights. People are saying that they’ve had to cut back on payroll, that they’ve had to pull back on planned investments, that they’re facing higher prices.
And all of it is related to Trump’s tariff agenda. Mechanically—by putting in place a universal 10 percent tariff, with much higher tariffs than that on China—you are raising the cost of importing goods into the United States. And even for America’s manufacturing sector, which is supposed to be the beneficiary of this set of policies, about half of the things that they use to produce things in America are imports because you rely on certain parts from abroad. And so you’re raising costs for businesses basically across the board, and some portion of those costs are going to get passed through to consumers.
The other big thing is uncertainty. And it’s kind of a vague term, and when people talk about it, sometimes they’re being a little squishy. But in this sense, you can tell what the impact is going to be. If you’re an investor trying to make a multimillion-dollar, multi-year investment, think about how you try to do that when tariff policy is changing week by week, in some cases day by day.
Ramamurti: There’s no predictability and no certainty. And when you’re trying to figure out: If I decide to invest in a domestic washing machine maker, because there’s imports on foreign washing machines, well those imports could disappear tomorrow or they could go up by 20 percent, or the country that you’re worried about could get an exemption from it because Trump has a good phone call with that world leader.
There’s just no predictability. And that’s why you see across the board companies pulling back on investment. When you see that pullback in investment, that means fewer jobs are created and, ironically, fewer goods are being produced in the United States.
Gibbs Léger: So Brian Deese wrote an interesting piece in The New York Times last week about what he called the “Luddite trap” of manufacturing. He argued that Trump’s tariffs are aimed to protect manufacturing, particularly the auto industry, from foreign competition. But his domestic policies, such as slicing incentives for EV [electric vehicle] production, will cut the auto industry off from innovation. So do you agree with that framing?
Ramamurti: Yeah. I think what you are seeing here is that it’s really important that we have a robust domestic auto manufacturing industry—not just for jobs, but for the industrial base of our country. And when you have foreign countries who engage in certain types of practices to boost their auto industries and basically artificially reduce the price of what they can then export to the United States, that threatens our domestic auto industry, and there’s many instances where it makes sense to stop that kind of conduct and be able to protect a robust domestic industry.
As Brian points out and others have pointed out, though, what you also want is to make sure that there’s still incentive for American manufacturers to keep innovating. You can’t do the protectionism forever. And if other countries are racing ahead when it comes to making cheaper electric vehicles or more efficient electric vehicles or batteries that have longer life, which means that you don’t have to charge your EV as much, we want to make sure that American companies have the incentive to keep up with that and to beat that ultimately.
Now, we have really good auto workers in the United States. We have a really good manufacturing supply chain. We have really good school, education, and learning opportunities for workers here in the United States. So we have a lot of advantages, but we have to make sure that the market incentives line up with that.
Gibbs Léger: So Republican leaders in Congress have been working to wrangle their members into passing a reconciliation package that would cut Medicaid and other basic needs programs to fund tax cuts for billionaires. And you don’t have to take my word for it; you can take the word of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which said as much in their latest report that was released Wednesday morning.
Can you talk a little bit about the proposals we’re seeing from Republicans and the ramifications that they would have on the people who need these programs to survive?
Ramamurti: Yeah, I think it’s worth zooming out a little bit and remembering why we’re in this position. So in 2017, during Trump’s first term, and there’s Republican control of Congress, they passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which did a number of permanent changes to the tax code but also did some five-year, eight-year changes to the tax code. And a lot of those were tax cuts for individuals, slanted to the wealthy side. All of those are expiring at the end of 2025.
So what this bill does is basically extend those tax cuts, which, again, are wildly favorable to the wealthy for an additional period of time. And it costs many trillions of dollars.
