Here's the thing about the media

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• The media on Trump's tariffs

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, what we need is more common sense.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Common breaking down the world's nonsense.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
About how American common sense.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Will see us through with the common sense of Houston.
I'm just pro common sense for Houston. From Houston. This
is the Jimmy Barrett Show, brought to you by viewind
dot Com. Now here's Jimmy Barrett.

Speaker 4 (00:32):
All right, Well, I guess we will talk a little
tariffs today. Seems how the impact from the tariffs has been, brother,
I guess scary to say the least, at least based
on what we've seen for the last couple of days
involving Wall Street. You dropping about two thousand points in
the last couple of days. Of course, I blame a

(00:54):
lot of that on the the mainstream media. I think
after a while becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. You know,
you got the media out there. Of course, here's the
thing about here's the thing about the media. The media
would love to be able to talk about a recession.
Now that Biden's no longer in office and Trump is
in office. They would love to be able to talk
about a recession. They would love to be able to

(01:16):
talk about a struggling economy. They would love to point
out to people that you know, how much your four
oh one K loss today? They would love to do that,
absolutely love to do that. So after a while, I think,
you know, it kind of like becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
You forecast enough doom and gloom out there, and before
you know it, you know, everybody's everybody's buying into it.

(01:38):
Everybody's buying into the idea that this is going to
be the worst thing ever. And you know this is
going to lead to more inflation and you're not gonna
be able to afford to go to the grocery store.
You thought the grocery store was bad before. They'll come
up with all these stories and do all of these
stories about it, and and it just it feeds on itself.
But let's let's throw a little of this in as well.

(02:00):
Here's an economic analyst. His name is John McNiff. I
got this from News Nation along with author former CNN
so jug In Just what a perspective. She worked at
CNN for years, no longer does's. She's written a book.
She's one of them, used to be one of their
business reporters, Alison Kassick. Here they are talking about the
market reaction on Wall Street so far to the Trump tariffs.

Speaker 5 (02:24):
For me, the focus is on this increase in uncertainty
and which the markets will call increase in volatility, and
the reaction to the tariffs has been a very dramatic
spike in violatility, which is a VIX index has gone
from you know, twenty to forty five in the past
three days. And then the reaction of the stock market
clearly with the five trillion wipeout of value, NASAK gone

(02:47):
into a bear market correction, SMP seventeen percent off, the
highs eleven percent lower in the past two days. Credit
spreads in the corporate and highland markets have all windened out.
All of these are are not positives for these policies.
And that's even before you kind of look at kind
of how these policies and this uncertainty is affecting the
behaviors of the consumer and households and corporates, corporation.

Speaker 6 (03:11):
So how do you process how do you process the
cell proposition? Allison from Trump of, well, this is what
we have to do.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
We got to turn the screws. And it's only been
a couple of days. No big deal. It is a
big deal.

Speaker 7 (03:25):
If you're an investor in this market. You know, we
even saw some IPOs that we're ready to go, they've
postponed their IPOs.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
You're seeing an immediate real world.

Speaker 7 (03:35):
Business impact just on the beginnings of these tariffs, you know.
And then of course, I think the overarching reason why
you're seeing this massive sell off over the past two
days is there's a concern about a recession, that the
tariffs will have a you know, a real effect on
the economy. JP Morgan increase its likelihood that a recession
will happen from forty percent to sixty percent. Why because

(03:58):
what are these tariffs hacks on consumers and businesses, and
it's a big hit to the economy, and by targeting
things that Americans buy, this causes a lot of disruption.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
In the economy.

Speaker 7 (04:09):
So the thinking is that if the if these policies
stay throughout the year, it could cause real damage to
the economy and cause a recession. And I'm also hearing
the S word being thrown around. I'm talking about stagflation.
That's ensures to have a recession with high inflation, that's
an even stickier.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Situation to get out of. It leaves the FED with.

