Trump Is Stuck in the '80s
Slate Money
Slate Podcasts
4.1 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2026
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week: The Trump administration kidnapped the president of Venezuela. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, Emily Peck, and guest Lizzie O'Leary, host of What Next: TBD, discuss Trump's rationale for the attack and the complex economics around Venezuelan oil that come with it. Then, Lizzie breaks down the unsettling trend of AI-generated nudes of real people, including many children, being created by X’s chatbot Grok and Elon Musk’s lackadaisical response to it. Finally, Emily fills us in on Trump’s $10 billion funding freeze for childcare and social services in five blue states and how the fear of "waste, fraud, and abuse” is weaponized politically.
In the Slate Plus episode: Greece is the word!
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Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Slate Money, your guide to the Business and Finance News of the Week. |
| 0:14.2 | I'm Felix Hammond of Bloomberg. I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios. |
| 0:18.7 | Hello, Felix. |
| 0:19.7 | With Elizabeth Spires of The New York Times. |
| 0:22.9 | Hello. |
| 0:23.9 | And very excitingly, we are giddy with anticipation with the one and only Lizzie O'Leary of Slate. |
| 0:33.2 | Hello. |
| 0:34.0 | Hi, Lizzie. |
| 0:35.0 | Welcome. |
| 0:35.9 | You also podcast on Slate. I also podcast on Slate. |
| 0:39.3 | I host a podcast called What Next TBD? |
| 0:42.3 | So we have brought you on basically because you're the best person and we love you very much |
| 0:46.3 | and you're great, but also because you have been doing a big deep dive into X, rock, |
| 0:53.3 | Elon and various ickyness thereabouts. |
| 0:58.2 | So we are going to talk about that. |
| 1:00.1 | We are also going to talk about, well, we are also going to allow Emily to go off on her own deep dive that she has done into, what's it called? |
| 1:12.2 | It's not called welfare anymore. It's called temporary assistance for needy families. I think it sounds the most boring possible. |
| 1:17.5 | It is actually going to be a good rant. It's like underpins the economy in so many ways, Felix. |
| 1:23.4 | When Emily gets a good rant going, you want to stay around for that. But of course, we are going to lead with Venezuela, because that's the big news of the week. |
| 1:31.2 | We have a Slate Plus segment about reeks and plays and Joyce and fun |
| 1:38.6 | and why you all need to buy a ticket to the Ulysses at Public Theatre. |
| 1:43.0 | And, well, mainly because Lizzie's here, it's just going to be in an awesome, awesome |
... |
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