Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and California will negotiate trade with other
Speaker 1: countries to bypass Trump's tariffs. That's incredible stuff. We have
Speaker 1: such a great show for you today. The Center for
Speaker 1: American Progress is near a Tanbin stops by to talk
Speaker 1: about how Trump just can't stop winning and by winning
Speaker 1: we mean we are all losing. Of course I'm joking.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich about
Speaker 1: being a voice in the darkness for people who are
Speaker 1: worried and how Democrats can do more of that. Then
Speaker 1: we have a special bonus from our fabulous YouTube channel
Speaker 1: with economist and friend of mine Justin Wolfers, who will
Speaker 1: explain to us why tariffs have devastated the public markets.
Speaker 2: But first the news, Molly, almost ten trillion dollars of
Speaker 2: stock value has been wiped out since inauguration day. Yes,
Speaker 2: we're requit this right before the closing bill. We may
Speaker 2: get to the ten trillion. We're winning. We're fucking winning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are winning.
Speaker 1: So all of you people who voted for Trump because
Speaker 1: you thought he'd be good for the economy. Ha ha
Speaker 1: ha ha ha. We're all laughing all the way to
Speaker 1: the poorhouse. US stock market has wiped out nine point
Speaker 1: six trillion dollars since inauguration day. Stocks have had a
Speaker 1: rough go of it since Donald Trump was sworn into
Speaker 1: office for the second term. You know why that is
Speaker 1: because his policies suck. He's bad at this. He's not
Speaker 1: very smart. He's obsessed with tariffs, and he's ruining the economy.
Speaker 1: We're about to go into a trade war. Everything is
Speaker 1: so stupid. Major equity indexes have seen their losses deep in.
Speaker 3: So Donald Trump goes to the Rose Garden.
Speaker 1: He makes an insane speech which includes the word boom
Speaker 1: four times. Okay, the economy will go boom, and fyi,
Speaker 1: it went boom.
Speaker 3: It just didn't go boom.
Speaker 1: Quite the way he wanted to. The SMP down thousands
Speaker 1: of points. Everything is down, down, down down, and fyi,
Speaker 1: there is no plan here right like this is tariffs,
Speaker 1: which will be met by other countries putting in more tariffs,
Speaker 1: which will be met by a trade war, which will
Speaker 1: make everything more expensive.
Speaker 3: You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump doesn't know how tariffs were so here we
Speaker 1: are good news. If you live in California, you may
Speaker 1: not be subjected to the terror because everything is insane
Speaker 1: and he's retruthing things that say he's purposefully crushing the market,
Speaker 1: which does not inspire confidence in the market.
Speaker 3: Molly, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, there were already people in Trump's administration
Speaker 1: muse about whether or not they were going to go
Speaker 1: into a recession.
Speaker 3: This is something presidents never do.
Speaker 1: Members of administration never do this, you know why, because
Speaker 1: they don't want a recession, so they usually don't sort
Speaker 1: of sit around and go like, maybe we might have
Speaker 1: a recession, but who knows. So look, this is stupid, pointless,
Speaker 1: bad for the country, bad for everyone. I do not
Speaker 1: think Donald Trump is intentionally crashing the markets because he
Speaker 1: loves carnage. But I do think that he's incompetent and
Speaker 1: kind of delusional.
Speaker 3: And there are no grown ups in the room.
Speaker 1: So listen, Gary Cohen, if you're listening to this, come back,
Speaker 1: come back, Gary Cohen. We need you to talk some
Speaker 1: sense into Donald Trump before we all are living under
Speaker 1: a bridge.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think the other word that you could
Speaker 2: have added in there is Trump is also careless, which
Speaker 2: is why he retweets things like that, because what he
Speaker 2: sees is the thing that says Trump is playing chess
Speaker 2: while everyone else is playing checkers. Anyway, to go along
Speaker 2: with that ten trillion dollars of wealth wiped out, the
Speaker 2: new projected cost of his tax cuts for the rich
Speaker 2: are seven trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, good luck getting them passed, right Like so,
Speaker 1: last time Trump did tax cuts and then some tariffs.
Speaker 1: This time Trump is doing tariffs with the hopes that
Speaker 1: it will drive Republicans to do tax cuts.
Speaker 3: I think it's going to be tough.
Speaker 1: Right now, all of a sudden, we have senators freaking
Speaker 1: out about the tariffs. We have real staunch Republicans. They
Speaker 1: weren't freaked out by RFK putting an anti vaxxer in
Speaker 1: charge of HSS.
Speaker 3: They weren't freaked out.
Speaker 1: By all of the fucked up things that Trump did,
Speaker 1: right like putting cash battel and in char to the FBI,
Speaker 1: or putting Pam Bondy as head of the DOJ. These
Speaker 1: things they were fine with, right putting I mean Tulsei
Speaker 1: Gabbarn in the nowtional Security Organization. No, the thing that
Speaker 1: got them upset was crashing the markets. Look, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: we'll take it. But I think Donald Trump's about to
Speaker 1: have real problems passing these tax cuts because this is
Speaker 1: the only leverage that sane people have. So I think,
Speaker 1: I actually think this may end up being You'll be
Speaker 1: shocked to hear this, but yet another unforced error in
Speaker 1: a administration filled with unforced errors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed. So my Twitter was ablaze this morning with
Speaker 2: a poll, which is not normally a thing that you
Speaker 2: see happening around the first week of April after a
Speaker 2: new administration comes in. But the poll said that AOC
Speaker 2: leads Chuck Schumer in the primary by almost twenty points.
Speaker 2: What are you seeing here? Because I think there's some
Speaker 2: things we should discuss.
Speaker 1: So this is a poll from Data for Progress, and
Speaker 1: I like to think of Data for Progress's things.
Speaker 2: Jesse and I like, yes, that they tend to be
Speaker 2: quote syst the lines to our worldview as far as
Speaker 2: polsters go, right.
Speaker 1: They are sort of the rest mutant of the left. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's a fair amount of wish casting, and for that
Speaker 1: reason they are actually ranked as a C.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should say they had some very questionable practices
Speaker 2: around with their pollingue for Elizabeth Ward's presidential CAMPI and
Speaker 2: they were called out for that did not look very
Speaker 2: good upon.
Speaker 1: Review and polls. Pollsters are ranked from ABC. So C
Speaker 1: is really as bad. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you can get worse than C.
Speaker 2: It just doesn't happen much if you can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's seven hundred and sixty seven likely voters.
