4/28/25: Trump 100 Day Approval Tanks, MAGA Cope Over Market Crash, Shein Prices Skyrocket

Krystal and Ryan discuss Trump's 100 day approval, MAGA voters cope amid market crash, Shein prices skyrocket.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
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Speaker 3 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have the incredible rhynd
Groom in this morning for Sager and Detti.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
Great to have you Ryan, left wing populist takeover.

Speaker 5 (00:42):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Actually, we are going to have Emily join us though,
so that we can reflect on Trump one hundred days
and not have a total left wing Trump's Arrangement syndrome
over here.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
So get our snark in now before where Emily shows up.

Speaker 5 (00:53):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
And for those of you who are wondering, Baby is
not coming yet that we know of.

Speaker 5 (00:58):
At least this morning that Sager is.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Having to deal with a few things there, so he'll
be in later this week, assuming that you know.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
A lot of fold in place, a lot of appointments
the last week or two.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Indeed, yeah, a lot going on, so also a lot
going on in the world. We are going to dig
into all of the polling that has come out with
regards to where Trump is as he hits one hundred
days this week, both on the top line numbers, where
he is economically, the way things have moved, even on
issues like immigration, how his own supporters are thinking about
the first hundred days. We're going to take a look,
of course, at the latest with.

Speaker 5 (01:26):
The trade war.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Shean prices are up and shipping traffic is way way down,
so you know, Americans starting to feel the pain at
places like Timu and she In see how that reaction goes.
We wanted to cover some of the things that have
happened with regard to immigration and deportations. That Wisconsin judge
was arrested last week. There's also some additional things that
we've learned Ice having deported several US citizen children seeing

(01:49):
is one to four years old, one of them suffering
from cancer, so we'll dig into that. We also have
burning clapping back at Alyssa Slotkin and Justice Democrats revealing
their first candidate this cycle, something Ryan had sort of
exclusive access to or early access, so we'll talk a
little bit about that. We also have a bit of
an international flare in the show today. This is also

(02:09):
partly because Ryan is here and he has done such
incredible reporting in Pakistan, but also this is an incredibly
important story for everyone, Indian Pakistan inching closer to potentially
a war, both of them of course nuclear armed superpowers,
so that's certainly something we want to keep our eye
in on and Canadians going to the polls today as well.
So we're going to have David Dole join us to
break down the twists and turns in that race, which

(02:31):
has been really centered around our own president here Trumph.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
And for the India Pakistan story, we'll have said Arthura Roy,
who wrote a really prescient investigative piece for us about
Jamu and Kashmir a couple of weeks ago at drop site.
And we'll also have a pre interviewed Wakasakhmed, who a
lot of you know is our terrific Pakistani reporter who's
here an exile in the United States, and just to

(02:54):
talk about whether or not we're going to get a
nuclear war out of.

Speaker 5 (02:57):
This, but were to take an important discussion.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
Yeah, I think that's rather important. Yeah, before we start onse,
we won't have time to talk about the latest updates
and Israel Palestine over the weekend. The the the murder
spree has just gotten out of control, and people in
Guys are saying that, and it's easy to get cynical
about this, but people in god are saying that the

(03:21):
amount of slaughter is at a scale on like it's
been previously. Wow, Like I think fifty three people killed
on Saturday, more than fifty killed on Sunday. Just seventeen
killed overnight into Monday morning. Meanwhile, net Yahu gave a
speech where he insisted that Israel will not accept an

(03:43):
Iran nuclear deal unless there's a complete obliteration of Iran's civilian,
peaceful nuclear program. It's like, this is a US Iran
nuclear deal.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Right, So it's so, well, we'd like to we'd like
to pretend it is anyway to imagine that it is so.

Speaker 4 (04:02):
But the question is can he actually bomb around without
US support and according to Tulsea Gabbert and Michael Waltz
and all these other intelligence officials. No, they can't successfully
pull it off. So it actually isn't up to him.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, well, we were talking before the show. You know,
schil abt Amram, who we've described as a liberal Zionist
and had on this show. He has been slowly sort
of evolving in his views, and he even just now
came out on set listens undeniable as a genocide, and
basically what tipped him over, and personally, I think at
this point there's no real serious debate that you can

(04:36):
have about whether or not it's a genocide. And what
tipped him over in particular is here they are just
outright starving. However, many people are left in the Gaza strip.
You now have dozens of people who have already died
of starvation. We know Abu Baker was suffering malnutrition. I'm
sure there are so many people in gods potentially basically
oh everyone, yeah, suffering from malnutrition. At this point, you know,

(04:57):
the food and the aid remains blocked. Administration does not
appear to be applying any pressure, regardless of what their
State Department spokesperson may say, in order to allow that
food aid in. And so I mean the clock is
ticking on, you know, an escalated extermination campaign. And that's
where we are right now.

Speaker 4 (05:15):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
So all right, well, without that grim update, no pun intended,
out of the way, I want to go ahead and
get to the very latest with regards to where the
Trump administration is at this morning. And as we said,
we have a special guest joining us to help us
understand what has happened in this first hundred days and
how the public feels about it.

Speaker 5 (05:32):
And that is our own Emily A. Jishinski.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
All Right, guys said, Trump administration officially hits one hundred
days this week. I think we have a fancy graphic
we can put up on the screen there with the
count count up.

Speaker 5 (05:42):
I guess through one hundred days.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
I think we're officially at what ninety eight today or
something like that. But all of the polling outfits ninety nine,
one hundred days, All of the polling outfits have done
their official you know, one hundred days. Where's the at
digging into the top line numbers also where he is
on an issue by issue basis. So let's go ahead
and put up on the screen this graphic that we
made with all of the different outlets and where they
see his approval at this point. Just a note the

(06:05):
one on the end there that's the Harvard Kennedy School.
That's just eighteen to twenty nine year old. So that's
why the numbers there look a little different, but very
noteworthy among that age demographic, which had been sold as
you know, really shifting to the right, and of course
voted for Trump in more significant numbers than young people
had voted for previous Republican candidates in the past, including
Donald Trump himself in twenty sixteen. But I mean, overall,

(06:28):
the picture here is not a pretty one.

Speaker 5 (06:30):
If you are the current president of the United States.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
I think the best ratings you've got there are about
eleven points underwater. You've got him dipping into the thirties
in at least one of these polls. You know, all
of them seem to be clustered around low forties in
terms of the approval rate. Really effectively, Emily, I think
at this point you can say pretty officially the honeymoon
is over. This looks very much like Trump pulling that

(06:55):
we saw in the first term, and he came into
this office with him you know, fairly positive approval rating.
He was roughly around fifty to fifty even had a
little bit of an edge you know, above water in
some of the polls early in his term. Now, with
a combination of tariffs and even things that had previously
been strong points for him like immigration going sideways and

(07:18):
receiving net negative approval ratings, he is left in a
you know, in a position of unpopularity, which is one
that he will be familiar with from the past.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, first of all,
that graphic is so helpful and incredible. I like that
we're now aggregating the pole aggregation with the politics and
New York Times. But what's particularly bad news for this
administration is that those numbers are not like new dips.
If you go and look at these charts, what they
reflect is an X. It's almost you could map the

(07:49):
real clear politics aggregation on sen your Times aggregation. Somewhere
around March tenth, eleventh, Chuck crosses the forty eight percent
approved disapproved sort of water mark and then keeps moving
in the other direction. So he starts above water and
is dipping, and then he starts his disapproves start to
go up as the approves start to go down. So

