Rich Lowry, Editor in Chief National Review Interview

Rich Lowry speaks with Mendte in the Morning about the weekend that Trump has had including his negotiations with China, the freeing of Edan Alexander, and his upcoming trip to the Middle East.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
But right now, let's get to Rich Lowry, editor in
chief of the National Review. Rich, can we just take
a moment to marvel over the last seventy two hours
of Donald Trump. It was pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Which part there's a lot you need to be more specific,
That's what I mean.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
It is totality the fact that you had it seemed
like when after when you had you had edon being
released with a thank you note to Donald Trump and
him getting involved with a maas. You you had this
tariff deal with China, you have peace between India and Pakistan,
or at least a ceasefire. You have a ceasefire that
may be starting between Putin and Zelensky, and he's going

(00:42):
to Saudi Arabia to strike some deals. I think it's
a pretty good forty two hours, well.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Highly energetic as his hostage release is fantastic. I don't
know why. It was just bizarre that American hostage is
held in Gaza for years and it wasn't a national obsession,
and it was only Trump that kind of talked about
this in the terms you'd expect from American president, you know,
or else. So that's that's fantastic. The China deal I

(01:12):
don't think it's not it's actually it's not a deal,
and there's there's nothing really been agreed except for both
sides are going to bring down there at their tariffs
to where they were a couple of weeks ago, or
actually a little higher, but just both sides basically had
embargo level tariffs, which is going to cause massive disruption
for both sides. So I don't I don't think much
as an accomplished there, except were going to avoid some

(01:33):
some pain, which is good. And then Trump will have
a lot of deals, uh, and on this trip in
the Middle East, some of which will be kind of
big and shiny and fake, some of which will be real.
But but this is this is what he relishes, you know, uh,
going overseas, getting deals. He's kind of like a big
governor the way, you know, courts for foreign businesses to

(01:54):
come to his state rather than the other states. That's
the way he looks at at America. He wants to
get these big, big vestments here.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
I am stunned by how much you were unimpressed with
all that was done, considering what we had in the past.
All that was done in a short time, especially, So
explain this to me. You had an you had an
article and the headline was Trump shifts his own vibe
and this is his own doing. You weren't talking about

(02:21):
this weekend.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Oh that was from about two weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Oh then you weren't.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, that was about the terror to a drop in.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
His y Uh Rich, Rich Rich where you have a
bad phone connection? Uh? You know what. We're going to
call you back and hopefully you will get a better line.
But I am stunned. I am stunned. I you know,
there there is a there is a conservative wing of

(02:54):
the Republican Party who has always been wary of Donald Trump.
And I think as much as Rich does give Donald
Trump credit when he feels like he deserves it, he
is wary of the promises and some of the accomplishments,
which is healthy. I think it's a healthy debate within
the party to hear someone like that. But it seems

(03:17):
to me it's all positive. You point to me a negative.
What was negative about any of this?

Speaker 2 (03:25):
You know?

Speaker 1 (03:26):
So you say, oh, no, it's not. Rich Lowry just
said a moment ago, it's not a deal. It's just
an agreement. What do you mean it's a deal? It's
an agreement. Not a deal. You mean, it isn't finalized,
But that doesn't take away from how positive this is.
And I don't know what he's talking about when he
said they're back to what they were. Fifteen and ten

(03:48):
percent is not what they were. And the market being
wide open in China, that's not what it was. This
is historic if especially do you think they can keep it,
especially if we can go a little bit further on
that and we can keep it. Oh, here you go,
rich is back, Richie, can I just took apart a

(04:09):
little bit of what you were saying, go ahead please? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
So, so with China, they haven't agreed to do anything,
neither of we. We had one hundred and forty five
percent tariffs on them, and they had whatever was one
hundred and twenty five tariffs on us. And we said, okay,
we'll go down to thirty, and they said we'll go
down to ten. But there's no agreement for more market
access to China or any of that. All that's yet
to be determined. It may may not be. And so

(04:37):
the problem was one hundred and forty five percent was
just totally unsustainable, even if Trump's own Treasury sectuary said
it was unsustainable. It's going to lead to empty, sore
small businesses going by business all this Trump. No, we're
not going to do that. I shouldn't have I mean,
it's an implicit concession. They never should have gone one
hundred and forty five in the first place. So no,

(04:59):
I'm not impressed with that one.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well I am. I am impressed, and I and according
to Scott Best and it's fifteen percent thirty percent, So
I'll go with him for right now. Let's talk about
Biden's pathetic rehabilitation tour. Oh and pathetic is the word
for it.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
It was.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
It was downright embarrassing. It was the last thing the
Democrats needed.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Oh yeah, I mean, he just confirmed why it was
right to dump them. He had no good explanation why
he stayed in the race in the first place and
tried tried to run again. He just picked this and
we're doing so much good stuff. Time ran out and
I couldn't get out and it didn't make a difference,
so I cut out. So late, all was completely upstanding.
We have a you know, uh was really gone. And

(05:44):
there's a new book coming out that saying the White
House was considered using a wheelchair, which was not not
a surprise to anyone who watched him shuffle around. He
kind of had to hold it, hold your breath, whether
he's going to have some disastrous on cameray and given moment.
So this was a preposterous lie, fraud was perpetrated on
the public and incredibly brazen, and because we could all

(06:04):
see what was going on, we all knew it was
a lie at the time.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Right Rich, we're still having a little bit of problems
with the phone line. Thanks so much, and I won't
talk about you this time. Thanks so much for joining
against Ridge Lowry, editor in chief of the National Review.
Now that even the Democrats came out and said, what
is Joe Biden doing? We don't need him right now.