Speaker 1: That's another thing, likely voters versus registered voters. So you
Speaker 1: know I would do with this what you will. The
Speaker 1: point I think is that voters are mad. We hear
Speaker 1: this again and again. They're mad. They feel that Democrats
Speaker 1: are not represented them the way they want to be represented.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of anger towards Schumer. Whether or
Speaker 1: not he could have done anything by the time the
Speaker 1: CR got around to him is an open question, but
Speaker 1: there certainly is a lot of feeling that he should
Speaker 1: have done something. And so I think there are real
Speaker 1: things to take away from this poll, even if this
Speaker 1: poll is not a straight line between this and what
Speaker 1: actually will happen.
Speaker 2: Agreed, this was an interesting thing that your husband shared
Speaker 2: with us.
Speaker 3: Yes, we got a text from Macreenfield. Yes, go on.
Speaker 2: How many lives does US foreign aid save?
Speaker 3: It saves a lot of lives in fact.
Speaker 1: When I was on the phone talking to Macreenfield this afternoon,
Speaker 1: he was musing about whether or not Donald Trump will
Speaker 1: have indirectly led to the deaths with the secession of
Speaker 1: foreign aid.
Speaker 3: More deaths than Paul pot So three million.
Speaker 1: Three million people will die because the Trump administration.
Speaker 3: Is ending for an aid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not good.
Speaker 1: If killing people is bad, then they don't want to
Speaker 1: be good. And it's people in East and Southern Africa, Nigeria.
Speaker 1: They'll die of preventable diseases, They'll die of malnutrition, they'll
Speaker 1: die of hunger. It's a pretty dark way to go.
Speaker 1: And it's all happening because very wealthy people want to
Speaker 1: pay fewer taxes. You're at Tandon as the president of
Speaker 1: the Center for American Progress. Welcome to Fast Politics near
Speaker 1: A Tandon.
Speaker 4: Great to be with you.
Speaker 1: We're at the I Told you so moment in Trump's
Speaker 1: second term, where he's doing all the stuff that we
Speaker 1: all knew he was going to do, and people are like,
Speaker 1: oh new, I'm making hand gestures to express my displeasure.
Speaker 3: I don't actually get a lot.
Speaker 1: Of pleasure out of being right. I would have rather
Speaker 1: been happy discuss.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess I'm in the space of like, I
Speaker 5: think it's totally fine for us to be individually outraged
Speaker 5: that our fellow Americans decided to vote for someone who
Speaker 5: advertised again again, I mean, who advertises going to basically
Speaker 5: do these tariffs that if you had thought about it
Speaker 5: for a second, you might think, oh, that could like
Speaker 5: take our economy and like headed into a gigantic like wall. Right,
Speaker 5: So I understand the anger, but I also think, look,
Speaker 5: there are a bunch of people who don't play that
Speaker 5: pay that much attention. There are a bunch of people
Speaker 5: who don't pay that much attention to politics who also thought, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, his first term, he said all this shit
Speaker 5: and nothing really bad happened, and they didn't really like
Speaker 5: process that he was going to systematically get rid of
Speaker 5: every single guardrail. Understand how like we're all angry. I'm
Speaker 5: definitely angry that, like, I'm in a country where people
Speaker 5: voted to kind of do all this damage. But I think, honestly,
Speaker 5: you know, politics's addition, not subtraction, and we have to
Speaker 5: welcome converts.
Speaker 4: Even if you want.
Speaker 5: To basically say why were you such an asshole, it's
Speaker 5: actually better to say I'm glad you've come over now
Speaker 5: I totally get like, it's not it's not like the
Speaker 5: just the tariffs. It's like the dehumanization of people, the
Speaker 5: picking people up off the streets. It's enraging. So, I mean,
Speaker 5: it is a lot to ask of the people who
Speaker 5: were right.
Speaker 4: To say, just let's be welcoming.
Speaker 5: But I still think we kind of have to be
Speaker 5: welcoming because the most important thing is to build like
Speaker 5: a gigantic majority against this monstrosity.
Speaker 3: No, And I think that's a good point.
Speaker 1: I would also add though, that I mean, we're not
Speaker 1: even one hundred days into this thing already. You know,
Speaker 1: the federal government is in tatters, right, The markets are
Speaker 1: cratering around us. The chance of a recession has gone
Speaker 1: from thirty to forty to sixty percent, is according to
Speaker 1: JP Morgan Chase, to those woke liberals over at JP
Speaker 1: Morgan Chase. And I think, what is the thing that I,
Speaker 1: as a person who gives a shit about policy, which
Speaker 1: makes me in the point, oh.
Speaker 5: Right, I'm going to say one percent? Like you know,
Speaker 5: I don't know, you live to be so negative, it's.
Speaker 4: Like a right.
Speaker 1: And so in my constant quest to relitigate what went wrong,
Speaker 1: so Biden, I am a big fan of all of
Speaker 1: the legislation, chips and science. Basically, Biden tried to bring
Speaker 1: manufacturing back to the United States, which is what Trump
Speaker 1: is trying to do with these tariffs, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but we just did it in a way that
Speaker 5: was smart and not totally moronic.
Speaker 1: Yes, there are certainly people who want to crash the
Speaker 1: economy and live in the road, right. I don't think
Speaker 1: Trump is playing three dimensional chests here. I don't think
Speaker 1: he's trying to crash the economy to enact a tech oligarchy.
Speaker 1: I don't think he thinks he's doing that. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe he is, but I think he thinks he's bringing
Speaker 1: manufacturing back. I think he thinks that the original sin
Speaker 1: of American life, which we all know to be slavery,
Speaker 1: was actually manufacturing and globalism.
Speaker 4: Right yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean if he thinks that much, but which do not.
Speaker 1: But the point is I think that because when he
Speaker 1: talks about, you know, how he's going to be, he
Speaker 1: thinks he's going to bring manufacturing back. So one of
Speaker 1: the problems was the Biden administration was that they were
Speaker 1: not able to communicate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a big challenge. Yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And a lot of those incredible policy accomplishments were
Speaker 1: were not transmitted. Talk to me about sort of the
Speaker 1: policy that you guys put in place with Chips and
Speaker 1: Science and some of these stuff to bring back manufacturing
Speaker 1: where it is now and what it looks like, how
Speaker 1: it's different than what I'm doing right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, I mean, look, President Biden had a vision which
Speaker 5: was that we should actually have policies that made America
Speaker 5: a place where manufacturing could thrive. So we had Chips
Speaker 5: and Science Act, you had elements of the Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 5: like the big investments in climate and renewables and investments
Speaker 5: in electric batteries and solar panels and all these things.
Speaker 5: And the idea of this was that we could basically
Speaker 5: have an industrial policy which tried to make the United
Speaker 5: States a place where people want to do business and
Speaker 5: come in to create things here. And we had huge
Speaker 5: successes with gigantic plants being built in Upstate New York,
Speaker 5: Micron and Arizona and Georgia.
