April 7, 2025 • 36 mins
On this podcast edition of Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness features Ethan Buchanan. ( @KennethRWebster )
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Giganic government sucks. Suit of happiness radio is DeLux.
Liberty and freedom will make you smile of a suit
of happiness us on your radio toile just as cheeseburgs
a liberty rise at food.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Today is National Beer Day and it's also World Health Day,
so I guess today is actually three holidays since this
also makes it International Day of Irony. You don't need
to be included on a top secret military chat to
know how Pete Hagseth will be spending his day to day,
and I don't judge him for that.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Hopefully him and Brett Kavanaugh hang out with each other.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
World Health Day, or as RFK Junior calls it, let's
have a Measles Party Day.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I kid. You know what's interesting about that?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
We've had two deaths now for the measles, and we've
been told that's a really big deal. But that's in
a span of about four months, and there's thirty million
people in Texas where this so called epidemics taking place.
Two deaths in four months, thirty million people. I think
we're overreacting a little to this. Yeah, obviously a lot
(01:13):
to go on the show today because we literally just
started so thank you for being I guess let's dive
into this shocking swings hit Wall Street after the stock
market went way down and then it went up, and
then it went down again, and then it kind of
evened out. The US stocks are swinging, if you will,
swinging harder than the Brian sets the orchestra back in
the mid nineties.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I didn't even prepare that joke ahead of time. I
just thought of it right now. And I'm sure you
could tell that the index punge, it sword, it sank,
it kind of evened out, it all got in the end.
I don't think there was any huge different, but I
will say this, the news that Trump is now threatening
fifty percent tariffs on China if Beijing doesn't remove retaliatory
duties definitely interesting. The White House says any suggesting that
(01:56):
Trump is considering a ninety day pause on tariffs is
fake news, so that's not going to be happening. The
Asian markets plunged overnight. Stock indexes in Singapore, Australia, Japan,
South Korea, and India all suffering losses. So the stock
markets are down all over the world, and we've been
told that's proof that Donald Trump is.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Very bad and very evil.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
We've also been told over and over again that liberal
democrats and leftists love the working class more than they
love Wall Street, that they don't actually think we need
an economic policy that will build up Wall Street. It's
more important to help the working class, to which I
would say, isn't what we're experiencing right now a vivid
(02:40):
resemblance of what you claim to believe in. Donald Trump
is adamantly concerned about the working class, bringing manufacturing jobs
back to America, or at the very least, bringing manufacturing
back to America, even if it's robotic, so that foreign
governments can't control our supply chain. Remember the pandemic when
we couldn't get our hands on highly valuable medication and
(03:04):
medical equipment because it was all in China. I mean,
medical supplies that American companies owned and manufactured was stuck
in China. They wouldn't give it to us because the
pandemic was happening. Doesn't it feel like, you know, the
working class aside that maybe that's a problem we should
try to solve going forward. Bill Gates told us as
(03:25):
recently as this week, there's guaranteed to be another pandemic Okay, Well,
assume he's right, which I don't think he is.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
But you know, what is a pandemic.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
An actual pandemic or are we talking about the government
overreacting to people getting sick? Well, I guarantee the second
thing is going to happen. And if it does and
we can't get access to medical supplies, a lot of
people might use what's going on right now as an
example of how we could have fixed it. The stock
market's down. That's bad for Wall Street, it's bad for
(03:57):
day traders, it's bad for hedge funds and stock but
it's not necessarily bad for the guy who doesn't have
a four oh one k, the out of work rust
belt worker somewhere in Pennsylvania or Ohio who hasn't had
a job in years because the factory in his town
is gone and he can't find anybody to buy his house.
(04:17):
These are the policies liberals claim to support for a
very long time, and now we're at a crossroads in
American history where they can put up or shut up
and they're not actually proving to believe in the things
they claim to believe in. And mind you, I say
that as someone who would not necessarily do things the
way Donald Trump is doing them right now. President Trump
(04:38):
has a message for those worried about tariffs. If you're
concerned about the impacts of the global tariffs, he recently implemented,
Donald Trump says, don't panic. Earlier today, he took to
social media and he stressed that quote, the United States
has a chance to do something that should have been
done decades ago. He continued with this statement, saying, don't
be weak, don't be stupid. Don't be a pannikin a
(05:02):
new party based on weak and stupid people. Be strong, courageous, impatient,
and greatness will be the result.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Shortly after that post, the President wrote another update in
which he affirmed that several countries are coming to negotiation
table due to the tariffs. Countries from all over the
world are talking to us. He claims, tough but fair
parameters are being set. He stated that he spoke with
the Japanese Prime Minister on Monday morning. He's setting a
top team to negotiate. Earlier in the day, Trump suggested
(05:31):
that the US economy is headed in the right direction
and that the tariffs were already bearing the fruit.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Now it's a matter of opinion. Some would disagree, some
would agree.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
But I will say this, Brent crude oil price to
add sixty five bucks a barrel today, a decrease from
last year. Additionally, trading economics recorded a significant decrease since
the start of the year. Interest rates have declined. Currently
stands at four point twenty five percent. It was at
four point five If it's a move in the right direction,
a significant drop from the five point three percent we
(06:04):
had in August of twenty twenty three. Recent data regarding
food prices not quite clear. The USDA Economic Research Services
reported a two point six percent year over year increase,
and then we got the job report on Friday.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
This was a big damn deal.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Obviously, inflation remains an issue, but the latest information from
the Bureau of Labor Statistics seems to indicate there are
a lot more jobs being created than we thought. So
I go back to my original point here. What matters
more to the left is the left more concerned with
what happens on Wall Street or what happens on Main Street.
(06:41):
Back during Trump one point zero, a lot was done
to help improve the stock market. Then we have that
four year pause of the Trump administration. Now we're back again,
and this time his economic policies aren't really necessarily supposed
to be influencing Wall Street, at least certainly not in
the short term. They're supposed to be helping those that
are looking for job or at the very least returning
manufacturing back to the United States.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
And I'll be objective on this.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I acknowledge the fact that moving forward, probably in the
next decade, there aren't technically going to be manufacturing jobs
anywhere on Earth, at least not the way we remember
them from the past, because a lot of those jobs
will be replaced by robots.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Now.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
We can't compete with China when it comes to labor.
You can't compete with a country that has child slave labor.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
You can't do it.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
But if labor converts from the current way our economy
operates now with people working in factories to the very
near future, or really even what's becoming the present robots
manufacturing our goods.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
That's something we can compete with China on.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Looking down the road fifteen twenty years, if we're still
relying on economic policies antiquated enough to represent a global
economy that featured people working in slavery, labor shops, sweatshops,
that sort of thing. Well, most manufacturing is being done
with robots. Maybe those old trade deals don't make sense anymore.
(08:07):
Maybe it is time to wipe the slate clean and
start again. Ripping off the band aid might not feel good,
but in the long run, it might be the best
thing for us.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
They see, whenever you lose sight of the enemy, look
behind you. Yeah, that's a bad paranoia right there. Probably
brought on by a bong ripper too. Kenny Webster's pursuit
of happiness.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
So it's estimated that more than two million people attended
anti Trump protests on Saturday, and apparently most of them
were Elon Musk's kids.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Hi, welcome back from break.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
If you just turn it on your radio, we're talking
about tariffs because well, duh, obviously seems pretty clear why
we're talking about it. Things are actually moving in the
right direction, though a lot of our foreign trade partners
seem to want to discuss new deals with us. He's
rarely Prime Minister Benjamin Nett and Yahoo arrived in Washington
yesterday for a visit to the White House, and he's
(08:58):
gonna be there till tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
The two leaders Trump and bb is that what people
call them.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
They're negotiating, among other things, Trump's tariffs, for which Israel
is a seventeen percent tariff rate, the result of a
significant US bilateral trade deficit, and Israel says they're ready
to make a deal. So let's see if that's true.
