April 24, 2025 • 44 mins
Balance of Power: Trump Urges Putin to Stop Ukraine Strikes (Podcast)
The US will demand that Russia accept Ukraine’s right to develop its own, adequately equipped, army and defense industry as part of a peace agreement, according to people familiar with the matter, pushing back on Russia’s insistence that the country largely demilitarize as a condition to end the war.
US envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Russia to raise the issue with President Vladimir Putin, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
It’s a signal that President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking some concessions from the Kremlin, as well as Ukraine, as it tries to end a war that’s now into its fourth year. Critics have thus far viewed the US proposals as tilted toward Russia, including the Trump administration’s insistence that Ukraine give up its aspirations to join the NATO military alliance.
Watch Joe and Kailey LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF.
Bloomberg Washington Correspondents Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz deliver insight and analysis on the latest headlines from the White House and Capitol Hill, including conversations with influential lawmakers and key figures in politics and policy. On this edition, Joe and Kailey speak with:
- Director of the Futures Lab and Senior Fellow with the Defense and Security Department at the Center of Strategic and International Studies Ben Jensen.
- Bloomberg Politics Contributors Rick Davis and Jeanne Sheehan Zaino.
- Operation Hope Inc. Chairman, CEO and Founder John Hope Bryant.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
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Speaker 2 (00:25):
Live from the White House.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
The President there sitting next to his Secretary of Saint
Marco Rubio, across the table from the Prime Minister of Norway,
who is in town for meetings today. They're going to
have a bilateral in the Oval Office, probably about an
hour from now. We'll walk into the Oval together and
bring you into that conversation. Jonas Steira at the White
House alongside Jaen Stoltenberg, his Trump whisperer, sitting in on
(00:50):
the meetings today. Donald Trump had very nice things to
say about Stoltenberg from the years he was running NATO
as Secretary General. They're going to get behind closed doors
now and again following lunch there will be a bilateral
news conference that takes place, not so much a news conference,
but a little conversation, if you will, around the fireplace
in the Oval Office. Some interesting headlines crossing there, everyone's
(01:12):
talking about Ukraine, at least for the most part. That
is really driving the agenda in this meeting today, thinking
very strongly, Ukraine Russia want peace. The headline from Donald
Trump Ukraine Russia need to get to the table. Think
we will get peace, saying he has his own deadline
on Ukraine. When asked about that, there was a reporter
(01:32):
who asked him as well about potentially winning the Nobel
Peace Prize, which he seemed to enjoy. Now, all of
this comes after a massive missile and drone attack by
Russia against Kiev last night, at least nine dead, more
than sixty wounded. As we talk about conditions here for peace,
(01:53):
Bloomberg is making news. We've talked a lot about conditions
for Ukraine. Right, you lose crimea freeze the lines in place,
you never get to join NATO, maybe peacekeepers from Europe,
but not Americans. Conditions for Russia are suddenly emerging. According
to Bloomberg person's familiar, the US will demand Russia accept
(02:14):
Ukraine's right to have its own army and defense industry.
This may be a non starter from Moscow, as Vladimir
Putin has made it clear. Remember before the invasion even happened.
It was about the demilitarization of Ukraine. So where are
we as Steve Whitkoff prepares to pack his bags from Moscow?
(02:35):
Were joined by Ben Jensen, a new voice on the
program and looking forward to the conversation with Ben, director
of the Future's Lab and senior fellow with the Defense
and Security Department at CSIS, the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Ben, it's great to have you.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I'm fascinated by this new wrinkle here because this has
really seemed like a negotiation that favored Russia until now.
Does this move the needle? And will this meeting with
Norway help us get any closer to peace?
Speaker 4 (03:04):
So great question, Thank you for having me. I would say,
we don't know what we'll move the needle yet, because
we're in the middle of a complex negotiation process that
doesn't lend itself necessarily to social media hot takes, whether
it's by our own political leaders or quick comments and
nightly addresses by Ukraine. Historically, negotiations take time and they
(03:25):
take discretion, and so you're seeing a real tension play
out in each side is using a mix of private communication,
direct private messages through intermediaries and also directly as well
as these public claims to try to gain a position
of leverage. And so I think we're starting to see
now that actually, behind the scenes, Trump's team has been
(03:46):
putting pressure on Moscow. I know sometimes from the outside
it doesn't look like that, but this is the first
sign that there has been pressure put on Moscow to
accept some type of concession. So it's the mix of
carrots and sticks that are really going to matter. And
you can't have all the carrots and sticks publicly revealed
where people start to maneuver around them. So does it
move the needle maybe, But I think more importantly what
(04:09):
it reminds us of is that not everything is as
it appears from the outside.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yeah, isn't that always the case? Vladimir Putin certainly isn't
waiting around. As you heard me mention, the attacks on Kiev.
Missiles and drones were horrifying. The images are horrifying, and
I'm guessing that President Trump saw them.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
In his daily briefing today, he.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Took to truth social pretty quick post, at least for
Donald Trump, and says, I am not happy with the
Russian strikes on Kiev. If you're with us on YouTube
you see the post. Not necessary and very bad timing,
he writes, Vladimir stop, exclamation point. Five thousand soldiers a
week are dying. Let's get the peace deal done. Exclamation
(04:52):
point pretty interesting, Vladimir stop.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Ben will he.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
No.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
In fact, I would direct you and your view and
listeners to check out our firepower strike tracker at CSIS.
So for over a year now, we've actually been scraping
statistics to analyze how Russia uses a mix of long
range drones the Shaheed, as well as ballistic missiles and
cruise missiles to effectively negotiate by fire, to use a
punishment strategy as a way of gaining strategic leverage over
(05:20):
President Zelensky through trying to kill as many Ukrainian civilians
as possible. This is completely counterintuitive to most of the
ways we've talked about war in the twenty first century,
but it shows us that war remains not only a
continuation of politics, but ultimately tragic and brutal. And so
what Putin did was is not necessarily any different than
what he's done. What you're seeing is that Ukraine is
(05:43):
at a critical point because Russia is actually getting more
sophisticated in its targeting, better able to integrate satellite intelligence,
better to integrate cyber intelligence, and now increasingly being able
to direct a complex mix of ballistic cruise missiles and
then more sophisticated shaheeds that resist Ukrainian electronic warfare. And
(06:04):
if you check out that firepower strike tracker we detail
with all the statistics, we actually break down and do
the analysis to show that when you mix the different
types of attacks and you concentrate them in a geographic space,
so I mix ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones just
on the Capitol, it's going to lower the probability that
Ukraine can intercept them, and it's going to actually begin
(06:25):
to really wage this punishment strategy into a brutal war
of attrition, which we've already seen. So it might have
seemed like it was audacious, it was bad timing, but
this is central to Russia's strategy. They can't win on
the battlefield. They're throwing their own young men literally what
the Ukrainians call them is meat assaults at front lines
(06:45):
where they're killed by drones. And so their bid for
success when they can't win with this twenty first century
version of trench warfare is to try to bomb the
Ukrainians into submission. It's utterly brutal, and our president is
right to take the stance he did.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
This is incredible, Ben, terrifying as you describe this. I'm
looking right now. You've got to check this out, guys,
go google it. As Ben mentioned here, Russian firepower Strike
Tracker analyzing missile attacks in Ukraine. This is great work
from the Future's Lab at csis Ben that would suggest
that the closer we get to peace, the more violent
(07:22):
this conflict will be.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
I think you're absolutely right, and in fact, that's something
for your viewers and listeners to really take into consideration.
There is a tendency now moving from the political and
strategic level down to the operational for each side to
take more risk and gambles to seek territorial concessions or
some kind of additional Basically, everyone's competing to get new
(07:45):
chips before they head to the poker table. Call these negotiations. So,
I think you're not just going to see Russia increase
these kind of highly concentrated firepower strikes. You're going to
see them continue to sacrifice the lives of future Russian generations.
You are also going to see them beg, borrow and
steal from North Korea, China and Iran to build up
their arsenal authoritarianism. But at the same time, on the
(08:07):
other side, you're also probably going to see the Ukrainians
pull off some pretty daring raids and long range strikes.
And the Ukrainians have been utterly ingenious throughout this war.
Remember this is a country that entered the conflict with
five drone companies and now has over five hundred, and
they produce thousands of FPVS first person view drones all
the way up to long range, low cost cruise missiles daily.
(08:31):
So you're I think going to see not just Russia
increasingly try to punish the Ukrainian people, I would expect
to see more long range Ukrainian raids. So in the
last week alone, you've had a Ukrainian strike on Russian
strategic bomber bases and also a Ukrainian long range strike
on a major ammunition depot, So I think we're going
to also see the Ukrainians trying to get those poker
chips for the negotiation table as well.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Wow, all right, Ben, I want to ask you about
CRIMEA specifically, and I want to bring you back to
this post that Donald.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Trump made yesterday on Tree with social umtry you saw it.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Ukrainian President Zelenski, he writes, is boasting on the front
page of the Wall Street Journal that Ukraine will not
legally recognize the occupation of Crimea. Donald Trump goes on
to write, this statement is very harmful to the peace
negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago
under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama and is
not even a point of discussion. He goes on to
(09:23):
say that if he wants Crimea, why didn't they fight
for it eleven years ago when it was handed over
to Russia without a shot being fired. That's a bit
of revisionist history. If you were paying attention to things.
Then the Press secretary at the White House, Caroline Leviott,
picked it up from there in the White House driveway yesterday.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Ben here's what she said.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
Well, as President Trump, Wrightfrey pointed out in that statement,
it was President Obama who gave up Crimea, who allowed
Russia to take it over in twenty fourteen, and so
the President is not asking Ukraine to recognize Crimea. Nobody
has asked them to do that.
Speaker 7 (09:56):
What he is asking is for people to come to
the negotiating table recognize saying that this has been a
brutal war for far too long, and in order to
make a good deal, both sides have to walk away
a little bit unhappy.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Ben, you don't have to wait into the Obama stuff.
But aren't we asking Ukraine to acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory?