(08:10):
that sounds very obvious, but the point is this is
a steady trend over the first one hundred days of
decline and Crystal. Before we got going, you sent a
chart that was also really interesting, which aggregated Trump's pulling
numbers on particular issues. Basically, the only one that he
is remaining at a decent level on is immigration, and
even that he is below water now. The only other

(08:33):
thing I'll add is people in the administration are hearing
a lot. And we've talked about this on the show
about Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty one, that Ronald Reagan
was able to weather a recession and all of the
political consequences that came with Paul Volker and the shock
and win reelection by nineteen eighty four, even though the
economy hadn't arguably quote unquote recovered. That is what this

(08:56):
administration Granted Trump doesn't have to run again, although God
knows he may, but he's the second term president, so
you expect to see a little bit more thicker skin
to public reaction. But in this case, they're also really
hoping that they're able to land the plane at some
point when it comes to the politics of public opinion

(09:19):
that right now, what they're doing is dramatic shock. They
had the mandate and so they're shocking the country not
just on terriffs but on everything. But the numbers are
not reflecting a positive, obviously political reaction to any of that.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Man, I'm really sorry to hear that, because I was
wondering too that whether or not they were starting to
think of Reagan in his first term and think like,
you know what, Okay, yeah, we are actually going to
drive the economy into recession. But that's okay because Reagan
did it too. Now, of course in eighty two, Democrats

(09:51):
had his massive wave and then yes, then there was
a giant landslide that re elected Reagan in nineteen eighty four.
The difference, of course, is that Reagan was elected, you
could argue to do something about runaway in stagflation and inflation,
and in combination with Vulgar. I don't think it was

(10:11):
totally happy with everything Vulker was doing, but in combination
with Vulker that was aimed at addressing something that voters
did say that they were upset about. Now voters have
said that they're upset about the collapse of manufacturing over
the last fifty years, in the hollowing out of the
middle class. And we talk a lot on this show
about how at least Trump was acknowledging that concern, and

(10:35):
the proxy for that acknowledgment was him talking about tariffs.
But then when he comes in and does it this
way and drives the country into recession, it's not exactly
what people were hoping was going to happen. And so
a lot of the conversation seems to be like, did
people vote for this or not? Like is this what
people had in mind? Let's put up Nate silver Eth
and this is one more chart that suggests, no, this

(10:58):
is not exactly how people, you know, felt like this
was going to go. So, you know, are how are
people squaring that? Are they really saying to themselves, Eh,
all right, we can actually blow the economy up because
Reagan did and Reagan was fine, and he was fine,
that's right. Like if that's your model, you're like, yeah,
you actually can, it's right.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
I mean, just to before you grab that question, I'm
only one thing to add to that is it's the
polar opposite.

Speaker 5 (11:23):
People voted.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
The number one thing they said is we want in plation,
you know, to come down yes, and terms like how
about price increases? So you know, I'm sure. I also
think in some ways I find the question of like,
you know, is this what people voted for or not
to be a little bit silly, because you know, voters
like there's a whole basket of things that go into

(11:44):
their vote. I think to think of it as, like,
you know, here's my checklist, and this is specifically the
issues on which I am voting, is just not a
realistic assessment of how most voters go about casting their ballot.
So I find the question itself to be a little
bit silly. But to the extent that people were casting
a ballot on one issue in particular, inflation was certainly

(12:05):
among the top, if not the top issue, and instead
not just on tariffs, but on the immigration policy as well.
These are inflationary policies that are almost certain to raise
prices significantly, at least in the short term.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
The Ryan Grimm voter checklist is whether the Eagles will
actually show up at the White House if they win
the Super Bowl. No, I think that's true. And the
other thing I think could be happening here is because
the tariffs were such a dramatic I mean, this administration
has been doing all kinds of like generational projects of
the conservative movement that are dramatic, and conservatives will quibble

(12:44):
with the process, even though Trump is sort of finally
handing to them on a silver platter what they've been
asking some Republican president to do for decades and decades.
So a lot of this is like dramatic, it is radical,
and people would say that, but the tariffs are PARTI
because the markets and the sort of material effects on
people's you know, conditions, They are going to be remembered

(13:09):
as the thing that maybe changed the trajectory of public
opinion on Trump. But actually, what we've seen in these charts,
and you can see it if we put the last
one back up again, the Nate Silver one's that's an X,
and the X starts to happen before liberation dates right
around like March tenth, March eleventh, that's New York Times
has it about March tenth. The Real Core Politics one

(13:30):
has it around the same time, So that's before Liberation Day.
This trend was happening for Trump very steadily.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
Before Liberation Dayah.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, and so hit it line there, right, Yep. The
gap opens up definitely around Liberation Day. But the point
I'm trying to make basically is that the group of
people who are independents, who aren't hardcore partisans, who showed
up and voted for Donald Trump because of inflation or
because of immigration. Frankly, that's the group of people that
probably is looking around and saying, I've voted against Joe Biden.

(14:03):
I thought Trump would make the economy better. I thought
that he would be the only one who had the
sort of political guts to take care of what they
saw as a wildly out of control immigration system. And
they're looking around now and they're like, okay, so those
deportations don't seem to be going well. Whether you're from
the left or the right, maybe you even want master deportations,
and you're like, well, that doesn't mean sending people the

(14:24):
sea cut. And on top of that, the market has
been in flux. There's percarity, uncertainty, layoffs. So you can
see how that one two punch is catching up with
Donald Trump. With that group of voters who's not the
partisan left or the partisan the part is an anti
Trump or the partisan pro Trump.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
I think you make an important point Emily, which is,
I do think the terriffs are the least like, the
most unpopular, and they're so dramatic, and they directly impact
people's material well being. And do you have huge numbers
that say, my personal financial situation right now is getting worse.
You have majorities who say, I expect it to get
even worse over the coming years. People are expecting price hikes.

(15:04):
Like I do think that probably in terms of the
souring of public opinion, is the most important thing. But
I also do think the fact that he has taken
on so much water on what had previously been his
most popular issue, which is immigration, because there was so
much conversation about these you know, the horrific deportations to
Seacott and the you know, just total like a rature

(15:27):
of any sort of due process, the revelations that you know,
they can't really produce evidence that any of these people
so far that we've learned about who are sent there
were actual hardened gang members. And then specifically the you know,
the conversation around kill mar Abrego Garcia, and if you
pull people on the handling there, I mean, it's a

(15:47):
landslide in the direction of you know, this should not
have been done, and this man should not be disappeared,
and they should bring him back, et cetera. I do
think that taking bringing him underwater on even his most
popular issue has also been an important part of the
acceleration in his favorability decline. And so you know, we
look at that like April one demarcation, that's Liberation Day,

(16:09):
but April is also when we start to really focus
in on some of these stories around immigration that people
are frankly horrified by.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
Let's put up a five wall. Emily answers there.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah, this is quite an interesting chart to look at,
and I think that's an important point because this administration
is stealing themselves and they sort of know, and they
went in they had this totally contradictory narrative. On the
one hand, they had a mandate. On the other hand,
handling that mandate could be pretty unpopular. And Trump is

(16:41):
having historically a shorter honeymoon than other president. So some
of these trends we're talking about are totally normal. You know,
you start pretty high and then steadily declined throughout your presidency.
We're talking about I've study decline over the first one
hundred days not the entire presidency, and so to some extent,
the Trump administration and people involved in this themselves because
they knew they were about to do some pretty dramatic

