Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 2: Good morning, everybody, Welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, great to
Speaker 2: see you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me here.
Speaker 4: Crystal, Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: I mean it is your like a whole part of
Speaker 2: the thing now, so I don't really have to welcome you,
Speaker 2: and you're just you know, you're fully integrated at this point.
Speaker 3: We've been doing so many fun host mix ups lately
Speaker 3: though it's been a lot of like, it's been really
Speaker 3: interesting and fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think people are enjoying the different dynamics.
Speaker 2: I'm enjoying the different dynamics, so you know, the audience
Speaker 2: has been asking for different nomination, so we've been delivering
Speaker 2: both intentionally and also through just life events, making it
Speaker 2: so that we need to swap days around.
Speaker 3: So we know we're not the Bro Show, but we
Speaker 3: can try to compete. We'll try our best.
Speaker 2: Tell the story about the guy that you met who
Speaker 2: was like even the Lady Show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so shout out if if you're listening, but I
Speaker 3: met a guy the other day who said love Counterpoint,
Speaker 3: love Crystal, love, Sager, love Ryan, I even love the
Speaker 3: Girls Show.
Speaker 4: They even love the Girls Show. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Shout out to that guy. A bunch of stuff to
Speaker 2: get into before I forget. If you guys are still
Speaker 2: having challenges with Spotify, just make sure you're checking your email.
Speaker 2: Premium subscribers, you should have instructions. We're going to continue
Speaker 2: to send those out and make sure everybody's good. If
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Speaker 2: to get it worked out for you. Okay, So we've
Speaker 2: got updates on the trade war Chargery Secretary Scott Besson
Speaker 2: out making some interesting comments. He's not too worried about
Speaker 2: empty shelves out there yet, so we'll get into all
Speaker 2: of that. Also, people noticing timu arging. Now an import charge.
Speaker 2: So whatever your basket is, where your card is, when
Speaker 2: you go to check out, it's more than doubled because
Speaker 2: of the import charges. So a lot of fallout beginning there.
Speaker 2: We've also got results out of Canada, Liberals mounting an
Speaker 2: extraordinary comeback, and really it does have almost everything to
Speaker 2: do with Trump, with the trade war, with the fifty
Speaker 2: first state talk, so break that down for you. We've
Speaker 2: got updates from Israel and also from Brooklyn. We've got
Speaker 2: Ben Smith on he had Emily this fantastic scoop about
Speaker 2: these right wing group chats, which I suspect. I mean,
Speaker 2: you must have been at least aware that these things
Speaker 2: were going on. I won't ask you to reveal whether
Speaker 2: you were inside of any of these, but some of
Speaker 2: the dynamics in there turn out to be really interesting.
Speaker 3: No, Chris, I was like partially offended that I did
Speaker 3: not know about this. I mean, I do know that
Speaker 3: really on the right. Yeah, No, but I was partially like,
Speaker 3: I'm glad they're not if the fact that they're not
Speaker 3: adding me tells me that they don't want the journalists
Speaker 3: who somewhat fare in their chat. But they like the
Speaker 3: right love signal, there's no question about it, Like I'm
Speaker 3: in a bunch of signal chats, but nothing like with
Speaker 3: I had no idea, truly had no idea.
Speaker 2: All right, So that's interesting. There's an incredible screenshot that
Speaker 2: came out of that one with like David Sachs throwing
Speaker 2: fit leaving the chat, Tucker leaves the chat, a winkle
Speaker 2: by Twin leaves the chat.
Speaker 4: Whatever.
Speaker 2: So apparently these things were really influential and forging some
Speaker 2: of the alliances between you know, the MAGA types and
Speaker 2: the tech right and some of the heterodox type quote
Speaker 2: unquote independent thinkers out there. So a lot to get
Speaker 2: into with Ben Smith, and we also are going to
Speaker 2: touch on this drama that's unfolding. At sixty minutes, their
Speaker 2: long time executive producer left and said, listen, I don't
Speaker 2: feel like I can be independent anymore. And this had
Speaker 2: to do with two things. One was some really actually
Speaker 2: quite strong a little belated, but quite strong reporting with
Speaker 2: regard to Israel and Gaza and all of their Trump
Speaker 2: coverage was coming under increasing scrutiny, so he felt like
Speaker 2: he had to leave the Scott Pellier at sixty minutes
Speaker 2: gave a monologue, you know, really calling out parent company Paramount.
Speaker 2: So some very interesting dynamics they are going to see.
Speaker 2: Ben Smith can stick around to weigh in on that
Speaker 2: because he is such a great lens on the media.
Speaker 2: So a lot of interesting things in the show this morning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Chrystal, we should start with Scott Besson talking about
Speaker 3: the shelves, because that's what's on everybody's mind.
Speaker 5: You get the best reviews of anyone in the administration
Speaker 5: outside the President.
Speaker 4: Your thoughts about the US China stand off right now?
Speaker 6: Well, Brian, first of all, it's all the president, especially
Speaker 6: on the eighteen important trading partners. We're doing bespoke deals,
Speaker 6: and he's going to be intimately evolved in every one.
Speaker 6: Two weeks ago when we had the Japanese delegation come in,
Speaker 6: he started it in the Oval and then we took
Speaker 6: them into the negotiating room, so he laid the groundwork,
Speaker 6: told them personally how important the relationship was, but also
Speaker 6: how important a fair deal for the American people is.
Speaker 5: Currently right now, when you are you worried about empty
Speaker 5: shelves because they say that a lot of these the
Speaker 5: supply lines and the cargo ships are being held up.
Speaker 7: A lot of people are saying, turn it around with
Speaker 7: the taps is high, I don't want the product.
Speaker 4: Are you worried about empty shelves?
Speaker 6: Not at present. We have some great retailers. I assume
Speaker 6: they pre ordered. I think we'll see some elasticities and
Speaker 6: I think we'll see replacements, and then we will see
Speaker 6: how quickly the Chinese want to de escalate.
Speaker 3: Well, the word bespoke was an interesting choice in that context. Crystal,
Speaker 3: look the books.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, don't worry you to throw the next
Speaker 2: element because I think some of the dynamics here are
Speaker 2: of money. So you know, liberals talk about sain washing Trump,
Speaker 2: and I think Scott Bessant is like the ultimate sain washer.
Speaker 4: Of Trump's tariff strategy.
Speaker 2: And warning to everyone because Howard Lutnik is apparently going
Speaker 2: to be on CNBC today and they've done analyzes that
Speaker 2: have found that like when Bestin's out there, the markets
Speaker 2: are relatively calm. When you get a Navarro, when you
Speaker 2: get a Lutnik, it goes a little haywire. So in
Speaker 2: any case, you know Bestent out there being like, I'm
Speaker 2: not worried about.
Speaker 4: The empty shelves.
Speaker 2: Think Americans are going to be worried about empty shelves
Speaker 2: if they do show up, which looks increasingly likely. And
Speaker 2: we've got here up on the screen. This is the
Speaker 2: TMU portion, And yesterday we covered Shean has hiked their
Speaker 2: prices up to like three hundred and seventy five percent
Speaker 2: on certain items.
Speaker 4: Here you can see all right.
Speaker 2: You know, I've got an item subtotal of sixty three
Speaker 2: dollars and sixty six cents. Shipping is free, sales tax
Speaker 2: is three dollars seventy seven cents, Import charges eighty nine
Speaker 2: forty six. So that's the one hundred and forty five
Speaker 2: percent tariff, so larger than the you know, cost of
Speaker 2: all of the goods put together for a total of
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty six dollars. So instead of paying
Speaker 2: sixty sixty three dollars, people are paying one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty six and TIMU making sure Emily that they know
Speaker 2: where that charge is coming from.
Speaker 3: Right, And you know, I mean, what's what's even more important?
Speaker 3: I think by our standards. I mean we're talking about
Speaker 3: the digital shelves here here, but when people start going
Speaker 3: to Walmart, Target, grocery stores and even you know, clothing
Speaker 3: retailers that you're sort of walking through looking for things
Speaker 3: like an old navy. That's where things are going to
Speaker 3: get particularly interesting because you know, like Timu and she
Speaker 3: and are extremely popular, no question about it. I think
Speaker 3: most Americans would probably say at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: they're not like essential to their life.
Speaker 2: I'm I don't know, I'm not sure about that because
Speaker 2: I think people have become accustomed to, you know, the
Speaker 2: things you can get on timuon she and are just
Speaker 2: remarkably inexpensive. And a friend of mine was also pointing
Speaker 2: out that some retailers actually, because the cost of goods
Speaker 2: from timuon she and are so cheap, they will actually
Speaker 2: buy from you know, almost wholesale from them and then
Speaker 2: resell in stores as well. So it's not just the
Speaker 2: online experience. It's also going to relate to those shelves
Speaker 2: in Walmart and home Depot and other places as well.
Speaker 2: So in any case, you know, the fallow in the
Speaker 2: beginning we've been covering, of course, all of the port
Speaker 2: traffic decline. You know, we're getting to probably early May,
Speaker 2: middle of May when you really will start to see, okay,
Speaker 2: all of the shipping that shut down when these terrafs
Speaker 2: were put into place, that's when it's really going to
Speaker 2: start to bite. And what Besson says there is not
Speaker 2: wrong that because there had been some level of tariff
Speaker 2: had been anticipated, so especially larger retailers that could afford it,
Speaker 2: did a lot of advance ordering so that they could
Speaker 2: have more in their warehouses to be able to you know,
Speaker 2: lock in a lower price and be able to be
Speaker 2: more flexible and adjust when the terraffs actually came into place.
Speaker 2: Of course, no one expected the particular tariff regiam that
Speaker 2: we ended up with, but they may have some flexibility
Speaker 2: in the early days. And that's what Besson was basically
Speaker 2: saying of like, oh, I trust our great retailers. They're
Speaker 2: going to be fine because they you know, probably prepared
Speaker 2: in advance. And I do think that there will probably
Speaker 2: be some of that that will help to at least
Speaker 2: push the shock off into somewhat into the future. And
Speaker 2: we'll see what happens with the terrafs between now and then.
Speaker 2: But you know, increasing I saw Ray Dalio saying this yesterday.
