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Speaker 1: Hello there, Happy Monday, and welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: the check podcast. If you are waking up in the
Speaker 1: Assella Corridor, I hope you don't have a foot of
Speaker 1: snow outside those of us on the southern end of
Speaker 1: the Slate Corridor or breathing a sigh of relief those
Speaker 1: of you in New York that might be another story.
Speaker 1: But for those of us that make content, it means
Speaker 1: you have more time bundled up in your house or
Speaker 1: you have to get out put the AirPods in. So
Speaker 1: I hope I can be a useful distraction while you're shoveling, sweeping,
Speaker 1: whatever you may be doing this morning. Look, it's a
Speaker 1: packed episode. As you know. I did a quick sort
Speaker 1: of emergency response as we got the big tariff ruling,
Speaker 1: and this is just such a monumental moment in the
Speaker 1: Trump presidency. It's very well, we look back, this is
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end. We may look back and
Speaker 1: say Liberation Day was sort of when it all actually
Speaker 1: was starting to come to an end. I'll get to
Speaker 1: that point in a minute, but let me give you
Speaker 1: a rundown of everything we're going to do. I'm going
Speaker 1: to unpacked all things tariff, because look, an important moment,
Speaker 1: the democracy, the guard rails, separations, like all of the
Speaker 1: features of this republic blossomed a bit. So that's that.
Speaker 1: And then you have a president responding as if he
Speaker 1: is now his goal is to destroy his own party
Speaker 1: in the midterms and do whatever it takes to help
Speaker 1: the Democrats, because his initial response on this is politically catastrophic.
Speaker 1: But hey, by the time you're listening to this, we
Speaker 1: also could be launching a new over of the ron because, oh,
Speaker 1: guess what, before the tariff ruling, we still have the
Speaker 1: largest build up in the Middle East of military assets
Speaker 1: since the start of the Iraq War. What's going on?
Speaker 1: What are we up to? Congress still is not being told.
Speaker 1: Is this about the nuclear program? Is this about negotiation?
Speaker 1: Is this about regiem change? The president who loves not
Speaker 1: to explain his rationales, is I think underestimating how precarious
Speaker 1: of a position he might be in here. But we'll see,
Speaker 1: and who knows. Maybe he's going to I mean, my goodness,
Speaker 1: the State of the Union on Tuesday? Is he going
Speaker 1: to announce that the missiles are dropping as he begins
Speaker 1: to State of the Union. Does he want to step
Speaker 1: on his own State of the Union? Is that his goal?
Speaker 1: Does he want to announce something? Does he want does
Speaker 1: he not want the specific does he have not maybe
Speaker 1: he doesn't have much to say beyond or does he
Speaker 1: rant and rave about the tariffs and complain about that?
Speaker 1: Does he ask Congress for some help on this? So
Speaker 1: we are in an incredibly precarious moment of his presidency,
Speaker 1: though to say it's the most precarious is sort of
Speaker 1: how do you pick right we kind of live in
Speaker 1: a constant state of turmoil and instability ever since he
Speaker 1: came down that escalator. So we are in one of
Speaker 1: those moments, massive economic instability. Small business is still trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what comes now. But we got some
Speaker 1: important institutional pushback on Trump's attempts to usurp power from Congress.
Speaker 1: So again, I'm gonna get to all that. Let me
Speaker 1: give you, like I said, a quick rundown, I'm going
Speaker 1: to break down. We got seven of the nine Supreme
Speaker 1: Court justices felt like they had to express their own
Speaker 1: view as to why they came to the decision. They
Speaker 1: came seven of the nine. The only two justices not
Speaker 1: to write their own separate either concurrence or dissent, Samuel
Speaker 1: Alito and Sonya Soda mayor everybody else had something to say,
Speaker 1: with the Neil Gorsuch concurring opinion being the most fascinating
Speaker 1: of all of them. But we're going to get into that.
Speaker 1: There's a brand new and ABC News poll out that
Speaker 1: shows incredibly bad news for the President and Republicans. But
Speaker 1: guess what doesn't show much good news for the Democrats.
Speaker 1: I will get to that in a moment. I spent
Speaker 1: part of my weekend at the Principal's First Conference at
Speaker 1: the Gaylord Hotel in suburban Maryland outside of DC. They've built.
Speaker 1: This is their six six year gathering. It was an
Speaker 1: impressive event it gave. I had a ton of in
Speaker 1: moderator panel with Pat McCrory, Bill Crystal, and another member
Speaker 1: of the Principal's First organization. And because it really is
Speaker 1: a gathering of center rights sort of ex Republicans lost Independence,
Speaker 1: a lot of military veterans and even a few active
Speaker 1: duty people I met there who feel politically lost but
Speaker 1: are alarmed by what's happened in this current moment inside
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. So it was an interesting conversation and
Speaker 1: I've I was moderating some interesting tension. Let's just say
Speaker 1: Pat McCrory and Bill Crystal, well they both have an
Speaker 1: agreement about Trump. They weren't unnecessarily on the same page
Speaker 1: of what comes next and how to do this? And
Speaker 1: I think that this is this is the debate that
Speaker 1: many non you know, sort of independence and anti Trump
Speaker 1: Republicans are having is do you try to save the
Speaker 1: Republican Party? Do you try to start something new? Do
Speaker 1: you try to get behind an independent or do you
Speaker 1: make common cause with the Democrats temporarily? That debate is
Speaker 1: a very lively discussion inside this group. I found it
Speaker 1: to be shall we say, intellectual nourishing might be a
Speaker 1: way to put it. Meanwhile, Team USA, right, how do
Speaker 1: I I want to get to that? That's very exciting,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to over I'm going to overanalyze the
Speaker 1: period of time. We haven't won the Olympic hockey goal
Speaker 1: since nineteen eighty. What's interesting is that in many ways
Speaker 1: America in nineteen eighty, that in that February, January, February
Speaker 1: and March period, that first quarter of the year nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: we were in a meles We were isolated, We felt
Speaker 1: isolated from the world. We had Iran, had our hostages,
Speaker 1: We were a divided politically in a sort of beginning
Speaker 1: of a political depression. Sounds familiar, doesn't right? Oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, we had an unpopular president and we have
Speaker 1: an unpopular president. We have all of this. So and
Speaker 1: that Olympic gold sort of was the beginning of you know,
Speaker 1: and we ended up on a good sort of twenty
Speaker 1: year run, you know, with a few ups and downs,
Speaker 1: but a nice twenty year run arguably starting with that
Speaker 1: Olympic gold all the way until nine to eleven. When
Speaker 1: you think about america role in the world, all of
Speaker 1: those things, end of the Cold War, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So you know, maybe maybe this is a good omen.
Speaker 1: I choose to believe it is a good open on
Speaker 1: that front. So with that, let's unpack what the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court just did, because after you know, our guardrails are back.
Speaker 1: They're bruised, but as we found out Friday, they still
Speaker 1: exist in this constitutional republic, and frankly, the results not surprising.
Speaker 1: You know, I got started with this relaunch of the
Speaker 1: Check podcast. It was in April, about a week before
Speaker 1: so called liberation debt. And if you want to go
Speaker 1: back to those earlier episodes to fact check me on this,
Speaker 1: I could tell you. I said, look, these are not
Speaker 1: going to be seen as constitutional. These will not survive
Speaker 1: a court challenge. The only question is is whether this
Speaker 1: ends up costing all of us more money. Right, it's
Speaker 1: already cost consumers money. Now there's going to be people
Speaker 1: looking for their refunds. And the irony is that the
Speaker 1: president is now going to accelerate our debt and deficit
Speaker 1: in ways that we already knew. He didn't really care
Speaker 1: about the national debt or the deficit. Again, this is
Speaker 1: a guy who's always borrowed other people's money, used it
Speaker 1: for himself, declared bankruptcy, and walked away. Right. He's done
Speaker 1: it many, many times, so of course he's going to
Speaker 1: do it with the US government. He doesn't care about
Speaker 1: those things. He just doesn't sort of see it. And
Speaker 1: he certainly has. If he took basic macro and microeconomics
Speaker 1: in college, he clearly didn't absorb anything with what he learned.
Speaker 1: I mean, this has been an economic disaster for the country.
Speaker 1: It has been a terrible for global leadership. And again
Speaker 1: we I think may look back that this is in
Speaker 1: sort of you know, I'm reminded of George W. Bush
Speaker 1: right after he went his second term and he pursues
Speaker 1: an unpopular policy of privatizing social security just you know,
Speaker 1: blew up in a faith. Then he wanted to do
Speaker 1: immigration that wasn't popular inside his own party, and eventually
Speaker 1: he had approval rating somewhere in the mid ti thirties,
Speaker 1: and you had a Democratic streep in that midterm of
Speaker 1: his second term, and then the biggest Democratic essentially the
Speaker 1: biggest Democratic victory in a presidential race, with the the
Speaker 1: Democratic tennant getting over fifty percent for the first time
Speaker 1: since Jimmy Carter and then before that LBJ. So that's
Speaker 1: what this sort of And you know in the moment,
Speaker 1: you didn't quite know when Bush was just never was
Speaker 1: had hit unrecoverable status really until the election itself. So
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not going to declare Trump dead. He's
Speaker 1: going to be president for another two and a half years.
Speaker 1: He can make a lot of trouble. How he responds
Speaker 1: to this moment will tell us whether his political demise
Speaker 1: will get accelerated or not. And I would say the
Speaker 1: first seventy two hours his response tells me he wants
Speaker 1: you know, he he plans on going down with the
Speaker 1: ship here, and he may burn his party down with it.
Speaker 1: So look, there was a reason why I was pretty
Speaker 1: confident that these tariffs were never going to be seen
Speaker 1: as legal, because tariffs are taxes, and taxes live an
Speaker 1: article one simple as that. I mean, it was basically
Speaker 1: what Robert said, this is this is sort of high
Speaker 1: school constitutional law. Okay, this is not even law school
Speaker 1: constitutional law. So when you try to run a sweeping
Speaker 1: global tariff regime through a nineteen seventy seven emergency statute
Speaker 1: that never mentions the word tariff. You're taking a pretty
Speaker 1: big legal risk. Pretty much open and shut case, rightly.
Speaker 1: The only surprise to me was that the ruling was
Speaker 1: six to three in the court, not seven two. It
Speaker 1: should have been at nine zero. But I expected Alito
Speaker 1: and Thomas to be partisans in here. They've never been
Speaker 1: serious jurists. Maybe they were serious jurists, but not in
Speaker 1: the last ten or fifteen years have they been serious.
Speaker 1: They've been always take thee what they believe is the
Speaker 1: own the Libs partisan right. Never may never embarrass your
Speaker 1: own party in any way. Anyway. The point is is
Speaker 1: that they've stopped being legal guys a long time ago.
Speaker 1: But I thought both Corsic and Kavanaugh had come in
Speaker 1: here so mild. The real surprise to me is that
Speaker 1: Kavanaugh ended up in the descent on here, and it
Speaker 1: was interesting. He of course had to write his own
Speaker 1: He wrote the overall descent and he's hiding behind foreign policy,
Speaker 1: which of all the weak arguments that Trump lawyers were making,
Speaker 1: it was the strongest of the weak arguments. Was saying, well,
Speaker 1: this is part of foreign policy, and a president has
Speaker 1: to conduct foreign policy. Still, at its core, this was
Speaker 1: not about trade. This was about who governs, who's in
Speaker 1: charge of the purse in the United States of America.
