Latest / Pod Save America / Will Trump Send Americans to Foreign Prisons?

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Will Trump Send Americans to Foreign Prisons? · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Detour.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: On today's show, we're going to talk about the latest
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: developments in Trump's war on the media and the latest
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: in Trump's war on the global economy. I'll also be
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: talking to Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal about the impact of Trump's
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: tariffs on the U.S. economy and how all of this
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: could shake out. But let's start with our most cheerful topic,
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Trump's war on the Constitution, specifically his government's illegal renditions
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: of innocent people to a foreign prison. On Monday morning,
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  Speaker 3: Trump hosted an Oval Office press conference with the president
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who oversees the notorious 40,000-person
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  Speaker 3: torture dungeon known as CICOT, where Trump has been sending
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: people who the government says are gang members assertions they're
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: making without offering any evidence or allowing any hearings. The
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: meeting came just a few days after the Supreme Court
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: issued a ruling on the case of Kilmar Obrego-Garcia. the
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Maryland father and husband of an American citizen who the
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: government mistakenly and illegally sent to the El Salvador prison,
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: a fact that multiple Trump officials admitted in court, including
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Trump's solicitor general. The SCOTUS ruling, in which there were
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: no dissents, said that a lower court's order, quote, properly
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is
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  Speaker 3: handled as it would have been had he not been
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  Speaker 3: improperly sent there. to El Salvador, end quote. The Trump
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: administration has responded by making the argument in court and
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: in public that actually they have no legal obligation to
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: facilitate Garcia's release, and they interpret the Supreme Court's ruling
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: to mean that the U.S. only has to allow Garcia
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: back into the country if El Salvador chooses to release him.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: Here's Trump and Bukele talking about this in The Oval today,
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: joined by Stephen Miller. Do you plan to ask President
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: Bukele to help return the man who your administration says
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: was mistakenly deported?
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: Which one is this?
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: The man who was mistakenly.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Deported to El Salvador?
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: Was the ruling in the Supreme Court, Steve, was it 9-0?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, it was a 9-0.
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: In our favor. In our favor, against the district court ruling,
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: the ruling solely stated that if this individual, at El
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: Salvador's sole discretion... was sent back to our country, that
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: we could deport him a second time. No version of
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: this legally ends up with him ever living here.
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  Speaker 5: Can President Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: to return him?
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  Speaker 1: Well, I'm supposed to have suggested that I smuggle a
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: terrorist into the United States, right? How can I return
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: him to the United States? If I smuggle him into
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the United States, or whether I do it of course,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not.
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  Speaker 4: Going to do it. Well, the president, Mr. President, you
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  Speaker 4: said that if the Supreme Court said someone needed to
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: be returned, that you would abide by that.
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  Speaker 5: You said that on Air Force One just a few
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: days ago. And they said that it must be facilitated.
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  Speaker 4: Why don't you just say, isn't it wonderful that we're
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: keeping criminals out of our country? Why can't you just
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: say that?
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Just incredibly dark and infuriating. And I mean, they lie
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: all the time, but Stephen Miller's Uh, just complete, uh,
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: lie about what is in the Supreme court ruling and
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: what it says is shocking. Just making up quotes, making
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: up assertions from the Supreme court, uh, ruling. What did
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: you guys make of the discussion in the oval about
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: this and how the administration is responding to the Supreme court?
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Uh, a few thoughts. I mean, I thought it was
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: notable that Trump himself doesn't seem all that comfortable talking
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: about the details. He deferred to Pam Bondi. He deferred
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: to Steven Miller. Even sad little Marco Rubio decided to
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: weigh in because he couldn't bear being left out. But yeah,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, your point that their general strategy is to
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: lie about what's happening in the courts, lie about what
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: the courts are saying. The craziest new one, I think
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  Speaker 2: it's over the weekend, was Stephen Miller now arguing that
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  Speaker 2: the administration didn't make a mistake when it sent Abrego
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  Speaker 2: Garcia del Salvador. The Solicitor General said it was a mistake.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: The Supreme Court wrote in its opinion that it was
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  Speaker 2: a mistake. DOJ has admitted it was a mistake at
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: every single hearing. But Miller is now just gaslighting. Miller
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: also said, I think it was on Fox News, that
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: the gang that was threatening Garcia no longer exists, therefore
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: it's not a problem to send him to El Salvador.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know if that's true, but if it is true,
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  Speaker 2: it's because all those gang members are now in the
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  Speaker 2: prison where they sent this man to rot wrongly based
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: on a mistake. So they're also just looking to find
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  Speaker 2: every loophole or technicality to avoid doing what the court says,
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  Speaker 2: like we're debating what the meaning of effectuate or facilitate means.
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  Speaker 2: And then finally, I mean, watching... Trump and his team
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: watching Bukele sit there sneering, smugly, laughing, enjoying it all,
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  Speaker 2: made me feel like, and I talked to a very
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  Speaker 2: smart immigration lawyer today who said something similar, that it
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: seems very unlikely the courts are going to be able
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  Speaker 2: to get Abrego Garcia back because ultimately the courts will
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  Speaker 2: say the U.S. government can't order Bukele to do something,
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  Speaker 2: they can't order El Salvador to do something. And I
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  Speaker 2: think that what that says is that The only thing
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  Speaker 2: that we can do is keep up the public pressure,
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  Speaker 2: keep talking about this, keep this story in the news
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  Speaker 2: because Bukele's line is like, oh, I'm not going to
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: smuggle a man back into the United States. That's not
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: what has to happen. Bukele needs to let Abrego Garcia
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  Speaker 2: out of prison. Then he can buy a plane ticket
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  Speaker 2: and fly to the United States. It's just that simple.
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  Speaker 2: But he's content holding a man in prison who is
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  Speaker 2: not even accused of committing a crime in El Salvador
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  Speaker 2: because he left the country when he was 16 years old.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. So I feel like we've rightly focused on trying
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  Speaker 1: to fix this right away and then the larger implications
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  Speaker 1: of it in terms of what it means if the
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: president can send someone to a foreign gulag and then
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  Speaker 1: because that gulag is on foreign soil, basically wash his
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  Speaker 1: hands of any responsibility. And that is terrible. I do
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  Speaker 1: think we're just skipping over a little bit what we
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  Speaker 1: need to learn about how depraved these people are. Because
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  Speaker 1: it's so baked into our understanding of Trump and Stephen
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  Speaker 1: Miller and now Marco Rubio and all of these people
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  Speaker 1: that they are cruel and inhumane that we don't really
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  Speaker 1: pause to say, don't you want to fix this? Even
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  Speaker 1: by your own standards, even by your own claims about
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  Speaker 1: the implications of this policy.
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  Speaker 3: Well, their claims are that he's a foreign terrorist.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: But they know that that's a lie, right? They know
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  Speaker 1: it's a lie. They're doing a kind of, they're prevaricating,
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  Speaker 1: they're playing games with the courts. They're outright lying about
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  Speaker 1: what the court has ruled or about the facts of
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: the case. But they know those statements aren't true. They
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: know that this person was sent in error and they
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  Speaker 1: really don't care. And so when we start talking about
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  Speaker 1: what it looks like for Trump to try to expand
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  Speaker 1: deportations to this prison, when we start to talk about
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  Speaker 1: what it looks like for them to want to send
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  Speaker 1: citizens to this place, we should just make sure we're
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  Speaker 1: noting that their kind of humanity is not kicking in here.
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  Speaker 1: There's no hope that we'll be able to appeal to
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  Speaker 1: their better angels, not even the Marco Rubios, right? The
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: supposedly serious and establishment types who are outright participants in this.
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  Speaker 3: He's the one who made the deal with Bukele. He
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  Speaker 3: was gone long ago. I mean, I just... Stephen Miller
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  Speaker 3: on Fox, you mentioned it, Tommy, like what he said about,
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  Speaker 3: he's like, it was not an error. And he said
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: it in the end that in the lawyer, the DOJ lawyer,
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  Speaker 3: who said it was an error. They were wrong and
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: they were put on leave. And that was a, they've
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: been relieved of duty. He's a saboteur, a Democrat. And
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: it's just like, it's such an obvious lie. The guy
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: was like promoted a couple of weeks before he was
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: relieved for all his good work on sanctuary cities. The
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: head of removal of operations at ICE also admitted it
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  Speaker 3: was an error. The top DOJ official also admitted error.
