Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, there we go. I see him and hopefully
I can hear him. Let me just say before we
actually start talking with Henry Olsen that if you are
fascinated by politics, and I don't mean so much the
nuts and bolts of this senator is doing that and
here's this bill and all the shenanigans, but rather elections
and polling and you know, big picture stuff about politics.
(00:24):
My next guest Henry Olsen. His podcast is called Beyond
the Polls, and I think it's the single best political
podcast out there and I never miss an episode. Henry
is a Washington Post columnist. He is a Senior Fellow
at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and I'd just
been wanting to get him on the show for so
(00:44):
long and he said yes the first time I asked, So, Henry,
welcome to Kowa. Thanks so much for doing this since
I'm a big fan and it's great to have you.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, thank you very much. I don't think I've ever
had such a glowing introduction.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
I mean it, though, So I listen to every episode
and I'm just going to bounce around with you in
this conversation. I got lots of things to talk about,
but just for fun, Can you please explain the metaphor
of the leopard eating your face party? Oh?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yes, that was the loudost recent episode. So leopard eating
your face party is a meme that's popped up recently,
and the idea is that somebody votes for the leopard
face eating party saying that they'll tear things up, and
then when they come for their face, they say, I
(01:35):
didn't think they'd eat my face. In other words, they
didn't take the actual policies of the party seriously and
are shocked when they're applied to them. And so I
use that in my most recent episode to talk about
like business people who are amazed that Trump is actually
going to impost tariffs. I didn't think the tariff leopard
would eat my face.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
So I will also note to folks that part of
the reason I like Henry so much is that he's
a huge nerd, and I'm a huge nerd, and so
Henry will do stuff like study, you know, the Greenland election,
and he did an episode with polling on the German elections,
which is sue and I find all of it fascinating.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I majored in foreign policy.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Actually, what makes you interested in the Greenland election or
such things.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well, I'm interested in elections across the world, which is
something that most people aren't because people are people. You know,
there's elections going on everywhere, and you learn something about
what people want and what they prioritize. Of course, I
was covering the Greenland elections because Donald Trump says he
wants to take them over, and you know, they are
a self governing nation within the Dall Danish Realm. They
(02:44):
have their own parliament, they have a right to secede
and become independent if they want to. So I thought, well,
this is kind of relevant. Let's find out what the
Greenlanders themselves want. And what turns out is that they
kind of not want to be with the United Slime States.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
The party that's.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
The most favorable to working with Trump was the only
party frozen out of the four party coalition government, and
the day the Greenlanders moved against the incumbents because they
wanted to say, hey, we want a better deal with Denmark,
but we don't want to be with the United States.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
We had a guest or the show before mine yesterday
had a moderately well known sort of political analyst commentator,
dude on I won't use his name, and he was
talking about what's going on with Trump and the tariffs,
and maybe this mister Garcia and l. Salvad already made
the comment that Trump is losing his base now, and
in my mind, I thought, well, that seems to fly
(03:40):
in the face of the very definition of the word base.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
But also, and this is my question for.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
You, I do think Trump is losing I don't know
that he's permanently lost, but I do think he's losing
a lot of moderates, center right people who said I
just can't do you know, Harris and more of all
that I'm gonna give him a try. I think he's
losing some of them. But in the context I have
on Twitter and with my listeners who are Trump supporters,
(04:09):
what I get from most of them is I'm willing
to let this play out, especially the tariff thing, and
see how it goes.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
So do you think this stuff that the so called mainstream.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Media is making so much out of is damaging.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Trump in an important way or.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Just a little, because I can't imagine it's not damaging
him at all.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, no, it's not damaging him yet in an important way.
But you can't deny the facts. The facts are that
his job approval rating is down about five points almost
three months into his presidency. You know, that's not unusual
that presidents start with a hopeful high almost all of
the time and then slowly decline. But he is losing
(04:50):
support among people who would be the people, not the.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Base, but the swing voters.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
You know, the reason Trump is president is because he
won the eight percent of the people who did not
like either he or Kamala Harris by twenty points. That's
his margin of victory. And those are the people who
are now saying they disapprove of him.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
They don't hate him.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
They could come back and like him again. But he
has gone down, and it's certainly as a result of
two things. One is, I think the tariffs injected a
lot of uncertainty, not just their fact but how they
were implemented. But to what people were saying in the polls,
even when his polls were doing better in January and February,
(05:32):
is that he's not paying enough attention to inflation. So
I think you've got Trump seems to talk about almost
everything but inflation, and that's not what this small but
crucial group of voters wanted from him. Last month's numbers
were good. I think the next couple of months numbers
are good for a nerdy statistical reason that I'm happy
(05:53):
to explain if you want me to go into it.