More good news. As a matter of fact, as you
look at what's going on with the European Union, the
EU has now offered Trump a zero for zero tariff
(09:26):
on industrial goods with the United States. European Commission President
Ursula von dare Layan that's a fun name, said earlier
today that the bloc has offered a zero for zero
tariff trade arrangement specifically for industrial goods with the United
States in a bid to avoid a full on trade war.
And at this trajectory, I will admit it does seem
(09:47):
like things are improving quickly. Obviously, it's only been going
on for a few days now. As far as the
stock marks it's concerned, it doesn't Saturday and Sunday they
don't really count. You can't trade on those. Marklis made
a point here about tariffs at town hall dot com,
and it's a good point. If tariffs don't work, why
do other countries tariff us? Look, I'm trying to be
(10:08):
objective all this because there's a lot of you know,
I did name my dog Milton Friedman. I'm a free
trade guy, but I'm also you know, pragmatism over principles sometimes,
or I mean, maybe it's a balancing act. It's a tightrope.
I don't know if it's one more than the other.
To be clear here, I want to choose my words carefully,
but you have to be a little pragmatic sometimes, don't you.
Let me say upfront that I do not know if
(10:29):
Trump's tariffs will accomplish his purpose or not.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Tariffs are common in human history. One of the first
things our federal government did after we became a country
is we created some tariffs to protect foreign or to
protect American workers. Some tariffs, in some places and at
certain times, have had some benefits to a country's economy.
That's objectively true. Other tariffs have been an utter disaster.
That's also objectively true. What few Americans know is that
(10:55):
a tariffs were a major cause of the two greatest
calamities in our history, The War between the States and
the Great Depression. One of the problems with dumbing down
the Civil War. Just saying it was like a war
over racism is to ignore the fact that actually tariffs
did play a big role in it. Not everybody involved
(11:15):
in the Civil War cared about slavery, but a lot
of people cared about tariffs. Countries often use tariffs to
protect certain domestic industries and have done so with success.
You know, in South Korea back in the nineties, it
was almost impossible to see any car on the road
except to Kia or a Hyundai. Guess why the South
Korean government put outrageous tariffs on foreign cars. The purpose
(11:36):
was obvious to encourage Koreans to buy Kias and Hundais,
which Koreans did. Kia and Hundi are very successful world
car companies now, so from the standpoint of the Korean
government and of course the executives and stockholders at Kia
and Hundai, those tariffs are considered a roaring success. Of course,
the offshoot of that is that tariffs hurt consumers. Koreans
(11:59):
might have been able to buy foreign cars without tariffs
cheaper than they could have bought Keyas and anddays Korean
consumers suffered by having to buy the higher priced automobiles,
but in the wrong run, it probably did help their country.
So there's a further hidden cost to tariffs that nobody sees.
For this example, since we're all American here, let's use
American dollars just for the listener radio listeners sick. Let's
(12:24):
suppose a key are in Korea. A Ford without the
tariff sold for twenty thousand dollars, and let's say Akia
sold for twenty five thousand dollars. Most people would probably
buy the cheaper car, not what the South Korean government wanted. Right,
You save five grand by adding the tariff to the
Ford and pricing it out of most Korean consumers. Reach
(12:44):
the people bought the Kia for twenty five k that
meant five thousand dollars they no longer had you get it?
If they could have bought the tariffless Ford to spend
on other products, they would have done so. They would
have taken the five thousand bucks and spend it on
other things. This cost to the tariff was never noticed
because it's money that was never spent in other areas.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Do you get it?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Koreans weren't able to patronize other businesses which were thus hurt.
But you can't miss something you never had. Does that
make sense? Such could never be measured because individual Koreans
had five thousand dollars less to spend. That's good for
Kien Hundai. It's bad for all the local Kimchi restaurants.
But it's difficult to deny that Kien Hyundai and a
(13:24):
lot of subsidiary businesses in Korea were benefited by the tariff. That,
no doubt, is part of what mister Trump. President Trump
hopes to accomplish with his tariffs. Tariffs are bad, let's
be clear. But that's the point. It's obvious that they're bad.
There's a lot of bad things people are using against us,
and we're not doing it in retaliation. Terriffs played a
(13:48):
major role in the two greatest disasters in US history,
as we just pointed out, the War between the States
and the Great Depression. For all the first seventy years
of American history, North and South argued and compromised over
the tariff. The North, moving into shipping and especially industry,
wanted a high tariff to to protect against the cheaper,
more well established goods coming in from Europe. The South,
(14:11):
nearly totally agriculture based, wanted as many cheap European products
as they could get, and they deemed a low tariff
on those goods.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
They wanted it, they demanded it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
The two sections argued about it ceaselessly, and South Carolina
almost seceded and started a war in eighteen thirty. Did
you know that over what was called the Tariff of abominations?
Sounds familiar, right? You remember hearing about this in public school,
but you haven't thought about it since you were a
little kid. So the Republican Party, which was totally a
Northern party, in eighteen sixty won the presidency in both
(14:44):
houses of Congress, and immediately they passed the highest tariff
in American history to that point. Now there were seven
Southern states and they seceded. They feared the Republicans in
Congress would try to use their power to abolish slavery,
something Lincoln he made very plain he believed in slavery
wasn't threatened by Lincoln's election in eighteen sixty, Folks Southerners
(15:09):
feared a high tariff would hurt them economically. Two of
the seceding Southern states mentioned the tariff in their articles
as secession. Not surprisingly, the Confederate States, upon forming a government,
immediately passed a lower tariff. Northern businesses, believing their profits
and government taxes would suffer by losing Southern consumers, persuaded
(15:30):
Lincoln that he couldn't let the South go.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Where shall we get our revenue.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
The tariff was more of an immediate cause of the
war than slavery was, which, as noted, Lincoln had no
intention of trying to abolish at first. I mean, he
said he would, but he said he was in favor
of it, but at the time it wasn't the plan.
If I were a Democrat today hating Trump's tariffs, I'd
be using this as an argument. The argument would be
(15:55):
high tariffs helped cause our Civil war. But Democrats are
committed to saying that avery is the sole cause of
the war, so they can't back away from that, now,
can they. The other disaster, the Great Depression, was also
spurred by a tariff. Most people think the stock market
collapse in nineteen twenty nine caused the depression, but that's
not exactly true. After the crash, the unemployment rate rose
(16:18):
to nine percent, but within a short time dropped back
down to six. That's when Herbert Hoover and the morons
in Congress passed perhaps the worst law in American history,
the Smoot Hawlly Tariff. It helped collapse several major European banks,
It caused a world financial panic, It spread the depression
across the globe. And that's when FDR and utter economic
(16:40):
illiterate was elected in nineteen thirty two. His policies kept
unemployment at double digits, often near twenty five percent right
up until World War Two. The tariff spurred the decade
long depression at least as much, if not more than
the stock market crash, a little known fact about American history.
So getting back to Trump's tariffs here, I'm willing to
(17:03):
admit there's more than one way to skin a cat.
I'm very curious how this is going to play out.
I will tell you I bought stock today. A lot
of people are out panic selling. I bought a couple
of things. As for Trump's tariffs, if they do what
the Smooth Holly tariff did, then there will be economic catastrophe.
But I don't think that's probable. Tariffs have occasionally been good,
(17:23):
usually bad, and only time will tell if Trump can
get the fair trade he wants, and whether or not
it would be beneficial for all the nations, or at
least more importantly for ours. Pray and hope for the best.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Kenny has always thought the best things in life are free, free,
plus tax, of course, Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Oh, I love hearing about this. I do love Texas Roadhouse.
I don't get paid to say that. I just I
like a mid priced steakhouse. I do Texas Roadhouse. Top
of America's favorite casual dining restaurants, Denny's wasn't far behind.
It was far, far, far, far far behind. Hi, welcome
back from Bray Kids. We've been talking a lot about
the economy today and what's going on with trade of wars.
(18:12):
We're going to go down to the border in the
next segment with one of our younger producers here Ethan Buchanan.