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  Speaker 3: The solicitor general of the United States in the Supreme
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  Speaker 3: court also admitted an error. I do think that like it,
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  Speaker 3: I don't know that the courts will be able to
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  Speaker 3: bring him back at this point, but I think that
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: the Supreme Court has a big decision to make because
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: Judge Zinnis, who's the district court judge in Maryland who
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: ruled on this, first of all, it's 6.30 p.m. right now,
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: East Coast time on Monday, and the government has not
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: provided an update, a daily update about Abrego Garcia like
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: they have been ordered to do by Zinnis. She has
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: a full hearing on Tuesday when you're listening to this.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: And.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: it's going to get back to the Supreme Court at
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: some point. And John Roberts and the entire court has
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: to know that they have made, the Trump administration has
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: made a mockery of their order. They have misstated it.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: They have lied about it. They have said things that
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: it doesn't actually say. And are they just going to
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: like let this go and be like, all right, well,
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: they got us on this one. They decided to lie
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: about it and not bring them back. And so nothing
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: we can do because it's making what the Trump administration
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: is doing and Stephen Miller in particular, they are making
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: a mockery of the Supreme Court right now. They're not
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: just defying it. They are making a mockery of it.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Two points about that. One, it is interesting the way
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Trump believes he still has to perform that he will
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: defer to the law and defer to the courts, even
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: as everyone under him is playing games. That is something
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: I worry about changing. Right now, he's saying, look, we're
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: not going to deport people. It's a violation. I respect
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. We're going to follow the Supreme Court,
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  Speaker 1: even as they're playing games underneath. That's a place where
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: he's not sure yet, right? He's gone farther this term
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: than he did last term. He is pushing new boundaries,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: but that's a line he hasn't crossed yet. And, you know,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: when will he cross it? I feel like he will.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: The question is when. The other part of this, too, is, yes,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: this is about making a mockery of the Supreme Court.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: This is about the implications of all this. But one
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: thing I really appreciate about the way Judge Zinnes has
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: been talking about this is Trump is doing this performative
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: bluster and infallibility around Kilmar. It's a person. He's just there.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: He's been there for 30 days. Andre has been there
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: for 30 days. They don't know that there are cases pending.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: They don't know that they're leading the nightly news. They
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: don't know that there's an ongoing dispute in front of
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court about their case. They have been removed
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: without communication. They have been disappeared. And there's another example
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: just broke right before recording, uh, documented, which is a
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: news outlet that covers immigration out of New York. Another case, uh,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Merrill Gutierrez, somebody who also applied legally at the border,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: came in through report of injury, applied through CBP one, uh,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: was working, uh, just grabbed off the street. His father
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: had to go precinct to precinct in New York, trying
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: to figure out where his son was, uh, because there's
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: no information that the, the, The place where you check
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: online to see where your relative is says he's in Pennsylvania.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Apparently he's been already disappeared to El Salvador. Basically trying
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: to find information. No one can give this guy information
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: because his son has been disappeared the way evil authoritarian
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: regimes disappear people without regard for due process, without regard
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: for the law, going door to door trying to find information.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Is that what America is to Marco Rubio now? A
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: place where if you're in the wrong place at the
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: wrong time, no tattoos, not that tattoos should matter, no
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: evidence of having done anything. And now the relatives have
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: to go searching the precincts. That's what happens in communist regimes.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: That's what happens in totalitarian regimes, people having to hold
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: up pictures of their loved ones because the state has
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: taken them. And it's happening. It's happening right in front
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: of us.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: And, you know, it got even worse in the Oval,
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: if you can believe it. Trump was also asked about
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: his stated desire to render American citizens to El Salvador,
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: which he has now said multiple times, said it again
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: in the Oval today. He said he's open to it
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: for Americans who've been convicted of certain crimes. He was
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: also then heard in the Oval telling Bukele, quote, the
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: homegrowns are next. You got to build about five more places.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: This is when he didn't even think the cameras were
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: really on them. This comes after new reporting from Rolling
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Stone that the White House is discussing how they can
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship. They've been talking about
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: this for quite a while. It was in Axios about
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: a month ago as well. There was also a report
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: from Politico over the weekend that former Blackwater CEO Eric
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: Prince is pitching the White House on a two-part plan
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: to increase deportations to El Salvador. The first part is
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: to pay Prince and his private contractors to handle the
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: logistics of deportation. And the second step is to declare
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: a section of SECOT, the El Salvadoran gulag, to be U.S.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: territory so they can get around the laws that they're
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: already breaking. Trump and Bukele were expected to discuss this
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: proposal in private at the White House. you know, legal
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: experts are saying everywhere the courts would never allow this.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Sure seems like that doesn't matter to the Trump White House.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: What do you guys think?
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we should take Trump at his word,
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: which is that he would love to deport American citizens
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: to El Salvador to rot in hell in this gulag.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: And I think Trump will claim, of course, that it's
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: only the worst of the worst. It's dangerous people. It's terrorists.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: But remember, Trump can just declare that a group is
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: a terrorist organization. Pam Bondi called vandalism of Tesla's domestic terrorism.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: So it's not at all difficult to imagine the White
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: House declaring that protesters or political enemies are terrorists who
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: thus need to be sent to El Salvador because we
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: can't possibly have them here, especially if it is in
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: the wake of some kind of domestic terror attack or
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: major incident, because there's always a crackdown on civil liberties
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: in those moments. And so we might be a long
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: way from this happening. It might sound hyperbolic. Of course,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: the courts would have a word. They would probably declare
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: it unconstitutional or illegal. I'm sure it would be very unpopular.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: but it's a serious concern. And man, fucking Eric Prince,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: like that guy, every idea he pitches is terrible. He
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: floated privatizing the war in Afghanistan. There's discussions about him
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: taking over rare earth mineral mines and the DRC on
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: behalf of the United States. Like I get them deciding
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: that part of this prison in El Salvador is actually
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: US territory and therefore it's legal to send US citizens there.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: That is made up legal thinking. It will never fly
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: in a court of law or public opinion, I don't think,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: but it doesn't mean that they won't do it.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Look at the pattern around what has happened with non-citizens
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: being sent to this place, which in violation of the law.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: It's a surprise. They move quickly. There's evidence against some,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: no evidence against others. They're filling these planes. They're trying
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: to stay ahead of the courts. And then the courts
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: intercede to try to slow it down. The El Salvador
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: is basically just a big pit they throw people in.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Once they're in the pit, they can't do anything to
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: get them out of the pit. My question is, are
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: citizens going to be subjected to this before the courts
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: intervene or not? Are we going to need test cases
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: of human beings grabbed by the administration and sent to
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: some foreign hellhole for the court to try to stop it?
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Or is there going to be some mechanism that the
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court will use? Maybe it's one of these cases
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: around Kilmar, around Andre, around one of these other people
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: that we're learning about. where they make it clear that
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: this is unconstitutional for citizens and non-citizens alike. I don't know.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: And this is why I think that the Supreme Court
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: has to step in here, even if, I mean, they're
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: defying the order, right? You could see a situation where
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: the Trump administration says, we asked El Salvador to facilitate
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: the release. And Bukele says, no, he cannot because he
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: has evidence that the guy is a terrorist and he
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: wants him back. And it would hurt our relations with
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: them and blah, blah, blah. And it's foreign policy. We
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: make some argument and then we lose the argument. They're
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: not even trying to do that. And I don't know
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: that Bukele really helped the whole case by saying, oh,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: I have no power. Bukele's saying, I have no power
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: to release them from prison. And then the Trump administration saying,
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: we have no power to get them back. So who's
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: running the prison? Who has the power to decide what
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: happens to the people? It is absurd on its face.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: And if the Supreme Court, this is why the Supreme
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Court needs to step in, not just for like the
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: potential of getting Garcia back and some of the Venezuelans
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: and some of the people who've already been deported wrongly
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: or renditioned to El Salvador, but for what's coming with citizens, right?
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: Like there was an immigration lawyer from Massachusetts who, She's
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: a US citizen, 40 years old, grew up in Newton, Mass,
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: her whole life. She got an email from CPB ordering
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: her to leave the country in seven days, saying your
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: parole has been eliminated. And CPB said in response, it
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: may have been unintended, right? It may have been unintended.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: But under the Trump administration's reasoning, what they're arguing in
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: court right now, if ICE had found this woman and
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: saw this mistake in order and didn't know she was
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: a citizen, grabbed her, threw her in the back of
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: a van, sent her to a detention center and got
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: her on the plane to El Salvador and then realized,
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: oh shit, she's an American citizen. Trump administration has no
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: power to bring her back. That's their argument that, sorry, Bukele,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: he wants to keep her. What can we do?