Speaker 4: And I think we should all think.
Speaker 5: Really seriously about why that didn't translate at the time.
Speaker 5: And I guess I say, you know, I think this
Speaker 5: is a little bit of a warning to the Trump
Speaker 5: administration because the President used you know, smart tariffs where
Speaker 5: he needed to, particularly with China, because they do have
Speaker 5: a series of policies where they are kind of preferencing
Speaker 5: Chinese goods. But you know, had an industrial policy where
Speaker 5: we're really investing in the United States and we create
Speaker 5: a lot of jobs. But we also learned that people
Speaker 5: were very price sensitive. And I know this is like
Speaker 5: news in the world, like people really care about jobs
Speaker 5: in the United States. But also, you know, when you
Speaker 5: know an average family, when people are kind of trying
Speaker 5: to think about how they make ends meet, they're really
Speaker 5: thinking about how much things cost, and then what their
Speaker 5: wages are, and when costs go up through the roof
Speaker 5: and they outpace their wages, like, it's not crazy that
Speaker 5: people are angry about that. So what I think is
Speaker 5: so kind of insane about the moment we're in is
Speaker 5: Donald Trump said, I have this gigantic criticism of Joe Biden,
Speaker 5: which is that all the costs up and I'm going
Speaker 5: to bring a costs down immediately, And then he decided
Speaker 5: to do this gigantic, insane tariff policy, which you know, okay,
Speaker 5: let's have criticism of China, but like what do we
Speaker 5: have against Canada or like most of these Africrican counturies
Speaker 5: or the island with the penguins, Like the whole thing
Speaker 5: is kind of nuts.
Speaker 3: Penguin Island's going and.
Speaker 5: Then you know, I mean it's like I find it
Speaker 5: on some levels so hysterical. But honestly, what's happening here
Speaker 5: is I think honestly President Trump just like bought his
Speaker 5: own bullshit. I don't think he thinks like the original
Speaker 5: sin is manufacturing. I think he thinks the original sin
Speaker 5: is that we like left the eighteen eighties right be
Speaker 5: essentially measles, but like, you know, his weird expansionist thing
Speaker 5: to Greenland, and it's like fundamentally, I think he like
Speaker 5: lives in a world where he just thinks you can
Speaker 5: use the market power of the United States to just
Speaker 5: induce everyone to produce here and with this they'll just
Speaker 5: go to other places, like there are other people who
Speaker 5: will buy goods and these states, Like I guess to me,
Speaker 5: the weirdest thing about the whole moment we're in, honestly,
Speaker 5: which goes back to the first issue of like how
Speaker 5: do we get here? Is the President's policies are a
Speaker 5: gigantic sucking sound on like the money that working class
Speaker 5: people have and are driving it to the wealthiest people
Speaker 5: in America because ess visually, he just has this tariff
Speaker 5: policy where we all pay basically a sales tack. It's
Speaker 5: on everything, like a variable sales stacks on all goods.
Speaker 5: And he has a massive through reconciliation through this budget
Speaker 5: gimmick system, he's doing gigantic tax cuts for the super rich.
Speaker 5: And I know there's a lot of kind of shit
Speaker 5: going on all the time, but like, if we just
Speaker 5: actually focus on the giant wealth transfer between working class
Speaker 5: people and the richest Americans, it is. It is the
Speaker 5: biggest drive towards massive inequality in my leftime.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we saw with Trump, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the weave. Now, Trump communicated
Speaker 1: so much he had weave, and he would say one
Speaker 1: word bacon, and bacon would get his people to know
Speaker 1: that he was talking about the price of eggs, so right,
Speaker 1: that things were too expensive. They're upset about inflation. So
Speaker 1: a lot of these people sad. Again you can argue
Speaker 1: whether or not it was true, but they said they
Speaker 1: were voting for him because of the price of eggs.
Speaker 1: What he's doing now will make everything more expensive discuss.
Speaker 5: I know, we went through a liberal panic earlier this
Speaker 5: week that he's going to go for a third term,
Speaker 5: And I personally think all this third term talk is
Speaker 5: just his strategy not to be lame ducked. He's a
Speaker 5: lame duck, honestly, and he doesn't want anyone to think
Speaker 5: he's a lame duck.
Speaker 4: So he did says kind of crazy stuff all the time.
Speaker 5: But like, the biggest evidence that he's not going to
Speaker 5: run for reelection is the fact that he is like
Speaker 5: happily tanking the economy for a vision that no normal
Speaker 5: person in America thinks is like actually achievable. And I
Speaker 5: don't think his own people think, like are they super
Speaker 5: hyper focused on I'll do bringing back clothing manufactory or
Speaker 5: clothing protection go into the United States.
Speaker 4: You know, people are.
Speaker 5: Really focused on the cost of things, and so I mean,
Speaker 5: it's like a gigantic bait and switch. But my experience
Speaker 5: with people is like when you bit and switch them,
Speaker 5: they do tend to get angrier. The presence disapproval on
Speaker 5: the economy has been the highest of any issue. It's
Speaker 5: the inverse of where he was in his first term,
Speaker 5: and the first term his economic numbers were the highest
Speaker 5: of all of his numbers, and people kind of personally
Speaker 5: disapproved of him.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 5: You know, his job approval is dropping and I imagine
Speaker 5: will drop more next week, but his economic numbers are
Speaker 5: the worst, and honestly, I think he just doesn't care
Speaker 5: like I guess. My take on this is he does
Speaker 5: not think normal politics of plastin.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 5: You could say that means he's going to throw out
Speaker 5: the elections, or my own take is more likely he's
Speaker 5: not going to run for reelection. But either way, the
Speaker 5: really really dangerous moment we're in, which you know, does
Speaker 5: scare me.
Speaker 4: The things that keep me up at night are are
Speaker 4: the fact that we have a.
Speaker 5: President of the United States who is not limited by anything,
Speaker 5: and that just means it calls on all of us
Speaker 5: to stand up a lot more.
Speaker 3: So that I think gets me to Harris.
Speaker 1: Yesterday, Harris came out and basically said, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of cowardice here, which I think she's
Speaker 1: pretty careful. She's not a person who acts out of emotion,
Speaker 1: at least not what I've seen.
Speaker 3: So the fact that she came.
Speaker 1: Out at a Bloomberg event and said I'm not seeing
Speaker 1: people stand up here.
Speaker 3: I think was meaningful discuss.
