Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Sound On podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 2: He saw the post on truth or whatever the truth
Speaker 2: social from Donald Trump about the Jeff Duncan if you
Speaker 2: don't know that name is the former lieutenant governor of Georgia.
Speaker 2: Will bring everyone back up to date here, and he
Speaker 2: had tweeted or xed that he was told to appear
Speaker 2: Tuesday before at the grand jury. Donald Trump on truth quote,
Speaker 2: I am reading reports that failed formal lieutenant governor of Georgia,
Speaker 2: Jeff Duncan, will be testifying. He shouldn't. I barely knew him,
Speaker 2: but he was right from the beginning of this witch
Speaker 2: hunt a nasty disaster. Let's bring in Michael Zelden. I've
Speaker 2: been looking forward to hearing from Michael ever since he
Speaker 2: left the country. He's back with a former federal prosecutor,
Speaker 2: former special counsel to Robert Muller while at the DOJ. Michael,
Speaker 2: does that sound like witness tampering?
Speaker 3: Well, everything that comes out of Donald Trump's in respect
Speaker 3: of all of these cases is right up against the
Speaker 3: line of witness tampering. I don't know whether anyone would
Speaker 3: actually charge him with it. What'll be most interesting to
Speaker 3: see is whether Judge Chutkin, the one who's handling the
Speaker 3: January sixth cases, will sanction him, because she just cautioned
Speaker 3: him yesterday the day before yesterday, to not make these
Speaker 3: types of inflammatory statements, and then he turned around and
Speaker 3: sort of thumbed his nose at her and made inflammatory statements.
Speaker 3: And so we'll see what happens. But it is surely
Speaker 3: something that he is purposely doing to try his case
Speaker 3: in the media because his biggest problem as a defendant
Speaker 3: is he cannot testify in trial because he cannot take
Speaker 3: the stand, swear to tell the tooth and then tell
Speaker 3: the truth. So he's got to do this in the
Speaker 3: media because he's got no other forum by which he
Speaker 3: will get his story out there.
Speaker 4: Well, and you mentioned Judge Chutkin, who sided partially with
Speaker 4: his defense marly with the prosecution in that protective order
Speaker 4: last week, but she is not immune from his social
Speaker 4: media kind of rampage. Honestly, in the last twelve hours either,
Speaker 4: there's more than a dozen posts related to the different
Speaker 4: legal cases against him. In one, he calls her a
Speaker 4: highly partisan judge. She obviously wants me behind bars, very
Speaker 4: biased and unfair. Does this make the prosecution's job easier
Speaker 4: all of this and his defense attorney's job harder.
Speaker 3: Well, it makes it harder for the defense attorney because
Speaker 3: the defendant Trump, and that's what she called him. She
Speaker 3: said he's a criminal defendant and he should be considered
Speaker 3: nothing else. The lawyers said that yes, Trump would honor
Speaker 3: the protective order, and of course the next day he didn't.
Speaker 3: And so it makes it very difficult for the defense
Speaker 3: lawyers who have maintained their credibility with the court and
Speaker 3: essentially say I can't control my own client, and that
Speaker 3: always puts them in a trick bag about whether they're
Speaker 3: going to continue the representation. I don't think it makes
Speaker 3: it any easier for the prosecutors because he's not talking
Speaker 3: about the substance of the matter that will be at trial.
Speaker 3: It's really more the optics that he's talking about. It
Speaker 3: proves the point to those who want to believe that
Speaker 3: he's a lunatic out of control, and it proves the
Speaker 3: point that he has a First Amendment right that he's
Speaker 3: entiled to make and so it's really just sort of neutral.
Speaker 3: You know, Paul Simon saying once that a man hears
Speaker 3: what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, And
Speaker 3: so people are hearing what they want to hear and
Speaker 3: disregarding the rest. In respect of this, I could.
Speaker 2: Say that about so many different things in politics right now, Michael.
Speaker 2: A lot of the reporting is centered around a possible
Speaker 2: rico charge or charge as I wonder if you feel
Speaker 2: that coming and in this case, if you can talk
Speaker 2: to our listeners about what that would mean, because based
Speaker 2: on what I have learned about this, Donald Trump may
Speaker 2: not actually have to be directly connected to what was
Speaker 2: going on as long as the organ is he was
Speaker 2: at the top of is implicated here.
Speaker 1: How do you see it?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: So, the Georgia rico law is a little bit different
Speaker 3: than the federal rico law. And federal rico law. You
Speaker 3: think about a mafia organization with a copo and then
Speaker 3: people underneath, and the coppo doesn't have to actually have
Speaker 3: his hands touching anything as long as he is part
Speaker 3: of that enterprise structure. In Georgia, it's really like a conspiracy.
Speaker 3: Plus some people have called it conspiracy on steroids, And
Speaker 3: what it requires, principally is that there be a conspiracy,
Speaker 3: which is an agreement by two or more people to
Speaker 3: commit an unlawful act and then some act in furtherance
Speaker 3: of it. The RICO says, if there are multiple crimes
Speaker 3: that are all related toward the end of the same end,
Speaker 3: then that meets RICO. And so in this case, I
Speaker 3: think what you'll have here is a conspiracy essentially of
Speaker 3: multiple defendants with an aim which was undertaken by the
Speaker 3: commission of various crimes, and that'll be the state reco charge.
