8/13/25: Trump Floats Jobs Numbers Coverup, MSNBC Says No DC Crime

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
and we are so excited about what that means for
the future of the show.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
This is the only place where you can find honest
perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
not exist anywhere else.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
So if that is something that's important to you, please
go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and
you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free,
and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

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. Good morning, everybody, Happy Wednesday. What top of
show are we calling this?

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Emily?

Speaker 4 (00:37):
What is this?

Speaker 3 (00:38):
This is breaking democracy, breaking democracy.

Speaker 5 (00:41):
Sometimes it's status points.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Battist points.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
I would say, get breaking democracy because we've given up
on democracy.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Right that's oh ah, just joking. No, no, no, it's okay,
No more quiet parts out loud. It's Happy Wednesday. Not
used to saying that.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, And to
Ryan for switching in. We've got some childcare problems at home,
but everything's seem to be working out right. Now, all right,
let's see what do we have today on the show?

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Who usually sets U up? Is it Ryan or you?
Who talks?

Speaker 6 (01:06):
We just we just it's it's how the spirit moves us.
Nobody really knows. It's okay, see, are much more regiment totally?

Speaker 5 (01:16):
Are you totally?

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (01:17):
All right, well, why don't I do the first three
and then you do the other three? In the spirit
of the show, we're going to talk about the economy
and the new BLS, the new Bureau of Labor Statistics
has a new proposed commissioner who's got some interesting changes,
and we're going to check in on inflation. We're also
going to talk about a fascinating in some ways a
new deal between Donald Trump and Nvidia and AMD, those

(01:39):
chip making companies here in the United States, a crazy
precedent that's being said there, and also kind of what
it tells us about AI. It's a good segue to
talking about employment, and basically youth unemployment and or underemployment
is going sky high here. There's a lot of AI
indications in the overall job market. Obviously, want to check
in on that. Youth unemployment not usual a good sign politically,

(02:01):
and then we are going to have what is his name,
Delano squad Square.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
He's going to be here in the studio.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
This is a friend of Emily's, and he's going to
talk to us a little bit more. He's more of
a conservative guest, but he's going to talk to us.
Somebody knows quite a bit about DC crime and he's
going to tell us what he thinks about the Trump
administration takeover here of MPD.

Speaker 6 (02:20):
Yeah, of course, and speaking of which, actually Donald Trump
is reconsidering or he is considering a reclassification of marijuana.

Speaker 5 (02:27):
So our co host here, Stephen A. Smith, has lots
of thoughts on that.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
What of Steven's best takes perhaps is only good take?

Speaker 6 (02:34):
Some people say, we're going to get into what's actually
on the table and what it might mean Donald Donald Trump.

Speaker 5 (02:41):
I actually meant to say.

Speaker 6 (02:42):
Tucker Carlson had a nun on his program who testified
to the conditions that Christian's experience in the Middle East
more broadly, but also particularly in the West Bank, and
she spoke a bit to Gaza as well. So we're
going to do a breakdown of some of the comments
that were on Tucker Show and what it could mean

(03:02):
if people the administration are watching it, and Soccer may
have thoughts on.

Speaker 5 (03:06):
That for sure.

Speaker 6 (03:07):
And Andrew Cuomo in the Epstein Files, that's not a
surprise to anyone, but zoraon Mom Donnie is now going
after him hard for being in the Epstein Files. So
we have a fascinating zo run ad to get to
and a little bit of news on the Maxwell transcript
front to get to as well. So Sager, let's start
with that new inflation report that the White House was

(03:30):
commenting on.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
You.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Let's get to it.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
And then it also includes this Bureau of Labor Statistics
commission Oh I forgot to say, by the way, Breakingpoints
dot com if you are able to help us out
monthly yearly memberships, you can go ahead and sign up.
And if you can't, no worries, just go ahead and
subscribe button on YouTube. If you're listening on a podcast,
just go ahead and send this episode or any of
your favorite episodes to a friend. So with the BLSID data,
we now have a response here from the White House

(03:54):
after Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner. Basically,
remember the Bureau of Labor Satistics, their job is to
compile all of the employment data. It is, however, very inaccurate,
kind of has been over the last five years. There's
a lot of complicated reasons that Chrystal and I got
into the last time that we covered it. But with
the new commissioner, they're actually proposing actually just doing away
with the monthly job support entirely.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Here's what the White House had to say, if.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
The jobs data is not reliable, should Americans trust the
inflation data?

Speaker 7 (04:21):
Well, look, the job's data has had massive revisions. We
want to ensure that all of the data, the inflation data,
the jobs data, any data point that is coming out
of the BLS is trustworthy and is accurate, which is
why the President has restored new leadership at the BLS.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Trustworthy and accurate. And this is apparently the new justification.
Let's go and put this up there on the screen
from the Wall Street Journal. This was after the appointment
of EJ.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
And Tony.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
He's now the chief He was previously the chief economist
at the Heritage Foundation. He has been a longtime critic
of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But for our purposes, Emily,
what he has proposed is doing away with the monthly
job report entirely, and just to give I guess, you know,
I don't know if there's both sides of this, but

(05:06):
I will at the very least like try to what
they are. What they are saying is that because the
monthly jobs reports have been so inaccurate that they have
proposed doing away with it entirely.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
In an interview on Fox News Digital on Monday ahead
of his nomination, ej Antoni criticized the monthly employment report
as Flaud suggested it be replaced quote with a more accurate,
though less timely quarterly data. Now, the thing is is
that that monthly report is very closely watched by economists,
by the stock market.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
It's I mean.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Obviously even last time. It's been known to move markets previously,
and so the doing away with it, and actually the
way that they compile it would become a major point
of scrutiny for kind of checking in on the economy.
You know, the inflation numbers and the jobs numbers are
two of the only measures that we really do have
as to how things are going in real time. As

(06:01):
I said the last time around, Look, you know the
idea that you're going to get a critical snapshot of
what's actually happened in a month is preposterous. Especially since
COVID we've had response rates decline.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
The stampling, there's so.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Many different problems with the way that they do it,
but it's much more of actually a technical problem. And
by the way, Doge fired the entire team who was
trying to update the system in their very first week
in office under Howard Lutnik. But so yeah, that's where
things are. I mean, the main problem is is that
now they're kind of showing quote distrust, you know in
the numbers and whatever these no new quarterly numbers are.

(06:35):
What they're going to have to do is prove their
work and actually do this competently.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Do I have full confidence that that's going to happen. No,
I do not. But I'm curious what you think. I'm
shocked you hear this.

Speaker 5 (06:45):
So let's put this next element on the screen.

Speaker 6 (06:46):
This says Joe Wisenthal's reaction, so to get a flavor
of how people are reacting in Wall Street world, he wrote, basically,
a lot of people would agree that the BLS does
need to be shaken up in some way due to
the increased cost of collecting data and he says, thanks
to inflation as well as lower response rates to surveys
and so on a soccer dispension, they're strange in the

(07:06):
production of high quality economic data, and having high quality
trust with the data is really important. But at this point,
hoping that the new BLS chief will credibly modernize economic
data collection is a bit like believing that Doge was
going to apply the world's most advanced statistical techniques to
reducing billing fraud at Medicare and Medicaid. It was a
nice idea, didn't happen, and it's hard to imagine it

(07:27):
happening now with economic data collection. So Antoni was just
until yesterday as Donald Trump plucked him at the Heritage
Foundation where he was a chief economist over there, and
one reaction, interestingly from someone at the American Enterprise Institute,
Dave Hebert, was I've been on several programs with him

(07:47):
at this point and have been impressed by two things.
His inability to understand basic economics and the speed with
which he's gone MAGA. Now, in the conservative world, there
were some people who just say, if you go full
MAGA and you are an economic populist, then you don't
understand basic economics. And the people who criticize him, just
from my survey of the comments, appear to be pretty

(08:12):
much libertarians whose main quibbles with him are over populism.
They see him as overly populist. But if you're Joe Wisenthal,
if you're on the street, you're looking at this, Stephen Moore,
I don't know if you saw this kind of poured
cold water on the idea that they would pull the
jobs reports.

Speaker 5 (08:31):
Okay, so it seems like.