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: U.S. citizen. By the way, they're barely even making that argument.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: This is just like the fear, the fear when the
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Trump administration before the ruling started talking about how these
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: people are out of their custody was they would just
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: tell the court they tried and failed with a wink
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: and a nod to an ally in El Salvador. they're
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: not even doing that. I also was just, when I
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: was reading about the Gutierrez case just before we recorded,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: basically it seems like he was just in the wrong
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: place at the wrong time, gets rounded up, suddenly finds
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: himself in Texas.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: Because one of the ICE agents said, oh, he's not
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: the one we're looking for, and the other one was like,
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: just grab him anyway.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: And so they're trying to fill these planes, right, with Venezuelans.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: This is their test case. This was their first attempt.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: This was their way of signaling a new policy. This
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: was their trial run. Do we really think they're going
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to make fewer mistakes when they're doing more plane loads
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: of people, when they're doing thousands of people, not hundreds
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: of people? Do we really think they're not going to
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: make more mistakes when they've dispatched even greater numbers of
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: ICE agents to try to round up more people? Well,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post reported that the goal for one year
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: is a million people. Stephen Miller is like the guy
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: driving the organization every single day to deport one million
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: people this year.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: So we also have some updates on the case of
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: Rumesa Ozturk, the Tufts University PhD student from Turkey who
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: masked agents grabbed off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, threw
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: into the back of a van and sent her to
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: a detention center in Louisiana. On Sunday, The Washington Post's
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: John Hudson reported that an internal State Department memo from
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: before Ozturk's detainment said there was no evidence that she
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: had engaged in any kind of anti-Semitic or pro-terrorist activity
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: or rhetoric. As the government is claiming, she simply signed
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: an op-ed that criticized Tufts for its response to Gaza. So,
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Benji Sarlin at the Post responded to the story with
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: a post that asks, are they incompetently picking horrifyingly weak
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: test cases or deliberately bringing them to scare the largest
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: possible number of people? What do you guys think? Because
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: I find it hard to argue at this point that
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: it's the former and not the latter.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: So ProPublica has this piece up about her detention that's
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: worth reading. And it sounds like what happened was Ozturk
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: was doxed by this group called Canary Mission. This is
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: a right-wing pro-Israel group. They have this anonymously run website.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: They dox students. They dox teachers and organizations that are
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: ostensibly or they claim are hostile to Israel. There's even
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: reports that Canary Mission has ties to Israeli intelligence. But
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: her sin here, as you said, was she was one
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: of four co-signers of an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: It criticized the school for refusing to, quote, divest from
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel and, quote,
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: being dismissive of the Senate, the collective voice of the
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: student body. Like the whole thing was pretty banal. It
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: was just a bunch of policy demands. So I don't
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: think they are bringing purposefully weak cases. I think the
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: overwhelming majority of cases are weak because we are talking
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: about completely reasonable free speech that has been demonized by
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: groups like Canary Mission because they They want to scare
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: people out of criticizing Israel. And then broadly, the administration
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: is now undergoing this effort to strip student visas from
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: these kids because they want to terrify people into leaving
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: the country, never coming here at all, not speaking up
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: at the first place, and just intimidating. Well, it's working because,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: you know, travel and tourism to the United States is cratering.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Including from Canadians.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: Well, and what you said there, Tommy, about Canary, right,
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: is think about this administration now and who it's filled with.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: It is filled with people from right-wing media fever swamps.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: And so, of course, the sources of their information, their
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: intelligence about who's a supposed terrorist and who's a danger
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: to the country are coming from, like, you know, random
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: people who are doxing other people and right-wing fever swamps
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: and all that bullshit. So, you know, they probably think, well,
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: I read this somewhere on some post from some right-wing blogger,
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: so I guess it must be true. Yeah, I.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: In the letter that the Trump administration sent to Harvard
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: with their list of demands to get federal funding, one
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: of those around international admissions reform, by August 2025, the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: university must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution, dot, dot, dot,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: including students supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism. They are putting
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: pressure on these schools around international students. First of all,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: that's just a lever because a lot of international students
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: pay full price. But also, I do think they want— I mean,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I think they just want Brown students to be especially well-behaved, right?
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: If you're from an unsavory part of the world, you're
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: here as our guest. We don't want to have any
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Muslims on campus acting as if they're anything other than
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: lucky to be here. And if you step out of
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: line even a little bit, you will pay. And I
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: do think that's guiding all of this.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: True, but plenty of people from other countries who are
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: not Brown are also getting swept up in this. And
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: I'm only saying that because— this is a larger issue than,
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: like they don't want anyone here in this country.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I do think that they look at somebody.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: Germans, Canadians.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: But they look at somebody.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: I bet they like the Germans, let's be real.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: A German guy got beat up at Logan.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: There is something I think they just sort of, they
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: see Arab students or students from the Middle East protesting
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: in the U.S. and it just makes them angry. And
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: I do think that that's part of it and why
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: they don't really give a fuck. I do think they'll like,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I think it's actually, just to answer your question, I
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: think some of these are signal cases. They're grabbing people
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: for the sin of writing op-eds. They are sending a message.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: They are also haphazard, cruel, feckless, and other peoples are
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: getting swept up in their incompetence. I mean, the most
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: dangerous force in human history is a cruel bureaucracy that
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: doesn't care about the consequences for the people it's hurting.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: And I will just say again, you know, I saw
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: Chris Van Hollen, senator from Maryland today, say that he
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: was going to demand a meeting with Bukele while he's
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: in Washington this week. And if not, he will travel
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: down to El Salvador himself, which is great. Like that
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: is the best thing I've seen from a Democratic politician.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: I saw Senator Padilla, our senator from California, post something
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: about this. Schumer has a comment about this. A bunch
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: of House members have a comment about this. Still not
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: enough in my view. There's still a lot of senators,
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Democratic senators, who are still just tweeting about tariffs and
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Medicaid and all the other stuff and not talking about this.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: And it just feels like a real emergency. And it's
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: about so much more than this one person from Maryland.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: This is just the case that because the government admitted
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: they made the error, it's like it's the most obvious
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: case that went to the Supreme Court. But the idea
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: of Trump saying, I want to send citizens there, like
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: this is the moment for like all the elected Democrats
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: to get out there and make a huge deal about this.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: The other part of it, too, is there's still a
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: lot of like, can he do this? No, he cannot
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: send U.S. citizens there. to a foreign gulag. We have rights.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: We have rights under our constitution. He does not get
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: to abrogate those rights. He does not get to pretend
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: the constitution doesn't exist. And the question is, what are
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: we going to do to make sure that those rights
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: are protected?
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: And also non-citizens have the right to due process, period, paragraph.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is brought to you by Walmart. Did
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: you know that more than 75% of Walmart managers started
• 25:22
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• 25:49
  Speaker 3: So the only reporter who pressed Trump and Bukele about
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: the renditions was CNN's Caitlin Collins, who was at first
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: denied a question. And then when she did finally ask them,
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: she was attacked for asking her questions by Trump, Bukele,
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: Stephen Miller, others in the Oval. Even though a federal
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: judge ruled last week that Trump's decision to ban the
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: Associated Press from covering the White House is unlawful. The
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: AP was excluded again from today's Oval Office press pool.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: And then on Sunday night, Trump took to Truth Social.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: to revive his call for the FCC to strip CBS's
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: broadcast license after watching 60 Minutes, apparently over segments they
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: did about the war in Ukraine and Trump's efforts to
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: take over Greenland. Reminder that Trump also has an active
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: lawsuit against CBS over the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: Are you guys surprised the White House Correspondents Association hasn't
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: done more to stand up for the AP, especially after
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: today's stunt?
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: I would say I'm disappointed, but I'm not surprised. I
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: think the White House Correspondents Association never really figured out
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: an effective way to respond to Trump during the first term.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: And things have gotten exponentially worse. And I think in
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: fairness to them, it's a very difficult task because the
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: biggest problem is getting reporters from different news outlets with
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: different incentives to take collective action that might harm their
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: interests or their ability to report. And the second challenge
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: is the White House loves the fight. They want to
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: fight with the press. They want to use them as
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: the foil. They want to twist what they do and
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: say in defense of press freedom to make them look biased.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: And so it's just a lose-lose proposition for these reporters
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: in a lot of ways. And you end up seeing
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: the White House Correspondents Association being like, oh, we're fighting
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: back by wearing a fucking pin. You know, and it
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: just looks so feckless.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I think there's a third part that makes it hard,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: which is the White House is controlled by Donald Trump.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: And we have seen the way they play games when
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: courts rule. But Donald Trump controls the White House. He
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: controls who's let into that room. And as much as
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Caitlin Collins is there, because of tradition, because she's expected
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: to be there, Trump could decide at any moment to
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: say no. And so it's a little bit of a
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: game of chicken. And I don't think it's wrong to
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: at least consider the possibility that if the press says,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: we're all doing this together, if the AP is not in,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: we're not in, it will just be the MAGA freaks
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: and boyfriends of MTG in there. And I do want
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: to say, good for Caitlin Collins. That is hard. She
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: is in that room. She is asking tough questions. She's
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: being jeered at by members of the administration. She's being
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: bullied by the president of the United States for asking
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: completely reasonable questions, trying to keep the conversation focused on
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: actual substantive issues while fucking chuds left and right are like, Mr. President,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: have you gotten taller? Talk to us about how healthy
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: you are, that kind of question. And that is a
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: hard thing to do. It's hard to stand there and
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: just be kind of just like, be jeered at while
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: you're doing your job and asking completely reasonable questions while
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the president's sitting next to a fucking Latin American authoritarian?
