Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2: Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
Speaker 2: and we are so excited about what that means for
Speaker 2: the future of this show.
Speaker 3: This is the only place where you can find honest
Speaker 3: perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
Speaker 3: not exist anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So if that is something that's important to you, please
Speaker 2: go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and
Speaker 2: you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free
Speaker 2: and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Speaker 3: We need your help to build the future of independent
Speaker 3: news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
Speaker 3: dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday, have an amazing
Speaker 3: show for everybody today.
Speaker 2: What do we have pristl Indeed, we do many things
Speaker 2: to get to this morning. So Trump will not rule
Speaker 2: out a recession. We'll tell you what the hell is
Speaker 2: going on there as just as we can figure anyway.
Speaker 2: We're going to take you inside that cabinet meeting showdown,
Speaker 2: Marco Rubio versus Elon Musk. Sean Duffy also getting in
Speaker 2: the mix, So some interesting things happening there. What does
Speaker 2: it mean for the future of doge Canada had elections.
Speaker 2: The Liberal Party there elected their new leaders, so he
Speaker 2: will be the prime minister until they call new elections.
Speaker 2: There has been a dramatic turnaround in fortunes for the
Speaker 2: Liberal Party since Trump started threatening them with significant tariffs,
Speaker 2: So really interesting dynamics there too. Civilians are being mass
Speaker 2: slaughtered and serious or you will not hear in the
Speaker 2: mainstream press, we will take you inside what's going on there.
Speaker 2: Just really shocking images and footage that we can reveal here,
Speaker 2: not for the faint of heart, whatsoever. The same time,
Speaker 2: in the Lease, Trump is trying to negotiate a new
Speaker 2: deal with Iran. Maybe so far Ron has rejected that
Speaker 2: outreach thing basically like why should we trust you? We
Speaker 2: had to deal with you before, how did that go?
Speaker 2: But still an interesting development and certainly want to track there.
Speaker 2: We are also following this situation with Columbia University. The
Speaker 2: Trump administration has stripped them of four hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: in federal funding and they have arrested. DHS has arrested
Speaker 2: and essentially disappeared at this point, we don't know where
Speaker 2: This guy is, a Green card holder who was a
Speaker 2: leader of pro Power nine protest on campus, so obviously
Speaker 2: a horrific situation there, and I'm taking a look at
Speaker 2: Tim Walls spilling the tea on the Kamala campaign and
Speaker 2: what might be next for him.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Can't wait to listen to that one, especially there's been
Speaker 3: a lot of discourse in the Democratic universe over his interview,
Speaker 3: which I've been enjoying absolutely thoroughly. Thank you to everybody
Speaker 3: who's been subscribing to the show. We really appreciate it's
Speaker 3: been a lot of fun. We've been working extra hard here.
Speaker 3: We've got five days a week now of coverage here
Speaker 3: at Breaking Points. To go ahead Breakingpoints dot com, you
Speaker 3: can become a premium subscriber and just had to say
Speaker 3: we will overcome this time change my fellow morning. It's
Speaker 3: a difficult time out there, Crystal. I will be happy
Speaker 3: to report traffic was much better today despite Elon's return
Speaker 3: to work mandate.
Speaker 1: My theory is that people are too lazy to get
Speaker 1: up in the dark.
Speaker 3: So maybe I am pro daylight saving time because people
Speaker 3: don't want to commute whenever.
Speaker 1: It's very dark.
Speaker 3: But for the rest of us, for the rest of
Speaker 3: us who have to get up no matter what it is,
Speaker 3: we shall overcome this.
Speaker 4: Wonder.
Speaker 2: I wonder if some of the agencies though, because one
Speaker 2: of the things is like they just literally don't have
Speaker 2: space for all.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, actually be a work.
Speaker 2: So I wonder if it's also partly the agencies reasserting
Speaker 2: themselves and being like, you know, somebod y'all actually don't
Speaker 2: need to come in.
Speaker 1: I'll save some of this for the cabinet.
Speaker 3: But I spent the weekend I talked to a couple
Speaker 3: of folks who are actually victims of the return to
Speaker 3: office mandate, and it's actually unbelievable. If I were one
Speaker 3: of them, not only would I quit and take that
Speaker 3: buy out, I would I would be absolutely furious. So
Speaker 3: that is a secondary conversation that we can get to.
Speaker 3: But let's turn down to recession watch. So Donald Trump
Speaker 3: has given an interview now which is nothing short of extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Asked to rule out a recession as a result of
Speaker 3: the tariffs and as a result of some of the
Speaker 3: other problems that we have right now in the economy,
Speaker 3: and he's basically not saying no. So let's take a listen,
Speaker 3: and I want to.
Speaker 5: Ask you about Ukraine and to blow up the other
Speaker 5: day with Zielenski. Let me stay on the economy for
Speaker 5: a moment, because there are rising worries about a slowdown.
Speaker 5: You've got the Atlanta Federal Reserve say we're going to
Speaker 5: have a contraction in the first quarter.
Speaker 6: Look, I know that you inherited a mess.
Speaker 7: And you say, I've only been here.
Speaker 5: Are you expecting a reception this year?
Speaker 7: I hate to predict things like that.
Speaker 8: There is a period of transition because what we're doing
Speaker 8: is very big. We're bringing wealth back to America. That's
Speaker 8: a big thing, and there are always periods of it
Speaker 8: takes a little time. It takes a little time. But
Speaker 8: I don't I think it should be great for us.
Speaker 8: I mean, I think it should be great. It's going
Speaker 8: to be great ultimately for the farmer.
Speaker 7: You know, don't forget.
Speaker 5: I meant, before you came into the Oval office the
Speaker 5: first time, you were a very successful businessman, very successful
Speaker 5: real estate executive. And a lot of people said, oh,
Speaker 5: this is the business president, this is it.
Speaker 1: He's watching the stock market.
Speaker 5: He knows all about you know, he doesn't want the.
Speaker 1: Market to go down.
Speaker 5: And now we've got tariffs and the market has been
Speaker 5: going down.
Speaker 7: Well, not much.
Speaker 5: I mean, in you said, look, we're going to have
Speaker 5: a disruption, but we're okay with that. Is that what
Speaker 5: you meant the stock market going down was the disruption?
Speaker 6: What to be a lump where you alluding to.
Speaker 8: What I have to do is build a strong country.
Speaker 8: You can't really watch the stock market. If you look
Speaker 8: at China, they have one hundred year perspective.
Speaker 3: If you look at what do you think if you
Speaker 3: look at Canada they have one hundred year perspective. Well,
Speaker 3: you say China, because if you said China, that's correct.
Speaker 1: If you said Canada, not so sure about that.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, the truth is is that the stock market,
Speaker 3: the S and P and the last month is down
Speaker 3: by about five percent. I guess, to be fair to Trump,
Speaker 3: it's down because it went up after he was elected.
Speaker 3: The market didn't necessarily expect him to be like this.
Speaker 3: If you look at the last one year, you know
Speaker 3: the S and P still up by some twelve percent
Speaker 3: or so.
Speaker 1: But you know, this is the problem for Trump is that.
Speaker 3: People are not really that people are not that retrospective,
Speaker 3: especially people on Wall Street. It's all quarter by quarter
Speaker 3: and you got to look at it now and it's
Speaker 3: what have you done for me? Lately that's how Americans are,
Speaker 3: and I think the real problem with some of that
Speaker 3: talk again is I don't disagree at all. Of course,
Speaker 3: how many times we joked here about stock market is
Speaker 3: a graph of rich people's feelings, et cetera. We're going
Speaker 3: to get to some comments by Scott Besten's Secretary of
Speaker 3: the Treasury about how the American dream should not be
Speaker 3: consumption based.
Speaker 1: Could not agree more.
Speaker 3: The issue is that people have got to really feel
Speaker 3: as if you're presenting a genuine alternative and doing everything
Speaker 3: possible to actually change the circumstances of their lives. And
Speaker 3: if we don't have more policy now and in the future,
Speaker 3: like with the tax bill and others that are not
Speaker 3: combined not only with just industrialization, but with immediate relief
Speaker 3: and feeling as if you're fighting for the average common
Speaker 3: working person, then you're going to have the divergence where
Speaker 3: you both will have more difficult consumption, You'll have worse
Speaker 3: on employment data, high home prices and no change to
Speaker 3: your fundamentals, and your overall retirement portfolio will go down.
Speaker 3: I mean, you should not forget we are swimming up
Speaker 3: against seventy five years of basically so called free trade
Speaker 3: policy and the consumption based economy. It's basically the dream
Speaker 3: that was sold to the American people, and it's not
Speaker 3: even a dream anymore.
Speaker 1: They believe it. If anything, it's the conditions of their lives.
Speaker 3: So you have to basically should not only take a
Speaker 3: whole of government approach, you're also trying to change the
Speaker 3: American culture. At the very same time, somebody who would
Speaker 3: ever bet against telling Americans that actually recession could be fine,
Speaker 3: and yeah, you should just go ahead and change your
Speaker 3: consumption based patterns that you've had for your entire life.
Speaker 1: Not usually a good way to get elected. I mean,
Speaker 1: what do I know that.
Speaker 6: It was a shocking response.
Speaker 2: It was crazy to get asked point blank, are we
Speaker 2: going to avoid a recession? And he's like, maybe, well,
Speaker 2: I don't like to predict that. I mean, that is
Speaker 2: that is wild, and it does give credence to, you know,
Speaker 2: the idea that actually they sort of want to maybe
Speaker 2: not necessarily spark our recession, but certainly to spark a slowdown.
Speaker 2: And the theory here is basically that the tariffs without
Speaker 2: some sort of significant slowdown, crushing of people's wages and
Speaker 2: ability to consume, and that goes along with slashing the
Speaker 2: government social safety net and all the austerity that Elon
Speaker 2: is bringing.
Speaker 6: To bear for regular people.
Speaker 2: Of course, rich people are getting their tax cut and
Speaker 2: they're getting their regulators gutted and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 2: But for regular people this mass austerity. The theory is
Speaker 2: that if you do terror RIfS without doing that, then
Speaker 2: you get inflation. So they've decided that the way to
Speaker 2: crush inflation is basically to screw.
Speaker 6: You over and make it so that you don't have
Speaker 6: money to spend. That's the sort of theory.