Stick around for that, but before we get to that,
it's always interesting to see how the anti Trump media
coverage actually affects the public's opinion about things, and it
seems to be changing. It used to be whenever there
was a news cycle filled with anti Trump hyperbole and sensationalism,
(18:35):
his approval rating would normally go down well. Trump's job
approval rating rose four points during tariff week, from forty
nine percent to fifty three percent. This according to our
report today at Breitbart dot com. The poll is taken
by Daily Mail and Jail Partners. They looked at a
one thousand registered voters between March thirty first and April third.
(18:55):
Trump's four point jump in job approval was not the
only surprise. Since March seventh, Trump's job approval from young
voters actually jumped thirteen points. Among Independents and Democrats, he
enjoyed a six point increase. Most telling, I think is
actually support from black voters jump seventeen points in a
single week. And then finally, more people support than opposed
(19:20):
Trump's tariffs on foreign countries by a margin of thirty
nine percent support thirty seven percent of post twenty four
percent have no idea, and I mean completely honest.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
I might fall. I might fall into that group right now.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Look, no one will know till we know. I've never
been a big fan of raising taxes on anything. Of
all the different policies Trump's ever supported, I am the
most skeptical about this, but so far it seems to
be working. You got to be objective kids. So far,
(19:56):
if we just look at raw data data, statistical data,
I would say, right now, the trajectory is that things
seem to be improving. The number of countries affected by
the tariffs versus the number of countries that are willing
to reach a new deal is quite high and increasing
by the day. But as for that polling data we
were just talking about, when asked if they support significantly
(20:17):
reducing the number of illegal immigrants coming into the country,
roughly seventy nine percent said yes. It should be noted
that the poll was taken before the stock market drop
on Thursday, but also before we got that big jobs.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Report on Friday.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
During the week of the poll, Trump was also getting
crucified nightly by the legacy media for even considering reciprocal tariffs,
So people knew about the doomsday predictions that were being made.
Who knows how much it affected this polling data.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
My guess is that.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Normal people understand the corporate media are deliberately turning everything
up to eleven to damage his approval ratings. The media
no longer have any game. Their playbook is as old
and tired as it is transparent. And you know the
other thing to consider here, normal people admire Trump standing
alone against the storm, refusing to bend. People want a leader,
(21:11):
and that's what a leader does. And finally, I'll say this,
I think this is everyone's biggest mistake. Normal people do
not care about the stock market. They do not care
about elite opinions and concerns. If you're a working class,
if you're in the service industry, you don't have a
four to oh one k to worry about.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
What do you care?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
When Trump came into office, the question about whether America
was headed in the right direction was upside down seventy
to thirty when more than two thirds of the country
believe the country's on the wrong track. The media winding
about Trump violating norms is as tone deaf.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
As it gets.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
But speaking of the media, we got to report about
them today too. Also published at brightbart dot com. There's
no Trump bump in the ratings for far left CNN
or MSNBC. Do you remember twenty seventeen when Trump took office.
It was the golden age for CNA. For four years,
people were watching CNN like they hadn't watched it in years,
(22:06):
and all it was around the clock was Trump arrangement syndrome.
The second Trump left office from his first term, the
January sixth thing came when went suddenly people just stopped
watching CNN. Where did they go, Well, they either quit
watching cable news for four years, they checked out, or
you know, maybe they put on MSNBC. So compared to
(22:27):
what was going on then, verse now, it's just not
the same. CNN did not get an increase in ratings
this time around, neither did MSNBC.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
As for Fox News, they actually made ratings history really
good numbers.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Here Fox News three over three million viewers of forty
six percent increase, CNN five hundred and fifty eight thousand viewers. Wow,
that's a lot less, considerably less. They actually explained it
like this. It was somewhere between. For Fox News, it
was somewhere between three million viewers and three hundred and
eighty thousand viewers, and they call that a sixty three
(23:05):
percent increase on the low end. For CNN, it was
somewhere between a half a million viewers and one hundred
and twenty one thousand viewers. Here's why that's so crazy.
Our morning show does better than that. I mean, that's
unbelievable to me. There's more people listening to me and
Billyett and Steve in the morning than a week of CNN.
MSNBC did a little better over a million viewers, ninety
(23:26):
six Somewhere between a million of viewers and ninety six
thousand viewers. Those are actually Walton and Johnson numbers. Think
about everything that has been in the news for the
last three months, nothing less than inaugurating a new president,
massively destructed wildfires in California, all the craziness around Trump's
cabinet picks, all the fake scandals aimed at Pete hug Seth,
(23:50):
the White House is fight with the courts, the deportations,
the attack on the Hoothy Rebels. I mean, I'm probably
leaving some big stuff out here. And what's the result
of all these left wing propaganda outlets, all this news
and fewer people tuning in. Really, that's hilarious. There's a
trust issue here for CNN, so trust issue for MSNBC.
(24:11):
Bottom line, that's all this is. You might be thinking
CNN's numbers don't look so bad because they did not
suffer double digit losses like MSNBC, But look at how
few people tune into CNN. CNN is still losing viewers
during a crazy busy first quarter news cycle. At least
MSNBC is able to attract a million average viewers during primetime.
(24:33):
CNN can't do that. CNN is door nail dead. Unless
that clown car gets a total enema to remove the clowns,
it'll be lucky to last another five years. The pharmaceutical
ads are outlawed, It's not going to last five years.
Think about how much money on CNN comes from Pfizer
and Maderna and Johnson and Johnson.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
So maybe people are just tired of the news, especially
cable news. No, not the case.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Look at those Fox News numbers I just shared with you.
Fox News remains the top cable news outlet. They have
the highest rated quarter in cable news history. Fox News
secured its highest quarter cable news share with over sixty
five percent increase of audience. Then there's the mind blowing
statistic listen to this quote. In addition to topping its
cable rivals, Fox NewsChannel also surpassed ABC and NBC during
(25:23):
weekday primetime. Hang on, more people are watching Fox News
than the major networks during primetime. That is something. More
people are watching Fox News during late night TV hours
than the major networks. I don't know how much here, kids.
I know I'm not a big fan of cable news.
(25:43):
This is an incredible accomplishment for Fox News. It is
total humiliation for the dying broadcast networks. Everything's changing, and
mostly for the better.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
America, the land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation,
Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness dies.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I bet you know what I'm about to talk about.
We're back from Great Kids. We still got a few
more minutes to go before we are done here this afternoon.
And with all this talk about the tariff war and
trade deficits and that sort of thing, it did remind
me of what was going on a couple months ago.
You remember that Donald Trump's first mention of tariffs over
(26:24):
the last few months of his presidency. It's been a
short time now since mid January didn't actually involve trade
deals when he originally brought up ar I mean it did, technically,
but the point of tariff discussion a month or two
back stemmed more from the need for border security. He
threatened Mexico, he threatened Canada, and then once those numbers
had been vastly improved, that was when he moved on
(26:46):
to this new controversy involving trying to decrease the trade
deficit for goods. Now, recent history has taught us anything.
These trade war ours don't have to go on for
very long. Did it last a long time with Mexico
or Columbia or Venezuela or Canada. No, so what we're
(27:07):
about to experience probably isn't terribly different from that. But
just a quick reminder, folks, there was certainly a need
for this. I mean, okay, whatever your opinions are on
the current trade war, there was certainly a need to
do something about the border.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
Even with things improved. Right now, look at what's going
on down there.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
One hundred and seventy five thousand dollars seized from twenty
one Romanian migrants illegals at the New Mexico immigration checkpoint,
when just the other day this is still happening right now.
Why were Romanian illegal immigrants trying to bring a bunch
of bills over the board.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
What would be the point of that.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
The Elpaso sector Border patrol agencies hundreds of thousand dollars
in cash from a bunch of Romanian nationals at the
interior immigration checkpoint.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
They were just hiding the money on them.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I could understand here if you're not a big fan
of civil asset forfeiture or legal theft by the government.
But that discussion in and of itself, it's a moot
point here because more importantly, look, it's one thing when
it's American citizens, But why were a bunch of Romanians
coming over the border with backpacks full of cash?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Weird?