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: No, I saw a couple of people saying like maybe
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: they all should have banded together when they denied the
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: AP today and been like, all right, we're not going in.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: But like if Caitlin Collins wasn't there today, I don't
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: know that we would have gotten a question about Garcia
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: because when he first denied her a question and he
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: went to someone else, I don't know who it was.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: They asked like a fine question about Ukraine, right, and Russia.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: But I was like– I was shocked that the first
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: question wasn't obviously about Bukele and Garcia. And then most
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: of them are just ridiculous questions. So it's like you
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: do need some reporters who are still allowed asking tough questions.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: But it's a real hard– it's a hard challenge.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess I'm at the point where I don't
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: believe the way you challenge Trump is by taking away
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: coverage of him. I just don't think that that's effective.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: And I don't know what other tools they have. It's
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: not easy. But I do think that we are better
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: off for Caitlin Collins having been there.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: In the Truth Post about punishing CBS, Trump specifically praised
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr saying basically, I sure hope he
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: does the right thing here. What do we know about
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Carr and what he might do or can do, I guess?
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Well, he's the chairman of the FCC. He's a right-wing activist.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: He wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC. He's
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: known for playing hardball and using all the tools at
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: his disposal to go after media organizations that Trump decides
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: are biased in some way. For example, he's currently or
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: has demanded that CBS turn over all these internal documents
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: about an interview they did with Kamala Harris that Trump
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: was not a part of because Trump says is unfairly edited.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: It was utterly ridiculous. But Carr did Trump's bidding there.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Carr was also, I believe, spotted recently wearing A golden
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Trump pin. Did you guys all see this?
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, I did see that. He was wearing a Trump head.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: I want us to actually not call it a pin.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: It was a fucking brooch.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: It was a brooch.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: He was wearing a Trump brooch. This fucking fag is
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: wearing a Trump brooch. It's a golden brooch. It is
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: the fucking queeniest fucking thing a person could have. It
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: was drag. He was wearing Trump drag.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: So was his face on the brooch?
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: It was Trump's face looking up at him.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: It's unbelievable.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: So the broach is obviously the real problem. But the
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: other challenge is that there's a lot of concern that
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: CBS is going to cave to everything Trump wants because
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: they're worried about their parent company, Paramount Global, getting FCC
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: approval to merge with Skydance Media. And Trump has lodged this,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: I think, $ 20 billion lawsuit against CBS News. So there's
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: just a lot of lawfare happening.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: Speaking of corporate media capitulation, you guys see the Michael
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: Wolff story in New York Magazine about how David Zaslav,
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns CNN, has
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: approached the White House about steps they can take to
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: get back on Trump's good side?
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Yes, including a fishing show with Don Jr.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: Because they want more conservative voices. But they have one
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: in mind.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they had a list. They apparently had a list.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: And it was just Don Jr. We had years of.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: People worrying about what corporate consolidation in media would mean
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: for journalistic independence. But it was in a world in
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: which people took for granted that the federal government would
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: not use politics to make those decisions. There was ideological
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: differences on mergers. There are different schools of thought about
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: whether or not allowing these big consolidations is good or
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: bad for consumers in the country. But the idea that
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: there's just direct political interference in these kinds of decisions
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: just wasn't part of the equation when all of a
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: sudden CNN was being picked up by conglomerates and all
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: these companies, when Warner Brothers Discovery were merging. And now
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: we're watching these companies have to capitulate. And I do
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: think that like Harvard fighting back, some of the law
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: firms fighting back is showing a path. ABC capitulating makes
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: it harder for CBS to fight. If CBS capitulates, it
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: will make it harder for the next one. We are
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: in a very dangerous moment. And the I want to
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: go back. Donald Trump saying today in the Oval, I
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: want to follow the law. You know, look, I was
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: to poor people, but I want to follow the law.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: I love and respect the Supreme Court. This is Donald Trump.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: He has gone so far, but he is still learning
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: what he can and cannot get away with. He really is.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: He is the greatest lie about Donald Trump is that
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: he doesn't respond to incentives. He does. And if CBS capitulates,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: he will have learned that these tactics works. These law
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: firms capitulating has taught him that those tactics work when
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: When Columbia does it, they go after Harvard. And so
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: it is so, like the stakes for CBS and the
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: stakes for the country of them deciding whether or not
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: to capitulate are so enormous. And I just hope the
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: people inside understand that they are, you know, if they
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: give in to Trump on this, they are the next
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: in a line of people in the story of how
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: we no longer had a free press. That is what
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: is at stake.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: And just, it's worth pointing out that this started with,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: no one facing any threat. It was just a bunch
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: of tech CEOs being like, okay, here's a million dollars
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: for your inauguration. And it was Jeff Bezos. According to
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: the story, someone at Warner Brothers Discovery reached out to
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: someone in the, quote, Trump orbit to get advice. And
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: one of the things they pointed to was Jeff Bezos
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: and Amazon buying a Melania Trump documentary for $ 40 million,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: which is about $ 40 million more than it's worth.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: And what did Bezos get? A bunch of tariffs.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: A bunch of tariffs.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: And so, but... Yeah.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: And like, it just, you know, the source, you could
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: look at that sourcing and think Trump orbit, what does
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: that mean? That's a little thin, but also you just
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: got to remember like Trump runs his, his extended universe,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: like a mafia Don, because the wall street journal reported
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: today that the guy negotiating all the deals between the
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Trump white house and law firms that they're pressuring to
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: give what is up to $ 1 billion worth of pro
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: bono services at this point is Boris Epstein. who doesn't
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: work at the white house. He has set up his
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: own little, whatever MAGA consulting shop. And so you'll end
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: up having Boris F. Stein working one side of this deal, companies,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: law firms, hiring like Trump aligned lobbyists to negotiate on
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: their behalf. Everyone's getting paid off of this. And it's just, it's, it's,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: it's mob shit.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: It's just, and it's a lot of people just making
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: the decision to cover their own asses, you know? And like,
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: this is financially better for me, or it's safer, or
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: I got to think about my firm or my college
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: or my company. And, you know, like maybe they're right
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: in the narrowest sense, but like good for Harvard. And
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: I really, really hope.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: That- It sucks saying that, by the way.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: I know, I hate saying that.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Fuck that. Really, it's bad. Shut that whole place down
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: last week.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: I just, I really hope that other colleges and universities
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: who are going to get targeted, like if anyone after
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: Harvard now- decides to give in again, they have just
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: really undercut Harvard and what they're doing. I hope this
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: makes all the other colleges and universities finally say, you
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: know what? Columbia fucked up. Harvard did the right thing.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: And now we're all going to fight it with Harvard.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: And same thing with other law firms.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: There's a couple of episodes of Sopranos where the guy
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: that played Terminator 2 in Terminator 2, I don't think
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: that's the T-1000, he gets in over his skis with
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: some debt to the mob. And he goes into business
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: with Tony. He has a sporting goods store because he's
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: trying to save his family. He's trying to save his life.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: And he ends up living in a tent inside that store.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Just saying.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: You're making a bad deal. You're going into business with
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: terrible people.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Especially the law firms, too. It's like, this is You're
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: a law firm. This is a clearly unconstitutional. Yes, exactly.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: Who wants a fucking lawyer from a law firm who
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: doesn't think that, who isn't willing to fight an unconstitutional
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: order here?
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: The levels of irony are just so great. It's like
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: law firms refusing to pursue legal avenues to do the
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: right thing and protect the constitution. Outrageous. Colleges refusing to
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: stand up for the principles on which they are founded.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Like I was reading Rumeza Ozturk's op-ed. that got her
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: slapped on a list by the Canary Mission and swept
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: up by ICE. It talks about, according to the Student
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Code of Conduct at Tufts, quote, active citizenship, including exercising
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: free speech and engaging in protest gatherings and demonstrations is
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: a vital part of the Tufts community.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Really? Really? You think so?
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know about that anymore. Not according to our government.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: I agree. And the other part of this too is
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: what Trump is betting on is that he is scarier
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: than these law firms' clients. He's scarier than the alumni.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: He's scarier than the students that Trump is betting. He
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: is more to worry about than all the people who
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: claim to believe in these values. I'm just thinking about,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: when I first moved to LA and I was starting out,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: I had an entertainment lawyer who would negotiate when I
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: was doing scripts. And I saw him, he was a
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: little bit tipsy at a party. And this is the
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: kind of lawyer you want. And he just said, I
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: was selling a script at the time. And he just said,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: They love it. We're going to pick them up by
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: their ankles, and we're going to shake them. We're going
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: to shake them. That's the kind of lawyer you want.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: Now he's living in a tent.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: That's the kind of lawyer you want.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: You want a lawyer, even when they're at a party,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: they're thinking about how they're going to shake down these
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: fucking studios. All right? Not these capitulating little fucking weasels
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: worrying about their Exxon Mobil money.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: You got to shake them. That was a good lawyer.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: He's a great lawyer.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 38:13
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• 39:23
  Speaker 3: I'm going to get into the latest on Trump's tariff
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: policy in my interview with Joe Weisenthal. But before that,
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: let's talk about the politics of how the trade war
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: is playing out. According to a CBS YouGov poll released
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: over the weekend, support for Trump's handling of the economy
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: and inflation continues to slide. A few notable numbers from
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: the poll, 75% of respondents said the short-term impact of
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: tariffs will be rising prices. 63% disliked Trump's approach to trade,
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: even though a bare majority does support its stated goals.