Speaker 2: We've got Jamie Diamond out now saying even if there
Speaker 2: was a full like pullback at this point, it's really
Speaker 2: kind of too late to undo a lot of the
Speaker 2: damage that's been done, which I think also relates actually
Speaker 2: to the Canada block that we're going to do and
Speaker 2: the way that Carney is talking about this kind of
Speaker 2: irrevocable break in the relationship with the US. We can
Speaker 2: put a three B up on the screen here, Jamie
Speaker 2: Diamond hang in and saying basically, like a recession is
Speaker 2: kind of the best we can hope for at this point,
Speaker 2: he said. He was addressing the crowd. He said he
Speaker 2: believes the best case outcome from the trade war would
Speaker 2: be a mild recession for the US economy, So that's
Speaker 2: what he's saying is the best case scenario. Ray Dalio
Speaker 2: also sounding a pretty big warning. He put out something
Speaker 2: on Twitter yesterday saying basically, it's already too late. We're
Speaker 2: going to have this massive realignment and here from here
Speaker 2: on ounce is just a question of whether that realignment
Speaker 2: is going to be executed with greater or less care.
Speaker 2: And I think we all can guess which direction we're
Speaker 2: going to be going in don the moves of this
Speaker 2: administration that's.
Speaker 3: Far well, we're clearly going in a bespoke direction. Crystal, Yeah, exact, lessant, No,
Speaker 3: I mean, I do think that's the most important connecting
Speaker 3: it to the carniblock. I mean, he's basically saying we'll
Speaker 3: get to this in just a moment, that this was
Speaker 3: all about the United States, that this is a permanent
Speaker 3: turning point for Canada, and he's not alone and thinking
Speaker 3: that the rest of the world thinks it. So the
Speaker 3: question now isn't whether everything has changed and whether it's
Speaker 3: too late, though I think it's helpful to hear that
Speaker 3: sort of from the mouth of Raydalio and Jamie Diamond.
Speaker 3: But basically, like, can the plane be landed in a way,
Speaker 3: you know, the optimist would say, in a way that's
Speaker 3: even better than before. But to the Diamond point, can
Speaker 3: the plane be landed in a way that is as
Speaker 3: manageable as possible for most Americans? And if the best
Speaker 3: case scenario is a mild recession, they're going to have
Speaker 3: to hope that, you know, well, hope is the wrong word.
Speaker 3: They're going to have to pray that the benefits that
Speaker 3: come out of this realignment that they have orchestrated and
Speaker 3: been the architects of are felt by Americans to offset
Speaker 3: the political costs of a recession, let alone the substance
Speaker 3: of costs of people's lifestyles and pocketbooks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean for me, it's just not clear
Speaker 2: to me what those benefits even are. You know, I know,
Speaker 2: think various things that have been floated. You know, in
Speaker 2: my estimation, we're going the opposite direction of all of
Speaker 2: the you know, the manufacturing, the rebirth of manufacturing in America.
Speaker 2: We're going backwards certainly on that metric. You know, the
Speaker 2: Treasury yields that that hasn't worked out the way that
Speaker 2: they thought. So you know, the amount of revenue we're
Speaker 2: bringing in from these tariffs is absolutely trivial at this point.
Speaker 2: You know, Trump is out there making these wild claims about, oh,
Speaker 2: We're going to replace the income tax with the tariff rapid.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just like ludicrous, utterly ludicrous thing to
Speaker 2: say or to claim. So, I mean that's always been
Speaker 2: the piece from the beginning. Is I just short term
Speaker 2: pain for long term pain? Is what it appears the
Speaker 2: track that we're on as far as I can tell
Speaker 2: at this point. And we can already see, you know,
Speaker 2: some sectors being really hard hit. We can put this
Speaker 2: up on the screen, so we already have what appears
Speaker 2: to be CNBC's describing as a full blown crisis for farms.
Speaker 2: And you know the headline here, US agriculture isn't nearing
Speaker 2: a trade war tear crisis. It's in a full blown
Speaker 2: crisis already. Farmers say, I've been following the numbers around.
Speaker 2: China has been canceling huge amounts of orders of pork.
Speaker 2: You know, things like our agricultural sector had already taken
Speaker 2: a hit visa VI China from previous trade war actions,
Speaker 2: and in Trump's first term they orchestrated effectively like an
Speaker 2: ag bailout. There's some talk of that now as well,
Speaker 2: because this is you know, it's a constituency that votes
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly for Trump, so he feels favorable to them. Much
Speaker 2: of agriculture at this point is big business. So those
Speaker 2: are the type of people as well who can get
Speaker 2: their mar A Lago dinner or get a call from
Speaker 2: the White House, or you know, throw some money at
Speaker 2: the inauguration. I know there was like a Chicken company
Speaker 2: that had given like five million dollars his inauguration, that
Speaker 2: was getting some perks, et cetera. So you know, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't be surprised if this is one group that gets
Speaker 2: another bail out.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, no, I think that's probably right, and this
Speaker 3: is why American farming is permanently in a state of crisis.
Speaker 3: The CNBC headline makes me grin a little bit because it's,
Speaker 3: you know, the tariffs are throwing it further into a
Speaker 3: state of crisis. But American farming has been thrust into
Speaker 3: for decades and that's part of why farmers. You go
Speaker 3: back and watch interviews that places like INBC did with
Speaker 3: with farmers earlier in Trump's term, and there was like
Speaker 3: this this interesting optimism people would you know, reporters would
Speaker 3: come in from New York and DC with their microphones
Speaker 3: and cameras would be like, well, aren't you furious, And
Speaker 3: the farmers would say, no, we think some of this
Speaker 3: needs to happen. They're probably also felt confident that they
Speaker 3: would eventually get a bailout. But Crystal, we're what almost
Speaker 3: ten years into this now, and they're probably I shouldn't
Speaker 3: say probably. Their patience is obviously wearing thin for some
Speaker 3: type of structural solution to the problems in agriculture and
Speaker 3: that's just not coming. I mean, the administration definitely doesn't
Speaker 3: have a solution to that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, doubt about it.
Speaker 2: And you know there's a big monopoly element there as well,
Speaker 2: and it's just you know, increasingly impossible to make it
Speaker 2: as like a small time family farmer. It's these giant
Speaker 2: agra business growers that dominate all of those markets. The
Speaker 2: last piece we have here is the Dallas Fed sury
Speaker 2: survey came out and Joe Wisenthal tweeting about this. Apparently
Speaker 2: the numbers were pretty dire, getting to the point of, like,
Speaker 2: you know, this is supposed to be improving the landscape
Speaker 2: for manufacturing and instead the manufacturing survey from the Dallas
Speaker 2: Fed the levels hit the lowest since May of twenty twenty. That,
Speaker 2: of course, during COVID all the comments are about tariffs
Speaker 2: and policy uncertainty added to the list of bad soft
Speaker 2: survey data, and that gets to the point of, you know,
Speaker 2: we're sort of in this period of suspended animation. The
Speaker 2: tariffs have been you know, have been put into place,
Speaker 2: but we have not really fully seen in the big
Speaker 2: meta data, the the you know, macro economic data, what
Speaker 2: the fallout of that is going to be. Retailers are
Speaker 2: warning about empty shells. We're not seeing empty shells yet.
Speaker 2: We're just starting to get these indications from Timu and
Speaker 2: she and of the way that prices are going up
Speaker 2: Amazon as well. Amazon sellers are hiking prices as well.
Speaker 2: So you know, we're we're in this moment before kind
Speaker 2: of the calm before the storm, and maybe it won't
Speaker 2: be as you know, maybe it won't be as significant
Speaker 2: as a lot of the numbers seem to indicate right now.
Speaker 2: But I don't think there's any doubt we're in for
Speaker 2: some some pain here coming up, as those shipments from
Speaker 2: China that would have arrived do not arrive, and retailers
Speaker 2: draw down on their stock and we see these reverberating
Speaker 2: impacts of layoffs and just the logistics sector alone. I
Speaker 2: mean you're talking about port workers. I saw the longshoreman
Speaker 2: put out a statement, you know, really declining the terrorist
Speaker 2: and impact on them and their workforce, the trucking industry,
Speaker 2: which is incredibly important, especially for non college educated men,
Speaker 2: which is another demographic that has been really supportive of Trump.
Speaker 2: Those are the areas that are really going to be
Speaker 2: hard hit early on. So I think we're all waiting
Speaker 2: to see what that impact is going to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The point actually even the language that Wisenthal uses
Speaker 3: there about soft indicators. I mean, that's the list of
Speaker 3: soft indications about what's happening. That's what's just very hard
Speaker 3: to ignore even when you look at you know, I
Speaker 3: read the Trump administration put out a press release this
Speaker 3: morning about the benefits the economy in the first one
Speaker 3: hundred days of the Trump administration. You're reading through this
Speaker 3: long list of bullet points, and if you juxtapose it
Speaker 3: side by side with those soft indicators, the list of
Speaker 3: soft indicators that Wisenthal is a is pointing out and
Speaker 3: has racked up on his own we cover them here
Speaker 3: that I think it's, you know, even if again I'm saying,
Speaker 3: by the most charitable interpretation of the plan here, even
Speaker 3: if you taking them at their own argument, if you
Speaker 3: j exuppose those lists side by side and say we're
Speaker 3: about a month from liberation day now, the indicators are
Speaker 3: stacking up in a way that suggests the long term
Speaker 3: pain is not going to be worth the soft term,
Speaker 3: the soft term the short term gain, and that I
Speaker 3: think didn't have to be the case. It speaks to
Speaker 3: the execution in this case.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and get to another Joe Wisenthal piece
Speaker 2: here that I thought was really interesting because one of
Speaker 2: the questions is like, Okay, the markets are down overall,
Speaker 2: but not that much, and it seems like maybe they
Speaker 2: should be down more given all of these soft indicators
Speaker 2: and the manufacturing index falling off a clip, and consumer
Speaker 2: sentiment and a majority of Americans saying they expect prices
Speaker 2: to get higher. In their own financial sitution was to
Speaker 2: get worse. We're already seeing layoffs. You know, everybody's looking
Speaker 2: at the ports in Seattle and in LA and are like,
Speaker 2: there's no there's no cargo coming in. This seems like
Speaker 2: it's going to be really bad, and yet the markets
Speaker 2: are like, yeah, it's okay, It'll be fine. And so
Speaker 2: Wisenthal has a theory about why that is the case,
Speaker 2: and he argues, we can put this up on the screen,
Speaker 2: that the Trump meme coin chart could be the market's
Speaker 2: most important chart right now. And I'll read you a
Speaker 2: little bit of his analysis. But the TLDR is that basically,
Speaker 2: retail traders, the type that would be interested in buying
Speaker 2: the Trump meme coin, which you can see is up
Speaker 2: and you know, has been juiced by this like promotion
Speaker 2: that Trump is like, hey, the top investors here, they're
Speaker 2: going to get a special dinner with me whatever, which
Speaker 2: is grotesque levels of corruption in any case, that those
Speaker 2: types of retail investors have been trained to buy the dip,
Speaker 2: and so every time the market goes down they rush
Speaker 2: in to say, ah, this is an opportunity of buying opportunity,
Speaker 2: told to buy the dip, I'm going to buy the dip.