Speaker 6 (08:33):
They're trying to calm It reminds me a little bit
of the terifs they're trying to calm Wall Straight a
little bit.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (08:39):
I mean, because you can understand if you're Joe Wisenthal
and you're like, oh, you're taking this maga guy right
off of Steve Bannon's war room, and people now have
to trade off of the information that he does or
does not provide.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
I think it's entirely fair.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
And I mean I think this is one again where
it's about competence, showing your work, transparency, etc. Not exactly
some of the hallmarks so far of dos the Trump
administration is basically it's just been a slapshot approach like
you may take a problem, you may diagnose it correctly,
but then fixing the problem. If you don't fix it correctly,
then people are obviously going to still prefer the earlier one.
Like to the BLS point, with all of those major

(09:13):
revisions under Biden and then significantly under Donald Trump. Just
again at a very technical level, the sampling and the
way that it was collected was outdated and ridiculous. It
is entirely fair to say, Okay, that's going to be done.
But one of the points that Wisenthal makes is that
the BLS at the end of the day, it's not
a political job because it was just compiling data. Like

(09:34):
at the end of the day, what your job should be,
even if you want to modernize it, if you want
to change it, is one that creates and corrects sampling.
You're going to have to be very transparent right at
the economy level and at the stock market level, to
make sure that everybody understands exactly how all of.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
This is done.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Taking away a monthly report was not, in my opinion,
the definition of modernization. We're not sure yet right whether
this is all going to go through, but the fact
that it is, you know, open about it is going
to make people very shaky about what the next one is,
and they're really going to have to go and to
check their work. And the worst possible scenario is like
an actual politicization of changing the way that the numbers

(10:12):
are calculated and making it so and then you know,
basically doing it in the way that would make it
so that it's overtly political. And already they have the
appearance of that. So it's actually on them to assure
any you know, serious market analysts or whatever that that's
not the case. They may get away with it, to
be honest, I mean, if they actually do have some transparence,

(10:32):
if it's.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
The only number you can rely on, then what the
hell are you supposed to do? Right?

Speaker 3 (10:36):
But their current justification, as I understand it as well,
is that if you change the way if the job
numbers had been accurate, according to the Secretary Scott Best,
and I was just saying yesterday, he's like, then the
FED would have cut rate. So part of this is
also trying to put pressure on the Federal Reserve. But again,
if you juke your numbers, you know, initially to try

(10:56):
and engineer some.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Sort of other result that's going to look really bad.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
And I'm not going to sit here in America is
the greatest you know, data collector or any of that.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
In the world.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Trust me, We're definitely not if you look at at
all the revisions for everything. But the point is more
about the trust in this specific person. And then you know,
it's not above the Trump administration to try to change
things that are happening to try and engineer some sort
of stock market.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Bomp or you know, a fall or.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
A FED cut or any of that. And that's where
we're started to get into very very dicey territory.

Speaker 5 (11:26):
It's dicey territory.

Speaker 6 (11:28):
But what's interesting about everything you just said is that
it gets to how fake all of this stuff is
to begin with.

Speaker 5 (11:34):
And that doesn't mean it's That doesn't mean.

Speaker 6 (11:35):
That in the process of fixing what you see as
a bad situation, you sort of make this diagnosis. It
doesn't mean that Trump can be trusted not to exploit
the opportunity and the very real problem.

Speaker 5 (11:48):
But it does mean that that doesn't mean that the
problem isn't real.

Speaker 6 (11:51):
And this gets to I think a really fundamental question
of policy in the Trump administration because there's direction. Yeah,
and there's process, and the distinction direction and process I
think gets lost so often in that, like he's sometimes
pointed in the right direction and the process is flawed,
and the process is sometimes worse than actually trying to

(12:14):
approach the problem like.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Well, we're gonna talk about this with d C. I
think is a perfect example.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
It's like you could take a problem of US crime
in Washington, d c uh and then you could say, Okay,
well we're going to deploy the federal troops or whatever,
and you're like.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Okay, you know, what are you going to do?

Speaker 3 (12:28):
And it's like and now there are videos coming out
of you know, FBI agents and HSI agents in the
cleanest and nicest parts of Washington, d C Emily, which
you and I have spent time in, and any.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Washington d C. Right, it'd be like having it'd be like.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
We're going to clean up crime in New York and
then having the troops like strolling around like the Upper
East Side, what like what are we doing here? You know,
it's like get out of your broad like there's nothing
going on unless it's for you know, journalists and for
cameras and all of that, and you know, their theory
would be like a grand show of force, and that
those of us who have lived here, like, what are
you even talking about?

Speaker 1 (13:02):
It's like, we don't have any issues here.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
It's exactly it's exactly the same same in la I
would say, right, you know, the same type of thing
in any partition deportations.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
You know, we go for the show.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, do same thing, going for the show, not actually
being serious. Just by the way, if anybody's interested, our
deficit payments significantly went up, outpacing all tariff revenue and
everything by over ninety percent. Just in case anybody's interested
in any of those numbers, the actual numbers, Let's go
ahead and put a four up on the screen.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
Please.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
This is to the inflation numbers that you were talking
about and overall, I mean, this is a number of
the Trump administration is very happy about. But there are
some serious warning signs inside of it. So they say
inflation held steady at two point seven percent.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
In July.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Prices excluding food and energy categories rose some three point
one percent over the last twelve months, above forecast, so
slightly above target, but two point seven unchanged from June's gain,
below the two point eight rise that was expected from
the economists surveyed in by the Wall Street Journal. But
the core inflation numbers, when you start to actually dig

(14:07):
into it, they start to get, you know, a little problematic.
And this is I've talked about this before about why
trying to put it all in a single number is
a problem because it ignores it'd be like GDP numbers.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
We like, well, GDP went up.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
I'm like, well, what about home prices in your ability
to afford one, you know, which is going to impact
you more. It's the same actually when you look at
what categories are driving inflation or not.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
So let's put this up there please.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
This is a six which has the individual goods where
you can see where you've had significant reduction.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
So eggs, yeah, great.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Eggs are actually down by some forty three percent in
terms of annualized gain, along with quote non frozen non
carbonated juices some five point two per I don't even
know what that is. Butter snacks, rice, pasta, cornmeal, lunch meats,
baby food, cheese.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
And related products.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
All of those have gone down, not significantly except for eggs.
But the places where we have seen increase are at
the very top. You can see coffee, what's interesting about
the coffee number I dug into this is a lot
of it is because of these tariffs on Brazil as
a result of the Bolsonaro stuff, right, so some fifty
percent tariff there. Brazil is a significant exporter of mass

(15:17):
market coffee here in the United States, but broadly also
just the general trade imbalance for a lot of the
other countries that ship coffee to America. The disruption and
supply chain has pushed it high as well as has
apparently been some bad weather down in Brazil and in
Latin America that killed the crop. So those two things
together have spiked the cost of coffee to some twenty
five percent. That's one of those things you could easily

(15:38):
notice because obviously, you know, I think the vast majority
of Americans drink coffee every single day. Beef and veal
remain some up fifteen percent. Cookies, peanut butter, canned vegetables,
can fruit, all of them are over ten percent, ice cream,
dried beans, fresh vegetables significantly again up over eight percent.
So a decent number of categories there of everyday items

(15:59):
which Americans are buying and getting. Some sticker shot coffee
being the most noteworthy one, it all comes together, you know,
in that three point one percent number, but it remains important,
you know, just to look at exactly where things are.
Put a five police on the screen as well. This
kind of gets to something we're about to talk about
in a little bit. But the US has also hit

(16:19):
the highest layoffs right now since COVID. So in July
there was some sixty two thousand job cuts announced and
that's a twenty nine percent jump from June, one hundred
and forty percent higher than in July of twenty twenty four. Now,
as you can see, a huge part of that is
by the government and from DOZE. Now specifically the reason why,

(16:42):
and I've said this to some people's shock before. A
lot of people don't know, the US government is the
largest employer in the United States of America, and so
if you trim you know, even a little bit, well,
then you're going to end up in that scenario where
you have a major number of layoffs, and you're also
going to have all of these different layoffs and other
categories that continue to hit technologies having a problem retail.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
That number is very interesting. I'm still I've did some.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Research, not fully ready anyone in the industry is not
ready to say it's all because of tariffs. There's like
other downstream problems inflation, consumer spending, services, and warehousing. But
the problem is it's up everywhere and significantly up amongst
the government. So overall it's kind of a shaky situation
right now. It really is precarious, and the tariffs are
one where. Yes, overall the tariff rate remains high, but

(17:29):
it's targeted at its most insane levels at only a
few countries, which is going to lead to those wonky outcomes.
So Brazil is the perfect example. That's our way of
the twenty five percent coffee bump. The other most tariff
country right now by the United States is India, so
there's going to be potential problems in the future on
generic pharmaceuticals. It could change the oil business. I'm trying

(17:50):
to think of the third most tariff country. I forget, yeah,
I did district period, but China our number one trading partner.
There's been a suspension and a broad bringdown of terror
because they keep getting exemptions and lo and behold. Just yesterday,
Trump announced in nine another ninety day pause. So we're
going to be coming up on two hundred and seventy
days basically of pauses on tariffs with China, which is

(18:14):
really the entire ballgame. So that's part of the reason
why the Trump administration can say, see, our tariffs are working,
when it's like, dude, you don't even have real tariffs
on like the original tariffs you announced, you.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
Took them all away. You can't say that it worked well.