(17:05):
policy changes. And on the other hand, I don't know
that the public thought that the drama would go beyond
you know, these kind of common sense policies on immigration
or common sense you know handling of the economy. And
I'm saying that, you know, regardless of whatever particular policy,
that Donald Trump is the alternative to Joe Biden because

(17:27):
he has this like in the minds of some voters,
he's not the guy who was responsible or oversaw the
inflation or oversaw the big immigration numbers. And so Trump
will look around and say, I'm cleaning up Joe Biden's mess.
But what happens now is Donald Trump and Republicans are
just consistently betting on Democrats being even less popular than

(17:49):
they are. This is a trend of the Trump era
that Donald Trump is, you know, so polarizing that they
just need basically like a second term Joe Biden, or
they need someone who is as uniquely unpopular as Hillary Clinton.
That's their only path to the White House. In the
Trump era, as long as Trump dominates politics because he
is so polarizing, and to some extent that becomes a

(18:11):
bubble right because you lose the will to recapture significant
swaths of the public.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
I can understand why so much of the public didn't
expect Trump to make these kinds of moves when it
came to immigration, because I think back to imily remember
that zero Hedge debate that we posted on immigration. It
was Robbie Swavee and like the libertarian presidential nominee on
one side against what Jack postobiac and Ryan He's like

(18:46):
far far right dudes, And I remember being surprised myself
at like how bonkers they were. They were like, they're like,
we need to go to war with the cartels, we
need to deploy the army in the American state. And
I knew that that those views are out there, but
I'm like, oh, these are These are fairly influential people

(19:06):
who will have the ear of even more influential people
like Stephen Miller, you know, if if Trump wins. And
so despite doing news shows basically every day, I hadn't
quite absorbed, you know, how committed and how radical they
were until I think until that debate and so then

(19:26):
seeing them actually execute it, it's not surprising that the public
is recoiling. But I'm curious as you talk to people
in that universe, do they feel chastened at all or
are they more like Steven Miller was over the weekend
giving who I don't know if you guys saw this,
this rant he gave where he's like, we need to
get these communists, you know, off the court. And if

(19:47):
you think that they're going to stand in the way
of President Trump getting the terrorists out of your neighborhood,
you know, you've got another thing coming. Like he was
just like full on, like you know, maniacally, We're full
steam ahead on this. So it are they checking themselves
at all based on these numbers or is it no,
like this is this is our shot to carry out
a revolution and we're going to do it.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
The Stephen Miller clip is very representative, the one that
you're just referencive and and Ryan well, I mean, so
this this hardened core absolutely is. I remember Ryan walking
out of that debate and just like taking a deep
breath and being like, holy shit, you were surprised by Like, yeah,
it was a lot. It was a lot. But you know,
I think that's exactly what we're talking about here, is

(20:30):
that the Trump administration felt it had the wind that
it's back with the public on immigration and on the
economy to the extent where they said, this is a
generational opportunity to take dramatic steps, corrective steps in their
mind that further the like broader conservative politics, broader conservative project,
which is pushing back on a century of as they see,

(20:52):
like Wilsonian administrative sprawl. And so they right now feel
as though, because the public gave them this permission, that
this is exactly like that, and to some extent this
is going to be controversial. They're kind of right, right,
like if the alternative, if if the alternative is totally
open borders as people see it, as people see it,

(21:13):
or Steven Miller, some people are still gonna be siding
with Stephen Miller and the public because the other policy
is so awful, and that's what gives them this idea
that they can keep going digging further and further, pushing
further and further. And that's obviously where you end up
alienating the public, because at some point the policies of
the Democrats are not that bad compared to sending people

(21:36):
to Seacott. So they are like that because that's this
is the hardened core who now feels like they have
been vindicated. They are absolutely riding high. They are feeling
like they should be dunking on reporters left and right
every single day, and they're ready to do battle. And
I think that that may come back, and I shouldn't
say may that will come back to bite them, because

(21:58):
the public have to be able to sort of absorb
where the public is, if that's part of your goal.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
Well, I mean this relates to actually the other conversation
we were having before the start, which is the revelation
of these you know, signal chat groups Chatham House, Ben
Smith and the reporting and you've got you know, David
Sacks and Tucker Carlson and all these like right wing
media figures and all these right wing tech billionaires all
inside of this chat group, and basically, you know, David

(22:25):
Sacks sort of threw a fit about some of them
having quote unquote Trumps arrangement syndrome.

Speaker 5 (22:30):
And like exited the chat.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
But to me, that's emblematic, first of all, of how
captured right wing quote unquote independent media is that they're
just like, you know, propagating these narratives that are being
said to them directly by billionaires. But in addition, it's
also emblematic to me of what an increasingly tight bubble
they are keeping themselves in. So and that has been
kind of, you know, an intentional project of Trump. Two

(22:52):
point zero is if there's anyone out there that even
may disagree on anything we're doing, we don't want anything
to do with it.

Speaker 5 (23:00):
And you pointed that out emily.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
With regard to the trade agenda, you don't have Bob
Leitheiser in there anymore.

Speaker 5 (23:06):
You've got Peter Davarro, right.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Because Lightheiser is you know, yes he's a protectionist, but
this is you know, someone who has his own ideas
about things and it's things and his intellectual and will
go about this in like some.

Speaker 5 (23:17):
Sort of an intentional way potentially.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
And instead you have Navarro, who's fresh out of prison
and who is an absolute ideologue, unmovable ideologue, driving the
train with regard to tariffs, alongside you know, Trump himself.
That seems to be the one part of the agenda
that Trump himself is really taking ownership of. Meanwhile, I
think the whole immigration portfolio and other and foreign policy

(23:40):
apparently too has been outsourced to Steven Miller, you know,
So you have these and then the all the doge
piece whatever that was of course outsourced to Elon Musk.
So you have sort of these incredibly ideological, off the
rails type figures who are completely managing whatever there you know,

(24:00):
ideological hobby horses, and as I said, they're you know,
the whole intent of Trump to two point zero is
to make sure that there is no one in the
room who's going to say this is a bad idea,
this is illegal, this is unconstitutional, I'm not going to
do this, I'm going to resign. Like that has been
a concerted effort to make sure that's the case. And
so yeah, they're in a complete and total bubble. And

(24:22):
I think they also, you know, they feel like, well
they were the posters were wrong about us before, and
the economists were wrong before, and so we're there's no
external feedback that is going to really move us off
of whatever our you know, wild ideological project happens to be.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
I think that's a really good point that because there's
such like limited trust in media feedback and perhaps reasonably
so on that point and polling that people don't. They're like, well,
what we're doing is popular. You know, this is exactly
what everyone voted for. So yes, we are going to
keep sending alleged MS thirteen people to El Salvador. But

(25:04):
on that point, this is this is really interesting what
you said, Crystal, because I think about even the fact
that Peter Nabarro was in prison and how that changed
this second Trump administration after all of the investigations and
escalations in the law fair It's like they are applying
these litmus tests for loyalty that from just a pure

(25:26):
like management standpoint, if this were not the United States
of America but some type of corporation, you would be like, Okay,
what you're doing here, Maybe there's some management logic to it,
because the litmus test is saying you are not counter signaling.
This is you know that to the point that like
they've executed or not executed, excluded not executed yet, but

(25:49):
excluded people from the circle that are critical. They see
that as counter signaling, and their litmus test is total
loyalty because if you don't pass that litmus test, you
are a potential vulnerability in the administration. You're a potential
squeaky wheel. You're the potential. You know, Cassidy was Cassie
Hutchinson who or whatever the other girl was who came