Speaker 7 (04:28):
Fewer tools to turn to, because if you go ahead
and keep lowering interest rates, if I check my economics
one on one, that could stoke inflation even more.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
Okay, stagflation. Now we're going to bring up stackflation, aren't we. Okay, See,
this is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm
talking about. If first of all, she says if the
Trump tariffs stay in place, we don't really know if
the Trump tariffs are going to stay in place or
they don't. We do know that there are more than
fifty different countries right now desperately trying to get down

(04:59):
Trump sit down and renegotiate with them, and so far
he's not doing it. So he clearly has the plan
in mind of what he plans to do here. I
think he wants he wants there to be a little
ouch factor for these countries so that he can negotiate

(05:21):
a deal that's great for the United States and not
necessarily so great for them. But I will say this,
I think there is a bit of a messaging problem
because not everybody in the Trump administration right now appears
to be on the same page as far as what
the goal is here. Maybe it's because Donald Trump doesn't

(05:42):
really want people to know what the goal is, because,
after all, if you know what it is he's exactly
trying to do, then that kind of takes away the leverage. Right. So,
I mean, there's one or two things here. Either he
is trying to negotiate with these other countries to remove
all their tariffs on the United States, or he's just

(06:05):
trying to turn this into and he's kind of intimated this.
He's trying to turn this into a great resource, financial
resource for the country, so he can get rid of
the Federal Income to Act and do some other things
along those lines. But the two are not mutually inclusive.
You can't do one without the other. They're they're kind

(06:27):
of opposites, so you can't do both. And of course
everybody's kind of well, which one is it. And he's
got a lot of members of his administration who are
going on you know, the news shows, talking about, you know,
what it is the president's doing, and they're sharing two
very very different stories. And Joe Kanca, you know, he

(06:50):
follows the media for a living on Fox, he kind
of noted this. Here's what he had to say about
kind of getting everybody on the same page as far
as their messaging.

Speaker 8 (06:58):
We saw throughout the campaign that Susie Wilds had everybody
on the same page and communications were very crisp. We
didn't see a lot of contradiction or a lot of
palace intrigue. Now we're seeing Elon Musk saying one thing
and on X in a very provocative way, and then
Peter Navarro on national television saying the other.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
So yeah, I.

Speaker 8 (07:17):
Would think that the White House has to get their
communications in order because we're hearing two different things.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
You made the point yesterday.

Speaker 8 (07:22):
Is this about bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars
in tariff revenue or is it a negotiation ploy to
bring tariffs down to zero?

Speaker 3 (07:30):
It can't be both.

Speaker 8 (07:31):
To your point, I think this week we got to
see two things. We have to see movement on the
tax bill because Donald Trump wants the largest tax decrease
in history, and if we get that, that offsets maybe
the pain.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
From the tariffs.

Speaker 8 (07:45):
But also said it, by the way, did advance the
ball on Friday night on that exact point exactly the
five yard line. I think we call it now at
this point. And then I think on these these tariff bills,
I think and we heard during Lucas's report that it
may not take weeks, but I want to hear the
framework of some agreements with some countries like Vietnam, like Israel,
like the United Kingdom, showing the American people this is

(08:08):
going the way we want to. If it's still as
clear as mud, then the markets will still see that
as uncertainty, and then we're gonna see thousands of points
more dropped in the stock market. So I think communications
are very key, especially this week.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Guy.

Speaker 4 (08:21):
Okay, we'll see if there's improvement when it comes to communications,
and we'll see if there's any improvement as it as
it relates to the stock market. I know one thing
I think I will avoid. I don't know about you.
I think I'm gonna avoid looking at my four oh
win k balance this week. I think we'll just, yeah,
we'll just kind of ignore that. Still, things that will
down a little bit back with more of the moment
Jimmy Bart Show. You're an AM nine fifty KPRC. All right,

(09:02):
but we've got a lot about tariffs today, and one
of the things there's a couple of interesting things about
tariffs that I find interesting as it relates to travel,
and I guess we'll I guess we'll use this one
first here, because I don't know if you have any
big summer vacation plans. We've got all kinds of things

(09:22):
going on, of which we already bought over tickets to
see in June. We've got that big fact Greek vacation
thing that we're taking several dozen of our listeners on.
And what's interesting to me is that I don't have
my plane tickets yet for that. And I'm hearing, at

(09:44):
least from some of the travel experts that it may
be a cheaper vacation as far as airfare this summer
to go to Europe, for example, then it would be
to travel in the United States. In fact, here's that
travel expert I heard. I remember his name, Greenburg. I
know his name was is Greenberg. Where did I see

(10:06):
this guy? He was talking about how how much of
a difference there's going to be between you know, buying
domestic airfare and buying you know, international airfare. There, Peter Greenberg,
he's a travel editor here. He is talking about terraffs
and how tariffs are going to be impacting tourism. He
believes this summer, well, it already.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Has you know, you look at that five percent average
for downfall for foreign travels to the US, it's actually
bigger than that. Right now, over the last six weeks,
foreign travels to the US has dropped about twenty four percent.
That's an average Canadian travels with the US. It's about
five weeks ago, was forty percent down as of last Friday,
just two days ago, down seventy five percent. So what