Speaker 6 (18:26):
Basically the ten percent baseline still that direct, but not basically.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
But that's not We're not that's not the one hundred
and thirty percent which was announced, So that's not the
so you know, the major changes or any of that
that was there. So yeah, of course things are where
they are. And then finally the last thing I've heard
from them is well, what about the stock market. I'm like, well,
and Nvidia alone is eight percent of the entire S
and P five hundred, and a huge part of the
S and P five hundred is driven by tech stocks,

(18:51):
which are generally not as impacted by tariffs.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
That's not where I would look.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
I would look at manufacturing employment and the deficit numbers,
as well as US capex like in turn terms of
domestic investment. All three of those are down from what
I was looking at just yesterday. So look, you know
it's not the disaster scenario, but it's not the great
success of scenario.

Speaker 6 (19:10):
I was going say, I was talking to Republicans on
Capitol Hill about a week before they left for recess,
and I think I mentioned this on the show before,
but I was telling them, if you look at this,
I think it was a quinnipiek pole from last month
that found Trump underwater on the economy, immigration, foreign policy.
So three signatured Trump issues and on the economy. I
asked them basically, like, what do you think that says

(19:33):
if Donald Trump is underwater on the economy, And they said, well,
this is why we passed the one Big Beautiful Bill
when we did, because we now expect heading into the midterms,
that these economic changes are going to trickle towards the consumer.
I don't think anyone actually used that word. I'm paraphrasing,
but are going to trickle into different states of communities,

(19:56):
and people will start feeling the effects of both the
tariffs and the Big Beautiful Bill in a good way.
Because they always saw the Big Beautiful Bill as the
necessary part two of the tariff agenda, basically, like they
didn't believe that you could just keep doing the tariffs
if the bill didn't pass, And that's an impossib hypothetical
to revisit now. But basically, that bill had all of

(20:19):
what they would not describe but are accurately described as
a sort of industrial policy, industrial policy decisions that are
aimed at bringing jobs back, So exemption right offs for
retroactive to January for things like manufacturing and building and.

Speaker 5 (20:37):
All of that.

Speaker 6 (20:38):
So Soccer right now, they're in the middle of their
own experiment, and they don't have any control over the
president who is using tariffs as a foreign policy tool
in addition to an economic tool. And so that just
leaves what's been there from the beginning uncertainty. And with
the uncertainty brings leverage, of course, and that's why you
end up getting the EU to table at a deal.

(21:01):
That's how you end up getting care Starmer to the
table on a deal whatever else. But it's also how
you end up with ninety day pauses recurring and the
China can't getay pauses.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
And I would say again, on these deals, and this
is the other thing that drives me crazy. You know,
some sort of deal is not necessarily good if they're fake.
So the six hundred billion dollar pledge from the European
Union is complete bullshit. I mean, if you look at
the European Union's own announcement, they were like, yeah, we
actually have no ability to compel you know, our companies
to do.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
This, but will pledge it. I guess right.

Speaker 4 (21:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Same with the Japanese.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
They were shown you know, some of the releases and
they were like, well, that's not what we promise at all.
And also at a certain point, you know, some of
these numbers all just become fake, like four hundred billion,
five hundred billion.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
It's all about in the execution. There's a reason. Just
so everybody understands.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
As said this, before my wife worked in trade policy,
these trade deals used to take years to put together.
Now that's an indictment of the process, but part of
the problem. One of the reason why they took years
was because they would pass congresses and they would also
pass legislature in wherever their home country was, and it
became a legally binding agreement between these two countries with

(22:09):
an arbitration process where if you violate said process, then
you're going to have to pay a fine or.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
We're going to have some you know, dispute court or whatever.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
I'm not defending those previous ones, because I think a
lot of those were bad deals. But I'm just saying,
at a very processed level, you're not supposed to just
sign some handshake agreement. It has no enforceability, right, So
whoever comes into office after Trump can do to his
deals exactly what Trump did to the Iran deal. This
was part of the problem with the Iran deals. They
never really passed through Congress, right, so the JCUPO can

(22:39):
just be ripped up by any executive This. You're not
supposed to really do stuff this way, especially with the
US economy, with business, because we now not just have
uncertainty for the next three and a half years, we
have uncertainty basically forever. Like whoever becomes a president. Yeah,
they get to do this whatever they want, last thing
before we move on. I am told though, that as
this moves up to the Super Court that they are

(23:01):
on very dicey territory. A couple conservative court watchers have
said that the court looks very skeptical, at least now
so far, on the way that Trump administration will handle
some of these tariffs that Trump administration is trying to
buckle it all under the purview of foreign policy, but
they don't think it's going to pass legal scrutiny.

Speaker 6 (23:17):
Yeah, and yeah, emergency measures and the same thing. We'll
talk about this in the D block or the DC
block as well. But yeah, that's and that's another huge
variable factoring into the uncertainty because now you have to
take into consideration when you're pricing markets how the Supreme
Court potentially will react in a decision like that. So
the more the uncertainty goes on, obviously, the more we're

(23:41):
likely to start seeing some of these like egg prices
will go down, but coffee prices will jump. These spotty
indicators and reports if we get reports, if we start
getting if we continue to get the data.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
This's been a story I've been watching. This is nerdy,
but everybody stick with me.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
It's about and so the company I just mentioned earlier,
they manufacture the most advanced AI chips. Obviously that's what's
made them a multi trillion dollar company. I believe n
Video alone is more worth more than the entire UK
stock market.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Just for reference, continues to boom.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
So there has been a lot of question over Nvidia
and being able to sell to China. Now there's been
a China kind of Hawk contingent, including Steve Bannon and
others part of the MAGA movement, and actually a lot
of former Trump administration officials from the first term who
have heavily criticized and Video. Their CEO, Jensen Wog and
kind of cozying up to the CCP and Video sees

(24:38):
it not as existential but as important to their future
profit revenues to be able to sell their H twenty chips,
one of the kind of their bread and broader chip
for a lot of AI processing, a lot of the
more basic open source models run on this AGE twenty trip,
as well as the ability to preserve the future sales
into China as core to their business and to growing right.

(25:00):
What Jensen has done is that he has heavily lobbied
the Trump administration, including paying a million dollars to attend
Amar a Lago dinner, and now struck one of the
most extraordinary business deals in American history, where under the
Trump administration, he will be allowed to sell these eight
twenty chips to China. In exchange, he must cut fifteen

(25:23):
percent of those sales to the US government, an individual
company must pay a portion to the US government. Here's
Trump confirming that deal at the White House. Let's take
a listen on China.

Speaker 6 (25:34):
Your administration agreed to send the most advanced or advanced
NVIDIA and AMD.

Speaker 8 (25:40):
Chip no absolute no obsolition and then fifteen percent of
prom the twenties no absolute no.

Speaker 5 (25:46):
Obsoligon well and then fifteen percent of the prom means
the twenties.

Speaker 4 (25:50):
No, no, that's this is.

Speaker 8 (25:51):
An all chip that China already has. And I deal
with Jensen, who's a great guy, and na Vidia. The
chip that we're talking about, the H twenty, it's it's
an old chip. China already has it in a different form,
different name, but they have it, or they have a

(26:15):
combination of two will make up for it. And even then,
so now Jensen also has Jensen's a very brilliant guy.
And Jensen also has a new.

Speaker 4 (26:23):
Chip, the Blackwell.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Do you know what the Blackwell is?

Speaker 4 (26:25):
The Blackwell is.

Speaker 8 (26:27):
Super duper advanced. I wouldn't make a deal with that,
although it's possible, I'd make a deal a somewhat enhanced
in a negative way. Blackwell, in other words, take thirty
percent to fifty percent off of it. But that's the
latest of the greatest in the world. Nobody has it.

(26:49):
They won't have it for five years. But the age
twenty is obsolete, you know. It's one of those things,
but it still has a market. So I said, listen,
I want twenty percent if I'm going to prove this
for you, for the.

Speaker 4 (26:59):
Country, country, for the US.

Speaker 8 (27:00):
I don't want it myself.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
You know.