Speaker 2: And I have to say, with his answer like this,
Speaker 2: that sounds kind of correct at this point. Not to
Speaker 2: mention that you have heard. I think it's you know,
Speaker 2: Scott Bessett who has said things are very similar and
Speaker 2: more sort of like technical economic jargon. I do think
Speaker 2: at this point that that is probably the plan. You know,
Speaker 2: we could talk more about this once we play best
Speaker 2: and saying like, oh, the American dream shouldn't just be
Speaker 2: like cheap consumer goods. True, but your agenda that you've
Speaker 2: laid out and that you're implementing is to shift the
Speaker 2: economy even more in the direction of the wealthy through
Speaker 2: those tax cuts, through the social safety net cuts through
Speaker 2: you know, getting rid effectively of the CFPB, gutting the SEC,
Speaker 2: gutting enforcement through things like you know, we're going to have.
Speaker 6: This crypto Reserve fund that we.
Speaker 2: Can use to you know, funnel public resources into stopping
Speaker 2: the crypto bags of billionaires. Through even the foreign policy,
Speaker 2: which is all geared towards sort of creating new areas
Speaker 2: of potential exploitation for the rich.
Speaker 6: So, yes, the economy should be a rebalanced.
Speaker 2: Yes, the core of like American prosperity shouldn't just be
Speaker 2: how much cheap goods can we.
Speaker 6: Get at Walmart.
Speaker 2: But you're going in the total opposite direction of that
Speaker 2: and just tilting the economy even more in the direction
Speaker 2: of the rich. It's sort of like Reaganomics and Paul
Speaker 2: Ryan on steroids.
Speaker 3: Well, it's very it's just very confused, and I think
Speaker 3: that's the easiest way to put and if things are confused,
Speaker 3: people are not going to read the best intentions into it.
Speaker 3: Now you also have the Commerce Secretary who has had
Speaker 3: some wild moments on television. First of all, he did
Speaker 3: say there will not be a recession, while Trump did
Speaker 3: not rule it out, but he also went off about
Speaker 3: AI and robots. So, guys, let's go ahead and play
Speaker 3: these two stots back to back, just so people can
Speaker 3: get a full taste that our economy is in very
Speaker 3: good hands right now. Let's go ahead and play Howard Ludnek.
Speaker 9: Anybody who bets against Donald Trump, it's like the same
Speaker 9: people who thought Donald Trump wasn't a winner a year ago.
Speaker 9: Donald Trump is a winner. He's going to win for
Speaker 9: the American people. That's just the way it's going to be.
Speaker 9: There's going to be no recession in America. What there's
Speaker 9: going to be is global tariffs are going to come
Speaker 9: down because President Trump has said, you want to charge
Speaker 9: us one hundred percent, We're going to charge you one
Speaker 9: hundred percent. And you know what they say. They say, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 9: don't charge us one hundred percent. We'll bring hours down,
Speaker 9: will unleash America out to the world, grow our economy
Speaker 9: in a way we've never grown before. You are going
Speaker 9: to see over the next two years the greatest set
Speaker 9: of growth coming from America as Americans.
Speaker 7: You saw it.
Speaker 9: One point three trillion of new investment coming in America.
Speaker 7: That speak of all those jobs.
Speaker 9: And remember each trillion of investment in America is one
Speaker 9: percent of growth GDP. So Donald Trump is bringing growth
Speaker 9: to America. I would never bet on recession, no chance.
Speaker 9: Do you think by moving everything back because you describe it,
Speaker 9: that they're going to be able to be competitive globally? Aren't?
Speaker 1: Price is ultimately going to actually have to rise.
Speaker 9: I think if you want to buy things from other
Speaker 9: countries and you want to bring it into America, then
Speaker 9: the price is going to rise.
Speaker 6: But if you make it here.
Speaker 9: Then of course the price won't rise. So make it here.
Speaker 9: Make it here. How hard is that to say? You know,
Speaker 9: just keep repeating it to yourself. There's no tariff if
Speaker 9: you make it here. So TSMC, the biggest chip manufacturer, says, okay, okay,
Speaker 9: I'll make it here. You're going to watch everybody come
Speaker 9: to that realization. Apple, who builds it all in China?
Speaker 9: Why are they building it all in China and giving
Speaker 9: us our iPhone? Why don't they make it here?
Speaker 7: You know they umused to say we don't have secretaries,
Speaker 7: that wages.
Speaker 1: Are lower over there.
Speaker 9: And now there are robots who can do it. You're
Speaker 9: going to see robotic production of iphe phones and the
Speaker 9: jobs that are going to be created. People who build
Speaker 9: those factories, the mechanics who work on those robots. These
Speaker 9: jobs are going to be millions and millions of those jobs.
Speaker 9: These are great, high paying jobs and you don't need
Speaker 9: a college education to do it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's what we're dealing. Okay, robot, we're going
Speaker 1: to do the job.
Speaker 6: Wait a minute, I mean you're going to build a robot.
Speaker 2: So it's going to be great. Like he kind of
Speaker 2: let the cat out of the bag with that one.
Speaker 2: That like, oh, the way we can keep the prices
Speaker 2: low is just like AI and robots.
Speaker 3: But that's why it drives me nuts, is that it
Speaker 3: needs if we're going to have a coherent Again, I'm
Speaker 3: very pro terror, I'm against a lot of USMCA. The
Speaker 3: truth is that natal USMC have been devastating for the
Speaker 3: American manufacturer. Fact is that we don't you know, build
Speaker 3: or have not only the defense industrial base, the industrial
Speaker 3: based period that we have here to be like a
Speaker 3: sustainable and a real country. You know, God forbid that
Speaker 3: we ever have an actual financial crisis. We're not Russia,
Speaker 3: we're not China, we're not India. We don't have policies
Speaker 3: in place to make sure that we can function in
Speaker 3: the in the bad times as well as in the good.
Speaker 3: But you know, this type of talk just makes it
Speaker 3: so completely incoherent, and it makes it again so that
Speaker 3: the American consumer just has no idea what to do.
Speaker 3: And when they have no idea what to do, they're
Speaker 3: going to pull back their overall consumer spending. And actually,
Speaker 3: you know, the fact is is that you know, if
Speaker 3: you do accept this thing, people have said, oh, who
Speaker 3: cares about the stock market, it's rich people. Well, I'm
Speaker 3: going to turn it over to our Treasury secretary now,
Speaker 3: because here's the problem. We live in a complete bottom
Speaker 3: up economy where or sorry, top down economy, fifty percent
Speaker 3: of all consumer spending is rich people.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: Right now, I was looking not only at some of
Speaker 3: the Wall Street Journal stats, but luxury services for high
Speaker 3: fine hotels, like first class air.
Speaker 1: Travel, all of you know, like Remoa bags, all that's
Speaker 1: exploding right now.
Speaker 3: But if you look at the bottom part of the economy,
Speaker 3: places where people have to penny pinsion others, it is devastating.
Speaker 3: And so you both are going to have consumer pair
Speaker 3: back at all levels, which is really bad, not only
Speaker 3: for the stock market, bad broadly Let's take a listen
Speaker 3: now to our Secretary of the Treasury Codes Again. He's
Speaker 3: pitching a vision very much like mine, but it has
Speaker 3: to be backed up with a lot of policy.
Speaker 1: Let's go and take a listen to Scott Bessett.
Speaker 10: Top ten percent of Americans are forty or fifty percent
Speaker 10: of consumption, and that is an unstable equilibrium. The bottom
Speaker 10: fifty percent of working Americans have gotten killed. We are
Speaker 10: trying to address that. We're trying to get rates down.
Speaker 10: And could we be seeing this economy that we inherited
Speaker 10: starting to roll a bit?
Speaker 11: Sure?
Speaker 10: And look, there's going to be a natural adjustment as
Speaker 10: we move away from public spending. The private spending. The
Speaker 10: market and the economy have just become hooked, and we've
Speaker 10: become addicted to this government spending, and there's going to
Speaker 10: be a detox period. The United States also provides reserve
Speaker 10: assets as a consumer of first and last resort, and
Speaker 10: it absorbs excess supply in the face of insufficient demand.
Speaker 10: In other countries' domestic models, this system is not sustainable.
Speaker 10: Access to cheap goods is not the asset is not
Speaker 10: the essence of the American dream.
Speaker 3: So I mean, look, you know access to cheap goods
Speaker 3: is not the essence of the American dream.
Speaker 1: I want that to be true.
Speaker 3: It has, however, been true for the last seventy five years.
Speaker 3: In fact, much of the degradation of our country is
Speaker 3: a result of that mindset. But it's baked into the culture.
Speaker 3: Now we are a Black Friday America. Like, let's be honest,
Speaker 3: we're Cyber Monday America. That's who we are. We have
Speaker 3: decided that those cheap things from China and all that
Speaker 3: are worth it. And in a sense, you can't necessarily
Speaker 3: blame people because all policy has been guided towards that direction.
Speaker 1: When you have no policy geared towards.
Speaker 3: Anything else, that's the easiest way to function in our society.
Speaker 3: But again, whenever you have major consumable goods or not sorry,
Speaker 3: major goods that are vital parts of the American life
Speaker 3: like health insurance and or home prices become completely unaffordable.
Speaker 3: On top of education, well what do we have. We
Speaker 3: have a complete, you know, mismatch of the things that
Speaker 3: are actually important are way too expensive, and the things
Speaker 3: that are not important to your life at all are
Speaker 3: the cheaper than ever. You can think by the way
Speaker 3: you're you know that he was speaking of the Economic
Speaker 3: Club of New York ironic because as you can.
Speaker 1: Think, the people like that.
Speaker 3: However, you know, again not to beat a dead horse,
Speaker 3: but if you have tax policy which is basically geared
Speaker 3: towards giving the Economic Club of New York, like a
Speaker 3: huge tax cut, and or you don't have policy that's
Speaker 3: put into place, which makes it so that you have
Speaker 3: more things like this that happened tariffs, for example, like
Speaker 3: if they took three months to do a real study
Speaker 3: of the tariffs, but then they come into place and
Speaker 3: they're strategic and they're staying and they're not part of
Speaker 3: some wishwash chaos with the markets.
Speaker 1: Well then at least, you know.