Speaker 2: So Wisenthal says, one possibility is that retail traders who've
Speaker 2: been trained like lab rats to buy every dip have
Speaker 2: piled in like crazy into all the old speculative stuff
Speaker 2: that's worked so well for so long, and so they're
Speaker 2: buying SPACs, tesla and random old coins like the trump
Speaker 2: meum coin. Pull up a chart of robinhood or anything
Speaker 2: else you associate with retail, and you'll probably find a
Speaker 2: line that significantly above its levels from the start of
Speaker 2: the month. Meanwhile, professional investors are extremely gloomy. A survey
Speaker 2: of fund managers from April fifteen showed that there hasn't
Speaker 2: been this much bearishness in thirty years. Other surveys show
Speaker 2: basically the same thing. Bearishness is everywhere, and so one
Speaker 2: story you can tell is simply that serious investors are
Speaker 2: looking at all those charts of port traffic drying up
Speaker 2: and calculating the impact of terraces on corporate earnings while
Speaker 2: retail investors are piling in like crazy, creating some kind
Speaker 2: of disconnect between the line on the screen and what
Speaker 2: a fair value for stocks actually is. I thought that
Speaker 2: was a pretty interesting assessment, Emily, which would make sense
Speaker 2: of why perhaps the market isn't moving the way that
Speaker 2: you would expect looking at these numbers and looking at
Speaker 2: just what an extreme action one hundred and forty five
Speaker 2: percent tariffs on China, let alone the terrifts on the
Speaker 2: rest of the world, What an extreme action that really represents,
Speaker 2: and what a fundamental reordering of the global economic order
Speaker 2: that that truly represents.
Speaker 3: Well, And I wonder also, I mean, the degree to
Speaker 3: which this is influencing, you know, the Trump administration's minute
Speaker 3: to minute policies. Like we remember when Walter Bloomberg that
Speaker 3: ridiculous X account posted that bessent had indicated it you
Speaker 3: basically misquoted something that Bessentt had said in a Fox
Speaker 3: News interview about a ninety day pause, which obviously ended
Speaker 3: up happening. But I think one of the reasons the
Speaker 3: administration probably held out on the ninety day pause. As
Speaker 3: long as it did is because they saw what happened.
Speaker 3: Is as soon as Boomberg tweeted that the fake account,
Speaker 3: the market shot back up. And basically the only connect
Speaker 3: that anyone made was because of this like fake news
Speaker 3: tweet that was going super viral on X Yeah, Walter Bloomberg.
Speaker 3: But like the but that does right, Like that builds
Speaker 3: into the decision making structure for the Trump administration. How
Speaker 3: easy it is to rejuce the markets with like just statements,
Speaker 3: And I like that sounds really basic, but it just
Speaker 3: it's it's an important part obviously what they're talking about
Speaker 3: in the White House. It was the bond markets that
Speaker 3: Trump said people were getting a little yippie that fundamentally
Speaker 3: caused him to do a one to eighty. Whether he
Speaker 3: was ultimately going to do it or not, I genuinely
Speaker 3: don't think we know, uh, And so this is yeah,
Speaker 3: I think I think the weisal theory sounds completely correct.
Speaker 3: And the last point I'll say this is more abstract.
Speaker 3: But I was listening to an old zero hedge debate
Speaker 3: over the weekend and it was like it was it
Speaker 3: was about bitcoin, and one person on each side of
Speaker 3: the argument they both disagreed about the state of the economy.
Speaker 3: I think it was six months ago something like that,
Speaker 3: and one of them made the point, this is what's
Speaker 3: terrifying about the economy is that you can have experts
Speaker 3: who like spend their entire life studying this and working
Speaker 3: in this, and they legitimately can't tell you whether we're
Speaker 3: in a good or a bad economy. And the Trump
Speaker 3: administration is coming into that context and saying, you know,
Speaker 3: this is that means that we can manipulate it in
Speaker 3: new and interesting bespoke ways to borrow the term from
Speaker 3: Scott Vessant, And you know what that actually means is
Speaker 3: it's just a continuation, or it's it's a dramatic manipulation
Speaker 3: of this experiment, like it's a it's a dramatic new
Speaker 3: variable and an experiment that nobody really knows how it's
Speaker 3: going to end. Like nobody can tell you how this
Speaker 3: is going to end, partially because nobody knows exactly where
Speaker 3: Donald Trump wants to take this and how other countries
Speaker 3: are reacting. But we've had a month long glimpse at that,
Speaker 3: and it's not good for the administration.
Speaker 2: I mean, even the importance of the vibes is even
Speaker 2: in evidence, just based on what I was saying earlier
Speaker 2: about apparently the markets do better when it's mostly Scott
Speaker 2: Besant out there versus Howard Lunne and like. That shouldn't
Speaker 2: matter because the policy is the same, right. So the
Speaker 2: fact that one comes in like a more like proper
Speaker 2: buttoned up Wall Street type package and one is this
Speaker 2: more like unhinged type of character, also a very Wall
Speaker 2: Street character, by the way, that shouldn't matter because the
Speaker 2: policy is not changing. But the fact that you have
Speaker 2: bested out there who can come up with, you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of art like bespoke deals and oh, I'm
Speaker 2: not worried about the shelves, and isn't spinning tails about
Speaker 2: millions and millions of armies of people screwing in little
Speaker 2: little screws and saying ridiculous things like that. The fact
Speaker 2: that that makes such a difference is in and of
Speaker 2: itself an indication that so much of the market is
Speaker 2: just about the vibes of the day, and that ends
Speaker 2: up being very unpredictable. And then the other thing that
Speaker 2: seems to be moving the market appears to be whatever
Speaker 2: inside info is being given out to, you know, Wall
Speaker 2: Street traders to front run whatever announcements are coming out
Speaker 2: of the administration later, which is something you know, we
Speaker 2: had talked about. I believe it was Bessett who had
Speaker 2: given Charles Gasparino reported on how he was giving out
Speaker 2: this information before it was public at an investor conference,
Speaker 2: allowing them to potentially profit on, you know, whatever moves
Speaker 2: we were set to come out, you know, with the
Speaker 2: Trump coin thing, I just don't want to lose sight
Speaker 2: of this.
Speaker 4: Can we actually.
Speaker 2: Skip forward to what is this A eight and put
Speaker 2: this chart up on the screen. You know, there's so
Speaker 2: much going on in this administration that it's hard to
Speaker 2: keep track. He's offering a private dinner to the top
Speaker 2: two hundred twenty investors in his mean coin. The offer
Speaker 2: caused it to surge and price his family's latest effort
Speaker 2: to profit from cryptocurrencies. I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 2: hear a word from Republicans again against about Nancy Pelosi's
Speaker 2: insider trading, Like if you aren't speaking out about this,
Speaker 2: which is just such naked brazen profiteering, corruption, graft, et cetera.
Speaker 2: It is extraordinary the level of just pay to play
Speaker 2: that is out in the open in this administration, and
Speaker 2: the meme coin is kind of like ground zero for that.
Speaker 2: And we already know, we've already have examples of crypto
Speaker 2: dudes who put a lot of money into Trump shit
Speaker 2: coin and announced it publicly and low and behold their
Speaker 2: enforcement actions get dropped low and behold they benefit. And
Speaker 2: it is so easy if you're you know, if you
Speaker 2: are a head of state, if you are a CEO
Speaker 2: of a company, if you are just some random person
Speaker 2: who like wants a pardon or whatever, it's so obvious
Speaker 2: that all you have to do is put a bunch
Speaker 2: of money into to pump up Trump shit coin, of
Speaker 2: which he directly personally benefits, and you know, tell him
Speaker 2: or announce it publicly or whatever, and you stand very
Speaker 2: likely to benefit. So, you know, this announcement, as the
Speaker 2: article mentions, increased his mean coin value significantly, it had
Speaker 2: fallen off quite a lot. The Malania coin was basically
Speaker 2: just like a total pump and dump run by some
Speaker 2: of the same people as Hobvier Malay's affiliated pump and
Speaker 2: dump scheme as well. And it's you know, it's just
Speaker 2: it's one of these things that I just can't let
Speaker 2: go and don't want to normalize because the corruption is
Speaker 2: so incredibly brazen and naked. And yes, many politicians they're corrupt,
Speaker 2: and the campaign finance system needs to reform.
Speaker 4: This is at another level.
Speaker 2: And one more piece before I get your reaction here,
Speaker 2: Emily go to A seven the club for the super
Speaker 2: rich that they are launching, because I really specifically want
Speaker 2: to get your reaction to this. So this is from Politico.
Speaker 2: They say, the Trump Aline Club for the Ultra Rich
Speaker 2: launches in Washington. The launch of Executive branch comes as
Speaker 2: Trump World looks to remake Washington. New club is coming
Speaker 2: to Washington. You probably can't get in. Don Junior, Mega
Speaker 2: donor Omid Malik and several other investors are launching an
Speaker 2: invite only club. The costs more than half a million
Speaker 2: to join, with an exclusive post White House correspondent dinner gathering.
Speaker 2: According to an invite, brainchild of Malik, will be located
Speaker 2: in Georgetown. Their goal, the people familiar with the plans, say,
Speaker 2: is to create the highest end private club that Washington
Speaker 2: has ever had and cater to the business and tech
Speaker 2: moguls who are looking to nurture their relationships with the
Speaker 2: Trump administration. And by the way, the club already has
Speaker 2: a waitlist. Emily, just unbelievable that we went from you know,
Speaker 2: all this rhetoric about drain the swamp yea, to this.