And what would happen to those Russian sub bases if
in fact Crimea went back to Kiev.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
So I think what you're seeing in all of this
if rhetoric and reality have not aligned for some time
in American politics. So I think the President's trying to
make the point that he wants them to negotiate the challenge.
And this is where the details matter. Is if you
look at Article two of the Ukrainian Constitution. And we're Americans,
so constitutions matter to us. Our own constitution matters, and
(10:44):
we know that other countries also guarantee rights to their
citizen natural rights through structures like constitutions. Article two of
the Ukrainian Constitution makes it impossible for President Zelensky to
recognize Crimea as part of Russia and the Ukrainians frankly
did fight for it. They fought for a long time.
It's just that Russia, through a manipulation of the law
of armed conflict, used the Little Green Men to seize it.
(11:07):
And frankly, there were a lot of Russian pensioners in
Crimea and large Russian naval bases making it easier. So
what you have right now is a very interesting situation
where the president is just doing what he does. He
really likes to turn up the rhetoric. He likes to
say things that grab our attention, and he's frankly successful
at it and pull us in in a way that
he can try to pressure both Ukraine and Russia to
(11:31):
try to negotiate to achieve the subjective, which in a
larger strategic sense means that the United States can focus
on the ongoing Iran negotiations and also focus more on China.
But in the meantime, what's happening is it's unsettling some
of the larger complexities of any piece deal. So Crimea
is going to be hard for the Ukrainians to win
back militarily, and it's definitely going to be something that
(11:53):
Russians will resist giving. At the negotiation table. Owing exactly
to what you put out, Crimea is key maritime terrain,
and not only is it key maritime terrain, Russia actually
still maintains large space infrastructure there for communicating with its
satellite constellation. So Crimea is important both from a maritime
and a space standpoint, but also increasingly a symbolic standpoint.
(12:15):
So it's hard to see that Russia's really going to
be willing to negotiate with it. And it's hard to imagine,
short of a catastrophic collapse of the Russian military along
the front line, that Ukraine can take it by military force,
which means we're left with a very difficult reality. Ukraine
cannot seed Crimea until it adjusts its own constitution. It
(12:36):
can't do constitutional referendums under martial law in the middle
of the war. So there's really a coordination challenge involved
with these negotiations about what has to move first. Can
you have elections in Ukraine? Can you put those things up?
And it also is a reminder to us that no
matter what we hear on truth, social or what Zelensky
says in a nightly address, this process is going to
(12:56):
take months, if not years to play out and that
detail are what will matter. The technical details are what
drives negotiations.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
In the end. Really fascinating.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
You know what I love, Ben is someone who knows
what they're talking about. I'm really glad that you could
come to share your expertise with us, and I hope
you'll stay close because this is a story developing before
our eyes. Benjamin Jensen, Director of the Future's Lab, Senior
Fellow Defense Security Department at CSIS, Let me know when
you're ready to host the show that was fascinating a
clinic with Ben Jensen. These are the kind of conversations
(13:29):
we try to bring you every day here on the
fastest show in politics.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Only on Bloomberg.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power Podcast. Catch
us live weekdays at noon and five pm Eastern on Apple,
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Speaker 3 (13:54):
Glad you're with us here on Bloomberg Radio Satellite radio
Channel one twenty one and on YouTube with our on
the White House, We're going to go back there shortly
for a bilateral meeting with President Trump and the Prime
Minister of Norway. You might think you just saw that
that was actually the beginning of their luncheon. Prime minister
arrived a short time ago. They're going to break bread
and then they'll be in the Oval Office with reporters
(14:15):
a bit later. On Ukraine is a major story that
we're following here today as it is the top agenda
item in this conversation. Jaen Stoltenberg is also in the room,
the former NATO Secretary General. As we consider the polls
this morning that are making the rounds, you might have
heard about some of these yesterday. Reuter zipsos thirty seven
percent of Americans approve of Donald Trump's handling of the economy.
(14:38):
Pure research, donald Trump's overall approval rating falling to forty
percent in the first hundred days, confidence in his economic
leadership dropping to forty five percent. Gallup's got ugly numbers.
And you know who else does Fox News? Fox News
poll first hundred days of President Trump's second term, and
it doesn't look great. He receives the best marks on
(15:00):
border security, the only issue where his ratings are in
positive territory. His worst are on inflation. Only thirty three
percent approve, fifty nine percent disapprove. Tariffs pretty similar, thirty
three percent disapprove foreign policy, forty percent taxes and guns.
(15:22):
None of these are looking good, and so maybe we
shouldn't have been surprised this morning on truth social well,
Donald Trump started writing this is only two hours ago.
Rupert Murdoch, he says, has told me for years he's
going to get rid of his Fox News Trump hating
fake polster, but he has never done so. This polster,
in quotes, has gotten me in Maga wrong for years,
he says, while he's ataged to start making changes at
(15:44):
the China loving Wall Street Journal. Not a fan of
the paper either. This is where we start with our panel,
both experts on polling. Rick Davis is with me here
at the table in Washington, our Republican strategist, partner at
Stone Court Capital, Genie Shanzano in New York, political science
professor at Iona University, or democratic analyst.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
What do you think, Rick, is.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Fox about to get a new polster and what does
this tell us about the first hundred days of this president.
Speaker 8 (16:11):
Well, if he doesn't like the Fox poulster, he doesn't
like any polsters, because as you pointed out, they're all
basically saying the same thing, which is saved for border security,
which is basically incursions of all but dried up under
the Trump administration. Nobody's coming across the border illegally. Everything
else is a dismal failure. I mean, you know, negative
(16:31):
twenty six percent on inflation, this is what he campaigned on.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
I'm going to bring those costs down. I mean economy.
Speaker 8 (16:39):
He won on the economy, and now negative sixteen percent
on that rating. I mean, it's really really bad news.
And you can only make the assumption that you know
this first one hundred days, unless there's a significant change
in what's happening, it could portend really poorly for these
men term elections.
Speaker 9 (17:00):
I mean, we're a long way away.
Speaker 8 (17:02):
Nobody's voting today, but if you're, you know, after the
first hundred days, these are numbers are all worse than
his first hundred days in twenty seventeen. So you know,
look what happened in the midterms in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 9 (17:17):
We have a model to work for.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
That's right. Democrats are loving this genie.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I don't know your thoughts on these numbers because Donald
Trump said yesterday in the Oval Office he had a
ninety two percent approval rating.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I believe is that is that not true?
Speaker 10 (17:30):
I'm not sure where the ninety two percent is coming from.
To Rick's point, this is pretty consistent across most pollsters.
And you look at the Real Clear Politics average, which
I always like to look at averages, and he is underwater.
And it's stunning that he is performing worse than he
was in his first term at this point. And the
(17:52):
you know, problem for Donald Trump is the first hundred
days or as good as it's going to get for
the modern president. And so it's not going to up here,
I'm sorry to tell him. And you know the reality
of all of this is this is all of his
own making. He hasn't had a crisis that has you know,
(18:12):
a natural disaster or something. These are things that he
has done to himself. Shot himself in the foot, if
you will. I mean, just imagine if he had come
in he had not gone with his idea of tariffs.
He had instead worked with Congress to pass the Reconciliation bill.
He had work to secure the border, but he had
(18:33):
done so knowing that he has to follow the court
orders and due process, and when he makes a mistakes,
send Abrego Garcia back. His numbers might be up where
they were when he came in, But all of this
is of his own doing. It's as if he can't
hault himself or stop himself from his worst instincts. And
I think number one that's going to go down in
(18:53):
the record books is his adherence to an discredited economic
policy that even a sixth grader could have told you
since the Great Depression, was not a good idea, and
he has followed it right down the path, and this
is where he ends up. I quite frankly think the numbers,
he should be pretty happy. They're better than they probably
should be given how quickly he has dismantled the economy.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Jeez, I don't think anyone's there to tell him that.
Genie CC's, by the way, keeping honest here that ninety
two percent approval rating was on veterans' services and it
was still not correct. So Rick, I guess the question
is here, is it the cadence or is it in.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Fact the issues that he's tackled.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
If Donald Trump was in there sign of eos every day,
keeping the media running, but it was actually about lowering
prices would be having a different conversation.
Speaker 5 (19:41):
You know.
Speaker 8 (19:41):
Look, I mean I think that part of it is
the rhetoric and part of it is.
Speaker 9 (19:44):
The impact, right.
Speaker 8 (19:45):
I mean, we know that there hasn't been substantial increases
in inflation, as these numbers might actually indicate, but there
also has not been substantial decreases. And even though Donald
Trump likes to talk about the price of gas coming down, eggs,
eggs and eggs and eggs, he's just not making that case.
Speaker 9 (20:04):
And by the way, he's drowning out all.
Speaker 8 (20:06):
That noise, all that message, with the noise around tariffs,
the noise around attacks of people, you know, the negotiations
on Ukraine. I mean, like we've talked about this a
lot during the campaign season. He's not getting any points
for trying to solve the Ukraine Russian war, right, the
right thing to do. Voters aren't going to give him
credit for it. And I think the one thing that
(20:26):
that Fox poll really indicated was that people have a very.
Speaker 9 (20:31):
Dim view of the future.
Speaker 8 (20:32):
It's not just where they are today, but overwhelmingly the
economy is getting worth fifty five percent. You know, Trump
policies are in the long run, are going to be
bad negative eleven percent. I mean like it's a dismal
future to most of these voters. And you see that
in the consumer data Michigan Consumer Sentiment Best Poll in America,
(20:52):
same thing. People don't see this getting better.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
And Genie, that's not just Democrats in this case. And
of course we're hearing on the daily basis from pretty
smart economists at major firms who we hear from on
the regular here on networks like Bloomberg, and they're increasing
their odds for a recession. If we find ourselves in
one and say the second half of the year, maybe
by the end of the second quarter, what happens to
these numbers, they're.
Speaker 10 (21:17):
Going to continue to get worse, because what we've seen
so far is almost at every step experts in particular fields,
whether it's economists on the economy, whether it's legal experts
on what he's doing with the courts or an education,
the experts in those areas are telling him to stop.
They are saying he's moving in the wrong direction. And
(21:38):
the public is always going to be a little slower.