Speaker 3: So really it looked like a federal conspiracy charge similar
Speaker 3: to what we saw in January sixth. These guys agreed
Speaker 3: Trump and his unindicted co conspiracy in that case to
Speaker 3: interfere with the orderly transfer power by committing the following
Speaker 3: four crimes. I think that's what we'll sort of see
Speaker 3: in Georgia. And the advantage of that to a prosecutor
Speaker 3: is that they get to tell a story. They can say,
Speaker 3: on this date, our story begins, and here is what
Speaker 3: happened throughout the middle course of it, and this is
Speaker 3: how it all ended. And that is a crime and
Speaker 3: that's called state rico, and we asked you to convict.
Speaker 4: Okay, So, in terms of the timeline for a case
Speaker 4: like this, especially given the reporting we have seen that
Speaker 4: more than a dozen people ultimately could be charged here,
Speaker 4: and considering the facts that, as we've reiterated time and again,
Speaker 4: this would be the force indictment of the former president
Speaker 4: just one of the many legal trials he could be
Speaker 4: facing down. Would the timeline look like here going forward
Speaker 4: once charges theoretically are brought.
Speaker 3: That's a great question, and we don't know the answer. Normally,
Speaker 3: the more charges and the greater number of defendants means
Speaker 3: the longer into the future the trial date is. People
Speaker 3: speculate that that's the reason that Smith charged only Trump
Speaker 3: in the January sixth case, to keep it streamlined. I
Speaker 3: don't know how long things will take in Georgia, but
Speaker 3: I would expect this could be Unless there's some expedited
Speaker 3: process here, this could be the very last case to
Speaker 3: go forward and probably go after the January sixth federal case,
Speaker 3: if the judge holds true and has a trial on
Speaker 3: January second, as the prosecutors have requested.
Speaker 2: Spending time with Michael Zelden, the former federal prosecutors been
Speaker 2: awfully helpful through all of Donald Trump's legal affairs with
Speaker 2: us here on Bloomberg as we consider what happens to
Speaker 2: the co conspirators unidentified, of course, co conspirators like Rudy Giuliani,
Speaker 2: Sidney Powell, those names who have become connected to this effort. Michael,
Speaker 2: I wonder your thoughts on this CNN story that prosecutors
Speaker 2: in Atlanta are now in possession of texts and emails
Speaker 2: that directly connect members of Donald Trump's legal circle to
Speaker 2: the early January twenty twenty one voting system breach in
Speaker 2: Coffee County. I bring it up because the Secretary of State,
Speaker 2: Brad Raffensberger, actually replaced machines in that county and I
Speaker 2: asked him about that following the dominion settlement.
Speaker 5: Here's what he said.
Speaker 6: It was corrupted by election official and county election director.
Speaker 6: That was a violation of state law. And I'm really
Speaker 6: big right now being investigated by our state election board.
Speaker 6: So there's a deep dive into that, and so we
Speaker 6: want to replace the mission means we don't believe that
Speaker 6: anything happened, but if anything did happen, we wanted to
Speaker 6: pull those machines, get them off, you know, take them
Speaker 6: out of the field and bring and put it brand
Speaker 6: new machines, So no one could question what the results
Speaker 6: would be in Coffee County. But like I said, that's
Speaker 6: an ongoing investigation. State Election Board has that and they
Speaker 6: will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the.
Speaker 2: Law, to the fullest extent of the law. Michael, that
Speaker 2: was back in April when that dominion settlement happened. In
Speaker 2: our remaining moment here, how important will evidence like these
Speaker 2: texts and emails be to connecting the Trump legal team,
Speaker 2: that entire group of people to this effort.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's significant in one major respect, which
Speaker 3: is Donald Trump has argued that all of his calls
Speaker 3: to Rathenberger and Governor Camp and others was a first
Speaker 3: man and protected free speech that he's allowed to call
Speaker 3: whoever he wants to call. In this case, this is
Speaker 3: an action. So if he's authorized an illegal access to
Speaker 3: a computer, on authorize access to computers is a crime
Speaker 3: in Georgia, that's not speech any longer. That's action, and
Speaker 3: action is always criminalized. And so this is a difference
Speaker 3: between speech and action, and there is no First Amendment defense,
Speaker 3: So it is significant if they can tie it back
Speaker 3: to Trump.
Speaker 2: Michael, it's great to have you back. Michael Zelden, former
Speaker 2: federal prosecutor with US on Sound On with Kaylee Lines
Speaker 2: in Washington. I'm Joe Matthew. This is Bloomberg.
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Speaker 2: The headline on the terminal. The US has adequate funding
Speaker 2: for the response. In Maui. I'm Joe Matthew along with
Speaker 2: Kaylee Lines in Washington. And it's been a big question here, Kayley.