Speaker 8 (27:02):
Every time I say, like like seven forty seven, I want,
I want yeah, for the air force. So I just
want to So when I say I want twenty, I
want for the country.

Speaker 4 (27:14):
I only care about the country.

Speaker 6 (27:15):
I don't like.

Speaker 8 (27:16):
I don't know, if you know, we will sometimes sell
fighter jets to a country and we'll give them twenty
percent less than we.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Have, all right, So just put this Wall Street Journal
story up here.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
The details of this are so crazy, so cool, with
billions at risk and video CEO buys his way out
of the trade battle. So, like I said, effectively, what
Jensen has done is he is allowing the FEDS. And
by the way, it's not just in Video, it's also AMD,
by the way, which is run by his cousin, which

(27:48):
is crazy that these two cousins of this family run
the two of the largest chip manufacturers in the world.
But so Jensen and AMD, these two companies are going
to have to cut some fifteen percent, maybe even twenty
The full details are not yet available to the government,
just of its chip sales to China in exchange for
issuing export licenses. So basically it's a pay to play

(28:11):
model in China. Now, I mean, theoretically, I guess that's
fine if it's applied across the board. But the process
in which this all came about, as I said, effectively
came down from Jensen desperately trying to get the Trump
administration to lift export licenses of his sales to China.
He has recently spent a lot of time in Beijing

(28:32):
CosIng up to the CCP. He's like, we're going to
do everything we can to preserve our business here in
China because the Chinese companies, a lot of these Deep
Seek models and others, are desperate for some of these
Age twenty trips. But the point really beyond all of
this is that all of it came about in the
same way that Tim Cook brought that solid bar of
gold to Donald Trump and the Oval Office, Like basically,

(28:54):
you know, providing offering to the Great ConA literally paying
tribute to the Great That's the way this is working.
And they're like, well, in exchange for you being allowed
to do business, you must cut a portion of revenue
to the state.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
And look again, it's fine if.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
It was applied across the board, but the point being
that there were significant geopolitical implications around this chip. Part
of the reason why Americans, especially the more Chinahawks, wanted
to stop the export of the H twenty trip is
it would not allow the continued development or of these
open source models, which became a major threat and according

(29:31):
to the AI companies ours, a lot of the technology
and others was stolen from them. Well, put a nine
up there on the screen. Because what's important beyond all
of this is that Chinese authorities have been doing talking
out of two sides of their mouth. One is they're like,
we want this age twenty trip, it's critical for our industry. Second, though,
just yesterday they came out and they were like, hey, everybody,

(29:53):
we need to stop using the Nvidia H twenty trip quote,
particularly for government related perp, because they don't even want
the pretense of a vulnerability.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
So effectively, what they're doing flip it is.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
They're playing us where they're like, yeah, oh yeah, we'll
keep buying it for now. This is what they've done
all the time. They're like, yeah, yeah, we'll keep buying
it for now. We'll keep buying it for now, and
at the same time using the full hammer of the
Chinese government to say that we're going to develop something new.
So just to present the other side of the argument
from a lot of people who defend selling age twenty,
they're like, well, we should keep selling it to them,

(30:27):
because if we don't, then they're going to just use
something else and develop their own native AI chips and company.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
They're already doing it, which I just showed you the evidence.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
They're already doing it no matter what, because they're not stupid,
unlike us. If they see even a single vulnerability, a
critical one that could come down the road, like with
all this trade uncertainty, they just solve it for themselves.
They've done this with cars, even those with batteries, with
minerals refining, I mean airplanes. Now with the chips, which
is really the only area technologically where they continue to

(31:00):
kind of ride behind us. But they're pouring oceans of
government backed money into developing their alternatives and to try
and be chip independent from America in the next four
to five years.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
And so, I mean the point then comes down.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
To is like, well, if they're going to be independent,
maybe make it a little complicated and difficult for them,
or at least negotiate some leverage here, you know, in
the interim but extent, we got this weird corrupt bargain
between Gensen AMD and the government. And you know, again,
you know, for a lot of libertarians and people out there,
they've always complained about crony capitalism. I mean, there's no

(31:34):
better example than this. It's pure just like pay to
play and fluffing the ego. That's a problem I have
around it doesn't make any geopolitical or strategic sense either way.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
It should just make sense.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
You know, fine, if you want to let them sell
it for the reasons I just said, yeah, well, we
don't want them to develop their own domestic manufacturer. They
want them to remain reliant on us. Okay, you know,
well we should still have some much more of a process.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
But that's not how this deal ended up coming about.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
No, it's the issue.

Speaker 5 (32:01):
No, it was completely paid a play.

Speaker 6 (32:03):
It was Jensen Wynn coosing up to Trump and to
others in the administration and getting basically what he wanted
out of it. So Don Bacon, who I think did
he he's formally announced he's not running for reelection, I
think so. Yeah, he's among the many China Hawks that
flipped out. So he said, We've got to realize we're
in an intellectual war, technology war with China, and we're

(32:24):
in an AI competition. Having Nvidia providing this tech to
China is a mistake. He was on a news nation
last night and said that so it's Trump was like
the great champion.

Speaker 5 (32:37):
Of a lot of the China Hawks.

Speaker 6 (32:38):
Yes, that's true, which is also hilarious for many reasons.

Speaker 5 (32:43):
You know, we can talk about installing Elon Musk at
the top of like the government.

Speaker 6 (32:48):
Efficiency effort and all of Musk's various ties to China.
We could talk about Trump's relationship was Hi Jin Pang.
But the China Hawks are in for such a wake
up call to what Donald Trump actually thinks. And there's
a non zero chance, by the way, that the way
Trump approaches China would be better than a president Mike Pompeio,

(33:10):
because you know, it's not belligerent and warmongering.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
My issue yet, my issue around this is the lack
of thought and it's just all egotistical' that's my you know,
like I said, if you want to ship it to him, fine,
do it for strategic sense, make a case. But this
is really just about it's because the thing is it
fits within the broader context of the way all the
text CEOs are approaching this. This is why Apple is
making their fake announcement over five hundred billion dollars and

(33:37):
presenting a solid bar of gold to Donald Trump. Right,
this is who do you think Jensen learned all this from.
He looked at Bezos and at Zuckerberg and at Sundhar
Pichai and all these other guys who have been doing
business with Trump, and they're like, okay, well this is
how I make sure that I get my exemption. You
think Apple is freaking out? You know, yes, they're gonna
have to pay I think a billion dollars in tear

(33:58):
of charges. But they could have been new ked overnight.
You know, with between China and India, they've gotten major
exemptions from all of their tariffs. They basically have from
day one. And then you'll recall you know, in the
early days they were telling us, Howard Lutnick and others,
how we're going to build iPhones here, and that's evaporated.
You know, It's like now it's like a single piece
of the glass, like right here. You know, it maybe

(34:19):
come from Kentucky and depending on the phone, you know
that you get, and it pales in comparison to all
of the investments that they remain making a broad as
long as though as they give him. I mean, I
can think of Sam Altman, that whole Stargate thing, five
hundred billion dollars. It's like, yeah, where's the money is
it happening? As Elon said, they don't even have the money.
It's true, it's absolutely ridiculous the idea that they're going

(34:40):
to be spending all of this. But as long as
they get a press conference and they're sucking up to him,
they basically just continue business as usual. Remember the same
biggest do you remember the fox Kind deal and just
what going on. It's a great example. We were yeah,
ends up.

Speaker 6 (34:54):
Yeah, it's splashy public relations announcements and then doesn't necessarily
pan out. Well that be the case with every single example. No,
I think there are some anecdotes where we are seeing
certain communities get good plants that are coming back, but
it's too early to say if that's happening at scale,
and the indications are not universally positive to say the very.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
Lest yes, that's right, we're going to turn down to
youth unemployment underemployment. Let's go and put this up there
on the screen, very closely watched numbers, relying on the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
So let's hope that they're right.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
But even according to the revisions you can see here
this chart quote, is a generational jobs crisis brewing. The
underemployment rate for young adults in America is up sharply.
So if you look after twenty ten, after the Great Recession,
this is the story of like that lost generation which
really got screwed. Underemployment was up some thirty percent at

(35:50):
one point in twenty ten. Basically all stayed high all
the way to twenty and fifteen, when the jobs market
started becoming a little bit better. It started to trend
down very nice sleep back to two thousand levels until
the COVID pandemic of twenty twenty. Massive spike after that
actually even surpassing twenty ten. It came back down during
the whole like tight labor market era of twenty twenty one.