(10:48):
that means a lot of empty seats coming into the US,
which means a lot of empty seats going back out.
So we're seeing airfares troumble. On international flights, we're seeing
fair so low. There was a fair the other day
from San Francisco to Cairo for four hundred and thirty
seven dollars. From Los Angeles to Sydney, get ready for
this round trip three hundred and ninety six dollars. You

(11:09):
can't get from New York to Chicago for three hundred
and ninety six dollars, which means there's going.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
To be a trade off there as well.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Domestic airfares will probably go up as more and more
Americans are worried about the situation and may decide to
stay home. Despite the fact that the international fairs are dropping. Well,
there's one little silver lining here with all those empty
seats for the first time, maybe, says COVID, You're going
to see a lot of available frequent Flyer award seats
for people who.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Could not have never redeemed them before because.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
The airlines have this excess capacity and they're going to
try to burn that off. So check out your frequent
flyer cast now for those people who've had such.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
A tough time redeeming their awards.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Within the next two weeks to four weeks, you might
see some great bargains there.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Not to mention availability.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
Okay, so what he's saying is is that it's going
to be cheaper to fly to Europe than it's going
to be to fly within the confines of the United States.
For the reasons why he said, We've got pure people
who are coming here to visit. Therefore, planes are coming
over much less full, which means they're going to go
back the other way less full, and in order to

(12:12):
try to fill the seats, they're going to be cutting
prices on airfare to try to fill as many seats
as they can, which will be interesting. So I you know,
like I said, I haven't I haven't got that part
of it officially booked yet, but it's coming up in June,
so I'm gonna have to book it pretty soon.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
Here.

Speaker 4 (12:26):
I'd be very curious to see how prices to Greece,
for example, from Houston, come down. And I don't know
if there's a I don't know if there's a spots left,
but I guess as long as I mentioned this, I
might as well say, you know, we've got I think
we've got like twenty one people who are coming on
the trip, and we can take more. We can certainly

(12:47):
fit in more. So, if you are looking for a
last minute June vacation idea and it turns out it
might be cheaper to go to Europe than it is
to travel in the United States, you're interested in going
to Greece, then go to travel with Jimmy dot Com.
It'll say that it expired back in February, but if
you contact them and let them know you want to go,
I'm sure they'll find room for you. Travel with Jimmy

(13:08):
dot Com if you want to check that out, because
that's gonna be a fun trip. That's gonna be a
lot of fun, all right. So that's that one. Maybe
silver lining is maybe you can get cheaper airfare to
a few spots. I don't know that that's enough for
me to say that, Okay, that's great that we added
all these terrorifts here if all, if all we're going

(13:28):
to do is get a little bit cheaper airfare to
Europe and end up paying for more airfare within the
confines of the United States. I also wonder how much
more we're going to be paying for for cars and trucks,
you know, assuming that that all those protections remain in place,
because as I've been saying all along on this thing,
there really is not much if there really is no

(13:49):
such thing as made in America. When it comes to automobiles, No, no,
very few vehicles are even majority made in the United States,
let alone one hundred percent made in the United States.
The only way you could avoid any tariffs on an
automobile is that if everything you parts, you know, everything

(14:10):
was made here in the United States. And there is
virtually no, certainly no American automaker that can say that
Ford Motor Company. You would like to think if any
if anybody, Ford in general motors would would be the
ones most likely to be one hundred percent made in
the United States. But no, they're not, and not even close.
They had one of their presidents on he's the president

(14:31):
of the Model E program, that's the electric vehicle and
Ford Blue Ford Blue and Model E president Andrew Frick
got asked on Fox Business, can you if, if, if
you took all your resources and moved them around, could
you produce a vehicle that is one hundred percent made
in the United States. This will be one of the
longest answers that really could have been summed up by

(14:54):
the word no. But you can hear him kind of
dodge around it a little bit.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
Number.

Speaker 6 (15:00):
America's number one auto manufacturer, and we assemble more US vehicles,
and we employ more US hourly autoworkers than any other OEM,
and we want to do more, not less, here in
the US. You know, eighty percent of what we sell
in the US is assembled right here in the United States,
and it would be helpful to have certain parts here
in the US. And the White House gets that, So.