Speaker 3: The American consumer, the American business, eve, Canada, Mexico, all
Speaker 3: of us can say all right, you know, we can negotiate,
Speaker 3: let's say, on these terms. Right now it all just
Speaker 3: feelschaotic to an end. Now, their defense from the White House,
Speaker 3: the defense from the White House is this is how
Speaker 3: you actually get things done in terms of being able
Speaker 3: to just throw things, keep the Canadians and the Mexicans
Speaker 3: or you know, the entire world really on their feet,
Speaker 3: create chaos in the system, and then work to that
Speaker 3: advantage whenever there's a vacuum, and you know, if you
Speaker 3: had true faith that a good outcome would come as a.
Speaker 1: Result of that, it's possible.
Speaker 3: I still think Trump has got a decent amount of runway. However,
Speaker 3: day after day after day you see market down, see
Speaker 3: consumer sentiment and all that. You're flirting with a bit
Speaker 3: of disaster the closer that we get to the first
Speaker 3: hundred days, and no real action on many of the
Speaker 3: things that he ran on, like inflation and on immigration.
Speaker 3: While you also basically just have dos to the centerpiece
Speaker 3: story of the entire country, you are very much moving
Speaker 3: away from that. We're coming up on fifty days, right,
Speaker 3: so you've only got fifty more to go. It's really
Speaker 3: not that long of a time. And so I do
Speaker 3: think that they are really flirting with fire here. And
Speaker 3: you know, and soon enough we're going to have that
Speaker 3: tax cut. It's not that far away, and that will
Speaker 3: only make the even worse.
Speaker 2: And Medicaid cuts very likely. Medicaid cuts, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: what they're floating as eight hundred billion dollars Medicaid cups cuts,
Speaker 2: which will be devastating to millions of people across the country.
Speaker 2: I mean one thing that Obamacare did. We'll talk more
Speaker 2: about this probably later in the week. Publicans put forward
Speaker 2: their continuing resolution as we move closer to this potential
Speaker 2: government shutdown. But you know, the Obamacare Medicaid expansion made
Speaker 2: Medicaid much more popular because it made it you know,
Speaker 2: it's not anywhere close to universal program, but it made
Speaker 2: it so that there was much more public buy in,
Speaker 2: so it wasn't just something that felt like it's on
Speaker 2: the fringes. Half of Americans are either on Medicaid themselves
Speaker 2: or have someone who's close to them who is on Medicaid.
Speaker 2: So this program has really become an integral part of
Speaker 2: the fabric of the healthcare system in this country. Everybody
Speaker 2: has problems with the healthcare system, but certainly they don't
Speaker 2: want to go in the direction of making it a
Speaker 2: more expensive and be less available. And that gets to
Speaker 2: your point saga about education, healthcare, and housing. So if
Speaker 2: you were going to remake the social contract in America
Speaker 2: and say, you know what, the essence of the American
Speaker 2: dream isn't cheap consumer goods.
Speaker 6: What could that look like?
Speaker 2: Because you know, I would like to move in that direction.
Speaker 2: I think cheap consumer goods have been like the opiate
Speaker 2: of the masses, and really has that mindset, which is
Speaker 2: this very neoliberal mindset, really has been quite detrimental to
Speaker 2: the overall well being of Americans, especially the American working class.
Speaker 2: So what could a new social contract look like. I
Speaker 2: think it would look like, Okay, things that you're buying
Speaker 2: at Walmart are going to be more expensive, but you're
Speaker 2: going to have universal health care. You're gonna have health care.
Speaker 2: It's going to be in prescription drugs. You're gonna be
Speaker 2: able to just go to the doctor and get care.
Speaker 2: Housing is going to be much more affordable. You can
Speaker 2: actually imagine yourself like getting on that ladder of home ownership.
Speaker 2: It's going to be much more widely available. We're going
Speaker 2: to get back to an arrow when there was such
Speaker 2: a thing as a starter home that a person with
Speaker 2: a regular salary could afford while they're in their twenties
Speaker 2: or at least early thirties. We're going to make it
Speaker 2: so that education is widely available that you don't have,
Speaker 2: you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a student loan
Speaker 2: debt that you're taking on. And in each of those categories,
Speaker 2: the Trump administration has already made moves to make things worse.
Speaker 2: So with education, they're rolling back some of the existing
Speaker 2: student loan relief. There's, of course, you know, an assault
Speaker 2: on certain institutions which could certainly translate into higher tuition.
Speaker 2: So you've got that on education. With regard to healthcare,
Speaker 2: we rolled back one of the executive orders that the
Speaker 2: Biden administration had put in place to try to make
Speaker 2: drugs cheaper, and you have these looming cuts to Medicaid,
Speaker 2: which you're going to be you know, devastating, especially in
Speaker 2: rural communities across the country. And with housing, if you're
Speaker 2: putting tariffs on building materials coming from Canada, you are
Speaker 2: very likely to have housing construction be even more expensive
Speaker 2: than it is right now. So instead of offering, okay,
Speaker 2: here's a new social contract.
Speaker 6: Here's what you are going to get out of it.
Speaker 2: Here's how it's going to overall improve quality of your life, well,
Speaker 2: you're well being, your communities, et cetera. Instead we're getting
Speaker 2: we're taking away the cheap consumer goods, and we are
Speaker 2: pushing the economy even more in the direction of the wealthy,
Speaker 2: even more in the direction of you know, Trump and
Speaker 2: Elon and whoever are there billionaire friends to benefit from?
Speaker 2: So you know, that's why when Scott Besson says that,
Speaker 2: why it is not going to bring true for people,
Speaker 2: and there would be a tremendous trust deficit to begin with,
Speaker 2: Like it would take an extraordinary level of proof that
Speaker 2: they're actually going to deliver for you in these other categories.
Speaker 2: I think for people to accept that new bargain at
Speaker 2: this point, but certainly not when you know, another part
Speaker 2: of his speech was telling these bankers that, like, we're
Speaker 2: going to cut some of the post financial crash regulations
Speaker 2: with regard to your supplementary leverage ratio and make it
Speaker 2: so that there's less less regulatory landscape holding you back.
Speaker 2: And you see what they're doing with the CFPDE, you
Speaker 2: see what they're doing with the SEC, you see what
Speaker 2: they're doing with making sure that bad bosses can bust your.
Speaker 6: Union, etc.
Speaker 2: And there's nothing being offered for people in exchange for
Speaker 2: giving up those cheap consumer goods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I was looking just now.
Speaker 3: Americans in nineteen seventy one spent seven point six percent
Speaker 3: of their income on healthcare. The exact data today is
Speaker 3: a bit unclear, but at GDP wise in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 3: Americans spent about seven point two percent of GDP on healthcare.
Speaker 3: Today it's eighteen percent, right, and so we've actually gotten batter,
Speaker 3: we've gotten sicker, it's gotten worse. So I mean, look,
Speaker 3: I understand, you know that's the Bernie Sanders vision, but
Speaker 3: like you don't even have to go that far.
Speaker 1: You could just make it like relatively affordable.
Speaker 3: Like you can make it so that it's not crazy
Speaker 3: too expensive starter homes and all of that. Or you
Speaker 3: don't need free college to make college affordable, it's actually
Speaker 3: not that difficult. You just make it so that these
Speaker 3: people can't ridiculously screw over their own students with student loans.
Speaker 3: You also don't need the government backstopping all of this
Speaker 3: as well. There are a lot of different ways, but
Speaker 3: the problem again is I don't see necessarily some major changes.
Speaker 3: I will say there's one good news is that apparently
Speaker 3: the House did include a twenty percent tax or so
Speaker 3: on endowments for colleges.
Speaker 1: I think it should be higher than that.
Speaker 3: But the problem here is that then we we would
Speaker 3: need to make sure that it is pegged as well
Speaker 3: to affordability, so that you can avoid the tax very
Speaker 3: easily avoid the tax as long as percent you know,
Speaker 3: income wise or whatever it is affordable. They're never gonna
Speaker 3: spring for that, and they're lobbying as hard as they
Speaker 3: possibly can. The overall picture it's not good. Let's go
Speaker 3: to the next one. This was from the Financial Times.
Speaker 3: I actually thought it was a very good piece, and
Speaker 3: it says, is this dot Com bust two point zero.
Speaker 3: But really what she tries to argue throughout all of
Speaker 3: this is just that these crashes that end up happening
Speaker 3: not like two thousand and eight, but more like dot
Speaker 3: Com or a few others, they don't have a single
Speaker 3: precipitating event. It's basically just a lot of different stuff
Speaker 3: that somehow just comes together in a moment roughly, you know,
Speaker 3: either a day or maybe a month, or over the
Speaker 3: last couple of months, that make it so that you
Speaker 3: just start to ask fundamental questions and look at fundamentals,
Speaker 3: and then the like dream or the bubble can just
Speaker 3: get popped without any real knowledge. And what they're worried
Speaker 3: about is something we've talked about here at nauseum, which
Speaker 3: is the makeup of the so called Magnificent seven stocks
Speaker 3: in the S and P five hundred and really is
Speaker 3: that they say particularly worrying for those who see parallels
Speaker 3: to two thousand. Magnificent seven that powered the broader market
Speaker 3: are now in correction territory. They're down twelve percent from
Speaker 3: the highs that collectively hid in December, and their fourth
Speaker 3: quarter profits were not particularly bad. Investors are starting to
Speaker 3: ask more questions about the billions of dollars spent on
Speaker 3: AI data centers and power sources and how that's going
Speaker 3: to translate to overall growth. To some long term investors,
Speaker 3: that seems eerily familiar to the loss of the dot
Speaker 3: com bubble into in nineteen ninety nine. Once funding became
Speaker 3: more expensive, loss making startups such as pet dot Com
Speaker 3: and webvan ran out of money, their telecom and technology
Speaker 3: providers started to struggle, pulling down the broader market, and
Speaker 3: you enter a recession in March of two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: And so again, nothing is one to one.
Speaker 3: It's just the fact that you see similar things that
Speaker 3: are happening, and if the Trump administration is not careful,
Speaker 3: they will find themselves in very similar territory.
Speaker 1: That's the issue.
Speaker 3: Let's go to the final part here, which you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not really sure why we're doing this. This is
Speaker 3: a post from both Charlie Kirk and from Trump on
Speaker 3: truth Social It's from Charlie Kirk saying, shut up about
Speaker 3: egg prices. Trump is saving consumers millions.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: The ironic part about this is the Trump administration actually
Speaker 3: did something pretty good on eggs a couple of days ago.