Speaker 2: As the President spent time, well more time in rehob
Speaker 2: with on vacation, and reporters couldn't get an answer out
Speaker 2: of him. When he took a bike ride yesterday, they
Speaker 2: of course wanted to talk about this thing in Hawaii.
Speaker 5: Can you come talk about can you come talk about Mawi?
Speaker 6: President?
Speaker 2: And he kept on right another point in Rehobe with
Speaker 2: reporters are yelling at him. I believe our own Justin
Speaker 2: Sink was one of them and got a no comment yes,
Speaker 2: as opposed to thoughts and prayers or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very interesting and interesting tone shift as well from
Speaker 4: the White House today in the aftermath, the President tweeting
Speaker 4: a multipart thread about the response, saying his prayers are
Speaker 4: with those impacted. Every asset we have will be available
Speaker 4: to them. So it seems like kind of a course
Speaker 4: correction here.
Speaker 2: Perhaps I guess that's true, And it brings us to
Speaker 2: the matter of funding for this. There's going to be
Speaker 2: an ask if it hasn't already been made for supplemental
Speaker 2: funding for FEMA for dealing with obviously the fallout here
Speaker 2: in Congress that was already struggling to figure out funding
Speaker 2: for a government whose fiscal year ends in a month
Speaker 2: and a half or something, joining us to talk about
Speaker 2: it as our expert our appropriations. Kind enough to spend
Speaker 2: time in this chair for us last week, the great
Speaker 2: Jack Fitzpatrick Bloomberg, Government Congress supporter, Thanks for spending time
Speaker 2: with our listeners last week.
Speaker 5: Jack.
Speaker 2: It's good to see you. You must be dying for
Speaker 2: lawmakers to come back to work. Yeah, but you don't
Speaker 2: really have to wait. There's this conference call tonight that's
Speaker 2: probably gonna get a little chippy, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: They have been trying to figure out lawmakers, especially in
Speaker 7: the House, where they stand on emergency funding, Ukraine funding,
Speaker 7: avoiding a shutdown during the August recess. It's a little
Speaker 7: hard for us to report out when they're not here
Speaker 7: walking in the hallways. But there will be a conference
Speaker 7: call tonight for House Republicans to discuss funding the government,
Speaker 7: and a key part of that is this request for
Speaker 7: additional money forty billion dollars total for Ukraine and related
Speaker 7: needs and also for FEMA, because FEMA needed money anyway,
Speaker 7: they were getting low in their disaster relief fund budget.
Speaker 7: It may be the case that they need to discuss
Speaker 7: more funding. Eventually, they absolutely will have to discuss more
Speaker 7: funding for the longer term rebuilding process in Hawaii, because
Speaker 7: FEMA isn't the one that rebuilds homes. They're the emergency response.
Speaker 7: But the House Republicans are still sort of in the
Speaker 7: process of figuring out what are our demands, what are
Speaker 7: the conservative demands? Can you attach supplemental emergency funds to
Speaker 7: a stop gap to avoid a shut down, they still
Speaker 7: have a lot of pretty fundamental questions to answer on
Speaker 7: their own position.
Speaker 4: Well, and I would imagine the emergency fund as well
Speaker 4: as the funding for border in migration, which also was
Speaker 4: included in that supplemental request, or a lot easier for
Speaker 4: the Republican Party to swallow than perhaps Ukraine a specifically,
Speaker 4: which is the bulk of what was requested.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that makes sense, and you would think so. I
Speaker 7: would point out though that there was a statement led
Speaker 7: by Warren Davidson from some Freedom Caucus members that was
Speaker 7: pretty much a blanket negative statement about the request, and
Speaker 7: it didn't distinguish saying we support disaster aid that portion,
Speaker 7: but not Ukraine. So there might be some work to
Speaker 7: get people on board, because this also is in the
Speaker 7: broader context of that debt limit deal where they set
Speaker 7: limits on spending and.
Speaker 4: No one wants to stick to Yes, No, very.
Speaker 7: Few people want to stick to it. Traditionally, you'd have
Speaker 7: wildfires or if there's a bad hurricane, lawmakers would say
Speaker 7: that's exempt from the cap, we don't need to offset it.
Speaker 7: But even last week we heard the likes of french Hill,
Speaker 7: who's not some Freedom Caucus members say, if you want
Speaker 7: supplemental funding, you're probably going to have to offset it. So, yes,
Speaker 7: Ukraine is a tougher sell to the ultra concervatives than
Speaker 7: wildfire relief. But they haven't really shown a willingness to
Speaker 7: go with the President's proposal on any of this yet.
Speaker 2: Bringing back to the first of June, I'm guessing Jack
Speaker 2: was standing there, Senator Lindsay Graham.
Speaker 8: I'm talking to the President Zelenski at one o'clock today.
Speaker 8: He's confused. I want him to know that this budget
Speaker 8: deal does not take off the table the ability to
Speaker 8: help you train with their liberation efforts, that there will
Speaker 8: be more money coming through a supplemental I want our
Speaker 8: own military to hear that there's a chance to repair
Speaker 8: some of the damage.