We're a little slower to catch up with that, and
it's a little slower to be reflected in the public
opinion polls. But that is what's going to happen eventually
if he doesn't stop. And you know, I think we've
seen this week Susie Wiles and others trying to tamp
down a little bit. You notice they have sort of
tried to get him not to talk until the markets
(21:59):
are closed, when he sort of goes rambling. You know,
they're trying to contain it. But if he keeps barreling
down these paths, the numbers in these polls and consumer
sentiment and everything else are just going to continue to
get worse. And so you know, the big question is
who's there in the White House to stop him. Doesn't
(22:20):
seem like a lot of people. Besnt seems to have
stepped up the you know, the CEOs have come in,
But he feels unshackled in his second term, and he
is committed to these ideas, and he is moving down
a path with no thought of the impact either on
himself politically as a self interested person, or the American
public or the world economy.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Quite frankly, Rick, you mentioned Ukraine. Is there any recourse?
Speaker 3 (22:44):
We're going to be talking a lot more about the
prospect for peace in our next hour as the President
meets with the Prime Minister of Norway. Is there any
recourse to promising over and over to be able to
solve this on day one and reach one hundred days
with no real plan sit or did no one actually
believe that to begin with?
Speaker 9 (23:03):
No, I think that it. First of all, everyone sort
of takes that kind of thing with a grainness.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
They do know it's.
Speaker 8 (23:07):
Hyperbole for him, right, and he even claims it's hyperbole,
and so you can't really tell the difference between what he's.
Speaker 9 (23:14):
You know, sort of preaching about and what he actually believes.
But it does have an impact.
Speaker 8 (23:18):
In this Fox poll, they asked about do you think
that the administration is competent?
Speaker 9 (23:24):
And fifty two percent says they're not.
Speaker 8 (23:27):
Well, you don't want the majority of America thinking, forget
if you're even trying to do the right thing, you're
not competent enough to implement it. And so that is
a very, very troubling number because we all remember when
Joe Biden at this stage of his presidency, all of
his numbers were significantly better than these, But he tried
(23:47):
to withdraw from Afghanistan on the short run, and it
was a disaster and people made a decision that he
was running an incompetent government, and everything since then in
his administration was bad and he couldn't dig out of
it because you couldn't convince people that you were competent.
If that happens to Donald Trump, no matter what he does,
it's going to be seen as incompetent through that lens.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Are you surprised that Pete Heegsath still has a job
With that said.
Speaker 8 (24:13):
You know, look, I mean Donald Trump is known for
his quick trigger finger in firing people. He made a
whole living out of a show where he did it.
And so yeah, I think people think.
Speaker 9 (24:25):
There's no upside.
Speaker 8 (24:26):
I mean, it's not like he's got such stellar credentials
that he brings confidence to the world community on the
security business. And so what's the point of this? It
was an experiment. It failed.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Okay, move on standing by his man. From everything we
can tell, but we also aren't done with the week.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Rick Davis and Genie Shanzano.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Catch
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Speaker 11 (25:06):
This comes Joe as we've gotten some fresh polling data
out of all places Fox News on how Americans are
feeling about the President's handling of tariffs and the economy overall,
and on both metrics, he is underwater by a pretty
wide margin. Tariff approval disapproval fifty eight percent disapprove of
tarif's only thirty three percent approval.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
We're looking at, broadly the lowest approval ratings for a
president in the first one hundred days in modern history,
which has prompted Donald Trump to get to truth social
and call on Rupert Murdoch to fire the polster at
Fox News. I'm not sure that's going to happen. He's
asking for the same at the Wall Street Journal. But
of course it brings us to the issue of tariff's
the corrosive effect that it's had on psychology in the markets.
Although we are feeling a little better about things today,
(25:48):
and the corrosive impact has had in the psyche of
many consumers who are concerned about rising prices and where
we're going to be in the second half of the year. Kayley,
every day we talk about economists raising odds for a
recession in the second half.
Speaker 11 (26:01):
Yeah, and it seems that those concerns are reflected when
you're looking at more marginalized communities in terms of their
financial health. According to a new survey from Hope Insider
survey from the Operation Hope Project, three or four participants
in the survey so they are not confident that the
(26:22):
economy will remain stable. Fifty three percent believe the change
in administration will not increase job growth in their communities.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Sensing a bit of a theme here.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
With that in mind, we're excited to introduce John Hopebrian
bring back to Bloomberg, the Chairman's CEO, founder of Operation
Hopes with us live from our bureau in Atlanta. John,
it's great to have you with us here on Bloomberg,
and I appreciate your coming to talk to us. You
actually were in the Treasury Department recently to talk about
financial literacy, which I know is a matter of great
import to you. You spent some time with Scott Bessen,
(26:52):
who tweeted a photo of you together and wrote, financial
literacy is a necessity, not a luxury.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Is the word tariff in.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
The Financial Receive notebooks that you're bringing forth.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
Well, I believe that, first of all, honored to be
with you, thanks for having me. I believe that financial
literacy is the civil rights issue of this generation. And
the color's not black or white, or red or blue,
it's green. It affects uh all of us, and I
e based on you're reporting, you just had even more
so now because the economy is basically driven the biggest
economy in the world, driven by consumer spending over seventy percent,
(27:25):
and everybody's starting to feel the pinch now. No tariffs
is not typically part of the financial literacy lexicon. I
do understand that, uh, the a president might wanna use
it as a negotiating tool in the short term to
to try to get someone to level a playing field,
uh with a guard to trade uh uh very uh
(27:46):
trade and balances, et cetera. As a long term tool,
I think for a country that is that runs on sentiment,
It runs on how do I feel about things? And again,
the economy is mostly consumer spending. As a long term instrument,
I don't think it's product. I actually think it's it's
potentially harmful. I'm hopeful that this is not a long
(28:07):
term strategy. The ninety day pause was a nice thing
to see. I think the saw the markets respond to that.
You know, when when you say tariffs to my population,
they're thinking about bread prices, egg prices, k kitchen top economics,
gas prices. You know, how it's gonna affect the restaurant,
(28:29):
how it's gonna affect the part, you know, the the
car they're buying, or the TV that they're buying, because
a lot of this stuff has parts from all around
the world, and they're smart enough at least to understand
that if if there's a tax on that, which is
what a tariff is, that the importer is going to
have to potentially raise those prices if it lasts for
(28:50):
a period of time. I do have confidence in sec
Secretary Scott Bessett, though, I do have enormous confidence in him,
and I think that he will find a way with
the administration to maneuver us forward.
Speaker 11 (29:04):
So if you think the Treasury Secretary is the adult
in the room, and there's been much reporting about his
role in implementing or having the President implement that ninety
day pause, perhaps pulling him back from the ledge on
firing the chair of the Federal Reserve, what has he
shared with you. Has he given you any insight into
the administrations thinking what he's receiving back when he brings
(29:24):
forward those messages.
Speaker 5 (29:26):
Yea. I spent over an hour with the Secretary, and
it was a very serious meeting, and he took the
issue very seriously rightly. So, I've known twelve Secretaries of
the Treasury, non US presidents. We've been recognized by five.
I've served three from both parties. This is the most
serious conversation that I can recall ever having with the
(29:49):
Secretary of the Treasury on this issue of financial literacy.
We covered a lot of ground. I'm going to answer
your question directly, but I intentionally did not cover tariffs
with it because I knew that the President has had
this on his mind since nineteen eighty. He's been talking
about this as nineteen eighty. He's gonna do it one
way or another. Why put the secretary in a position
(30:09):
where he can't answer a question or is a question
that can't be answered? So let's you know it is
what it is. Let that go forward. There are a
lot of other things that can that we have more
control over, and that's gonna again play itself out the
way it plays itself out. The things that I did
engage him on he was completely transparent about. He wanted
to have constructive criticism, a critique. He wanted to know
(30:36):
how policies were affecting the average citizen. He wanted to
feedback on that on a regular basis. He understood that
this is a non partisan issue that you need. This
can't be something that gets put into some partisan discussion
where only one group supports it, that it will fail
that way. You need Republicans, the Democrats, blacks and whites,
(30:56):
rich and poor, urban and rural. You need my population
that I represent with the largest in the country to
embrace uh something it makes sense from the administration. So
he's very smart, I think to ask a group that
has fifteen hundred offices in the country and a polse
on what's going on for not only just help with
(31:16):
the program side and maybe we give him some policy
recommendations he might like he's invited those, but also to
help at the right time to to get this This
could be a This really could be a unifying issue
for the country and at a time where everybody argues
over is a is a dark outside? Is it light out?
Is that really light no, No, it's not light. Somebody's
(31:38):
lying to me, right, you know. I mean, you can't
get Somebody says something's up, somebody says no, that's down right.
Everybody's like in the are in the business of arguing,
and I think people are exhausted by it. By the way,
isn't it nice that there's a topic that actually most
people agree on? And I think and I think he
(31:58):
thinks financial literacy could be that issue that is a unifier. Uh. Now,
we we gotta get all the noise out the way,
the political noise and the partisanship out the way I have.
I I mean, people saw me meeting for the the
administration from what you call it my community, and folks
start coming at me with that, and I said, look,
trust me, sit down for a minute. I I tr
(32:20):
I've known this guy for a decade. He's a good man,
and just trust me. I think there's something we can
do here that's good for everybody. And they said, great,
well that has to happen. Everybody has to say this
is a radical movement of common sense. Uh, this is
something we can agree on, this is something we can
get done, and let's work on it. And that's his view,
and I was it was very refreshing. Actually, I didn't
(32:40):
feel uncomfortable in any part of the meeting. M He
was himself, which is direct and transparent, and he was
squarely focused on this issue. But he also understood that
financial literacy ripples out into the broader economy. In other words,
he wasn't treating it as like a some trinket issue
or some some m marginal issue. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Well, he referred to you as a longtime friend in
his posts supporting this idea on Financial Literacy Month, and
we appreciate your bringing us inside that conversation, John, because
you know, the presidents surrounded by a lot of different
people who have a lot of different ideas about all
of these things. And there were some pretty ugly tweets
that we saw posts on X from the likes of
Laura Lumer referred to you as a pro impeachment Trump hater.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Even Elon Musk retweeted that, calling it troubling.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
And I'm wondering if you have any reaction to what
you heard there or if that might impact your relationship
with this administration.