Ramamurti: And what they’re trying to do is offset part of the cost of that with huge cuts to Medicaid. And as you noted, the CBO put out a report this morning saying that some of the options that the Republicans are considering to cut several hundred billion dollars from Medicaid are going to cause millions of people—low-income people, vulnerable, needy people in many cases—to lose access to care, either because they’re booted off the program or because the lack of federal funding means that states can’t afford to keep them on the program anymore. Or, in many instances, they’re putting all of these really challenging administrative hurdles into place. You have to constantly keep recertifying that your income is low enough to meet the threshold. And the states aren’t well funded enough to keep making sure that people are keeping up with it, so people lose coverage even though they’re eligible for it, just because they can’t fill out the paperwork.
It’s economically silly. It’s, I think, politically going to be very harmful for the Republican party. And, frankly, I think it’s immoral that we are causing people to lose access to health care coverage, which could mean—and this is not exaggeration—could mean more illness and more death just to keep extending tax cuts for the rich. I mean, the typical tax cut for a family making $1 million a year is $70,000 per year.
Gibbs Léger: Wow. That’s a lot. All on the backs of people who can least afford it.
I want to shift topics a little bit. Donald Trump has been a lot less shy these past couple of months in attacking independent agencies. And recently he’s gone after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, calling Powell “political” and accusing him of cooking the books for Democrats.
So for our listeners, can you talk about why the Fed’s independence is so important, and what do you think would happen if Trump tried to actually remove Powell?
Ramamurti: There’s actually a lot of interesting academic research on this. When you have a central bank like the Federal Reserve, whose main job is to set interest rates, the countries where that central bank is independent rather than being controlled directly by the head of state or by the legislature have much better outcomes. They have more growth. They have more stable prices.
And it makes sense because everyone knows that there’s a political benefit in many cases to cutting interest rates. People don’t like high interest rates.
Ramamurti: It means that the cost of getting a mortgage is more. It means that your credit card interest rate is higher for small businesses. It means that the cost of getting a small-business loan is higher. So people like it when interest rates come down. But for the central bank, keeping interest rates high is an important tool for keeping prices in check.
And what tends to happen in countries where there isn’t this independence is that they keep rates lower and lower, and they tend to have runaway inflation. And that tends to hurt the economy, and it tends to hurt consumers at the end of the day because their money doesn’t go as far as it used to.
So there’s a real benefit in keeping that level of independence. And I think that if Trump takes steps to fire Powell before his term is up, you’re going to see real panic in the markets—not just the stock market, but in all of the international markets for U.S. treasuries and other financial products, all of which is geared around the predictability and stability of the United States. And getting rid of the Fed chair prematurely, I think, would really cast a lot of that into doubt.
Gibbs Léger: So, I want to talk about Abundance—a topic that a lot of people are discussing—Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, which lays out a vision to try and lower costs in America. It’s been getting a lot of buzz in progressive circles. And it’s certainly gotten us interested here at “The Tent” to pick the brains of very smart people like yourself on the agenda for the broad center left with 2026 and, ugh, 2028 rapidly approaching.
So as Democrats develop an alternative agenda to contrast with the Trump administration, where should they focus their efforts? What are one or two big policy ideas that you would love to see the Democratic Party go after?
Ramamurti: I think that we need to focus on trying to solve the problems that people experience in their daily lives. And I think part of what Abundance does is get at some of those problems, right? The cost of housing, the cost of energy, which translates to utility costs—those are really important types of issues that we need to address. There are others, though.
I think that Democrats should be talking a lot more about K-12 schools. That’s an issue where when—I have three kids in school, I meet with a lot of parents, some of whom are left-leaning, some of whom are right-leaning—all of them want their kids to go to better schools, and all of them have concerns about learning loss from the pandemic.
A lot of communities, there’s concerns about absenteeism in schools and kids just not going. It would be nice if the Democratic Party had something to say at the national level about what they’re going to do about that the next time they’re in charge.