Speaker 2: This is when the outrage first, the freak out first
Speaker 2: happened when it became clear than in this debt ceiling
Speaker 2: deal that was looming that there would not be as
Speaker 2: much money for the Pentagon as expected. And so then
Speaker 2: I guess there was another side deal in the Senate
Speaker 2: around that Jack that brought us to this situation. We're
Speaker 2: in here where the Senate the House are both playing
Speaker 2: off different sheet music.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Senate and House Republicans have as many differences on
Speaker 7: spending almost as House Republicans and House Democrats. Lindsey Graham
Speaker 7: has been very very vocal right from the start that
Speaker 7: emergency funds should be used to provide more defense spending
Speaker 7: than under this framework in the debt limit deal, not
Speaker 7: even just if something unforeseen happens with Ukraine that there
Speaker 7: should just be more money. So Graham also himself has
Speaker 7: said directly to me, I think when we need a stopgap,
Speaker 7: which we obviously will need to get past September thirtieth,
Speaker 7: we need to tack on Ukraine funding disaster aid. He's
Speaker 7: also said, and this wasn't addressed directly in the request
Speaker 7: food aid Global food Aid, because that's still sort of
Speaker 7: a tangential Ukraine Russia issue and he wants more funding
Speaker 7: for that. So you're getting a push from some Senate
Speaker 7: Republicans and Susan Collins is on board with it to
Speaker 7: add money, and they are fighting with the House Conservative
Speaker 7: Freedom Caucus members about as much as the Democrats are fighting.
Speaker 2: But that would come on that would come as part
Speaker 2: of the cr though, is what you're suggesting. If there
Speaker 2: is one, All this would be attached separate from the
Speaker 2: actual budget for the next fiscal year.
Speaker 7: Right, that is the idea from the likes of Lindsey Graham.
Speaker 7: I think that's one unanswered question is does everything go
Speaker 7: together if you can get some of the Freedom Caucus
Speaker 7: members to say okay to disaster aid, and then that
Speaker 7: actually can ease the path to avoiding a shutdown and
Speaker 7: getting the continuing resolution, and you separately then negotiate Ukraine
Speaker 7: funding that has not been ruled out yet. This is
Speaker 7: what we call packaging and sequencing. And yes, it's very
Speaker 7: inside baseball, but it's important to how they're gonna try
Speaker 7: to avoid a shutdown.
Speaker 4: At the end of this conversation, Kali, Yeah, I just
Speaker 4: wonder what the real likelihood is that they successfully avoid
Speaker 4: a shutdown, because I've had people tell me. Congressman Seth Molton,
Speaker 4: for example, said there is a quiet understanding that the
Speaker 4: government is going to shut down, right.
Speaker 7: Poet, Yeah, there is definitely a threat of a shutdown
Speaker 7: October first. It also is a real threat for when
Speaker 7: you get toward January first, if they get a stopgap
Speaker 7: deal and keep the ball rolling past September thirtieth, that
Speaker 7: does not mean they're out of the woods. There's that
Speaker 7: threat of the automatic one percent if they're using a
Speaker 7: continuing resolution after the end of December. I don't know
Speaker 7: when the greatest threat of a shutdown is, but when
Speaker 7: you see the huge gap between the different parties, including
Speaker 7: Senate and House Republicans, nothing looks great and it absolutely
Speaker 7: is a possibility that it falls apart at the end
Speaker 7: of September.
Speaker 2: That's why Libby Cansfell was saying January one is the
Speaker 2: real deadline here that Jack, that would be fifteen days
Speaker 2: before Iowa.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, it'll all heat up with a lot of
Speaker 7: I guess, a harsher political spotlight as people get on
Speaker 7: the campaign trail, as the specter of the presidential race
Speaker 7: becomes more clear, it can be tougher and tougher to
Speaker 7: actually strike deals. And that's what happens every other year
Speaker 7: as you get closer to the election. Nobody wants to
Speaker 7: take a bad deal.
Speaker 4: So I know you'll be listening to this conference call
Speaker 4: at six pm. What tangible signs of progress should we
Speaker 4: be looking for between now and actually weeks from now
Speaker 4: when the House returns to Capitol Hill. How much work
Speaker 4: really is going to be done even though they are
Speaker 4: still technically in recess.
Speaker 7: If the House Republicans can come up with a clear
Speaker 7: plan to hold more votes, because they tried to start
Speaker 7: holding votes just on their own bills, and they had
Speaker 7: one and then they the second kind of fell apart.
Speaker 7: If they can have a clear agreement among themselves to
Speaker 7: get the Conservatives on board, and that's the kind of
Speaker 7: thing they're going to be talking about at this conference call,
Speaker 7: that would be a better sign than if things really
Speaker 7: melt down. So really, the progress that you could see
Speaker 7: in August is if House Republicans come up with a
Speaker 7: more specific and concrete plan for how they want to
Speaker 7: move forward, rather than bickering between the Conservatives and the
Speaker 7: leadership and that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Got it.