But that's why he's going down. But it's nowhere near fatal.
If the election were held today, Trump would be re elected,
Republicans would easily hold the Senate, maybe pick up a seat,
and the House would be a toss up. And he
has not even declined to the worrying point yet.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Uh okay, So yeah, give me, give me the nerdy
thing about why you think the inflation numbers will be
fine for another month or two.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, So what happens with the inflation numbers is every
month you add the most recent month's numbers and you
take off the one from a year ago. Well, it
just so happens that the next two just like the
last month were era were months that had annualized inflation
of three and a half to four and a half percent.
So as long as the numbers come in at or
(06:40):
below that for the next month, inflation won't go up.
And if it comes in at only zero point two percent,
which is two and a half percent, a year, the
inflation annual number will go down. So it's baked into
the cake that Trump's inflation news will likely be good
for the next two months, and then it reverses as
a couple of really good that come off and you'll
(07:01):
probably see a slight increase. And none of it has
to do with Trump's policies. All of it has to
do with statistical nerdery.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
But okay, so, and I'm again I'm very much a nerd.
But if if, if tariffs did cause the price of
things to go up in the short term, wouldn't that,
you know, make the gap bigger?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Well, the thing question is what percentage of the consumer
price index is covered by tariffs. The answer is actually
a very small percentage. Seventy percent of the consumer price
index is covered by services. Half of that is covered
by housing. So yes, if the tariffs cause like new
(07:45):
car prices to go up, that would be a hit.
But much larger in the consumer price index is energy.
It's thirteen it's seven percent of the index. If energy
continues to go down, that'll swamp in the overall d
the new car hit. So yeah, when you listen to
the mainstream media talk about this part of the times.
(08:06):
I want to say, have you ever actually looked at
a detailed BLS monthly report? Because the answer is probably
a null, And then you run the numbers and you say, hey,
you know what, Yeah, there might be inflation that's large
in some segments, but it's offset by inflation and other segments.
And that's why I think the news for the next
couple of months will probably be at worst for Trump,
(08:27):
no more than a level inflation and more likely than
not slightly declined.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
We're talking with Henry Olsen. He writes for the Washington Post.
He's a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center,
and his fabulous podcast is called Beyond the Polls. One
of the things I'm thinking about, Henry, is that the
American people generally don't look at you know, GDP statistics,
(08:53):
CPI statistics. By the way, I am nerdy enough that
I do read these releases, not every time, but I
used to be financial markets trader, so I used to
read that stuff really a lot. So but when they
go to Walmart and they buy this thing that's made
in China that's twenty percent more than it used to be,
or they want to buy a new car, and it's
four thousand dollars more than it was a few months ago.
(09:15):
Separate from again, how exactly it'll show up in a
government report, how will that show up in the minds
of voters.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, I do think that there is a as lived
at inflation rate. And that's one of the reasons why
Biden was never really helped by a lowering inflation rate,
because in areas that people actually had to purchase, you know,
food prices in particularly, they were continuing to go up,
and that could very well hurt Trump as people don't
look at the headline rate, but they see, oh my gosh,
(09:46):
this toy seems to be a lot more expensive, or salmon,
you know, we get a lot of salmon from overseas,
or shrimp. You know, if you if you regularly buy
shrimp and suddenly you notice, gee at, the price is
double because it's farmed from Vietnam. You know, that's the
sort of thing that people will will notice. But it's
really going to be again good specific the sort of
thing that people buy every day. Gasoline is down, and
(10:10):
that's one of the things Trump has been trying for
and that has been succeeding. So, Yeah, the as lived
inflation index could very well not help Trump, but as
long as energy prices keep coming down, it could also
help them. The point is, and this is why I'm
an analyst, rather than put in another descriptor, I don't
(10:32):
know the answer yet. Yeah, I know the factors, but
I don't know the answer yet. But yes, you're absolutely right,
and as lived inflation experience could very well harm Trump.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Okay, so this is drifting just slightly from polling in
that kind.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Of thing, we're going to go beyond the polls. Good.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
So, so one of the things I wonder about, so
Trump knows that he needs to codify in legislation as
much as possible of the stuff that he's doing so
that the next Democrat doesn't just undo it. And in
order to do that, he needs to keep every Republican, essentially,
every republic every Republican other than Thomas Massey on board.