(26:10):
out in the January sixth hearings. Liz Cheney, by the way,
someone who was really close with Trump circles and Trump
one point zero. You're the squeaky wheel that can get
us in trouble down the road. And so because of that,
they've really purged people who are willing to be internal critics,
because that's you don't pass the litmus test. And when
there's that genuine hesitation to criticize internally even the trajectory,

(26:33):
then you end up with a chilling effect and you
end up with everyone just hopping on the bandwagon of
every idea that Stephen Miller has or that Donald Trump
frankly has.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
What I also found interesting about this first hundred days
is what Trump didn't do, which is basically pass anything
through Congress. He did the Lake and Riley Act in
the first couple of days, which is a Democrats just
base gave him whatever they wanted when it came to
immigration because they were really on their on their heels.
But since then it's probably been the least productive kind
of it's definitely been the least productive first hundred days

(27:07):
of any new president who controlled Congress in like modern
you know, in memory. Instead, he's focused on executive orders,
and he's focused on kind of concentrating power in the
executive bites, going after law firms, going after you know, gutting,
trying to gut universities, you know, rounding up, the rounding
up students, the trade war, things that he can do

(27:30):
on his own, and then having his having his top
administration officials complain that the laws are such that they
get in the way of him being able to do
it legally, like this JD. Vance saying, look, what do
he wants to do? You know, all these people came
in and now it's really cumbersome to get them out. Meanwhile,
of course, though there is progress being made legislatively, you know,

(27:51):
the reconciliation package is moving, The budget you know, continues
to move. Do you do you are are you impressed
by what you've seen moving through Congress? And do you
think do you think he's going to be able to,
like in the longer run, get this reconciliation bill, the
tax cut bill through and divert you know, he's trying
to divert tens or maybe even hundreds of billions of

(28:12):
dollars over to ice. Their current budget is something like
nine billion. He wants to put that up somewhere between
three hundred and five hundred, which is like silly, Like
they don't have the capacity to spend that amount of money.
The point is they would be they would have more money,
and money would be no object for you know, what
they're trying to accomplish. Do you do you think that

(28:33):
they're sufficiently committed to that that they're going to get
some of these things done.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
This is a really quiet source of tension on the
right because a lot of people who are sort of
architects of unitary executive theory, which is where this administration
has spent the bulk of its first one hundred days focused,
Meaning they're trying to retake power that they feel has
been wrongly delegated to bureaucrats and the administrative agencies. That

(28:58):
people who support that also say that's going to require
a lot of codification through Congress. You can't just do this.
We've seen this come up in certain court cases time
and again that this has to be done through Congress.
If you want to get rid of USAID or the
Department of Education, you can't do it with an executive order.
You can't just dismantle the agency. You can dismantle it
in certain ways, but ultimately you have to pass and

(29:21):
act through Congress. And they're all pretty i mean, everyone
you talk to in Trump circles is pretty sure the
midterms are not going to go well for them, that
they're probably going to lose the House. And that's where
it's sort of Twenty twenty five is such a different
year than before Congress got sclerotic and did absolutely nothing.
That's downstream of our politics. We could probably talk about

(29:41):
new gingrids for a long time and how that came
to pass. But the point is, I mean, this should
be a robust legislative agenda that they should be able
to be whipping up bills and getting them through Congress.
They don't even have to be big, like omnibus type bills.
But they can't because they're stuck on these stupid budget
battles and because so much of the energy right now

(30:02):
is in taking power back from the executive branch that
they can't even augment that with you know, Article one
type of activity. So I think that's actually going to
be a bigger tension in the next one hundred days
of the Trump administration, because a whole lot of the
people who are the policy architects here are going to
want to see stuff go through Congress before the midterms.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Go ahead and put a four up on the screen
that this shows the historical context of you know, Trump
is the most unpopular. He's actually beat his own record
for being the most unpopular president at one hundred days
in modern history. Now, of course, you know, our politics
has changed, like these Harry Truman style almost ninety percent

(30:47):
approval writings are just not really on the table at
this point in time. But you know, even if you
look at Joe Biden at this point he was in
the fifties. You know, Barack Obama was extraordinarily Barbara in
the first term. In the second term, he was we
think of that as being a time when there was
a huge backlash against Obama. He's still at fifty percent there,
you see, you know, George W. Bush not doing too

(31:09):
while they're in the second term, but obviously very popular
in the first term. So in any case, even by
modern you know, equivalent standards, Trump is sort of uniquely unpopular.
But you know, I want to transition to we have this, uh,
this great clip from Frank Luntz one of his focus
groups where he was speaking to Trump supporters and asked

(31:30):
them specifically about the tariffs in their concerns about the economy,
they have any concerns about the economy. And this has
been the consistent source of Trump's power. You know, He's
always been compared to other presidents, relatively unpopular, but he
has this group of voters who are ride or die.

Speaker 5 (31:48):
And will never leave him no matter what.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
And that is certainly evident in this clip that you'll
see where every single one of these Trump voter focus
group participants is like, it's fine if my pohurah one
k goes down. I'm not worried about it. I support
what he's doing. I think this is a masterclass, et cetera.
Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

Speaker 6 (32:06):
I need to ask you an issue that no one's
brought up and that has crashed your four A one
case most of you to tariffs. Stock market is way down,
it needed a correction. Oh so you support it?

Speaker 5 (32:26):
Yes, you bet yep, And I have to tell you
how many for a one K wasn't impacted at all?

Speaker 6 (32:34):
How many? First off, how many of you did not
lose any money over the drop over the crash of
the stock market market one indidividual to people?

Speaker 7 (32:44):
So and my administration I lost more money than the
Trump administration by far.

Speaker 8 (32:55):
Yeah, for the whole year.

Speaker 6 (32:58):
No one's upset over this.

Speaker 8 (33:00):
Now if people just get in and stay the course,
they'll be just fine.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (33:07):
And I was about to say, I'm not a day trader.
I try not to look at it very often, which
is I think a good thing. But I also I
also trust that Trump and all of his advisors that
are involved with the tariff issue know what they're doing.
So I'm just gonna hang on. I know it'll correct

(33:30):
at some point.

Speaker 6 (33:31):
How much surprises have to go up before you say
this is not.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
That buy from China.

Speaker 5 (33:37):
I'd rather pay more money and buy American same And.

Speaker 8 (33:41):
Prices only go up if if demand is inelastic and
if there's no alternative supplies. And they're doing a brilliant job.
They're surrounding China with countries that want to manufacture stuff
as well, and we do need to bring this stuff back,
the strategic stuff for sure, but but China is going
to be in the soup if they don't knock it off.

