Just Another Orange Monday

Speaker 1 presenting sponsor is Simply Safe Home Security. Amid this political environment where the next big headline feels more unpredictable than ever, your home security doesn't have to.

Speaker 1 SimplySafe provides 24-7 protection, so no matter what's happening in the world, you always have peace of mind at home. Lobby, you got a little peace of mind through SimplySafe, didn't you?

Speaker 2 I do. I set up a SimplySafe system.
It really does give you peace of mind. It's easy to do.
You can just customize it for your space, your house, your apartment.

Speaker 2 your yurt, and then you're good and it works and it's great and I highly recommend it.

Speaker 1 With SimplySafe, millions of Americans enjoy the new standard in home security and greater peace of mind every time they arm their system, when heading out in the morning or when locking up each night.

Speaker 1 Traditional security systems only take action after someone has already broken in, and that's too late. SimplySafe's active guard outdoor protection can help prevent break-ins before they happen.

Speaker 1 If someone's lurking around or acting suspiciously, those agents see and talk to them in real time, activate spotlights, and even contact the police all before they have the chance to get inside your home.

Speaker 1 There's no long-term contracts or cancellation fees. Monitoring plans start affordably at around a dollar a day, 60-day satisfaction guarantee, or your money back.

Speaker 1 Visit simplysafe.com/slash crooked to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplysafe.com/slash crooked.

Speaker 1 There's no safe like simply safe.

Speaker 3 Extra value meals are back. For just $5, get a savory and sweet sausage, egg, and cheese McGriddles, plus hash browns and a coffee.

Speaker 4 Only at McDonald's.

Speaker 1 For limited time only, prices and participation may vary.

Speaker 5 Prices may may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California, and for delivery.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm John Levitt.

Speaker 2 I'm Tommy Dutor.

Speaker 1 On today's show, we're going to talk about Trump saying he'd love to send American citizens to the Gulag in El Salvador as his administration is fighting court orders to bring back a man the government admits they sent there by mistake.

Speaker 1 That case is now headed to the Supreme Court. We're also going to talk about how the resistance to Trump is finally showing some life.
There were huge protests all over the country this weekend.

Speaker 1 Barack Obama also spoke up for the first time since Trump's inauguration. Then Lovett talks to Oren Cass, one of the intellectual godfathers of Trump's tariff regime.

Speaker 2 I called him the architect. He didn't like that.

Speaker 1 He didn't like it.

Speaker 1 Big week for him. Yeah.
Big week for him. Yeah.
Speaking of tariffs, we will start there since that is the biggest story in the world right now. Our last pod together was right before Liberation Day.

Speaker 1 And boy, has that left a mark.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Remember life before Liberation Day? Barely.

Speaker 2 I think some liberated some stool for some traders, you know?

Speaker 1 Stool? Stool? Wow.

Speaker 1 I don't know what else to do. The big clinical issue.
Speaking of stool, here's just a small sampling of recent headlines.

Speaker 1 Wall Street Journal, Trump's tariffs wipe out over $6 trillion on Wall Street in epic two-day route. The Economist, Trump's trade war threatens a global recession.

Speaker 1 Fox Business, after Trump tariffs, J.P. Morgan raises chance of recession to 60%.

Speaker 1 CNBC, quote, this is the Trump recession, CEOs say, with price increases, job losses coming. Seems bad, but our boy isn't worried.

Speaker 1 Trump spent the weekend hosting a Saudi-backed golf tournament at his beach club club in Florida.

Speaker 1 And good news, the White House put out a statement saying the president did win his second-round matchup of the senior club championship.

Speaker 1 Senior club. Although, I don't know.
I don't know what happened in the finals.

Speaker 2 They showed his swing. His swing looks like dog shit.

Speaker 1 Really? I didn't see it. Then on Monday, after China announced retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., Trump announced yet more tariffs on China, totaling 104%.

Speaker 1 If they don't back down, it seems like Trump's certainly not.

Speaker 1 Here's what he said to reporters on Air Force One on his way home from golfing on Sunday when asked whether there was a level of market pain that would make him reverse course.

Speaker 6 I think your question is so stupid.

Speaker 7 I mean, I think it's a, I don't want anything to go down.

Speaker 6 But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.

Speaker 6 I don't think inflation is going to be a big deal because if you look at me, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars. This is not new to me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, look, sometimes you have to take your medicine, guys.

Speaker 2 Tim Cook is like, what do I got to do? I'll put Ted Lasso in a MAGA hat.