Speaker 5 (33:39):
I mean, what I believe is that the election's over
and he's a president of the United States. And as
I've said on multiple TV interviews and urban Black urban
radio interviews, if the president succeeds, we succeed. If the
president fails, we fail. What's complicated about this. Nobody should
(33:59):
be rooting for his failure. We should be trying to
help him succeed. That which is exactly why I r
I risked, you know, pushback from m a traditional my
traditional community to go and have this meeting, which I
thought was important on the first day of Financial Literacy Month.
And luckily, I mean, I'm getting very proud of the
black and brown community are very mature about it. They
(34:19):
were like, yeah, there's le It's not a black black
of brown John, as you said, it's about the green right,
It's not, you know, so go get us some green
Let's let's see what we get. And I and they
were and you know, doctor King's died, uh was assassinated
fifty seven years ago this month. And we were in
Memphis for that with Republicans by the way, and Democrats
and members of the Trump administration with us, and for
three hours, nobody said anything negative about anybody. I I
(34:43):
banned it. No no hating, no arguing, no nothing. And
we were. It was about solutions in the business plan
for America. And of course doctor King died trying to
help poor whites, which is the largest population of poverty
in this country then and today. And we have a
business plan week CRED for rural America where a lot
of poor whites live. We have a business plan for
Black Americans and for women, and for Latinos, and for
(35:04):
Asians and for Native American Indians. And it's all published,
it's all transparent. You can download it, and a most
people are ready to go, wow, actually makes some sense.
I like this. It's something from me here. We've got
to get back to that conversation because the Bible says
a house divided cannot stand. We keep on with this ridiculousness,
ladies and gentlemen, and we want to worry about whether
(35:27):
we're hitting on each other. Cause everybody wants to be an American,
but Americans, well, we speak in Mandarin in twenty years,
because there are other countries that want to be US. China, Russia, Iran,
North Korea want our way of life and what we have.
They can only it can't get into fair fight. They
can only get it if we mess it up. And
we gotta figure out whether we're better together. That's what
(35:48):
doctor King believed. That's what I believe. So I you know,
what does life have to do with it? I mean,
this has to do with with are do we do
I really respect me? And learn to like me? That
like me? Never respect me? Right? And do we respect
each other? Because by the way, we need different views.
This country is made up this. I just were on
(36:10):
the way in here. I heard from my people that California,
which went from the fifth largest economy in the world
to the fourth largest economy ahead of Japan. Right, well, California,
I believe is the most diverse place in the United
States of America. And New York I believe you guys
are in New York is the second most biggest economy
right in the US, and it also is one of
(36:31):
the most diverse places. So I'm not I mean, diversity wins.
Diversity wins. And most, by the way, most people are immigrants,
including my European friends, and of course black peoples got
on the wrong boat. That's another conversation. I look, we
got we got to lighten the temperature. Light in the temperature,
and and and laser and laser and the focus on
what we are really about, what's the business plan for
(36:54):
this country and and how can we again, this is
the biggest economy in the world, and it's seventy percent
consumers spending. That's all of us doing better.
Speaker 7 (37:05):
Well.
Speaker 11 (37:05):
To return to the point you were just making on
everybody wants to be the United States of America. I
wonder what you make of the narrative that has been
working its way through financial market participants in the last
month or two about the end of US exceptionalism. Is
that the way you see it is that what these
policies could bring about.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
I think every fifty to seventy maybe certainly one hundred years,
this country has an identity crisis. We had it with
the First Reconstruction, which was well, of course, we had
it with the War for our independence. But then you
had the first Reconstruction, which was slavery, right, that was
the decision, by the way, the Republican Party, people don't
(37:44):
know was built. It was birth on freedom and anti
slavery agenda. I don't know if we go know that that
was while Lincoln got so much heck, but that was
the first reconstruction. And then you had Frederick Douglas, a
black man working with Abraham Lincoln, a white man who
and Frederick douglasized Abraham Lincoln. But Lincoln was smart enough
to recognize with stuff he didn't know as smart as
(38:06):
he was, and he brought Frederick Douglas into the conversation.
At the end of the day, Fredid Dodullas made him
a better president. His council made him a better president.
That constructive friction, Lincoln realized was a good thing, not
just negative friction, constructive friction. Then we had the Second Reconstruction,
the Civil rights movement and Johnson President Johnson, who happened
even a Democrat did not like or did not get
along with, Doctor King. Doctor King got along with pretty
(38:28):
much everybody, but they but they figure out they were
better together that they ended up with four civil rights
bills by a guy who called people really interesting names.
I'm talking about Johnson. And then you had the third reconstruction,
which is what I think we're in today, twenty twenty
to twenty thirty. And so I'm not surprised that there's
all the country's basically going through a colonic I mean,
(38:49):
this is one, you know, one huge digestive exercise where
we gotta flush a lot of things through our system,
and we got to figure out, right, can you survive
hard right? And that's it? Can you survive hard left?
And that's it? I don't think so. I think most
people are actually massively in the middle. It's a radical
(39:10):
movement of common sense. They wanna pay their mortgage. They
wanna send their kid to college, right. They wanna start
a business or are uh, or go work for one.
They wanna go to the park with their kids. They
wanna enjoy their neighbors. They wanna they w I the
diversity actually is part of our magic sauce. It's just
that the diversity is a little darker these days, it's
a little bit more tan. But the diversity is all.
(39:32):
Do you know that women? You know, in nineteen seventy two,
a women did not have a bank could not get
a bank account nineteen sev not eighteen seventy two. After
in the Second Reconstruction, the furnive Action, which was created
for blacks, actually went to benefit white women. And I
say bravo. By the way, today women and w and
women couldn't get a a loan unless her husband guaranteed
(39:53):
it in nineteen seventy two. Today women are a third
of the US economy. If we hadn't done that, if
we hadn't had that debate and want it with common sense,
where would we be today? A third of all women
not grow is I think it's like seven trillion dollars
is the women's contribution to GDP. We'd be an also
ran country. We'd be a third run, a third world country.
(40:13):
As economically, here we go again. Half of this country,
forty percent of country is black and brown. I love Mathews,
doesn't have an opinion. Within ten years of your majority
of minorities, the largest group of baby boomers in the
history are beginning to retire. As you know, there's gonna
be one hundred trillion dollars wealth transfer the next ten
or twenty years. That's basically white wealthy people trying to
(40:34):
go play golf. At the same time, you know, the businesses,
who's gonna buy him the t the GDP, who's gonna
replace them? My rich friends need my poor friends do better,
if only to stay rich. And so this is what
I told the secretary. As you can't well, I'm sorry
I didn't tell secretary this part. I told TV this part.
You can't cut yourself alone out of this crisis. Yes,
(40:55):
there is waste, there is bloating. Let's get to that
in an intelligent way, not in a U, not in
a A. The hou is in as important as the
what we can be gracious about this. We can understand them.
It's not the employee's fault. If they're working at a
agency that may not be efficient. Let's deal with that
in an intelligent way. Get that out of the way.
Now that's at the bottom third of the economy, and
(41:17):
make them capitalists and let them r just repair the
ladder and let them become a homeowner's forty four percent
of Black people own a home compared to seventy five
percent of their white counterparts. That's good for banks, for
them to become get financially illiterate. Right, then get the
credit score up. By the way, credit score increases of
a hundred points in Black America, loan it's worth a
h It's worth sep. Seven hundred and fifty billion dollars
(41:39):
by twenty fifty three. Then you go buy homes. Forty
four percent to sixty percent home ownership for Black o
eric a loan that's good for eight hundred billion dollars.
That's one point five trillion dollars of wealth creation and
two to three percent of GDP increases every year. And
then you have business gr business acquisition. Baby boomers don't
want the businesses, well, sorry, the baby boomers are retire
(42:00):
that they want to give away the stocks, bonds of cash,
all that stuff in the homes. The family wants that.
The family don't want the businesses, well, let somebody buy
that business. That's a trillion dollars of wealth creation. And
AI artificial intelligence. I'm co chair with Sam Altman on
the AI Ethics Council, and i am co chair with
Douglan Billan of walmart on financial literacy for all this
(42:20):
is the civil rights and civil rights, these two things.
That's a trillion dollars. So that's three and a half
trillion dollars of new wealth creation by twenty fifty three,
twenty years or so, and two to three percent of
additional GDP. Who doesn't want that? I mean who when
the black person succeeds in this example, or the poor
rural white, or the woman, or the Latino or the
(42:43):
Asian yes here legally, when they succeed, all boats rise.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Who?
Speaker 5 (42:51):
I mean, this is a radical movement of common sense.
I just think that no one's really having this conversation.
But this is the conversation, and that's why we wanted
you to be here.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
John.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
If we just let you keep talking, I feel like
you're gonna solve this for us right now, in this hour.
You know, there are very few people who come on
Bloomberg and we clear the decks for like this. At
some point we are gonna check the markets. But while
you're still with us live from Atlanta here. You know,
there's the old saying, if you're getting it on both sides,
you're doing something right. And I suspect that you feel
like that right now.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Would you go back to the secretary again, have your advice?
Speaker 5 (43:26):
Mean, I'll come back, sure. I mean I was there
meeting with other folks a couple of weeks last week. Actually,
I mean, look, I'm gonna give him. I'm gonna give
him some some room and let him do his job.
He's helping to run the world economy. He knows my
number if if if he wants to call me, I'll answer.
But you know, let him have the room, let him
talk to some other people, let him. You know, we
(43:46):
have the largest infrastructure for financial literacy coaching in America.
We're not going anywhere, and we're the best in class,
and we're in urban community. Percent of our offices are
in white, poor rural communities, by the way, and they
don't care what color are. They just care why they're
getting their earning up, task credit, their credit score up,
the debt down. They're saving us up and the bank
says yes to an approval and the You know, so,
(44:07):
we have this infrastructure that's growing fifteen hundred offices total,
millions of clients, and we're here when the Secretary of
the Treasury and by extension, the administration has some make
sense things they like to do that we can be
helpful for it. If they don't need us, we'll go
on about our business.