Speaker 3: And yet so very believable. Yes, but you know, populists
Speaker 3: have for a long time and still will decry the
Speaker 3: quote unquote Georgetown cocktail parties like it is a cliche
Speaker 3: that is constantly invoked by populists, especially on the right
Speaker 3: in recent years. But what they just did was create that.
Speaker 3: What they're trying to do is create their own like
Speaker 3: extra special Georgetown cocktail party. Literally they put those in Georgetown,
Speaker 3: which doesn't really have anything to do with it except
Speaker 3: for that it's a funny part of them just walking
Speaker 3: right into this cliche. So, yeah, the drain the swamp
Speaker 3: is drain the swamp of the left. It's not drain
Speaker 3: the swamp completely, obviously. It's you know, we're gonna we'll
Speaker 3: let some people remain in the swamp. It's not a
Speaker 3: structural change to the swamp. Yeah, it was a structural
Speaker 3: change to the swamp. Then you wouldn't have places where
Speaker 3: you have to pay half a million dollars to rub
Speaker 3: elbows with.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 3: It's it's a listen it's not the same thing as
Speaker 3: Hunter Biden. But Don Junior is selling this club because
Speaker 3: he's like the son of the president, has access to
Speaker 3: the president, has the ear of the president.
Speaker 2: Yeah, David Sachs was hosting this party. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is an administration official. It's just incredibly, incredibly brazen and
Speaker 2: just one last piece on the you know, latest corruption circuit.
Speaker 2: We've got some new info about how much Elon stands
Speaker 2: to benefit from the work of Doge, even as Doge,
Speaker 2: by their mats or their public metrics, is a complete failure,
Speaker 2: has saved the taxpayer effectively no money. You know, even
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon is calling it out, and Elon is set
Speaker 2: to pure sort of like slink out of town, but
Speaker 2: put a nine up on the screen. He stands to
Speaker 2: benefit to the tune of billions of dollars simply from
Speaker 2: his companies avoiding the regulatory scrutiny that they were previously
Speaker 2: under from a whole host of agencies. And you know,
Speaker 2: this is something Emily that we attract on this show.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a particular part of a particular board
Speaker 2: that was going after Tesla that regulates automated vehicles, and
Speaker 2: he was very unhappy with them.
Speaker 4: Oh, they get gutted.
Speaker 2: You know, the Department of Labor was he had all
Speaker 2: kinds of issues with them and all sorts of allegations
Speaker 2: against his companies there. They get gutted CFPB. They were
Speaker 2: set to regulate Twitter if Twitter was doing this deal
Speaker 2: with Visa, they get gutted. So it was quite naked.
Speaker 2: And he's got his end engineers in over at the
Speaker 2: you know, the uh over inside of what's the why
Speaker 2: am I blanking on the TSA? He's got them or
Speaker 2: inside the TSA. That's another area that you know, is
Speaker 2: a big problem for him. So in any case, this
Speaker 2: Senate subcommittee found two point three seven billion in legal
Speaker 2: liability that he is saving just from his efforts to
Speaker 2: deregulate and defenestrate the administrative state.
Speaker 3: No, what he's been doing is sacrificing Crystal nobly, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And at the same time that's a joke obviously. But
Speaker 3: we were talking about you and I were talking last week,
Speaker 3: and you made a really good point that ultimately Elon's
Speaker 3: not in it for bike is his big goal in
Speaker 3: DOGE is not moving some you know, money around and
Speaker 3: saving himself. You know, a couple of billion dollars whatever.
Speaker 3: His big goal is like advancing these companies that he
Speaker 3: thinks are changing the world, and this like techno libertarian way.
Speaker 3: It's not necessarily about the money. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 3: the money stuff isn't Incredibly, it's just so it's so
Speaker 3: corrupt and the precedent that it sets going forward is high.
Speaker 3: It's a completely different precedent than what we had before
Speaker 3: with like Pentagon contractors. It's not the same thing at all.
Speaker 4: So any way, Yeah, although not the TSA. I'm just
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, guys. Too many acronyms for me this morning.
Speaker 3: That's why we need Doge Crystal. That's why we need DOE.
Speaker 2: That's right, they just added another agency. Now I got
Speaker 2: the digital service whatever whatever that I got to remember
Speaker 2: as well, though I guess that already existed. Nobody just
Speaker 2: knew about it or cared about it at the time.
Speaker 2: All right, guys, it is official. The Liberals in Canada
Speaker 2: mounted what was an absolutely extraordinary comeback. They will be
Speaker 2: able to form a government led by Mark Karney, who
Speaker 2: was a central banker and now Prime minister. Let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and take a listen to Carney in his victory
Speaker 2: speech really talking about some of the fissures with the
Speaker 2: United States and how significant they're going to be now
Speaker 2: and in the future.
Speaker 4: Take a lesson.
Speaker 5: We are once again at one of those hinge moments
Speaker 5: of history. Our old relationship with the United States, a
Speaker 5: relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. The system
Speaker 5: of open global trade anchored by the United States, a
Speaker 5: system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War,
Speaker 5: a system that will not perfect, has helped deliver prosperity
Speaker 5: for a country for decades, is over. These are tragedies,
Speaker 5: but it's also our new reality.
Speaker 3: We are over.
Speaker 5: We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but
Speaker 5: we should never forget the lessons. We have to look
Speaker 5: out for ourselves and above all, we have to take
Speaker 5: care of each other.
Speaker 2: So emily, they are over the American betrayal, but it
Speaker 2: is not forgotten, and they will be moving in another
Speaker 2: direction moving forward. And let's just put the results up
Speaker 2: on the screen when I want to get your reaction.
Speaker 2: I mean, the shift in the political wins in Canada
Speaker 2: has been extraordinary. We had David Dole, who is himself
Speaker 2: Canadian hosts Rational National Over on his YouTube channel. He
Speaker 2: was breaking down for us just how central Trump really
Speaker 2: was in this race. And according to him, it was
Speaker 2: the fifty first state jabs that really packed the most punch.
Speaker 2: Obviously the trade war significant as well, but that was
Speaker 2: the thing that really changed everything. And you know, if
Speaker 2: you look at the polls and the way that they shifted,
Speaker 2: it's absolutely extraordinary.
Speaker 4: The Liberals were able to make this comeback.
Speaker 2: And Pierre pauliev he had been seeing I mean, you
Speaker 2: can speak to this more than than I can. He
Speaker 2: had been seen as kind of this you know, right
Speaker 2: wing rising star media figure. I think the right had
Speaker 2: had a lot of hopes for Canada. There was a
Speaker 2: backlash there during COVID, there were the trucker protests. You
Speaker 2: of course had Trudeau who had just fallen off a
Speaker 2: cliff and was sort of forced to resign, opening up
Speaker 2: the possibility for this election. So really a dramatic change
Speaker 2: of fortunes here.
Speaker 3: M yeah, huge. And you know, I think one thing
Speaker 3: that might happen in the media coverage of this over
Speaker 3: the next twenty four to forty eight hours is that
Speaker 3: people think, because because Karney and his party came from
Speaker 3: so far behind, that this means, you know, Canada has
Speaker 3: decisively moved, you know, and I shouldn't say move, but
Speaker 3: stuck with Trudeau and stuck with the Liberals. But what
Speaker 3: we ended up seeing is they we just had this
Speaker 3: graphic on the scene on the screen that showed they
Speaker 3: ended up five votes short or five seats short of
Speaker 3: a majority. And it's absolutely a stunning comeback. Is absolutely,
Speaker 3: no no question about that whatsoever. I mean, Polyiev was
Speaker 3: up by about twenty points and polls closer to the
Speaker 3: beginning of the year. So the flip after Trudeau is
Speaker 3: like genuinely remarkable. Canada is very, very divided, and it
Speaker 3: absolutely this is a situation for Canada that's you know,
Speaker 3: it's not twenty fifteen anymore, where justin Trudeau is on
Speaker 3: the scene being the future. Polyev really was seen as
Speaker 3: the to your point, the antidote to that. So if
Speaker 3: Trudeau is seen as sort of the friendly face of
Speaker 3: the neoliberal Western future, then Pouliev was kind of seen
Speaker 3: as the answer to the follies of that era of
Speaker 3: Trudeau and Obama and Angela Merkel. He was seen as
Speaker 3: a figure who could sort of be young and articulate
Speaker 3: and bring the right into its future in Canada. And
Speaker 3: the fact that he you know himself, fell so far
Speaker 3: short well even things were divided for his party, is
Speaker 3: a real blow to his ability to have a future.
Speaker 3: Now maybe he still will. Politics are unpredictable, but he
Speaker 3: was particularly on the assent and this is a good
Speaker 3: indication that it didn't work out so well for his
Speaker 3: brand on the campaign.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he What you're referring to is he actually lost
Speaker 2: his own seat. So not only does the Conservatives lose
Speaker 2: and they won't have a chance to form a government
Speaker 2: the Liberals will, but he actually lost his own seat,
Speaker 2: so he will not be a member of Parliament anymore.
Speaker 4: So that stings.
Speaker 2: What David Dole tweeted out in reaction to this, and
Speaker 2: David's a lefty, he said, Liberals just short of a majority,
Speaker 2: putting NDP. Those are the lefties in the deciding seats.
Speaker 2: Jack Meets saying loses his seat, making an NDP leadership
Speaker 2: race quick and painless. Pierre Poliev loses his seat. Loally
Speaker 2: says this is actually the perfect result. So that was
Speaker 2: his response to all of this. We pulled this reaction
Speaker 2: from you know, run of the bill, Canadian voter getting
Speaker 2: her sense of what was going on in this race,
Speaker 2: and why she cast her ballot as she did. Let's
Speaker 2: go ahead and take a listen to B one B.
Speaker 7: I think who I voted for would be the best
Speaker 7: to take care of Trump. Because Trump is I'm sorry
Speaker 7: to say and ask, and he shouldn't even be president
Speaker 7: of the United States, but because he is, we need
Speaker 7: a strong person so that we could stand strong.