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: That said, 57% of independents, as well as 84% of Democrats,
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: 9% of Republicans, said Trump does not have a clear
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: tariffs and trade plan. No shit. Latest example, over the weekend,
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: Customs and Border Protection issued a notice that exempted electronics
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: like smartphones and computers from the latest round of tariffs.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: But on Sunday, the administration said those exemptions would be temporary.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: Trump himself said that, quote, there was no tariff exception
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: announced on Friday and added these products are subject to
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: to the existing 20% fentanyl tariffs. You always want to
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: put a fentanyl tariff on your phone. And they are
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: just moving to a different tariff bucket. Then on Sunday,
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: Trump said the tariffs on semiconductors are coming, quote, very soon.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: And in his meeting with Bukele on Monday, said there
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: will be some short-lived exceptions for car parts. If you're confused,
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: you're not alone. Here are just a few of Trump's
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: top economic advisors on the Sunday shows, as well as
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: Trump himself on Monday.
• 40:45
  Speaker 6: Those tariffs are temporarily off, but they're going to be
• 40:49
  Speaker 6: coming right back on in another form in a month
• 40:51
  Speaker 6: or so?
• 40:52
  Speaker 5: Or what are you saying?
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Correct. That's right.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: That's right. But 90 days could be a rolling deadline,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: is what I hear you saying.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: Well, I would not say that.
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: You want to call an exclusion potatoes, potatoes.
• 41:06
  Speaker 6: When people talk about the chaos or lack of straight, whatever,
• 41:09
  Speaker 6: you just go back to day one. Look, I'm a
• 41:12
  Speaker 6: very flexible person.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: I don't change my mind, but I'm flexible.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: And you have to be.
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: You just can't have a wall and you'll only go.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you have to go around.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: It, under it or above it. What in the lead
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: time is on a new semiconductor plant? Three days?
• 41:27
  Speaker 5: A couple of days.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: A couple of days. When was the last time you
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: think Trump touched his toes, speaking of flexibility, or saw them?
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: He goes under, around, over.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: We got the physical. He's doing great. Our boy's healthier
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: than ever.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: 6'3, 224.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: DK Metcalf stats. Ripped.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: What do you guys make of the polling on Trump's
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: tariffs and his economic approval? Anything surprising?
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: One number that stuck out to me that I liked
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: was who's responsible for the economy. 54% say Trump. 20%
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: say Biden and Trump. with some smaller percentage saying, or
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: some small percentage saying just Biden still. That's basically three
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: quarters saying that Donald Trump is now responsible for the economy.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: The honeymoon is over. There's no more blaming Biden. That's
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: not flying anymore. He owns what is happening. He owns
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: this mess. He owns the high cost of living. He
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: owns the failure to address problems in the economy. 67%
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: of independents say the economy is not in good shape.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: That is now on him.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think that jumped out
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: at me too. I think Big picture, he still has
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: North Korea numbers among Republicans. Whatever economic pain they're feeling
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: when they look at their 401ks, they're not blaming him.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: They're at least moving away from him. I do think
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: there's some real warning signs when you've only got 40%
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: approval of Trump's handling of inflation. 65% think the tariffs
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: will make the economy worse in the short term. There
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: are big majorities that think that the tariffs, like I said,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: over 70% think tariffs will primarily benefit corporations and the wealthy.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like they've done the best branding there.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: However- The voters are more forgiving when you ask them
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: about the long term prospects of terrorists. And as you mentioned,
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: if you ask them about kind of Trump's goals versus
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: how he's executing on it, basically, I think about 60
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: percent of the country thinks he's going to use tariffs
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: to negotiate and then he's going to remove them later.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: And I assume, therefore, they think things will be OK.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: I continue to think that this is the this is
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: going to be the high watermark for his polling on
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: the economy and on tariffs. I think what has happened
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: is the tariff story has, and a lot of the
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: polling shows this, has broken through like nothing else, right?
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: Everyone has heard about this. Financial news, business news, political news,
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: it's everywhere, right? And so I think people's feelings about
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: what's going to happen to the economy are getting pretty negative,
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: but they haven't yet experienced the higher costs because the
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: tariffs haven't really kicked in or the higher interest rate, right? Like,
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: The worst of it hasn't happened yet materially to people's lives.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: And when that happens, I think the bottom falls out
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: at least for, you know, independents and maybe some Republicans.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Economically, what's happening right now is businesses aren't making decisions
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: because they can't predict what's going to happen. So they
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: are not hiring or adding or spending or doing CapEx,
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: et cetera. At some point soon, businesses will start firing.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: And I was talking to someone I know here in L.A.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: who was working on a merchandise deal with an athlete.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: And now it's completely on hold in perpetuity because the
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: socks were going to come from China. There's a billion
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: stories like that. There's a great story, The Daily did
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: it today, about a small business owner who basically, she
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: imports a baby product from China. Right now, it will
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: be more expensive for this woman to import things she's
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: already paid to have produced than to just leave them there.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: There's a manufacturer that said they were considering moving to Canada.
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: to produce there. Is that, I thought we were supposed
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: to bring manufacturing back. Is that not what's going to
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: happen here?
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think also like the, so I think
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: the delta between the goal and the execution just talks
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: about the way the chaos is really broken through for people.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: The other piece of this is the stories have now
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: kind of turned, I'm interested what Joe has to say
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: about this, but the stories have now turned to, okay,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: he stepped back from the brink on these crazy tariffs
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: for the whole world, but there's still 10% global tariff
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: and there's still this massive tariffs on China that's having implications.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Let those implications, let the people Companies directly affected, the
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: people being unable to figure out how to work around it, layoffs,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: all that will like take time, I think, to kind
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: of reach people here. Just like literally just like hear
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: from a friend about somebody facing a consequence, because I
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: think people in their mind think, oh, yeah, we got
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: to stop. You know, China's taking advantage. I think people
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: believe that. I believe that, you know, but I think
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: seeing the consequences is different. I will say just to
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: be a straight shooter on the other side of this,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: respect and above science. That's what I busted out in
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: a while. he's caused an international economic meltdown. He's shipping
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: people off to a gulag by mistake. He's rambling on the,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: in the oval office for hours a day. His approval
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: has dropped from, you know, 51, 52 to 47, right?
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: He's still like that, that kind of unmovable opinion. Like
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: that is, it sucks. It just sucks. It sucks.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: He's at 47%.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: He's the worst president we've ever had. He's caused a
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: fucking self-inflicted wound that may have decades-long consequences for our
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: leadership and the global economy, and he's at 47%.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: I will say, it's April. Yeah. And at this time,
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: in Biden's term, you know, his staff was talking about
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: the next FDR. Why didn't Obama learn from... You know,
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: he's not going to repeat the mistakes of Barack Obama.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: He's the greatest president ever.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Listen.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: his approval rating was much, much higher than this. But
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: I saw someone that the Biden slide in his approval
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: rating that happened around the withdrawal of Afghanistan, like Trump
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: is facing that slide, that level of slide right now.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: I just want, yes. And I, that's, I agree. I
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: hope it is the high watermark, but him living at
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: 47% is just a reason to be like a little bit, just,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: just cautious about over-interpretating the results right now.
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: And I do, I mean, I was saying, I do
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: think that interpretation from your average American who is not
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: a political junkie like all of us, is don't love
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: the news about Donald Trump right now. Don't love the
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: tariff stuff. Maybe some of the deportation stuff is a
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: little weird, but I like deporting criminals and stuff. But
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: I don't know. It's a few months. Give them a
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: little more time. See what happens. Let's see how.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: The economy goes.
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: I think that's what they're thinking. So before we get
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: to my conversation with Joe Weisenthal, we've got to end
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: today's News Block with a corrupt date. That's our awesome
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: name for a recurring segment on all the latest Trump
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: family corruption news. It's really wearing well, I think.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: I think it's here to stay.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: It was the best of the list of options that
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: we had.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: Today's item is a Wall Street Journal report about the
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: shady crypto exchange Binance, which pleaded guilty to money laundering
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: charges in 2023. Since then, Binance has been banned from
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: the U.S. market and has special government monitors making sure
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: it's not money laundering again. But here's the journal headline.
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: Binance seeks to curb U.S. oversight while in deal talks
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: with Trump's crypto company. The Journal found that execs from
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: Binance met with Treasury officials last month about getting rid
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: of the monitors and returning to the U.S. market, even
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: as it's considering listing a so-called stablecoin from World Liberty Financial,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: which is a Trump family moneymaking endeavor. The Journal says
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: that this scheme could make billions for the Trump family. Tommy,
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: could you help decode the terms here and any sense
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: of how bad this could potentially be?