Speaker 5: The thing that is so much worse now than Trump's
Speaker 5: first term is the pre obeying. And I worry that
Speaker 5: fear is contagious. So the fact that we have media
Speaker 5: institutions that are supposed to be the guardians of free
Speaker 5: information and guardians of democracy, and you know, people who
Speaker 5: in a democratic administration will lect dress about the right
Speaker 5: to rights to information. You know, the fact that they're
Speaker 5: cowering that you know he's basically threatening a news agency,
Speaker 5: the AP and you don't seem like a walkout from
Speaker 5: the reporters is just honestly pathetic.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: And I have been on my own personal just campaign
Speaker 5: around Paul Weiss. I was a summer associate at Paul
Speaker 5: Weiss obviously many many years ago, was a summer associated
Speaker 5: at Paul White.
Speaker 7: I wouldn't have said it, but I mean, when the
Speaker 7: wealthiest lawyers in the world, not like in America, the
Speaker 7: wealthiest lawyers in the world are cowering and paying off
Speaker 7: basically mob money to a president who they know is
Speaker 7: just full of it.
Speaker 5: And they they're lawyers, so they know these executive actions
Speaker 5: are illegal, and we can kind of guess they're illegal
Speaker 5: because every law record it.
Speaker 1: Tells us that every judge from every administration, five administrations
Speaker 1: have ruled against them.
Speaker 5: Yes, judges from five different administrations. I mean the fact
Speaker 5: that they don't seek the tierro and they just go
Speaker 5: slobber in front of him.
Speaker 4: And every time.
Speaker 5: They do this, we know this from authoritarian regimes all
Speaker 5: throughout history. Every institution that cowers just makes it worse
Speaker 5: for the next one. And that's why Paul Ways had
Speaker 5: to give forty and then Scatton gave a hundred. And
Speaker 5: I honestly think, and I know there are good people
Speaker 5: at these law firms, but I just think history asks
Speaker 5: you in moments to stand up for your principles, and
Speaker 5: it's like it's an accident. Who has to stand up.
Speaker 5: It's not really clear ever until you're in that moment.
Speaker 5: And honestly, I just don't know how people of goodwill are.
Speaker 5: You know, partners who have power in these law firms
Speaker 5: are still there. I mean, I just I was like,
Speaker 5: and I had this conversation real say once with the
Speaker 5: Pobwoys partner, and I just said, you know your grandkids
Speaker 5: are going to ask you what you did in this.
Speaker 4: Moment and what are you going to say? You were
Speaker 4: going to say?
Speaker 3: And what did he say?
Speaker 4: It was?
Speaker 5: You know, he was like I'm really struggling with that,
Speaker 5: and I was like, well, not enough. You're not struggling enough, right,
Speaker 5: Are you struggling enough? Because honestly, like I think there's
Speaker 5: only one answer to this question, which is if you
Speaker 5: think democracy is at stake, then you have to like,
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry, like it will mean you make less money, right.
Speaker 4: I understand that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's very sad, but you eli, will you make
Speaker 5: like twelve million instead of fifteen million dollars?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's ridiculous, it's very very sad. Sorry, no,
Speaker 4: I agree. I could just go on and on on this.
Speaker 5: It's like so enraging to me, Like we're all out here,
Speaker 5: how do we ask veterans?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not time.
Speaker 5: Like we're asking veterans who've been fired to stand up
Speaker 5: and tell their stories. We're asking like doctors and nurses
Speaker 5: who used to get funding from HHS to stand up
Speaker 5: and tell their stories. We're asking people to stand up
Speaker 5: and try to oppose the insanity of this administration, which
Speaker 5: definitely feels like a receip to me that like you
Speaker 5: as a big Paul Wise attorney, your skin attorney can't
Speaker 5: stand up.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It's also these people were never going to be the
Speaker 1: ones to be brave. I mean, that's the thing with
Speaker 1: the billionaires, right, we have these billionaires who are the
Speaker 1: first in line to give up. Right, they're just like,
Speaker 1: I want to make a millenia movie that seems like
Speaker 1: something the American people are desperate for.
Speaker 3: Let's pay her.
Speaker 1: Millions of dollars. The idea that capitalism was ever going
Speaker 1: to be the sort of protector of democracy, right, that
Speaker 1: these billionaires were ever going to act in their own good. Well,
Speaker 1: so let me ask you as we find ourselves in
Speaker 1: this moment. Like, one of the places where I feel
Speaker 1: that Democrat Republicans members of Congress really failed was regulation
Speaker 1: tech regulation that they never even fucking tried to regulate
Speaker 1: technology one hundred.
Speaker 5: I think the biggest problem in America, honestly, Like, the
Speaker 5: reason why we have Donald Trump is because this is
Speaker 5: my view, is because we have social media companies who
Speaker 5: run amok and basically make a shit ton of money
Speaker 5: by driving us to hate each other. You know, that's
Speaker 5: like their whole profit system is to keep eyeballs, And
Speaker 5: why do they keep eyeballs by making us angry? So
Speaker 5: they feed us content about like some random person on
Speaker 5: a free in a subway somewhere and what they did,
Speaker 5: and you see polarization throughout the globe, and there's like,
Speaker 5: is it just an accident that this all happened in
Speaker 5: the last like fifteen years of social media like platforms
Speaker 5: took up and people spend more and more of their time,
Speaker 5: and their whole goal is to get us to watch
Speaker 5: what they're doing and get angry. And so I do
Speaker 5: think a fundamental mistake was that we haven't regulated, we
Speaker 5: haven't gotten rid of Section two thirty, we haven't changed
Speaker 5: Section two thirty. There's like no liability for just telling
Speaker 5: lies online, and it's just like the whole system drives
Speaker 5: all of us to hate each other. I think it
Speaker 5: is like one of the core threats to democracy. I
Speaker 5: do not think dland Trump would have even surfaced if
Speaker 5: we didn't have a system where we're all like he
Speaker 5: can live on the height of Americans.
Speaker 1: And one of the other failures, it feels to me,
Speaker 1: was that there were not strong anti corruption laws passed
Speaker 1: the way they were after Watergate, and so in my mind,
Speaker 1: this is a failure of a number of people. But
Speaker 1: I would love to put Merek Garland in this category.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that there was so much inability
Speaker 1: to learn from the errors of Trump won? Like, why
Speaker 1: was there not more legislation? Why was there not more
Speaker 1: executions earlier?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Why do you think?
Speaker 5: Well, I kind of think maybe the lesson isn't to
Speaker 5: put a judge into a cabinet agency. And you know,
Speaker 5: I really honestly believe, I mean, and I think this
Speaker 5: is like a really important lesson for everybody. One of
Speaker 5: the reasons why we have these institutions where people are
Speaker 5: pre obey is because they fundamentally believe that Democrats will
Speaker 5: be like Merrit Garland and Republicans will be like Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: And I just have to say, I do not think
Speaker 5: we will ever get a Merrit Garland like figure in
Speaker 5: as Attorney General in the I don't think any Democrat
Speaker 5: will ever think that the proper response to this kind
Speaker 5: of lawlessness is just to take forever to make a
Speaker 5: decision about anything. I mean, so, I you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't know what form that will take, you know,
Speaker 5: I think it's important for people to remember that if
Speaker 5: you do not act to stop corruption early, you are
Speaker 5: advancing corruption.
