December 18, 2025 • 9 mins
LISTEN and SUBSCRIBE on:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i
WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:
https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured
Staying up late paid off—this was a different kind of Trump speech. No teleprompter, fewer crowd-pleasing riffs, and a noticeable shift in tone toward acknowledging real economic problems. Yes, there were inaccuracies and familiar exaggerations, but this time the speech was lighter on gimmicks and heavier on responsibility. Using Jingle All the Way as a metaphor, this episode digs into leadership, credibility, and the danger of making promises you can’t—or won’t—keep. Is this the beginning of a long-overdue pivot, or just a brief pause in the performance? The midterms, inflation, and voter patience will decide.
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i
WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:
https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured
Staying up late paid off—this was a different kind of Trump speech. No teleprompter, fewer crowd-pleasing riffs, and a noticeable shift in tone toward acknowledging real economic problems. Yes, there were inaccuracies and familiar exaggerations, but this time the speech was lighter on gimmicks and heavier on responsibility. Using Jingle All the Way as a metaphor, this episode digs into leadership, credibility, and the danger of making promises you can’t—or won’t—keep. Is this the beginning of a long-overdue pivot, or just a brief pause in the performance? The midterms, inflation, and voter patience will decide.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Trump's jingle all the Waste speech. Yeah, I stayed up
way past my bedtime last night to watch this speech.
This is I can't recall. I can't recall Donald Trump
doing an entire speech off the teleprompter. It was a
enormous improvement from his usual speeches in content. Let's see
(00:42):
it at that. No, it wasn't the normal Donald Trumps
stand up act entertaining everybody. I caught a fish. This
is big. Where there some obvious inaccuracies in what he
had to saysolutely absolutely eighteen trillion dollars in new investment. No, No,
(01:06):
at least he didn't. At least he said it wasn't
terriff revenue, which is good step in the right direction. No,
we don't have that bringing inflation down. No, inflation is
basically where it was when he took office. Okay, there's
other things that I'm going to go through, and I
don't want to pick. Okay, because again I want to
(01:28):
try to focus on the positive. Here, I am step
in the right direction. Why was it a step in
the right direction? Just like I mentioned a couple of
days ago, here Scott Bessett all of a sudden starting
to not use the the hoax, the affordability oaks, it's
democratic hope. No, they're not doing that. They're actually coming
(01:51):
out and saying, Okay, we have a problem, and we're
going to fix it, and we're going to deal with
it and things are going to be much better. There's
always my concern with Trump. Many of the things that
he said on the campaign trail were just you know, impossible.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
All right.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Reconflation down on day one, I'm gonna solve the war
on day one, and all these various different things. This
is where I'm getting to jingle all the way. A
great Christmas movie. Enjoyed it back in the day, kids
loved it again. I'm a big Arnold Schwarzenegger fan. Howard
Howard played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie is a
(02:32):
busy business owner and he keeps letting his kid down,
keeps letting his kid down. He's always busy at work.
Beginning the movie, fails, fails to show up to his
kids karate karate matches getting a higher belts. But you
learn because the kid's very upset. It's a pattern for Howard.
(02:55):
He does this all the time. Anybody who is in
a position of leadership, and it doesn't matter if you
are a business owner, you are a school teacher, you're
a coach, or your head of a household, your father
(03:16):
or mother. You promise something, you say you're going to
do something, you get it done. You get it done,
you don't. You don't write checks you can't cash and
it's going to happen. Sometimes you'll make a promise and
(03:37):
God forbid, something pops up, or it doesn't go your way,
whatever it may be. But you don't come out and say, no, no,
it's not my fault, I didn't do it. I'm right. No,
he can't do that. I am in a business and
(03:59):
I do a lot of guest appearances. I have friends
that host radio shows. I appear on their shows. Whatnot
take our job and I take this job very very seriously. Yeah,
I believe that anybody who is in a position of
power leadership out there trying to you know, talk inform
(04:21):
people must go above and beyond and trying to get
things right. And when you don't get something right, you
make a mistake, you might say something that is in accurate.
You want to correct it, you want to correct it immediately.
And Trump doesn't do that. He is under the belief
(04:45):
that you know, you will never ever ever admit when
you are wrong or you've done something wrong. And that
doesn't jibe with me. I talk about it all the time.
It's like nails on a chalkboard for me when my
intelligence is insulted. When you're just going out and you're
riffing and you're making things up and you have no
(05:10):
interest in correcting them, you have no interest in being accurate. Again,
it's nails on a chalkboard for me. I can't take it.