Speaker 9 (15:21):
Yeah, how long would it take for you to be
able to make all the parts in the United States?

Speaker 6 (15:27):
Well, like I said, we already assemble eighty percent of
our vehicles right here in the US, including the F
one fifty, which is actually rolling down the assembly line
right behind me here at Dearborn Truck. So relatively speaking,
we're in a good position, but we're in a complex
industry relying on a lot of different suppliers, and we
need to ensure that we have the right supply chain
ecosystem in place here in the US to do so,

(15:50):
and we're working with the administration to get clarity on
parts to grow jobs here in the US for us
to be able to do that.

Speaker 9 (15:55):
Yeah, at the moment, I think you've got a thirty
day window where you don't pay any tariff on parts
coming in from Canada. I think you've got a thirty
day window there. So times growing a little short. Tell
me more about the employee discount you're offering on most
of the vehicles because the land has just matched it.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, I saw that. Well.

Speaker 6 (16:14):
We were really proud to lead that. You know, we're
a very proud American automaker. We've been around for one
hundred and twenty two years and we are always going
to be there for our customers, especially in times of
uncertainty and are from America for America. Campaign is intended
to be there for our customers, which is why we
are offering employee pricing. Customers will pay what we pay

(16:36):
as an employee. We have great inventory on the ground.
We are not repricing that inventory. So our customers, if
they come in now to a Ford or Lincoln dealer
anywhere across the country, will have a great offer for
them to come in and buy a vehicle. We have
a great selection of you know, gas, hybrid and electric
vehicles for them to.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Choose from.

Speaker 4 (17:00):
There first and foremost salespeople, right, yeah, I get that,
I get that. I wonder how how do how do
Ford employees feel about the X plan being offered to,
you know, to to to the regular customers. Is that
the same as the employee plan they're saying it is.
I think this has happened before. This is where they

(17:21):
have offer made those kinds of offers, you know, to
to reduce the price down to what the employees pay.
And the employees, I know, in the pass of employees
offen going hey wait a minute, that's one of our
benefits of working here, and you're taking the benefit away
giving it to everybody else. But you know, you do
what you got to do to sell cars. They they
have a problem, and they had a problem before tariffs.

(17:44):
They they they've had a problem at at a lot
of different automotive manufacturers have had a problem with just pricing.
Cars have gotten really super expensive, and pickup trucks in particular,
not only are they super expensive, but they've had to
really put incentive on them, but Ford and General Motors
both he had to put really big incentives on pickup

(18:06):
trucks to try to move those things. I've got I've
got a pickup truck extra vehicle for us, like back
in September in the accents, we're huge, and the centers
are still huge now and they still have a lot
of trucks sitting on the lot. So I'm sure they
look at these terrafs and go, man, anything that's gonna
drive this price up is gonna is gonna be bad
news for us. All right, quick little break, We are

(18:26):
back with more in a moment. Jimmy beartt show a
nine fifty k PRC. You know who I've seen making

(18:55):
the rounds here lately on television. Interestingly enough, he is
Oliver Stone. Remember Oliver Stone, the director. Oliver Stone was
the guy who gave us the movie JFK, which of
course had this supposedly wild conspiracy theory involving the CIA

(19:15):
and you know, the New Orleans Mafia and in all
this stuff in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And
it was I think, as I recall it, he did
the movie because he really felt that there was a

(19:35):
conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy and he didn't believe anything coming
out of the Warren Commission. Do you ever tell you,
by the way, that Gerald Ford, who was a this
is when he was a representative from Michigan before he
was President of the United States. Gerald R. Ford was
on the Warren Commission as a young Republican representative from Michigan.

(20:00):
And I've actually talked with him before, and at least publicly,
he bought the whole Warren Commission thing, hook line and sinker,
right down to the magic bullet. I mean, he never
wavered whatsoever in his opinion that the work they did
on the Warren Commission was good work and that you know,

(20:21):
there was no mass conspiracy to assassining John Kennedy and
was a lone assassin, even though you would think anybody
could see that that was not the case. I mean,
especially when you see the connection of Jack Ruby, who
ended up killing Oswald to shut him up, so there
wasn't a trial. You know, they made dog one sure

(20:41):
there was no trial and no way to you know,
to have any of the evidence come forward at any rate.
Oliver Stone, who did this movie JFK And I've seen
the movie several times. It's a fascinating movie to watch.
Even if not word of it is true, it's still
a fascinating movie to watch. And I did. The more
I learn about, you know, the CIA, and the more