Speaker 6 (44:24):
All right.
Speaker 11 (44:24):
We'll leave it on that note. John, Thank you so
much for being so generous with your time today. John
Hope Bryant Operation Hope, Inc. Chair, CEO and founder here
with us on Bloomberg TV and Radio.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Thanks for listening to the Balance of Power podcast.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already, at Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you get your podcasts, and you can find
us live every weekday from Washington, DC at noontime, Eastern
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Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
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(00:20):
you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Live from the White House.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
The President there sitting next to his Secretary of Saint
Marco Rubio, across the table from the Prime Minister of Norway,
who is in town for meetings today. They're going to
have a bilateral in the Oval Office, probably about an
hour from now. We'll walk into the Oval together and
bring you into that conversation. Jonas Steira at the White
House alongside Jaen Stoltenberg, his Trump whisperer, sitting in on
(00:50):
the meetings today. Donald Trump had very nice things to
say about Stoltenberg from the years he was running NATO
as Secretary General. They're going to get behind closed doors
now and again following lunch there will be a bilateral
news conference that takes place, not so much a news conference,
but a little conversation, if you will, around the fireplace
in the Oval Office. Some interesting headlines crossing there, everyone's
(01:12):
talking about Ukraine, at least for the most part. That
is really driving the agenda in this meeting today, thinking
very strongly, Ukraine Russia want peace. The headline from Donald
Trump Ukraine Russia need to get to the table. Think
we will get peace, saying he has his own deadline
on Ukraine. When asked about that, there was a reporter
(01:32):
who asked him as well about potentially winning the Nobel
Peace Prize, which he seemed to enjoy. Now, all of
this comes after a massive missile and drone attack by
Russia against Kiev last night, at least nine dead, more
than sixty wounded. As we talk about conditions here for peace,
(01:53):
Bloomberg is making news. We've talked a lot about conditions
for Ukraine. Right, you lose crimea freeze the lines in place,
you never get to join NATO, maybe peacekeepers from Europe,
but not Americans. Conditions for Russia are suddenly emerging. According
to Bloomberg person's familiar, the US will demand Russia accept
(02:14):
Ukraine's right to have its own army and defense industry.
This may be a non starter from Moscow, as Vladimir
Putin has made it clear. Remember before the invasion even happened.
It was about the demilitarization of Ukraine. So where are
we as Steve Whitkoff prepares to pack his bags from Moscow?
(02:35):
Were joined by Ben Jensen, a new voice on the
program and looking forward to the conversation with Ben, director
of the Future's Lab and senior fellow with the Defense
and Security Department at CSIS, the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Ben, it's great to have you.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I'm fascinated by this new wrinkle here because this has
really seemed like a negotiation that favored Russia until now.
Does this move the needle? And will this meeting with
Norway help us get any closer to peace?
Speaker 4 (03:04):
So great question, Thank you for having me. I would say,
we don't know what we'll move the needle yet, because
we're in the middle of a complex negotiation process that
doesn't lend itself necessarily to social media hot takes, whether
it's by our own political leaders or quick comments and
nightly addresses by Ukraine. Historically, negotiations take time and they
(03:25):
take discretion, and so you're seeing a real tension play
out in each side is using a mix of private communication,
direct private messages through intermediaries and also directly as well
as these public claims to try to gain a position
of leverage. And so I think we're starting to see
now that actually, behind the scenes, Trump's team has been
(03:46):
putting pressure on Moscow. I know sometimes from the outside
it doesn't look like that, but this is the first
sign that there has been pressure put on Moscow to
accept some type of concession. So it's the mix of
carrots and sticks that are really going to matter. And
you can't have all the carrots and sticks publicly revealed
where people start to maneuver around them. So does it
move the needle maybe, But I think more importantly what
(04:09):
it reminds us of is that not everything is as
it appears from the outside.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yeah, isn't that always the case? Vladimir Putin certainly isn't
waiting around. As you heard me mention, the attacks on Kiev.
Missiles and drones were horrifying. The images are horrifying, and
I'm guessing that President Trump saw them.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
In his daily briefing today, he.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Took to truth social pretty quick post, at least for
Donald Trump, and says, I am not happy with the
Russian strikes on Kiev. If you're with us on YouTube
you see the post. Not necessary and very bad timing,
he writes, Vladimir stop, exclamation point. Five thousand soldiers a
week are dying. Let's get the peace deal done. Exclamation
(04:52):
point pretty interesting, Vladimir stop.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Ben will he.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
No.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
In fact, I would direct you and your view and
listeners to check out our firepower strike tracker at CSIS.
So for over a year now, we've actually been scraping
statistics to analyze how Russia uses a mix of long
range drones the Shaheed, as well as ballistic missiles and
cruise missiles to effectively negotiate by fire, to use a
punishment strategy as a way of gaining strategic leverage over
(05:20):
President Zelensky through trying to kill as many Ukrainian civilians
as possible. This is completely counterintuitive to most of the
ways we've talked about war in the twenty first century,
but it shows us that war remains not only a
continuation of politics, but ultimately tragic and brutal. And so
what Putin did was is not necessarily any different than
what he's done. What you're seeing is that Ukraine is
(05:43):
at a critical point because Russia is actually getting more
sophisticated in its targeting, better able to integrate satellite intelligence,
better to integrate cyber intelligence, and now increasingly being able
to direct a complex mix of ballistic cruise missiles and
then more sophisticated shaheeds that resist Ukrainian electronic warfare. And
(06:04):
if you check out that firepower strike tracker we detail
with all the statistics, we actually break down and do
the analysis to show that when you mix the different
types of attacks and you concentrate them in a geographic space,
so I mix ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones just
on the Capitol, it's going to lower the probability that
Ukraine can intercept them, and it's going to actually begin
(06:25):
to really wage this punishment strategy into a brutal war
of attrition, which we've already seen. So it might have
seemed like it was audacious, it was bad timing, but
this is central to Russia's strategy. They can't win on
the battlefield. They're throwing their own young men literally what
the Ukrainians call them is meat assaults at front lines
(06:45):
where they're killed by drones. And so their bid for
success when they can't win with this twenty first century
version of trench warfare is to try to bomb the
Ukrainians into submission. It's utterly brutal, and our president is
right to take the stance he did.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
This is incredible, Ben, terrifying as you describe this. I'm
looking right now. You've got to check this out, guys,
go google it. As Ben mentioned here, Russian firepower Strike
Tracker analyzing missile attacks in Ukraine. This is great work
from the Future's Lab at csis Ben that would suggest
that the closer we get to peace, the more violent
(07:22):
this conflict will be.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
I think you're absolutely right, and in fact, that's something
for your viewers and listeners to really take into consideration.
There is a tendency now moving from the political and
strategic level down to the operational for each side to
take more risk and gambles to seek territorial concessions or
some kind of additional Basically, everyone's competing to get new
(07:45):
chips before they head to the poker table. Call these negotiations. So,
I think you're not just going to see Russia increase
these kind of highly concentrated firepower strikes. You're going to
see them continue to sacrifice the lives of future Russian generations.
You are also going to see them beg, borrow and
steal from North Korea, China and Iran to build up
their arsenal authoritarianism. But at the same time, on the
(08:07):
other side, you're also probably going to see the Ukrainians
pull off some pretty daring raids and long range strikes.
And the Ukrainians have been utterly ingenious throughout this war.
Remember this is a country that entered the conflict with
five drone companies and now has over five hundred, and
they produce thousands of FPVS first person view drones all
the way up to long range, low cost cruise missiles daily.
(08:31):
So you're I think going to see not just Russia
increasingly try to punish the Ukrainian people, I would expect
to see more long range Ukrainian raids. So in the
last week alone, you've had a Ukrainian strike on Russian
strategic bomber bases and also a Ukrainian long range strike
on a major ammunition depot, So I think we're going
to also see the Ukrainians trying to get those poker
chips for the negotiation table as well.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Wow, all right, Ben, I want to ask you about
CRIMEA specifically, and I want to bring you back to
this post that Donald.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Trump made yesterday on Tree with social umtry you saw it.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Ukrainian President Zelenski, he writes, is boasting on the front
page of the Wall Street Journal that Ukraine will not
legally recognize the occupation of Crimea. Donald Trump goes on
to write, this statement is very harmful to the peace
negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago
under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama and is
not even a point of discussion. He goes on to
(09:23):
say that if he wants Crimea, why didn't they fight
for it eleven years ago when it was handed over
to Russia without a shot being fired. That's a bit
of revisionist history. If you were paying attention to things.
Then the Press secretary at the White House, Caroline Leviott,
picked it up from there in the White House driveway yesterday.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Ben here's what she said.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
Well, as President Trump, Wrightfrey pointed out in that statement,
it was President Obama who gave up Crimea, who allowed
Russia to take it over in twenty fourteen, and so
the President is not asking Ukraine to recognize Crimea. Nobody
has asked them to do that.
Speaker 7 (09:56):
What he is asking is for people to come to
the negotiating table recognize saying that this has been a
brutal war for far too long, and in order to
make a good deal, both sides have to walk away
a little bit unhappy.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Ben, you don't have to wait into the Obama stuff.
But aren't we asking Ukraine to acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory?
And what would happen to those Russian sub bases if
in fact Crimea went back to Kiev.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
So I think what you're seeing in all of this
if rhetoric and reality have not aligned for some time
in American politics. So I think the President's trying to
make the point that he wants them to negotiate the challenge.
And this is where the details matter. Is if you
look at Article two of the Ukrainian Constitution. And we're Americans,
so constitutions matter to us. Our own constitution matters, and
(10:44):
we know that other countries also guarantee rights to their
citizen natural rights through structures like constitutions. Article two of
the Ukrainian Constitution makes it impossible for President Zelensky to
recognize Crimea as part of Russia and the Ukrainians frankly
did fight for it. They fought for a long time.
It's just that Russia, through a manipulation of the law
of armed conflict, used the Little Green Men to seize it.