(36:13):
But you're watching how very quickly just in the last
couple of years it's ticked up and now it's actually
back to levels around two thousand and nine before that
massive explosion in twenty ten, and something very closely to watch.
You got to ask, like why, what exactly is happening?
And I think there's a lot of reasons for it.
Number one is ai this is at the high levels

(36:36):
of the job market. We're going to talk about that
in a little bit. Number two is at the low
levels of entry. Well, yeah, it's funny, it's spoted to
the low and high more. What I meant is it's
impacting college graduates for entry level work. So but those
are already people they spent a lot of money on
their education. They were probably going to be higher earners.
But there's a big question too at the lower levels

(36:57):
as to why that's not happening for the non college
graduate people who are in trades or in others. Remember
in twenty twenty one they had a major explosion. But
problem right we've seen right now is with the unemployment
figures and others. We're seeing like a softening of underemployment
for a lot of those people as well, And so
when you combine it together, you kind of have potentially
another lost generation post COVID, where just like in twenty ten,

(37:21):
the elder millennials, in particular those who graduated in ownA,
I mean, they were just destroyed. There's no even talk
like it's difficult to describe what it was like for
a lot of those people. We're not there yet, but
there are very troubling signs, and I think it goes
to the shakiness of the overall labor market, especially for
young people.

Speaker 5 (37:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (37:39):
No, And I think that's a good point, and it
also speaks to about how much longer. So to some extent,
if we look at the uncertainty that Trump says is
strategically meant to show the United States has leverage at
a certain point, the uncertainty that the weight of the
uncertainty and the economy starts to become even by his
own explanation. So if we're taking him at face value
and saying I agree with it, I do think the

(38:00):
uncertainty is creates some leverage at to a point, no,
for sure, but then the weight on the economy becomes
so significant that it has effects like on an unemployment
for people who are coming out of college, that you
have to look at it and say, even by what
your argument is here that you're bringing jobs back at

(38:22):
a certain point, when does the bleeding stop at a
certain point? What is you letting the blood just seep
into the economy? Not worth what you're talking about anymore,
But at what point is a net cost by your argument?

Speaker 3 (38:34):
Totally, and this was actually really driven home at the
technological level and especially with the general like breaking of
the American dream by this story.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
It's an amazing story. It's been gone viral for a
number of reasons.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
Put B two up here on the screen, and the
headline here is, quote, goodbye one hundred and sixty five
thousand dollars tech jobs. Student coders seek work at Chipotle.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
As companies like Amazon and Microsoft lay off workers and
embrace a coding tools, computer science graduates say they are
struggling to land tech jobs. I would add h one
B into this, by the way, because we talked previously.
We did a segment here on the show about how
Microsoft fired a bunch of workers and then applied for
a bunch of h one B visas. But the point
is basically the pursuit of cheap labor AI and then

(39:18):
also just a general softening of the overall market means
that people like this woman who they profile here in
the story are really getting screwed. So you know, they're
lead off by basically talking about how this woman monsign Mishra,
She is twenty one years old. She grew up in California,
graduated from Purdue with a degree in computer science. Basically

(39:39):
did everything right, you know, but quote, after a year
of job hunting for tech jobs and internships, she graduated
in May without any job offer. The only company that
even called me for an interview, she said, was Chipotle.
Since the early twenty tens, you know, they've talked about
kind of the booms of how it was so awesome
in twenty fourteen twenty fifteen to go work Google and

(40:00):
Facebook with all this free stuff and healthcares, etc. But
a lot of these AI programming tools basically have eliminated
all of the original scott work that people like this
were put into the pipeline for. And I'm not denigrating
it because scott work. I did a lot of Scott
work after I graduated. That's what you do, because you
do it so that you're around you do. You do

(40:21):
these basic menial tasks while you learn bigger skills and
you get promoted up into the company. But at the
beginning they're like, well, we have everybody who has all
the higher level skills already. We don't need to put
any more people into the pipeline or pay them. We
can just use our AI tools to basically eliminate ten
to fifteen percent of our payroll. And that's basically what's happening.
They even point actually to a survey. More recently, state

(40:44):
schools Maryland, Texas, Washington. These are decent colleges as well
as prefit private universities Cornell and Stanford. Many tech graduates
computer science graduates said that they had applied to hundreds
and in several cases thousands of tech jobs at companies, nonprofits,
and a government agencies. All of them were given coding assignments,

(41:04):
many of these other things. Even with these month long
jobs quest the vast majority of them they either ended
up ghosted, they didn't end up being hired. I actually
did warn about this a few months ago, after Liberation
Day in April, because I had heard for a lot
of those people who are graduating in May that people
were pulling their offers.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
This is like, sorry, we can't do it.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
The stock market is down, which is we're not where
we can't make any major commitments. Now, the summer is
coming to an end. People are about to start going
back to school in the next month or two. And
if you think like that's devastating, you know for people
who graduated. They even say here that one individual who
graduated in twenty twenty three had applied for five seven
hundred and sixty two tech jobs. Diligence resulted in thirteen

(41:44):
job interviews and no full time offers.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
I mean that is devastating.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
Later on quote he applied for a job at McDonald's
to help cover expenses, was rejected for his lack of experience,
has moved back to Shorewood, Oregon, and is now receiving
unemployment benefits from previous I mean, that's that's.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
That's terrible, right.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
This is exactly the story from nine I remember hearing
it reading about it of people who graduate again did
everything right. There's even a lot of stories about the
law school class of two thousands.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Yeah, they had it.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
They went in expecting to make one hundred and seventy
five thousand dollars or whatever in two thousand and eight money.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
They were going to be bawling.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
Like when they graduated, they had offers at the big
banks or the major corporate law firms. By the time
they were out, they were like, you're done, you have nothing,
I have a lot of people had to move home.
Some of them it ended up working out okay, but
it just created like mass chaos and of course debt,
you know, for a lot of these people. So look,
the point I think in all of this is that
it's at both levels of the economy. But if it

(42:47):
starts getting so dicey at the higher level of labor,
that is, again these are people saddled problem statistically with
hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, no promise to
pay it off, and then you wonder why zoron has
happened or any of these other you know, political effects
of what youth unemployment looked like in our economy. I
just thought it was a really sad story when you
look at it broadly.

Speaker 6 (43:08):
Ye, it is, and I think those parallels are really
important to point out. So I have this other headline
and I should have added it to the rundown, but
this is from last month.

Speaker 5 (43:15):
This is unfortune.

Speaker 6 (43:16):
The headline here is gen z men with college degrees
now have the same unemployment rate as non grads. A
sign that the higher education payoff is dead. Well, we've
had plenty of those signs over the years, but this
is I mean, that's not just a sign. That's your
example that the higher education payoff is debt. It's not
just a sign that it's going to happen. It's it's
clearly the indication that it has happened. And so you

(43:39):
then have this massive debt hangover. We saw it with
millennials after the Great Recession that lasts into your thirties
and forties student loan debt. You're not able to pay
it off because you were not making the money that
you thought you would make when you took out the loans,
and those jobs just don't exist. And so millennials, it
looked like there's a trend of gen z getting married,

(44:02):
potentially buying houses earlier after the pandemic.

Speaker 5 (44:05):
And actually what we could.

Speaker 6 (44:07):
End up seeing from this is something similar to millennials
where they were getting married later than they said they
wanted to, having children later than they said they wanted to.
And all of this is just to say we aren't
only looking at costs on the economy. We're also looking
at people's lives and happiness. And it's not just numbers
on a page or on the screen. There are all

(44:28):
kinds of cultural effects that come on with this that
people remember vividly from the recession. And so you know,
if that's what we're looking at, and there's some really
troubling signs, we kind of have already run the play.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
I think it's really devastating, the AI part of it.
It has been overstated about mass job loss, but the
layoffs are here and we knew part of that was
going to happen. Let's put B four for example on
the screen. So this is about AI driven AI driven
layoffs shrinking the job mark, specifically for recent graduates. So
what they say, as I have said here, these entry

(45:05):
level roles are being hardest hit. Companies are automating tasks
traditionally handled by the most junior staff, and at the
same time, the broader job market is slowing. Rising employment
with recent graduates and with young tech workers. And you know,
even if you look at some of the Federal Reserve data,
so there was some more recently data I think it
was from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and what

(45:28):
they showed in the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta was
a similar kind of softening of the overall job market.
I'm trying to look specifically at the unemployment rate, but
they what they showed was that this software engineering and
computer science degree in particular saw major changes just over
the last couple of years. And it just makes it

(45:49):
again where I've seen, you know, for examples I'm trying
to think about. I talked about one somebody who I
know who works in consulting, and they were like, well,
when I came into consulting, he's like ten years into
his career now, but he's like, my initial job was
just note taking and arranging minutes and all these other things.
It was. It sucks, but it's like that's how you
you know, start your climb up the ladder.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
He's like, we don't even need somebody to do that anymore.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
We just have Microsoft Teams, which has the you know,
open ai chat, gpt ai function or whatever built into it.
It automates everything, it does summaries, and so we're just
not giving offers, you know, to nearly the same number
of people. Well, that sucks, you know, for a lot
of people similarly, especially when they quote did everything right
and then they just get smacked, you know, initially by

(46:32):
this mass social change. And I can definitely think at
the white collar levels where we're going to see the
most impact in the law, in consulting, in technology, But
don't make a mistake to say that it's not coming
for blue.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Collar workers as well.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
Like if you're a tradesman with a house skill, that's
going to be one thing. But everyone talks about the
McDonald's kiosks, more automation, all of those things that just
reduces the overall head count that a lot of people need,
or it just means that the type of job you're
going to get is not necessarily the one that is
going to pay very much future will give you any
upward mobility or advancement.