Speaker 4: I think people kind of lose sight of that.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think we had a total arm's length
Speaker 5: from these kinds of decisions at the Department of Justice.
Speaker 5: Just as an observer really felt to me he was
Speaker 5: he so had the voices of Republicans in his head
Speaker 5: that he could not act. And my takeaway of all
Speaker 5: of this is, if you have Donald Trump's voice in
Speaker 5: your head or Republican right wing people in your head,
Speaker 5: You're not going to fight and fight strong enough. And
Speaker 5: I think that's a huge lesson for us going forward.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Ne're a tandem.
Speaker 1: Okay, great, Martin Heinrich is the senior Senator from the
Speaker 1: great state of New Mexico.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to a fast politics Senator.
Speaker 8: Great to be here.
Speaker 3: So we are.
Speaker 1: As we're speaking, the Corey Booker filibuster is still going, right, It.
Speaker 8: Is still going He is remarkable.
Speaker 3: Is it longer than Ted Cruz?
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 8: I think it's longer than Ted Cruz now? But I think,
Speaker 8: you know, I think he's shooting for the longest. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 8: I'm trying to think if that was Strom Thurman.
Speaker 1: Yes, Strom Thurman was the longest, and Sad Corcoran maybe before.
Speaker 8: I've got to tell you, like, Corey and I are
Speaker 8: really good friends. But as someone who's like an introvert
Speaker 8: and very detail oriented, I gave probably the longest speech
Speaker 8: in my life this year, and it was a little
Speaker 8: over half an hour. To watch him do this for
Speaker 8: so long and be so on it and to capture,
Speaker 8: you know, what so many people are feeling, it's it's remarkable.
Speaker 8: I'm grateful to have him here.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what so many people are feeling.
Speaker 1: Because I've been all day in reviewing experts and authoritarianism
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other people like that, and what
Speaker 1: they keep saying is that the most important thing is
Speaker 1: to push back, and to push back forcefully and to
Speaker 1: push back right away. And basically I think the real
Speaker 1: lesson is that what democrats did during Trump one point
Speaker 1: oh worked, and what democrats are doing during Trump two
Speaker 1: point zero needs to look more like what they did
Speaker 1: the first time.
Speaker 8: I mean is that your sense, I think whenever you're
Speaker 8: dealing with authoritarianism, and that's what this is, and that's
Speaker 8: what this president. He doesn't have boundaries. And one of
Speaker 8: the key things is to never give up your voice
Speaker 8: and your power without a fight. So the ability for
Speaker 8: all of us to say this is not okay, this
Speaker 8: is not normal. I don't believe in this. I'm going
Speaker 8: to stand up against this. That's the central principle that
Speaker 8: defines whether democracy slide into something very different or are
Speaker 8: able to recover as we did in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: So one of the things, again I am no Frank
Speaker 1: Lutz fan, really I am not. But he says something
Speaker 1: which I think is worth talking about for a second,
Speaker 1: which is he says, I'm hosting a focus group of
Speaker 1: Democratic voters who are angry with them leadership in DC.
Speaker 1: What Corey Booker is doing right now on the set
Speaker 1: of Floor is exactly what they want to hear. Democrats
Speaker 1: would be smart to get a transcript and copy it
Speaker 1: word for word.
Speaker 8: I think we have to play on two playing fields,
Speaker 8: which one is we have to express and as I
Speaker 8: said before, just forcefully say that when a bully punches
Speaker 8: you in the nose, you punch back, and you're not
Speaker 8: going to give up your power. You're not going to
Speaker 8: accede to what they want to do. You're not going
Speaker 8: to make it easy for them to do what they
Speaker 8: want to do, and at the same time, we have
Speaker 8: to play a long term strategic game and understand that
Speaker 8: there are lots of Americans right now who are laser
Speaker 8: focused on the fact that this is an administration who
Speaker 8: would be comfortable taking our democracy away from us, and
Speaker 8: that we can't let that happen. At the same time,
Speaker 8: we were focused in twenty eighteen, and twenty eighteen was
Speaker 8: really critical to what happened in twenty twenty, and we
Speaker 8: need to be focused again. In twenty eighteen, it was healthcare,
Speaker 8: health care, healthcare, and that was the message because that
Speaker 8: was what it took to win over struggling families who
Speaker 8: have fifty different things going on and don't always have
Speaker 8: time to get into the weeds about history and democracy,
Speaker 8: and especially in a media environment that is as fractured
Speaker 8: as ours is now. And I think for us right
Speaker 8: now going into next year's election, even dealing with the
Speaker 8: special elections that we're talking about literally as we speak today,
Speaker 8: we need to be talking about prices and the economy
Speaker 8: because the reckless, irresponsible policies of this president could easily
Speaker 8: push us into a recession, and even a recession where
Speaker 8: inflation continues to go out of control, where we have
Speaker 8: literally a contracting economy but spiraling prices more and more
Speaker 8: out of the reach of average Americans. And so you know,
Speaker 8: it's a hard job, but we need to be able
Speaker 8: to walk and chew gun.
Speaker 3: That's called stagflation.
Speaker 8: It is called stagflation. I don't use that word because
Speaker 8: most of my constituents don't know what stagflation is. They
Speaker 8: don't remember the last time we had stagflation, and so
Speaker 8: I tried to explain it a little bit because it
Speaker 8: sounds pretty bad to have a recession where prices continue
Speaker 8: to go out of control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in fact, I was not alive for that period,
Speaker 1: or at least I was very young at the end
Speaker 1: of the seventy so.
Speaker 3: It, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's all I have is the fact that I was
Speaker 1: not an adult in but it was very, very, very
Speaker 1: dark moment in American life. So talk to me about
Speaker 1: you guys have gotten a lot of pushback about the
Speaker 1: cr and they are about to be about few fifteen
Speaker 1: books coming out about by the mistakes that Biden made,
Speaker 1: and they are going to I think they're going to
Speaker 1: really poison the well a lot towards establishment democrats, and
Speaker 1: I think we're going to have even more of a
Speaker 1: tea party movement. Do you think that there's a world
Speaker 1: in which leadership might get shaken up by this.