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Right. In the meantime, Honduran Honduran alien has been indicted
on theft of forty firearms in Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
The guy's mugshot is really creepy too. It looks like
the pupil from.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
One of his eyes is missing, and then he's got
a neck tattoo of some freaky circus clowns.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Really scary stuff. So yeah, obviously we're not out of
the wood jet here.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
One hundred and thirty three illegal aliens were just busted
in a New York deportation operation. We've been told over
and over again by the lefties in New York City
they're gonna do everything they can to prevent ice from
making bus while it wasn't enough. One hundred and thirty
three of them were just arrested. And do you remember
several years ago, what was his name, Jamal Koshogi the
(28:53):
I believe it was a Washington Post journalist was murdered
by the Saudi Arabian government, and then the Time magazine
Person of the Year after that was murdered journalists, dead journalists.
And weirdly absent from that list of all the dead
journalists was anybody murdered by cartels down in Mexico. Time
magazine did not want to talk about that little part
(29:14):
of our immigration crisis. Well, as it turns out, a
Mexican journalist was assaulted after exposing cameras inside a women's
bathroom in a Mexico City shopping plaza. The Mexican journalist
was targeted, assaulted, and her head or equipment broken after
she exposed a series of video cameras inside the women's
bathroom in a popular Mexico City shopping mall. Now this
(29:34):
isn't quite the sort of thing where we're used to
seeing when a journalist gets murdered in Mexico, which, by
the way, happens all the time. Usually it's not for this.
Usually it's for exposing cartels. But that does beg the question.
Are the cartels in the business of putting hidden cameras
and women's bathrooms in Mexico City.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It's a very interesting question to answer. And one more
here for you involving Houston. Today, the Houston Immigration Customs
Enforcement Office has deported one hundred and seventy four illegal
aliens with six hundred and ten criminal convictions.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
In the span of just two weeks.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
So yeah, I guess you could say things are improving
down at our border now. Over the weekend, all over
the country, we had illegal immigrants lining up to protest
against Donald Trump. Here's one of them in Washington, d C.
Speaking in front of hundreds of thousands of people.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
My name is Grasa Martinez Roses.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I am an immigrant, I am an document queen and unashamed,
queer and unashamed. This is Grisa Martinez Rosas.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Have United We the Dream, the executive director in the
country illegally and also queer to boot, which has nothing
to do with it, but it got a big cheer
from the crowd, because you know, when you're talking to
a bunch of Pinko Marxist commis play the hits, tell
him you're disabled or gay, or that you you know
you're cross eyed or left handed.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
They love that stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
I do wonder, if I'm Tom Homan, why aren't I
arresting this person right now? Here were his thoughts on
all the news stories I just talked about out and
maybe a good point to be made here about how
we need some long term solutions. I think anybody listening
to us probably knows four years ago we didn't have
this problem. Four years ago, we were building a wall,
Things were getting cleaned up around the country, we were
(31:15):
deporting illegals. And then Joe Biden came in and he
undid all the work that Donald Trump did. Now we
have Donald Trump undoing all the work that Joe Biden did. Obviously,
it's silly and ridiculous to have two political parties going
back and forth on some common sense issue like this.
But as they're both erasing and redoing their work every
time a new administration takes over, it costs the taxpayers
(31:37):
a lot of money. One of our producers here it
works in the newsroom down the hall, is a zoomer,
a young conservative in his early twenties and also the
host of his show airing on Sundays here on KPRC Radio,
My Buddy Ethan Buchanan. Ethan just kind of feel like
Groundhog Day every day, Bill Murray's famous hit movie. We're
reliving the same thing over and over again. Trump cleans
(31:59):
up the border, Biden messes up the border, Trump cleans
up the border. Will this cycle keep repeating itself? And
if so, what can we do about that?
Speaker 6 (32:06):
I definitely, I definitely think it is going to repeat itself.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
But first of all, to answer your your question about
why isn't Tom Homan just deporting that one chick, Well,
if you watch the video, I think you'll see the
girth and stature. I think the word fat is politically incorrect,
so I'll dance around that for the sake of the audience.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
It's yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:30):
I mean, there's a solid case to be made that
the helicopter fuel that it will take to airlift her
out of the country is frankly fiscally responsible given the
debt crisis that we're seeing at the federal level.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
Okay, hang on, we've got doades here.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
So is it possible that Elon Musk could figure out
a way for us to take some of the left
over baby oil from puff Daddy's mansion and like just
kind of slide her back.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Over the border. I like that plan. I like that plan.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
But you know, baby oil is an asset that can
be resold and maybe play into a tax cut for
or for the taxpayers, or biofuel.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Maybe biofuel.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
There's basically it's math to do, right.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
They got to run the numbers and figure out what
the most cost effective way to get all five hundred
and sixty billion pounds of this illegal alien back across
the Rio Grande. But yeah, you to your real point, Yeah,
we definitely are seeing groundhog Day. We saw the border
crisis be completely fixed almost not completely, but pretty damn
close under Donald Trump the first time. Sure, and then
(33:27):
Joe Biden came in and he very intentionally undid that.
Now a lot of people might say, Okay, well, if
Donald Trump basically fixed the problem and all Joe Biden
had to do was basically ignore everything that Trump had did,
leave everything in place, like he did with Trump's China
tariffs during his administration, everything would have been fine. So
(33:48):
why did he go in and intentionally unsecure the border.
And I would submit to you that the Democrats have
been playing the long game on illegal immigration for a
very long time, and Abiden kind of was the basically
the final straw of that. Like we've been talking on
and on and on about, you know, whether or not
illegal aliens are going to be able to vote. I
(34:10):
don't think that's really the big concern. I mean, eventually
they will if we give them amnesty.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
But do you think that Democrats knew that Joe Biden
didn't have a political future, Kamala Tim Walls, none of
these people had a political future, but just by having
them there, they could sacrifice them as candidates, because once
you lose on a national level, you really can't run
them again. I mean not a normal politician, unlike Trump.
Most politicians can't do that. But they knew that by
getting all those illegal immigrants into the country, even if
(34:37):
they lost a couple of elections in the long run,
it would help out the Democrat voter base.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
I mean, it's what they did with Obamacare.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
Remember, right after they passed to Obamacare, the Democrats actually
lost the House. They are they're very good at saying, Okay,
we're going to sacrifice some candidates in service of the system,
in service of the long game. So they're saying, hey,
Donald or Joe Biden might have a terrible presidency, everybody
might hate him and will lose the next election. But
we've got a bunch of I legal aliens in the country,
(35:03):
and as many as Donald Trump deports, he's not going
to be able to get all of them.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
Now here's why that matters.
Speaker 5 (35:09):
They're going to be counted on the census in twenty
thirty unless we do something before then.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Okay, and that was twenty twelve when we lost, when
the Democrats lost the House. How old were you in
twenty twelve, Ethan.
Speaker 6 (35:20):
Oh god, do I even hold on? I'm home school,
so let me pull on my coach and they don't.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Do the math.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Sure, thirteen years ago that would have been you're trying
to figure out how old you were thirteen years ago?
Hold good, nine, I was nine year nine years so
you well, Ethan, you know you're a lot smarter than
most people.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
You're eight. Hey, if people want to check out your show,
when does it air?
Speaker 5 (35:41):
It air's a seven pm Sundays right here on AM
nine to fifty KPRC. Or if you're outside the Greater
Houston area. The free iHeartRadio app. I love that and
a lot of our listeners are Hey to the rest
of you. I love you all, thank you for listening,
and hey download that.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Subscribe to the Walton Johnson or Kenny Webster Pursuit of
Happiness podcast. Subscribe to Ethan Buchanan's podcast. You could download
our smartphone app. You could chop online at our store.
I love WJ dot com. I hope you all have
an awesome afternoon. We'll be back brain early tomorrow morning
for more of what you bought a radio for.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
You are listening to the Pursuit of having this radio.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
Tell the government to kiss your ass when you listen
to this show.