The speech yesterday, Ken, there was inaccuracies there. It signaled
a bit of a shift, in my opinion, a bit
(05:31):
of a shift that they are going to acknowledge that
things need to get better. I don't know who sat
Trump down and basically read him his pull numbers, what
people feel, how people feel about the economy. I don't
know if he's taken a look at the unemployment numbers
(05:52):
of four point six percent to ten percent for youth
unemployment and recognize that he is going to get schala act.
He is going to get schalacked in the midterms. That's
just the reality, unless unless he stops, you know, placing
(06:16):
you know again, he did it last night, though he
placed a lot of blame about but it was it
was perspective. He wasn't wrong. Okay, Inflation went parabolic under Biden,
There's no doubt about that. But they have to see.
People have to see that you're working on it, that
you're doing something about it. You can't just go, you know,
(06:37):
spewing off at the mouth another you know. Yeah, the
thing that he really needs to do is to just
stay away from the cameras and the michaels. He can't
help himself. He loves to see, you know, narcissist. You
know the word narcissist comes from. It's the you know, Greek,
you know, mythology, you know, narcissists looking at him self.
(07:01):
In the war case, I couldn't tear himself away from
looking at himself all the time. He loves it, he
loves it. But it's not good for your presidency. Man,
It wasn't good for your presidency during COVID going out
every day at four o'clock less is more control the message.
Don't go off on rifts. Stop giving speeches that meander
(07:23):
for an hour and forty five minutes like you're some
sort of half assed feet del castro.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Stop stop.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Let people know that you know what, you don't have
time for speeches. You don't have time for these things.
You're too busy working to get prices down and doing
all of the things that people want you to do.
Going to remind everybody, first couple months, it was animal
spirits in this country. It was animal spirits. And I
(07:53):
mentioned his poll numbers were the highest when he had
Musk there, and Musk cutting back the spite with the
left tried to do and get rid of him. But
again they threw Musk out of town because he was
following the money. And there's too many on the left
and the right that are tied in that's the business
of Washington, d C. Liberation Day. Straight down hill. Now
(08:19):
again he talked about his favorite word, tariff. I do
think that the Supreme Court is trying right now to
come up with some sort of compromise, and quite frankly,
I think that will save him to some degree. Yesterday
in his speech, he didn't didn't come up with any
(08:41):
far flung ideas of getting rid of the income tax
and sending everybody two thousand dollars checks. I know he
said a you know, one seven and seventy six dollars
check to all members of the military. Again, I don't
know how he can just declare and decree that. I
think it has to go through Congress if I'm not mistaken.
But it was short on gimmicks, which is good, just good.
(09:04):
So okay, going back, jingle all the way. Stop making promises.
Stop making promises that you can't keep or you have
no intention of keeping because you're just trying to have
have a crowd up at some point in time. Don't
do that.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Do that.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You make a promise, you deliver, and if you know
you don't deliver, it's not because you weren't working your
ass off on it. Head in that direction. Okay, this
could be the pivot. We'll see what's going to happen
moving forward. Watch Dog and Wall Street dot Com
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Trump's jingle all the Waste speech. Yeah, I stayed up
way past my bedtime last night to watch this speech.
This is I can't recall. I can't recall Donald Trump
doing an entire speech off the teleprompter. It was a
enormous improvement from his usual speeches in content. Let's see
(00:42):
it at that. No, it wasn't the normal Donald Trumps
stand up act entertaining everybody. I caught a fish. This
is big. Where there some obvious inaccuracies in what he
had to saysolutely absolutely eighteen trillion dollars in new investment. No, No,
(01:06):
at least he didn't. At least he said it wasn't
terriff revenue, which is good step in the right direction. No,
we don't have that bringing inflation down. No, inflation is
basically where it was when he took office. Okay, there's
other things that I'm going to go through, and I
don't want to pick. Okay, because again I want to
(01:28):
try to focus on the positive. Here, I am step
in the right direction. Why was it a step in
the right direction? Just like I mentioned a couple of
days ago, here Scott Bessett all of a sudden starting
to not use the the hoax, the affordability oaks, it's
democratic hope. No, they're not doing that. They're actually coming
(01:51):
out and saying, Okay, we have a problem, and we're
going to fix it, and we're going to deal with
it and things are going to be much better. There's
always my concern with Trump. Many of the things that
he said on the campaign trail were just you know, impossible.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
All right.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Reconflation down on day one, I'm gonna solve the war
on day one, and all these various different things. This
is where I'm getting to jingle all the way. A
great Christmas movie. Enjoyed it back in the day, kids
loved it again. I'm a big Arnold Schwarzenegger fan. Howard
Howard played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie is a
(02:32):
busy business owner and he keeps letting his kid down,
keeps letting his kid down. He's always busy at work.