Speaker 8: Well, I think we're at a moment where we're in
Speaker 8: a generational change in the Democratic Party. There's just no
Speaker 8: question about that. And you know, look, I'm fifty three
Speaker 8: years old and I'm in the only legislative job I
Speaker 8: can imagine where that still makes you one of the
Speaker 8: young folks. And we need new voices that inspire the
Speaker 8: people who are going to replace us. I don't think
Speaker 8: any of us deserve these jobs forever. That said, we
Speaker 8: also need leaders who are strategic, and so this is
Speaker 8: not going to be an easy time. I came down
Speaker 8: on one side of the cr battle. People I fully
Speaker 8: respect came down on the other side of it. And
Speaker 8: the truth was we were choosing between two choices that
Speaker 8: both really sucked, and you know, the argument from both
Speaker 8: sides was know this one sucks more, and so really
Speaker 8: smart people came out down on different sides of that,
Speaker 8: and my feeling was it was so important in that moment,
Speaker 8: especially when the administration was trying to take congressional power
Speaker 8: away from away from the congress to push back forcefully
Speaker 8: and the punishable and then right back in the nose.
Speaker 8: And so that's that was my choice. But I've got
Speaker 8: to say there were no easy choices in that battle.
Speaker 1: Agreed, it was a terrible situation, and for sure Trump
Speaker 1: World was from what I know from Schumer's office, they
Speaker 1: were planning on making hr essential personnel and just spending
Speaker 1: the shutdown firing everyone they could. But do you think
Speaker 1: there should have been deliverables? Do you think that Democrats
Speaker 1: would have been in a strong position with deliverables?
Speaker 8: I think we should have seen this coming a month
Speaker 8: earlier so that we could could have settled on what
Speaker 8: is the best possible scenario, what does a win look like,
Speaker 8: and then focused all of our energy and all of
Speaker 8: our efforts in all of our messaging towards that goal.
Speaker 8: And at the end of the day, would it come
Speaker 8: out different? I can't answer that. But we've got to
Speaker 8: get better at seeing what's coming around the corner and
Speaker 8: being ready for it and being having our shit together.
Speaker 1: Once it came through the House, it was on Democrats
Speaker 1: and what was not unreasonable to assume that Johnson was
Speaker 1: not going to be able to get it together to
Speaker 1: pass it. Because as we saw just now with this
Speaker 1: remote voting bill, Johnson is not like a genius mathematician.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, but we can't count on it. This is a
Speaker 8: personality cult at this point. This is not the Republican
Speaker 8: party that I grew up many of my family friends
Speaker 8: being part of, and you know it's it's not party
Speaker 8: of Reagan. So people tend to fall in line for
Speaker 8: Trump in a way that I have not seen other
Speaker 8: Republican leaders or presidents be able to deliver on. So
Speaker 8: we have to be prepared for those times when that's
Speaker 8: exactly what happens. As as bad as Johnson is at
Speaker 8: counting votes, I mean, my god, I served four years
Speaker 8: in the House and I couldn't tell you when Nancy
Speaker 8: Pelosi ever got it wrong in terms of knowing where
Speaker 8: her votes were. But we can't count on that. We
Speaker 8: have to be ready for when the president swoops in
Speaker 8: and is able to deliver the goods.
Speaker 3: Right and to whip the votes.
Speaker 1: So now from world still needs to pass two really
Speaker 1: big pieces of legislation.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 1: They want these tax cuts for very wealthy people. It's
Speaker 1: really just the tax cuts, right.
Speaker 8: The CR everything's about the tax cuts. So the CR
Speaker 8: was about getting to what was important to them.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 8: So normally, you know, the spending bill that we would
Speaker 8: do would not be a CR. Most people don't even
Speaker 8: know what a CR is. We would do multiple different
Speaker 8: appropriations bills to fund every different part of the government.
Speaker 8: The people who tend to be on the appropriations committees,
Speaker 8: even the Republicans, like that work. They don't want government
Speaker 8: on autopilot most of the time. But what the Trump
Speaker 8: White House and President Trump and that whole group of
Speaker 8: rologarchs that he has elevated, what's important to them is
Speaker 8: defunding all of these things in government so that they
Speaker 8: can pay for a giant tax cut for the hyper rich, right,
Speaker 8: And so they were willing to accept a CR to
Speaker 8: get it out of the way so that they could
Speaker 8: get to what they really care about, which is eviscerating
Speaker 8: Medicaid to pay for their tax cut.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's true, And in fact, we had a pretty
Speaker 1: incredible moment where Casey was on television saying we need
Speaker 1: to cut Medicaid and then he said reform right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, missed the talking points there for a minute and
Speaker 8: had a moment of honesty, because that's what it is.
Speaker 8: It's like if you drill down on any of the
Speaker 8: stuff that they're calling medicare fraud, and medicare fraud is real,
Speaker 8: but it's small and it's prosecutable, and it's something that
Speaker 8: people who deal with real crime can root out. But
Speaker 8: when you deal with the kind of numbers that they're
Speaker 8: throwing out there, what they're talking about is like s
Speaker 8: forms not filled out the right way and somebody forgetting
Speaker 8: to put their zip code on an application. They're lumping
Speaker 8: all of that into fraud so that they can get
Speaker 8: to a crazy number big enough to pay for their
Speaker 8: tax cut.
Speaker 3: Also, Doge has Doge has a sort of.
Speaker 1: Grift going that it is going to be able to
Speaker 1: cut enormous sums from the federal budget. But it seems
Speaker 1: through technology or some kind of right like these tech pros,
Speaker 1: these one guy is called Big Right. There are these
Speaker 1: very right leaning tech pros. We are young that they
Speaker 1: are going to somehow find things that are going to
Speaker 1: save millions of dollars in the federal government. So that
Speaker 1: is something that's sort of i think, not really happening,
Speaker 1: but sort of a bait and switch.
Speaker 8: Oh, it's a complete bait and switch. It's about creating chaos,
Speaker 8: it's about breaking down the people who care the most
Speaker 8: about their jobs. I mean that's why when Doge fired
Speaker 8: so many people, they fired the easy ones to fire,
Speaker 8: not the people who were problematic in their work history.
Speaker 8: But for example, they fired National Park rangers who had
Speaker 8: just gotten promoted because they were the most high functioning,
Speaker 8: but because they were within twelve months of that promotion,
Speaker 8: those were the first folks to go. So the whole
Speaker 8: Doge premise, we can find efficiencies, but you have to
Speaker 8: actually understand what each of these government agencies is supposed
Speaker 8: to do to be able to find those efficiencies. So
Speaker 8: you don't shut down, you know, your ability to fight
Speaker 8: fires in the Western United States to save a few nickels,
Speaker 8: And these guys are like rummaging around in the couch
Speaker 8: cushions looking for nichols. And meanwhile they're just completely eviscerating
Speaker 8: the things we need the government to actually do.
Speaker 3: So signal gate.