Speaker 1: So the court ruled six to three that the International
Speaker 1: Emergency Economic Powers at AIPA reminds me of the Simpsons
Speaker 1: movie yep by yepa. This is aep BA EEPA. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help myself. It does not authorize the president
Speaker 1: to impose sweeping global tariffs. Six justices ended up in
Speaker 1: the majority, three dissenters. But here's what matters. There were
Speaker 1: seven opinions. Seven Okay, it tells you something. This court
Speaker 1: agreed on the result, but not on the reasoning chief.
Speaker 1: Justas Roberts wrote the controlling opinion, his argument was institutional,
Speaker 1: straightforward regulate importation does not equal in post tariffs, as
Speaker 1: simple as that Congress knows how to say duties, Congress
Speaker 1: knows how to say tariffs. It did not say either
Speaker 1: of those two words in the i EPA legislation. Tariffs
Speaker 1: are taxation. Taxation belongs to Congress. Hard stop. Then there's
Speaker 1: the there there's the concurring opinion that I would want
Speaker 1: all of my wanta be law school, folks. And you
Speaker 1: know I always joke I don't play a lawyer. I'm
Speaker 1: not a lawyer, but I have been playing one on
Speaker 1: TV for a long time. I am. I'd like to
Speaker 1: think I have gotten sort of a pretty decent legal
Speaker 1: education over the last thirty years, as I love reading
Speaker 1: me some good Supreme Court opinions or just sense at times,
Speaker 1: because you learn a lot about the politics of the
Speaker 1: court when you do. And he wrote separately, and he
Speaker 1: leaned hard into what's known as the major Questions doctrine,
Speaker 1: and then he also called out pretty much five of
Speaker 1: us go by the way, kind of amusing, but still
Speaker 1: before we get to what he called him out on.
Speaker 1: He was tackling major questions, right, which is the idea
Speaker 1: that when a president claims extraordinary economic power, Congress must
Speaker 1: speak clearly. And here's where it gets interesting, or so
Speaker 1: it's called out all of his colleagues, first the liberals,
Speaker 1: for what he described frankly as a flip flop, because
Speaker 1: he basically said, hey, you opposed this idea of the
Speaker 1: major questions when it limited democratic administrations, in particular Biden
Speaker 1: on issues involving COVID in the workplace, COVID mandates and
Speaker 1: the student loan issue. But now are you using the
Speaker 1: same structural instincts Justice Kagan. She was joined by Sotomayor,
Speaker 1: agreed with the outcome, but rejected the idea this was
Speaker 1: a major question issue. She said that the ordinary statutory
Speaker 1: interpretation was enough. Essentially, she was trying to defend the
Speaker 1: fact that she was not flip popping here. She was
Speaker 1: trying to disaggregate the rationale she used to be in
Speaker 1: favor of Biden using emergency powers to do the student
Speaker 1: loan cuts, and she was trying to essentially separate it
Speaker 1: from her what appears to be literally the opposite point
Speaker 1: of view, which to somebody with no skin in the game,
Speaker 1: you know, the same way. It looks like robertson excuse me,
Speaker 1: Thomas and Ledo were partisans here. Essentially, of course, is
Speaker 1: saying and said, hey, looks like Kagan, so do my
Speaker 1: own Jackson essentially have been partisan here as well. Then
Speaker 1: you have Justice Brown Jackson. She leaned into legislative history,
Speaker 1: saying Congress never intended AIPA to become a tariff machine,
Speaker 1: and therefore that's why she came to the same conclusion
Speaker 1: as roberts On the other side, Justice Kavanaugh wrote the
Speaker 1: principal dissent in his argument foreign affairs is different. He
Speaker 1: saw this as part of foreign affairs, So the president
Speaker 1: traditionally has brought her authority here and major questions doctrine
Speaker 1: shouldn't apply in the same way in trade and diplomacy.
Speaker 1: Justice Thomas went even further, arguing Congress can delegate ter
Speaker 1: for Thorty Broadly, he basically said, nope, these emergency powers
Speaker 1: delegated it all away, and the President was perfectly within
Speaker 1: his constitutional rights to do all of this. So to
Speaker 1: say this was it your typical liberal conservative split is
Speaker 1: an understatement. It was a structural split, and that matters.
Speaker 1: And by the way, just a little history lesson here,
Speaker 1: because I was curious, how often have we had seven
Speaker 1: of the nine justices all write their own either supporting
Speaker 1: opinions or dissent. Well, in nineteen seventy one, during the
Speaker 1: Pentagon Papers case New York Times versus the United States,
Speaker 1: all nine justices wrote their own opinion. They agreed on
Speaker 1: the ruling, but they did not agree on how they
Speaker 1: got there. Right, They went nine nothing, but they ended
Speaker 1: up having individual opinions explaining that away a case that
Speaker 1: effectively struck down all existing death penalty laws in the
Speaker 1: United States Furman versus Georgia in nineteen seventy two. Same thing.
Speaker 1: All nine justices wrote their own rationales for how they
Speaker 1: got to their opinion, and then, of course dread Scott.
Speaker 1: The infamous dread Scott decision, one of the worst in
Speaker 1: the history of the Supreme Court, also featured all nine
Speaker 1: justices in the last few decades. Seven opinions usually signal
Speaker 1: a massive turf war between the different wings of the Court.
Speaker 1: And as I've told you, there's there's three distinct wings
Speaker 1: of the Court, Okay, and I think Gorciats and Kavanaugh
Speaker 1: are sort of somewhere in between the two of the
Speaker 1: conservative wings. Right, you have sort of a institutionalist conservative
Speaker 1: wing which is anchored by Roberts and Barrett. Kavanaugh mostly
Speaker 1: is with them on these institutional rulings. In this case
Speaker 1: it was Gorsich, not Kavanaugh. Thomas and Alito are usually
Speaker 1: in the more on the further the right spectrum, a
Speaker 1: little more in favor of even stronger executive authority essentially,
Speaker 1: but a bit more partisan. You know, their takes seem
Speaker 1: to be grounded in well, what ruling do we want
Speaker 1: to get to and then they find a rationale to
Speaker 1: get there. And then you, of course you have the
Speaker 1: three liberals that rarely do they do they break ranks.
Speaker 1: So it is a I think a court that has
Speaker 1: split more in three than it is in two, because
Speaker 1: that's what Donald Trump does, right. He has divided his
Speaker 1: own party in that case. And you see that divide
Speaker 1: on on on the Supreme Court. So I think that
Speaker 1: is there a is there is there that or is
Speaker 1: this a case where they all wanted to explain their
Speaker 1: own rationale? And I think it is clear that they
Speaker 1: really didn't agree on they they you know, you had
Speaker 1: a strong majority agree that the president overstepped his constitutional
Speaker 1: overstepped his constitutional authority, but they just disagreed on exactly
Speaker 1: what how he overstepped that authority. Still I can't help
Speaker 1: but when you look at it sort of seven responses
Speaker 1: like that, it really is sort of it reminds me
Speaker 1: of the coalition against Trump in general, right, which is
Speaker 1: there's a large majority of the country, say fifty five
Speaker 1: sixty percent that don't like how Trump governs, the general
Speaker 1: direction that Trump is taking us. This episode of The
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Speaker 1: dot Net Slash, the Chucktodcast. But they don't all agree
Speaker 1: that as to on the same things. As to what
Speaker 1: he's doing. Right, there are some that don't like what
Speaker 1: Trump's doing, but maybe like what he's doing in immigration.
Speaker 1: There are some that may be like what he's doing
Speaker 1: in immigration, but don't like what he's doing on tariffs.
Speaker 1: But it is it does sort of the fragmented court
Speaker 1: knows that Trump is an unconstitutional president and probably the
Speaker 1: most abuse abusive of the constitution of any president we've had,
Speaker 1: going even Nixon included. And yet right there you can't
Speaker 1: get a coherent singular message to sort of take them on,
Speaker 1: and even in the legal community, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: Now there's Trump's response, And as I said on Friday,
Speaker 1: before knowing Trump's response, I said, he's the wild card here.
Speaker 1: There was a real opportunity, right. This economy sucks, people
Speaker 1: don't like it, and you know, these tariffs have been
Speaker 1: attacked on consumers. It is served as inflationary. In fact, earlier,
Speaker 1: just before this tariffruling came out, we got news the
Speaker 1: economic growth stagnated massively in the fourth quarter, right under
Speaker 1: one and a half percent growth, which is just terrible.
Speaker 1: Anything under two doesn't even allow us to sort of
Speaker 1: keep up with inflation. That is not good, and it
Speaker 1: is part of it is attributed to the shutdown, but
Speaker 1: they're also has been this continued, you know, as we're seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, for about six months, many businesses tried actually
Speaker 1: not to pass on the cost of the tariffs that
Speaker 1: ended in the last quarter and the and we've seen
Speaker 1: in January a lot of price spikes in particular, all
Speaker 1: of that has gone away. And that's so so ironically,
Speaker 1: you know, the best thing that could have happened to
Speaker 1: the congressional Republicans was for these tariffs to be viewed
Speaker 1: as unconstitutional. That's if Trump would go along and accept
Speaker 1: the premise that the Supreme Court is correct here. That's
Speaker 1: not what he's doing. And this is what should make
Speaker 1: all of us pause here. Man. The President didn't respond
Speaker 1: by arguing on the merits. He didn't argue about it
Speaker 1: the statutory interpretation. He didn't respond by seeing the court
Speaker 1: misread history. He responded by doing what he does best,
Speaker 1: attacking his own appointees for simply being disloyal. And it
Speaker 1: is a reminder, right, if we did not have lifetime
Speaker 1: appointment to the Supreme Court. He tried to fire Gorsich.
Speaker 1: He tried to fire Barrett, just like he's doing with
Speaker 1: the FED. So just keep that in mind. The founders
Speaker 1: knew that. I mean, look, none of us love this
Speaker 1: lifetime appointment business. And maybe we should have age limits
Speaker 1: and there's some ways to end it. But you cannot
Speaker 1: what you cannot have as an executive having the ability
Speaker 1: to fire somebody in another branch of government. And obviously
Speaker 1: our founders knew that, and that's why it's important to
Speaker 1: give Supreme Court justices this. So here he is personally
Speaker 1: attack it Neil Gorsuch and Amy Cony Barrett. Neil Gorsich,
Speaker 1: who was voted with Trump quite a bit. In fact,
Speaker 1: he's rarely in that institutional Every once in a while
Speaker 1: he surprises you. I was pretty convinced he'd be with
Speaker 1: the seven to two majority. Like I said, the surprise
Speaker 1: for me was capital. But Trump did the usual personation, right,
Speaker 1: he said this was an embarrassment to their families. So
Speaker 1: he's attacking the families of Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coneni Barr.