Speaker 2: Call later starts at six o'clock, That is.
Speaker 7: What we've heard. This will not be a public call,
Speaker 7: so we'll see what people tell us.
Speaker 4: Everybody is going to conference. Oh can you imagine the
Speaker 4: zoom chaos?
Speaker 2: No, don't at all.
Speaker 4: It's going to proceed.
Speaker 2: But would you please mute yourself a congressman, you're not
Speaker 2: on mute Jack, Great to see you, Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 2: Jack Fitzpatrick Bloomberg, Government Congress reporter. With a little bit
Speaker 2: of sense of what's coming. You can let the quiet
Speaker 2: August pass you by, but there's a lot on the
Speaker 2: way in September.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Sound on podcast Catch us
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Speaker 2: I got to talk of contagion today and over the
Speaker 2: weekend with some tough news economically from China, Kayley, that
Speaker 2: has a lot of folks wondering that, you know, this
Speaker 2: new call of a soft landing might be changing again.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The the thing is, this is the second largest economy
Speaker 4: we're talking about. Even though it feels like it's a
Speaker 4: world away. The US and China are inextrictably linked economically, right,
Speaker 4: heavily reliant on China as a trade partner, and as
Speaker 4: China goes kind of the global economy may go as well,
Speaker 4: given its importance for all those reasons. So when you
Speaker 4: see things like they're dealing with deflation, having issues with trade,
Speaker 4: the property sector very much in turmoil, a lot of
Speaker 4: concern around credit. To your point about potential contagion, it's
Speaker 4: not necessarily encouraging headlines for market participants.
Speaker 2: No far from, which is why we thought the column
Speaker 2: here on Bloomberg Opinion by Andreas Kluth was important. It's
Speaker 2: time for a pause in US hysteria about China. I
Speaker 2: love a contrarian view, and I'm not sure this actually
Speaker 2: is one, but what we've been hearing in the echo
Speaker 2: chamber here inside the Beltway would suggest that because both
Speaker 2: Democrats and Republicans can't seem to run fast enough from
Speaker 2: Beijing right now, or run fast enough toward Taiwan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or just kind of adopting the hawkish toward China narrative.
Speaker 4: In general, it feels like everyone has to do that
Speaker 4: President Biden, including like we saw at his donor event
Speaker 4: in Utah last week in which he said China's economy
Speaker 4: was a quote ticking time bomb.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Andreas joins us right now in studio here in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. By the way, welcome to Washington. We're delighted
Speaker 2: to have you here in the bureau. As you write,
Speaker 2: prudent d risking one of our favorite terms.
Speaker 1: As well.
Speaker 2: We went through the risking, the coupling, I can't remember.
Speaker 2: The rest must stay proportional and targeted. What would define
Speaker 2: that if you were advising the administration.
Speaker 9: What would define that as Actually, for example, what they
Speaker 9: did last week before Joe Biden lost it at that fundraiser.
Speaker 9: I think that was the day after or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 9: but before that, they took a very you know, in
Speaker 9: the tussle between the Treasury and the Department of Defense.
Speaker 9: It seemed that the Treasury went out in that one
Speaker 9: and for a pragmatic modern and measured a proportionate but
Speaker 9: still hawk as you approach, which which was that they're
Speaker 9: going to have limits on American investments in Chinese companies
Speaker 9: that are involved in quantum computing, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence.
Speaker 9: And that makes sense because those are the things you
Speaker 9: might need in the next war. And if it comes
Speaker 9: to that over Taiwan or the South Tennessee, no one's
Speaker 9: no one here or certainly not me and no and
Speaker 9: I know it is suggesting to to to not prepare
Speaker 9: for that scenario, but to go beyond that and talk
Speaker 9: of not de risking the term you just used, but
Speaker 9: the decoupling, and especially to make that a bidding war
Speaker 9: in the in the upcoming election season in both parties,
Speaker 9: but especially on the Republican side, to Santas and is dangerous.
Speaker 9: It's just also stupid. It's not in America's interests. It's
Speaker 9: it's not traditional American foreign policy. We wouldn't want to
Speaker 9: impoverage one point four billion people. First of all, we
Speaker 9: wouldn't want a humanliate them. Also, that's their narrative anyway,
Speaker 9: and also we want them to keep buying our stuff.
Speaker 9: We just want to prepare to win a war if
Speaker 9: it comes to that.
Speaker 4: Well, and so to your point about everyone going to
Speaker 4: the hawkst direction, that's the hysteria to what you refer
Speaker 4: in this piece. On your point about this executive order
Speaker 4: from last week being very narrow in scope, the rhetoric
Speaker 4: from the administration around that has been this is about
Speaker 4: national security interests. We are not trying to hold China
Speaker 4: back economically. They've repeatedly said this. And yet the point
Speaker 4: you're making is that the US may not have anything
Speaker 4: to do with holding China back economically. That may just
Speaker 4: be happening independent of what we do.
Speaker 9: Well, that's the sort of cheeky Mark Twainyan kind of or.