Speaker 1: And by the way, now we just saw this reporting
Speaker 1: that members of President Trump's National Security Council may have
Speaker 1: been using Gmail. So that's a Gmail Gate speak to
Speaker 1: us about the large implications of this scandal.
Speaker 8: Well, that kind of begs the question if they're choosing
Speaker 8: to use Gmail and not their government emails, and they're
Speaker 8: using signal and not their high side secure communications platforms.
Speaker 8: You know, there's a real question here where they just
Speaker 8: trying to avoid the regular checks and balances of things
Speaker 8: like the Federal Records Act because it's not safe to
Speaker 8: do that. We all know, like those of us who
Speaker 8: are on the intelligens committees, we know better than to
Speaker 8: be lulled into thinking that just because you were using
Speaker 8: an end to end encrypted platform that you're safe because
Speaker 8: your device could still be compromised. Right, and we don't
Speaker 8: know were these personal phones. They won't tell us that.
Speaker 8: There are a lot of outstanding questions here. Were these
Speaker 8: phones ever swept to see if there was malware on
Speaker 8: them where the phones actually compromises, we would know that
Speaker 8: potentially if they were swept. So this is an administration
Speaker 8: and a group of people who are doing everything they
Speaker 8: can to manage the damage rather than just admit that
Speaker 8: they screwed up. And that real leadership is about, especially
Speaker 8: in the military, it's about admitting you did something wrong
Speaker 8: and dealing with the downstream effects of that. And there
Speaker 8: has been no willingness by anyone in this administration to
Speaker 8: take responsibility for this mess.
Speaker 1: It does seem as if there is no absolutely no accountability.
Speaker 1: But also, do you think that Trump is making a
Speaker 1: mistake if he keeps on walls, which I guess he
Speaker 1: is for now, do you think that actually sort of
Speaker 1: hurts him? Because I get that the goal here is
Speaker 1: to never admit that you are wrong. But doesn't the
Speaker 1: incompetence sort of rub off on everyone else? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously they're all incompetent.
Speaker 8: But it projects in competence, and of course it projects hubris,
Speaker 8: which shouldn't surprise any of us. But if you look
Speaker 8: at some of the numbers coming out just today around
Speaker 8: how people view this, people view it as reckless. You know,
Speaker 8: there are a lot of Republicans out there who served
Speaker 8: in the military who know that the DoD guidance is
Speaker 8: that operational details never never get communicated on your low
Speaker 8: side communications because that puts real service members' lives at risk.
Speaker 8: You have access to a bunch of emojis that maybe
Speaker 8: you don't have access to him the high side.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 8: That's like, this is ridiculous. Sources and methods should never
Speaker 8: ever ever be in these kinds of communications. And there
Speaker 8: were details in these communications that I can just tell
Speaker 8: you do not belong. You may have the Secretary of
Speaker 8: Defense saying like this is not classified because I get
Speaker 8: to define what's classified and what's not. But these are
Speaker 8: precisely the kind of details that should never be included
Speaker 8: in unsecured communications.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Senator.
Speaker 8: No, it's a pleasure to get a chance to chat
Speaker 8: with you again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really appreciate it. And it's really good.
Speaker 1: I mean, the more you guys can elevate you and
Speaker 1: people who are younger and more clear.
Speaker 8: Well to be continued, we're not backing down from this fight.
Speaker 1: Okaye, good because the stakes are really high, as you.
Speaker 8: Know, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: And now we have an excerpt from our YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: Justin Wolfer's is the host of the Think Like an
Speaker 1: Economist podcast and a professor at the University of Michigan.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Justin Wolfers.
Speaker 9: Things are going great.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 6: I didn't even ask.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's going real well in case you're wondering, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about tariffs and how.
Speaker 6: We're going I have a challenge for you, Emily. Yours
Speaker 6: is the only show I ever go on and swear
Speaker 6: yes excellent, and I my challenge is, let's not do that.
Speaker 6: Let's not do liberal rage. I feel it, you listeners, whe.
Speaker 9: The hairless dog feels it.
Speaker 6: No one likes to see the equality of life destroyed. Yes,
Speaker 6: but I my challenge for you is the issues are
Speaker 6: too big and too important, and I think there's nothing
Speaker 6: more important we can do today than explain it in
Speaker 6: the nerdiest possible ways so that our listeners know what's
Speaker 6: happening to their world.
Speaker 2: So no swearing.
Speaker 6: Let's walk out, all right.
Speaker 9: I can't believe no swearing. You know, I'm the least
Speaker 9: swearing of many people I'm on with. I'm like the
Speaker 9: grown up, and now you are becoming the grown up
Speaker 9: in the room, which is you know, all.
Speaker 6: Right, we need some grown ups in.
Speaker 9: Speaking of a room with no grown ups. The White
Speaker 9: House discuss so.
Speaker 6: Obviously there was the big tariff announcement. The big news
Speaker 6: for everyone is very very large tariffs from the United States,
Speaker 6: bigger than the smooth holy tariffs that Benstein joked about
Speaker 6: in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Speaker 9: They crashed the economy last time.
Speaker 6: It was called the Great Depression.
Speaker 9: Yes, I wasn't alive.
Speaker 6: Then if you compare our tariff rates to those of
Speaker 6: other industrialized countries. They are now ten to twenty times larger.
Speaker 6: So we are getting cut off from the rest of
Speaker 6: the world to a degree that no one else at
Speaker 6: our level of economic development or in the modern era
Speaker 6: and US. So that's the big news, and I don't
Speaker 6: want to lose sight of that. But actually you were
Speaker 6: asking about the White House, and so what's even crazier
Speaker 6: is it's completely clear that they did no homework. So
Speaker 6: what we now have is very different tariffs for very
Speaker 6: different countries. Trump calls these retaliatory or reciprocal. Sorry, he
Speaker 6: calls them reciprocal. Texts, Yeah, they're hurting us, will hurt them. Right,
Speaker 6: It is impossible to have tariffs that are ten or
Speaker 6: twenty times larger than other people and for that to
Speaker 6: be reciprocity. Like the mathematics of that. I hope we're obvious.
Speaker 6: There is still, you know, a well spread talking point
Speaker 6: among the fox is set where people believe that we're
Speaker 6: getting ripped off by other countries. Look, here's the trick.
Speaker 6: Economy is a big pie. There are small slices and
Speaker 6: small slivers where there are active interest groups and national
Speaker 6: traditions and so on, which are indulging protectionism enough that
Speaker 6: it gives Trump's folks talking points, But don't lose sight
Speaker 6: of the reality that in a modern economy, tariff rates
Speaker 6: average one or two percent, not twenty percent. So this
Speaker 6: is not reciprocal tariffs. This is American tariffs. This is
Speaker 6: big walls around the country. If you want to think
Speaker 6: about it in metaphorical terms, what Trump has done has
Speaker 6: thrown rocks in the harbors of all of our ports,
Speaker 6: made it harder for anyone else to enter, and the
Speaker 6: retaliatory tariffs make it harder for ships to leave. We're
Speaker 6: now less integrated with the rest of the world.