Speaker 2: And I saw a poll that had Trump's approval rating
Speaker 2: in Canada something like eleven percent. I mean, he's just like,
Speaker 2: could not be more unpopular across the political spectrum, and
Speaker 2: he was not doing much to help them. On day
Speaker 2: if we can put this next one up on the screen,
Speaker 2: he posted this on I Believe Truth Social He said,
Speaker 2: good luck to the great people of Canada. Elect the
Speaker 2: man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your
Speaker 2: taxes and have increase your military power for free to
Speaker 2: the highest level in the world. Have your car still win, lumber, energy,
Speaker 2: and all other businesses. Quadruple in size was zero tears
Speaker 2: or taxes if Canada becomes the cherished fifty first state
Speaker 2: of the United States of America, no more artificially drawn
Speaker 2: line from many years ago, you know, And I like
Speaker 2: when he talks about how the.
Speaker 4: Borders are arbitrary.
Speaker 2: Look how beautiful this land mass would be, free access
Speaker 2: with no border, all positives, no negatives.
Speaker 4: It was meant to be.
Speaker 2: America can no longer subsidize Canada with the hundreds of
Speaker 2: billions of dollars a year that we have been spending
Speaker 2: in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is
Speaker 2: a state. That forced Pierre Polyiev to have to respond.
Speaker 2: But b three up on the screen, he said, President Trump,
Speaker 2: stay out of our election. The only people who will
Speaker 2: decide the future of Canada are Canadians at the ballot box.
Speaker 2: Canada will always be proud, sovereign and independent. We will
Speaker 2: never be the fifty first state. Today Canadians can vote
Speaker 2: for change so we can strengthen our country, stand on
Speaker 2: our own two feet and stand up to America from
Speaker 2: a position of strength. But Pierre Polyiev had done enough to,
Speaker 2: you know, associate himself with Trump and with the American
Speaker 2: right wing that that was just completely over It was
Speaker 2: completely impossible to overcome, even as he's clearly doing his
Speaker 2: best yere to distance himself from Trump and say you
Speaker 2: stay out of our elections, sir, We will never be
Speaker 2: the fifty first state. And again, according to to David Dole,
Speaker 2: that really was a sort of key tension point for
Speaker 2: Canadians where they wanted nothing.
Speaker 4: To do it.
Speaker 2: David also pointed out the last several ads that Pierre
Speaker 2: Polliab's team put out for the election, like they're closing
Speaker 2: ads did not feature him at all, so which is
Speaker 2: also not a great sign of how people are feeling
Speaker 2: about your.
Speaker 3: Candidate, that that post is giving Vladimir stop right, like
Speaker 3: it looks so weak, it looks so weak, especially after
Speaker 3: pauliev was, you know, sort of probe Trump in some
Speaker 3: particular ways, like it just to have to then say
Speaker 3: President Trump, stay out of our election like he's a toddler.
Speaker 3: The other the flip side of those, of course, is
Speaker 3: that first of all, the appetite in Canada for indulging
Speaker 3: the United States. I mean, this isn't just about the
Speaker 3: Trump administration. This is about the United States, because Canadians
Speaker 3: know that there are a lot of people in the
Speaker 3: United States that support the Trump administration, and so the
Speaker 3: appetite for Canada now becoming anti US is strong. And
Speaker 3: Eric Kaufman wrote about this. I want to say it
Speaker 3: was the Free Press, but he wrote about how Trump's
Speaker 3: approach to Canada, Greenland, but also just trade and populism
Speaker 3: in general actually has the effect of undermining some of
Speaker 3: his populist allies, people who he would want to build
Speaker 3: up around the world. If Trump were engaged in this
Speaker 3: like robust, ideological, coherent, ideological project to kind of realign
Speaker 3: the entire world, that actually a lot of this ends
Speaker 3: up undermining that goal because let's say you could have
Speaker 3: had quallyev in Canada. You know, there are populist parties
Speaker 3: in Europe. You know, is Trump hurting an AfD or
Speaker 3: is he helped an AfD in Germany? Like it? Is
Speaker 3: this sucking the winds out of Is this taking the
Speaker 3: wind out of the sale of populism in some of
Speaker 3: these places? You know, Mela, is he going to hurt
Speaker 3: Mala At the end of the day. These are like
Speaker 3: legitimate questions and something very interesting. We have a story
Speaker 3: up and unheard on this right now, just this morning
Speaker 3: about what happened in Canada. You know, what does it
Speaker 3: like the future of the United States trade relationship with Canada?
Speaker 3: Does this even work out well for the United States
Speaker 3: when Canada now has the option to align with other
Speaker 3: places and the Canadian people do not want to align
Speaker 3: with the United States under Donald Trump. To the point
Speaker 3: we were discussing earlier in the show, Crystal, does the
Speaker 3: short term pain end up having, even by the Trump
Speaker 3: administration zone logic, no long term gain because those even
Speaker 3: in the short term, the relationships were damaged to the
Speaker 3: point where there are in permanent realignments or at least
Speaker 3: in definite realignments that happen out, you know, away from
Speaker 3: the United States.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, Canadians did not hate us, and now they hate us.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at the polling, like the
Speaker 2: shift in attitudes of your average Canadian vs.
Speaker 6: A v.
Speaker 2: America has dramatically changed and now is incredibly negative. It's
Speaker 2: somewhere you know, sixty five seventy percent are like, yeah,
Speaker 2: screw these people, basically, and all of that effectively comes,
Speaker 2: you know, from Trump, the fifty first state stuff, calling
Speaker 2: him governor Trudeau, launching the trade war. All of that
Speaker 2: has just really shifted attitudes and Cans have been very
Speaker 2: unifying in terms of like Canadian nationalism and perspective. And
Speaker 2: just to emphasize again how central Trump and the trade
Speaker 2: war and whatever is, we can put this up on
Speaker 2: the screen this next polling just to show you the
Speaker 2: way that things unfolded here, just how down and out
Speaker 2: the Liberals were. And you know, unlike here, the blue
Speaker 2: is the Conservatives, the red is the Liberals. Most other places,
Speaker 2: that's the way they do it. Anyway, we're reversed here
Speaker 2: because we have to be special anyway. You can see
Speaker 2: where Trudeau resigns. It really is at you know, a
Speaker 2: nature of popularity for the Liberals, and I do think
Speaker 2: part of the change in their fortunes is also the
Speaker 2: fact that Okay, Trudeau's gone, we got a new dude.
Speaker 2: And you could think of a worse resume than a
Speaker 2: central banker to be at the helm when you're facing
Speaker 2: this trade war. There was some potentially Mark Carney sort
Speaker 2: of like fanfic about maybe he was the one or
Speaker 2: organizing the Treasury bond sales behind the scenes. I don't
Speaker 2: know that that's actually true, but in theory, he would
Speaker 2: be the type of person who would understand the way
Speaker 2: that you could, you know, you could utilize whatever leverage
Speaker 2: that you have. Then you see the Trump threatening to
Speaker 2: make Canada fifty first state and signing tariffs, and the
Speaker 2: dramatic pull movement up to the present day where they're
Speaker 2: able to, you know, to achieve this, this victory. And
Speaker 2: then the last thing I wanted to put up on
Speaker 2: the screen is I'm not sure that Trump is like
Speaker 2: really that upset about this, even though to your point, Emily, like,
Speaker 2: theoretically you would think you would prefer to have the
Speaker 2: more right wing prime minister in Canada there to work with.
Speaker 2: But he gave an extraordinary interview to the Atlantic, which
Speaker 2: could be a whole segment in and of itself, but
Speaker 2: he got asked specifically about Canada. We can put this
Speaker 2: part up on the screen, and he seems to just
Speaker 2: sort of enjoy that he was so central, even if
Speaker 2: the outcome is the opposite of the one you would
Speaker 2: think that he would intend. So let me just read this.
Speaker 2: They say you seriously want them to become a state
Speaker 2: talking about Canada, he says, I think it'd be great,
Speaker 2: and then they say a hell of a big democratic state.
Speaker 2: A lot of people say that, But I'm okay with
Speaker 2: it if it has to be, because I think, you know, actually,
Speaker 2: until I came along, I'm no political genius, but I
Speaker 2: know which way they're going to vote. They have socialized medicine.
Speaker 2: Trump says, you know, until I came along remember that
Speaker 2: the Conservative was leading by twenty five points, and one
Speaker 2: of the journalists says it's true, and he says, then
Speaker 2: I was disliked by enough of the Canadians that I've
Speaker 2: thrown the election into a close call. Right, I don't
Speaker 2: even know if it's a close call. But the Conservative
Speaker 2: they didn't like Governor Trudeaux too much and I would
Speaker 2: call him Governor Trudeau, but he wasn't fond of that.
Speaker 4: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: Em seems like he just likes he likes that he
Speaker 2: was central. He likes that he, you know, overturned what
Speaker 2: was expected. He likes that he was this troublemaker in
Speaker 2: terms of the Canadian elections. It doesn't seem like he's
Speaker 2: too upset. He seems like he's bragging about the fact
Speaker 2: that he handed this victory over to the Liberals.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a more sinister reading of this too, which
Speaker 3: was the piece that I referenced that we have up
Speaker 3: and unheard this morning, makes this argument that if you're
Speaker 3: Donald Trump and you actually want to undermine the stability
Speaker 3: of Canada, one of the ways to do that might
Speaker 3: be to take the person who's leading in the polls
Speaker 3: and just throw it all up into complete chaos and
Speaker 3: make the government more divided, which it ended up being.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't a decisive win for the Conservatives, and
Speaker 3: it ultimately wasn't a decisive win for the liberals. It's
Speaker 3: much less of a kind of a state system at
Speaker 3: this point. Now. I tend to think what we just
Speaker 3: heard from Donald Trump in the Atlantic is probably as
Speaker 3: close to the truth as we can get, which is that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he has another quote in that interview about how he
Speaker 3: runs the world now that there's just something kind of
Speaker 3: thrilling about being the leader of the United States and
Speaker 3: being able to kind of wave your magic wand via
Speaker 3: truth social and throw everything into complete and utter chaos.