Speaker 9: And in this case, there's a Napoleon allegedly said, never
Speaker 9: interrupt your enemy if he's making a mistake, and a
Speaker 9: thesis that a lot of people here are also talking
Speaker 9: about because you might consider contrauring is by Adam Posen
Speaker 9: of the Peterson Institute of Economics, who's saying, you know,
Speaker 9: as you just pointed out, Kayley, China has been surprising
Speaker 9: us all year with negative news. When we thought, after
Speaker 9: the zero COVID policy, after the drop, that it might
Speaker 9: get positive, they're in fact becoming negative. And Adam Posen
Speaker 9: is saying, well, this is long term, and we haven't
Speaker 9: understood how negative this is going to get. Why because
Speaker 9: Chi Jinping reverted to communist or authoritarian type and started
Speaker 9: fiddling arbitrarily with draconian, abrupt, whimsical, capricious measures in the
Speaker 9: economy and has freaked out his own population so that
Speaker 9: they're saving or the equivalent of hoarding and not investing
Speaker 9: or spending anymore. So productivity, they have a democraphic problem,
Speaker 9: they have these other problems. But they're saying, if we're
Speaker 9: projecting less than five percent growth from next year, it's
Speaker 9: going to be a lot worse than that. So it
Speaker 9: could be that the Chinese have just sabotaged their own economy.
Speaker 9: Why would we try to do a more of it
Speaker 9: just because there's an election season and then be and
Speaker 9: then look like the bad guys. We don't need to
Speaker 9: do that. We could maybe start talking cooperatively with them
Speaker 9: about some other things.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we've referred to the U I guess hot
Speaker 2: mic moment that the President had at the fundraiser in
Speaker 2: Utah last week. He called China's economic situation a ticking
Speaker 2: time bomb?
Speaker 5: Is he right?
Speaker 9: Well, the Adam Posen theory or the theory that I'm
Speaker 9: interested in now and that I agree with, is that
Speaker 9: it's not so much a ticking time bomb, but this
Speaker 9: sort of I don't know what it's a slow and
Speaker 9: gradual metaphor. I need like a like we thought this
Speaker 9: was a rise and rise and rise story and that's
Speaker 9: how they painted it. Since thanks shaping, it's in fact
Speaker 9: of a rise and rise and now reversion to the mean.
Speaker 9: They have an aging population. This may may not go anywhere.
Speaker 9: What you're saying with the spillover I guess to talk
Speaker 9: today is is this going to be Asian crisis two
Speaker 9: point zero?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 9: I covered Asian chrisis one point out of Hong Kong.
Speaker 9: I don't think that's going to happen because they have
Speaker 9: control over their exchange rate and things like that. But
Speaker 9: that could happen and that would be really bad news
Speaker 9: for all of us. So we don't want that. We
Speaker 9: just don't want them to get so big that they
Speaker 9: can fund Belton Road initiatives in Africa and Asia and
Speaker 9: displace us. That's all we do, I would say.
Speaker 4: Okay, So just to kind of wrap things up here,
Speaker 4: as you were alluding to, we need to tread carefully
Speaker 4: so that you can focus on areas of cooperation with China.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking things like climate change, for example. Really, given
Speaker 4: how tense this relationship is and when you have potentially
Speaker 4: incendiary rhetoric coming from the President of the United States,
Speaker 4: what actually is your degree of optimism that that cooperation
Speaker 4: can happen when we're just starting to even really talk
Speaker 4: to each other again.
Speaker 9: It's more optimistic than you would think. That the President
Speaker 9: lost it a little bit because even though it's true,
Speaker 9: I think he called them terrible guys, bad guys, something
Speaker 9: like that, which is objectively true, it's just not the
Speaker 9: president's job to say that. You leave that to Kaylee,
Speaker 9: Joe and me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, it will be clear about that.
Speaker 9: But the people who have in recent years really, I mean,
Speaker 9: since Trump really done the damage? Is she jinping? And
Speaker 9: with something that you may know is called wolf warrior diplomacy.
Speaker 9: It's sort of a bad film, atrociously, it's like Rambo
Speaker 9: for Chinese people, with the roles reversed. And so he's
Speaker 9: told every all the diplomats be a wolf warriors and
Speaker 9: kiss everybody off. And that has to stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you just moved here from Germany. Welcome to Washington.
Speaker 2: Thank you, don't be a stranger. We both want you
Speaker 2: to come back off. I want you to do that.
Speaker 2: Andreas Klouf, how about it? Everybody, This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Sound on podcast. Catch the
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Speaker 1: thirty A.
Speaker 2: Six tweet thread six by my count here by President
Speaker 2: Biden today. Not exactly the most prolific on Twitter, even
Speaker 2: though I'm supposed to call it X Is that an
Speaker 2: ex thread?
Speaker 5: Now? I can't.
Speaker 2: But it's all about Hawaii. The President says every asset
Speaker 2: we have will be available to victims of the fires
Speaker 2: in the tweet threads as the Federal Emergency Management Agency
Speaker 2: is offering temporary shelter assistants, encouraging people to apply for help.