Speaker 3: But like Biden, they're not doing anything about it. They
Speaker 3: have the Department of Justice actually investigating egg sellers.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: The reason why I think that they're not doing it
Speaker 3: is it sounds eerly familiar to the whole price control
Speaker 3: drama that happened during the campaign. And you and I
Speaker 3: talked about this, but remember Biden's Department of Justice went
Speaker 3: after the meat packing industry, but they just never talked
Speaker 3: about it to anybody. And so Trump, you know, look,
Speaker 3: your Department of Justice is doing something good here. That's
Speaker 3: very popular to go after people who are either price
Speaker 3: gouging and look, investigation, let's see what it bears out.
Speaker 1: Are you, you know, making undue profits.
Speaker 3: Or you're using bird flu as an excuse to jack
Speaker 3: things up, or is whole foods you know, like, what's
Speaker 3: the real profit margin on all this stuff? You could
Speaker 3: call that communist if you want, I would say that's
Speaker 3: living in a society whenever you have one of the
Speaker 3: most subsized industries literally on Earth. But that's the issue
Speaker 3: is at the same time, it's like, shut up about
Speaker 3: egg price. It's like, no, egg prices are way too high.
Speaker 3: Here's what I'm doing about it. Yeah, let me talk
Speaker 3: about it all the time. Yeah, and instead we get
Speaker 3: doge nonsense. So look, it's a messaging problem as much
Speaker 3: of this, as much as it is a policy problem.
Speaker 3: We will find out, you know, we'll find out how
Speaker 3: how much people are willing to put up with it.
Speaker 1: I really have no idea.
Speaker 3: Because overlying all of this is that Trump is the
Speaker 3: strongest cult of personality in modern American history.
Speaker 1: People love him.
Speaker 3: They you know, if you look at Republican confidence in
Speaker 3: the economy, it's sky high right now, Like their overall
Speaker 3: approval are they really like much like a lot of
Speaker 3: Democrats were under Joe Biden. So it's really a question
Speaker 3: of both independence and of democratic activism to see if
Speaker 3: that will be able to be overcome at a partisan,
Speaker 3: you know level, even beyond the midterms and all that,
Speaker 3: Like how they're going to Walesce for whatever the argument
Speaker 3: comes in the future. So, but that's my only coveyat
Speaker 3: If anybody can survive this, it is Trump. He's more
Speaker 3: runway than anybody other politician I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean certainly with his base, like they'll
Speaker 2: follow him into the gates.
Speaker 6: Bell, I think it's really true at this point.
Speaker 2: Listen, how do we feel about the like Zelenski Trump
Speaker 2: White House, JD Van situation. Have you seen the chart
Speaker 2: of the way that Republican opinion changed after that meeting?
Speaker 2: It just it went from like actually liking Zelensky pretty
Speaker 2: well to it falling off a cliff over just that one,
Speaker 2: like Trump signaling I don't like this guy, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: they'll go I mean they will buy Okay, a recession
Speaker 2: is good for us somehow, the stock market crashing is
Speaker 2: good for us Somewhile it really is that like closely
Speaker 2: tied to him and whatever he says. But you know
Speaker 2: that's like thirty percent of the country. And then you
Speaker 2: have obviously Democrats hate the guy and are going to
Speaker 2: continue to hate the guy and are going to continue
Speaker 2: to make a lot of noise about the cuts of
Speaker 2: the social safety net, the giveaways to the rich, et cetera.
Speaker 2: He's only likely to than their hand with the policy
Speaker 2: moves anticipated from here. And then you've got, you know,
Speaker 2: the Independence who really swung towards Trump in this election,
Speaker 2: and the sort of new swing coalitions which are more
Speaker 2: up for grabs, and so, you know, are they able
Speaker 2: to really buy into the story of the tariffs are
Speaker 2: to reindustrialize America, even though Trump is not even really
Speaker 2: telling that story consistently at this point? Are they able
Speaker 2: to look at the sort of glossy top line of
Speaker 2: we're making the government quote unquote more efficient and ignore
Speaker 2: the specifics of the cuts that are happening, The way
Speaker 2: they're damaging, incredibly damaging, the way they've been done with
Speaker 2: the hatchet, the way they've had to scramble and rehire
Speaker 2: people that they realized were really critical for the government.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's you know, that's the question. You guys
Speaker 2: won't be surprised, which diruction. I think things are going
Speaker 2: to go and especially with the economy turning increasingly sour,
Speaker 2: but you know, similar to the point that you've been making.
Speaker 2: Sorobamaris tweeted this and I thought this was really well said.
Speaker 2: He's like, listen, Trump came in with a mandate and
Speaker 2: a trifecta, and he's going to waste it on letting
Speaker 2: banks pie up the overdraft fees on low income customers
Speaker 2: and firing vets and nuclear weapons safety specialists then scrambling
Speaker 2: to hire them back. What even is a legislative agenda here?
Speaker 2: And you know, I think that's well said. Like the
Speaker 2: first one hundred day priority has been this, just like Doge,
Speaker 2: ramming through all sorts of like gutting the regulatory system
Speaker 2: and pushing to fire air traffic controllers as we're about
Speaker 2: to discuss in the next block, et cetera. And none
Speaker 2: of it is coherent whatsoever. I mean, it does feel
Speaker 2: sometimes like you've got Trump's you know, national populism somehow
Speaker 2: with this, like Frankenstinian mashup with Elon Musk's anarcho capitalism,
Speaker 2: and the whole thing is just like a dog's breakfast
Speaker 2: that somehow still you know, is very clearly going to
Speaker 2: benefit the rich.
Speaker 1: I think about it all the time. I'm just like,
Speaker 1: how did we get here?
Speaker 3: And at first, you know, it's interesting too, because I
Speaker 3: was really thinking about the backlash in the beginning. I
Speaker 3: was like, look, in a certain sense, the chaos is
Speaker 3: actually what a lot of people voted for.
Speaker 1: They love it.
Speaker 3: There's nothing they love more than seeing like liberals cry.
Speaker 3: But I think the reason it is starting to turn
Speaker 3: is not only the consumer sentiment and the tariffs per se,
Speaker 3: but you do have a lot of federal government employees,
Speaker 3: as I keep saying, across the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the largest employer in the entire nation. And
Speaker 1: everybody kind of knows somebody who works for the government.
Speaker 3: Not even here in DC that's a given, but I'm
Speaker 3: saying all across the country, be a National Park Service, whatever,
Speaker 3: Pentagon contractor, and not only that, you know, I heard
Speaker 3: a story. These are all just in my own life
Speaker 3: of somebody I know works at a private firm. It's
Speaker 3: like a marketing company. One of their major one of
Speaker 3: their major clients was like a major US government agency.
Speaker 3: So the US government agency freezes all future contracts, which
Speaker 3: means what they have layoffs at this agency.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting, that's
Speaker 1: one of them.
Speaker 3: Just I mean, obviously feel bad for those people, but
Speaker 3: I meant more on a sociological level, of those people
Speaker 3: probably never in their lives thought about the government or
Speaker 3: doze whatever, you know, beyond beyond like the way an
Speaker 3: normal person would. But that's when there's something gets touched,
Speaker 3: and when something touches you.
Speaker 1: We saw this during COVID.
Speaker 3: What's the most radicalizing event for a lot of people,
Speaker 3: COVID why vax mandates lockdowns whatever? That was, school closures
Speaker 3: exactly because that's an actual concrete policy that was enough
Speaker 3: to turn people Republican, at least in my circles. For
Speaker 3: what it's been several years now since that happened, and
Speaker 3: the hangover effect from that has been years of political ramifications. Well,
Speaker 3: I could see the similar, you know, change if there
Speaker 3: is a slash and funding, or if somebody gets laid
Speaker 3: off or somebody finds themselves like genuinely materially harmed by
Speaker 3: one of these policies. Let's say there's a crash, you know,
Speaker 3: I talk about that one a lot hurricane season. We'll
Speaker 3: see that one soon, in the effects of whether Noah,
Speaker 3: you know, has something a major international crisis which is
Speaker 3: not handled properly and troops get killed like, those are
Speaker 3: the types of things that really make and force people
Speaker 3: to change. So we will see, as I said, but
Speaker 3: I do think I can just see risk and part
Speaker 3: of the problem is I think what a great leader
Speaker 3: should always do is to anticipate those issues. I'm just
Speaker 3: a moron, you know, Like I don't you know, at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, it's not that difficult to
Speaker 3: come up with these scenarios in your head. These are
Speaker 3: elected officials and many of them working in professional politics,
Speaker 3: and they often wait to pounce for a great moment.
Speaker 3: You should always apply that thinking, and you should do
Speaker 3: everything in your power to make sure that you're not
Speaker 3: susceptible to those types of you know, macro change events,
Speaker 3: whatever that could change your political fortunes. And so that's
Speaker 3: just generally how I've been thinking about where the organic
Speaker 3: change and the pushback may be. The Democrats were always
Speaker 3: going to be upset, but it really it's about independence
Speaker 3: and also about how people will materially feel about this
Speaker 3: at the end.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just checked.
Speaker 3: It's been forty nine days since January twenty, so tomorrow's
Speaker 3: the fiftieth day of Donald Trump's presidency. You really don't
Speaker 3: have that much longer left for your the good will
Speaker 3: of the American people, And if the latter fifty days
Speaker 3: look more like the first, I think it'll be a
Speaker 3: problem for him.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the cabinet, shall we.
Speaker 3: All right, this is an extraordinary show down in the
Speaker 3: cabinet meeting. We're getting some details here. Let's go and
Speaker 3: put it up there on the screen. Apparently, in this
Speaker 3: cabinet meeting, which was convened by Donald Trump over tensions
Speaker 3: inside of DOGE, Marco Rubio had a complete standoff with
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, and you'd be surprised, which is not just
Speaker 3: over DOGE and the State Department, but it was also
Speaker 3: over usaid and more broadly about cabinet level authority. So
Speaker 3: let me just read from some of this.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: He was in the cabinet room with the Oval Office,
Speaker 3: the White House Secretary of State seated beside the President,
Speaker 3: listening to a litany attacks from the richest man in
Speaker 3: the world. Seated diagonally opposite across the elliptical mahogany table,
Speaker 3: Elon Musk was letting Rubio have it, accusing him of
Speaker 3: failing to.
Speaker 1: Slash his staff.