(11:12):
And you know, some stuff he can probably get through
the Senate with a simple majority, like maybe some recisions
and reconciliation, but other stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Will be a little harder.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Anyway, what do you think Republicans need to look at
or worry about, or see as an opportunity as far
as keeping members of Congress on board with Trump, and
in the sense of if tariffs start hurting, are they
going to start backing away from Trump to protect their
own skins?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Even though that's very.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Difficult in a Republican party that's so loyal to Trump.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
It's very complex. But what's your take?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, I mean, tariffs would have to buy a lot
for the Republicans in the House to start backing away
from him. You know, most Republicans in the House are
in safe Republican districts. They only have to worry about
the Republican primary. Really no indication that Trump's being hurt
among Republicans. Like I said, the small slippage that has
occurred is largely among Trump leaning or pure independence. You
(12:08):
might have said, Hey, I was willing to give them
a chance. I'm still willing to give them a chance,
but it's not working out the way I thought it would.
So Karis would have to fight really hard, or would
have to have like a stock market collapse. You know,
everyone was whining about a ten percent decline. Well, you know,
I lived through a twenty five percent decline in one
day in nineteen eighty seven, and the market came back
(12:30):
and Ronald Reagan's vice president was elected and the following year.
The fact is it was the last couple of weeks
has been a hullablue about little not about real things.
So I think what you need to be doing is
understanding the complexities of your coalition, which is to say,
it's not just the base, it's not just the Conservatives,
(12:50):
it's not just the big donors. It includes these people
who voted for Joe Biden in twenty twenty, voter for
Hillary Clonton in twenty sixteen, and vote for Donald Trump
on the Hey, let's give him a chance. That's what
gave him the majority. That's what kept them in power.
So if I were them, I would focus on a
laser like that, and I would make sure that every
(13:12):
faction of my party has something. You know, the businesses
are going to scream about taxes and say, well, how
about a little bit of deregulation or doing something on
the expensing side and the tax code so that you
get something. That's what I would do if I were
in the Trump administration, and if I were in the
leadership in either the House or the Senate.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
All right, we got about ninety seconds left.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
First, let me just mention the October of nineteen eighty
seven crash. I was in my fourth month as a
trader on the options exchange in Chicago, and all these
guys who had been trading for years and years walked
off the trading floor. I stayed on the trading floor.
I ended up basically breaking even. Obviously, if I knew
(13:50):
then what I know now, I would have made enough
money in three days to retire and never work again.
But boy was that a thing, watching you know, over
twenty percent in one day. And then you have all
these people, you know, getting there are panties in a bunch.
When we drop three percent, they ain't seeing nothing, all right?
So about about a minute here, Henry, So we spend,
and I understand why we spend.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I don't just mean you and me talking about lots
of time talking.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
About Republicans, and ten years ago or more, I used
to say on the show, I cannot tell you what
the Republican brand stands for. Now right now, I think
I kind of can, and it doesn't necessarily mean I
like it, but I think I can at least tell you.
But I can't tell you what the Democratic brand stands for.
And of course elections are about choices, and people seem
(14:32):
to forget that, Oh I hate Trump so much, the
other guy is going to get elected. But an election
is about a choice. So right now, what is your
thought about the Democratic brand.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I've got about a minute.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
The thing is with the Democratic brand, we actually can
say what it's about. The problem is there's lots of
Democrats who don't like it, but they won't do anything
about it. The Democratic brand is about being leftward on everything,
you know, not everything everywhere all at once, but you
know it is. We can't say the reac You know,
if you say the react about trans girls competing in
(15:03):
women's sports, you get booed by a large number of
the Democratic base. If you talk about any sort of compromise,
you get booed by the Democratic base. The fundamental factor, remember,
is that the Democratic Party has the lowest partisan identification
in any time in a century. It's not all going
to the Republicans, but there's a lot of people who
have said I don't like them anymore. And if the
(15:26):
Republicans can take advantage of it over the next three years,
we're looking at a thirty year realignment that will move
the country rightward.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Folks, that's the great Henry Olsen. His podcast, which should
be a must on your podcast subscribing list, is called
Beyond the Polls. We didn't get to any and I
wish we had Next Time nineteen eighties movies references, which
Henry does a lot of in his podcast, and I
love all of them as a big Monty Python fan,
(15:54):
and other things myself. Henry, I'm so grateful that you
did this. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
I will certainly come back. Thank you for having me
on Rock.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Grateful, grateful for your time.