On Abundance specifically, I think it’s an interesting set of ideas, but my concern about it is that if you go talk to people at the state and local level, people who are mayors or city counselors or state legislators, a lot of them will tell you that they’re supportive of more housing, of making it easier to build, of rolling back zoning requirements that raise the cost of housing, and so on. The problem is that it’s just politically really challenging. It’s unpopular—and not just with NIMBYs [not in my backyard] or whatever you want to call them, but normal people who are just worried about what’s it going to mean for traffic in the morning, what’s it going to mean about overcrowding at my kid’s school, what’s it going to mean about are all the swings going to be used at the park when I try to take my kid there because there’s more people there.
Those are legitimate concerns that people who are supportive, like I am, of making it easier to build housing need to overcome. And so while I think that the Abundance ideas are correct substantively, my concern is that they are not necessarily that popular politically, and figuring out how to achieve some of those goals while making them politically popular is really the big challenge.
Gibbs Léger: So, according to recent estimates, the Trump administration plans to cut IRS staffing by 40 to 50 percent. CBS News reported Monday that the administration has already fired a third of their auditors. So what will this do to tax revenues? And will these moves actually save the government any money? Because that’s why they say they’re doing them.
Ramamurti: No, quite the opposite. They will cost the government an enormous sum of money. In fact, if there was one set of people that it would be the stupidest to fire if you’re trying to save money, it would be IRS auditors. And there’s two reasons for that.
Number one, these are the types of people—they’re basically hardcore accountants—that are responsible for doing audits of really big corporations, really wealthy people who have their money in all sorts of different types of funds and trusts and investments and where it’s easier for them to try to evade some of their tax obligations because they can move the money around more easily. There are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake—and that’s not an exaggeration.
Ramamurti: There’s something called the tax gap, which is the amount of money based on our tax rules that we should be bringing in, if everybody paid exactly what they owed, versus what we actually bring in. And in the United States, that tax gap is about 15 percent: There’s about a 15 percent delta between what is owed and what we actually collect. And that alone is worth, over a 10-year period, several trillion dollars.
Ramamurti: OK? The cost of—I mean, name your favorite program: free college, free child care—we could cover all of that and more just if we close the tax gap.
And by the way, the tax gap in the United States is higher than it is in other countries, like the UK and so on, because they are more aggressive about enforcement of their rules. So we’re going in exactly the wrong direction. And it’s not just that the individual cases that these people would be taking on; they’re not going to be able to find the money that’s being hidden. It’s a deterrence thing because if you are thinking about, “Hey, I am taking a risk and maybe I’ll try to underpay my taxes by a $100 million this year,” and you know that their chances of being audited have gone way down because they’ve cut the number of auditors, it’s going to decrease the amount of money that people send in in the first place. And so we’re really just cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Gibbs Léger: I wonder how much Donald Trump’s family, how much they contribute to that delta. Because we’ll never know because we haven’t seen those tax returns.
So I want to finish—I don’t need to tell you that there’s a lot of frustration and anxiety out there during these first couple of months of the Trump administration. So what advice do you have for listeners who want to fight back, but they just don’t know where to start?
Ramamurti: I would just start at the local level. Get involved in your kids’ school, in the PTA. Get involved in a town meeting, in some ordinance effort in your town.
I like to think of it as building a muscle. If you want to exercise that political muscle, you’ve got to start somewhere. And if you’ve never ran before, you don’t want to start by running a marathon. You go out there and run a mile around the block, right?
Ramamurti: And so get involved at the local level. It’s amazing how fulfilling that is, how you can feel like you’re really making a difference in the community that you live in. And I think it gives people hope.
What I’ve found is that at times like this when people feel hopeless and all the power in Washington is arrayed against you, there’s still progress that you can make at the local level. And we can start turning the tide back, starting with tomorrow, and then hopefully with the midterm elections in next year.
Gibbs Léger: Well, Bharat, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and insights with our audience. Thank you again for joining us on “The Tent.”
Ramamurti: Thank you so much for having me.
Gibbs Léger: That’s going to do it for us folks. Be sure to go back and check out previous episodes. Before we go, Colin, we have to talk about the Met Gala.
Seeberger: Of course we do. It is always a highlight of every spring. Did you have any favorites?