The Giganic government sucks. Suit of happiness radio is DeLux.
Liberty and freedom will make you smile of a suit
of happiness us on your radio toile just as cheeseburgs
a liberty rise at food.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Today is National Beer Day and it's also World Health Day,
so I guess today is actually three holidays since this
also makes it International Day of Irony. You don't need
to be included on a top secret military chat to
know how Pete Hagseth will be spending his day to day,
and I don't judge him for that.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Hopefully him and Brett Kavanaugh hang out with each other.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
World Health Day, or as RFK Junior calls it, let's
have a Measles Party Day.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I kid. You know what's interesting about that?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
We've had two deaths now for the measles, and we've
been told that's a really big deal. But that's in
a span of about four months, and there's thirty million
people in Texas where this so called epidemics taking place.
Two deaths in four months, thirty million people. I think
we're overreacting a little to this. Yeah, obviously a lot
(01:13):
to go on the show today because we literally just
started so thank you for being I guess let's dive
into this shocking swings hit Wall Street after the stock
market went way down and then it went up, and
then it went down again, and then it kind of
evened out. The US stocks are swinging, if you will,
swinging harder than the Brian sets the orchestra back in
the mid nineties.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I didn't even prepare that joke ahead of time. I
just thought of it right now. And I'm sure you
could tell that the index punge, it sword, it sank,
it kind of evened out, it all got in the end.
I don't think there was any huge different, but I
will say this, the news that Trump is now threatening
fifty percent tariffs on China if Beijing doesn't remove retaliatory
duties definitely interesting. The White House says any suggesting that
(01:56):
Trump is considering a ninety day pause on tariffs is
fake news, so that's not going to be happening. The
Asian markets plunged overnight. Stock indexes in Singapore, Australia, Japan,
South Korea, and India all suffering losses. So the stock
markets are down all over the world, and we've been
told that's proof that Donald Trump is.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Very bad and very evil.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
We've also been told over and over again that liberal
democrats and leftists love the working class more than they
love Wall Street, that they don't actually think we need
an economic policy that will build up Wall Street. It's
more important to help the working class, to which I
would say, isn't what we're experiencing right now a vivid
(02:40):
resemblance of what you claim to believe in. Donald Trump
is adamantly concerned about the working class, bringing manufacturing jobs
back to America, or at the very least, bringing manufacturing
back to America, even if it's robotic, so that foreign
governments can't control our supply chain. Remember the pandemic when
we couldn't get our hands on highly valuable medication and
(03:04):
medical equipment because it was all in China. I mean,
medical supplies that American companies owned and manufactured was stuck
in China. They wouldn't give it to us because the
pandemic was happening. Doesn't it feel like, you know, the
working class aside that maybe that's a problem we should
try to solve going forward. Bill Gates told us as
(03:25):
recently as this week, there's guaranteed to be another pandemic Okay, Well,
assume he's right, which I don't think he is.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
But you know, what is a pandemic.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
An actual pandemic or are we talking about the government
overreacting to people getting sick? Well, I guarantee the second
thing is going to happen. And if it does and
we can't get access to medical supplies, a lot of
people might use what's going on right now as an
example of how we could have fixed it. The stock
market's down. That's bad for Wall Street, it's bad for
(03:57):
day traders, it's bad for hedge funds and stock but
it's not necessarily bad for the guy who doesn't have
a four oh one k, the out of work rust
belt worker somewhere in Pennsylvania or Ohio who hasn't had
a job in years because the factory in his town
is gone and he can't find anybody to buy his house.
(04:17):
These are the policies liberals claim to support for a
very long time, and now we're at a crossroads in
American history where they can put up or shut up
and they're not actually proving to believe in the things
they claim to believe in. And mind you, I say
that as someone who would not necessarily do things the
way Donald Trump is doing them right now. President Trump
(04:38):
has a message for those worried about tariffs. If you're
concerned about the impacts of the global tariffs, he recently implemented,
Donald Trump says, don't panic. Earlier today, he took to
social media and he stressed that quote, the United States
has a chance to do something that should have been
done decades ago. He continued with this statement, saying, don't
be weak, don't be stupid. Don't be a pannikin a
(05:02):
new party based on weak and stupid people. Be strong, courageous, impatient,
and greatness will be the result.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Shortly after that post, the President wrote another update in
which he affirmed that several countries are coming to negotiation
table due to the tariffs. Countries from all over the
world are talking to us. He claims, tough but fair
parameters are being set. He stated that he spoke with
the Japanese Prime Minister on Monday morning. He's setting a
top team to negotiate. Earlier in the day, Trump suggested
(05:31):
that the US economy is headed in the right direction
and that the tariffs were already bearing the fruit.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Now it's a matter of opinion. Some would disagree, some
would agree.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
But I will say this, Brent crude oil price to
add sixty five bucks a barrel today, a decrease from
last year. Additionally, trading economics recorded a significant decrease since
the start of the year. Interest rates have declined. Currently
stands at four point twenty five percent. It was at
four point five If it's a move in the right direction,
a significant drop from the five point three percent we
(06:04):
had in August of twenty twenty three. Recent data regarding
food prices not quite clear. The USDA Economic Research Services
reported a two point six percent year over year increase,
and then we got the job report on Friday.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
This was a big damn deal.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Obviously, inflation remains an issue, but the latest information from
the Bureau of Labor Statistics seems to indicate there are
a lot more jobs being created than we thought. So
I go back to my original point here. What matters
more to the left is the left more concerned with
what happens on Wall Street or what happens on Main Street.
(06:41):
Back during Trump one point zero, a lot was done
to help improve the stock market. Then we have that
four year pause of the Trump administration. Now we're back again,
and this time his economic policies aren't really necessarily supposed
to be influencing Wall Street, at least certainly not in
the short term. They're supposed to be helping those that
are looking for job or at the very least returning
manufacturing back to the United States.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
And I'll be objective on this.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I acknowledge the fact that moving forward, probably in the
next decade, there aren't technically going to be manufacturing jobs
anywhere on Earth, at least not the way we remember
them from the past, because a lot of those jobs
will be replaced by robots.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Now.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
We can't compete with China when it comes to labor.
You can't compete with a country that has child slave labor.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
You can't do it.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
But if labor converts from the current way our economy
operates now with people working in factories to the very
near future, or really even what's becoming the present robots
manufacturing our goods.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
That's something we can compete with China on.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Looking down the road fifteen twenty years, if we're still
relying on economic policies antiquated enough to represent a global
economy that featured people working in slavery, labor shops, sweatshops,
that sort of thing. Well, most manufacturing is being done
with robots. Maybe those old trade deals don't make sense anymore.
(08:07):
Maybe it is time to wipe the slate clean and
start again. Ripping off the band aid might not feel good,
but in the long run, it might be the best
thing for us.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
They see, whenever you lose sight of the enemy, look
behind you. Yeah, that's a bad paranoia right there. Probably
brought on by a bong ripper too. Kenny Webster's pursuit
of happiness.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
So it's estimated that more than two million people attended
anti Trump protests on Saturday, and apparently most of them
were Elon Musk's kids.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Hi, welcome back from break.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
If you just turn it on your radio, we're talking
about tariffs because well, duh, obviously seems pretty clear why
we're talking about it. Things are actually moving in the
right direction, though a lot of our foreign trade partners
seem to want to discuss new deals with us. He's
rarely Prime Minister Benjamin Nett and Yahoo arrived in Washington
yesterday for a visit to the White House, and he's
(08:58):
gonna be there till tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
The two leaders Trump and bb is that what people
call them.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
They're negotiating, among other things, Trump's tariffs, for which Israel
is a seventeen percent tariff rate, the result of a
significant US bilateral trade deficit, and Israel says they're ready
to make a deal. So let's see if that's true.