Speaker 2: And this follows. At least one good opportunity over the
Speaker 2: weekend to talk about it would have been the bike
Speaker 2: ride in Delaware. Can you come talk about Mali? Can
Speaker 2: come talk about they got a wave?
Speaker 1: There? He goes.
Speaker 2: The big bike ride on Sunday was nice out, but
Speaker 2: it of course led to a whole round of criticism
Speaker 2: about what's the president got better to do here than
Speaker 2: deal with the situation in Hawaii? Is warm? People are
Speaker 2: exposed to the visuals horrifying visuals from this fire in Lehina,
Speaker 2: and the President is taken to Twitter to talk about
Speaker 2: it on a week by the way, that was set
Speaker 2: to celebrate the first anniversary of the IRA, not your IRA,
Speaker 2: the Inflation Reduction Act. Incidentally, the first response as I
Speaker 2: look on Twitter X it was a five tweet thread,
Speaker 2: I was wrong. The first response that I see need
Speaker 2: to rename Hawaii to Ukraine. Then Biden will shower it
Speaker 2: with money. We reassembled our panel, Genie Schanzano.
Speaker 5: And Rick Davis.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to say are with us Bloomberg Politics contributors.
Speaker 2: Is this fair? Genie? Did he miss an opportunity?
Speaker 10: He did miss an opportunity, and you know, Justin asked
Speaker 10: him the right question to say, you know, give a
Speaker 10: no comment to that. I was wondering did he not
Speaker 10: hear the question? Did he misunderstand it? Because this is
Speaker 10: like politics one oh one. You're the president of the
Speaker 10: United States, what about you know, we're thinking of everybody suffering.
Speaker 10: We have you know, sent aid already because the reality
Speaker 10: is both the governor and the Senator thank the president
Speaker 10: for acting so quickly. Six hours he declared a presidential declaration.
Speaker 10: That's really really fast. They were thrilled by that. He
Speaker 10: you know, that is the right approach, But a no
Speaker 10: comment sounds tone deaf and all I can imagine it
Speaker 10: is not the empathetic Joe Biden we've grown to know
Speaker 10: and love, and so you know, maybe he misunderstood or
Speaker 10: didn't hear it, but yeah, he missed an opportunity and
Speaker 10: they tried to go back on X and fix it.
Speaker 10: But he's got to say it in his own words.
Speaker 2: Uh, I guess we are really calling it x now.
Speaker 2: This moment, here's just a couple of seconds long, was
Speaker 2: tweeted by the r n C. This is another moment
Speaker 2: at Rehoboth Beach. Well, you can talk about the Hawaires
Speaker 2: podcast the president no comment was the answer. Why no comment? Rick,
Speaker 2: I surely you would not have advised him to say that.
Speaker 2: What should he have said?
Speaker 7: Yeah, don't they.
Speaker 11: Give presidents a brief that says hear how to not
Speaker 11: screw up something like Katrina. I mean George Bush said
Speaker 11: the state, good job, Brownie, And so you would think
Speaker 11: that in a natural disaster, as Genie said, you know,
Speaker 11: our empathetic commander in chief would say something with his
Speaker 11: heart goes out to the people of Hawaii to the
Speaker 11: horrible loss. I mean, there are a hundred things he
Speaker 11: could have said other than no comment, which is now
Speaker 11: being compared to what he said when they also caught
Speaker 11: him by surprise during the East Palestine toxic contamination when
Speaker 11: he said no comment there. So President no comment is
Speaker 11: not going to be what people want to hear from him.
Speaker 11: So his staff needs to really understand that there's no
Speaker 11: such thing about being on vacation when you're president. Of the
Speaker 11: United States.
Speaker 2: So what should he do, Jeanie, he can't fly over it.
Speaker 2: We're both referring here to Katrina here and good job brownie.
Speaker 2: Former President George W. Bush do in the flyover he
Speaker 2: was heavily criticized for. This is eleven hours away. What
Speaker 2: does Joe Biden do?
Speaker 10: He should be expressing concern and a commitment on the
Speaker 10: part of the federal government to do everything to help
Speaker 10: the people who are suffering there. We are looking at
Speaker 10: what fifteen hundred people still missing, almost one hundred passed
Speaker 10: away at this point. The devastation is traumatic. It's the
Speaker 10: worst firefighter firefighter fire rather that we've had, and he
Speaker 10: needs to express that he and his administration are on
Speaker 10: top of it. The resources are there or coming, and
Speaker 10: most importantly for him, his heart goes out to the
Speaker 10: people suffering. You hardly have to be president or a
Speaker 10: politician to say I'm very sorry and I am praying
Speaker 10: for in thinking of everybody impacted. Empathy is what he
Speaker 10: needs to express, and he needs to do it in
Speaker 10: his own words, and then he can say he will
Speaker 10: visit when the time is right and he's not interfering
Speaker 10: with their ability to help you rescue people who may
Speaker 10: still be have an opportunity to be rescued and to
Speaker 10: help people out.