Speaker 3: You have fired nobody, mister Musk told Rubio, then scornfully
Speaker 3: added that perhaps he was the only person he had
Speaker 3: fired was a staff member from Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
Speaker 3: Rubio has been privately furious with Musk for weeks ever
Speaker 3: since his team effectively shuddered an entire agency that was
Speaker 3: under Rubio's CONTROLSAI, but an extraordinary cabinet meeting in front
Speaker 3: of President Trump and twenty others, details of which have
Speaker 3: not been reported, mister Rubio got his grievances off his chest.
Speaker 1: Musk was not being truthful.
Speaker 3: Rubio said, what about the more than fifteen hundred State
Speaker 3: Department officials who took the buyouts?
Speaker 1: Did they not count his layoff?
Speaker 3: He asked, sarcastically, whether Musk wanted to rehire them so
Speaker 3: that he could make a show of firing them again.
Speaker 3: Then he laid out his detailed plans reorganizing the State Department.
Speaker 1: Musk was unimpressed. He told Rubio he was on good TV.
Speaker 3: Good on TV, with a clear sub sext that he
Speaker 3: was not good for much else. Throughout all of this,
Speaker 3: the President sat back in his chair as if he
Speaker 3: were watching a tennis match. After the argument dragged on
Speaker 3: for an uncomfortable amount of time, Trump finally intervened to
Speaker 3: defend Rubio as quote doing a great job.
Speaker 1: So Rubio has a lot to deal with. He's very busy.
Speaker 3: He's always traveling, so everyone just needs to work together.
Speaker 3: That was only one of two clashes apparently that happened
Speaker 3: inside that meeting.
Speaker 1: The second was actually between.
Speaker 3: Sean Duffy and Elon Musk, Shawn Duffy's the Secretary of Transportation.
Speaker 3: Duffy said, the young staff of mister Mus's team, we're
Speaker 3: trying to lay off air traffic controllers.
Speaker 1: Quote what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 3: Mister Duffy said, I have multiple plane crashes to deal
Speaker 3: with now, and your people want me to fire a
Speaker 3: traffic controllers. Must hold Duffy's assertion was a lie. Duffy
Speaker 3: insisted it was not, and he had heard from them directly.
Speaker 3: Musk said, who has been fired? Give me their names,
Speaker 3: Tell me their names. Duffy said, there are no names,
Speaker 3: because I stopped them from being fired. At another point,
Speaker 3: Musk insisted people were hired under DEI programs were working
Speaker 3: control towers. Duffy pushedback and must did not add any details,
Speaker 3: but said in the longer back and forth that Duffy
Speaker 3: had his phone number and should call him if they
Speaker 3: had any issues to raise. The exchange added with Trump
Speaker 3: telling Duffy he had to hire people from MIT and
Speaker 3: that the people and the controllers need to be geniuses.
Speaker 3: I guess we could agree with that one. And you know,
Speaker 3: just a little bit of we're just taking a look
Speaker 3: at what exactly.
Speaker 2: We had no use for these high falutant right, you know, universities.
Speaker 3: No, no, we want the best of the best. MIT,
Speaker 3: by the way, has got no affirmative action, so shout
Speaker 3: out to MIT. Let's go to the next one here,
Speaker 3: just to show you some of the fallout. Elon is
Speaker 3: no longer following Secretary Duffy on his personal account, so
Speaker 3: he's very petty man. The point being that there's been
Speaker 3: some there's been some flare ups here in the background.
Speaker 3: Now how it all works, I don't actually know, because
Speaker 3: at the same time, if you read the article, Trump
Speaker 3: did back up, you know Elon saying at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, like, oh, if they're not firing enough people,
Speaker 3: Elon you you know you you get it done, or
Speaker 3: Elon will. But he also was trying to telegraph at
Speaker 3: the same time that the cabinet officials themselves are the
Speaker 3: ones with the ultimate authority to hire and fire. And this,
Speaker 3: you know, this is a Washington tail as old as time.
Speaker 3: Who has jurisdiction who are the people who are actually
Speaker 3: you know, in charge of the government, And usually it's
Speaker 3: the Cabinet secretary. But when the White House and in
Speaker 3: this case DOGE under Elon is trying to take control
Speaker 3: over this not only take casing of political problems, but
Speaker 3: also like extra judicial problems in terms of like who
Speaker 3: has the authority to do this and whether the Elon's
Speaker 3: technically in charge of DOGE or not. This was the
Speaker 3: overall end result in some sense, this is what Trump loves,
Speaker 3: you know, he loves the drama, and he loves all
Speaker 3: of you.
Speaker 6: He likes some of these factions fights.
Speaker 2: Ah we they talk in here about how you're sitting
Speaker 2: back and watching this like he was watching a tennis match.
Speaker 1: There's nothing he loves more than that.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's funny if it's something stupid like
Speaker 3: oh Morosa versus John Kelly.
Speaker 1: But it's not funny.
Speaker 3: Whenever it's about hatred government programs like air traffic controllers.
Speaker 3: So that's where I think there's a little bit of
Speaker 3: an issue right now.
Speaker 2: So there's an update this morning. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you saw this. Marco Rubio has a new pinned tweet okay,
Speaker 2: which says after a six week review, we're officially canceling
Speaker 2: eighty three percent of the programs at USAID. The fifty
Speaker 2: two hundred contracts that are now canceled spent tens of
Speaker 2: billions of dollars in ways that did not serve and
Speaker 2: in some cases even harm the core national interests of
Speaker 2: the US. In consultation with Congress, we intend for the
Speaker 2: remaining eighteen percent of programs or keeping a proxibility thousand
Speaker 2: to be administered under more effectively under the State Department.
Speaker 2: Thank you to DOJE and our hard working staff who
Speaker 2: worked very long hours to achieve this overdue in historic reform,
Speaker 2: and Elon replied, tough but necessary. Good working with you.
Speaker 2: The important parts of usai D should always have been
Speaker 2: with Department of State. So, I you know, Rubio there
Speaker 2: trying to signal to the DOGE fans that no, he's
Speaker 2: he's on board, he's a good you know DOGE ally,
Speaker 2: and it seems like they sort of kissed and made
Speaker 2: up in terms of the Twitter back and forth. But
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, some of the backstory with Rubio
Speaker 2: I think has to come down to as well. When
Speaker 2: PETFAR funding was cut and there was a backlash, Rubio
Speaker 2: signed a waiver saying no, no, these funds still need
Speaker 2: to go out. But the funds still did not go out.
Speaker 2: So it was like he had actually no control over
Speaker 2: the agency that he was running. And I'm sure that
Speaker 2: and things that we have no idea about contributed to
Speaker 2: this tension. But the fact USAID was such a direct
Speaker 2: target and Elon really took the helm and sidelined Rubio there,
Speaker 2: you know, that is part of what led to this blow.
Speaker 6: Up between them.
Speaker 2: Now, the other thing that you have to keep in
Speaker 2: mind with this cabinet meeting and the way it's been
Speaker 2: sold to the price and the way Trump is positioning things,
Speaker 2: et cetera, is that part of the legal problems for
Speaker 2: Elon and DOGE is that, you know, it does have
Speaker 2: to be the agencies who decide who to hire and fire.
Speaker 6: So by putting this.
Speaker 2: Out to the media and positioning its like no, no, no,
Speaker 2: Marco Rubio, Sean Duffy, they really are ultimately in charge,
Speaker 2: that could also help them with their legal case because
Speaker 2: the courts have already signaled like you can't just you know,
Speaker 2: DOGE can't just blanket fire people. Office of Personnel Management,
Speaker 2: which is like government HR can't just blanket fire people
Speaker 2: outside of their own agencies. That has to come from
Speaker 2: the departments themselves. So that's the other piece. Is that
Speaker 2: repositioning this narrative where it's oh, no, the cabinet secretaries
Speaker 2: are actually in charge, could be an attempt as well
Speaker 2: to help them with their legal trouble.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually read that as well. I mean, no
Speaker 3: one should confuse it to say Marco Rubio is not
Speaker 3: a conservative who probably doesn't agree with cutting the you
Speaker 3: know USAI. Yeah, right, First, that's always been the case.
Speaker 3: The question for them is about authority and about the
Speaker 3: ability to actually, you know, put these cuts in and
Speaker 3: see as if it. Basically the question is is Doshan
Speaker 3: Duffy himself get to decide who gets cut and what's not.
Speaker 3: And in general, this is one where look, I'm not
Speaker 3: a big expertise worshiper or any of that, but at
Speaker 3: the very least, if we think about norms, you know,
Speaker 3: for people who've been sentate confirmed to these positions, who
Speaker 3: have the authority and the reporting of their underleans to
Speaker 3: like actually go and find out who should get cut
Speaker 3: or not, then sure, but that's a different story about
Speaker 3: who gets cut, and especially at a media level as
Speaker 3: opposed to just coming in and deciding what gets cut
Speaker 3: and what's not. And that's really where again, you know,
Speaker 3: you can have all the so called like ability like
Speaker 3: Elon supposedly has to be able to come in and
Speaker 3: just be like a domain expert, you know, almost immediately.
Speaker 3: But you know, with the government, it's just fundamentally different
Speaker 3: than a private company. That was actually the fascinating part
Speaker 3: of when you were reading in the Times article is
Speaker 3: he just kept coming back.
Speaker 1: He's like, look, my market cap of.
Speaker 3: My companies is hundreds of billions, Like you know, I've
Speaker 3: been able to run them this, this and this, and
Speaker 3: I mean I've just said from day one. It's like, look,
Speaker 3: it is just not the government. Like efficiency, while it
Speaker 3: should be a goal, is not the ultimate goal. Like
Speaker 3: it's not about increasing the profitability of the government. There
Speaker 3: are a lot of government programs which are super inefficient,
Speaker 3: but they're very popular and or necessary for a lot
Speaker 3: of people. They could be more efficient, but it would look,
Speaker 3: what's more efficient social security or letting people starve. Obviously
Speaker 3: letting people starve is more efficient. It's not a sociological
Speaker 3: you know, it's not like a benefit to society though,
Speaker 3: so we say, Okay, we're going to pay it. You know,
Speaker 3: that's one of those where the business mindset has just
Speaker 3: never made a lot of sense and part of the
Speaker 3: reason why I don't think business people have ever been
Speaker 3: particularly good politicians.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I think that's exactly right. And I mean Elon's
Speaker 2: arrogance and his lack of ability to work with people,
Speaker 2: his total unwillingness to try to like smooth things over.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's part of his character that he's actually
Speaker 2: proud of. I mean, he tweeted that thing about like
Speaker 2: what the downfall of Western civilization is like empathy, Like
Speaker 2: that's he thinks that. I mean, there's stuff he makes
Speaker 2: similar type of comments in that direction in the biography,
Speaker 2: the Walter Isaacson biography.