Gibbs Léger: Oh, so many. Too many to mention, but I’ll start with Zendaya, who always—
Gibbs Léger: —fierce and, I mean, sharp—just the lines and the hat.
Gibbs Léger: The tribute to Diana Ross and “Mahogany,” and then Diana Ross was there on the steps with her. I mean, she is so amazingly beautiful. And Law Roach, her stylist, rarely misses.
Seeberger: Yeah. Killed it.
Gibbs Léger: Yes. And of course, Colman Domingo.
Seeberger: Which outfit, though? The blue?
Gibbs Léger: I liked both.
Gibbs Léger: I always like a surprise.
Gibbs Léger: It’s like, “Oh, what’s underneath that cape?” And also, a nod to André Leon Talley, who always wore these magnificent capes. So I love that. But then the suit underneath—he does not miss.
Seeberger: No, he does not.
Seeberger: He does not. So making their Met Gala debut this year was Christian Latchman, who’s a model. And he had this incredible white tuxedo that had a train and this big pink flower on his lapel. And it just, oh, looked so good.
Gibbs Léger: Looks lovely.
Seeberger: Yeah, absolutely. Ate it right up. Doechii looked so fierce, I mean, per usual. The hair, the cigar—everything about it.
Gibbs Léger: It all worked. It was so good.
Seeberger: Girl, you know exactly what you’re doing. Any misses for you?
Gibbs Léger: So my sister and I were actually talking about this because I was like, “I didn’t really like Kendall Jenner’s dress when I first saw it.” And my sister was like, “Actually, you should go back and look at it because it was tailored really nicely and maybe just didn’t look good.” And so I went back and looked and I was like, “OK, I still don’t like it, but I like it a little more than I did before.”
Gibbs Léger: I thought—oh wait, there was somebody just flew right out of my mind and I was like, “Oh, what are you even doing?” There’s some people who were like, “I just wanted to wear a pretty dress.” And I’m like, “OK, but you can do that on any red carpet.”
Seeberger: What are we doing here?
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. Literally, what are we doing here?
Gibbs Léger: I love Simone Biles.
Seeberger: No, I was going to say it. I was going to say it.
Gibbs Léger: I love her, I do, but—
Seeberger: It looked like high school cheerleader kind of vibes.
Seeberger: Yeah, it was a no for me.
Gibbs Léger: It was a big no for me. And I was like, “You let Mr. Simone Biles outshine you with his outfit.” He looked great. And people are like, “Oh, it’s because she’s short.” I’m like, “Did you see Sabrina Carpenter?”
Gibbs Léger: Yeah. That was a complete serve.
Seeberger: I have to say, Simone was one for me. Kim Kardashian—
Seeberger: It was a big miss for me.
Seeberger: Yeah. No, thank you. But the Met Gala, you’ve got to be able to laugh at it. You’ve got to have fun with it. And it’s good to have a little distraction in the era in which we find ourselves.
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. And in the era where Trump is cutting everything for the arts, a reminder: The Met Gala is a fundraiser.
Gibbs Léger: And they raised more money this year, my understanding, than they have previously. So kudos to them for that. Yay. And Rihanna is pregnant again. We are never getting new music. I’m just saying. It’s never coming, people.
Seeberger: Hey, she can sing, she says. She can sing. We may not get a tour anytime soon.
Gibbs Léger: I don’t need a tour. I’d like some new music.
Seeberger: Well, we will all be waiting with bated breath. Rihanna, get the people what they want.
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. I mean, congratulations on everything, but please. Give us some new music along with the new baby.
Gibbs Léger: OK. With that, it’s time to go. Everybody take care of yourselves, and we’ll talk to you next week.
Gibbs Léger: “The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Daniella Gibbs Léger, and co-hosted by Colin Seeberger. Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer, Mishka Espey is our booking producer, and Muggs Leone is our digital producer. Jacob Jordan is our writer. Hai Phan, Olivia Mowry, and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.
Views expressed by guests of “The Tent” are their own, and interviews are not endorsements of a guest’s perspectives. You can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.