All right, there we go. I see him and hopefully
I can hear him. Let me just say before we
actually start talking with Henry Olsen that if you are
fascinated by politics, and I don't mean so much the
nuts and bolts of this senator is doing that and
here's this bill and all the shenanigans, but rather elections
and polling and you know, big picture stuff about politics.
(00:24):
My next guest Henry Olsen. His podcast is called Beyond
the Polls, and I think it's the single best political
podcast out there and I never miss an episode. Henry
is a Washington Post columnist. He is a Senior Fellow
at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and I'd just
been wanting to get him on the show for so
(00:44):
long and he said yes the first time I asked, So, Henry,
welcome to Kowa. Thanks so much for doing this since
I'm a big fan and it's great to have you.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, thank you very much. I don't think I've ever
had such a glowing introduction.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
I mean it, though, So I listen to every episode
and I'm just going to bounce around with you in
this conversation. I got lots of things to talk about,
but just for fun, Can you please explain the metaphor
of the leopard eating your face party? Oh?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yes, that was the loudost recent episode. So leopard eating
your face party is a meme that's popped up recently,
and the idea is that somebody votes for the leopard
face eating party saying that they'll tear things up, and
then when they come for their face, they say, I
(01:35):
didn't think they'd eat my face. In other words, they
didn't take the actual policies of the party seriously and
are shocked when they're applied to them. And so I
use that in my most recent episode to talk about
like business people who are amazed that Trump is actually
going to impost tariffs. I didn't think the tariff leopard
would eat my face.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
So I will also note to folks that part of
the reason I like Henry so much is that he's
a huge nerd, and I'm a huge nerd, and so
Henry will do stuff like study, you know, the Greenland election,
and he did an episode with polling on the German elections,
which is sue and I find all of it fascinating.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I majored in foreign policy.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Actually, what makes you interested in the Greenland election or
such things.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well, I'm interested in elections across the world, which is
something that most people aren't because people are people. You know,
there's elections going on everywhere, and you learn something about
what people want and what they prioritize. Of course, I
was covering the Greenland elections because Donald Trump says he
wants to take them over, and you know, they are
a self governing nation within the Dall Danish Realm. They
(02:44):
have their own parliament, they have a right to secede
and become independent if they want to. So I thought, well,
this is kind of relevant. Let's find out what the
Greenlanders themselves want. And what turns out is that they
kind of not want to be with the United Slime States.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
The party that's.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
The most favorable to working with Trump was the only
party frozen out of the four party coalition government, and
the day the Greenlanders moved against the incumbents because they
wanted to say, hey, we want a better deal with Denmark,
but we don't want to be with the United States.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
We had a guest or the show before mine yesterday
had a moderately well known sort of political analyst commentator,
dude on I won't use his name, and he was
talking about what's going on with Trump and the tariffs,
and maybe this mister Garcia and l. Salvad already made
the comment that Trump is losing his base now, and
in my mind, I thought, well, that seems to fly
(03:40):
in the face of the very definition of the word base.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
But also, and this is my question for.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
You, I do think Trump is losing I don't know
that he's permanently lost, but I do think he's losing
a lot of moderates, center right people who said I
just can't do you know, Harris and more of all
that I'm gonna give him a try. I think he's
losing some of them. But in the context I have
on Twitter and with my listeners who are Trump supporters,
(04:09):
what I get from most of them is I'm willing
to let this play out, especially the tariff thing, and
see how it goes.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
So do you think this stuff that the so called mainstream.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Media is making so much out of is damaging.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Trump in an important way or.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Just a little, because I can't imagine it's not damaging
him at all.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, no, it's not damaging him yet in an important way.
But you can't deny the facts. The facts are that
his job approval rating is down about five points almost
three months into his presidency. You know, that's not unusual
that presidents start with a hopeful high almost all of
the time and then slowly decline. But he is losing
(04:50):
support among people who would be the people, not the.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Base, but the swing voters.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
You know, the reason Trump is president is because he
won the eight percent of the people who did not
like either he or Kamala Harris by twenty points. That's
his margin of victory. And those are the people who
are now saying they disapprove of him.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
They don't hate him.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
They could come back and like him again. But he
has gone down, and it's certainly as a result of
two things. One is, I think the tariffs injected a
lot of uncertainty, not just their fact but how they
were implemented. But to what people were saying in the polls,
even when his polls were doing better in January and February,
(05:32):
is that he's not paying enough attention to inflation. So
I think you've got Trump seems to talk about almost
everything but inflation, and that's not what this small but
crucial group of voters wanted from him. Last month's numbers
were good. I think the next couple of months numbers
are good for a nerdy statistical reason that I'm happy
(05:53):
to explain if you want me to go into it.