Speaker 1: Oh that book sucks's.
Speaker 2: I mean, but it's still like, you know, you get
Speaker 2: a sense of his character and empathy is something that
Speaker 2: he looks down on. So the idea of like, oh,
Speaker 2: people are going to die in Africa because of HIV
Speaker 2: because we don't have that funding, Like he doesn't care.
Speaker 2: The idea that he you know, he's pushing the social
Speaker 2: securities of Ponzi scheme and.
Speaker 6: He like the elderly people were lifted.
Speaker 2: Out of poverty by this program has been importantly, incredibly important.
Speaker 2: He doesn't care like the fact that Marco Rubio was
Speaker 2: pissed off at him.
Speaker 6: He certainly doesn't care.
Speaker 2: And the fact that it was also Sean Duffy was
Speaker 2: one of the other people who was most pissed off
Speaker 2: at Elon also makes a lot of sense because Sean
Speaker 2: Duffy Department of Transportation FAA is under him. That is
Speaker 2: one of the departments that Elon has taken the most
Speaker 2: interest in.
Speaker 1: Why well, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, FAA has been investigated SpaceX because of now, we
Speaker 2: just had another SpaceX rocket that blew up and caused
Speaker 2: mass diversion of commercial flights and airports had to be closed,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So he's been pissed off at them for
Speaker 2: a while. There's also reporting about the way his SpaceX
Speaker 2: people have come in and are trying to take contracts
Speaker 2: away from other countries and other companies and redirect them
Speaker 2: to Starlink in particular just under SpaceX. So it's not
Speaker 2: surprising that Sean Duffy would be one of the others
Speaker 2: that had the most sort of grievance and you know,
Speaker 2: rubbed up against Musk the most here. But you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of how this plays out and whether Elon
Speaker 2: will actually be rained in or not, color me a
Speaker 2: little bit skeptical because, as Zager was saying, after this
Speaker 2: whole thing, Trump gets asked like, okay, well what went
Speaker 2: down in the Oval office? And he does make this
Speaker 2: comment that's like, well, you know, it's up to the
Speaker 2: agency heads to cut, but if they don't, Elon will
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 6: Take a listen, you.
Speaker 11: Spoke today with your cabinet members and Elon Musk.
Speaker 10: What did you tell them in regards to Elon Musk
Speaker 10: and his authorities to carry out actions.
Speaker 7: We had a great meeting.
Speaker 8: We had Elon and we had some of the representatives
Speaker 8: that for you know, the business reps. We also had
Speaker 8: most of the cabinet members, not all of them, it
Speaker 8: doesn't really pertain to all of them, but many of them.
Speaker 7: And I thought it was a really good meeting.
Speaker 8: It was about cutting because we have everybody knows the
Speaker 8: country's way out of control in terms of the number
Speaker 8: of people. We have many people that don't work, We
Speaker 8: have many people probably that aren't even living, that are
Speaker 8: getting checks, and we're finding all of that out and
Speaker 8: it's being reported we're going to save hundreds of billions
Speaker 8: of dollars. We've already saved a lot, and parts of
Speaker 8: it are contracts that are expired that we're paying on,
Speaker 8: many crazy things that you know, you can see it happening.
Speaker 7: It shouldn't happen, but you can see it happening. You
Speaker 7: see a lot of it being put out.
Speaker 8: But the other thing I think most important for today,
Speaker 8: I want the cabinet members to keep good people. I
Speaker 8: don't want to see a big cut where a lot
Speaker 8: of good people are cut. I want the cabinet members
Speaker 8: to keep the good people. And the people that aren't
Speaker 8: doing a good job, that are unreliable, don't show up
Speaker 8: to work, et cetera, those people can be cut.
Speaker 7: So I had a meeting and.
Speaker 8: I said, I want the cabinet members go first, keep
Speaker 8: all the people you want, everybody that you need. And
Speaker 8: it would be better if they were there for two
Speaker 8: years instead of two weeks, because in two years they'll
Speaker 8: know the people better. But I want them to do
Speaker 8: the best job they can. Where we have good people,
Speaker 8: that's precious, it's very important, and we want them to
Speaker 8: keep the good people.
Speaker 7: And so we're going to be watching.
Speaker 8: Them and Elon and the group are going to be
Speaker 8: watching them, and if they can cut, it's better, and
Speaker 8: if they don't cut, then Elon will do the cutting.
Speaker 2: So if they can cut, it's better, but if they
Speaker 2: don't cut, then Elon will. So still ultimately the final
Speaker 2: decision rusting with Elon there. So we'll see, we'll see
Speaker 2: me and I just it's been the level of subservius
Speaker 2: from Trump, the level of the amount of the direction
Speaker 2: of the government that he has just handed over to
Speaker 2: Elon has been truly extraordinary. And so maybe we'll look
Speaker 2: back at this as like a turning point where I
Speaker 2: think from Trump's language and the fact that he said
Speaker 2: this thing about we want to cut with a scalpel,
Speaker 2: not a hatchet, like, I do think he realizes some
Speaker 2: of the political peril here, and I think he's felt
Speaker 2: blowback from and there are a lot of Republicans who
Speaker 2: were like, this thing that was important in my district
Speaker 2: got cut. And by the way, you know, Elon went
Speaker 2: and gave them his number so that they can petition
Speaker 2: him directly. They can petition the king directly to have
Speaker 2: their particular cuts reversed. But you know, I do think
Speaker 2: he has a bit of a sense that he's on
Speaker 2: politically perilous ground. Does that make him change course? I
Speaker 2: think that's a real open question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know's that's the point is that we
Speaker 3: really cannot tell because for all of that, Elon, you know, yes,
Speaker 3: he's been put in.
Speaker 1: His place a little bit.
Speaker 3: Will he does wear a suit now, thank you, We
Speaker 3: finally showed up win a suit to a cabinet meeting.
Speaker 3: Even Trump, I guess, could no longer countenance that anymore.
Speaker 3: After he he just threw a comment at him, unlike Zelenski.
Speaker 3: Apparently Elon listens. But you know, even then, the audacity
Speaker 3: to like lecture the US Secretary of State in the
Speaker 3: American Cabinet room when you're unelected, it's just unbelievable. It's
Speaker 3: like oo, and Trump just puts up with it, right.
Speaker 3: And it's not even like he's a senior member of
Speaker 3: the White House staff, like a Stephen Miller or somebody
Speaker 3: like that, who has been on board the campaign since
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, symbiotic with Donald Trump, who genuinely has the
Speaker 3: authority and the political standing to do so. It's like
Speaker 3: this person didn't really support Trump until like July of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four right, and then just ended up you know,
Speaker 3: bandwagoning and paying for the campaign to basically leap frog
Speaker 3: all of these other people who've been with him for
Speaker 3: such a long time. Not even Steve Bannon would ever
Speaker 3: dare to sit there in the US Cabinet room and
Speaker 3: to lecture the United States Secretary of State, right, And
Speaker 3: he's got ten times more authority in my opinion, to
Speaker 3: be able to do so. So, look, is it a
Speaker 3: turning point and all that? Maybe my only political caution
Speaker 3: is it's still just so early that Trump could reverse
Speaker 3: course and he'd probably be fine. A lot of this
Speaker 3: may be you know, energizing all that to democratic basis.
Speaker 3: Still have seventeen months till the midterms and all that
Speaker 3: start to really kick into gear. So that's where I'm
Speaker 3: the most curious is what direction they decide to go in.
Speaker 3: But I still think the tax bill is like a
Speaker 3: looming political detriment to them politically, where that's one where
Speaker 3: being a normy Republican alone like even sands Elon is
Speaker 3: going to be very politically difficult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for the White House. That's where I just can't
Speaker 1: look away.
Speaker 3: I'm like, this is a blinking red light of political
Speaker 3: problems that you're just waiting, you know, to pass, and
Speaker 3: they're frothing at the mouth for it. But I don't
Speaker 3: think America is going to take it down lightly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think so either. If democrosts were smart,
Speaker 2: they would talk relentlessly about medicaid and tax guts for
Speaker 2: the rich. I mean that that would be you would
Speaker 2: be on just like endlessly solved.
Speaker 1: We would be smarter. It's not cut Medicaid. I mean,
Speaker 1: I still that's the other thing. Look Medicaid.
Speaker 3: We'll see they say, you know the budget and all
Speaker 3: that has quote unquote cuts. Trump says you won't sign
Speaker 3: a Medicaid or a Medicare cut if they do work requirements.
Speaker 3: I still think that's very different. I mean, you know, liberals,
Speaker 3: can you argue about it till they're blue and the
Speaker 3: face work requirements are very posuble.
Speaker 2: I was looking at the I was looking at the
Speaker 2: numbers this morning. And let's say that even if you
Speaker 2: put in work requirements. So they have slated in the
Speaker 2: Republican budget that passed the House eight hundred billion dollars
Speaker 2: in cuts that would likely be from Medicaid. The way
Speaker 2: that the process works, it's not like specified but it
Speaker 2: would almost have to come from either Medicaid or Medicare,
Speaker 2: and Medicare is even more politically difficult to cut it all.
Speaker 2: So if you put in work requirements, that's about one
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollars, right, So you still have seven hundred
Speaker 2: billion dollars more that you are going to cut. So
Speaker 2: it's you will be cutting into the bone. And I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, I oppose work. I think everyone should have healthcare.
Speaker 2: But even if you do that for people who don't
Speaker 2: aren't disabled, it is it's a drop in the bucket of.
Speaker 6: How much they ultimately want to cut.
Speaker 2: But the last thing that I'll say about the Elon
Speaker 2: situation is Elon has his own agenda, right, And Elon,
Speaker 2: as much as he may, you know, put on the
Speaker 2: suit and make nice with Trump and get oh, mister Trump,
Speaker 2: thank you so much, and you're so amazing, and he
Speaker 2: may butter him up, but Elon has his own ideological agenda,
Speaker 2: and Elon believes himself to be ready player one, the
Speaker 2: primary actor, not Trump. It will take more than a
Speaker 2: little you know, leaked to the press slap on the
Speaker 2: wrist to get Elon to stop pushing ahead with whatever
Speaker 2: the hell he wants to do.