Speaker 1: And we know when Trump does this, it does it
Speaker 1: does you know, all of a sudden there are mentally
Speaker 1: unstable people out there who start doxing people start going
Speaker 1: after it is. It is terrible what he does, and
Speaker 1: it's designed as a chilling effect, right. What you know,
Speaker 1: he goes after anybody that was supposedly that he viewed
Speaker 1: as on his side, and when they break ranks, he
Speaker 1: he goes after him in nasty ways because he's trying
Speaker 1: to prevent it from happening again. He's afraid it's going
Speaker 1: to get contagious. But here's the thing, more and more people,
Speaker 1: more and more Republicans. I think this is this is
Speaker 1: why I think this could be such an important moment
Speaker 1: that this the breaking points don't happen. The breaking points
Speaker 1: are realized six months after that breaking point happens. Right,
Speaker 1: And so you know, if we go on and I
Speaker 1: promise you Democrats sweep the midterms, we'll say, Okay, this
Speaker 1: thing started collapsing. And it really sort of took another
Speaker 1: nose dive with the Supreme Court ruling and then his
Speaker 1: just unhinged response to it. And look, we're all kind
Speaker 1: of numb to this. Oh, just another day at the office.
Speaker 1: He's just attacking members Supreme Court. He also thinks there's
Speaker 1: some conspiracy blaming foreign influence. You have the conspiracy of
Speaker 1: these foreigners right there infiltrating the Supreme Court. This is
Speaker 1: some foreign influence campaign on Justices Gorsach and amy Cony Barrett.
Speaker 1: Let's take it all the way through. Tell me how
Speaker 1: that works, mister President. Tell me how there's foreign influence
Speaker 1: on Neil Gorsich. Tell me how there's foreign influence on
Speaker 1: John Roberts. You know you can't. You're gonna throw this
Speaker 1: out there. Give me some details. Show your proof. I'm
Speaker 1: sure your proof is with the with the with all
Speaker 1: the stuff you found out during when when you swore
Speaker 1: that you had evidence that Barack Obama wasn't born in
Speaker 1: the United States. I'm sure that evidence is in the
Speaker 1: same place at the evidence of of that's somehow foreign
Speaker 1: interest swayed Neil Gorsuch and Amy Cony Barrett. Show your evidence.
Speaker 1: You don't do that. What you do is you count
Speaker 1: on your lapdog supporters to just take your accusation and
Speaker 1: run with it, and you count on algorithms to amplify
Speaker 1: it and make it seem like a legitimate talking point.
Speaker 1: It's disgusting, it's awful, and yeah, we already have look
Speaker 1: another person came after you, mister President at mar a Lago.
Speaker 1: All right, stop this. The more you do this stuff,
Speaker 1: the more you put everybody at risk physically. You're putting
Speaker 1: the lives in dangers of two Supreme Court justices that
Speaker 1: you appointed. You appointed these people, and you're attacking them
Speaker 1: and attacking their families. It's outrageous and it's awful. And
Speaker 1: the again, right, you have an entire Republican party who
Speaker 1: just doesn't respond to this anymore. I understand rationally why
Speaker 1: they don't. Doesn't get them anywhere, just causes more problems
Speaker 1: for them, and it's all sort of self preservation is
Speaker 1: why you don't speak out. But folks, he is super weak.
Speaker 1: This is the absolute definition of an emperor with no clothes,
Speaker 1: and every day we keep finding out how little he's
Speaker 1: wearing under his little garments there. So he obviously is
Speaker 1: decided not to not to do this the normal way
Speaker 1: any other president when they're set back, they criticize the court,
Speaker 1: they're frustrated, they say this or that, but then they
Speaker 1: are like, figure out another way. Maybe they want to
Speaker 1: work with Congress, but nope. He doesn't view his loss
Speaker 1: as a constitutional issue. He views the loss as a
Speaker 1: loyalty issue. But let's go back to April. And this
Speaker 1: is why I fear long term impact of Trump less
Speaker 1: than most people do. He really is lazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: he is super lazy, right. I often used the joke, Look,
Speaker 1: he's too lazy to be Hitler, He's too lazy to
Speaker 1: be Orbon. He's too lazy to be air to one. Okay,
Speaker 1: forget any of these other you know, forget using the
Speaker 1: north star of the Nazis. Right, just picked today's sort
Speaker 1: of authoritarian. It's too lazy to be Orbon. I'm too
Speaker 1: lazy to be air to one. Right. Imagine you know,
Speaker 1: he actually had some political capital in the first ninety
Speaker 1: days of his administration, and he could have probably strong
Speaker 1: armed his narrow congressional majorities in the House and Senate
Speaker 1: to give him the authority if he simply said back
Speaker 1: in late March, hey, Congress, I want I want specific
Speaker 1: tariff authority. I'm going to I'm a better negotiator than
Speaker 1: you are. I'm going to negotiate these trade deals, but
Speaker 1: I need to control the tariff. I need you to
Speaker 1: delegate tariff authority to the president. Let's debate it, let's
Speaker 1: vote on it. And there'd have been wouldn't have been easy,
Speaker 1: and he may not have won that argument, but that
Speaker 1: is how you try to win an argument. And then
Speaker 1: if you can't win the argument, then he can go
Speaker 1: find his own Republicans to challenge the primary folks, and
Speaker 1: you try to do it that way. It's what FDR
Speaker 1: would do when he had rakhal centrin Democrats to some
Speaker 1: of his ideas. But he also had pretty decent political
Speaker 1: capital with Republicans in that moment. You certainly know he
Speaker 1: would have strong armed the House at that time, right,
Speaker 1: he was pretty much the House speaker at that point,
Speaker 1: and John Thune was in go along, get along mode,
Speaker 1: I know, McConnell and you know. And they could have
Speaker 1: done it through the reconciliation process when they were doing
Speaker 1: their big beautiful bill. They were too lazy to pursue
Speaker 1: because it's what was it going to be hard? They
Speaker 1: were going to have to do some good old fashioned
Speaker 1: horse trading. But remember, right, the greatest weakness Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has is his laziness. It will always be the key
Speaker 1: as to why he didn't have the success he could
Speaker 1: have had in business. Right. Too lazy in the casino
Speaker 1: business to right, he didn't want to deal with competitors,
Speaker 1: so bought them up, drowned himself in debt, and walked away. Right,
Speaker 1: he's just always looking for a shortcut. Right, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has shortcuted his way to being a billionaire. Good for him.
Speaker 1: He's used the power of the federal government to actually
Speaker 1: make himself a billionaire. Again a shortcut. But as president,
Speaker 1: his agenda is failing and he's failing to remake the
Speaker 1: American economy in his vision because he's too lazy to
Speaker 1: work with Congress. Bottom line, had he done that, he'd
Speaker 1: have had a shot. Markets would have been calmer, his
Speaker 1: political capital was fresher, Party was more unified in that moment,
Speaker 1: and he wouldn't have gotten all the authority he would
Speaker 1: have wanted, but he would have gotten some targeted authority
Speaker 1: and it would have been legitimate. But again, he didn't
Speaker 1: want to bother He wanted speed, he wanted immediate leverage.
Speaker 1: She wanted unilateral control. But it's lazy because it doing
Speaker 1: it every way I'm describing is a little bit harder.
Speaker 1: It's effort, It takes it. You have to have an
Speaker 1: attention span a little bit greater than a nat Well
Speaker 1: we know he doesn't, so he reached for the emergency
Speaker 1: powers because they work so well during COVID. So he
Speaker 1: loves these shortcut emergency powers that Stephen Miller consistently finds
Speaker 1: for him now, and he didn't want to have a
Speaker 1: debate in his own party, and this avoids deliberation. Well,
Speaker 1: guess what his shortcut ran into Article one. So within
Speaker 1: hours of the ruling, Trump announces a new global baseline
Speaker 1: tariff under Section one twenty two of the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four Trade Act. So he's going back even further now
Speaker 1: in congressional authorization to try to find a legal way
Speaker 1: around this. By the way, this new fifteen percent flat
Speaker 1: tariff that he's sent across the board expires in one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty days, so it is he's going to
Speaker 1: need to go to Congress if he wants to continue it.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to Congress weighing in on this. This
Speaker 1: is where it belongs, and I think it's going to
Speaker 1: be quite the MRI. We're going to find out where
Speaker 1: the Republican Party is today. Because one thing that has
Speaker 1: been true since Donald Trump took his second oath of office,
Speaker 1: every day he's lost a Republican supporter every day or
Speaker 1: every week, somebody leaves the reservation. Nobody. He has not
Speaker 1: added anybody to his coalition. You see it in the
Speaker 1: form of elected officials breaking from him, and you see
Speaker 1: it obviously in all of these in all of these polls.
Speaker 1: But what his response to this ruling is not good
Speaker 1: in the short term. This will be good in the
Speaker 1: long term because we've established some guard raids, but it's
Speaker 1: going to be unstable in the short term. We have
Speaker 1: a bunch of instability where they'll be refunds. Justice Kavanaugh
Speaker 1: warned of chaos. Yeah, I mean, there was no reason
Speaker 1: to violate the Constitution, But there is some truth to this. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's chaos. The importers had to pay billions under this
Speaker 1: i epa misuse of the IEPA authority. They're going to sue.
Speaker 1: They're going to want their money back. Sounds like the
Speaker 1: government's going to fight having to give any of the
Speaker 1: money back. These are lawsuits could take years. It's not
Speaker 1: good for small businesses that need to deal with imports.
Speaker 1: It's not good for any business, but small businesses. Big
Speaker 1: business can can figure out how to mitigate the impact
Speaker 1: of this on their on their bottom lines. They can
Speaker 1: write it down right, they can they can get some
Speaker 1: tax savings out of something like this. But boy, small business,
Speaker 1: this is a killer. That's why it was. NFIB was
Speaker 1: a part of the groups, a part of the bigger
Speaker 1: group of people that were suing over this. And oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, the President just exploded the deficit with
Speaker 1: his illegal tariffs because what looked like was going to
Speaker 1: be the ability to actually see some revenue uh come
Speaker 1: into the country used to at least shrink the deficit
Speaker 1: annual deficit. I don't think we were going to make
Speaker 1: any progress on the debt itself. Put to shrink the deficit. Well,
Speaker 1: now if you've removed it, you know he was. Look,
Speaker 1: this has always been part of a larger project. As
Speaker 1: I've tried to let try to walk people through, we're
Speaker 1: ultimately the goal here. The people that have really gotten
Speaker 1: a hold of Trump are the folks that want to
Speaker 1: get rid of income taxes. And you've seen in the States,
Speaker 1: you've seen attempts to get rid of property taxes. There
Speaker 1: are a whole bunch of people that want to move
Speaker 1: all taxation back to being consumption oriented, right, much more
Speaker 1: like a vat tax like the Europeans, right that everything
Speaker 1: is consumption oriented. Well, guess what that was our tax
Speaker 1: policy before we before the sixteenth Amendment and legalized income taxes.
Speaker 1: And you know what, that was worse for everybody, and
Speaker 1: it meant poor people paid a lions share the taxes.
Speaker 1: Rich people hid from paying most taxes because they were
Speaker 1: consumption based and the income and the impact was much
Speaker 1: greater on lower income people than it wasn't higher income people,
Speaker 1: which is what made the income tax popular in that time.