Speaker 3: There's no like coherent strategy to destabilize Canada behind it.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, I mean, for like pauliev
Speaker 3: was running when he was ahead, he was like running
Speaker 3: against things like carbon tax. This really was a rejection
Speaker 3: I've sort of left neoliberalism like Democratic Party, Obama, Trudeau,
Speaker 3: Merkele neoliberalism and Chris I forget this was you who
Speaker 3: was making this point. Trump also does seem to get
Speaker 3: along with the cure starmers. Dare I say, Scott Bessen's
Speaker 3: the Mark Carney types. So he might not be entirely
Speaker 3: upset about this result because he now feels like maybe
Speaker 3: he's someone he can like deal with, that he can
Speaker 3: cut deals with. He doesn't necessarily want everyone to be
Speaker 3: like a lap dog. He sort of enjoys the you
Speaker 3: sare about the Tian Wow. He enjoys the lap dogs too.
Speaker 3: But he also loves the fights. I mean, he irrelishes
Speaker 3: the fights, which is why he was talking to the
Speaker 3: Atlantic Yesterra.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, he loves our girl Claudia down in Mexico.
Speaker 3: So and he is so right about her.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, I mean, I have no insight
Speaker 2: into I did see somebody making that point. It's an
Speaker 2: interesting one and one to watch, and I don't know
Speaker 2: whether they'll get along or not. You know, because of
Speaker 2: the antipathy that the Canadian public has towards Trump, specifically
Speaker 2: into the American public now in general, he's Carney's going
Speaker 2: to be under tremendous domestic political pressure to be extremely
Speaker 2: tough when he's dealing with Trump, or at least to
Speaker 2: project toughness with uh, you know, in fortitude when dealing
Speaker 2: with Trump. That's effectively what he has been elected now
Speaker 2: to do and to navigate this situation.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I saw some of the right.
Speaker 2: Wing cope like, oh, this a week in Canada and
Speaker 2: now we can roll in the tanks or whatever. It
Speaker 2: was the insanity that I was seeing on Twitter. But
Speaker 2: you know, conservatives have to be very disappointed when there
Speaker 2: seemed to be all of this wind at their back,
Speaker 2: the vibe shift, all of that, and now you've got
Speaker 2: liberals winning quite handily here and being able to form
Speaker 2: a government with the you know, the lefties pretty easily,
Speaker 2: and Pierre Poliev himself losing his own seat.
Speaker 4: So there you go.
Speaker 3: No, no, you're right, it's it's it's totally cope. There
Speaker 3: were all kinds of thing pieces earlier in the year
Speaker 3: about how this was the end of any of a
Speaker 3: local era in Canada and populism was a send it.
Speaker 3: Conservatives were rallying around, American conservatives were rallying around. Polyev
Speaker 3: really liked him. He was going viral and American conservatives
Speaker 3: circles apples.
Speaker 2: People keep talking about some apple. Tell me I'm mess this.
Speaker 3: It was a viral video that he did with and
Speaker 3: Poaliev did where he was so he was being interviewed
Speaker 3: by some it was like I want to say, like
Speaker 3: Canadian broadcast like it was.
Speaker 8: It was.
Speaker 3: It was a tough, hostile interview, and he was very calmly,
Speaker 3: kind of owning the reporter while he was munching on
Speaker 3: an apple, very nonchalant, like he was just in this
Speaker 3: casual conversation and kind of owning the guy with facts
Speaker 3: and all of that stuff. You know, I was just
Speaker 3: gonna say that facts and logic. So that's he went
Speaker 3: really viral. That's probably the first time he got in
Speaker 3: a lot of American conservatives radars, and he had other
Speaker 3: moments like that that conservatives were loving. So to turn
Speaker 3: around now and feel like pallyev he was, you know,
Speaker 3: just this this loser all along, who was you know,
Speaker 3: driving the Canadian right into the ground. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: just not how people looked at him six months ago.
Speaker 2: The other cope I saw is that, you know, the
Speaker 2: reason he lost is because he didn't race Trump, and
Speaker 2: that's what he should have then, you know, he should
Speaker 2: have embraced Trump and then that would have led him
Speaker 2: to victory. And I just, I mean, that's just utterly preposterous,
Speaker 2: given how dramatically unpopular Trump is in Canada.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's obviously insane, but there's something about how weak
Speaker 3: he looked by, you know, at first saying nice things
Speaker 3: about Donald Trump and then having to say, I mean
Speaker 3: he was in an impossible situation, then having to say,
Speaker 3: mister president or President Trump, stay out of our election.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just Donald stop, please leave us alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah not great.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, shall we turn to the Democrats and
Speaker 2: what's going on with them? So you guys will probably
Speaker 2: remember there was a significant race for a leadership fight
Speaker 2: in the House between AOC who wanted to be ranking
Speaker 2: member on the Oversight Committee, which basically it's a very
Speaker 2: public facing role. It was a good fit for her
Speaker 2: because she understands the media, she's feisty, she does well
Speaker 2: in these committee hearings, et cetera. So she would be
Speaker 2: in this prominent forward face role in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Nancy Pelosi intervened and instead got her man, Jerry Connolly
Speaker 2: to across the finish line to be ranking member of
Speaker 2: this committee. Now, it was known at the time that
Speaker 2: Jerry Connolly is he's in his seventies and he also
Speaker 2: is suffering from cancer and apparently that you know, the
Speaker 2: cancer prognosis has just recently gotten worse, so he is
Speaker 2: now saying he's stepping away from that role as ranking
Speaker 2: Member of Oversight that he had just won over AOC.
Speaker 2: Let's put this up on the screen. This is his
Speaker 2: official statement. Jerry Connolly, By the way, I've met him
Speaker 2: before a number of times. He represents a northern Virginia
Speaker 2: suburban like Fairfax County District in Virginia and has for
Speaker 2: a while. He used to be the head of the
Speaker 2: Board of Supervisors in Fairfax County, so a long time
Speaker 2: public official. Anyway, he says, Dear friends, I want to
Speaker 2: begin by thanking you for your good wishes and compassion
Speaker 2: as I continue to tackle my diagnosis. Your outpouring of
Speaker 2: love and support has given me strength in my fights
Speaker 2: both against cancer and our collective defensive democracy. When I
Speaker 2: announced my diagnosis six months ago, I promised transparency. After
Speaker 2: grueling treatments, we've learned the cancer, which was an initially
Speaker 2: beaten back, has now returned. I'll do everything possible to
Speaker 2: continue to represent you and thank you for your grace.
Speaker 2: The sun is setting on my time in public service.
Speaker 2: This will be my last term in Congress. I will
Speaker 2: be stepping back as ranking member of the Oversight Committee
Speaker 2: soon with no rancor, in a full heart, I'm move
Speaker 2: into this final chapter full of pride in what we've
Speaker 2: accomplished together over thirty years. My loving family and staff
Speaker 2: sustain me, My extended family. You all have been a
Speaker 2: joy to serve, your friend and public servant. And you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want to be an asshole here. I've met,
Speaker 2: like I said, I met Jerry Connolly, you know, interpersonally,
Speaker 2: very nice person. But if you truly believe yourself to
Speaker 2: be which I do, in this existential threat for the
Speaker 2: future of the country and democracy, you need to put
Speaker 2: your most effective players forward. And it was always very
Speaker 2: clear that that would not be Jerry Connolly at seventy
Speaker 2: years old in battling cancer. It would be someone like
Speaker 2: AOC who is leading the fight and is out there,
Speaker 2: you know, touring the country alongside Bernie Sanders and garnering
Speaker 2: record breaking crowds and understands new media, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: so here we are four months into the Trump administration
Speaker 2: and he's already having to step back emily from this
Speaker 2: role whatsoever. In terms of the who's going to be
Speaker 2: the replacement, It's not going to be AOC. She is
Speaker 2: no longer actually on this committee. She I guess got
Speaker 2: switched or both committees or whatever. Can put Ken Klippenstein,
Speaker 2: who's been all over this from the very beginning.
Speaker 3: Put the to say the very least about Ken.
Speaker 2: I tried, I tried to book Ken for us today,
Speaker 2: but he's like traveling right now and is just like
Speaker 2: killing him. Because yeah, all over this at the beginning.
Speaker 2: But anyway, put this next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 2: This is who looks to be set to replace him,
Speaker 2: another seventy year old representative, Stephen Lynch. Ken goes on
Speaker 2: to say his background is colorful. Lynch was apparently arrested
Speaker 2: at some point for drunkenly attacking a group of Iranian
Speaker 2: students protesting US intervention abroad. There are some other members
Speaker 2: on this committee who could have been interesting. Rocana is
Speaker 2: on this committee. Jasmine Crockett is also on this committee,
Speaker 2: so you don't have to go with another seventy year old.
Speaker 2: But yet here they are just like, this is the
Speaker 2: guy who's next in line seniority or leadership can rely
Speaker 2: on them or whatever. And it's absolutely incredible. I mean,
Speaker 2: Democrats have had multiple members die in office this session,
Speaker 2: which have led Republicans to you know, expand their margins
Speaker 2: by a little bit, and that little bit can make
Speaker 2: all the difference in terms of, you know, getting close
Speaker 2: legislation through the House.
Speaker 3: I'm so there's no committee that Democrats should have wanted
Speaker 3: a like very aware and healthy person on more than
Speaker 3: oversight for the first one hundred days of the second
Speaker 3: Trump administration. Like I am furious on be half of
Speaker 3: Democratic voters just thinking back on how insane it was.
Speaker 3: Like this is a concession that everyone who was concerned
Speaker 3: about Connolly getting this position was correct. This is him
Speaker 3: basically throwing in the towel and saying I'm not up
Speaker 3: to the job. Well, if you had had the humility
Speaker 3: and your supporters had had the humility to say that
Speaker 3: one hundred days ago, the Oversight Committee could have been
Speaker 3: much more robustly energetically pushing back on the Trump administration.
Speaker 3: It is just completely it's you know, all of this
Speaker 3: is obvious, what we're saying right now, but it is
Speaker 3: such a just obnoxious example of how wrong the old
Speaker 3: guard is, and how stubborn the old guard is, and
Speaker 3: how stuck in their way as the old guard is,
Speaker 3: and just how not up to the moment they are.