Speaker 7 (34:03):
Ever, article of quothing I have on is probably made
in China, Malaysiers, somewhere else. Okay, retailers, give me something
made in America.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
So Emily Trump has denly lost ground with independent voters.
I mean, the numbers there are pretty extraordinary, and he
has lost some high profile supporters or at least not
necessarily lows them. But some people are starting to express concern.
Joe Rogan has done so. Candice Owens just came out
and said, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm
siding with Harvard over Donald Trump. So you have a

(34:36):
little bit of cracks at the kind of elite level.
There's no sign of that in the polling among Republican
based voters, who still very much trust Donald Trump and
very much support whatever it is that he's going to
do whenever it is, he's going to do it well.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
And this has always been Trump math, is that you
have this base and it's actually not even a majority
of the Republican Party. It never really has been a
majority of the Republican Party. It's about thirty to forty
percent of Republicans who are just they will leave the
Republican Party if Trump leaves the Republican Party. They are
just Trump first, and then the party, then conservatism. Trump

(35:15):
is their sort of politics. He is the party and
so to them, and so yeah, that's the Trump math.
Is always that group of people who will turn out
to the polls, and then you have to put on
top of that some group of people that is just
plainly voting against the other side. They just think the
other side is so awful that they will swallow all

(35:36):
of the sort of stylistic issues that they see with
Donald Trump or any of the liabilities that they see
with Donald Trump and say, all right, he's less bad.
And that's not exactly what happened with Barack Obama. It's
not exactly what happened with Georgia Bush. You had a
big group of people that were voting of independence who
said I'm actually voting for this person, or swing voters

(35:57):
who said I'm actually voting for this person, not just
against the other person. And that's how Trump has always
been able to get through. It doesn't translate for Republicans
after Trump, and that is what they have to reckon
with when they see a Joe Rogan as a Canarian,
the coal mine is that this guy gravitated towards Donald Trump.
As soon as Donald Trump starts to screw things up,

(36:19):
that doesn't mean he's going to ever be around the
Republican Party again. So how do you sort of be
able to weather the storms of Donald Trump and come out?
Does that mean you need to start speaking out against
what's happening in the universities And nobody's going to do that.
But these are the thoughts that are going to start
bubbling up in their heads in the next one hundred

(36:39):
days for sure.

Speaker 4 (36:40):
And if we could put up aaight, that shows how
deep in the minority these kind of hardcore Trump supporters are.
Is seventy two percent of people expect a recession, and
the vast majority of them believe that Trump is doing this,
that he's driving us into recession, that this is not
some external shock to the economy. Thirty four percent approve

(37:04):
of Trump's tariffs. In this country that is so divided
by tribe, by party, it's very hard to get anything
under like forty five. Like if your side supports it,
then at least forty five percent of the country is
gonna end up supporting it, even if it's the most
idiotic thing ever until it starts to have material bite.

(37:26):
And I think that's the only thing that can kind
of push through the part isn't divide here. So you
kind of wind up with Trump in this in this
trap where if he wants validation, which as we know,
that is the thing that he lives on, you know,
throughout throughout the day, throughout his life, he can find
that validation in that focus group and from people like

(37:50):
Frank Lunz was talking to there, who are like, yeah,
need this is this is all great, there's a plan,
trust the plan. Just don't look it's all it's all
gonna be. So Trump can find that. So what what
what could shake him out of this? Is it? And
it's it sounds like the market, Yeah, yeah, the bond
market and the Target Walmart and Home Depot ceo is

(38:13):
coming to tell him the shelves are going to be empty.
Shook him out of it. And he's like, okay, fine,
we're not tw one hundred and forty five percent. And
then everybody's size and they're like, okay, somebody got through
the Trump This is all going to be okay, and
then he's like, it's only going to be fifty to
sixty percent, and it's like, bro, that's the same once
you're over like ten ish percent, Like you're shutting down

(38:35):
global shipping, which is maybe fine if you have some
plan B for what you're going to do when global
shipping shuts down, but moving it from one forty five
to sixty it's like, oh, he didn't really get it
so that so he he sort of absorbed it when
he heard it from those CEOs. Now the shelves are
actually potentially going to be empty. So will that resonate

(39:00):
at all?

Speaker 1 (39:02):
I mean it depends because if you've purged internal critics
and people are walking on eggshells to say, hey, sir,
you're your own supporters, you're working class supporters who paid
money to get to another state to go to a
Trump rally, like these are the types of people right
now who are really unhappy. First of all, does anyone
in the circle have the sort of courage to say that,

(39:24):
to make that point without being blacklisted? I don't know.
It seems like the people who did in that case
were people outside of Trump's circle that were able to
get through to Scott Bessant, and then Scott Bessant was
able to take the message to Donald Trump or that
he heard directly from these guys on Wall Street. I mean,
Trump is here if this is hopeful. Trump is a

(39:45):
savvy politician to the extent that he knows people's material
conditions are a big driver of their politics. And you know,
the whole thing we haven't talked about here, that's maybe
the biggest elephant in the room is the fact that
this guy might want to run for a third term.
And I say run, I don't know what that means.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
There are a Trump twenty twenty eight hat over there now.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
Yeah, Scott Scott, as Steve Bannon has said, I don't
know who Scott Bannon is. It's a combination of Steve
Bannon and Scott Bessant. That is an interesting hybrid in
the like Maga zoo but if you want to imagine that.
But Steve Bannon has said there could be different avenues
for that, And I just think that is a really
important elephant elephant little room right now. That changes everything

(40:32):
we just talked about in the way that they see
this internally too.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, and previously the right would have oh you libs
are trumped arrangements. Of course, he's just joking about that.
No one's saying that shit this time. No one is
saying that.

Speaker 5 (40:43):
This time.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
They're like, oh, I guess he wants to run again.
We'll see how that goes.

Speaker 4 (40:47):
We can't tell what's a joke or not anymore.

Speaker 5 (40:49):
It's not none of as a joke. Clearly, none of
it is a joke.

Speaker 4 (40:51):
Twenty eight is more likely to be as approval rating,
but still, yeah.

Speaker 5 (40:54):
True, true.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
I so one thing I also wanted to to not
skip over over and actually, can we go back to
A five and put this up on the screen, because
there's a bunch that's really interesting and noteworthy in this
New York Times Ciena poll of the different issues. First
of all, immigration is his top issue. He's still underwater there.
But then if you look at his worst issue, it's

(41:17):
the case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, which I think is
vindication to people such as myself who've been saying, no,
you should be talking about this case because that is
going to pull down all of his numbers on immigration,
which is his strongest issue. You want to go after
his strength, et cetera. Putting that aside. Look at what
his next worst issues are the war between Russia and
Ukraine and foreign conflicts in general. And Ryan, I don't

(41:40):
want to skip over that because I think when we
did our focus groups and talk to those AOC Trump
voters right after the election, almost all of them cited, Hey,
I think he's going to be better for peace. I
think he's going to be better for ending wars than
Biden Harris. And now you know, and Trump makes this
out landish promise, so I'm going to resolve the Russia

(42:01):
Ukraine conflict in twenty four hours. Always preposterous, but you know,
he says it was such he repeated it so much
that I think a lot of people did feel like, okay,
maybe not twenty four hours, but he's going to be
able to bring this thing to a close. Obviously, the
Gaza ceasefire completely collapsed. Now you're looking at just complete
you know, extermination campaign and starvation within Gaza. And so

(42:21):
you know, that was another piece that I think is
really important as well. There was this preposterous framing of him,
in my view, as being this like anti war peace
candidate that truly won over you know, some chunk of
independent voters. And that piece has also just completely completely crumbled,
and he has really nothing to show for foreign policy

(42:42):
agenda at this point.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
Yeah, and Emily, before you answer that, Amir Tabone at
the at Ha Retz over the weekend had this really
interesting column where he said there actually is a war
that Trump can end with a tweet, and he's referencing
this kind of really pathetic post on either Twitter or
through a social from Trump where he was like, Vladimir
please stop, what are you doing? Like it was like

(43:05):
just humiliating himself. If Trump did that for net Yahoo
and said, this is what Tabona wrote was Bibe stop,
get the hostages out. Like if he did that, the
next day, the bombing stops, the talks resume seriously, and
within days probably the hostages are out. Like there actually

(43:28):
is a war that he can end if he chooses to. Instead,
he's not ending the one he's focused on and the
one that he promised he would end, which is Israel's
assault on Gaza. He ended it on the inauguration day,
he got his little headline, and then six weeks eight
weeks later allowed Israel to start it up again. And

(43:49):
he's also saying that net Yahoo needs to be kind
to the people in Gaza. That was roughly his quote
on Air Force one. Meanwhile, net Yaho is not allowing
any food in, hasn't since March second, which if your
stated preference from as Trump is not the one that
nen Yah was falling through on, doesn't that make you

(44:10):
look weaker than Joe Biden. Like Joe Biden when he
would tell them you got to start letting aid in,
they'd go from like, you know, three hundred trucks to
three hundred and fifty trucks, Like he could at least
move the needle. Right, Trump is claiming that he wants
food to get into Israel, and nt Yah who's telling
him to f off?