But that's why he's going down. But it's nowhere near fatal.
If the election were held today, Trump would be re elected,
Republicans would easily hold the Senate, maybe pick up a seat,
and the House would be a toss up. And he
has not even declined to the worrying point yet.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Uh okay, So yeah, give me, give me the nerdy
thing about why you think the inflation numbers will be
fine for another month or two.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, So what happens with the inflation numbers is every
month you add the most recent month's numbers and you
take off the one from a year ago. Well, it
just so happens that the next two just like the
last month were era were months that had annualized inflation
of three and a half to four and a half percent.
So as long as the numbers come in at or
(06:40):
below that for the next month, inflation won't go up.
And if it comes in at only zero point two percent,
which is two and a half percent, a year, the
inflation annual number will go down. So it's baked into
the cake that Trump's inflation news will likely be good
for the next two months, and then it reverses as
a couple of really good that come off and you'll
(07:01):
probably see a slight increase. And none of it has
to do with Trump's policies. All of it has to
do with statistical nerdery.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
But okay, so, and I'm again I'm very much a nerd.
But if if, if tariffs did cause the price of
things to go up in the short term, wouldn't that,
you know, make the gap bigger?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Well, the thing question is what percentage of the consumer
price index is covered by tariffs. The answer is actually
a very small percentage. Seventy percent of the consumer price
index is covered by services. Half of that is covered
by housing. So yes, if the tariffs cause like new
(07:45):
car prices to go up, that would be a hit.
But much larger in the consumer price index is energy.
It's thirteen it's seven percent of the index. If energy
continues to go down, that'll swamp in the overall d
the new car hit. So yeah, when you listen to
the mainstream media talk about this part of the times.
(08:06):
I want to say, have you ever actually looked at
a detailed BLS monthly report? Because the answer is probably
a null, And then you run the numbers and you say, hey,
you know what, Yeah, there might be inflation that's large
in some segments, but it's offset by inflation and other segments.
And that's why I think the news for the next
couple of months will probably be at worst for Trump,
(08:27):
no more than a level inflation and more likely than
not slightly declined.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
We're talking with Henry Olsen. He writes for the Washington Post.
He's a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center,
and his fabulous podcast is called Beyond the Polls. One
of the things I'm thinking about, Henry, is that the
American people generally don't look at you know, GDP statistics,
(08:53):
CPI statistics. By the way, I am nerdy enough that
I do read these releases, not every time, but I
used to be financial markets trader, so I used to
read that stuff really a lot. So but when they
go to Walmart and they buy this thing that's made
in China that's twenty percent more than it used to be,
or they want to buy a new car, and it's
four thousand dollars more than it was a few months ago.
(09:15):
Separate from again, how exactly it'll show up in a
government report, how will that show up in the minds
of voters.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, I do think that there is a as lived
at inflation rate. And that's one of the reasons why
Biden was never really helped by a lowering inflation rate,
because in areas that people actually had to purchase, you know,
food prices in particularly, they were continuing to go up,
and that could very well hurt Trump as people don't
look at the headline rate, but they see, oh my gosh,
(09:46):
this toy seems to be a lot more expensive, or salmon,
you know, we get a lot of salmon from overseas,
or shrimp. You know, if you if you regularly buy
shrimp and suddenly you notice, gee at, the price is
double because it's farmed from Vietnam. You know, that's the
sort of thing that people will will notice. But it's
really going to be again good specific the sort of
thing that people buy every day. Gasoline is down, and
(10:10):
that's one of the things Trump has been trying for
and that has been succeeding. So, Yeah, the as lived
inflation index could very well not help Trump, but as
long as energy prices keep coming down, it could also
help them. The point is, and this is why I'm
an analyst, rather than put in another descriptor, I don't
(10:32):
know the answer yet. Yeah, I know the factors, but
I don't know the answer yet. But yes, you're absolutely right,
and as lived inflation experience could very well harm Trump.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Okay, so this is drifting just slightly from polling in
that kind.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Of thing, we're going to go beyond the polls. Good.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
So, so one of the things I wonder about, so
Trump knows that he needs to codify in legislation as
much as possible of the stuff that he's doing so
that the next Democrat doesn't just undo it. And in
order to do that, he needs to keep every Republican, essentially,
every republic every Republican other than Thomas Massey on board.