Speaker 9: Where do you think they came up with these numbers?
Speaker 6: Sorry, it is hard to explain the degree of incompetence
Speaker 6: behind this, but let's nerd out for.
Speaker 2: A little bit.
Speaker 6: Okay, I don't think you should worry, but you could
Speaker 6: worry about something called our trade deficit. Our trade deficit
Speaker 6: is that we buy more stuff from abroad than they
Speaker 6: buy from.
Speaker 1: Us, right, because it's cheaper to manufacture in places like
Speaker 1: the Vietnam than it is in places like Michigan.
Speaker 6: You don't even need an economist. I buy stuff from
Speaker 6: abroad because I want to I buy Australian one because
Speaker 6: it tastes better. Yeah, well, I buy my kids toys
Speaker 6: from China because they're cheaper. There's no economy out there.
Speaker 6: There's you and I and your listeners making decisions, and
Speaker 6: it turns out the decisions that I make. Or I
Speaker 6: buy Vietnamese made T shirts because they're cheap, and I'm cheap,
Speaker 6: and that's okay, that's my business, right.
Speaker 3: So we had a very American here go ones.
Speaker 6: I believe in freedom, my friend. My T shirts that
Speaker 6: I buy from Vietnam have eagles on them and fireworks.
Speaker 6: So we have a trade deficit. Now, there are two
Speaker 6: ways of describingess whenever we trade. When I buy a
Speaker 6: T shirt, I send pieces of paper over to Vietnam,
Speaker 6: those pieces of paper called US dollars, and they send
Speaker 6: me pieces of cloth back. If what you thought the
Speaker 6: most important thing in life was was pieces of paper,
Speaker 6: you would be very upset that America has more pieces
Speaker 6: of paper leaving that it has coming back. I've tried
Speaker 6: to wear pieces of paper. They don't keep you warm.
Speaker 6: My T shirt with the eagle and the fireworks and
Speaker 6: the freedom does keep me warm. So as much as
Speaker 6: we run a trade deficit in dollars. We run a
Speaker 6: trade surplus and stuff. So that's why I'm not so
Speaker 6: worried about that. But President Trump is okay, fair enough,
Speaker 6: he probably had a very bad teacher at the Warden
Speaker 6: School many years ago. But then what he worries about
Speaker 6: is something different. He worries about our trade deficit with
Speaker 6: each individual country. What's our trade deficit with Australia, with Canada,
Speaker 6: with Mexico and so on. Right, economists call these bilateral
Speaker 6: trade deficits. Worrying about this is insane. Let me give
Speaker 6: you an example. I run a bilateral trade deficit with
Speaker 6: Traded Joe's. Every time I go there, I give them
Speaker 6: money and they give me stuff. And I also say
Speaker 6: to them while I'm there, I say, you know, I'm
Speaker 6: a pretty good economist. Would you like me to deliver
Speaker 6: an economics lecture while I'm in the store. I will
Speaker 6: accept your money. And they always say no. So I
Speaker 6: run that trade deficit. That's literally a trade deficit between
Speaker 6: Justin Wolfers and Traded Joe's. I kind of think that's
Speaker 6: okay that Traded Joe's doesn't buy a lot of educational
Speaker 6: services from the University of Michigan. And I kind of
Speaker 6: think it's okay that they're not buying meals from me either,
Speaker 6: but Trump is worried about that, and so the tariffs
Speaker 6: are set proportional to America's trade deficit with each country.
Speaker 6: So if Traded Joe's were another country, the United States
Speaker 6: would have a one hundred percent tariff on Trader Joe's.
Speaker 6: Is my life going to be better if I can't
Speaker 6: get moderately good frozen meals from Trader to Joe's. No,
Speaker 6: I'd have to eat the crap that I cook instead.
Speaker 6: And so that's what's driven each of these individual tariffs,
Speaker 6: and it leads to some profound absurdities. There's the country
Speaker 6: of Lesotho. Every poor country which is lucky enough to
Speaker 6: live on top of some dirt that has diamonds underneath it.
Speaker 6: Americans like diamonds, so they buy diamonds from Lesotho. People
Speaker 6: Innesotho are very very poor. They don't buy much stuff
Speaker 6: from America. We make very expensive, high end stuff. So
Speaker 6: therefore the United States runs a trade deficit with Lesotho.
Speaker 6: Trump thinks that's evidence that they're ripping us off and
Speaker 6: they must have very high tariffs on us, so he
Speaker 6: has just put very very high tariffs on Losertha. This
Speaker 6: makes no sense. It's literally crazy. So what we have
Speaker 6: is an old man who misunderstands economics, who has surrounded
Speaker 6: himself with people who refuse to explain to him, literally
Speaker 6: refuse to explain to him that his ideas might know
Speaker 6: since that's the problem. So with Saint Markets full dramatically
Speaker 6: on the news of these terraffs.
Speaker 1: To hear more, please head over to our YouTube channel
Speaker 1: by searching Fast Politics with Molly Chong Fast.
Speaker 2: And a moment.
Speaker 3: Jesse Cannon Molly Jung Fast.
Speaker 2: So imagine, for some reason you wanted to buy a
Speaker 2: cyber truck. I can't conceive of why.
Speaker 3: No, don't worry.
Speaker 2: Apparently Tesla is not accepting them as trade ins and
Speaker 2: taking them to return when people don't like driving it
Speaker 2: around and having swastikas written on it and people laughing
Speaker 2: at them on the street.
Speaker 3: I am shocked.
Speaker 1: You'll remember that cyber trucks have actually been recalled because
Speaker 1: of the glue that Elon Mush uses to glue the
Speaker 1: metal to the bottom of the car is coming unglued.
Speaker 3: You'll remember that.
Speaker 1: Well, you can maybe get them recalled, but you certainly
Speaker 1: cannot trade them in for Tesla's cyber truck owners say
Speaker 1: Tesla will not accept its own vehicle as a trade in.
Speaker 1: With Tesla having issues selling new cyber trucks, the automakers
Speaker 1: reportedly not taking any trade ins. Many cyber truck owners
Speaker 1: report trying to trade in their truck for a new vehicle,
Speaker 1: and they were told that the automaker currently doesn't accept
Speaker 1: its own.
Speaker 3: Vehicle as a trade in.
Speaker 1: I am not at all surprised.
Speaker 2: So real buyers remorse in a real life situation.
Speaker 3: That's it for.
Speaker 1: This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Speaker 1: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
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Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.