Speaker 1: It was to make the rich start paying their fair share.
Speaker 1: And here we go again, right, it's rich and wealthy people.
Speaker 1: They don't want it. They think that once they have money,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't get taxed on it until they spend it.
Speaker 1: And ditto with their property. Well, good luck funding any
Speaker 1: service that government provides today if you take away income
Speaker 1: taxes and property taxes. But we are going to have
Speaker 1: a ton of instability now for a while. Right, he's
Speaker 1: going to all right, so he found one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty days worth of ways to do terariffs. So he's
Speaker 1: going to find their sort of five or six my
Speaker 1: friend Bruce Melman, go check out his sub stack. There's
Speaker 1: five or six other pieces of various authorities that he
Speaker 1: can start to rebuild his tariff structure, and he'll do that,
Speaker 1: but it's going to cause all sorts of instability in prices.
Speaker 1: Prices aren't going to come down, They're only going to
Speaker 1: go up. And at this point, right you think, oh, great,
Speaker 1: there's going to be no teriff, but as a business
Speaker 1: you have to plan that there's going to be some
Speaker 1: more tariff somewhere. So this is a mess. But you know,
Speaker 1: did anybody expect Donald Trump to leave? I mean, at
Speaker 1: this point, when he leaves office on January twenty, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty nine, we're going to have half the White House
Speaker 1: probably not be rebuilt, a Kennedy Center that's gutted and
Speaker 1: not finished, half built structures, an economy in tatters because
Speaker 1: of the mess he has created with this tariffs. So
Speaker 1: let's zoom out internationally. What's going to happen all these
Speaker 1: trade deals he cut using this illegal tariff authority. How
Speaker 1: many countries are going to say, hey, we want a
Speaker 1: new deal. The deal we cut is no longer operational.
Speaker 1: I think quite a few countries are going to do that.
Speaker 1: So if the tool he used for leverage is unstable,
Speaker 1: then the leverage itself shrinks. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: he still hasn't finished this trade deal with China, and
Speaker 1: he's going to meet with she in April. My god,
Speaker 1: has it ever been a better environment for the Chinese
Speaker 1: than the environment Trump has created? Now he's alienated every
Speaker 1: major ally the United States has right handing over China,
Speaker 1: you know, handing, Canada and India, all these in the
Speaker 1: European Union better trade relations with China than with the
Speaker 1: United States. And he has sort of usurped his own
Speaker 1: leverage that he was trying to manufacture in going back
Speaker 1: and forth. Heck of a job, Trumpy, because every foreign
Speaker 1: leader is going to look at the Supreme Court rule
Speaker 1: and go Court's going to intervene. We may there may
Speaker 1: be some refunds. Congress may have to insert its control again.
Speaker 1: Why do we have to negotiate with Trump on these deals?
Speaker 1: So we'll see, it's going to be a mess. But
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's been weakened quite a bit. So here's where
Speaker 1: it's going to get interesting politically if this now moves
Speaker 1: to Congress, and we'll see, right Mike Johnson does not
Speaker 1: want to put these votes out there now, I mean
Speaker 1: right now, Trump's going to be super vulnerable to Republicans
Speaker 1: walking away from him right. I mean, we've already seen
Speaker 1: a handful of Republicans, and Trump got angry when when
Speaker 1: a Colorado Republican voted against voted to get rid of
Speaker 1: that symbolic vote to get rid of the Canadian tariffs,
Speaker 1: and Trump withdrew his endorsement endorsed his primary opponent. Now,
Speaker 1: in some ways, if Trump wants to try to purge
Speaker 1: his party and reorient it around his protectionist vision for
Speaker 1: the United States, then this is how he's you know,
Speaker 1: he's going to have to go find more like minded
Speaker 1: folks and get them elected to Congress. But I'll tell
Speaker 1: you this, Colorado's have always been a free trade state.
Speaker 1: Colorad Bhado's was one of those states that you know,
Speaker 1: while they lean left there, they're you know, they're not
Speaker 1: anti right to work, not the most pro union state.
Speaker 1: They don't like tariffs. It's free trade s date. I
Speaker 1: have feeling that Jeff heard, the congressman that Trump once
Speaker 1: endorsed and has now unendorsed, knows his electorate better than
Speaker 1: Donald Trump knows that electorate. So bottom line is this
Speaker 1: is an MRI moment for the Republican Party. Right, We're
Speaker 1: going to find out who is still a free market
Speaker 1: conservative and who isn't. So we'll find out if they're
Speaker 1: how big this fracture is. We know there's a small
Speaker 1: fracture in the Republican Party over trading tariffs. We know
Speaker 1: there's a silent minority. I still think it's close to
Speaker 1: a majory, that's close to a majority that doesn't like
Speaker 1: these tariffs, but they're scared to say anything publicly. You've
Speaker 1: got to cover the Supreme Court. Well, we see more folks,
Speaker 1: especially as balloting gets closer, exposed themselves as free marketeers.
Speaker 1: We'll see and there might be votes. A rational reaction
Speaker 1: by a president would be to try to get authority
Speaker 1: in Congress, try to persuade, try to find a way
Speaker 1: to do this. I don't know if he's going to
Speaker 1: try to do this that way. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: expect him. I mean, he's already responded as I mean literally.
Speaker 1: A Democratic strategist said to me, if I could have
Speaker 1: scripted Trump's reaction to this ruling, I couldn't have scripted
Speaker 1: it any better. I mean, is he is owning the
Speaker 1: every tax hike now in the country, every consumer tax hit.
Speaker 1: He just announced a fifteen percent tax hide and consumer
Speaker 1: goods across the board, So you now know that if
Speaker 1: you're paying more, it is directly associated with Trump's economy.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable, he said in April this would likely end
Speaker 1: in the situation we're in now. The only surprise was
Speaker 1: that the ruling wasn't even more emphatic it was seven
Speaker 1: to two or nine zero. But what happens next is
Speaker 1: far more important. Does Congress reassert its authority in the moment?
Speaker 1: Do we see free market republicans speak out publicly? Does
Speaker 1: the loyalty tests continue by Trump? If Gorsach and Barrett
Speaker 1: are disloyal for reading a statute narrowly, what happens the
Speaker 1: next time the disagreement is over something bigger than tariff's
Speaker 1: So this wasn't about trade policy. This is about how
Speaker 1: we govern and whether we have three co equal branches
Speaker 1: of government. And Donald Trump shortcut just ran straight headlong
Speaker 1: into the brick wall that is the US Constitution. And
Speaker 1: guess what, he's super unpopular at the moment. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you about a new poll in the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Through this for a few minutes before we get to
Speaker 1: the interview. Now, it's a poll of all adults and
Speaker 1: so far as we've seen the pattern. When it's adults,
Speaker 1: it's his job approval can't get out of the thirties.
Speaker 1: When it's registered voters, you'll see his job approval it's
Speaker 1: somewhere in the forty one forty two percent range. Sixty
Speaker 1: percent disapproved. It's that disapproval number is huge. Here's a
Speaker 1: few more things. Do you approve a disapprove of the
Speaker 1: way Trump is handling This is again Washington Post IPSOS poll.
Speaker 1: So it's a you, gov, i'm, i'm, it's EPSOS. I'M.
Speaker 1: It's not my favorite methodology, but look that ship has sailed,
Speaker 1: but he is upside down on every single issue. He's
Speaker 1: got a majorities disapproving of him on every issue. They
Speaker 1: tested us Mexican border. Fifty percent disapproved of his policy.
Speaker 1: That was the best issue he performed on. Forty seven
Speaker 1: percent approve of his border policy, Fifty eight percent disapprove
Speaker 1: of his immigration policies, fifty seven percent disp proove of
Speaker 1: his handling of the economy, sixty two percent disapprove of
Speaker 1: the relations that he has with other countries, sixty four
Speaker 1: percent disapprove of the tariffs, and sixty five percent hate
Speaker 1: this inflationary Now Here's the thing that ought to scare democrats.
Speaker 1: Americans are split on who they trust to handle the
Speaker 1: country's main problems. Here's the specific wording of the question, overall,
Speaker 1: who do you trust to do a better job handling
Speaker 1: the country's main problems? Trump? Of the Democrats in Congress, well,
Speaker 1: thirty three percent picked Trump, thirty one percent pick Democrats
Speaker 1: in Congress. Thirty one percent said neither. How about that? Right?
Speaker 1: Does that not tell you where America really is? Right?
Speaker 1: You know, you basically have the base of the basis
Speaker 1: of two parties saying one thing and everybody else feeling
Speaker 1: I don't trust either one of these parties at the moment,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I continue to wonder is this
Speaker 1: an opportunity for a third party and independent? Does this?
Speaker 1: You know, are Democrats going to realize they have a
Speaker 1: huge problem, that their brand is shit. They are seen
Speaker 1: as way too liberal, way too progressive, way outside the
Speaker 1: mainstream on some of these issues, and this is why
Speaker 1: they don't have confidence and sort of the rest of
Speaker 1: the electorate. Right, the base is animated on hate and Trump,
Speaker 1: and that might be enough in a midterm, but this
Speaker 1: poll is still revealing as again, Donald Trump unpopular in
Speaker 1: every single issue that matters to Americans. The fact that
Speaker 1: this is not a blowout, that Democrats aren't more trusted
Speaker 1: right now to handle everything than Trump by ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty points, that's a reflection on the Democratic
Speaker 1: That's that's that's just a reminder of a red flag,
Speaker 1: all right. I, Like I said, I've got a terrific
Speaker 1: injury with game to beer here. It is, like I said,
Speaker 1: the perfect neighbor is. I used the MRI metaphor before.
Speaker 1: I think it's an MRI and race and culture in
Speaker 1: America a little bit. Some of our gun laws are
Speaker 1: stay in your ground laws is sort of relevant in here.
Speaker 1: But here's the beauty of this documentary again using only
Speaker 1: footage from body cameras, no narration, no talking heads. It
Speaker 1: is a classication. You get to decide your own reaction
Speaker 1: without letting others try to influence you and tell you
Speaker 1: what you're seeing. You're seeing it all raw and in
Speaker 1: real time. And I highly encourage it. I really do,
Speaker 1: because I think it will when you hear people say that,
Speaker 1: you know, it is just a reminder that that we've
Speaker 1: raised a lot of racists in this country, multiple generations,
Speaker 1: and it's going to take a while for us to
Speaker 1: eradicate that strain, that virus out of the American society.
Speaker 1: We're making progress, not fast enough, and this, this documentary
Speaker 1: will tell you that. So let's sneak in a break.
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Speaker 1: something you should really think about it, especially if you've
Speaker 1: got a growing family. Well, let's get into the time
Speaker 1: machine because guess what, let's just say thematically, it sort
Speaker 1: of fits with the with the broader theme of the
Speaker 1: beginning of this podcast, having to do with emergencies and
Speaker 1: how those in power can abuse legislation that gives them
Speaker 1: emergency power. So let's get into the time machine. Where
Speaker 1: are we going. We are going back to February twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three. The German parliament building known as the
Speaker 1: Reichstag burned. The fire matters, but the story isn't the flames.