More good news. As a matter of fact, as you
look at what's going on with the European Union, the
EU has now offered Trump a zero for zero tariff
(09:26):
on industrial goods with the United States. European Commission President
Ursula von dare Layan that's a fun name, said earlier
today that the bloc has offered a zero for zero
tariff trade arrangement specifically for industrial goods with the United
States in a bid to avoid a full on trade war.
And at this trajectory, I will admit it does seem
(09:47):
like things are improving quickly. Obviously, it's only been going
on for a few days now. As far as the
stock marks it's concerned, it doesn't Saturday and Sunday they
don't really count. You can't trade on those. Marklis made
a point here about tariffs at town hall dot com,
and it's a good point. If tariffs don't work, why
do other countries tariff us? Look, I'm trying to be
(10:08):
objective all this because there's a lot of you know,
I did name my dog Milton Friedman. I'm a free
trade guy, but I'm also you know, pragmatism over principles sometimes,
or I mean, maybe it's a balancing act. It's a tightrope.
I don't know if it's one more than the other.
To be clear here, I want to choose my words carefully,
but you have to be a little pragmatic sometimes, don't you.
Let me say upfront that I do not know if
(10:29):
Trump's tariffs will accomplish his purpose or not.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Tariffs are common in human history. One of the first
things our federal government did after we became a country
is we created some tariffs to protect foreign or to
protect American workers. Some tariffs, in some places and at
certain times, have had some benefits to a country's economy.
That's objectively true. Other tariffs have been an utter disaster.
That's also objectively true. What few Americans know is that
(10:55):
a tariffs were a major cause of the two greatest
calamities in our history, The War between the States and
the Great Depression. One of the problems with dumbing down
the Civil War. Just saying it was like a war
over racism is to ignore the fact that actually tariffs
did play a big role in it. Not everybody involved
(11:15):
in the Civil War cared about slavery, but a lot
of people cared about tariffs. Countries often use tariffs to
protect certain domestic industries and have done so with success.
You know, in South Korea back in the nineties, it
was almost impossible to see any car on the road
except to Kia or a Hyundai. Guess why the South
Korean government put outrageous tariffs on foreign cars. The purpose
(11:36):
was obvious to encourage Koreans to buy Kias and Hundais,
which Koreans did. Kia and Hundi are very successful world
car companies now, so from the standpoint of the Korean
government and of course the executives and stockholders at Kia
and Hundai, those tariffs are considered a roaring success. Of course,
the offshoot of that is that tariffs hurt consumers. Koreans
(11:59):
might have been able to buy foreign cars without tariffs
cheaper than they could have bought Keyas and anddays Korean
consumers suffered by having to buy the higher priced automobiles,
but in the wrong run, it probably did help their country.
So there's a further hidden cost to tariffs that nobody sees.
For this example, since we're all American here, let's use
American dollars just for the listener radio listeners sick. Let's
(12:24):
suppose a key are in Korea. A Ford without the
tariff sold for twenty thousand dollars, and let's say Akia
sold for twenty five thousand dollars. Most people would probably
buy the cheaper car, not what the South Korean government wanted. Right,
You save five grand by adding the tariff to the
Ford and pricing it out of most Korean consumers. Reach
(12:44):
the people bought the Kia for twenty five k that
meant five thousand dollars they no longer had you get it?
If they could have bought the tariffless Ford to spend
on other products, they would have done so. They would
have taken the five thousand bucks and spend it on
other things. This cost to the tariff was never noticed
because it's money that was never spent in other areas.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Do you get it?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Koreans weren't able to patronize other businesses which were thus hurt.
But you can't miss something you never had. Does that
make sense? Such could never be measured because individual Koreans
had five thousand dollars less to spend. That's good for
Kien Hundai. It's bad for all the local Kimchi restaurants.
But it's difficult to deny that Kien Hyundai and a
(13:24):
lot of subsidiary businesses in Korea were benefited by the tariff. That,
no doubt, is part of what mister Trump. President Trump
hopes to accomplish with his tariffs. Tariffs are bad, let's
be clear. But that's the point. It's obvious that they're bad.
There's a lot of bad things people are using against us,
and we're not doing it in retaliation. Terriffs played a
(13:48):
major role in the two greatest disasters in US history,
as we just pointed out, the War between the States
and the Great Depression. For all the first seventy years
of American history, North and South argued and compromised over
the tariff. The North, moving into shipping and especially industry,
wanted a high tariff to to protect against the cheaper,
more well established goods coming in from Europe. The South,
(14:11):
nearly totally agriculture based, wanted as many cheap European products
as they could get, and they deemed a low tariff
on those goods.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
They wanted it, they demanded it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
The two sections argued about it ceaselessly, and South Carolina
almost seceded and started a war in eighteen thirty. Did
you know that over what was called the Tariff of abominations?
Sounds familiar, right? You remember hearing about this in public school,
but you haven't thought about it since you were a
little kid. So the Republican Party, which was totally a
Northern party, in eighteen sixty won the presidency in both
(14:44):
houses of Congress, and immediately they passed the highest tariff
in American history to that point. Now there were seven
Southern states and they seceded. They feared the Republicans in
Congress would try to use their power to abolish slavery,
something Lincoln he made very plain he believed in slavery
wasn't threatened by Lincoln's election in eighteen sixty, Folks Southerners
(15:09):
feared a high tariff would hurt them economically. Two of
the seceding Southern states mentioned the tariff in their articles
as secession. Not surprisingly, the Confederate States, upon forming a government,
immediately passed a lower tariff. Northern businesses, believing their profits
and government taxes would suffer by losing Southern consumers, persuaded
(15:30):
Lincoln that he couldn't let the South go.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Where shall we get our revenue.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
The tariff was more of an immediate cause of the
war than slavery was, which, as noted, Lincoln had no
intention of trying to abolish at first. I mean, he
said he would, but he said he was in favor
of it, but at the time it wasn't the plan.
If I were a Democrat today hating Trump's tariffs, I'd
be using this as an argument. The argument would be
(15:55):
high tariffs helped cause our Civil war. But Democrats are
committed to saying that avery is the sole cause of
the war, so they can't back away from that, now,
can they. The other disaster, the Great Depression, was also
spurred by a tariff. Most people think the stock market
collapse in nineteen twenty nine caused the depression, but that's
not exactly true. After the crash, the unemployment rate rose
(16:18):
to nine percent, but within a short time dropped back
down to six. That's when Herbert Hoover and the morons
in Congress passed perhaps the worst law in American history,
the Smoot Hawlly Tariff. It helped collapse several major European banks,
It caused a world financial panic, It spread the depression
across the globe. And that's when FDR and utter economic
(16:40):
illiterate was elected in nineteen thirty two. His policies kept
unemployment at double digits, often near twenty five percent right
up until World War Two. The tariff spurred the decade
long depression at least as much, if not more than
the stock market crash, a little known fact about American history.
So getting back to Trump's tariffs here, I'm willing to
(17:03):
admit there's more than one way to skin a cat.
I'm very curious how this is going to play out.
I will tell you I bought stock today. A lot
of people are out panic selling. I bought a couple
of things. As for Trump's tariffs, if they do what
the Smooth Holly tariff did, then there will be economic catastrophe.
But I don't think that's probable. Tariffs have occasionally been good,
(17:23):
usually bad, and only time will tell if Trump can
get the fair trade he wants, and whether or not
it would be beneficial for all the nations, or at
least more importantly for ours. Pray and hope for the best.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Kenny has always thought the best things in life are free, free,
plus tax, of course, Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Oh, I love hearing about this. I do love Texas Roadhouse.
I don't get paid to say that. I just I
like a mid priced steakhouse. I do Texas Roadhouse. Top
of America's favorite casual dining restaurants, Denny's wasn't far behind.
It was far, far, far, far far behind. Hi, welcome
back from Bray Kids. We've been talking a lot about
the economy today and what's going on with trade of wars.
(18:12):
We're going to go down to the border in the
next segment with one of our younger producers here Ethan Buchanan.