(11:07):
And frankly, there were a lot of Russian pensioners in
Crimea and large Russian naval bases making it easier. So
what you have right now is a very interesting situation
where the president is just doing what he does. He
really likes to turn up the rhetoric. He likes to
say things that grab our attention, and he's frankly successful
at it and pull us in in a way that
he can try to pressure both Ukraine and Russia to
(11:31):
try to negotiate to achieve the subjective, which in a
larger strategic sense means that the United States can focus
on the ongoing Iran negotiations and also focus more on China.
But in the meantime, what's happening is it's unsettling some
of the larger complexities of any piece deal. So Crimea
is going to be hard for the Ukrainians to win
back militarily, and it's definitely going to be something that
(11:53):
Russians will resist giving. At the negotiation table. Owing exactly
to what you put out, Crimea is key maritime terrain,
and not only is it key maritime terrain, Russia actually
still maintains large space infrastructure there for communicating with its
satellite constellation. So Crimea is important both from a maritime
and a space standpoint, but also increasingly a symbolic standpoint.
(12:15):
So it's hard to see that Russia's really going to
be willing to negotiate with it. And it's hard to imagine,
short of a catastrophic collapse of the Russian military along
the front line, that Ukraine can take it by military force,
which means we're left with a very difficult reality. Ukraine
cannot seed Crimea until it adjusts its own constitution. It
(12:36):
can't do constitutional referendums under martial law in the middle
of the war. So there's really a coordination challenge involved
with these negotiations about what has to move first. Can
you have elections in Ukraine? Can you put those things up?
And it also is a reminder to us that no
matter what we hear on truth, social or what Zelensky
says in a nightly address, this process is going to
(12:56):
take months, if not years to play out and that
detail are what will matter. The technical details are what
drives negotiations.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
In the end. Really fascinating.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
You know what I love, Ben is someone who knows
what they're talking about. I'm really glad that you could
come to share your expertise with us, and I hope
you'll stay close because this is a story developing before
our eyes. Benjamin Jensen, Director of the Future's Lab, Senior
Fellow Defense Security Department at CSIS, Let me know when
you're ready to host the show that was fascinating a
clinic with Ben Jensen. These are the kind of conversations
(13:29):
we try to bring you every day here on the
fastest show in politics.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Only on Bloomberg.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power Podcast. Catch
us live weekdays at noon and five pm Eastern on Apple,
Cocklay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You
can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship
New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Glad you're with us here on Bloomberg Radio Satellite radio
Channel one twenty one and on YouTube with our on
the White House, We're going to go back there shortly
for a bilateral meeting with President Trump and the Prime
Minister of Norway. You might think you just saw that
that was actually the beginning of their luncheon. Prime minister
arrived a short time ago. They're going to break bread
and then they'll be in the Oval Office with reporters
(14:15):
a bit later. On Ukraine is a major story that
we're following here today as it is the top agenda
item in this conversation. Jaen Stoltenberg is also in the room,
the former NATO Secretary General. As we consider the polls
this morning that are making the rounds, you might have
heard about some of these yesterday. Reuter zipsos thirty seven
percent of Americans approve of Donald Trump's handling of the economy.
(14:38):
Pure research, donald Trump's overall approval rating falling to forty
percent in the first hundred days, confidence in his economic
leadership dropping to forty five percent. Gallup's got ugly numbers.
And you know who else does Fox News? Fox News
poll first hundred days of President Trump's second term, and
it doesn't look great. He receives the best marks on
(15:00):
border security, the only issue where his ratings are in
positive territory. His worst are on inflation. Only thirty three
percent approve, fifty nine percent disapprove. Tariffs pretty similar, thirty
three percent disapprove foreign policy, forty percent taxes and guns.
(15:22):
None of these are looking good, and so maybe we
shouldn't have been surprised this morning on truth social well,
Donald Trump started writing this is only two hours ago.
Rupert Murdoch, he says, has told me for years he's
going to get rid of his Fox News Trump hating
fake polster, but he has never done so. This polster,
in quotes, has gotten me in Maga wrong for years,
he says, while he's ataged to start making changes at
(15:44):
the China loving Wall Street Journal. Not a fan of
the paper either. This is where we start with our panel,
both experts on polling. Rick Davis is with me here
at the table in Washington, our Republican strategist, partner at
Stone Court Capital, Genie Shanzano in New York, political science
professor at Iona University, or democratic analyst.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
What do you think, Rick, is.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Fox about to get a new polster and what does
this tell us about the first hundred days of this president.
Speaker 8 (16:11):
Well, if he doesn't like the Fox poulster, he doesn't
like any polsters, because as you pointed out, they're all
basically saying the same thing, which is saved for border security,
which is basically incursions of all but dried up under
the Trump administration. Nobody's coming across the border illegally. Everything
else is a dismal failure. I mean, you know, negative
(16:31):
twenty six percent on inflation, this is what he campaigned on.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
I'm going to bring those costs down. I mean economy.
Speaker 8 (16:39):
He won on the economy, and now negative sixteen percent
on that rating. I mean, it's really really bad news.
And you can only make the assumption that you know
this first one hundred days, unless there's a significant change
in what's happening, it could portend really poorly for these
men term elections.
Speaker 9 (17:00):
I mean, we're a long way away.
Speaker 8 (17:02):
Nobody's voting today, but if you're, you know, after the
first hundred days, these are numbers are all worse than
his first hundred days in twenty seventeen. So you know,
look what happened in the midterms in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 9 (17:17):
We have a model to work for.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
That's right. Democrats are loving this genie.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I don't know your thoughts on these numbers because Donald
Trump said yesterday in the Oval Office he had a
ninety two percent approval rating.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I believe is that is that not true?
Speaker 10 (17:30):
I'm not sure where the ninety two percent is coming from.
To Rick's point, this is pretty consistent across most pollsters.
And you look at the Real Clear Politics average, which
I always like to look at averages, and he is underwater.
And it's stunning that he is performing worse than he
was in his first term at this point. And the
(17:52):
you know, problem for Donald Trump is the first hundred
days or as good as it's going to get for
the modern president. And so it's not going to up here,
I'm sorry to tell him. And you know the reality
of all of this is this is all of his
own making. He hasn't had a crisis that has you know,
(18:12):
a natural disaster or something. These are things that he
has done to himself. Shot himself in the foot, if
you will. I mean, just imagine if he had come
in he had not gone with his idea of tariffs.
He had instead worked with Congress to pass the Reconciliation bill.
He had work to secure the border, but he had
(18:33):
done so knowing that he has to follow the court
orders and due process, and when he makes a mistakes,
send Abrego Garcia back. His numbers might be up where
they were when he came in, But all of this
is of his own doing. It's as if he can't
hault himself or stop himself from his worst instincts. And
I think number one that's going to go down in
(18:53):
the record books is his adherence to an discredited economic
policy that even a sixth grader could have told you
since the Great Depression, was not a good idea, and
he has followed it right down the path, and this
is where he ends up. I quite frankly think the numbers,
he should be pretty happy. They're better than they probably
should be given how quickly he has dismantled the economy.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Jeez, I don't think anyone's there to tell him that.
Genie CC's, by the way, keeping honest here that ninety
two percent approval rating was on veterans' services and it
was still not correct. So Rick, I guess the question
is here, is it the cadence or is it in.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Fact the issues that he's tackled.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
If Donald Trump was in there sign of eos every day,
keeping the media running, but it was actually about lowering
prices would be having a different conversation.
Speaker 5 (19:41):
You know.
Speaker 8 (19:41):
Look, I mean I think that part of it is
the rhetoric and part of it is.
Speaker 9 (19:44):
The impact, right.
Speaker 8 (19:45):
I mean, we know that there hasn't been substantial increases
in inflation, as these numbers might actually indicate, but there
also has not been substantial decreases. And even though Donald
Trump likes to talk about the price of gas coming down, eggs,
eggs and eggs and eggs, he's just not making that case.
Speaker 9 (20:04):
And by the way, he's drowning out all.
Speaker 8 (20:06):
That noise, all that message, with the noise around tariffs,
the noise around attacks of people, you know, the negotiations
on Ukraine. I mean, like we've talked about this a
lot during the campaign season. He's not getting any points
for trying to solve the Ukraine Russian war, right, the
right thing to do. Voters aren't going to give him
credit for it. And I think the one thing that
(20:26):
that Fox poll really indicated was that people have a very.
Speaker 9 (20:31):
Dim view of the future.
Speaker 8 (20:32):
It's not just where they are today, but overwhelmingly the
economy is getting worth fifty five percent. You know, Trump
policies are in the long run, are going to be
bad negative eleven percent. I mean like it's a dismal
future to most of these voters. And you see that
in the consumer data Michigan Consumer Sentiment Best Poll in America,
(20:52):
same thing. People don't see this getting better.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
And Genie, that's not just Democrats in this case. And
of course we're hearing on the daily basis from pretty
smart economists at major firms who we hear from on
the regular here on networks like Bloomberg, and they're increasing
their odds for a recession. If we find ourselves in
one and say the second half of the year, maybe
by the end of the second quarter, what happens to
these numbers, they're.
Speaker 10 (21:17):
Going to continue to get worse, because what we've seen
so far is almost at every step experts in particular fields,
whether it's economists on the economy, whether it's legal experts
on what he's doing with the courts or an education,
the experts in those areas are telling him to stop.
They are saying he's moving in the wrong direction. And
(21:38):
the public is always going to be a little slower.
We're a little slower to catch up with that, and
it's a little slower to be reflected in the public
opinion polls. But that is what's going to happen eventually
if he doesn't stop. And you know, I think we've
seen this week Susie Wiles and others trying to tamp
down a little bit. You notice they have sort of
tried to get him not to talk until the markets
(21:59):
are closed, when he sort of goes rambling. You know,
they're trying to contain it. But if he keeps barreling
down these paths, the numbers in these polls and consumer
sentiment and everything else are just going to continue to
get worse. And so you know, the big question is
who's there in the White House to stop him. Doesn't
(22:20):
seem like a lot of people. Besnt seems to have
stepped up the you know, the CEOs have come in,
But he feels unshackled in his second term, and he
is committed to these ideas, and he is moving down
a path with no thought of the impact either on
himself politically as a self interested person, or the American
public or the world economy.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Quite frankly, Rick, you mentioned Ukraine. Is there any recourse?