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just think about what's happening.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: It's not just that the Wall Street Journal reported that
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: the Binance folks were meeting with the Treasury Department to
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: talk about loosening oversight of their company while exploring this
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: deal with the Trump administration. The Trump administration has also
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: talked about taking a stake in the Binance U.S. operations.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: And the crime that Binance was accused of was like
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: money laundering by Iran on its platform, terrorist organizations using it.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: other criminal organizations. It was a massive amount of money
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: laundering happening. And the fine they paid was $ 4. 3 billion.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: The CEO went to jail for four months. And now CZ,
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: the founder of Binance- But not in El Salvador. Not
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: in El Salvador.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: Not bad enough for that, even though terrorist financing.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: Was part of it. The U.S. So, you know, the CZ,
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: the founder, wants a pardon. They want to get rid
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: of restrictions on Binance from the U.S. government. And according
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: to a bunch of news reports, Binance looked at the
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: treatment of another crypto founder named Justin Sun, who, quote unquote,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: invested about $ 75 million into World Liberty Financial, which is
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: the Trump family's crypto company. And then, wow, who would
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: you thunk it? the SEC paused their fraud investigation to
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Justin Sun. So there's just this very clear way you
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: can work with the Trump family organization to get not
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: only regulatory relief, but even personal legal relief for the
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: leaders of these companies. And all of that's on top
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: of the Trump family launching the meme coin right before
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: the inauguration, which basically allows anyone to funnel money into
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: his pocket because every time you buy a Trump coin
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: or a Melania coin, fees go to the Trump organization
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: and they're collecting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fees.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: So there's just this whole set of crypto-specific deregulation that's happening.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: The SEC is dropping investigations into crypto companies. DOJ announced
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: it wouldn't be enforcing certain money laundering cases on crypto.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: It's just a very, it's like something we should all
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: be watching, both in terms of how people can funnel
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: money to Trump, but also future consumer harm, because a
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: lot of these companies are pretty fucking shady.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: Sure, I'm sure crypto czar David Sachs has a good
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: handle on it.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: We should just assume that people are bribing Trump, that
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: they're putting money into his account. Part of this ties
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: back into tariffs. We are now in the what industries
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: and what companies specifically get exemptions phase. Trump loves this.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Tim Cook, desperate to have exemptions for iPhones. Other companies
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: have billions of dollars worth of business at stake. What
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: is to stop someone from just getting a meeting with
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: the president, talking all about how good they are for
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: the American economy, and then just have to show them
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: on your phone that you made a transfer and only
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: two of you will ever know because there's no record,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: there's no paper trail, and all of a sudden the
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: exemption's lifted.
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: Or you could just do it in the Oval Office
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: in front of a bunch of cameras. You know, they
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: don't care either way.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Well, Pam Bondi certainly doesn't give a fuck. The level of, like,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: it is just incredible the way in which Republicans in
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: Congress do not give a fuck about how corrupt this
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: administration is. They are the problem, and obviously Trump is
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: the core problem here, But the fact that these Republicans
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: have so just completely abandoned any sense of responsibility to
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: the country, just no sense of obligation to their office,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: to their state, to taxpayers, to the nation they swore
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: an oath to, nothing, none of it.
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: You see Marjorie Taylor Greene bought the dip?
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: What?
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: There was a New York Times story that she... She
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: finally reported that she did make a bunch of stock
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: purchases right after Trump's.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Marge and I have that in common.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: That's a bipartisan problem. They need to ban stock trading.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: He did tweet it. He did tweet it.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: Well, did she buy day of? Yeah. The day of
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: the rip.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, like him tweeting 15 minutes before, like it's
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: a good time to buy probably gives everyone who was
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: insider trading because of information from the administration cover to
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: do whatever they did.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, some people just had a feeling. Yeah.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: It's just like the what about ism of like, imagine this.
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: if Hunter Biden did this is so tired and so boring,
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: but this is just so much worse than any of
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: the things that we read about him doing. Like, yes,
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: it was gross to get a retainer from a Burisma
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: or whatever, but like we're talking about billion dollar purchases
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: in industries. And these are not like long held Trump
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: family organization businesses. These are crypto companies. They started right
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: before the administration so that they could capitalize in moments
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: like this.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. David Foster Wallace gave a great commencement speech once
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: about the importance of cliche. And I know that what
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: if Obama did it? What if Biden did it? And
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: I know it's a cliche. Maybe we got to bring
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: it back. We just got to stop. Like, I know
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: we all roll our eyes in it because we're so
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: like hyper engaged, fucking broken partisans. But like. What if
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Obama did it? People would lose their minds. We can't
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: point that out anymore because it's cliche. It's a good cliche.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: If George W.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Bush did it, we would have all lost our minds.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: And probably something would have happened.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: I think what the problem with pointing to the Hunter
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: stuff is it sounds like a defense of him, which
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: no one's intending it to be. It's just pointing out
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: their hypocrisy.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: So MTG bought between $ 21, 000 and $ 315, 000 in stocks. both
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: the day before and the day of.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: Way to go, Marjorie. Way to be brave.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: What a range.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: And the day before Trump's move, she also dumped between $ 50, 000
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: and $ 100, 000 in treasury bills.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Day before? Yeah. Wait, she dumped treasury bills? Yeah. Hmm.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: She was freeing up cash probably to buy stocks.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: If it dropped. Interesting.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Interesting.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in who got out of stocks... on Monday?
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: Or when was Liberation Day? Tuesday? Because we recorded Monday.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: Like who got out on Monday? Got a lot of
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: cash out and then jumped in.
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: She did. She did both days. She did the day
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: before and the day after.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, that one, none of them should be able
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: to trade stocks. I mean, Liberation Day, everyone knows is coming,
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: you know, right? So it's a little more defensible. But
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: if you're all of a sudden buying a bunch of options.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, the day before the pause.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, not before Liberation Day. It was the day before
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: the pause, which no one knew about because, you know.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: Trump said it was just they wrote it from their
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: heart in the Oval Office the day of.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: Watching Jamie Dimon on TV.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: When we get back from the break, you'll hear my
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: conversation with Joe Weisenthal of Bloomberg about what Trump thinks
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: he's doing with tariff policy and what's likely to happen
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: in real life. Two quick things before we do that.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: The next book from Crooked Media Reads is coming soon.
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: It's called When We're in Charge, The Next Generation's Guide
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: to Leadership by our pal Amanda Lippman. She's been on
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: the pod many times. It's out May 13th. Amanda's co-founder
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: of Run for Something. She's helped launch the political careers
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: of hundreds of millennials and Gen Zers. Now she's turning
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: that experience into a guide for the next wave of
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: leaders who want to make an impact without sacrificing their
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: well-being or their principles. I know that just since Trump
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: has been reelected, Run for Something has had, I think,
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: like more applications for people who want to run for
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: office than they did even in 2017. It's great. So
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: that's fantastic. When We're In Charge is part manifesto, part manual,
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: and just so helpful in thinking about how young people
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: can lead and run for office. So it's an essential book.
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: It's great reading. Pre-order When We're In Charge now at Cricut.com
• 55:33
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• 55:35
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• 55:36
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• 57:50
  Speaker 3: Joe Weisenthal, welcome to the show.
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: You know the economic news isn't stellar when I have
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: to turn on notifications for your Twitter feed.
• 57:58
  Speaker 6: People are calling me up who normally don't call me up.
• 58:01
  Speaker 6: I was like, okay, that must mean that there's at
• 58:03
  Speaker 6: a minimum a lot of volatility in the markets.
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: Obviously, there's a lot more going on than just that.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: I want to start with your 30,000-foot view of where
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: things stand right now. We are recording Monday afternoon, California time.
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: It seems as if the markets have stabilized a bit
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: after the last two weeks. But how are the business
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: and financial worlds feeling about this trade war and how
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: it might affect the economy?
• 58:29
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I think at a minimum, at a minimum,
• 58:33
  Speaker 6: there is this view that for a long time, you know,
• 58:36
  Speaker 6: The quote rules, they always say businesses want certainty, that
• 58:39
  Speaker 6: businesses hate uncertainty. These are cliches, but there's probably always
• 58:43
  Speaker 6: some truth to why these are cliches.
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: At a minimum, we're in a period of a high.
• 58:48
  Speaker 6: Degree of uncertainty about what the trading relationship between the U.S.
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: And the rest of the world is going to look like.
• 58:54
  Speaker 6: And at a minimum, you would think that, okay, this
• 58:57
  Speaker 6: is not an environment in which businesses are going to
• 59:00
  Speaker 6: be inclined to make new investments, open up new factories,
• 59:04
  Speaker 6: open up new locations. expand headcount, et cetera. I think
• 59:09
  Speaker 6: the general perception is it's worse than that. So that
• 59:11
  Speaker 6: would be the minimum is that you have this sort
• 59:13
  Speaker 6: of period of uncertainty where there's no new expansion. But
• 59:17
  Speaker 6: you have the hit to the stock market. You have
• 59:19
  Speaker 6: major new costs coming through. I mean, this is something
• 59:23
  Speaker 6: of an instantaneous supply shock, probably not quite on the
• 59:27
  Speaker 6: order of the COVID supply shock. but a supply shock nonetheless.