Beginning the movie, fails, fails to show up to his
kids karate karate matches getting a higher belts. But you
learn because the kid's very upset. It's a pattern for Howard.
(02:55):
He does this all the time. Anybody who is in
a position of leadership, and it doesn't matter if you
are a business owner, you are a school teacher, you're
a coach, or your head of a household, your father
(03:16):
or mother. You promise something, you say you're going to
do something, you get it done. You get it done,
you don't. You don't write checks you can't cash and
it's going to happen. Sometimes you'll make a promise and
(03:37):
God forbid, something pops up, or it doesn't go your way,
whatever it may be. But you don't come out and say, no, no,
it's not my fault, I didn't do it. I'm right. No,
he can't do that. I am in a business and
(03:59):
I do a lot of guest appearances. I have friends
that host radio shows. I appear on their shows. Whatnot
take our job and I take this job very very seriously. Yeah,
I believe that anybody who is in a position of
power leadership out there trying to you know, talk inform
(04:21):
people must go above and beyond and trying to get
things right. And when you don't get something right, you
make a mistake, you might say something that is in accurate.
You want to correct it, you want to correct it immediately.
And Trump doesn't do that. He is under the belief
(04:45):
that you know, you will never ever ever admit when
you are wrong or you've done something wrong. And that
doesn't jibe with me. I talk about it all the time.
It's like nails on a chalkboard for me when my
intelligence is insulted. When you're just going out and you're
riffing and you're making things up and you have no
(05:10):
interest in correcting them, you have no interest in being accurate. Again,
it's nails on a chalkboard for me. I can't take it.
The speech yesterday, Ken, there was inaccuracies there. It signaled
a bit of a shift, in my opinion, a bit
(05:31):
of a shift that they are going to acknowledge that
things need to get better. I don't know who sat
Trump down and basically read him his pull numbers, what
people feel, how people feel about the economy. I don't
know if he's taken a look at the unemployment numbers
(05:52):
of four point six percent to ten percent for youth
unemployment and recognize that he is going to get schala act.
He is going to get schalacked in the midterms. That's
just the reality, unless unless he stops, you know, placing
(06:16):
you know again, he did it last night, though he
placed a lot of blame about but it was it
was perspective. He wasn't wrong. Okay, Inflation went parabolic under Biden,
There's no doubt about that. But they have to see.
People have to see that you're working on it, that
you're doing something about it. You can't just go, you know,
(06:37):
spewing off at the mouth another you know. Yeah, the
thing that he really needs to do is to just
stay away from the cameras and the michaels. He can't
help himself. He loves to see, you know, narcissist. You
know the word narcissist comes from. It's the you know, Greek,
you know, mythology, you know, narcissists looking at him self.
(07:01):
In the war case, I couldn't tear himself away from
looking at himself all the time. He loves it, he
loves it. But it's not good for your presidency. Man,
It wasn't good for your presidency during COVID going out
every day at four o'clock less is more control the message.
Don't go off on rifts. Stop giving speeches that meander
(07:23):
for an hour and forty five minutes like you're some
sort of half assed feet del castro.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Stop stop.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Let people know that you know what, you don't have
time for speeches. You don't have time for these things.
You're too busy working to get prices down and doing
all of the things that people want you to do.
Going to remind everybody, first couple months, it was animal
spirits in this country. It was animal spirits. And I
(07:53):
mentioned his poll numbers were the highest when he had
Musk there, and Musk cutting back the spite with the
left tried to do and get rid of him. But
again they threw Musk out of town because he was
following the money. And there's too many on the left
and the right that are tied in that's the business
of Washington, d C. Liberation Day. Straight down hill. Now
(08:19):
again he talked about his favorite word, tariff. I do
think that the Supreme Court is trying right now to
come up with some sort of compromise, and quite frankly,
I think that will save him to some degree. Yesterday
in his speech, he didn't didn't come up with any
(08:41):
far flung ideas of getting rid of the income tax
and sending everybody two thousand dollars checks. I know he
said a you know, one seven and seventy six dollars
check to all members of the military. Again, I don't
know how he can just declare and decree that. I
think it has to go through Congress if I'm not mistaken.
But it was short on gimmicks, which is good, just good.
(09:04):
So okay, going back, jingle all the way. Stop making promises.
Stop making promises that you can't keep or you have
no intention of keeping because you're just trying to have
have a crowd up at some point in time. Don't
do that.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Do that.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You make a promise, you deliver, and if you know
you don't deliver, it's not because you weren't working your
ass off on it. Head in that direction. Okay, this
could be the pivot. We'll see what's going to happen
moving forward. Watch Dog and Wall Street dot Com
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