Speaker 1: The real story is how fragile Germany's political system already was,
Speaker 1: how quickly legal authority became a vehicle for authoritarian power.
Speaker 1: And to understand the night of the Reichstag fire, you
Speaker 1: have to understand why Adolf Hitler was even in office
Speaker 1: in the first place. Because he didn't seize power, he
Speaker 1: was handed power. That's how this authoritarian regime in Germany began.
Speaker 1: By the early nineteen thirties, Germany was exhausted. The Great
Speaker 1: Depression had devastated the economy. Remember, America was pursuing that
Speaker 1: horrible protectionist tariff policy that was essentially causing the rise
Speaker 1: of nationalism all around the world. That's my historical opinion.
Speaker 1: But it had devastating impact on the European economy, particularly
Speaker 1: the Germans. Unemployment swords collapsed. Faith in the parliamentary democracy
Speaker 1: in Germany erode it. The president, Paul von Hindenberg, had
Speaker 1: already appointed three chancellors in rapid succession before he ends
Speaker 1: up appointing Adolf Hitler. First it was Heinrich Bruening. He
Speaker 1: governed through the harsh austerity measures during the depression. He
Speaker 1: was the one that had to cut spending and wages
Speaker 1: in hopes of trying to stabilize the currency. Instead, it
Speaker 1: deepened public misery and he lost support inside that parliament.
Speaker 1: Then came Franz von Poppen, who had virtually no base
Speaker 1: inside parliament and ruled almost entirely by presidential emergency decree.
Speaker 1: He alienated both the left and the right and could
Speaker 1: not build a governing coalition. And then the last one
Speaker 1: before Hitler was a gentleman by the name of Kurt
Speaker 1: von Schlatscher, who tried to split the Nazi Party and
Speaker 1: construct a cross party alliance. It failed and he quickly
Speaker 1: lost Hindenburg's confidence. So in under three years, Germany cycled
Speaker 1: through three increasingly unstable governments. And during that entire period
Speaker 1: they had something called Article forty eight, the emergency clause
Speaker 1: of the Weimar Constitution, which was used regularly to bypass
Speaker 1: parliament because parliament was so dysfunctional and divided, so emergency
Speaker 1: rule had already been normalized in German society's some From there,
Speaker 1: Hitler didn't invent the habit. He stippingly stepped into the void.
Speaker 1: So how did Hitler get there? In nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party had surged to become the largest party
Speaker 1: in parliament. It was real popular support, but he did not.
Speaker 1: The Nazi Party did not have a majority in parliament,
Speaker 1: but in the November nineteen thirty two elections the Nazis
Speaker 1: actually lost seats. Momentum was slipping. Hitler was not inevitable,
Speaker 1: But what changed was the calculation of the elites. Again,
Speaker 1: just think about the Republican Party circa twenty sixteen. But
Speaker 1: I digress. So what changed was elite calculation. Conservative insiders,
Speaker 1: especially Franz van Poppin, believe they could use Hitler's popularity
Speaker 1: to stabilize government. They assumed that they would dominate the captain,
Speaker 1: that they could box Hitler in, that his radicalism could
Speaker 1: be managed, that his mass following could be harnessed. Well,
Speaker 1: they were wrong, but they tried so. On January thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, Hindenberg appointed Hitler Chancellor. Not because he
Speaker 1: was democratic, not because he had a majority in parliament
Speaker 1: he did not, but because the elites at the time thought, well,
Speaker 1: he's got the biggest block of supporters and we can
Speaker 1: control him, or so they thought, so he gets appointed
Speaker 1: January thirtieth, twenty seven. Twenty eight days later, excuse me.
Speaker 1: February twenty seventh, the Reichstock burns now a Dutch communists
Speaker 1: Marinis vander Lub was arrested at the scene. Most historians
Speaker 1: today believe he likely acted alone. Whether the Nazis helped
Speaker 1: or simply exploited the fire is still debated to this day.
Speaker 1: Right was it an inside job? Was you know? Was
Speaker 1: vander Lubi a patsy? But politically it didn't matter. Hitler
Speaker 1: immediately framed the event as the beginning of a communist uprising,
Speaker 1: and that framing found fertile ground. Enemy of my enemy
Speaker 1: is my ally and everybody feared the communists in Germany.
Speaker 1: Germany had a growing Communist block inside the Reichstock Street.
Speaker 1: Clashes between Nazis and Communists were common. Political violence was
Speaker 1: happening a lot. The violence was real and fear moved quickly.
Speaker 1: So the next day after the fire, twenty eighth, Hindenberg
Speaker 1: signed the Reichstag Fire Decree under Article forty eight. That
Speaker 1: decree suspended, essentially what is the equivalent of our first Amendment.
Speaker 1: It suspended freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom
Speaker 1: of assembly, protections against arrest without charge. This was constitutional authority,
Speaker 1: legal authority. Their constitution essentially created a dictatorship. Legally. Thousands
Speaker 1: of communists were arrested immediately, their ability to organize a
Speaker 1: campaign was crippled. And then here's the here's the key
Speaker 1: with it. A week later, they're holding elections anyway, They
Speaker 1: were having another round of elections in March. So on
Speaker 1: March fifth, nineteen thirty three, Germany votes. The Nazi Party
Speaker 1: receives forty three point nine percent of the vote two
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty eight seats, not a majority. Even after
Speaker 1: the fire, even after the repression, the Nazis did not
Speaker 1: command a p a majority of German voters. But here's
Speaker 1: where the mechanics mattered. The Communist Party won about twelve
Speaker 1: percent in that election, but many of its deputies were
Speaker 1: prevented from taking their seats. They wouldn't let the Communists
Speaker 1: in there. So it you take away the Communists, suddenly
Speaker 1: that looks like they do have a majority. So when
Speaker 1: you combined with conservative allies, the Nazis had the numbers
Speaker 1: to move forward. Later in March, they passed something called
Speaker 1: the Enabling Act, in a granted Hitler's cabinet authority to
Speaker 1: legislate without parliamentary approval. Just they just he would decree.
Speaker 1: There was no more legislative branch in Germany at this point.
Speaker 1: By the way, to get this passed, it required two
Speaker 1: thirds majority. The legislature basically voted to eradicate its existence.
Speaker 1: And why did it pass because the Communist Party members
Speaker 1: weren't a to vote, they were absent. Some opposition members
Speaker 1: were simply intimidated by the Nazi thugs. Conservative parties calculated
Speaker 1: that cooperation was safer than resistance. Again go back to
Speaker 1: nine twenty sixtey. Sorry, the authoritarian turned required votes, it
Speaker 1: required signatures, it required a legal procedure. The German dictatorship
Speaker 1: was done via constitutional rules. Why did it work well?
Speaker 1: By February nineteen thirty three, emergency governance had already been normalized,
Speaker 1: Parliament had already been weakened in Germany. The economic crisis
Speaker 1: had eroded faith in liberal democracy in general. What they
Speaker 1: looked around and wasn't working. People didn't like people didn't
Speaker 1: like that economy. Elites believed the temporary authoritarian measures would
Speaker 1: restore order. So the Reichstag fire did not create authoritarianism,
Speaker 1: but it accelerated a system that was already leaning in
Speaker 1: that direction. And that's what's so always been so unsettling
Speaker 1: about this incident and history, because the incident is not
Speaker 1: the fire or the arson. The most unsettling part of
Speaker 1: this story is its legality. German democracy didn't collapse because
Speaker 1: laws were ignored, just the opposite. It collapsed because the
Speaker 1: laws were used expansively. But they were used, and they
Speaker 1: were used under crisis conditions. Emergency powers are not inherently authoritarian.
Speaker 1: It's who uses those emergency powers. But when crisis becomes
Speaker 1: the organizing principle of governance and legislatures differ rather than
Speaker 1: assert authority. Emergency becomes permanence. Hitler did not overthrow the
Speaker 1: system in one night. He operated within it, stretched it
Speaker 1: until it snapped, and then created his own scary version.
Speaker 1: The reichs Dog didn't fall in flames, It fell with signatures. Boy,
Speaker 1: such a reminder. History doesn't repeat, but it certainly does
Speaker 1: run all right, little question time, By the way, I
Speaker 1: might as well share this with you so that don't
Speaker 1: name anything Hindenburg because Hindenburg is a politician and Hindenburg
Speaker 1: is alm all End in catastrophe. That's the real takeaway.
Speaker 1: That's my other takeaway from our time machine history of
Speaker 1: the Reichstug fire. But anyway, let's take some questions. Ask Chuck.
Speaker 1: This comes from Jaye New York, and he says, hey,
Speaker 1: you mentioned last week that populism almost always leads to
Speaker 1: with anti semitism. It is an accurate correlation with some
Speaker 1: obvious historical examples Hitler's Germany. But my question is why
Speaker 1: does populism lead to anti Semitism? Is it simply because
Speaker 1: populis often look for a scapegoat and Jewish people provide
Speaker 1: an easy target As a non Jewish person, I've accepted
Speaker 1: the correlation of populism anti Semitism. I've never really considered
Speaker 1: the why Jay, It's an excellent question. I think one
Speaker 1: is we're a super small minority already. Two that's so,
Speaker 1: and minorities get scapegoated generally. Two Jews do punch above
Speaker 1: their weight in corporate America, in the finance world. So
Speaker 1: in tough economic times, it becomes if you already, especially
Speaker 1: if you you know, look, there's less anti Semitism in
Speaker 1: South Florida because there's more Jews that live in South Florida, right,
Speaker 1: you know, they're to me, the correlation of anti Semitism
Speaker 1: usually is where there's fewer Jews. Right Wherever you see
Speaker 1: the least amount of Jews, you'll see the most amount
Speaker 1: of anti Semitism. Some of it's driven by some some
Speaker 1: hateful sects of Christianity, not Christianity itself, but there are
Speaker 1: some sort of sex that most Christians would denounce, that
Speaker 1: that that use religion to sort of teach hate of Jews.