• 59:31
  Speaker 6: You have the rise in interest rates that we've seen
• 59:35
  Speaker 6: over the last several days. That's going to affect borrowing costs.
• 59:38
  Speaker 6: It's going to affect the housing market. That's going to
• 59:39
  Speaker 6: affect the car market, other areas of corporate finance. So
• 59:42
  Speaker 6: that probably has a tightening and negative effect on actual activity.
• 59:47
  Speaker 6: So it's really not just a market story, even though
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: everyone's watching the charts on their screen. That's sort of
• 59:54
  Speaker 6: what's getting the immediate attention because we really haven't had
• 59:57
  Speaker 6: the hard data, so-called, hit that really shows what's been
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 6: going on in the economy over the last few weeks.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: Trump's top economic advisor in the White House, Kevin Hassett,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: he was on Fox today saying that there's no chance
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: at all of a recession happening in 2025. Is that
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: believable to you?
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I don't know how anyone could say
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 6: that ever. I mean, in any condition, right? In any condition,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 6: I don't know how anyone could ever say there's no
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 6: chance at all happening. And when you look at just
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 6: the degree of tightening that we've gotten in financial markets,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 6: and by tightening, I mean, like, if you're issuing equity,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 6: that's gotten more expensive because the price has gone down.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 6: If you're issuing credit, not only have you seen yields rise,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 6: you've seen credit spreads rise.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: And just the higher costs of all kinds of inputs.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 6: And then the sort of negativity that's out in the ether,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 6: out in the media, it's hard for me to believe
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: that there is literally no chance at all of a recession.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 6: I would say, actually, there are some people who think
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 6: that a recession has started already. Larry Fink, the CEO
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 6: of Blackstone, said I think about a week and a
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 6: half ago that the CEOs he talks to think the
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 6: recession has already begun. Charlie Gasparino, who works for Fox Business,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 6: said he talks to CEOs who think that a recession is.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 5: Either imminent or has perhaps already begun.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 6: If you look at the betting markets, you know, there's
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 6: like at least a 50-50% chance, according to people with
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 6: money on the line, that a recession has begun. So
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 6: the idea that there's no chance at all of a
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 6: recession in 2025 strikes me as a little bit implausible.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: I'm a little confused about how the markets are reacting
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: to the news that smartphones and other electronics are currently
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: exempt from Trump's tariffs on China, which was quickly followed
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: by Trump and some of his staff saying, actually, they're
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: still subjected to the 20% fentanyl tariffs and will probably
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: be subjected to additional tariffs targeted at the semiconductor industry
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: and electronic supply chains. What did you make of all
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: that and the market reaction to that today?
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: I mean, there's an extraordinary amount of uncertainty, obviously.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 6: I mean, look, I guess the market presumes that there
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 6: is not going to be 145% tariffs on iPhones. That
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 6: seems like, OK, it's not going to be that big,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 6: which maybe some people thought that was going to be.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: And, you know, that would just be an eye popping,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: a staggering number. I mean, the important thing is that
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: a lot of the.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 6: Action, if you look in the market, really took place
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 6: before April 2nd, before so-called Liberation Day. And so, you know,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 6: it's like, you know, Apple is a $ 202 stock because
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 6: of the time we're talking about this. It had been
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 6: over 240 in late February. So already a lot of
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 6: the anxiety from this trade war was getting baked into
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 6: the market even before the actual formal numbers, which still
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 6: seem very uncertain, were revealed.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: How big of a deal do you think it is
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: that China is now trying to halt exports of rare
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: earth minerals to the U.S.? You know what?
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 6: I'm really glad you asked that question because I would
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 6: just say— I will do a plug for my own podcast,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 6: Odd Lots, which we have an episode that will come
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 6: out Tuesday morning. I'm not sure when this will come out.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: Tuesday morning.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 5: We're actually on this question exactly. So here's the good news.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: Here's the good news. It's not that big of a deal.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 5: It turns out they're not that rare. They're not that much.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: It turns out, and I didn't know this up until we.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 6: Talked to our own colleague who really knows this stuff,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 6: the number one use of so-called rare earth metals is
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 6: actually in vacuum cleaners.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: In the worst comes... Yeah, I know.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 6: It sounds really scary, rare earth metals, or China has
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 6: control over them. It turns out this is not that.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 6: Of all the big deals that are out there in
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 6: the world, and there are many, this is one that
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 6: people can probably chill out about. In the worst case scenario,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 6: they say like, oh, this is used in like missile
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 6: tech or whatever. In the worst case scenario, maybe people
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 6: will come around and ask to like buy your vacuum cleaner,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: your Dyson vacuum cleaner from you so that they can
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 6: extract the metal.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: But this is probably one thing that'll be okay.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about the trade war with China writ
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: large because it does seem like regardless of what Trump
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: backs off or what he doesn't, that that trade war
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: is here to stay at least for the foreseeable future.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: If that's the case- Could you talk about what that
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: will mean for most Americans and our economy overall?
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, like, you know, there's a huge share
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 6: of goods consumption that comes from China. So there's the
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 6: goods consumption, obviously, which ranges from all kinds of things,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 6: from like high-end items like smartphones to like small plastic
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 6: things that you would get at a dollar store like
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 6: refillable water balloons and so forth. There are a lot
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 6: of small businesses. I mean, one of the reasons that
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: this is perceived by some as perverse is that you
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 6: have a lot of small businesses, small manufacturing companies, in instances,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 6: who might buy some sort of intermediate good or they
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 6: buy some piece from China that they reassemble and make
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 6: into something more expensive in the U.S. So it's hard
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 6: to imagine that it wouldn't be massively expensive. disruptive, that
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: there wouldn't be companies that face some sort of existential
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 6: threat to their ongoing viability from what are truly like
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 6: staggeringly high tariffs between the number one and the number
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 6: two economy in the entire world. I don't, you know,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 6: it's a, and in a short period of time, you know,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 6: countries undergo trading relationships and they rebuild their manufacturing sectors.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 6: And this is the thing that happens from time to
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 6: time in history. You know, they start off as hard, small,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 6: and maybe there's like one protected sector or there's like
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 6: export subsidies and stuff. There's not, you know, there's not
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 6: obviously some sort of, you know, social insurance to spread
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 6: the pain from these, particularly to small businesses who buy
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 6: things from China and so forth. So this is massively
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 6: disruptive in a short period of time.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: Just with that in mind, like. Stepping back from all this,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: what would you say the Trump administration's theory of the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: case is with its trade policy right now? And I
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: ask that question because there have been a few different
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: rationales given, some of which seem to contradict each other.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: But what do you think they are hoping to achieve
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: based on the policies you've seen so far? And how
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: likely do you think it is that they can achieve
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: those goals?
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 6: You know, they have revealed many different arguments for the tariffs, right?
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 5: So one is it's, oh, it's about, you know, fighting
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 5: the budget deficit.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 6: Some is it's about we need to rebuild a manufacturing base.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 5: My guess is that, you know, there's various versions of it.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 6: Some of it is just that, you know, all of
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 6: these countries have ripped us off for a long time
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 6: through unfair trading practices. And therefore, this is like the
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 6: right way to redress years of wrong. I think the
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 6: main theory of the case, though, is that this belief
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 6: that the U.S. is an incredibly rich economy, which it is,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 6: with a very strong consumer sector. And it's so strong
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 6: and it's so central to the global economy that other
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 6: countries and companies in other countries should essentially pay for
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 6: the right to sell.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 5: Into the economy. And if their economics don't work.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 6: Such that paying for the right to sell into the
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 6: economy no longer is viable for them, then they.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: Should set up a manufacturing base.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 6: And I think there's probably this sort of Part economical
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 6: and part cultural impulse of like why manufacturing is per
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 6: se important. And I think it's important to also address
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 6: that this is obviously not just a Trump thing that
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 6: a lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 6: We saw this under Biden, obviously, this sort of deep
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 6: anxiety about manufacturing or the lack of manufacturing industry. particularly
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 6: in advanced goods. We experienced it during COVID with all
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 6: the anxiety around, you know, personal protection equipment and.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 5: Stuff like that.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 6: It's not a new thing, but I think there's this
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 6: clear anxiety about the fact that, you know, the entire
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 6: world really is so dependent on one country that's emerging
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 6: as a manufacturing powerhouse in almost every category that you
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 6: can think of.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: What's your best guess on what's going on with the
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: bond markets and the weakening dollar?