(21:04):
I learned about, you know, some of the information that
they have found, some of the information that's missing, the
more I tend to believe that that movie is closer
to the truth than the Warrant Commission ever was. But
Oliver still making the rounds talking about, you know, the
classified documents that have been released once he believes there

(21:24):
should be a complete reinvestigation. In a way there is
right now with Representative Iluna, you know, trying to do
more of an investigation to the assassination of John Kennedy.
I personally, I don't think it ever gets anywhere. I
don't think we ever get to the entire truth. I

(21:44):
think way too much has been done to make sure
that that never happens, even though we're talking about something
happened in nineteen sixty three, for good for goodness sakes,
I mean, good lord, I mean, how many all these
years have passed, you know, sixty over sixty years have
passed and we still can't getty closer to the truth.
But here's Oliver Stone on Fox over the weekend, actually

(22:04):
I think it was Friday night. He was on with
Jesse Waters.

Speaker 8 (22:07):
How close are we getting to the truth of what
happened in Dallas that day?

Speaker 10 (22:13):
Jesse, I don't know. You've been very good on this.
You have a memory and you've followed up.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
You know.

Speaker 10 (22:19):
I was sitting in Congress in nineteen ninety two to
testify for the JFK Records Act, which was the result
of my film JFK in ninety one. But it was
a good act. They tried the ARB, they tried to
get as much information. They didn't get any cooperation, as
you know, from the CIA at all, practically nothing, and

(22:42):
so many of the other people they didn't come forward
with the documents, they didn't do what they were going
to say they do. The spirit of that law was
the only exception would be national security, and it had
to be serious national security. Well, this is a question
of national security, and it just keeps getting delayed and
kicked around to kick the can down the road kind
of thing, and it's frustrating. So mister Trump has started

(23:06):
a new at least a new energy, and he's given
us say, look, I want all the files out, no exceptions,
now nothing. And that was the original law. They didn't
abide by it, Jim, this is my researcher.

Speaker 11 (23:20):
Law actually said in twenty seventeen in October everything should
be declassified. There should be no exceptions at all. And
the only person who can stop that was the president. Well,
on that day he was visited by some Intel higher ups,

(23:41):
and instead of declassifying everything like he said he wanted
to do, he ended up delaying it all right, and
he even delayed it into the Biden administration, and the
Biden administration, if anything, was even.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
Worse on this on this particular issue.

Speaker 11 (23:58):
So what happened, I'm sure you're aware of this, Jesse,
is that people like Andy Napolitano and mister Rogan reminded
candidate Trump of what he should have done in his
first administration. And therefore I think that's the impetus behind

(24:18):
this executive order, all right, And in addition to that,
we have Congresswoman Luna who is going to take a
legislative attack on this subject. And I really hope between
both of these angles we finally will get every last
piece of paper.

Speaker 4 (24:37):
Yeah that exists. That's the other thing. There's too many things.
Wouldn't you think that anything that really was the smoking
gun so to speak, in this that's long gone, right,
don't you think. I mean, there's there's no way, there's
no way that that there's enough information in there where
you can point the fingers say that's who did it,

(24:59):
that's who responsible for it. I'm sure that stuff was
long long ago removed. If it was ever in there
to begin with, why would they keep their own evidence
of their own guilt. If it's the CIA, they would
destroy it. They would absolutely destroy it. He's like trying
to get to the truth of what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Do you think we ever get to the truth on

(25:20):
that about who this kid was who tried to assassinate
President Trump? I mean, they cremated him, right, you know,
as quickly as they could, you know, We don't really
know much of anything about him. We don't know. We
haven't learned anything more, at least the public hasn't learned
anything more about, you know, his motivation and if he

(25:44):
was working for somebody or doing this on his own.
You think we ever get to the bottom of that.
I don't either. And the thing is crazy about that
is the guy who they almost killed is the current
president of the United States. So did they did they
somehow convince him that there was no conspiracy involved with this,

(26:08):
or that the conspiracy did not involve any anybody connected
in any way, shape or form of the United States.
They must have, right, they must have. Hey, that's all
I got for today. Have a great Monday, what's left
of it. We will see you tomorrow morning, bright and early,
five am over on news Radio seven kt r H.
Hope to see you tomorrow afternoon four here on Am

(26:29):
nine fifty KPRC. Have a great evening.