Speaker 1: But it's it, I've all, you know, look as I
Speaker 1: look at it, and you're just like I just I
Speaker 1: find it amusing that this tiny you know that that
Speaker 1: we Jews here that were like point three percent of
Speaker 1: the globe's population or something like that. And yet we're
Speaker 1: and in fact, we're still below our population high are
Speaker 1: below the popular what the Jewish population of the globe
Speaker 1: was pre World War Two. And you know, we're apparently,
Speaker 1: you know, behind all these incredible conspiracies. So we really,
Speaker 1: I guess, punch above our weight. But look, it's always
Speaker 1: easy to scapegoat entities you don't know. And it's still
Speaker 1: there are still huge pockets in this country, huge pockets
Speaker 1: around the world that no Jewish people exist, but have
Speaker 1: never met one. So when you have not when you
Speaker 1: don't know anybody as a three dimensional figure, it's easy
Speaker 1: to turn them into sort of two dimensional enemies. It's
Speaker 1: the best explanation I have. But it is, you know,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. I mean, it's interesting the way you
Speaker 1: word it, you sort of you accept you accept that
Speaker 1: as an accurate correlation. I mean, it just it just
Speaker 1: is always what happens. I think sometimes we forget that,
Speaker 1: you know, bad ideas are usually not rational. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: a better way to look at it. Next question comes
Speaker 1: from Bills from Newburg, Oregon, but he says temporarily Falls Church, Virginia. Well,
Speaker 1: it's nice to have you as a neighbor. Bill, he says,
Speaker 1: I think if you answer this one, then I'll enter
Speaker 1: the five timers club. If that means that you've read
Speaker 1: five of my questions on here. If you do honor
Speaker 1: me thus, I humbly thank you. Is this the first
Speaker 1: administration that runs the most like a business that you've
Speaker 1: ever seen? Long a mantra Republicans, I think they finally
Speaker 1: got their wish and this administration is run the most
Speaker 1: like a business or any other. Your defense of Casey
Speaker 1: Watperson's Corporation is acting rightly in the face of the
Speaker 1: Epstein files made me shake my head. I think this
Speaker 1: administration is handling the Epstein files exactly the way a
Speaker 1: corporation's pr department went. I often say, go Kaines, but
Speaker 1: this time I'll say, go Seahawks, my adopted team. Thanks
Speaker 1: Billis I didn't know I was defending the Casey Washerman
Speaker 1: Corporation ex actly rightly in the face anyway. Not quite sure.
Speaker 1: I get the question you're asking if it's running more
Speaker 1: than well, Well, it depends on if by running the business,
Speaker 1: do you do what's in the best interest. A business
Speaker 1: is supposed to do what's in the best interest of
Speaker 1: its bottom line. The question does Donald Trump run this
Speaker 1: administration and the best interests of the bottom line of
Speaker 1: the United States, or does he run it in the
Speaker 1: best interests of the bottom line of Donald Trump. I
Speaker 1: know that sounds a bit sort of like hyperbole, but
Speaker 1: I feel like he makes more decisions based on what's
Speaker 1: in his best interest in the private sector, he and
Speaker 1: his friends, et cetera. But it's not always in the
Speaker 1: best interest of the bottom line of the United States.
Speaker 1: So that's where you know, he's picking winners and losers.
Speaker 1: So I don't I understand the I understand the premise
Speaker 1: here question. I just don't see the evidence that he
Speaker 1: is running it like a US. If he's running it
Speaker 1: like a business, he's not running it like a business
Speaker 1: that wants to grow, expand and be successful over time. Right,
Speaker 1: it feels like he's running it more like how does
Speaker 1: a legacy business that's trying to survive rather than thrive.
Speaker 1: But I've always you know, if you ran the government
Speaker 1: like a business, you would you probably would get rid
Speaker 1: of a lot of poverty measures because they, you know,
Speaker 1: you might get rid of. You might not stockpile as
Speaker 1: much defense weaponry either, Right, you know, so there'd be
Speaker 1: a lot of regulation, a lot more regulation you might
Speaker 1: get rid of if you were running it like a business. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't think he's running it in the best interests
Speaker 1: of the US government's bottom line. I think ultimately, if
Speaker 1: he's running it like a business, he's running it in
Speaker 1: the best interests of his own bottom line. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to see where you caught what I was saying about
Speaker 1: Casey Wasserman, and how you any I wasn't defect. I
Speaker 1: look at the Casey Wasserman situation and think, you know,
Speaker 1: I was talking with the journalists who said that they
Speaker 1: they had a line. The way they were dealing with
Speaker 1: it is anybody with Epstein ties pre two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: they weren't going to treat treat like what were you
Speaker 1: thinking that they were willing to give anybody preos basically
Speaker 1: pre charges being brought against him some benefit of that.
Speaker 1: There's a middle ground of people that sort of still
Speaker 1: kept in touch with him and then until he you know,
Speaker 1: then and then walked after that, and then there's anybody
Speaker 1: that you dealt with him after two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: you don't, right. Wasserman is one of the few that
Speaker 1: is being punished for emails that go back to twenty
Speaker 1: oh two, twenty o three that don't seem to go there.
Speaker 1: So that would be one, but it is, you know,
Speaker 1: and yes, I do agree that the Epstein files in
Speaker 1: that sense are being Yes, the handling of that on
Speaker 1: a pr level, I'll give you that that right. The
Speaker 1: best way of business would do is just put it
Speaker 1: all out there, make every you know, don't organize it
Speaker 1: for people. Make other people have to figure it out.
Speaker 1: The problem with this is that every couple of days
Speaker 1: there's like a new It feels like a new development
Speaker 1: because you know, somebody is, you know, methodically. You know,
Speaker 1: there's hundreds and thousands of people methodically going through these
Speaker 1: these files, and there's always something new to find. And
Speaker 1: again you look around. I mean, I miss this. I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm an adjunct professor at USC. Apparently we had
Speaker 1: some USC professors get caught up in the Epstein files.
Speaker 1: So this has been like a machine gun that went
Speaker 1: off erratically and bullets went everywhere, and everybody's paying a
Speaker 1: price except Donald Trump. I think Donald Trump's paying a
Speaker 1: price too, right, you know, is he going to pay
Speaker 1: a direct price or does he pay an indirect political price,
Speaker 1: and I think he's paying the indirect political price more importantly, Bill,
Speaker 1: if that is your five timer, congrats, welcome to the
Speaker 1: five Timers club. Maybe we should get mugs or something,
Speaker 1: get some swag for that as well. Next question comes
Speaker 1: from Philip and Biloxi. He says, Hey, they're my Congressman.
Speaker 1: Mike Eazel surprisingly is embracing the Supreme Court's decision. He
Speaker 1: was interviewed locally on WLOX where he said, and I'm paraphrasing,
Speaker 1: we may not like it, but the Supreme Court is
Speaker 1: the final word, and we have to obey the law
Speaker 1: of the land. He's also running a local radio that
Speaker 1: says something like, thanks to Trump and Eazel, the economy
Speaker 1: is booming and we're living in a golden age. Which
Speaker 1: is why I say it's surprising because he normally echoes
Speaker 1: all of Trump's talking points. Thanks also for being the
Speaker 1: only national voice I know that occasionally speaks about Mississippi politics.
Speaker 1: Philip and Biloxi, Well, you know, that's very heartening to hear,
Speaker 1: and I think it is a reminder that I do
Speaker 1: take the more optimistic approach about elected officials that most
Speaker 1: of them do want to accept the structure of the
Speaker 1: constitution that really the most abusive, the person that has
Speaker 1: the least amount of respect for it is the guy
Speaker 1: sitting in the Oval office. And and yes, you certainly
Speaker 1: have people who don't want to look like they're on
Speaker 1: the wrong side. And notice how you know that there's
Speaker 1: different ways you can sort of accept well, Supreme Court
Speaker 1: the law of the land. He doesn't want to get
Speaker 1: caught being anti Trump, but he may be very happy
Speaker 1: that this happened, you know. So the point is is
Speaker 1: that given where he is at, you know, I think
Speaker 1: the the he couldn't get caught pushing, you know, publicly
Speaker 1: celebrating the Supreme Court ruling. So I think there's a difference, Right,
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see who celebrates it, who uses this
Speaker 1: as a moment. You know, who else is Don Bacon
Speaker 1: not running for reelection? Right, who else goes that far
Speaker 1: out on the limb on that? But and let's see,
Speaker 1: you know, what does he do if he does have
Speaker 1: to vote in Congress on any of these things. I'm
Speaker 1: not convinced that Trump wants to go do that, but
Speaker 1: we'll see. Next question comes from an elected official, John
Speaker 1: m imperially, a mayor from New Jersey, and he writes, first, Chuck,
Speaker 1: thank you for the tododcast political junkie and amateur historians
Speaker 1: dream come true. I'm the mayor of a small town
Speaker 1: in New Jersey and frequently electure on American history and
Speaker 1: specifically the Constitution from a quote citizen's point of view.
Speaker 1: So here's my question. What if the Constitutional Convention had
Speaker 1: been held in the spring or fall of seventeen eighty
Speaker 1: seven rather than the summer. My point is that the
Speaker 1: delegates of the Constitutional Convention could not wait to get
Speaker 1: out of the hot, muggy, miserable Philadelphia that summer. The
Speaker 1: result of brilliant constitution and principle, but with way too
Speaker 1: many particulars rushed over and not properly thought out. One
Speaker 1: other thought for you is to throw out in your
Speaker 1: toddcast exactly who are the founding father. There's the fifty
Speaker 1: six men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the thirty
Speaker 1: nine men who signed the Constitution, or the six men
Speaker 1: who signed both. And when I asked, who do the
Speaker 1: six men who signed both are, no one gets it right.
Speaker 1: They are George Climber, George Reed, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris,
Speaker 1: James Wilson, and Benjamin Franklin mayor imperiality. First of all,
Speaker 1: I want to come visit your town. Love love hearing this,
Speaker 1: appreciate you loving the history part. I think you had
Speaker 1: to sign both. I think to be founding father. So
Speaker 1: let's go at the six, right, they should they shouldn't.
Speaker 1: We probably should make a bigger deal out of them.
Speaker 1: You know, I have confessed a few times that I'm
Speaker 1: a sports card junkie. I guess you called it a
Speaker 1: baseball card junkie. In two thousand and nine, Tops put
Speaker 1: out an American history set and it was great. It
Speaker 1: had like little insert sets of Medal of Honor winners,
Speaker 1: and it was every Medal of Honor winner up through
Speaker 1: two nine, give you a little and I I just
Speaker 1: loved it. I you know, my daughter was five at
Speaker 1: the time. And so I made a big deal and
Speaker 1: we built we have this great album of it and
Speaker 1: all this stuff, and and it has a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of subsets of those that signed the Constitution and those
Speaker 1: that signed the Declaration of Independence. But we really ought
Speaker 1: to say, make a bigger deal on the six, you know.
Speaker 1: And you know, at least one is a name that
Speaker 1: most people already know of Benjamin Frank. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's a pretty good it's a pretty good place to start.
Speaker 1: But that's a kudos. Let's make those Let's make the
Speaker 1: uh the founding six. Let's maybe over time we give
Speaker 1: them more and more of their due. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: and thanks for your service. John another New Jersey and
Speaker 1: writes in this is John from New Jersey. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's the same John, any rights. Was waiting to
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts on these two news bits. One that
Speaker 1: Gallup ending its presidential poll in two and Alila Mahea
Speaker 1: is beating Tom Malinowski in New Jersey special election. I
Speaker 1: think it's upsetting the Gallup is choosing to stop polling
Speaker 1: presidential approval rather than report on the current administration's port rating.
Speaker 1: Do you see other firms mimicking this? And what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on Mahia's win. I'm curious about how the
Speaker 1: June primary will go if there's more of a consolidation
Speaker 1: in that primary, But it looks like the establishment is
Speaker 1: already called lest a rounder. I did some Gallup thoughts
Speaker 1: on my sub stack last week. If you wanted to
Speaker 1: read those, I you know, it's funny when you're in
Speaker 1: this When you're making content in multiple places, you touch everything.