Speaker 3 (22:44):
We're going to be talking a lot more about the
prospect for peace in our next hour as the President
meets with the Prime Minister of Norway. Is there any
recourse to promising over and over to be able to
solve this on day one and reach one hundred days
with no real plan sit or did no one actually
believe that to begin with?
Speaker 9 (23:03):
No, I think that it. First of all, everyone sort
of takes that kind of thing with a grainness.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
They do know it's.
Speaker 8 (23:07):
Hyperbole for him, right, and he even claims it's hyperbole,
and so you can't really tell the difference between what he's.
Speaker 9 (23:14):
You know, sort of preaching about and what he actually believes.
But it does have an impact.
Speaker 8 (23:18):
In this Fox poll, they asked about do you think
that the administration is competent?
Speaker 9 (23:24):
And fifty two percent says they're not.
Speaker 8 (23:27):
Well, you don't want the majority of America thinking, forget
if you're even trying to do the right thing, you're
not competent enough to implement it. And so that is
a very, very troubling number because we all remember when
Joe Biden at this stage of his presidency, all of
his numbers were significantly better than these, But he tried
(23:47):
to withdraw from Afghanistan on the short run, and it
was a disaster and people made a decision that he
was running an incompetent government, and everything since then in
his administration was bad and he couldn't dig out of
it because you couldn't convince people that you were competent.
If that happens to Donald Trump, no matter what he does,
it's going to be seen as incompetent through that lens.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Are you surprised that Pete Heegsath still has a job
With that said.
Speaker 8 (24:13):
You know, look, I mean Donald Trump is known for
his quick trigger finger in firing people. He made a
whole living out of a show where he did it.
And so yeah, I think people think.
Speaker 9 (24:25):
There's no upside.
Speaker 8 (24:26):
I mean, it's not like he's got such stellar credentials
that he brings confidence to the world community on the
security business. And so what's the point of this? It
was an experiment. It failed.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Okay, move on standing by his man. From everything we
can tell, but we also aren't done with the week.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Rick Davis and Genie Shanzano.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Catch
us live weekdays at noon and five pm Eastern on Apple,
Cockley and Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us
live on YouTube.
Speaker 11 (25:06):
This comes Joe as we've gotten some fresh polling data
out of all places Fox News on how Americans are
feeling about the President's handling of tariffs and the economy overall,
and on both metrics, he is underwater by a pretty
wide margin. Tariff approval disapproval fifty eight percent disapprove of
tarif's only thirty three percent approval.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
We're looking at, broadly the lowest approval ratings for a
president in the first one hundred days in modern history,
which has prompted Donald Trump to get to truth social
and call on Rupert Murdoch to fire the polster at
Fox News. I'm not sure that's going to happen. He's
asking for the same at the Wall Street Journal. But
of course it brings us to the issue of tariff's
the corrosive effect that it's had on psychology in the markets.
Although we are feeling a little better about things today,
(25:48):
and the corrosive impact has had in the psyche of
many consumers who are concerned about rising prices and where
we're going to be in the second half of the year. Kayley,
every day we talk about economists raising odds for a
recession in the second half.
Speaker 11 (26:01):
Yeah, and it seems that those concerns are reflected when
you're looking at more marginalized communities in terms of their
financial health. According to a new survey from Hope Insider
survey from the Operation Hope Project, three or four participants
in the survey so they are not confident that the
(26:22):
economy will remain stable. Fifty three percent believe the change
in administration will not increase job growth in their communities.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Sensing a bit of a theme here.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
With that in mind, we're excited to introduce John Hopebrian
bring back to Bloomberg, the Chairman's CEO, founder of Operation
Hopes with us live from our bureau in Atlanta. John,
it's great to have you with us here on Bloomberg,
and I appreciate your coming to talk to us. You
actually were in the Treasury Department recently to talk about
financial literacy, which I know is a matter of great
import to you. You spent some time with Scott Bessen,
(26:52):
who tweeted a photo of you together and wrote, financial
literacy is a necessity, not a luxury.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Is the word tariff in.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
The Financial Receive notebooks that you're bringing forth.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
Well, I believe that, first of all, honored to be
with you, thanks for having me. I believe that financial
literacy is the civil rights issue of this generation. And
the color's not black or white, or red or blue,
it's green. It affects uh all of us, and I
e based on you're reporting, you just had even more
so now because the economy is basically driven the biggest
economy in the world, driven by consumer spending over seventy percent,
(27:25):
and everybody's starting to feel the pinch now. No tariffs
is not typically part of the financial literacy lexicon. I
do understand that, uh, the a president might wanna use
it as a negotiating tool in the short term to
to try to get someone to level a playing field,
uh with a guard to trade uh uh very uh
(27:46):
trade and balances, et cetera. As a long term tool,
I think for a country that is that runs on sentiment,
It runs on how do I feel about things? And again,
the economy is mostly consumer spending. As a long term instrument,
I don't think it's product. I actually think it's it's
potentially harmful. I'm hopeful that this is not a long
(28:07):
term strategy. The ninety day pause was a nice thing
to see. I think the saw the markets respond to that.
You know, when when you say tariffs to my population,
they're thinking about bread prices, egg prices, k kitchen top economics,
gas prices. You know, how it's gonna affect the restaurant,
(28:29):
how it's gonna affect the part, you know, the the
car they're buying, or the TV that they're buying, because
a lot of this stuff has parts from all around
the world, and they're smart enough at least to understand
that if if there's a tax on that, which is
what a tariff is, that the importer is going to
have to potentially raise those prices if it lasts for
(28:50):
a period of time. I do have confidence in sec
Secretary Scott Bessett, though, I do have enormous confidence in him,
and I think that he will find a way with
the administration to maneuver us forward.
Speaker 11 (29:04):
So if you think the Treasury Secretary is the adult
in the room, and there's been much reporting about his
role in implementing or having the President implement that ninety
day pause, perhaps pulling him back from the ledge on
firing the chair of the Federal Reserve, what has he
shared with you. Has he given you any insight into
the administrations thinking what he's receiving back when he brings
(29:24):
forward those messages.
Speaker 5 (29:26):
Yea. I spent over an hour with the Secretary, and
it was a very serious meeting, and he took the
issue very seriously rightly. So, I've known twelve Secretaries of
the Treasury, non US presidents. We've been recognized by five.
I've served three from both parties. This is the most
serious conversation that I can recall ever having with the
(29:49):
Secretary of the Treasury on this issue of financial literacy.
We covered a lot of ground. I'm going to answer
your question directly, but I intentionally did not cover tariffs
with it because I knew that the President has had
this on his mind since nineteen eighty. He's been talking
about this as nineteen eighty. He's gonna do it one
way or another. Why put the secretary in a position
(30:09):
where he can't answer a question or is a question
that can't be answered? So let's you know it is
what it is. Let that go forward. There are a
lot of other things that can that we have more
control over, and that's gonna again play itself out the
way it plays itself out. The things that I did
engage him on he was completely transparent about. He wanted
to have constructive criticism, a critique. He wanted to know
(30:36):
how policies were affecting the average citizen. He wanted to
feedback on that on a regular basis. He understood that
this is a non partisan issue that you need. This
can't be something that gets put into some partisan discussion
where only one group supports it, that it will fail
that way. You need Republicans, the Democrats, blacks and whites,
(30:56):
rich and poor, urban and rural. You need my population
that I represent with the largest in the country to
embrace uh something it makes sense from the administration. So
he's very smart, I think to ask a group that
has fifteen hundred offices in the country and a polse
on what's going on for not only just help with
(31:16):
the program side and maybe we give him some policy
recommendations he might like he's invited those, but also to
help at the right time to to get this This
could be a This really could be a unifying issue
for the country and at a time where everybody argues
over is a is a dark outside? Is it light out?
Is that really light no, No, it's not light. Somebody's
(31:38):
lying to me, right, you know. I mean, you can't
get Somebody says something's up, somebody says no, that's down right.
Everybody's like in the are in the business of arguing,
and I think people are exhausted by it. By the way,
isn't it nice that there's a topic that actually most
people agree on? And I think and I think he
(31:58):
thinks financial literacy could be that issue that is a unifier. Uh. Now,
we we gotta get all the noise out the way,
the political noise and the partisanship out the way I have.
I I mean, people saw me meeting for the the
administration from what you call it my community, and folks
start coming at me with that, and I said, look,
trust me, sit down for a minute. I I tr
(32:20):
I've known this guy for a decade. He's a good man,
and just trust me. I think there's something we can
do here that's good for everybody. And they said, great,
well that has to happen. Everybody has to say this
is a radical movement of common sense. Uh, this is
something we can agree on, this is something we can
get done, and let's work on it. And that's his view,
and I was it was very refreshing. Actually, I didn't
(32:40):
feel uncomfortable in any part of the meeting. M He
was himself, which is direct and transparent, and he was
squarely focused on this issue. But he also understood that
financial literacy ripples out into the broader economy. In other words,
he wasn't treating it as like a some trinket issue
or some some m marginal issue. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Well, he referred to you as a longtime friend in
his posts supporting this idea on Financial Literacy Month, and
we appreciate your bringing us inside that conversation, John, because
you know, the presidents surrounded by a lot of different
people who have a lot of different ideas about all
of these things. And there were some pretty ugly tweets
that we saw posts on X from the likes of
Laura Lumer referred to you as a pro impeachment Trump hater.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Even Elon Musk retweeted that, calling it troubling.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
And I'm wondering if you have any reaction to what
you heard there or if that might impact your relationship
with this administration.
Speaker 5 (33:39):
I mean, what I believe is that the election's over
and he's a president of the United States. And as
I've said on multiple TV interviews and urban Black urban
radio interviews, if the president succeeds, we succeed. If the
president fails, we fail. What's complicated about this. Nobody should
(33:59):
be rooting for his failure. We should be trying to
help him succeed. That which is exactly why I r
I risked, you know, pushback from m a traditional my
traditional community to go and have this meeting, which I
thought was important on the first day of Financial Literacy Month.