Speaker 6: It's the way he operates, and in this way.
Speaker 2: The fact that he is this businessman who you know,
Speaker 2: sees violating the law and as like a cost of
Speaker 2: doing business and just something that he does as part
Speaker 2: of his daily practice and charging forward no matter what,
Speaker 2: no matter who would object or what the norms are,
Speaker 2: what the procedures are, or whatever, it does give him
Speaker 2: a tremendous advantage in this battle. And we've already seen
Speaker 2: the way that his doge apparatics have rolled through all
Speaker 2: of these departments and gotten access to all these data,
Speaker 2: and you know, sent out his five bullet point email
Speaker 2: without getting anyone's permission to the whole of government and
Speaker 2: forced everybody to react to him like that is the
Speaker 2: way that he operates. And so it's going to take
Speaker 2: much more from Trump than just saying like, oh, the
Speaker 2: agency heads are in charge, but ultimately Elon gets his
Speaker 2: aside too to cut It's going to take a lot
Speaker 2: more actual effort in actually checking Elon and perhaps even
Speaker 2: just removing Elon from the post before he would ever
Speaker 2: stop pushing in the direction that he is pushing. So
Speaker 2: that's why I'm skeptical that this will represent a true
Speaker 2: turning point. But perhaps if Trump realizes like how politically
Speaker 2: paralysis is, or if Elon pisss him off or offends
Speaker 2: his ego in some certain kind of way, maybe things change.
Speaker 6: But I just don't see any sign.
Speaker 1: Of that yet. Well yeah, I'm excited to see.
Speaker 3: Certainly if they listen, if they get what, if they
Speaker 3: get what's coming to them, nobody can say.
Speaker 1: You weren't worn. It's even in the White House.
Speaker 3: What you think Steve Bann and all those other people
Speaker 3: aren't telling them what's coming.
Speaker 1: But listen. I mean, if that's what they want to do,
Speaker 1: I guess that's what they want to do.
Speaker 2: That was one of the things he apparently told Steve
Speaker 2: Bannon to back off the Elon curtize.
Speaker 1: And of course, so.
Speaker 2: We got some updates from our neighbors of the North
Speaker 2: and our president's relationship with them.
Speaker 6: Let's go and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: The New York Times, reporting on a conversation between Canada
Speaker 2: Trudeau of Canada and himself, he told Justin Trudeau that
Speaker 2: he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the
Speaker 2: border between the two countries was valid and that he
Speaker 2: wants to revise the boundary. Trump offered no further explanation.
Speaker 2: And this is obviously in the context of the trade
Speaker 2: war which terrorists were put on. Some of them have
Speaker 2: been rolled back, but there's still a significant number that
Speaker 2: are in place. All of them are supposed to go
Speaker 2: back into effect on April second, So still very much
Speaker 2: up in the air what's going on there. And Sager know,
Speaker 2: Trudeau has really become convinced that Trump is quite serious
Speaker 2: about the whole fifty first state conversation, or at least
Speaker 2: about moving the borders and the US just annexing part
Speaker 2: of Canada that Trump wants to annex. And you know,
Speaker 2: as we look at these tariffs in the context of
Speaker 2: the Canadian and economy and the context of our economy,
Speaker 2: Trudeau at least really believes that the purpose of these
Speaker 2: it's certainly not about fentanyl, but that it's not even
Speaker 2: really about the you know, reindustrialize of the American economy.
Speaker 2: It's about waging economic war to try to get Canada
Speaker 2: to capitulate to these territorial ambitions of Donald Trump, of
Speaker 2: his new manifest destiny of acquisition.
Speaker 3: I don't know how serious it is beyond just literally
Speaker 3: like a feeling that America has been getting ripped off
Speaker 3: by Canada and just wanting to have some punishment. There's
Speaker 3: also there's also an element here of political management, of
Speaker 3: which I've been trying to get my head around. Clearly,
Speaker 3: Trump respects Claudia Shinbound in Mexico much more than Trudeau.
Speaker 3: I don't really know why. I mean Claudia Shanbaum. I mean,
Speaker 3: if we're talking border disputes, we got way more border
Speaker 3: disputes with Mexico than we do with Canada. So you know,
Speaker 3: if we really want to talk real revisionism or Baja
Speaker 3: California or any of that stuff, I'm game. We can
Speaker 3: talk about that all day long. So with Canada, I
Speaker 3: actually think it's a lot more ideological because justin Trudeau
Speaker 3: not only being a liberal per se, but just you know,
Speaker 3: more neilib and critical. I think of the Trump administration
Speaker 3: over the four years after for them as well. I mean,
Speaker 3: Trump has got fixations that go back decades. Canada and
Speaker 3: Japan are the two. If you go when you look
Speaker 3: at his comments from the nineteen seventies onwards, it's all
Speaker 3: Japan and Canada. The Japanese it drives them crazy because
Speaker 3: he's still living in the world of like nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: where Japan is filthy, rich and growing, you know, a
Speaker 3: decade over like eight and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were the China of their time.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying we still don't have trade problems with Japan,
Speaker 3: that's just different now. The point I think with all
Speaker 3: of this is that Trump just had as a theory
Speaker 3: of tariffs, which he's always wanted to be able to do,
Speaker 3: and being both unrestrained and having that ability, this so
Speaker 3: called like Madman theory and all that he wants to
Speaker 3: see how far that he can push it while running
Speaker 3: up against the realities of the market and of overall
Speaker 3: US consumer sentiment. I think what he did not necessarily
Speaker 3: grapple with is the reaction from Canada that we've seen
Speaker 3: domestically in their politics and with their rise now of
Speaker 3: the Liberal Party basically saving them reigniting like this Canadian nationalism,
Speaker 3: which I didn't even know existed. I thought they all
Speaker 3: hated each other anyway, and they're divided over language, but
Speaker 3: they really have come together. You got to give it
Speaker 3: to them, you know, in a way, you do need
Speaker 3: like an external threat force to really make yourself your
Speaker 3: country come together for your national identity. But the problem
Speaker 3: that I actually think is whenever we're igniting that Canadian
Speaker 3: identity and bringing them together, their capacity to suffer as
Speaker 3: opposse to the American consumer, it's probably much higher because
Speaker 3: they feel like they're sticking it to the man, whereas
Speaker 3: Americans are like, I don't know about this, like right,
Speaker 3: and we're we're way more consumer in society too.
Speaker 2: Well, not only that, but as we were discussing before,
Speaker 2: like for the Canadians, they would know exactly what they're
Speaker 2: fighting for, like to keep their country. For us be
Speaker 2: like what why are we even doing this? Like what
Speaker 2: is going on? They don't even like there's a tiny
Speaker 2: minuscule amount of fenchanel coming across the border, which is
Speaker 2: the line that we've been sold about why we have.
Speaker 6: To do all of this.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a legal pretext.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's the legal pretend. But I mean they
Speaker 2: talk about it. That's that's what they're trying to sell,
Speaker 2: is like, oh, this is why we need to do it.
Speaker 2: You had what Peter Navarro talking about how the Mexican
Speaker 2: cartels had taken over Canada. So there's not any clear
Speaker 2: reason why Americans would want to wage this war, economic
Speaker 2: or otherwise but for Canadians, like, the stakes are very
Speaker 2: clear and they're very high. So listen, I don't know
Speaker 2: what the hell is going on in Trump's head. I
Speaker 2: do think that part of it is, like you said, Sager,
Speaker 2: like Trudeau is this very sort of like the Obama
Speaker 2: of Canada, you know, and can literally right and King
Speaker 2: Abbason in during the Obama era and all of that,
Speaker 2: and position himself in a very similar way in terms
Speaker 2: of this sort of like you know, high IQ liberal
Speaker 2: internationalists approach, and I think Trump just like he just hates.
Speaker 6: All those people. He just hates them.
Speaker 2: And it's partly this chip on his shoulder that Trump
Speaker 2: has about how they look down on him and all
Speaker 2: of this sort of stuff.
Speaker 6: I do think that plays into it.
Speaker 2: But I also think partly, maybe as a result of that,
Speaker 2: you can't just dismiss the things that he has himself
Speaker 2: said about wanting to use an economic war to annex
Speaker 2: Canada as the fifty first state. And maybe that's like
Speaker 2: the opening negotiating position. But I thought it was very
Speaker 2: revealing here that you know, he has recognized like, oh,
Speaker 2: all these treaties and stuff that set the border, I'm
Speaker 2: just not going to agree with those and I just
Speaker 2: don't accept them. And I'm gonna, you know, I'm going
Speaker 2: to see about annexing this area just north of the
Speaker 2: Great Lakes. I'm going to see what I can get
Speaker 2: away with. I think we have to take him seriously
Speaker 2: at that. And you know, you talk about things that
Speaker 2: are politically unpopular, like the US expanding into Canada is
Speaker 2: not something that anyone voted for, and it's wildly politically unpopular,
Speaker 2: as is acquiring Greenland. Probably the most popular of his,
Speaker 2: like you know, territorial conquest things, is the Panama Canal,
Speaker 2: which has already like sold off to Black Rocks.
Speaker 1: So you know, he didn't sell it off to Black Rock.
Speaker 3: The Chinese sold it to Black Okay, and they probably
Speaker 3: shouldn't have owned it in the first place. We're all being.
Speaker 2: Honest, but we know why that transaction ultimately.
Speaker 1: Okay, But why is that so bad? This is this
Speaker 1: is where I get annoyed.
Speaker 3: It's like, by the way, he tweeted today that Greenland
Speaker 3: will have the right of self determination. So Greenlanders, there's
Speaker 3: only fifty thousand of you. I have a modest proposal,
Speaker 3: will give you a million bucks each. All you have
Speaker 3: to do is come over here, the Danes have treated
Speaker 3: you like shit. You will be embraced greatly by the
Speaker 3: American Empire and we protect you anyway, so you might
Speaker 3: as well sign up on Canada.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Again, I have mixed feelings these Canadians. They drive me crazy.
Speaker 3: The way that they just their their chauvinism when clearly
Speaker 3: we are the only reason that they get to exist
Speaker 3: and breathe is a little bit annoying considering how how
Speaker 3: much of our defense posture goes to their benefit. However,
Speaker 3: I can sympathize with being a power that is up there.