Speaker 1 I'll fuck a woman. What does it take?

Speaker 1 Help me.

Speaker 1 I can't be selling $30,000 iPhones in the United States, please. Saying your question is so stupid.
It's still funny to me. It's great.
Guys, general reactions to the insanity of last week?

Speaker 1 And what do you think Trump's plan is here? There seems to be conflicting views coming from the White House. I know you're surprised.
On whether he wants to negotiate.

Speaker 1 And what he ultimately wants out of this trade war. He was also on Monday in the Oval Office with B.B.
Netanyahu.

Speaker 1 There was a press available, and someone said, are these going to be permanent or are you going to negotiate? And he said, they can be permanent and I can negotiate. Loves of both hands.

Speaker 1 What do you guys think?

Speaker 1 I assume it's primarily a negotiating strategy. I'm guessing he's going to cut some deals.
But again, the... Complicating factor is the issue doesn't seem to be the tariffs.
It's the trade deficit.

Speaker 1 I'm not totally sure how you fix that. Well, it's a hard policy.

Speaker 2 Well, you can't fix it overnight, for sure. It takes time.
Yeah, well, look, all these things are in conflict.

Speaker 2 If tariffs are a means of reshoring a bunch of domestic industry, then they're not a negotiating tool.

Speaker 2 If they're a means of raising a bunch of revenue, then they're not a negotiating tool. If they're a negotiating tool, they can't do both of those other things.

Speaker 2 I will say, I was thinking about our conversation last week, pre-liberation day. We were in a pre-liberation day mindset.
And we were talking like, it's strange.

Speaker 2 The markets don't seem to be behaving as if this is real.

Speaker 1 I remember you saying that. And I was like,

Speaker 2 now they are.

Speaker 1 Yeah, now they are. Now they are.

Speaker 1 But I mean, if it is a negotiating strategy, the process is making him very, very unpopular overseas or abroad everywhere. I mean, look at what's happening in Canada.

Speaker 1 The prime minister, Mark Carney, is running on fighting Trump, and this issue has revived the Liberal Party, which was dead in the water after nine years of Trudeau. There's also no clarity.

Speaker 1 Like, the tariffs are on, they're off, they're delayed, they're doubled, we're golfing.

Speaker 1 No one seems to know like what's going to happen next. And there's no prioritization.
We're tariffing everyone.

Speaker 1 Like, in the Oval Office today with Netanyahu, this reporter is like, do you think you might get rid of the tariffs on Israel since they got rid of all of theirs on you?

Speaker 1 And he's like, no, no, I don't think so. And then we're tariffing like the Canadians.
We're tariffing Lesotho. We're trying to destroy the country of Lesotho.
Lesotho, Derek Thompson wrote about this.

Speaker 1 And I think for because... What we didn't talk about was the trade deficit part because we didn't know about the whole crazy formula last week.

Speaker 1 So for people who might not understand what we mean by the trade deficit and how it's based on that, Derek wrote a piece in the Atlantic about this.

Speaker 1 He said, one one of the highest tariff rates, 50%, was imposed on the African nation of Lesotho, whose average citizen earns less than $5 a day.

Speaker 1 Because Lesotho's citizens are too poor to afford most U.S. exports, while the U.S.

Speaker 1 imports $237 million in diamonds and other goods from the small landlocked nation, we have reserved close to our highest possible tariff rate for one of the world's poorest countries.

Speaker 1 The notion that taxing Lesotho gemstones is necessary for the U.S. to add steel jobs in Ohio is so absurd that I briefly lost consciousness in the middle of writing the sentence.

Speaker 2 I just, there's also like this whole idea that like a trade deficit means other countries are screwing you. And like there are a lot of, I'm not an economist.
I talked to Oren about this a bit.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of reasons we have trade deficits with countries. Sometimes it's because we import their fossil fuels.
Sometimes it's because they do have unfair practices to try to

Speaker 2 using their own industrial policies to grow their manufacturing base.

Speaker 1 Overall, it's because we're the biggest, richest country around. And so like, how do we expect smaller, poor countries to buy more stuff from us than we buy from them?

Speaker 2 And what, listen, I don't know if this is, I don't know if you guys are history buffs, but I don't think of Vietnam as a country we've been getting, taking shit from.

Speaker 2 You know, like, I don't like view it as a place like, finally, we're going to get back at those Vietnamese. What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 But to me, I'm glad you brought up Vietnam because the most confusing part of this is the China piece to me.