Speaker 6 (47:02):
Well, and trade shops also support admin roles that are
going to be hit by AI as well. So I
mean it's yeah, that's significant and underscores to me the
incredible urgency of having our pipeline from high school to
college or to the job market is probably a better
way to put it.

Speaker 5 (47:22):
Adapt And I.

Speaker 6 (47:23):
Don't know, sorry, I mean, it's like we're still it
seems like we're still an automnpilot and still doing the
same thing over and over again. When you know, when
you look at the consulting example, do I think it's
probably better that a lot of people aren't going to
be at McKinsey.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Yeah, that's the funny thing. It looks. But it's real
easy for me to say sitting here.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
Of course, it's not so easy to say to somebody
graduating with an expectation of actually getting a job, and.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Where else do they go?

Speaker 6 (47:47):
Yeah, exactly, because what just happened is the bottom rung
and this is slightly different than the recession. The bottom
rung of the latter was kicked out, and you have
no way to get to the middle rung, let alone
to the top rung.

Speaker 5 (48:00):
So what do you do, I mean, seriously, what do
you do? You know.

Speaker 6 (48:05):
We're right now it seems like just continuing on the
autopilot default of sending people through this normal college to
white collar job pipeline, that it's changed so much that
it's the route reflex is outdated.

Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, I totally agree. Okay, why don't we move on
to DC. Let's see what's going on.

Speaker 5 (48:26):
Let's do it. This morning. Videos are rolling in of law.

Speaker 6 (48:33):
Enforcement taking to the streets of Sager get this Georgetown.
So if you've been here to DC or know Georgetown
as one of the more upscale neighborhoods, although it certainly
had its problems smash and grabs and all of that
during the pandemic.

Speaker 5 (48:44):
So joining us to discuss.

Speaker 6 (48:46):
All of this is Delano Squire's He has a research
fellow over at the Heritage Foundation, but also somebody who
has spent unlike many conservatives who are now frothing at
the mouth to talk about all of this, and.

Speaker 5 (48:57):
People on the left as well. We're going to get
into that.

Speaker 6 (49:00):
Allanta has put in a lot of time actually working
in DC. So Delana was the rehearstfal Thank you for coming,
and secondly, just tell people give them a little background
on your career working for DC before you ended up
at Heritage.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (49:13):
So I worked in DC DC government for about fifteen years,
starting in two thousand and seven, always sort of in
a public facing arena for most of that, I managed
a technology program called Connect DC where we help low
income residents get access to technology, So that means I
spent a lot of time in public housing. I've been
to DC jail at least four times, talking to guys

(49:35):
who as they were ready to transition back into the community,
you know, doing a lot of stuff with senior citizens
with K through twelve students. And then the last year
I was in the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which
was a newly created office in the city.

Speaker 4 (49:52):
I think this was.

Speaker 9 (49:52):
Around twenty twenty twenty twenty one. Obviously, you know, with
everything around George Floyd and BLM riots, the city wanted
to approach gun violence from sort of a public health perspective,
and they pulled together people from all across district agencies.
So I was there again twenty twenty one into twenty
twenty two, interfacing with residents as they would call complain

(50:15):
about shootings and violence in their neighborhoods.

Speaker 5 (50:17):
That was during the spike in DC.

Speaker 9 (50:19):
Yes, yes, one gentleman sent ten videos from his security
camera to the city capturing shootings in his neighborhood. I
figured he lived in a house that costs at least
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So there were frustrations
there from residents all across the city, you know, about
shootings and gun violence. So it really showed me the

(50:41):
difference between what the activist class says, you know, remember
when they were on to defund the police train, and
what residents, sometimes in the poorest parts of the city
were saying, which is, we want more police on the street.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
Yeah, and I want to spoke focus specifically on that actually,
because there's quite a bit of armchair quarterbacking going on,
and even frank even probably from us right, I've lived
in DC for fifteen years.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
I lived in you know, I went to.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
College in Foggy Bottom, which is you know, and where
the State Department is and Northwest Washington. Never lived really
outside of that, which traditionally has always been kind of
the home of lesser crime, although it did, you know,
get quite a bit worse over like a ten year period.
So I'm curious because at the end of the day,
that doesn't matter. It really matters for the permanent residence
and particularly people in the poor areas. So I'm curious

(51:28):
before we even get to some of the media reaction
for your reaction to the way, first the Trump administration's deployment,
the conception behind it, and then how you have seen
it played out now. So far we've only had one day,
but there's been a lot of show of force, right,
So what do you think?

Speaker 9 (51:43):
Definitely not And I'll say this, not only did I
live in DC for fifteen years, but ye work in
DC for fifteen years. I lived in DC for five
years in northeast of DC in ward seven my wife
and our kids.

Speaker 4 (51:53):
So I'll let me put my cars on the table.

Speaker 9 (51:56):
I was in favor of Operation Legend in the first
Trump term that married federal resources so atf dj DEA
and took it took those resources into a handful of cities.
I think it was eight cities across the country to
address violent street crime.

Speaker 4 (52:16):
I supported that.

Speaker 9 (52:17):
In fact, I said if I was advising the president,
I would talk about that five times as much as
the first step back. So I'm not opposed to sort
of federal involvement in addressing local crime. Generally speaking, I
think the takeover, the fact that it was sort of
precipitated by obviously the incident involving the dult staffer, to me,

(52:39):
feels somewhat disjointed because it's not that. Oh, there have
been forty five miners, you know, under the age of
eighteen who've been shot and killed in DC over the
last two years. We're marshaling federal resources to address that.
It's been I think a lot of the complaints, oftentimes
for people who don't actually live in the city that

(53:00):
have been have been driving the.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
Narrative that's what the res are the wrong way.

Speaker 9 (53:04):
But I mean, if it leads to better results for
the residents and for people who work in the city
and for people who visit the city, then I'm all
for it.

Speaker 4 (53:13):
The show of force.

Speaker 9 (53:14):
And again I've seen a few videos, you know, atf
agents walking around Georgetown.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Okay, I mean or the National Mall.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
This is hard to explain because for most people on
television or what your like House of Cards, they're like, oh,
it's the National Mall, right, Like nobody who live It's
like Times Square, nobody lives.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
I've been there in five years, Okay, reason to go?
What are you I written down there? Okay?

Speaker 3 (53:37):
All right? Other than other than exercise, Like, there's no
reason to go down there. It's a place for tourists
and for business that's fine. Hey, they need to be
safe as well. But there is no crime there either, okay,
and there hasn't been for many years.

Speaker 4 (53:47):
Yeah, generally speaking.

Speaker 9 (53:48):
And I think that's what people a lot of people
don't don't think about when they think about DC.

Speaker 4 (53:52):
They think about the mall and the Capitol, and the
White House and the Mint.

Speaker 9 (53:55):
But this is a city of seven hundred thousand people
in the eight wards, you know, spread out across for
different quadrants, and the violent crime tends to be clustered
in a handful of neighborhoods, particularly the homicides of the shootings, yes,
sixty percent happened you know, east of the Anacostia River,
in Ward seven and Ward eight, poorest parts of the city,
the most disproportionately black parts of the city, and other

(54:18):
parts of the city. Again, you may have certainly assaults, robbery,
carjacking that sort of spread out a little bit more,
but it's not the same as.

Speaker 4 (54:27):
What you get sort of east of the river.