(11:12):
And you know, some stuff he can probably get through
the Senate with a simple majority, like maybe some recisions
and reconciliation, but other stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Will be a little harder.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Anyway, what do you think Republicans need to look at
or worry about, or see as an opportunity as far
as keeping members of Congress on board with Trump, and
in the sense of if tariffs start hurting, are they
going to start backing away from Trump to protect their
own skins?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Even though that's very.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Difficult in a Republican party that's so loyal to Trump.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
It's very complex. But what's your take?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, I mean, tariffs would have to buy a lot
for the Republicans in the House to start backing away
from him. You know, most Republicans in the House are
in safe Republican districts. They only have to worry about
the Republican primary. Really no indication that Trump's being hurt
among Republicans. Like I said, the small slippage that has
occurred is largely among Trump leaning or pure independence. You
(12:08):
might have said, Hey, I was willing to give them
a chance. I'm still willing to give them a chance,
but it's not working out the way I thought it would.
So Karis would have to fight really hard, or would
have to have like a stock market collapse. You know,
everyone was whining about a ten percent decline. Well, you know,
I lived through a twenty five percent decline in one
day in nineteen eighty seven, and the market came back
(12:30):
and Ronald Reagan's vice president was elected and the following year.
The fact is it was the last couple of weeks
has been a hullablue about little not about real things.
So I think what you need to be doing is
understanding the complexities of your coalition, which is to say,
it's not just the base, it's not just the Conservatives,
(12:50):
it's not just the big donors. It includes these people
who voted for Joe Biden in twenty twenty, voter for
Hillary Clonton in twenty sixteen, and vote for Donald Trump
on the Hey, let's give him a chance. That's what
gave him the majority. That's what kept them in power.
So if I were them, I would focus on a
laser like that, and I would make sure that every
(13:12):
faction of my party has something. You know, the businesses
are going to scream about taxes and say, well, how
about a little bit of deregulation or doing something on
the expensing side and the tax code so that you
get something. That's what I would do if I were
in the Trump administration, and if I were in the
leadership in either the House or the Senate.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
All right, we got about ninety seconds left.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
First, let me just mention the October of nineteen eighty
seven crash. I was in my fourth month as a
trader on the options exchange in Chicago, and all these
guys who had been trading for years and years walked
off the trading floor. I stayed on the trading floor.
I ended up basically breaking even. Obviously, if I knew
(13:50):
then what I know now, I would have made enough
money in three days to retire and never work again.
But boy was that a thing, watching you know, over
twenty percent in one day. And then you have all
these people, you know, getting there are panties in a bunch.
When we drop three percent, they ain't seeing nothing, all right?
So about about a minute here, Henry, So we spend,
and I understand why we spend.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I don't just mean you and me talking about lots
of time talking.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
About Republicans, and ten years ago or more, I used
to say on the show, I cannot tell you what
the Republican brand stands for. Now right now, I think
I kind of can, and it doesn't necessarily mean I
like it, but I think I can at least tell you.
But I can't tell you what the Democratic brand stands for.
And of course elections are about choices, and people seem
(14:32):
to forget that, Oh I hate Trump so much, the
other guy is going to get elected. But an election
is about a choice. So right now, what is your
thought about the Democratic brand.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I've got about a minute.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
The thing is with the Democratic brand, we actually can
say what it's about. The problem is there's lots of
Democrats who don't like it, but they won't do anything
about it. The Democratic brand is about being leftward on everything,
you know, not everything everywhere all at once, but you
know it is. We can't say the reac You know,
if you say the react about trans girls competing in
(15:03):
women's sports, you get booed by a large number of
the Democratic base. If you talk about any sort of compromise,
you get booed by the Democratic base. The fundamental factor, remember,
is that the Democratic Party has the lowest partisan identification
in any time in a century. It's not all going
to the Republicans, but there's a lot of people who
have said I don't like them anymore. And if the
(15:26):
Republicans can take advantage of it over the next three years,
we're looking at a thirty year realignment that will move
the country rightward.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Folks, that's the great Henry Olsen. His podcast, which should
be a must on your podcast subscribing list, is called
Beyond the Polls. We didn't get to any and I
wish we had Next Time nineteen eighties movies references, which
Henry does a lot of in his podcast, and I
love all of them as a big Monty Python fan,
(15:54):
and other things myself. Henry, I'm so grateful that you
did this. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
I will certainly come back. Thank you for having me
on Rock.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Grateful, grateful for your time.
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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