Speaker 3: It's just the sort of arrogance of the political class
Speaker 3: just being I think, you know, to some extent here
Speaker 3: put on fold display and again predictable and obvious. But
Speaker 3: the Oversight Committee is doing exactly what it says, like
Speaker 3: they have powers to call witnesses, like when Republicans were
Speaker 3: in the minority recently under Biden, the Oversight Committee, the
Speaker 3: Oversight Committee is where they felt they were doing their
Speaker 3: most important work. And it's because you can then call
Speaker 3: hearings and do Hunter Biden and Benghazi and all of
Speaker 3: those things come out of oversight. It's very powerful if
Speaker 3: you use it correctly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I remember when he won this or was
Speaker 2: going for this position at the time, which I could
Speaker 2: remember the exact language that he used, but he said
Speaker 2: something like I've waited a long time for this. It
Speaker 2: was very like I did my time. I'm next in line,
Speaker 2: so I'm getting this seat. And Nancy Pelosi made sure
Speaker 2: that he had the votes to be able to and again,
Speaker 2: like we all knew this was the reality.
Speaker 4: They knew this was the reality. This was utterly predictable.
Speaker 2: And so not only was it really you know, self
Speaker 2: serving for Jerry Connelly, even to put himself up for
Speaker 2: this position is extraordinarily you know, extraordinarily short sighted and
Speaker 2: weak move from Democratic leadership to push him for this
Speaker 2: spot and just speaks to a lack of seriousness and
Speaker 2: a lack of meeting the moment that has been characteristic
Speaker 2: across the board from the official Democratic leadership. And boy
Speaker 2: do I have another example of that Senator Schumer, who,
Speaker 2: of course, you know, capitulated the Republicans the one thing
Speaker 2: that where Democrats in the Senate really had some leverage.
Speaker 2: He completely you know, hands Republicans' major victory there. Now
Speaker 2: he's on CNN saying that, don't worry, he's in the fight.
Speaker 2: He has sent the Trump administration a strongly worded letter, Emily,
Speaker 2: so he will await their response. Let's take a listen
Speaker 2: to what he had to say.
Speaker 9: But it's also going to hurt the kind of medical
Speaker 9: research and other kinds of great research that has done
Speaker 9: at Harvard and other universities. So we sent him a
Speaker 9: very strong letter just the other day, tell asking eight
Speaker 9: very strong questions about why this isn't just a pretext.
Speaker 3: Well, you'll let us know if you get a response
Speaker 3: to that letter. I do want to I love it,
Speaker 3: seven not say seven strongly worded questions, eight strongly worded.
Speaker 4: Questions, very strong, very strong questions. He said, I love that.
Speaker 2: Dana's like, okay, you let me know when they get
Speaker 2: back to you on that one, sure, buddy, Like, it's
Speaker 2: just you can't make it up.
Speaker 4: It's so pathetic. It is so utterly pathetic.
Speaker 3: It's insane that he was on live television and thought
Speaker 3: that was a good thing to say, Like, are you
Speaker 3: listening to yourself? You know that you were stepping straight
Speaker 3: into a joke. Buddy. This is the minority, this is
Speaker 3: the head of Senate Democrats for how many years, and
Speaker 3: he can't even get through an interview without saying something
Speaker 3: as stupid as that. I mean, it's come on.
Speaker 2: Man, I miss Harry Reid. That's what I got to
Speaker 2: say about that. I miss Harry Reid. Harry he would never, No,
Speaker 2: he would never. Meanwhile, you've got you know, they're just
Speaker 2: the again, the leadership. They are just thrashing around trying
Speaker 2: to figure out where to be, what to say. They've
Speaker 2: recognized at this point that the base wants them to
Speaker 2: do more, so you know, their response is things like
Speaker 2: Senator Schumer sending eight strong questions in a strongly worded letter,
Speaker 2: and then Hakeem Jeffries and Corey Booker did some sort
Speaker 2: of a like live show out on the Capital steps,
Speaker 2: which everything it's just, you know, it's just a little odd.
Speaker 2: I will say that the Corey Booker speech, it didn't
Speaker 2: really it really didn't do it for me because of
Speaker 2: a variety. You know, it wasn't really about anything. And
Speaker 2: you know, it's felt to me very performative, although impressive,
Speaker 2: like listen, to hold your bladder that long is extraordinary,
Speaker 2: if in fact that's true, just to speak for that long,
Speaker 2: I can't even imagine. But I have to say, liberals
Speaker 2: ate that shit up. They loved it. They absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2: They see him as a hero. And this shows you,
Speaker 2: like the bar it is not that high. They just
Speaker 2: want people to do something, even though something is just
Speaker 2: like standing and talking for a while, right.
Speaker 3: Because that's a great that's a great point because that
Speaker 3: philibuster didn't have any legislative goal. Like literally, they just
Speaker 3: were lapping up Corey Booker demonstrating how like passionately he
Speaker 3: was anti Trump and anti this administration. And it was
Speaker 3: actually smart because he was like live on TikTok and
Speaker 3: breaking records and it you know, as I think vapid
Speaker 3: as it was, it just rallied the troops because people
Speaker 3: are desperate.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 2: But in any case, it came Jeffrey's Corey Booker do
Speaker 2: this hangout live stream thing on the Capitol steps. Let
Speaker 2: me give you just just just a little taste of
Speaker 2: it them like just a little taste, And I want.
Speaker 8: You all to know, I miss Obama, I miss Obama,
Speaker 8: I miss Obama, I miss Obama, and I.
Speaker 4: Miss I miss her husband too.
Speaker 8: We'll be pushing back against the Republican efforts to am
Speaker 8: this far right extreme budget down the throats of the
Speaker 8: American people, and we wanted to make sure that heading
Speaker 8: into that fight, we were very clear with our Republican
Speaker 8: colleagues there will not be a single Democratic vote to
Speaker 8: take away the healthcare of the American.
Speaker 3: People, not a sing law.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, Emily, the spirit of Barack Obama is alive
Speaker 2: and well in the fake ass speech cadence of people
Speaker 2: like Pete Boodaget and Corey Booker. So never fear. It
Speaker 2: just feels so try hard, you know, it just feels
Speaker 2: very like we're.
Speaker 4: Gonna be cool. We're going to do a thing. Here,
Speaker 4: we are doing a thing. I don't know. It just
Speaker 4: lands weird.
Speaker 3: And Hakim Jefferies is clearly his staff has clearly made
Speaker 3: a considered effort in the last couple of weeks to
Speaker 3: make sure that he does media mostly out of a suit.
Speaker 3: So like now they're putting him in a baseball cap
Speaker 3: and T shirts and his like sneakers. It's just so like,
Speaker 3: I'm casual every man, Like I'm just you know, your friend.
Speaker 3: It's very to your point, try hard, and it's so
Speaker 3: sudden it looks just cringe and it's again, we talked
Speaker 3: about this recently, but it's so strange for me because
Speaker 3: this used to be even like younger Republicans how they
Speaker 3: came across. And I'm not saying Republicans are like hip
Speaker 3: and spry either, because they're not. But it used to
Speaker 3: not be like this for Democrats, Like it used to
Speaker 3: be a lot easier for them, especially in the Obama era,
Speaker 3: to come across as normal human beings. But they're so
Speaker 3: they're overthinking it so much because they're so thrown off
Speaker 3: by like the youth shift and working class Hispanic voters.
Speaker 3: Some changes in the Black electorate, so it's just hard
Speaker 3: for them to figure out what they should do and
Speaker 3: they haven't landed on anything, so it ends up looking
Speaker 3: really awkward and there's no sign of that, you know,
Speaker 3: there's no sign of the light being at the end
Speaker 3: of that tunnel at all.
Speaker 2: And some of them, I mean, they're just so many
Speaker 2: of them are just like old and kind of lost
Speaker 2: at sea in the world of.
Speaker 4: Like the new social media.
Speaker 2: Like they be like, I should be doing a thing,
Speaker 2: but I don't really know what that thing is. And
Speaker 2: so much of this too, is like just stop trying
Speaker 2: to be something you're not. Like Keem Jeffries. You're never
Speaker 2: going to be a firebrand. You're never gonna be that
Speaker 2: like super relatable cool guy. That's just not who you are.
Speaker 2: I mean, look to go back to the Canada Black
Speaker 2: Mark Carney is like the ultimate technocrat and he just
Speaker 2: leans into it and people are like, Okay, that's who
Speaker 2: he is, you know. I mean Bernie Sanders, like he's
Speaker 2: not out there trying to do a thing. He just
Speaker 2: is himself. That's that's it. That's just stop trying so hard.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, I'd be remiss if I didn't say,
Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer's strategy, I'd just basically like wait around and
Speaker 2: let the Republicans hang themselves is kind of panning out.
Speaker 2: Not only have we covered extensively Trump's numbers at one
Speaker 2: hundred days, obviously they're really bad across the board, even
Speaker 2: his best issue of immigration, he's now underwater, especially when
Speaker 2: you ask about specifics foreign policy. But most importantly, his
Speaker 2: economic numbers have fallen off a cliff, and predictably that
Speaker 2: is having a major packed on the down ballot races.
Speaker 2: I think Republicans just basically expect to lose the House
Speaker 2: at this point. It's almost like a foregone conclusion, given
Speaker 2: that we're nowhere near out of the woods with regard
Speaker 2: to the economic pain either. Harry Enton just did a
Speaker 2: piece on the unpopularity of the Republican Party and how
Speaker 2: it may translate to midterm losses. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: take a listen to that.
Speaker 10: Democrats versus Republicans. We have three polls out within the
Speaker 10: last few weeks.
Speaker 4: What do they all show?
Speaker 10: They all show the Democrats up by two points in
Speaker 10: the CNBC poll, the Fox News poll that was out
Speaker 10: on Friday. Look at that Democrats up by seven the
Speaker 10: New York Times poll that was out this Friday as well,
Speaker 10: Democrats by three. And keep in mind the House GOP
Speaker 10: won the popular vote back in twenty twenty four by
Speaker 10: a little less than three percentage points. So when you
Speaker 10: see three seven to two averaging four, that is a
Speaker 10: tremendous shift. That is a shift of seven points from
Speaker 10: the November twenty twenty four elections away from the GOP.
Speaker 10: You look at Trump's net federal rating in October of
Speaker 10: twenty twenty four coin in New York Times minus nine points.
Speaker 10: Look at where it is now minus thirty points among independence.
Speaker 10: That's horrific, that's historically awful. Take a look at the
Speaker 10: generic ballot in October of twenty twenty four. The Democrats
Speaker 10: were ahead, but only by three, well within the margin
Speaker 10: of our Look at where they are now, up seventeen points.