Speaker 9 (54:29):
So if the federal resources were being used to address
crime in the highest crime parts of DC, I think
that would be something different. And in fact, two years ago,
council Member Treyon White, who represents Ward eight once again,
once again call for the National Guard in August. I

(54:50):
think that request was ultimately, you know, declined. But it's
not to say that there aren't city leaders who have
brought this issue up. But obviously what you hear from
the left does that. Well, crime, violent crime is on
a steep decline. And while that may be the case,
even including homicides and shootings, the question is, Okay, where
are we starting from. Yeah, Like I grew up in
New York in nineteen call it ninety two, there were

(55:13):
twenty five hundred murders in New York. Now they're about
in a given year three seventy five to four to twenty,
which obviously is a steep decline from the nineteen nineties,
but it's still you're talking about concentrated areas where that
is part of the local rhythm, Like the everyday rhythm
of life is hearing gunshots and knowing somebody and including

(55:37):
children who get shot and killed in the streets.

Speaker 5 (55:40):
Well, that's exactly what I want to focus on.

Speaker 6 (55:41):
Because the Washington Post before this was hyper polarized because
Trump took it on, did a couple months ago a
sweeping investigation into the spike intruancy, and it's significant. I
mean it's still not back down below pandemic levels. Was
already high before the pandemic. Huge problem. We've seen the
like quoteen takeovers of Navy Yard three four times just

(56:03):
in the last couple of months, where if people haven't,
if you're not a local, you probably haven't seen the
footage or the images from it. But it's literally hundreds
of teenagers who go into the lobbies of apartment buildings
or shooting Roman candles at the windows during the Fourth
of July, but actually like creating a situation where the
cops could not control the seat the streets because they
were totally overrun. Basically, so that to me, if I

(56:29):
look at the truancy, I look at what Donald Trump
is doing with the show of force, Delana, is what
you were saying, what is going to address the kind
of root cause? So basically my question for you is,
I actually think the show of force can probably do something.
I think pushing the Metropolitan Police Department here to do

(56:50):
something probably will make them better and will force them
to finally confront some of their own failures. The statistics
are being debated right now. There's a police commander who
was suspended.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
This is C four.

Speaker 6 (57:00):
We can put it on the screen for cooking the books.
The police union says the books are being cooked. It's
hard to know exactly what the numbers are, but all
that to say is there. I mean, it seems like
there's just a lot more that the Trump administration could
be doing that's not sending people in net gators and
bullet professed on the National Mall.

Speaker 9 (57:21):
And let me say this because because you know, I
want to be fair to the Bowser administration. Right, Mayor
bows to her credit and I think she's on her
third term now, to her credit, is not build de Blasio.
I don't think she uttered the words defund the police
one time in twenty twenty. Now, I won't be critical
in this sense. I think she cave to the BLM
activists by making you know, Black Lives Matter Plaza, which

(57:43):
I saw as somewhat of a troll for President towards
President Trump in twenty twenty. And they hate her anyway,
right partly because she is she is pro police.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
So I think the city has tried to do a lot.

Speaker 9 (57:55):
To address you know, gun violence, and again spent millions
dollars resources to try to, you know, bring these numbers down.

Speaker 4 (58:03):
Then they have come down.

Speaker 9 (58:06):
But from my perspective and just given the things that
I research in terms of you know, family structure, the
stuff about truancy and chronic absentee is a while an
issue nationwide. When you have schools, high schools in DC
where the chronic absentee res the truancy rate is like
ninety percent, it's insane. That is first and foremost a

(58:27):
problem with the family and part of the issue. And
I addressed this, and I would bring this up periodically
even when I was in the city. Is like, Okay,
we have twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year olds carjacking people,
shooting people, but the first adults that come up for
an accountability check are the mayor, the police chief, and
you know, the school superintendent.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
That is completely out of order. Right. So what I
would love to hear.

Speaker 9 (58:52):
An elected officials say is say is something to the
effect that, look, we're doing everything we can to address
the crime, but it is not our responsibility to parent
your children. That's your job, because if you can't control them,
how would you expect me to control them?

Speaker 4 (59:07):
They live in your house, they're under your rules. I
would hope.

Speaker 9 (59:11):
At some point, some mayor somewhere, some police chief somewhere
would say something to that effect and galvanize the community
to take responsibility for their children, our children in ways
that help address some of these issues, because it can't
just be root causes being an euphemism for more spending

(59:32):
on the library, twenty four hour rec center, you know,
just keeping kids busy twenty four to seven, which again.

Speaker 4 (59:40):
I know what it's like.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
Yeah, not a horrible thing, not going to solve the problem, but.

Speaker 9 (59:44):
That is we let me say it this way, we
do not apply that same framework when it's other types
of crimes. I've never heard a Democrat or progressive say, man,
you know, if only those you know, clan members had
more jobs and economic opt tunity in the nineteen forties,
maybe they wouldn't have terrorized black neighborhoods.

Speaker 4 (01:00:03):
No, nobody says that they.

Speaker 9 (01:00:04):
Only do it when it comes to urban crime and
when it comes to low income black populations. And I
believe people have more agency in that than that, but
they have to be called up and activated to do
what needs to be done.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
Well at the same time, and I see, I appreciate
this is actually more of a nuanced conversation. We're not
sitting here fluffing than Trump administration. We're like, yeah, there's
some major issues happening, but you know, we're not going
to sit here in gaslight everybody and say there's no problem.
But that's unfortunately what a lot of the media has
done on this. So here we have MSNBC Simone Sanders,
let's take a listen.

Speaker 10 (01:00:34):
We'll get reaction that it is perceived violence amplified by
some actual real acts of violence. But the way I've
heard DC being described this morning is like it's a
city under siege, like it's a dangerous place, clutching your pearls,
you got to keep your bag under your dress when
you leave the house, And that's that's just not true.

(01:00:54):
What we are talking about, though, is these instances of
juvenile crime. My concern is that the president is using
instances of juvenile crime in the city of Washington, d C.
As a pretext for what I would describe as his
authoritarian overreach.

Speaker 5 (01:01:10):
When you walk down the streets of.

Speaker 10 (01:01:11):
Georgetown, you don't see a police officer on every corner,
but you don't feel unsafe. So what is it about
talking about places like southeast DC right ward eight. If
you will that people say, well, we need more officers
to make us safe. I think we have to rethink
what safety means in America.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
All right, So this is why the pretext of this matters.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Right. So she said, when you walk down the streets
to Georgian again, the richest neighborhood, probably statistically the richest
neighborhood in all of Washington, DC, you don't see a
cop on every corner.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Now apparently do because the Trumpet streets. They don't need
to be there, there's nothing going on.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
But that is a level of not just like paternalism,
but also of denial, which just completely absconds the entire problem. Right.

Speaker 9 (01:01:54):
And my frustration when I see that is these are
the same people that claim that they speak for the
black community. Right now, again, most of the homicides, I mean,
when I work in officer of gun violence Prevention, every
morning we would start with a call from the assistant
police chief going through the contact shootings the last last
twenty four or seventy two hours if you're coming off
a weekend. Every I mean ninety nine percent of the time,

(01:02:17):
young black male, young black male, young black male. But
when samone Sanders and Roland Martin and other people in
sort of the aristocracy, right, the sort of black progressive elites.
When they talk, they are only interested in mobilizing federal resources.
If you're investigating, you know, what you think is a
noose in a NASCAR garage with Bubba Wallace, If you're

(01:02:39):
investigating Jesse Smolett, if Joe Biden is saying that the
greatest threat to America is white domestic terrorism, then they'll say,
we need the federal government to marshal office resources to
address these problems. So they are more concerned with fake
hate crimes than real street crimes. And the reason is

(01:02:59):
because for the left and the right, the primary role
that the black community plays within sort of the criminal
justice ecosystem is often victims of a racist system and
not victims of violent crime.

Speaker 4 (01:03:13):
And that's why people like Simon.

Speaker 9 (01:03:14):
Sanders can say with a straight face, Oh, you know,
it's not that bad, And why are there more police
in Southeast than there aren't Georgetown. Well that's where the
shootings occur, right, that is where the shootings occur. So
when I see that type of thing, it frustrates me deeply.
I'll give you a quick story when I was still
in DC, there was an activist he went by the
name Seaweb who had been tracking homicides just in his

(01:03:37):
neighborhood over by the Convention Center right since the nineteen nineties.

Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
He had a brick wall full of names.