Stick around for that, but before we get to that,
it's always interesting to see how the anti Trump media
coverage actually affects the public's opinion about things, and it
seems to be changing. It used to be whenever there
was a news cycle filled with anti Trump hyperbole and sensationalism,
(18:35):
his approval rating would normally go down well. Trump's job
approval rating rose four points during tariff week, from forty
nine percent to fifty three percent. This according to our
report today at Breitbart dot com. The poll is taken
by Daily Mail and Jail Partners. They looked at a
one thousand registered voters between March thirty first and April third.
(18:55):
Trump's four point jump in job approval was not the
only surprise. Since March seventh, Trump's job approval from young
voters actually jumped thirteen points. Among Independents and Democrats, he
enjoyed a six point increase. Most telling, I think is
actually support from black voters jump seventeen points in a
single week. And then finally, more people support than opposed
(19:20):
Trump's tariffs on foreign countries by a margin of thirty
nine percent support thirty seven percent of post twenty four
percent have no idea, and I mean completely honest.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
I might fall. I might fall into that group right now.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Look, no one will know till we know. I've never
been a big fan of raising taxes on anything. Of
all the different policies Trump's ever supported, I am the
most skeptical about this, but so far it seems to
be working. You got to be objective kids. So far,
(19:56):
if we just look at raw data data, statistical data,
I would say, right now, the trajectory is that things
seem to be improving. The number of countries affected by
the tariffs versus the number of countries that are willing
to reach a new deal is quite high and increasing
by the day. But as for that polling data we
were just talking about, when asked if they support significantly
(20:17):
reducing the number of illegal immigrants coming into the country,
roughly seventy nine percent said yes. It should be noted
that the poll was taken before the stock market drop
on Thursday, but also before we got that big jobs.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Report on Friday.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
During the week of the poll, Trump was also getting
crucified nightly by the legacy media for even considering reciprocal tariffs,
So people knew about the doomsday predictions that were being made.
Who knows how much it affected this polling data.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
My guess is that.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Normal people understand the corporate media are deliberately turning everything
up to eleven to damage his approval ratings. The media
no longer have any game. Their playbook is as old
and tired as it is transparent. And you know the
other thing to consider here, normal people admire Trump standing
alone against the storm, refusing to bend. People want a leader,
(21:11):
and that's what a leader does. And finally, I'll say this,
I think this is everyone's biggest mistake. Normal people do
not care about the stock market. They do not care
about elite opinions and concerns. If you're a working class,
if you're in the service industry, you don't have a
four to oh one k to worry about.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
What do you care?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
When Trump came into office, the question about whether America
was headed in the right direction was upside down seventy
to thirty when more than two thirds of the country
believe the country's on the wrong track. The media winding
about Trump violating norms is as tone deaf.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
As it gets.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
But speaking of the media, we got to report about
them today too. Also published at brightbart dot com. There's
no Trump bump in the ratings for far left CNN
or MSNBC. Do you remember twenty seventeen when Trump took office.
It was the golden age for CNA. For four years,
people were watching CNN like they hadn't watched it in years,
(22:06):
and all it was around the clock was Trump arrangement syndrome.
The second Trump left office from his first term, the
January sixth thing came when went suddenly people just stopped
watching CNN. Where did they go, Well, they either quit
watching cable news for four years, they checked out, or
you know, maybe they put on MSNBC. So compared to
(22:27):
what was going on then, verse now, it's just not
the same. CNN did not get an increase in ratings
this time around, neither did MSNBC.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
As for Fox News, they actually made ratings history really
good numbers.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Here Fox News three over three million viewers of forty
six percent increase, CNN five hundred and fifty eight thousand viewers. Wow,
that's a lot less, considerably less. They actually explained it
like this. It was somewhere between. For Fox News, it
was somewhere between three million viewers and three hundred and
eighty thousand viewers, and they call that a sixty three
(23:05):
percent increase on the low end. For CNN, it was
somewhere between a half a million viewers and one hundred
and twenty one thousand viewers. Here's why that's so crazy.
Our morning show does better than that. I mean, that's
unbelievable to me. There's more people listening to me and
Billyett and Steve in the morning than a week of CNN.
MSNBC did a little better over a million viewers, ninety
(23:26):
six Somewhere between a million of viewers and ninety six
thousand viewers. Those are actually Walton and Johnson numbers. Think
about everything that has been in the news for the
last three months, nothing less than inaugurating a new president,
massively destructed wildfires in California, all the craziness around Trump's
cabinet picks, all the fake scandals aimed at Pete hug Seth,
(23:50):
the White House is fight with the courts, the deportations,
the attack on the Hoothy Rebels. I mean, I'm probably
leaving some big stuff out here. And what's the result
of all these left wing propaganda outlets, all this news
and fewer people tuning in. Really, that's hilarious. There's a
trust issue here for CNN, so trust issue for MSNBC.
(24:11):
Bottom line, that's all this is. You might be thinking
CNN's numbers don't look so bad because they did not
suffer double digit losses like MSNBC, But look at how
few people tune into CNN. CNN is still losing viewers
during a crazy busy first quarter news cycle. At least
MSNBC is able to attract a million average viewers during primetime.
(24:33):
CNN can't do that. CNN is door nail dead. Unless
that clown car gets a total enema to remove the clowns,
it'll be lucky to last another five years. The pharmaceutical
ads are outlawed, It's not going to last five years.
Think about how much money on CNN comes from Pfizer
and Maderna and Johnson and Johnson.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
So maybe people are just tired of the news, especially
cable news. No, not the case.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Look at those Fox News numbers I just shared with you.
Fox News remains the top cable news outlet. They have
the highest rated quarter in cable news history. Fox News
secured its highest quarter cable news share with over sixty
five percent increase of audience. Then there's the mind blowing
statistic listen to this quote. In addition to topping its
cable rivals, Fox NewsChannel also surpassed ABC and NBC during
(25:23):
weekday primetime. Hang on, more people are watching Fox News
than the major networks during primetime. That is something. More
people are watching Fox News during late night TV hours
than the major networks. I don't know how much here, kids.
I know I'm not a big fan of cable news.
(25:43):
This is an incredible accomplishment for Fox News. It is
total humiliation for the dying broadcast networks. Everything's changing, and
mostly for the better.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
America, the land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation,
Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness dies.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I bet you know what I'm about to talk about.
We're back from Great Kids. We still got a few
more minutes to go before we are done here this afternoon.
And with all this talk about the tariff war and
trade deficits and that sort of thing, it did remind
me of what was going on a couple months ago.
You remember that Donald Trump's first mention of tariffs over
(26:24):
the last few months of his presidency. It's been a
short time now since mid January didn't actually involve trade
deals when he originally brought up ar I mean it did, technically,
but the point of tariff discussion a month or two
back stemmed more from the need for border security. He
threatened Mexico, he threatened Canada, and then once those numbers
had been vastly improved, that was when he moved on
(26:46):
to this new controversy involving trying to decrease the trade
deficit for goods. Now, recent history has taught us anything.
These trade war ours don't have to go on for
very long. Did it last a long time with Mexico
or Columbia or Venezuela or Canada. No, so what we're
(27:07):
about to experience probably isn't terribly different from that. But
just a quick reminder, folks, there was certainly a need
for this. I mean, okay, whatever your opinions are on
the current trade war, there was certainly a need to
do something about the border.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
Even with things improved. Right now, look at what's going
on down there.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
One hundred and seventy five thousand dollars seized from twenty
one Romanian migrants illegals at the New Mexico immigration checkpoint,
when just the other day this is still happening right now.
Why were Romanian illegal immigrants trying to bring a bunch
of bills over the board.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
What would be the point of that.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
The Elpaso sector Border patrol agencies hundreds of thousand dollars
in cash from a bunch of Romanian nationals at the
interior immigration checkpoint.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
They were just hiding the money on them.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I could understand here if you're not a big fan
of civil asset forfeiture or legal theft by the government.
But that discussion in and of itself, it's a moot
point here because more importantly, look, it's one thing when
it's American citizens, But why were a bunch of Romanians
coming over the border with backpacks full of cash?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Weird?