And luckily, I mean, I'm getting very proud of the
black and brown community are very mature about it. They
(34:19):
were like, yeah, there's le It's not a black black
of brown John, as you said, it's about the green right,
It's not, you know, so go get us some green
Let's let's see what we get. And I and they
were and you know, doctor King's died, uh was assassinated
fifty seven years ago this month. And we were in
Memphis for that with Republicans by the way, and Democrats
and members of the Trump administration with us, and for
three hours, nobody said anything negative about anybody. I I
(34:43):
banned it. No no hating, no arguing, no nothing. And
we were. It was about solutions in the business plan
for America. And of course doctor King died trying to
help poor whites, which is the largest population of poverty
in this country then and today. And we have a
business plan week CRED for rural America where a lot
of poor whites live. We have a business plan for
Black Americans and for women, and for Latinos, and for
(35:04):
Asians and for Native American Indians. And it's all published,
it's all transparent. You can download it, and a most
people are ready to go, wow, actually makes some sense.
I like this. It's something from me here. We've got
to get back to that conversation because the Bible says
a house divided cannot stand. We keep on with this ridiculousness,
ladies and gentlemen, and we want to worry about whether
(35:27):
we're hitting on each other. Cause everybody wants to be an American,
but Americans, well, we speak in Mandarin in twenty years,
because there are other countries that want to be US. China, Russia, Iran,
North Korea want our way of life and what we have.
They can only it can't get into fair fight. They
can only get it if we mess it up. And
we gotta figure out whether we're better together. That's what
(35:48):
doctor King believed. That's what I believe. So I you know,
what does life have to do with it? I mean,
this has to do with with are do we do
I really respect me? And learn to like me? That
like me? Never respect me? Right? And do we respect
each other? Because by the way, we need different views.
This country is made up this. I just were on
(36:10):
the way in here. I heard from my people that California,
which went from the fifth largest economy in the world
to the fourth largest economy ahead of Japan. Right, well, California,
I believe is the most diverse place in the United
States of America. And New York I believe you guys
are in New York is the second most biggest economy
right in the US, and it also is one of
(36:31):
the most diverse places. So I'm not I mean, diversity wins.
Diversity wins. And most, by the way, most people are immigrants,
including my European friends, and of course black peoples got
on the wrong boat. That's another conversation. I look, we
got we got to lighten the temperature. Light in the temperature,
and and and laser and laser and the focus on
what we are really about, what's the business plan for
(36:54):
this country and and how can we again, this is
the biggest economy in the world, and it's seventy percent
consumers spending. That's all of us doing better.
Speaker 7 (37:05):
Well.
Speaker 11 (37:05):
To return to the point you were just making on
everybody wants to be the United States of America. I
wonder what you make of the narrative that has been
working its way through financial market participants in the last
month or two about the end of US exceptionalism. Is
that the way you see it is that what these
policies could bring about.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
I think every fifty to seventy maybe certainly one hundred years,
this country has an identity crisis. We had it with
the First Reconstruction, which was well, of course, we had
it with the War for our independence. But then you
had the first Reconstruction, which was slavery, right, that was
the decision, by the way, the Republican Party, people don't
(37:44):
know was built. It was birth on freedom and anti
slavery agenda. I don't know if we go know that that
was while Lincoln got so much heck, but that was
the first reconstruction. And then you had Frederick Douglas, a
black man working with Abraham Lincoln, a white man who
and Frederick douglasized Abraham Lincoln. But Lincoln was smart enough
to recognize with stuff he didn't know as smart as
(38:06):
he was, and he brought Frederick Douglas into the conversation.
At the end of the day, Fredid Dodullas made him
a better president. His council made him a better president.
That constructive friction, Lincoln realized was a good thing, not
just negative friction, constructive friction. Then we had the Second Reconstruction,
the Civil rights movement and Johnson President Johnson, who happened
even a Democrat did not like or did not get
along with, Doctor King. Doctor King got along with pretty
(38:28):
much everybody, but they but they figure out they were
better together that they ended up with four civil rights
bills by a guy who called people really interesting names.
I'm talking about Johnson. And then you had the third reconstruction,
which is what I think we're in today, twenty twenty
to twenty thirty. And so I'm not surprised that there's
all the country's basically going through a colonic I mean,
(38:49):
this is one, you know, one huge digestive exercise where
we gotta flush a lot of things through our system,
and we got to figure out, right, can you survive
hard right? And that's it? Can you survive hard left?
And that's it? I don't think so. I think most
people are actually massively in the middle. It's a radical
(39:10):
movement of common sense. They wanna pay their mortgage. They
wanna send their kid to college, right. They wanna start
a business or are uh, or go work for one.
They wanna go to the park with their kids. They
wanna enjoy their neighbors. They wanna they w I the
diversity actually is part of our magic sauce. It's just
that the diversity is a little darker these days, it's
a little bit more tan. But the diversity is all.
(39:32):
Do you know that women? You know, in nineteen seventy two,
a women did not have a bank could not get
a bank account nineteen sev not eighteen seventy two. After
in the Second Reconstruction, the furnive Action, which was created
for blacks, actually went to benefit white women. And I
say bravo. By the way, today women and w and
women couldn't get a a loan unless her husband guaranteed
(39:53):
it in nineteen seventy two. Today women are a third
of the US economy. If we hadn't done that, if
we hadn't had that debate and want it with common sense,
where would we be today? A third of all women
not grow is I think it's like seven trillion dollars
is the women's contribution to GDP. We'd be an also
ran country. We'd be a third run, a third world country.
(40:13):
As economically, here we go again. Half of this country,
forty percent of country is black and brown. I love Mathews,
doesn't have an opinion. Within ten years of your majority
of minorities, the largest group of baby boomers in the
history are beginning to retire. As you know, there's gonna
be one hundred trillion dollars wealth transfer the next ten
or twenty years. That's basically white wealthy people trying to
(40:34):
go play golf. At the same time, you know, the businesses,
who's gonna buy him the t the GDP, who's gonna
replace them? My rich friends need my poor friends do better,
if only to stay rich. And so this is what
I told the secretary. As you can't well, I'm sorry
I didn't tell secretary this part. I told TV this part.
You can't cut yourself alone out of this crisis. Yes,
(40:55):
there is waste, there is bloating. Let's get to that
in an intelligent way, not in a U, not in
a A. The hou is in as important as the
what we can be gracious about this. We can understand them.
It's not the employee's fault. If they're working at a
agency that may not be efficient. Let's deal with that
in an intelligent way. Get that out of the way.
Now that's at the bottom third of the economy, and
(41:17):
make them capitalists and let them r just repair the
ladder and let them become a homeowner's forty four percent
of Black people own a home compared to seventy five
percent of their white counterparts. That's good for banks, for
them to become get financially illiterate. Right, then get the
credit score up. By the way, credit score increases of
a hundred points in Black America, loan it's worth a
h It's worth sep. Seven hundred and fifty billion dollars
(41:39):
by twenty fifty three. Then you go buy homes. Forty
four percent to sixty percent home ownership for Black o
eric a loan that's good for eight hundred billion dollars.
That's one point five trillion dollars of wealth creation and
two to three percent of GDP increases every year. And
then you have business gr business acquisition. Baby boomers don't
want the businesses, well, sorry, the baby boomers are retire
(42:00):
that they want to give away the stocks, bonds of cash,
all that stuff in the homes. The family wants that.
The family don't want the businesses, well, let somebody buy
that business. That's a trillion dollars of wealth creation. And
AI artificial intelligence. I'm co chair with Sam Altman on
the AI Ethics Council, and i am co chair with
Douglan Billan of walmart on financial literacy for all this
(42:20):
is the civil rights and civil rights, these two things.
That's a trillion dollars. So that's three and a half
trillion dollars of new wealth creation by twenty fifty three,
twenty years or so, and two to three percent of
additional GDP. Who doesn't want that? I mean who when
the black person succeeds in this example, or the poor
rural white, or the woman, or the Latino or the
(42:43):
Asian yes here legally, when they succeed, all boats rise.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Who?
Speaker 5 (42:51):
I mean, this is a radical movement of common sense.
I just think that no one's really having this conversation.
But this is the conversation, and that's why we wanted
you to be here.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
John.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
If we just let you keep talking, I feel like
you're gonna solve this for us right now, in this hour.
You know, there are very few people who come on
Bloomberg and we clear the decks for like this. At
some point we are gonna check the markets. But while
you're still with us live from Atlanta here. You know,
there's the old saying, if you're getting it on both sides,
you're doing something right. And I suspect that you feel
like that right now.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Would you go back to the secretary again, have your advice?
Speaker 5 (43:26):
Mean, I'll come back, sure. I mean I was there
meeting with other folks a couple of weeks last week. Actually,
I mean, look, I'm gonna give him. I'm gonna give
him some some room and let him do his job.
He's helping to run the world economy. He knows my
number if if if he wants to call me, I'll answer.
But you know, let him have the room, let him
talk to some other people, let him. You know, we
(43:46):
have the largest infrastructure for financial literacy coaching in America.
We're not going anywhere, and we're the best in class,
and we're in urban community. Percent of our offices are
in white, poor rural communities, by the way, and they
don't care what color are. They just care why they're
getting their earning up, task credit, their credit score up,
the debt down. They're saving us up and the bank
says yes to an approval and the You know, so,
(44:07):
we have this infrastructure that's growing fifteen hundred offices total,
millions of clients, and we're here when the Secretary of
the Treasury and by extension, the administration has some make
sense things they like to do that we can be
helpful for it. If they don't need us, we'll go
on about our business.
Speaker 6 (44:24):
All right.
Speaker 11 (44:24):
We'll leave it on that note. John, Thank you so
much for being so generous with your time today. John
Hope Bryant Operation Hope, Inc. Chair, CEO and founder here
with us on Bloomberg TV and Radio.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Thanks for listening to the Balance of Power podcast.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already, at Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you get your podcasts, and you can find
us live every weekday from Washington, DC at noontime, Eastern
at Bloomberg dot com.
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