Speaker 9 (01:03:45):
And faces of guys who have been shot and killed
just in that sort of two block radius. And he
told me part of the reason he does it is
because he mentors some of these guys children, and these
are some of the only photos and videos that they've
ever seen of their father. So he had been doing
it twenty plus years. So when I hear again these
sort of you know, pundits trying to sweep these issues

(01:04:10):
under the rug, it frustrates me deeply.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Well, then let's talk about this thirty year So this
is a new talking point. DC violent crime is at
a thirty year low. Now, first of all, as you
just said, the police commanders are investigation for duke and
the stats, So who knows whether that's even true, But
you know, at the context that you've laid out, we
still have a lot of murders compared to New York.
I believe it's the highest in the entire United's or

(01:04:34):
one of the highest among US cities at a per
capita basis. And even then, just focusing on murders does
not address quality.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Of life crime.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
I've always talked about this with San Francisco. San Francisco
doesn't have a ton of murders.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
Go visit. It's not nice. Why is it not nice?

Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
Car crime, property, theft, heroin, drug addiction, everywhere. So just contextualize,
I think what it means for the DC resident and
for for what the problem is at a crime level,
at a quality of life level, and then what does
the solution actually look like? Because look the show of
force and the activists and all that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
That's going to happen no matter what.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
But people here, if you actually want to know what
you could do about it, what do you think?

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
Yeah, I mean, I think you raise a good point. Right.

Speaker 9 (01:05:16):
The quality of life stuff is separate and related, but
separate from the violent crime, you know, as you said,
I mean, they're they're porch pirates.

Speaker 4 (01:05:24):
So every you're gonna ring in the.

Speaker 9 (01:05:26):
Community, it's like, Okay, another package is stolen. It's the carjackings, right,
It's it's the assaults. Sometimes it's just it's just the intimidation.
It's it's the homelessness, it's the vagrancy. These are things
that frustrate people, and these are things that drive people
you know away and make them move to to you know,
Virginia or Maryland. I think addressing each of the issues

(01:05:49):
you know comprehensively makes sense, but each of them has
their own set of root causes.

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
Again, with the youth crime, parents have to be held
to account.

Speaker 9 (01:05:59):
I'm not saying that they have to be arrested, but
I mean a mayor or a police chief can at
least start by talking about the importance of family as
it relates to addressing this particular issue. Some of the
other stuff, I might be more radical than most, Yeah,
I have and some certain certain ideas.

Speaker 4 (01:06:18):
Only talk about my wife because I might look.

Speaker 9 (01:06:22):
I would be open to at least putting the idea
on the table of rounding up known gang members and saying, look, guys,
if you as a hell bent on hurting each other,
we'll go somewhere else where.

Speaker 4 (01:06:34):
You can do that. You can sign the.

Speaker 9 (01:06:35):
Waivers, you can you can have the whatever uh level
of force you all agree to. We can have it out,
but we're not going to allow you to terrorize this neighborhood.
We're three year olds and toddlers and senior citizens are
the ones who get caught and crossfire because you guys
one have no respect for yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
We're talking about the Wire. This is season three of
the Wire, you know, yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:06:57):
Answer season now in Anacostia, right, So I.

Speaker 9 (01:07:01):
Would be open to that right. It might not pass
legal mustard, but open to the idea. And I think again,
I'm fine with the zero tiles policy for vagrancy and
some of these other quality of life crimes.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
I know a lot of people don't like that.

Speaker 9 (01:07:15):
But I think law abiding, tax paying citizens have a
right to live in neighborhoods that are clean and orderly,
and getting there is not always going to feel comfortable.
Like I saw one of the videos that was certainly yesterday.
You know, you have some federal agents look like they
were walking through an alley. They come up on, you know,
a group of might have been two or three young

(01:07:36):
black men and you know, hey, guys, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:07:38):
You have your ID.

Speaker 9 (01:07:39):
Now, most people don't carry ID when they're you know,
on the porch.

Speaker 4 (01:07:44):
It was a very respectful interaction.

Speaker 9 (01:07:46):
You know, the federal officer was basically explaining what this
initiative was, but I've seen many that aren't aren't nearly
as respectful.

Speaker 4 (01:07:54):
And this is where this is where the nuance comes in.

Speaker 9 (01:07:58):
And part of my concern, Earn, is that you have
conservatives talking about life and blue cities the way liberals
talk about life.

Speaker 4 (01:08:05):
In the Deep South.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
I think that's very smart, right, and it's and.

Speaker 9 (01:08:08):
What it does is it conditions, not just a sense
of fear, which I felt probably when I was driving
my family from DC to Texas through Mississippi and saying,
oh my gosh, what if I get stopped in downtown
that had been conditioned to me. I grew up in
New York, I don't I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:08:21):
Anything about Mississippi.

Speaker 9 (01:08:23):
Yeah, but I don't want families who are coming here
from Iowa Wisconsin to think as soon as I step
off the Greyhound or the Amtrak, then I'm gonna get mugged.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
And murdered Greyhound.

Speaker 4 (01:08:33):
That might appen, well, but it's not.

Speaker 9 (01:08:37):
It's not just the fear that the conditions, but it
makes it easier to say, these are not real Americans
like us, and we're willing to do whatever it takes
to to sort of make this problem go away.

Speaker 6 (01:08:50):
And so this is my last question because one of
the things that Samon Sanders gets at is the age
old debate between the sort of presence of law enforcement
and whether or not is gonna go down because you
have more cops in the street with stop and frisk
or whatever it is, broken windows, all of these. I mean,
the progressive left basically tried their experiment as backlash to

(01:09:12):
those policies in San Francisco and Oakland, and the experiment
has been a failure to the point where even its
own proponents have walked back. Maryel Bowser here in DC
gave into a lot of progressing policing policy ideas and
walked some of them back.

Speaker 5 (01:09:24):
She's even walking back.

Speaker 6 (01:09:25):
The sanctuary city status now as well, to the extent
that she kind of can. So, is there though a
risk I mean, just steal manning the way that we
and probably all three of us think about this, Is
there a risk that a militarized police force, which a
lot of like libertarian leaning conservatives are already don't like.

Speaker 5 (01:09:43):
Is there a risk that that makes the problem worse
in any way? Or is it only going.

Speaker 9 (01:09:48):
To from your perspective, help, I don't see it making
the problem worse.

Speaker 4 (01:09:55):
That doesn't mean that it will necessarily help.

Speaker 9 (01:09:57):
Again, one of the things I liked about Operation Legend
and again back in the first Trump term, is that
they were using it wasn't just the show of force
on the streets. It was the intelligence. It was the
prosecution that was getting you know, not just bad guys.

Speaker 4 (01:10:11):
But murderers off the street.

Speaker 9 (01:10:13):
So if federal resources were used sort of to help
in investigations closing cases, I think that's a lot different
than just the show of force and having agents on
the street, particularly they're just walking around the hands in
their pockets, you know, in Georgetown or Navy Yard. So
I don't think it will necessarily make it worse. That
doesn't mean it'll make it better. One of the things

(01:10:35):
that I've often said is like, look, people like Simone
Sanders and you know other folks on the left are
very much pro police. They either live in gated communities,
right or they have security guards or they pay for
private security.

Speaker 4 (01:10:50):
The only people who I legitimately.

Speaker 9 (01:10:52):
Believe are open to the police going away are guys
who are in the streets. So whether you're street gang,
organized crime, or you're related to someone or friends with
someone who handles their own business in the streets. Everybody
else from noise complaints. If a homeless person is sitting
on your front porch, nine one one can you. So

(01:11:14):
I don't believe this notion that they don't think that
police matter. It takes more than just police on the streets,
because I mean, criminals are not smart in the sense
that they're engaging in dangerous activities, but it's smart enough
to know, Okay, we know the police surge between three
pm and seven pm. When the sun goes down, they
go home, we come out and we terrorize the streets.

(01:11:35):
So I think a lot of it is about the coordination.
And when I was in DC, they would say this
frequently that DC is resource rich, but coordination poor.

Speaker 4 (01:11:44):
When you add the federal layer.

Speaker 9 (01:11:46):
On top of that, that could make the problem worse,
and that no one knows exactly what it is that
they're supposed to be doing. But I think there's a
potential to make it better if again those federal resources,
the advanced technology, more prosecutors can help close cases and
bring some level of closure to victims and their families.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
Well, I really appreciate joining US Man.

Speaker 3 (01:12:07):
I really learned a lot and I hope the audience
found it helpful, so thank you for joining US.

Speaker 1 (01:12:10):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (01:12:11):
Thank you,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}8/13/25: Trump Floats Jobs Numbers Coverup, MSNBC Says No DC Crime

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

The Joe Rogan Experience

All Episodes

8/13/25: Trump Floats Jobs Numbers Coverup, MSNBC Says No DC Crime

Stuff You Should Know