Speaker 3: That is like, hey, hold on a second, I thought
Speaker 3: we were great neighbors and all that, and you're trying
Speaker 3: to change that contract. So broadly, I think that their
Speaker 3: ignition of nationalism is more interesting, especially because it hasn't
Speaker 3: really existed for a long time, like they haven't had
Speaker 3: a reason to be together. Like I said, I mean,
Speaker 3: they all hate each other anyway, whether they speak French
Speaker 3: and English one of the dumbest countries in the planet, whatever.
Speaker 3: But my point is just that for them, they have
Speaker 3: been able, both the Conservative and the Liberal Party, to
Speaker 3: have extraordinary political benefit of standing up to Trump, which
Speaker 3: I just generally think is worse, especially if we're trying
Speaker 3: to get a better and more favorable deal on economic terms.
Speaker 3: But I mean, the truth of the matter is our
Speaker 3: trade deficit with Canada is unbelievable, and they have been
Speaker 3: a huge beneficiary both of NAFTA. Their own quality of
Speaker 3: life as rate not only stable, was actually broadly increase
Speaker 3: to the extent that it's had a problem since NAFTA.
Speaker 3: It's their own fault because of mass immigration, of which
Speaker 3: they're having their own fights over in their own country
Speaker 3: right now. So even justin Trudeau admitted and part of
Speaker 3: the reason he's so unpopular.
Speaker 1: So him getting kicked out is an interesting moment.
Speaker 3: And actually, if we see the rise of kind of
Speaker 3: the leaders in Canada, both left and right, they're having
Speaker 3: to fuse this new Canadian nationalism fight with kind of
Speaker 3: like who and what they stand for, which is broadly
Speaker 3: better for them. I kind of wish we had the
Speaker 3: same thing over here. I'm almost jealous, to be honest,
Speaker 3: of their awakening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's get to the Canadian politics here. Trudeau
Speaker 2: stepped down as Liberal Party leader because he was profoundly unpopular,
Speaker 2: and so the Liberal Party had their leadership elections, who
Speaker 2: can put this up on the screen. They chose a
Speaker 2: guy named Mark Carney. He is the former governor of
Speaker 2: both the Bank of England actually during Brexit and also the.
Speaker 6: Bank of Canada.
Speaker 2: I mean, my sense of him, for wow, I've known
Speaker 2: about this guy for like two days, is that he's
Speaker 2: sort of like a liberal technocrat kind of a guy
Speaker 2: in terms of the Liberal Party, tends towards the more
Speaker 2: sort of fiscal conservative, as did his primary rival, Christian Freeland.
Speaker 2: So in any case, they've chosen this just sort of
Speaker 2: like steady hand who has a deep understanding obviously of
Speaker 2: the global financial system given his previous positions, banker who
Speaker 2: will now face the Conservative leader, a guy by the
Speaker 2: name of Pierre. That's how that's the French pronunciation I
Speaker 2: think he says.
Speaker 1: V I think is the way that I'm going to
Speaker 1: call him. Mister Pierre is.
Speaker 6: The French version.
Speaker 2: But in any case, he was looking I mean, this dude, Pierre,
Speaker 2: he looked like he was a shoe in And if
Speaker 2: you put up put up see the chart that we have,
Speaker 2: what is that C four B that shows the polling
Speaker 2: and the way that Trump's tariff war has just like
Speaker 2: completely completely rescued the Liberal from what was previously certain defeat.
Speaker 2: And you can see the red line there like they
Speaker 2: were in the toilet.
Speaker 6: I mean, we.
Speaker 2: Covered this when Trudeau resigned. You can see the line there.
Speaker 2: It was at an absolute low. But the combination, I'm
Speaker 2: sure having a new leader helps, but really it's the
Speaker 2: Trump economic warfare that has rescued the liberal parties hopes.
Speaker 2: Here now there's still not a locket a shoe in.
Speaker 2: If you put the one before this up on the screen,
Speaker 2: you can see C. Four that the Conservatives still have
Speaker 2: an edge in terms of the what the polling shows.
Speaker 2: But before Liberals were absolutely toasted, it says they're still
Speaker 2: up in the polls. The Conservatives are, with the latest
Speaker 2: averages suggesting forty percent of voters back then. The liberals fortunes, meanwhile,
Speaker 2: have been revived. Their support has climbed to slightly over
Speaker 2: thirty percent, up ten points from January. The new dude,
Speaker 2: Mark Carney can call elections kind of I guess whenever
Speaker 2: he really wants. It has to be in the relative
Speaker 2: near term, but he can call elections whenever he should
Speaker 2: call them. For like April six, when the new terrorists
Speaker 2: are being put into place to maximize his chances of success. Here,
Speaker 2: let's just get a taste of see three guys, let's
Speaker 2: just go ahead and get a taste of Mark Carney
Speaker 2: in the way that he is talking about the political situation. Obviously,
Speaker 2: he puts Trump here at front and center.
Speaker 1: There's someone who's trying to do the opposite.
Speaker 12: There's someone who's trying to weaken our economy. Yeah, Donald Trump,
Speaker 12: Donald Trump, and Donald Trump, as we know, has put
Speaker 12: as a prime minister, just said unjustified tariffs on what
Speaker 12: we build, on what we sell, on how we make
Speaker 12: a living. He's attacking Canadian families, workers and businesses, and
Speaker 12: we cannot let him succeed. And we won't.
Speaker 1: We won't.
Speaker 12: The Canadian government has rightly retaliated and is rightly retaliating
Speaker 12: with our own tariffs that will have maximum impact in
Speaker 12: the United States and minimum impact here in Canada. And
Speaker 12: my government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans
Speaker 12: show us respect.
Speaker 2: And he ran on taking aggressive posture towards Trump. He
Speaker 2: wants to put into place dollar dollar retaliatory terrorsts that
Speaker 2: would hit the US hard and you know, sort of
Speaker 2: minimize the impact for Canada. I know there's been a
Speaker 2: lot of talk targeting red states, in particular going after
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's support base, and so you know, the fact
Speaker 2: that that's what people were looking for is also really noteworthy.
Speaker 2: Apparently Pierre Poliev, who previously had really position sort of
Speaker 2: compared himself to Trump and had gone viral in the
Speaker 2: American right, et cetera. Now he is really trying to
Speaker 2: distance himself from Trump and said he is quote not Maga.
Speaker 2: So you can see the way the fault lines have drawn,
Speaker 2: in the way that what was previously a neutral or
Speaker 2: benefit for the Conservatives has now turned into being totally toxic.
Speaker 1: Canada was right for Maga style takeover.
Speaker 3: They had the same problem that Trudeau had to resign
Speaker 3: for a reason, he was massively unpopular, and they have
Speaker 3: huge problems of mass immigration that Pierre that Trudeau even admitted.
Speaker 3: They have same economic stagnation, they have very similar trends.
Speaker 3: You know, we are cousins, you know, in a way,
Speaker 3: and so our problem is definitely rhyme. But now with
Speaker 3: this reignition of Canadian nationalism, you have even the Conservative
Speaker 3: Party really coming out hard on behalf of Canada.
Speaker 1: We have here a.
Speaker 3: Great clip from Ontario from Doug Ford the brother of
Speaker 3: Rob Ford. The Ford family, the most American family, even
Speaker 3: though they are Canadian, of coming out against Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: And here's Doug Ford is at the Premier of Ontario.
Speaker 3: I guess they call him over there. He says, I
Speaker 3: supported Trump getting elected, but man, was I wrong.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 4: In response to what started earlier this week, you threatened
Speaker 4: to cut off electricity to big chunk of the United States.
Speaker 11: Well, you know something, I have a great relationship with
Speaker 11: the governors in New York and Michigan. In Minnesota, I
Speaker 11: just got off the phone yesterday with Governor Walls and
Speaker 11: what a gentleman he is. And I'm going to put
Speaker 11: it twenty five percent tariff on the electricity the one
Speaker 11: point five million homes and businesses as of Monday until
Speaker 11: President Trump drops East tariffs. That's the last thing I
Speaker 11: want to do. It's the last thing. But he has
Speaker 11: to understand that he can't attack our country economically and
Speaker 11: expect us to roll over.
Speaker 4: So starts Monday. Starts Monday unless this war ends before then,
Speaker 4: that's right, yes, which means American electric bills are going
Speaker 4: to be the Upper and Midwest and the Northeast, the
Speaker 4: middle landa are going up.
Speaker 11: That's right. And what we're seeing already with gas prices
Speaker 11: in the northeast, gas prices are going to go up again. People. Eventually,
Speaker 11: the assembly lines if he continues April second, we'll shut
Speaker 11: down within five days. Auto parts go back and forth
Speaker 11: across the border up to eight times before it gets
Speaker 11: assembled in Ontario or Michigan or other states. And for
Speaker 11: what he's created, an absolute mess.
Speaker 4: Last I checked, you're a conservative, Yes, Sam, you celebrated
Speaker 4: President Trump's victory in November.
Speaker 11: I thought, you know, I thought he'd do a great job. Man,
Speaker 11: was I wrong? And I am first to admit I
Speaker 11: was wrong.
Speaker 3: It just shows you that even the political leaders there
Speaker 3: who are conservative are going to have to come against America,
Speaker 3: which you know is going to have big ramifications for them,
Speaker 3: and give them a mandate because of the new election
Speaker 3: to be able to negotiate with a much harder line
Speaker 3: against the United States, which could have.
Speaker 1: A lot of problems.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right. And he's a very like Trumpian.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love politician, Like I said, I love it
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: He's got a lot of swagger, you know. And so look,
Speaker 2: this is the guy who's historically been able to read
Speaker 2: the mood of the public. I don't think that's a
Speaker 2: particularly hard thing to do in Canada right at this moment,
Speaker 2: like it's pretty clear where the battle lines are drawn,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, well, you know, we'll see where this
Speaker 2: all goes, because it asks at this point, I mean
Speaker 2: I I I'm forgetting the numbers, but it still is
Speaker 2: a significant amount of tariffs that are in place, even
Speaker 2: now after they rolled back the you know, whatever goods
Speaker 2: fall under the U. S. M c A, and with
Speaker 2: the threat that we're going to do all of this
Speaker 2: again in less than a month's time.
Speaker 6: So yeah, we'll
Speaker 2: See, we'll see where it goes for their politics and ours.