Speaker 10: There is no way on God's green earth that the
Speaker 10: Republicans can hold on to the House of Representatives if
Speaker 10: they lose independence by seventeen percentage points. My goodness, gracious.
Speaker 4: What do you think about that?
Speaker 3: M I mean like, this is despite Democrats' best efforts,
Speaker 3: I think, And that's part of this is interesting too.
Speaker 3: Did you see Alyssa slock and dropping like F bombs recently.
Speaker 4: Did you see the stories about that? I did not
Speaker 4: see that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, The Hill had a whole story yesterday about how
Speaker 3: Dems are like embracing the F word, and my god,
Speaker 3: I feel like that happens every time a political party
Speaker 3: gets a little bit bestperate. But you know, it reminded
Speaker 3: me of the Hakim Jeffreys Corey Booker like just sitting
Speaker 3: on the steps chatting with people moment, because it's like, you, guys,
Speaker 3: what's working right now is Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Acosio
Speaker 3: Cortez going to Red States and holding fighting oligarchy, fighting
Speaker 3: oligarchy rallies, not Alyssa Slockin, you know, thinking that she's
Speaker 3: like a cool mom for dropping F bombs in an interview,
Speaker 3: like forcing herself to drop an F bomb in an interview.
Speaker 3: It g's just so bizarre. But I think the reason
Speaker 3: they're doing it, Crystal, is because they, like Hakim Jefferies
Speaker 3: and Corey Booker can't go full quote fight oligarchy. This
Speaker 3: is there and that's, by the way, what's good for
Speaker 3: the party, Uh, what's good for them would be to
Speaker 3: embrace this anti oligarch message, but because they are also
Speaker 3: bankrolled by oligarchs, they're uncomfortable with that messaging. And that's
Speaker 3: why Alissa Slockin is now explicitly pushing back against it.
Speaker 3: And I think it's why Hakim Jeffries and Corey Booker
Speaker 3: maybe they clear the very low bar of you know,
Speaker 3: looking like they have at least some energy and aren't
Speaker 3: you know connolly. But at the same time, I think
Speaker 3: what Trump is struggling with is coming without actually a
Speaker 3: decent resistance from the Democratic Party, and so that goes
Speaker 3: to show like, what could this be? Like I mean again,
Speaker 3: like Donald Trump has barely won a couple of elections.
Speaker 3: This man came off being the host of Celebrity Apprentice,
Speaker 3: Like Hillary Clinton was terrible, Joe Biden was terrible, Kamala
Speaker 3: Harris was terrible. That's how bad Dems have been. It's
Speaker 3: not any I think special testament to Donald Trump being
Speaker 3: super attractive and likable. I think he's a smart politician
Speaker 3: with his base. But it's not like the entire country
Speaker 3: loves Donald Trump despite what he may say. It's just
Speaker 3: that consistently Dems have been worse than Trump, except for Biden.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty in the middle of the pandemic. So
Speaker 3: they in ten years they have not figured out a
Speaker 3: way to be slightly better than Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, your point about slock In and Jefferson Booker too,
Speaker 2: is really well taken. And I've never seen anything more
Speaker 2: horror manufactured than the like pushing slot Eliza Slockin on us,
Speaker 2: like no one wanted this. The Democratic leadership for some
Speaker 2: reason was like this lady, she's the real future of
Speaker 2: a party. We're gonna have her do the response to
Speaker 2: the state of the Union. We're gonna have her lead
Speaker 2: our effort to you know, tamp down all this anti
Speaker 2: oligarchy talk that's getting a little too popular among our
Speaker 2: normy Democrat base. But to your point, you know, I
Speaker 2: think the I think the things that have really landed
Speaker 2: with the liberal base has been number one, the Stop
Speaker 2: Oligarchy Tour, the Fight Oligarchy Tour.
Speaker 4: Number two.
Speaker 2: You know, people like Jasmine Crockett who just can like
Speaker 2: dish it out and really is it just has this
Speaker 2: vibe and this energy. She's not going to take any shit,
Speaker 2: and she's gonna like get out there and get in
Speaker 2: your face. Whatever Cory Booker's speech, whether I like it
Speaker 2: or not. I mean, listen, he did a thing, okay,
Speaker 2: the like liberals loved it. The other thing is the
Speaker 2: Chris van Holland going to El Salvador, which you know,
Speaker 2: to me is a study in contrast between Core Booker's thing,
Speaker 2: which was actually basically about nothing about like him positioning
Speaker 2: himself as a resistance fighter, whereas Chris van Holland, you know,
Speaker 2: he actually did a thing like he went. It was
Speaker 2: a real issue, it was some personal riskue himself. It's
Speaker 2: a risky political issue, and obviously Bikelly did all he
Speaker 2: could to make the optics as terrible as possible, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think his actions really kept that
Speaker 2: story alive and has helped to move public opinion dramatically
Speaker 2: against the Trump administration, not only specifically in that case,
Speaker 2: but that's what helped to drag them underwater on immigration
Speaker 2: in general. So and since then you've seen some other
Speaker 2: representatives and senators follow suit and going to visit people
Speaker 2: who are detained because they you know, published an obed
Speaker 2: or had some you know, pro Palestine speech or whatever.
Speaker 2: You saw other members also travel down to El Salvador.
Speaker 2: So that really set a model for for Democrats moving forward,
Speaker 2: who actually wanted to do something and not just like
Speaker 2: sit on the steps of the Capitol and talk about
Speaker 2: how which they missed Barack Obama.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, so I think with the base, it makes
Speaker 3: sense to me that that would be sort of that
Speaker 3: all of that would be a shot in the arm.
Speaker 3: I still think the van Holland and what was the
Speaker 3: oh the uh yeah, Well, I think the van Holland
Speaker 3: example in particular is like, I don't think they quite
Speaker 3: nailed the messaging for a broader audience, but I think
Speaker 3: he understood that what the Democratic Party's base, like the
Speaker 3: grassroots type people want right now is someone to like
Speaker 3: actually take personal risk and sect you.
Speaker 2: No, I really disagree with that, and I think it
Speaker 2: shows up in the polling. I mean, when we were
Speaker 2: looking yesterday at the best and the worst issues for Trump,
Speaker 2: his best issue and this was the New York Times
Speaker 2: Siena polling, which is, you know, considered to be one
Speaker 2: of the more credible pollsters and they do a large sample,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Best polling numbers were on immigration, though he
Speaker 2: was still underwater by four worst polling numbers was the
Speaker 2: handling of Kilmara Brego Garcia, So I think. I mean,
Speaker 2: the numbers I've seen are like twenty percent support what
Speaker 2: the Trump administration is doing there. So I do believe
Speaker 2: that the efforts of Chris van Holland and others to
Speaker 2: shine a light on that and to consistently explain, you know,
Speaker 2: this isn't really about this one guy, and however you
Speaker 2: may feel about him, this is about due process for
Speaker 2: all of us. This is about protecting all of our
Speaker 2: rights and your right to have your day in court
Speaker 2: before being sent for life to this you know, foreign
Speaker 2: goolog I think it's undeniable at this point that that
Speaker 2: messaging has landed and that it has dramatically turned people
Speaker 2: against the Trump administration's handling in that one specific case,
Speaker 2: with bleedover into how they feel about the immigration program
Speaker 2: read large.
Speaker 3: I think people definitely agree with that sentiment. I don't
Speaker 3: disagree that that's where the public has landed on it.
Speaker 3: I think it's a for me, it's an interesting case
Speaker 3: study and how Dems can misread or not misread that's
Speaker 3: the wrong word, how they can over maybe overread the
Speaker 3: public's position. Like it's easy to say, and actually I
Speaker 3: think Trump does this times too. It's easy to say, Okay,
Speaker 3: the public is with us, this is a winning issue.
Speaker 3: We can't be sending people to see caught on, you know,
Speaker 3: mistakes that your own administration's attorneys, your own DJ attorneys
Speaker 3: admit and like sucking up to the CALA and doing
Speaker 3: that weird stuff like nobody is like here for that.
Speaker 3: I think what Van Holland did then looked like the
Speaker 3: Trump administration was able to message it in a way
Speaker 3: that probably resonated with a lot of people as Dems
Speaker 3: actively trying to keep people who are not in the
Speaker 3: country legally in the country, even though it's not what
Speaker 3: the case is about. I think it's it's easy to
Speaker 3: get we probably just disagree on it. I just think
Speaker 3: it's easy to get caught in that trap of like
Speaker 3: not sticking on the narrow issue, but then also looking
Speaker 3: like you're in the position that most people disagree with
Speaker 3: because you kind of misread where people are on the
Speaker 3: narrow issue in and of itself. But we probably disagree
Speaker 3: in that.
Speaker 4: I mean I do.
Speaker 2: I do just disagree with the assess meant there. And
Speaker 2: I think at this point the polling bears it out
Speaker 2: pretty clearly that, you know, because the Trump administration had
Speaker 2: admitted fault in this case. It made it fairly clear
Speaker 2: cut of like you screwed up, bring the guy back,
Speaker 2: like what are you doing? And also because the Trump
Speaker 2: Trump himself was like, we're going for us born, you know,
Speaker 2: homegrown criminals next, it didn't take any imagination to go, oh,
Speaker 2: this isn't just about rights for undocumented immigrants. This is
Speaker 2: an assault on all He wants to be able to
Speaker 2: send anybody he wants and disappear into this dungeon. And
Speaker 2: you know, I think that really made it easier for
Speaker 2: Democrats to make the case that this matters for everyone.
Speaker 4: And you know, the.
Speaker 2: Tariff stuff politically is obviously extremely toxic, and it's also
Speaker 2: something that everyone is aware of their own material circumstances
Speaker 2: and the way they're being negatively impacted. So I think
Speaker 2: they were able to push the message about kill Maara
Speaker 2: Brego Garcia and the assault on rights and the way
Speaker 2: that this the implications this has for the broader immigration agenda. Well,
Speaker 2: obviously the tariff stuff is there and is not going
Speaker 2: away anytime soon, but we can we can agree to
Speaker 2: disagree on that one if you'd like, We'll come back
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 4: I'm sure another day.
Speaker 3: Oh, Yeah, there'll be plenty to talk about.