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Right. In the meantime, Honduran Honduran alien has been indicted
on theft of forty firearms in Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
The guy's mugshot is really creepy too. It looks like
the pupil from.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
One of his eyes is missing, and then he's got
a neck tattoo of some freaky circus clowns.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Really scary stuff. So yeah, obviously we're not out of
the wood jet here.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
One hundred and thirty three illegal aliens were just busted
in a New York deportation operation. We've been told over
and over again by the lefties in New York City
they're gonna do everything they can to prevent ice from
making bus while it wasn't enough. One hundred and thirty
three of them were just arrested. And do you remember
several years ago, what was his name, Jamal Koshogi the
(28:53):
I believe it was a Washington Post journalist was murdered
by the Saudi Arabian government, and then the Time magazine
Person of the Year after that was murdered journalists, dead journalists.
And weirdly absent from that list of all the dead
journalists was anybody murdered by cartels down in Mexico. Time
magazine did not want to talk about that little part
(29:14):
of our immigration crisis. Well, as it turns out, a
Mexican journalist was assaulted after exposing cameras inside a women's
bathroom in a Mexico City shopping plaza. The Mexican journalist
was targeted, assaulted, and her head or equipment broken after
she exposed a series of video cameras inside the women's
bathroom in a popular Mexico City shopping mall. Now this
(29:34):
isn't quite the sort of thing where we're used to
seeing when a journalist gets murdered in Mexico, which, by
the way, happens all the time. Usually it's not for this.
Usually it's for exposing cartels. But that does beg the question.
Are the cartels in the business of putting hidden cameras
and women's bathrooms in Mexico City.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It's a very interesting question to answer. And one more
here for you involving Houston. Today, the Houston Immigration Customs
Enforcement Office has deported one hundred and seventy four illegal
aliens with six hundred and ten criminal convictions.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
In the span of just two weeks.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
So yeah, I guess you could say things are improving
down at our border now. Over the weekend, all over
the country, we had illegal immigrants lining up to protest
against Donald Trump. Here's one of them in Washington, d C.
Speaking in front of hundreds of thousands of people.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
My name is Grasa Martinez Roses.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I am an immigrant, I am an document queen and unashamed,
queer and unashamed. This is Grisa Martinez Rosas.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Have United We the Dream, the executive director in the
country illegally and also queer to boot, which has nothing
to do with it, but it got a big cheer
from the crowd, because you know, when you're talking to
a bunch of Pinko Marxist commis play the hits, tell
him you're disabled or gay, or that you you know
you're cross eyed or left handed.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
They love that stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
I do wonder, if I'm Tom Homan, why aren't I
arresting this person right now? Here were his thoughts on
all the news stories I just talked about out and
maybe a good point to be made here about how
we need some long term solutions. I think anybody listening
to us probably knows four years ago we didn't have
this problem. Four years ago, we were building a wall,
Things were getting cleaned up around the country, we were
(31:15):
deporting illegals. And then Joe Biden came in and he
undid all the work that Donald Trump did. Now we
have Donald Trump undoing all the work that Joe Biden did. Obviously,
it's silly and ridiculous to have two political parties going
back and forth on some common sense issue like this.
But as they're both erasing and redoing their work every
time a new administration takes over, it costs the taxpayers
(31:37):
a lot of money. One of our producers here it
works in the newsroom down the hall, is a zoomer,
a young conservative in his early twenties and also the
host of his show airing on Sundays here on KPRC Radio,
My Buddy Ethan Buchanan. Ethan just kind of feel like
Groundhog Day every day, Bill Murray's famous hit movie. We're
reliving the same thing over and over again. Trump cleans
(31:59):
up the border, Biden messes up the border, Trump cleans
up the border. Will this cycle keep repeating itself? And
if so, what can we do about that?
Speaker 6 (32:06):
I definitely, I definitely think it is going to repeat itself.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
But first of all, to answer your your question about
why isn't Tom Homan just deporting that one chick, Well,
if you watch the video, I think you'll see the
girth and stature. I think the word fat is politically incorrect,
so I'll dance around that for the sake of the audience.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
It's yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:30):
I mean, there's a solid case to be made that
the helicopter fuel that it will take to airlift her
out of the country is frankly fiscally responsible given the
debt crisis that we're seeing at the federal level.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
Okay, hang on, we've got doades here.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
So is it possible that Elon Musk could figure out
a way for us to take some of the left
over baby oil from puff Daddy's mansion and like just
kind of slide her back.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Over the border. I like that plan. I like that plan.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
But you know, baby oil is an asset that can
be resold and maybe play into a tax cut for
or for the taxpayers, or biofuel.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Maybe biofuel.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
There's basically it's math to do, right.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
They got to run the numbers and figure out what
the most cost effective way to get all five hundred
and sixty billion pounds of this illegal alien back across
the Rio Grande. But yeah, you to your real point, Yeah,
we definitely are seeing groundhog Day. We saw the border
crisis be completely fixed almost not completely, but pretty damn
close under Donald Trump the first time. Sure, and then
(33:27):
Joe Biden came in and he very intentionally undid that.
Now a lot of people might say, Okay, well, if
Donald Trump basically fixed the problem and all Joe Biden
had to do was basically ignore everything that Trump had did,
leave everything in place, like he did with Trump's China
tariffs during his administration, everything would have been fine. So
(33:48):
why did he go in and intentionally unsecure the border.
And I would submit to you that the Democrats have
been playing the long game on illegal immigration for a
very long time, and Abiden kind of was the basically
the final straw of that. Like we've been talking on
and on and on about, you know, whether or not
illegal aliens are going to be able to vote. I
(34:10):
don't think that's really the big concern. I mean, eventually
they will if we give them amnesty.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
But do you think that Democrats knew that Joe Biden
didn't have a political future, Kamala Tim Walls, none of
these people had a political future, but just by having
them there, they could sacrifice them as candidates, because once
you lose on a national level, you really can't run
them again. I mean not a normal politician, unlike Trump.
Most politicians can't do that. But they knew that by
getting all those illegal immigrants into the country, even if
(34:37):
they lost a couple of elections in the long run,
it would help out the Democrat voter base.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
I mean, it's what they did with Obamacare.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
Remember, right after they passed to Obamacare, the Democrats actually
lost the House. They are they're very good at saying, Okay,
we're going to sacrifice some candidates in service of the system,
in service of the long game. So they're saying, hey,
Donald or Joe Biden might have a terrible presidency, everybody
might hate him and will lose the next election. But
we've got a bunch of I legal aliens in the country,
(35:03):
and as many as Donald Trump deports, he's not going
to be able to get all of them.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
Now here's why that matters.
Speaker 5 (35:09):
They're going to be counted on the census in twenty
thirty unless we do something before then.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Okay, and that was twenty twelve when we lost, when
the Democrats lost the House. How old were you in
twenty twelve, Ethan.
Speaker 6 (35:20):
Oh god, do I even hold on? I'm home school,
so let me pull on my coach and they don't.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Do the math.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Sure, thirteen years ago that would have been you're trying
to figure out how old you were thirteen years ago?
Hold good, nine, I was nine year nine years so
you well, Ethan, you know you're a lot smarter than
most people.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
You're eight. Hey, if people want to check out your show,
when does it air?
Speaker 5 (35:41):
It air's a seven pm Sundays right here on AM
nine to fifty KPRC. Or if you're outside the Greater
Houston area. The free iHeartRadio app. I love that and
a lot of our listeners are Hey to the rest
of you. I love you all, thank you for listening,
and hey download that.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Subscribe to the Walton Johnson or Kenny Webster Pursuit of
Happiness podcast. Subscribe to Ethan Buchanan's podcast. You could download
our smartphone app. You could chop online at our store.
I love WJ dot com. I hope you all have
an awesome afternoon. We'll be back brain early tomorrow morning
for more of what you bought a radio for.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
You are listening to the Pursuit of having this radio.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
Tell the government to kiss your ass when you listen
to this show.
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