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Like?

Speaker 4 (44:28):
Is there any point at which this is embarrassing to him?

Speaker 1 (44:30):
It's because the people who are making the policy itself,
who are executing the policy itself, are not with Trump
on those points about how Israeli speak kind to the
people in goss At. Trump, at the very least, I
guess you could say, has like maybe more of a
realist perspective than the Mike Huckabee. Huckabee, on his first

(44:51):
night as ambassador, posted a picture with Netsan Yahoo. I
mean Trump himself obviously posted on true social a couple
weeks that they are on the same side of every issue.
He and Nen Yahoo after they had a phone call.
But you know, this was everything we were talking about
with Dan Caldwell being purged from the Pentagon from Pete
Heigsa's circles. Like, yes, that sort of exasperation with the

(45:13):
israel Hawks in the Republican Party is real in Trump circles,
but it's not nearly as powerful as the sort of
holdovers the you know, policy or the build up the
residue of decades and decades of GOP bear hug Israel,
bear hugging of Israel at every turn. And so even

(45:34):
if Trump, as you were saying that, if Trump posted
just bb stop in all caps like he did to putin,
I was imagining him being subverted, Like what would happen
immediately after he sent that, true social people would people
who are in the administration doing sort of like daily
policy would immediately if he even did that hypothetically, would

(45:54):
immediately be trying to find ways to support Netsan Yahu
that are like under the radar. So that's not conspiratorial,
It's just that there's an internal war between people who
thought like even people here in DC who look at
Donald Trump and say, well, maybe this is the best
chance to sort of end the dead foreign policy consensus

(46:14):
in a good way. You know, they're constantly being their
efforts are constantly being like frustrated and thwarted by the
majority of people in professional Washington foreign policy circles who
have learned that they can you know, get continue to
have jobs by saying nice things about Donald Trump. I'm
thinking specifically, like a Mike Waltz here, by the way,
and be in positions of power, and then they can.

(46:37):
All they had to do was like sort of take
that pill of swallow the pill of take the medicine
of saying, oh, yeah, Donald Trump is great, make America
great again. So yeah, it does look weak, It absolutely
looks weak, but it doesn't really get framed that way
among his supporters.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
It also imperils the negotiations with Iran as well. So
I mean there's you know, the coddling of Israel has
reverberating impacts that don't just just stay limited to you know,
the horrors that are unfolding in Gaza with our taxpayer dollars,
which is increasingly wildly unpopular with almost the entire population,
with like the exception of boomer Republicans. Effectively, at this point,

(47:14):
the whole nation has turned on this, you know, on
this project of perpetual war crimes. I do want to
touch on immigration again really quickly, just because we have
some really interesting numbers there that show, you know, people
can evaluate how things are going and change their minds.
On the democratic side, in particular, there seems to be
this assumption that, like, well, if a pole says people

(47:36):
think this, that's it.

Speaker 5 (47:38):
There's no change in their minds. It's over.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
We better just not talk about that topic, or we
better totally you know, adopt a different view on that topic,
et cetera. And immigration is like the primary case in point.
Take a look at A nine, So this is just
on how people feel about whether or not immigrants benefit
the population, and you can see this huge surge in
the number of people who now say immigrants make the

(48:02):
country better off, and a dramatic decline in those who
say that immigrant immigrants make the country worse off, and
relatively flat on the ones that say it doesn't make
much of a difference. If you go back and look
at the numbers on immigration during Trump one point zero,
you have almost never in history had a more pro
immigrant population than we did at that time, because they

(48:24):
were looking at what Trump was doing and they were saying,
I don't support this, I don't like this, And that's
how you end up with Democrats, you know, reading those
polls and then you know, doing their high school Spanish
at the debates and you know, positioning themselves in that way.
So we're seeing a similar radical shift in terms of
people's views on immigration. And go ahead and put a
ten up on the screen. You can see Independence in particular,

(48:48):
who have shifted quite dramatically. The fifty six percent overall
disapprove of Trump's handling of the issue. Sixty two percent
of Independence opposed removing foreign students, fifty two percent pose
additions to El Salvador. I would personally like that number
to be a lot higher than that, but anyway, and
only twenty one percent Abrego Garcia left in this prison.

(49:10):
So you know, to me, this was predictable that you know,
in theory, people say, yeah, okay, let's you know, Trump's
saying these people are all criminals. Yes, let's get the
criminals down, et cetera. When you're actually met with the
reality of, oh, these are human beings who you know,
many times they are not the caricature that they've been
made out to be. And then you also have the

(49:32):
Trump administration, you know, engaging in these outrageous tactics which
they themselves you'll clearly paint a picture of, Hey, today
it's kill mar Abrego Garcia, tomorrow can be you. We
want to go after the homegrowns next. So immediately they're
helping to make the connection between the loss of rights
for this immigrant population and the loss of rights for

(49:53):
the entire population. You know, it's not surprising to me
to see that immigration, even on the issue of immigration,
he's now underwater and independence are really flipping their views
in real time.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
No, it not surprising, and gets to a point that
you made earlier, which is that they don't even necessarily
trust public opinion anymore because they saw that happen in
the first term and then saw him get re elected
several years later because the Biden administration's policies were so unpopular.
And again you can make the mistake of misreading that

(50:27):
mandate as an embrace of your policy rather than a
rejection of your predecessor's policy. And I think there's some
of that happening. And the other part of it is
that because they feel they have the mandate, they are
sort of isolating themselves or insulating themselves from even critics
on the right who say, you're going to hurt your

(50:48):
ability to do quote unquote mass deportations if you're focusing
on these cases where you actually made a mistake in
doubling down. In the case of kilmar Abrego Garcia, obviously
the man who admitted the Trump administration made a mistake
was fired, but the administration doubled down on it and
didn't concede that there was any error whatsoever, and it

(51:08):
became a public spectacle that resulted in public opinion shifting,
just as you showed, Crystal, And so you know, it's
sort of from both sides. There's this criticism that people,
because of those litmus tests in the administration are basically
insulated from and it will not make their policies more popular,
that's for sure.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
I think it's Stephen Miller. I think the public sees
Stephen Miller on TV and they're like, whatever that guy's for.

Speaker 5 (51:33):
On against He is a relatively repulsive.

Speaker 4 (51:36):
And he's single handedly driving in entire country's views on immigration.
He fades and people are like, yeah, I don't like
immigrants anymore. He comes back and like, God, I love.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Immigrants, like immigrants or this dude, I'm with the immigrants
team immigrant all day long. I mean, he just reads
he is an extremist.

Speaker 4 (51:52):
Like he is. Trump thinks he's an extremists. There's that
amazing anecdote where he's making fun of Miller for being
a racist, saying that, like, if it was up to you,
Steve Than, you know, everyone in this country would look
exactly like you.