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 6: I think there's two things. It's a really good question.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 6: My co-host of the podcast, Tracy Alloway, has written a
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 6: lot about this. I wouldn't say there's two things going
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 6: on right now. It does feel like, to some extent,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 6: there is this general flight out of U.S.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: Assets.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 6: And so we have this sort of trifecta of the
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 6: stock market going down, the dollar going down, the treasury
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 6: market going down. And so people look at the U.S.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 6: and they start to question, is the U.S. a place
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 6: where I want to park my marginal dollar? And it
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 6: seems like, at least at the margins, more people are
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 6: answering no. The other thing with the bond market specifically
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 6: is that we've had a few bouts of really intense selling.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 6: And then intense selling, and it's happened a couple of
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 6: times at night, you know, like during the overnight futures,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 6: et cetera.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 5: There's not a lot of liquidity in the market. And
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 5: when people are panicking, they want dollars, you know, they
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 5: want to pay the bills. I always joke, you.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 6: Know, it's like, you have to pay your rent. You
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 6: have to pay your cell phone bill. All these things
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 6: become very immediate.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: It doesn't matter.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 6: You can't, you know, I can't pay my mortgage with
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 6: a treasury bond. I need actual dollars. And so you
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 6: just start the cliches. You sell everything that's not nailed down.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 6: You sell your desk. You sell your headphones, etc., And
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 6: so I think it's like rumblings of that where there's
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 6: this very acute sense of anxiety where it's like, I
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 6: just want to survive to the next day.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 5: I just want to survive to the next month.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 6: And treasuries are one of the things in the menu
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 6: of things that you can sell. Treasuries are one of
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 6: the things that's available to you.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: So you think it remains to be seen whether this
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: is a consequence of the instability we're facing right now
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: or a longer term trend away from the U.S. based
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: on just the unpredictability of the Trump administration's policies?
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 6: I mean, look, I do think it's probably too early
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 6: to say, but you know, look, there are other signs
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 6: of it too, of this sort of like, you know,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 6: the U.S. is turning away from the rest of the
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 6: world in sort of.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: Very straightforward ways. That's what tariffs do.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 6: And you see various ways that the rest of the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 6: world is turning away from the U.S. You see it
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 6: in the drop of, you know, I tend not to
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 6: put a ton of stock in like polls of how
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 6: people think about the U.S. at any given time, but
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 6: they're way down. We see tourism way down from other
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 6: countries already that's already hit. You know, today there were
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 6: headlines about, you know, I think there's this hope that,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 6: for example, you know, the U.S. could become, have a
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 6: good relationship with the Vietnamese, for example, on Pryway, one
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 6: of China's neighbors. Seems very implausible to me. China is
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 6: going to be an important supply and demand source for Vietnam.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: In its future. It's its next door neighbor.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 6: There were headlines today about China wanting its companies to
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 6: deepen their investment in Vietnam. So, you know, I think
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 6: you look at Europe, you saw the prime minister of
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 6: Spain already talking about deepening its relationship with China and
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 6: so forth. So I think there's certainly a risk that
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 6: just as we're turning away from the rest of the world,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 6: that the rest of the world like rethinks its relationship
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 6: with us.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: Because you follow this, you know, every second of the day.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: you've seen all the headlines and all that. There's a lot,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: you know, there's, I'd say there's been a fair amount
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: of panic or at least people making, you know, proclamations
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: that like, this is, this reminds me of COVID or
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: this reminds me of 2007 and eight or this reminds me, like,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: where are you on the scale of like, this is
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 3: a development that we should really be concerned about, or
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: maybe this is just, you know, just some instability now
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: and things will level out.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 6: You know, I started my career as a financial journalist
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 6: in 2008, October 2008 specifically. So, you know, the collapse
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 6: of Lehman Brothers and the failure of authorities then to
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 6: sort of like stem that major bank run was to always,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 6: to my mind, the sort of defining event of my career. And,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 6: you know, I always thought it would be in COVID
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 6: for a second seemed like it could be that as well. But,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 6: you know, then obviously there was a pretty forceful economic response.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 6: And I, like a lot of people, were surprised to
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 6: some extent the degree to which something resembling normalcy or
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 6: something resembling the pre-COVID life came back to the pre-COVID
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 6: economy and actually came.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 5: Back extremely fast.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 6: This feels really different to me because this feels really
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 6: different than 2008. And I think it's certainly plausible. that
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 6: it's a bigger deal than 2008. I don't know if
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 6: it's going to be a bigger deal in terms of
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 6: like unemployment per se, because I don't, you know, it's
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 6: a different, it's different.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 5: But the idea, you know, this.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 6: Seems like one of those bells that's hard to unring
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 6: because even, you know, the tariffs are still here.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 5: They don't seem like they're going anywhere.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 6: In theory, the tariffs could be totally reversed, but it's
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 6: hard to imagine the president credibly committing to never using
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 6: them again, right?
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 5: This is the problem.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 6: He could completely reverse the tariffs tomorrow, and then he
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 6: could reverse himself the next day. And so I think
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 6: people have really woken up to this idea that, like,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 6: the relationship that the U.S. will have to the rest
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 6: of the world that, you know, to some extent had
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 6: just been taken for granted, for better or worse, over
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 6: the last, you know, several decades, may not be the
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 6: same again.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's something that could outlast Trump as well.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 5: And I don't think that's really sunk in yet. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 5: it's definitely... Look, you know, Trump really....
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 6: Maybe the word is credit, but you know, it was
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 6: his administration in 2016 that sort of heightened this anxiety
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 6: about China in general.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 5: And then there was a lot of carry-through to the
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 5: Biden administration.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 6: I remember like in the 2020 primaries, like wondering with candidates,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 6: are you going to keep the then existing China tariffs?
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 5: And there was a remarkable amount of continuity. In fact,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 5: I would say like.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 6: It's probably like the most bipartisan consensus of any topic
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 6: I can think of is this view that we have
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 6: to change our relationship with China, that China is some
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 6: sort of existential threat, whether it's economically or perhaps military,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 6: et cetera.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 5: Probably one of the most bipartisan views that there is.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 6: And, you know, I don't think, I think by and large,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 6: like Democrats probably at this point would say, no, let's
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 6: like roll back the tariffs, but in general, right? But
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 6: I do think like, The relationship with China is probably,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 6: on some level, never going to go back to even
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 6: the sort of 2020, you know, even the Biden era environment.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I also keep thinking that even if they announce,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: you know, dozens of deals with all the rest of
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: the countries to get rid of the reciprocal tariffs, he
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: seems like he's pretty intent on keeping the 10% universal tariff.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does feel like that.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: It seems like these China tariffs are also here to
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: stay as well.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and maybe, you know, the thing I keep thinking about,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 6: you know, when people talk about these deals and the
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 6: White House says, oh, these countries have lined up, and
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 6: you hear Wall Street people say, make a deal, make
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 6: a deal, announce a deal, and so forth. And the
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 6: thing that I keep wondering about, which I've never seen,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 6: is like, what does this supposed deal even look like
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 6: with any of these countries?
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 5: Because the truth of the matter is, you know, that chart.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 6: That they came up with on like April 2nd, Liberation Day,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 6: was essentially like this made up formula. Like that was
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 6: not a real measure of existing trade barriers. And in
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 6: a lot of cases, you know, they're like, oh, it's
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 6: not just tariffs, but it's non-trade barriers. I think by
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 6: and large, that's perceived to be nonsense. It's not obvious
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 6: that many of these countries have a lot to like,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 6: a lot to give us, you know, like I imagine, sure,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 6: you might be able to like sell some of these
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 6: countries more soybeans or something like that and that's usually
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 6: you know one of the things oh yeah we're gonna
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 6: like we're gonna buy some more natural gas from you
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 6: i could totally see that in some cases but there's
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 6: not like a ton obviously that any of these countries
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 6: can give and sure every country has some tariffs because
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: every country has its own internal politics you know it's
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 6: like why does the u.s subsidize like ethanol or something
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 6: yeah because of politics And so every country probably has
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 6: their own equivalent of ethanol where there is like some
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 6: industry that for political reasons has to be protected or
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 6: is untouchable and to have this or that.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 5: But by and large, I don't think most countries that
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 5: we trade.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 6: With have a ton of like obvious gives, nor is
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 6: it clear like what our asks are in many of
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 6: these cases. So I'm like kind of skeptical about this
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 6: idea that there's going to be this parade of deals
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 6: coming that like, can bring down the tariffs. Now, of course,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 6: it's always possible that countries could give Trump almost nothing,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 6: and he takes it as a win, especially if he
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 6: wants the market to go up.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 5: All of that is certainly possible, of course.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would say maybe even plausible. Maybe even plausible,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: that's right. What's going to happen, yeah. Joe Weisenthal, thank
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: you so much for joining. Thank you for having me.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: And thanks for all you're doing to keep us informed.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: Appreciate it.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: Anytime.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: That was a blast.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: That's our show for today. Thanks to Joe Weisenthal for joining.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: Dan and I will be back with a new show
• 1:16:55
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