Speaker 1: You don't know if you've touched everything in every place,
Speaker 1: and I have not, you are correct. I have not
Speaker 1: touched New Jersey eleven here. I've done it in a
Speaker 1: couple other spots. I think I did it with the
Speaker 1: Silissa podcast, and we haven't touched and Gallop. I don't
Speaker 1: think I mentioned on the podcast maybe quickly in passing,
Speaker 1: but I did write up on gal I look, first
Speaker 1: of all, parse the announcement very very carefully from Gallup.
Speaker 1: Gallup said they're going to stop publicly releasing their job
Speaker 1: approval on the president. I didn't get clarification of whether
Speaker 1: they're not actually asking the question. It's absolutely malpracticed to
Speaker 1: not ask the question on any survey you're doing, on
Speaker 1: anything in the public policy space at all, because you've
Speaker 1: got it is. It is a helpful way to at
Speaker 1: least understand how partisan folks are behaving where they lie.
Speaker 1: It gives you a better sense of which policy ideas
Speaker 1: have political traction versus those that may have, you know,
Speaker 1: or less driven by ideology, more driven by popularity. It's
Speaker 1: it's just a it's it's it would be malpracticed not
Speaker 1: to have that piece of data with you. It is
Speaker 1: hard not to wonder Gallups primary. You know, they do
Speaker 1: a lot of survey work and private survey work. Can
Speaker 1: they have a lot of federal contracts? The lack of
Speaker 1: trust anybody has in this country right now of any
Speaker 1: corporation and Donald Trump is amazing because a lot of
Speaker 1: people immediately looked up the amount of federal contracts that
Speaker 1: Gallup has with the government, sees that was quite a
Speaker 1: bit and could easily see right, Donald Trump already was
Speaker 1: mad at Politico, So then everybody in the government had
Speaker 1: to cancel their political subscriptions, whether they had a political
Speaker 1: produce subscription somewhere, et cetera. And uh. And it sounds
Speaker 1: like Gallup was worried about its bottom line and worried
Speaker 1: about its business. It's possible they thought there was no
Speaker 1: upside to it since a whole bunch of other people
Speaker 1: were putting it out publicly. Nobody was saying Gallups was
Speaker 1: the best of the polls that are out there. Gallup
Speaker 1: had the best brand name out there, but their poll
Speaker 1: for a long time hadn't been the best poll. It
Speaker 1: had been sort of problematic for a long time. You know,
Speaker 1: I remember when they stopped, they had a daily tracking
Speaker 1: which was a total mess because while I don't think
Speaker 1: their methodology changed, how people interpreted the changes just created
Speaker 1: all sorts of friction and they did a terrible job
Speaker 1: of communicating when they're when the tracking pole would change. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think Gallup got out of the public
Speaker 1: polling business a long time ago. Right when it used
Speaker 1: to be the CNN USA Today Gallup pole, that was
Speaker 1: the you know, basically the only pole that was considered
Speaker 1: better than that one was NBC News Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: But over time, the CNN, the Gallup pole had shown
Speaker 1: a lot more instability, and I know that we we
Speaker 1: certainly stopped using it as a reliable indicator. So I'm
Speaker 1: not going to sit here and call the Gallup pole,
Speaker 1: you know, but I but it would be it would
Speaker 1: be malpractice. Not the doing any survey that you do public,
Speaker 1: public or private, in order to understand your survey better,
Speaker 1: in order to have a baseline, in order to know
Speaker 1: your your your survey isn't totally out of whack. You know,
Speaker 1: job job approval is one of those ubiquitous questions that
Speaker 1: helps you and you know, understand whether you basically have
Speaker 1: a you know, it's a the fact that so many
Speaker 1: other posters do it. It serves as almost a check
Speaker 1: to make sure you're you don't have a you know
Speaker 1: you know for sure, do you have an out could
Speaker 1: you have an outlier survey, et cetera. So do pay
Speaker 1: attention to the fact that they just simply said they
Speaker 1: stopped they were going to stop publishing the result. Again,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine anybody would actually stop asking it. I
Speaker 1: mean again, it's a it's it's one of those questions.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a stabilizing question. It helps you understand
Speaker 1: whether your your survey is is A is a trustworthy
Speaker 1: uh A trustworthy survey. As for the MAHI, I thought,
Speaker 1: look that the most fascinating aspect of this was the
Speaker 1: aggressiveness of APAC right. They wanted to take Malanski down.
Speaker 1: They went after them hard, and they were successful. They
Speaker 1: raised the negatives of Malinowski and they see but the
Speaker 1: candidate they were hoping to help ended up finishing third,
Speaker 1: and the candidate that benefited from APEX attack ads in Malinowski,
Speaker 1: was somebody further to the left than Malinowski and perhaps
Speaker 1: just as unfriendly to some of APAX issues as Malinowski
Speaker 1: had become So it was really one of those a
Speaker 1: reminder that when you do attack ads and multi candidate
Speaker 1: races in primaries, know what you're trying to do. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to take somebody out, do know who could
Speaker 1: benefit you? Know? And are you sure you're going to
Speaker 1: end up with somebody that isn't going to be more
Speaker 1: more of a problem for your issues? In this case,
Speaker 1: I think it was. It was that, I think it
Speaker 1: And this is where when interest when a big interest
Speaker 1: group goes after somebody, sometimes it's you know, Canada and
Speaker 1: candidate be cancel each other out and a candidate c
Speaker 1: ends up benefiting. We got some three way prime. We
Speaker 1: got a three way primary coming up in Texas, right,
Speaker 1: We're going to see something like that take place. Right.
Speaker 1: Does Wesley Hunt benefit from all the corn and attack
Speaker 1: ads on Paxton? Right rather than Cornyn? I mean, it
Speaker 1: certainly looks like Cornan has not benefited from all these
Speaker 1: attacks on Paxton, but instead the Demo generic Democratic vote
Speaker 1: has benefited when matched up against Paxton in general election matchups,
Speaker 1: and Paxton's negatives keep going up, but it is not
Speaker 1: helping Cornyon. So it is a reminder that Basically, negative
Speaker 1: ads can work, but don't assume those negative ads will
Speaker 1: accrue to the benefit of another candidate that you want
Speaker 1: to benefit. It could always accrue to a third candidate.
Speaker 1: But as for look, I think I certainly you know,
Speaker 1: I see why everybody's going ahead and rally. It shnocked
Speaker 1: off somebody who used to have the title commerce and
Speaker 1: seem to win despite not being the biggest spender or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So I understand why the establishment at
Speaker 1: this point is like mam, might as well, might as
Speaker 1: well get behind money. Next question comes from Robert Leeds
Speaker 1: any rights, Hey, check me the press, missus you I
Speaker 1: worked in several campaigns. Anyway, I'm a gold trader, and
Speaker 1: I have said for years that during Trump's first term
Speaker 1: and again during the second, gold seems to do weird things.
Speaker 1: On the eve of the job's report, huge sell orders
Speaker 1: would come in overnight when the market was strong, gold
Speaker 1: would crash for five seconds, go back up, and then
Speaker 1: a bear's report will come out at eight thirty. After
Speaker 1: seeing your podcast today, I wanted to share this. You're
Speaker 1: doing a great job. Thanks well. What he was talking
Speaker 1: about was this weird again, and I think we've got
Speaker 1: to get some regulatory structure around these prediction markets versus
Speaker 1: gambling markets, et cetera. But there's got to be a
Speaker 1: way to deal with fraud. And somebody gamed the jobs numbers.
Speaker 1: Right when Peter Navarro goes out warns of a bad
Speaker 1: jobs report, jobs report turns out much better the next
Speaker 1: day than when he went out there. And of all
Speaker 1: people to go out there as somebody who's already of
Speaker 1: questionable credibility on his information in general, right, that just
Speaker 1: smells crazy. And you know this is where I you know,
Speaker 1: we're going full speed into these new markets without you know,
Speaker 1: we were building the ideas first and trying to come
Speaker 1: up with the regulation later. Very hard to put regulation
Speaker 1: on something that's already left the station. And I'm concerned
Speaker 1: about this, but we don't seem to have a very good,
Speaker 1: very interesting what you say on gold, you've just explained
Speaker 1: why I do not get involved in those markets at all.
Speaker 1: I don't trust them. I think there's the people that
Speaker 1: are most involved are doing it as hedge and games
Speaker 1: in gaming it in some form, and those are just
Speaker 1: not That's not where my comfort level is. You know,
Speaker 1: I like, I like, I'm more of them. My financial
Speaker 1: advisor and I were more of the warm Buffett acolytes, right,
Speaker 1: like investing in companies that people use, you know, durable goods,
Speaker 1: not always durable goods, but some durable goods, some texts
Speaker 1: on this on that, but you know, companies that actually succeed,
Speaker 1: not just hypotheticals. Next question comes from Dan in Fairfax.
Speaker 1: He goes, hey, I consider myself an informed voter, but
Speaker 1: I am lost when it comes to this issue. From
Speaker 1: what I gather, a judge in Tazewell County has ruled
Speaker 1: twice that the redistricting effort shouldn't proceed, but the state
Speaker 1: government is moving ahead anyway. I also read that state
Speaker 1: democrats think any lawsuit of posing the measure can only
Speaker 1: be filed in Richmond, which is really confusing. Further, the
Speaker 1: state Supreme Court doesn't seem to think this is an
Speaker 1: issue requiring urgency. Can you explain what's going on? Thank you, Dan,
Speaker 1: fair Facts. Look, it's a fair point. I think the
Speaker 1: the the legis the democrat. The democrats and the legislature
Speaker 1: continue to believe that the Supreme Court is going to
Speaker 1: overrule this staswell judge like they did the last time.
Speaker 1: But let's just step back. You know, I find this
Speaker 1: whole campaign. I've seen the ads. The ads for Yes
Speaker 1: use every talking point I was using about why there
Speaker 1: shouldn't be re redistricting around, and it was just like confusing.