Speaker 5 (52:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (52:03):
Yeah, two racist for Trump.

Speaker 5 (52:05):
I mean that which relates to too races because he's
happy to have around it right exactly.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Yeah, I'm happy to give him control of the entire portfolio.
And it relates to you know, they've been tracking the
stock market performance when it's Peter Navarro and Howard Lutnik,
whose name is mentioned more in.

Speaker 5 (52:20):
The news versus Scott Pasant.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
So Ryan, you may have you may be onto something
there in terms of the spokespeople for the Trump policies.

Speaker 5 (52:28):
And thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
We appreciate you and I'm great to have your views
on this first very very consequential, very fast paced momentous it.
We'll certainly say extraordinary first hundred days of this administration.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Thanks for having me, guys, Yeah, our pleasure.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
We now have the Trump trade war officially showing up
in numbers in terms of shipping and news media starting
to cover it. Let's take a listen to MSNBC talking
about a fifty percent your over your drop at West
Coast Ports.

Speaker 10 (53:02):
You are looking at a forty four percent decrease in
vessels year over year coming in. And what's really key here, Alex,
are the people that move the containers.

Speaker 5 (53:15):
You need people to move trade.

Speaker 10 (53:17):
If you have forty percent less containers coming in, that
is going to impact the people that are the truckers,
the railroads, the warehousing. This is more than just US
consuming and US bringing in orders. There's an entire supply
chain here that is connected to jobs. And so the
longer this goes, Alex, We're going to see some significant

(53:40):
impact here in terms of in terms of employment.

Speaker 5 (53:44):
In fact, the Port of Oakland, which is a huge, huge.

Speaker 10 (53:47):
Port that relies on both imports and exports, are very
very balanced. They've got a fifty to fifty split. They
already started warning on Friday about the detriment when it comes.

Speaker 9 (53:58):
To jobs and the expos are with this, even if
a deal is reached soon, are we for at least
some troubling times ahead.

Speaker 4 (54:07):
I believe we are.

Speaker 10 (54:08):
And the reason why is that trade takes time to
move and you also have to order it. The fact
that we've had a pause in all of these manufacturing plants.
I have had sources tell me in China that there
are factories that are literally shut down because they're not
making any products for the United States. So if you
think about it, remember with COVID, everything shut down and

(54:31):
then everything ramped back up. And so what happens is
once you hit that on pause button, it's going to
be that rush to make the materials and then get
the product on the vessels and back here, which causes
congestion and raises freight prices.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
And the West Coast ports are not only gigantic, they're
also the first places where these massive disruptions would show up.
I think we all got a real lesson in supply
chain logistics during COVID, And how you know, once these
things start.

Speaker 4 (54:57):
To unravel, apparently not all of us, not all.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Of us, There are cascading effects that you cannot just
snap your fingers and things go back to normal, even
if Trump today comes down and says, guess what trade
war over, We're back to, you know, wherever the previous
tariffs were with regard to China. If you could put
B two up on the screen, because I thought this
was a remarkable visible representation of just how screwed the
supply chain is at this point.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
So this is a map.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
You can see China on one side, you can see
la on the other side, and the blue dots are
all of the ships. Now normally there should be you know,
roughly even distribution across this map, and you can see
because so many companies in the US that we're planning
on importing goods from China said I can't pay this

(55:43):
one hundred and forty five percent tariff. This is an impossibility.
You have all of these ships in this cargo just
stuck sitting in China right now. And you know that's
the state of affairs that Walmart and Home Depot were
warning Trump a bat out that hey, we are weeks away,
days away from starting to have our shelves be light,

(56:06):
starting to have things that are just on of stock.
And also many people have been taking you, Ryan b
one Bee, guys, put this up on the screen. We
are also now officially the point where San, the low
cost retailer that many Americans appreciate, is massively hiking their prices,
so up to three hundred and seventy seven percent price

(56:29):
hikes over at Shan. You know, not everything is at
that level, but the thick kitchen cleaning towels have not
now gone up from a dollar twenty eight, which is unbelievable.
They cost that to six dollars and ten cents whatever.
Blind's air conditioning gap brush that's gone up two hundred
and nineteen percent. So the price hikes are starting to hit.

(56:49):
I can tell you I personally have seen prices jump
at Amazon just over the past couple of weeks as well.
And I know there were reports Ryan about Amazon sellers
starting to take into account these price hikes.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
Yeah, and the risk for the world is that all
of those ships that you saw kind of hanging out
off the Chinese coast, they got to go somewhere at
some point, and so there there other countries are afraid
that now there's going to be a bunch of Chinese
dumping Like okay, well we made this stuff, it's sitting
the ship, can't sell it to the United States because

(57:20):
they're doing their thing. You know, who wants a towel
for you know, two dollars and Columbia to be like,
all right, we'll take you know, a million towels for
two dollars or whatever, uh or a Columbia company and
then the company in Columbia that makes the towels they
go under. So like that, there's a there's a risk.
Everybody's kind of holding their breath over like how this

(57:43):
is how this is going to play out. Meanwhile, this
this Ken Griffin, you know, Trump supporting Ken Griffin. This
answer that he gave at a at a recent conference,
I thought kind of nailed the problem that the that
the US what do you what would you call it?
The US political economy faces coming out of this, because

(58:06):
the thing that really nailed Biden, like you said, was
inflation from when the supply chains restarted, because you can't
because of all of the bankruptcies and all of the clogging.
It takes a very long time for that to start
running smoothly again. Now you've also implicated treasury, treasury bonds

(58:31):
and the dollar, So what is that going to do when, if,
and when that starts flowing again, let's roll Griffin.

Speaker 5 (58:40):
Markets are, you know, obviously not liking what they're hearing.

Speaker 2 (58:44):
Treasuries in particular have seen a lot of volatility and worries.

Speaker 5 (58:50):
About dysfunction in the market. What is that doing to
the American brand?

Speaker 11 (58:55):
Well, okay, you actually picked exactly the right word. The
America can brand, right. The United States was more than
just a nation. It's a brand. It's a universal brand,
whether it's our culture, our financial strength, our military strength.
America rose beyond just being a country.

Speaker 8 (59:15):
It was like an.

Speaker 11 (59:15):
Aspiration for most of the world. And we're eroding that
brand right now. And if you think of your behavior
as a consumer, how many times do you buy a
product with a brand on it because you trust that brand.
You know you could buy like a similar dress with
no name for less money. But you want the dress
that you think is going to not fall apart in

(59:36):
two weeks. You want the handbag that you think is
well made. You want the television that you know that
when you turn it on, it's going to work perfectly.
You want the car that when you turn the engine on,
it's going to run and when it comes to somebody management.
For example, there are many great American institutions who's the
power of their brand, but they will deliver a fair

(59:56):
service at a fair price that they'll do well by
their investors and put their investors' interest first. Whether it's
a Black Rock or Fidelity. These are global brands of
immen's power. But in the financial markets, no brand compared
to the brand of the US treasuries US treasure market,
the strength of the US dollar and the strength the
credit worthiness of US treasuries, no brand came close. We

(01:00:20):
put that brand at risk, and as you and I
both know, it can take a very long time, very
long time to remove the tarnish on a brand.

Speaker 4 (01:00:34):
And the US being the kind of reserve currency and
this kind of global empire has a lot of downsides,
also has upsides for Americans that you can imagine a
world in which the strength that comes from that could
be the basis for reform and revitalizing the country. Instead,
you're kind of getting rid of it without replacing it
with anything else, right, and also destroying tourism like just

(01:01:00):
which is you know, nine plus percent of GDP, which
is just an absolutely huge number.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
And much more significant for certain places many of the
Red states, like Florida and the Gulf Coast in particular.