Speaker 2: And again, meantime, this is the administration is hoping to
Speaker 2: talk this week about the first anniversary of the IRA,
Speaker 2: which is seeming less possible because of all of this.
Speaker 2: Then you turn on Sunday morning television and you've got
Speaker 2: a Democrat from Saint Paul from Minnesota urging the president
Speaker 2: not to run for reelection. Here's Congressman Dean Phillips.
Speaker 12: People want to turn the page. I think that's fair
Speaker 12: to say. As a Democrat, I adore Jobiden. He saved
Speaker 12: this country. He can cement his legacy. My real call
Speaker 12: to action right now is not about me. The call
Speaker 12: to action is to ask the president to pass the torch.
Speaker 2: That's clearly not in the works, Rick, at least that
Speaker 2: we're aware of. If your publicly, Roger Stone, I guess
Speaker 2: would tell you otherwise. But how does the president manage
Speaker 2: calls like this?
Speaker 11: Well, largely he'll ignore it. They'll be a cavalcade of
Speaker 11: Democratic office holders and power brokers who call this this
Speaker 11: poor guy up and wood shed him. And it does
Speaker 11: come actually at a pretty sensitive time in his sort
Speaker 11: of emergent presidential campaign. But I would say too, one
Speaker 11: of the things that's going to come up with this
Speaker 11: fire situation in Hawaii is that he's asked for a
Speaker 11: supplemental which increases FEMA substantially to handle these kinds of disasters.
Speaker 11: And when that hits the floor, he better be prepared
Speaker 11: much better than he was this weekend to make a
Speaker 11: very clear pitch for this, because that you don't want
Speaker 11: the natural disaster assistance overshadowing or succumbing to a problem
Speaker 11: when you also have your Ukraine assistance attached to it.
Speaker 11: So he's he's going to have to have a campaign
Speaker 11: around that, and it's and it's going to have to
Speaker 11: be very public and very forceful.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about this a lot or next hour,
Speaker 2: these supplemental budget requests, but it does make you wonder
Speaker 2: what we're heading for when lawmakers return to town, although,
Speaker 2: as we'll learn a little bit later on in the program,
Speaker 2: they're not waiting. There's an important conference call tonight the
Speaker 2: Republican leadership to talk about these budget matters. We'll get there.
Speaker 2: Rick and Jeannie with some final thoughts next as another
Speaker 2: Republican candidate leaves a mark in Iowa. By wrapping this
Speaker 2: is Bloomberg, you're.
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Speaker 2: Carbon whole narrative. Last week on the Republican campaign trail
Speaker 2: was a surgeon vivek Ramaswama. All right, maybe not surging,
Speaker 2: but his numbers were up finished fourth in the New
Speaker 2: York Times Siena poll in Iowa, specifically setting him up
Speaker 2: for what could have been the biggest moment of his campaign,
Speaker 2: wrapping eminem on the soapbox at the Iowa State Fair.
Speaker 2: Listen to them get into this. That's they love it.
Speaker 2: They can't get enough of it. Kayley Lines is even dancing.
Speaker 2: And it brings us back to this whole question Rick really,
Speaker 2: I can't know. Rick is not a fan Genie. I'm
Speaker 2: guessing that you are. It brings us down to the
Speaker 2: question though, of likability. We heard about this with Ron DeSantis, right.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's more quote unquote fun. How do you manage
Speaker 2: that part of a campaign?
Speaker 11: Rick, Well, uh, I think it's managing itself. I mean,
Speaker 11: we're witnessing the future of national politics. The fact has
Speaker 11: hit the stage, our first millennial candidate for the GOP
Speaker 11: for national office. And look, he's super smart, he's telegenic.
Speaker 11: He's doing a great job as a candidate. But I'm
Speaker 11: going to take some getting used to when I see
Speaker 11: a presidential candidate start to wrap.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing you're not gonna tell Joe Biden to do this, Genie,
Speaker 2: maybe you will. All I know is the woman standing
Speaker 2: behind Vivek there at the fair worker looked very wary
Speaker 2: about what's going on.
Speaker 10: I would pay Joe Biden to do this. Bite your tongue, Joe, please.
Speaker 10: And I'm very confused because the rhyme from college was
Speaker 10: deveake rhymes with cake, but we say the vex. So
Speaker 10: I wish he would clarify this. He did this in college,
Speaker 10: he's doing it again. I just have to remind him.
Speaker 10: This is from two thousand and two, so the young
Speaker 10: kids in my class, this is sort of before they
Speaker 10: were born or cognizance. So he's gonna have to move
Speaker 10: it up a bit, even the millennial of vivike Ramaswami
Speaker 10: a little bit behind the times.
Speaker 2: The vake I'm psych I have so much to learn still,
Speaker 2: So it's basically like he was singing Glenn tunes up
Speaker 2: there is what you're saying, Genie. Thank you so much,
Speaker 2: Rick and Jennie, our signature panel, the best in the business.
Speaker 9: We thank you.
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