Speaker 1: Like when you hear an ad or you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I agree with that. I agree with that. You know,
Speaker 1: there shouldn't be politics in this. We got to take
Speaker 1: the politics out of this. That's why you've got to
Speaker 1: vote yes. You're like, wait what And I sit here
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I'm you know, am I being gas
Speaker 1: lit by this ad campaign? Look, ends justify the means
Speaker 1: is bad policy, period. And ultimately that's what this entire
Speaker 1: effort in Virginia is about. Ends justifying the means. We
Speaker 1: have to do this now because of what they're doing
Speaker 1: in Tech. We have to do this now, and what
Speaker 1: they might do in Florida, what they might do in Indiana,
Speaker 1: what they might do in Missouri. Uh, I get it. Politics,
Speaker 1: ain't bean bag. You've heard me say it before on
Speaker 1: the Virginia front. Your right to be confused. I'm very
Speaker 1: confused too. Some of it had you know. I Ultimately
Speaker 1: it feels as if these state supreme courts are you know,
Speaker 1: and what we've seen the courts are ultimately going to
Speaker 1: side with a legislatures on this because ultimately, right, that's
Speaker 1: that's who has the supremacy. Here is the legislature. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if this is what they've chosen to do, and
Speaker 1: they're going to the voters, so I suspect that this
Speaker 1: stay you know, I guess it's weird early voting starts
Speaker 1: before the end of the stay right. I think early
Speaker 1: voting is supposed to begin the six and this stay
Speaker 1: this this this is supposed to basically be a not
Speaker 1: a statement, sort of an injunction against this process till
Speaker 1: the eighteenth. I think it's extraordinarily confusing. I have a
Speaker 1: feeling this map's going to pass pretty but this amendment
Speaker 1: to do this is going to pass pretty easily. But
Speaker 1: I'm just I don't think this is a good long
Speaker 1: term look for Democrats. And I you know, I understand, Hey,
Speaker 1: you got to get power now, You'll worry about how
Speaker 1: it looks later. Is the mindset. But again, it goes
Speaker 1: back to ends justify the means, and we're watching an
Speaker 1: entire Republican party that's probably going to regret at some
Speaker 1: point being an ends justify the means. Party, and they've
Speaker 1: been that party in particular since certain certain orange haired
Speaker 1: man strode down an escalator. And it is, it is,
Speaker 1: it is. I can tell you this. I know Spamberger
Speaker 1: is going to regret having to start this partisan and
Speaker 1: it's interesting how she is having you know, some of
Speaker 1: it is just because the legislatures this there, this redistrict effort,
Speaker 1: you know, they vary, the clock is sticking, you know,
Speaker 1: they they literally had to move this in days and
Speaker 1: get it done even before she got sworn in. And
Speaker 1: it has put her more as a partisan actor than
Speaker 1: I think I ever thought she would want to be,
Speaker 1: and look like very curious to see, by the way,
Speaker 1: what her State of the Union response comes across as
Speaker 1: I think when you're when you're the Democrats, it's who
Speaker 1: i'd pick, right, you want to pick somebody who just
Speaker 1: won and won by a lot from a state that
Speaker 1: used to be you know, and share her profile from
Speaker 1: the national security space. So I I you know, I
Speaker 1: think I get why they picked her. I do. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm there's two ways about sort of her tenure.
Speaker 1: If you're going to do hardcore politics, better to do
Speaker 1: at the start of your term. And then you moderate
Speaker 1: us the term goes on. On the other hand, it's
Speaker 1: hard to make you know. This is a first impression
Speaker 1: for a lot of voters in Virginia. But Dan, I'm
Speaker 1: as confused, and the ad campaigns are only more confusing.
Speaker 1: But look, it's gonna pass because this will be a
Speaker 1: super small turnout election and we already know those that
Speaker 1: are fired up on any messaging that involves checking Trump
Speaker 1: are gonna win the Battle of Turner. All right. Last
Speaker 1: question for this episode comes from Jim Tobahana, Pennsylvania. I
Speaker 1: think you're giving me your age, but I'm not gonna.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do it. I don't want to. I
Speaker 1: don't watch you bragging about how much younger you are
Speaker 1: than I am. Jim, all right, just because you got
Speaker 1: you got ef You've been on this planet eight less
Speaker 1: years than I have. You don't have to rub it
Speaker 1: in my face. Uh. Anyway, your question, does international diplomacy
Speaker 1: have a greater long term impact on legacy Trump? With
Speaker 1: his focus on the second term so much abroad, I
Speaker 1: don't see how this positively impacts his legacy. Putting his
Speaker 1: name on statues the Kennedy Center giving h seems like
Speaker 1: a short term ego boost for him. Band aid that
Speaker 1: the next administration can reverse. Ultimately, long term legacy seems
Speaker 1: like strength in the US with a focus domestically, with
Speaker 1: an emphasis on improving his approval rating. Focusing on more
Speaker 1: of a bipartisan agenda would be the biggest way to
Speaker 1: improve as a long term legacy. Am I right? If
Speaker 1: prices continue to soar in the behavior of his cabinet,
Speaker 1: no marf k Junior Agency's ice, he's diminishing his own legacy. Jim,
Speaker 1: you're you know you're doing You're you're applying something that
Speaker 1: I used to have to ban during my meet the
Speaker 1: press days, during our staff in there and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1: Stop trying to use logic with me. You know, in
Speaker 1: the Trump era we banned logic. Jim. Everything you're saying
Speaker 1: is so logical. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes right.
Speaker 1: George W. Bush did that, right, He's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna focus on pep bar. By the end, we
Speaker 1: realized that Rack was gonna be a terrible legacy all
Speaker 1: this stuff, but he's still you know, there were some
Speaker 1: things he did that that were about his legacy, and
Speaker 1: guess what one of the most positive legacies he has
Speaker 1: is is what he's done in helping fund cures for
Speaker 1: AIDS in Africa and what the pep Far program has done.
Speaker 1: I know that Elon Musk and that those people I
Speaker 1: have been trying to destroy that last positive legacy of
Speaker 1: the Bush administration. But you know, this goes back to I,
Speaker 1: don't you know Trump's the first guy. You know, I
Speaker 1: used to do these exit interviews with retiring members of
Speaker 1: Congress when I when I had my multiple when I
Speaker 1: with with the Daily Rundown and with then I would
Speaker 1: eventually change it to Meet the Press Daily and Meet
Speaker 1: the Press now. And I used to do these exit
Speaker 1: interviews with retiring members both sides of the aisle and
Speaker 1: get as many of them that would sit down, and
Speaker 1: they were really legacy questions. And you know, but I
Speaker 1: also wanted to know, like, you know, when was the
Speaker 1: first time you wanted to run for office? And why
Speaker 1: do you want to run? Things like that? And you know,
Speaker 1: because I've done these sort of candidate interviews back thirty
Speaker 1: five years now where people want to run for office
Speaker 1: the first time, you know, back at the Hotline, we
Speaker 1: used to interview these candidates, cook Report, and we used to,
Speaker 1: you know, piggyback on the Cook Report. This is what
Speaker 1: they They do this more strenuously than we did a
Speaker 1: hotline back in the day. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I that I've learned from those interviews over the
Speaker 1: years is that I used to say, you know, it
Speaker 1: always made me feel better about the democracy, because everybody,
Speaker 1: whether they were, no matter where they were on the
Speaker 1: political spectrum hard left, center, left, hard right, center, right, independent,
Speaker 1: whatever you wanted to put it, they all ran for
Speaker 1: office on for one thing. There was always something they wanted.
Speaker 1: There was the initial trigger, you know. I remember talking
Speaker 1: to one congressman. I said, so, what what got you
Speaker 1: involved in congress? His first office was on the school board,
Speaker 1: and he was mad that they drew drew the lines,
Speaker 1: drew kid out of a certain school district. I'm going
Speaker 1: to go on the school board, And he admitted, he goes.
Speaker 1: Once I got on the school board, I realized they
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the lines. It was somebody else,
Speaker 1: he goes. But but I got involved, and and and
Speaker 1: suddenly he said, the more he learned about government and
Speaker 1: how it worked, the more interested he got. So Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's one of the few people to successfully gain office,
Speaker 1: whose simple motivation seemed to be sort of the same
Speaker 1: motivation somebody has to go streaking on a football field.
Speaker 1: They just wanted to be noticed, right, They just wanted to,
Speaker 1: you know, be famous. They wanted more people to have
Speaker 1: to respect them. It's a weird motivation. But he wasn't
Speaker 1: motivated because he's got an issue he cares the most about.
Speaker 1: He was maybe he has a daddy. There's plenty of
Speaker 1: We've had a handful of presidents and presidential candidates who
Speaker 1: I think got involved in policy because they felt like
Speaker 1: it was the only way to please their dad. You know.
Speaker 1: Boys said, there's a lot of politics is filled with
Speaker 1: presidents are filled or it's amazing how many of our
Speaker 1: presidents have daddy issues one way or the other, including
Speaker 1: this one, by the way. But I don't think he
Speaker 1: really cares. You know, when you when you're so worried
Speaker 1: about putting your name on stuff, it shows you that
Speaker 1: you really don't care about Like the Institute of Peace
Speaker 1: was never his idea. He just wanted to slap his
Speaker 1: name on it because it uses the word piece. The
Speaker 1: Kennedy Center isn't his idea, But he wants to slap
Speaker 1: his name on it because he's afraid his name is
Speaker 1: going to disappear. You know, He's only a real legacy
Speaker 1: is going to be that ballroom in the White House, right,
Speaker 1: And I think he thinks, hey, they still call the
Speaker 1: balcony Truman's falcony, so hopefully they'll always have to call
Speaker 1: you know, the ball room will always be the Trump ballroom.
Speaker 1: Well he might get that, and there'll be some Donald.
Speaker 1: There'll be some Donald J. Trump elementary schools, and I
Speaker 1: you know, you know, we know this, it will be.
Speaker 1: But I don't think he's got an issue. He the
Speaker 1: if he cared about one issue throughout his entire career,
Speaker 1: it was, you know, his belief in tariffs. But even that,
Speaker 1: I don't think he fully understood why he believed in
Speaker 1: tariffs other than he was trying to come up with
Speaker 1: a talking point to insert himself into a political conversation
Speaker 1: back in the late eighties. So again to go back
Speaker 1: to your question, Jim, everything about him makes sense, but
Speaker 1: you're that that's not how Trump's wired. It's just not
Speaker 1: how he's wired. You know, You're you're one hundred percent
Speaker 1: right in these things. By the way I've gone, we've
Speaker 1: gone now a couple hours and I didn't get to
Speaker 1: and I'm going to save this for Wednesday, but we're
Speaker 1: going to do I'm going to give you. I'll give
Speaker 1: you this hint now, the Christy Nomes Senate campaign. That's
Speaker 1: a fascinating exit ramp that the Trump White Houses try
Speaker 1: to come up with to get rid of Nome. Fascinating situation.
Speaker 1: Also want to get into the Maha moms and how
Speaker 1: yet another monsanto, the first major donation they'd ever given
Speaker 1: to Trump. Let's just say they reminded Trump of that.
Speaker 1: That's why they got the executive order that they got.
Speaker 1: But those Maha Moms, We're going to get into that
Speaker 1: too on Wednesday. So look, it was a hugely busy weekend.
Speaker 1: That last question reminded me of a couple other issues.
Speaker 1: I didn't get to get to. Maha moms and Nome
Speaker 1: for South Dakota Senate where two of them. But I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna I'm just going to leave that as a
Speaker 1: tease for the next episode in forty eight hours. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. By the way, we were having some of
Speaker 1: our you guys have been great. I know there's some
Speaker 1: new subscribers out there, some new devots. I appreciate having you.
Speaker 1: How do I know new? Because we keep growing and
Speaker 1: things are going well. I can tell because I now
Speaker 1: got more people telling me, hey, I've got fewer people
Speaker 1: coming up to me saying hey, I miss you. What
Speaker 1: are you doing now? Now it's like, hey, I miss
Speaker 1: you over there, but I really like what you're doing now.
Speaker 1: So that's all because you guys are liking, you're subscribing,
Speaker 1: word of mouth, all of those things. And so let's
Speaker 1: just say I appreciate it because it's you know, this
Speaker 1: is an entrepreneurial business, and it is credibility has earned
Speaker 1: one listener and one viewer at a time, and this
Speaker 1: growth tells me that you guys are help are expressed
Speaker 1: or saying that I'm earning it with you. So thank you,
Speaker 1: and with that, I'll see you at forty eight dollars