Speaker 4 (01:01:11):
That is like reliving twenty ten and twenty eleven. Yeah,
which tiktoks about that, and for no reason, Like the
amount of pain that ripped through Vegas in the wake
of the financial crisis is hard to bear and to
see it now happening for no reason, just just because, Yeah,
it's hard.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
To watch and was part of a shift to the
right in Nevada because of the carnage from COVID and
the you know, the perception of democratic handling of that.
And you know, in spite of the fact that you
have very strong union organization there, you know, you still
saw significant shift to the right in Nevada as a

(01:01:52):
consequence of you know, the shutdowns and the COVID fallout.
So you know, you can only imagine with this where
the blame is one hundred percent with Donald Trump, Like
there's no argument otherwise what the fallout could be.

Speaker 4 (01:02:06):
That's a good point. They suffered through the COVID lockdowns,
So first they suffered through financial crisis and yeah, real
estate collapsed.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Oh that was brutal.

Speaker 4 (01:02:13):
Then a nice recovery for a while, and then they
got a couple of good years and then whacked by COVID.
Then everybody's coming back to Vegas and partying and things
are looking good and then boom, yepy wat shut down.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
You know, the Ken Griffin things could require a longer
exploration that maybe we don't want to get into you today.
But as he's talking about America as a brand, I'm
just thinking, like many of the people on the Trump
team that you know he supported and he backs Republicans
to the tune of many millions of dollars, they don't
agree with that. Like Steven Miller sees America as blood
and soil, right, so they don't see America as a

(01:02:45):
quote unquote brand. And you know, I think there is
something to be said for a critique of the America
is a brand posture. But I also think that you know,
his comments about the way that that branding and no
one would understand this better than Donald Trump himself, that
that branding impacts. You know, our status is the global
reserve currency and the flight to safety to treasury bonds,

(01:03:05):
et cetera. You know, it is quite paramount. So the
way that the financial system is structured right now, and
so if you are going to disrupt that and move
to something else. You better have a damn good plan.
If there's one thing that we have definitely learned, there
was no damn good plan here.

Speaker 5 (01:03:19):
There was barely a plan.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
I mean, they were crafting that chart using chat GPT
or however they decided to do it leading up to
the hours before it's revealed and turns the entire global
you know, economic system utterly on its head. We got
a couple more pieces here that just show, you know,
the beginnings of the economic fallout. We've got B five
an ill Intel plant has now been delayed years and

(01:03:42):
you know, at the cost of quite a number of jobs,
is now delayed until twenty thirty one. And in part
the uncertainty over the tariffs is is playing into this.
We also something that Sager had brought up before is,
you know, some of these specific parts of our economy
are ultra ultra dependent on China.

Speaker 5 (01:04:01):
The you know, for new parents buying.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Strollers, like basically every stroller is ninety eight percent or
something made in China. Many other you know goods that
you sort of essentially have to buy when you are
bringing a.

Speaker 5 (01:04:14):
Child into this world, and toys.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Are disproportionately made in China as well, be six up
on the screen. So these are impacts already on the
US toy industry, and you have to think, like you know,
for in our terms, Christmas is a long way off.
If you are a toy importer, if you're a toy store,
you're thinking about this and you're planning for it now.

(01:04:37):
You already have some eighty to almost ninety percent of
toy companies that are delaying orders. You got sixty four
percent of small toy companies and eighty percent of mid
sized toy companies canceling orders. And you have almost half
that say ran they will go out of business in
weeks or months, Yeah, weeks or n right.

Speaker 4 (01:04:58):
And that they and a lot of them are are
going out of business as we speak. China, meanwhile, has
announced that they're going to try to help their companies
that you know, these factories that are completely shut down.
They're going to try to help those companies, help those
workers to get through this, because they can do that.
They have like a unified system, whereas you know, we don't,
you know, Donald Trump would have to go to Congress
and doesn't apparently doesn't feel any interest in doing that

(01:05:19):
real quickly on that on that Intel point to preempt
or a counter argument that you're going to hear from
Trump supporters over this plant. Well, let's say, well, this
plant was it was delayed previously. First it was supposed
to be twenty twenty whatever, and then it was supposed
to be twenty to thirty. Now it's twenty thirty one.
And this is, you know, a representative of the failures

(01:05:41):
of the of the Chips Act, of the and of
the underlying kind of capacity in the United States to
build up our high tech manufacturing base. Okay, true, But
if that's the case, and you already understand that, is
that the foundation on which you would launch a trade

(01:06:01):
like think about that. So according to you, I'm talking
to you Trump supporters who are going to make this
exact point about this Intel plant, that this had nothing
to do with the tariffs, that we just simply are
not able to build these manufacturing facilities in a competent way.
If that's true, and it is, we have a lot
of work to do when it comes to labor force

(01:06:24):
and when it comes to cracking down on these multinational corporations.
It would much rather do stock buybacks than actual investments.
That's true, We've got to get our house in order.
If that's true, then why did you just take a
wrecking ball to our ability to do that? Why not
fix our own manufacturing capacity problems here in the United

(01:06:47):
States first and then launch a trade war so that
when market conditions are made better domestically by tariffs, we
have the capacity to respond to those conditions and build
man manufacturing capacity. That would be how you could potentially
successfully do that.

Speaker 5 (01:07:04):
And the irony is we actually were doing some of that.

Speaker 4 (01:07:07):
Widen. The charts are like shooting straight up under Biden.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
If you if you go and look at manufacturing investment
and spending and jobs, and you know, these factories were, yeah,
these factories.

Speaker 5 (01:07:20):
Were coming online.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
We were actually, you know, for the first time in
a long time, the recovery out of COVID included more
manufacturing spending. You know, the history of economic crises in
you know, modern American economic history has been that when
you come out of the crisis, some of the manufacturing
losses they're just gone.

Speaker 5 (01:07:39):
They don't come back.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
And they were able to buck that trend through the
Infrastructure Act and through the Chips Act in particular, and
through the the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the dumbest
ever name.

Speaker 4 (01:07:52):
But anyway, some of some of Trump and Biden's tariffs, yes,
targeted tariffs.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
Put putting all of those things together, you actually did
have a positive trend in terms of rebuilding American manufacturing
in some really key sectors for the future. And all
of that they're taking a sledgehammer to. And Trump thought
all of that was stupid. Ryan, I mean, He's said this.
His view was, you didn't have to give do this

(01:08:18):
industrial policy. You didn't have to give these subsidies and
create these incentives for companies to build that.

Speaker 5 (01:08:23):
You could just do tariffs and force them into it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:25):
And job bone them. Yeah, call them up and yell
at them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
And you know what the job owning like with a
company here or there, that may work. But if you're
trying to have a nationwide manufacturing renaissance in certain key sectors,
you are not going to be able to jaw bone
your way into that. And you're certainly not going to
be able to just tariff your way into that. And
we know that because in Trump's first term he did

(01:08:48):
just tariffs, much more limited, but just tariffs without corresponding
industrial policy.

Speaker 5 (01:08:53):
And it didn't work.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
Manufacturing continues to decline, Companies continue to offshore jobs. And
the only way that we turn, no matter what round,
was through the industrial policy that was you know, inherent
in the Biden administration that the Trump Trump people and
the Doge people are now completely like decimating and taking
a wrecking ball to