Speaker 1 Because if China is the primary concern, if China is the problem, why aren't we focused on China? Why are we tariffing the shit out of Vietnam?

Speaker 1 Because in Trump's first term, the tariffs on China convinced a bunch of industries to slowly move manufacturing to Vietnam. We liked that.

Speaker 1 The Biden administration in 2023, they signed a big security deal with Vietnam because everyone used Vietnam as a critical partner in dealing with China.

Speaker 1 But Trump just slapped a 46% tariff on Vietnam that will put 5.5% of the country's entire GDP at risk. We're going to crush their economy.
Why?

Speaker 1 And all the U.S. consumers that are buying products like Nike shoes, which makes half of their shoes in Vietnam, are going to pay a 46% tariff on every single sneaker? Got to make those shoes here.

Speaker 2 Everyone is just sort of intellectualizing what is like Trump's sort of lizard brain 1980s idea of what tariffs are for, done in as stupid a way as possible. It fails on its own terms, right?

Speaker 2 Like we're not isolating China.

Speaker 2 We're uniting the world against us. There's no strategy here.
We don't even know what people are supposed to do other than reduce their trade deficit, which is a long-term problem.

Speaker 2 A lot of the governments aren't explicitly responsible for the exact amount of the trade deficit. Like

Speaker 2 there's no like, this started with Canada and Mexico where he was like, oh, it's about fentanyl and it's about immigration or whatever kind of set of issues it was.

Speaker 1 It's also not protecting critical industries. Like we could have had exceptions on certain products from certain countries, like tariffs on things like bananas, coffee, avocados.

Speaker 1 Like we're not making those here. We're not making bananas.

Speaker 1 Famously. We're not doing that here.
And then, of course, now you got some people are like, just don't buy coffee. We shouldn't buy coffee anyway.

Speaker 1 Have fruit juice instead. It's like, I hate to tell you about the fruits.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's also a problem as well.

Speaker 1 Some of the rationale here is out of fucking control.

Speaker 2 The number of conservatives that spent last year saying that Joe Biden is driving up the cost of eggs and everything comes down to the cost of eggs that are now these sort of Zen-like

Speaker 2 anti-materialist kind of

Speaker 2 people. It's incredible.

Speaker 2 There's too many things. We've all become too obsessed with things.

Speaker 1 And oil and gas got a carve-out, by the way. Surprise, surprise that the biggest industry of donors to the Trump administration, to his campaigns, got a carve-out.

Speaker 1 But their little goofy-ass math equation excludes services. So financial services, digital services, cloud computing, tourism.
That's not part of the math. And that's where the U.S.

Speaker 1 has a trade surplus with a lot of countries. But we just decided not to put it in.

Speaker 1 Endgame here, like, could he negotiate down a bunch of tariffs and then declare victory when it's not really a victory, just to say face?

Speaker 1 Yes, I guess you could, you could see that as an outcome, a very typical Trump outcome.

Speaker 1 He says, oh, I, I finally, you know, I, I told the Vietnamese, this is what I'm demanding, and I got them, you know. But I think the damage is already done.
And the,

Speaker 1 a lot of these CEOs and economists who are predicting recession or at least predicting a downturn,

Speaker 1 they're predicting that based on the idea that he may pull back some of this, not that it could get even worse, right? Like,

Speaker 1 you know, companies are already canceling plans to build new factories.

Speaker 1 They're already announcing layoffs, which is just funny because I thought building new factories here was the whole point of the tariffs, but they're already starting to cancel that.

Speaker 1 So there's no certainty, and he's already doing damage. Also, a lot of these CEOs that CNBC was polling and talking to were like,

Speaker 1 they have a real fear that there's just going to be a boycott of American goods all over the world because of the sentiment, the anti-American sentiment. And that's going to really hurt U.S.

Speaker 1 corporations.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's no, how are you supposed to plan? How are you supposed to decide where to invest or where not to invest? We have no idea what's going to happen next. And by the way, look,

Speaker 2 it matters that Congress is so feckless and pathetic in the face of all this because the tariff power belongs to Congress. They've given it to the president.

Speaker 2 Even in this case, this is being abused on some sort of specious emergency ground.

Speaker 2 We have a global emergency against every single country on earth at the same time. So we have to declare a trade war, and that's within the president's authority.

Speaker 2 But regardless, Congress could take this authority back, and then you could have a policy that was set through an actual democratic process.

Speaker 2 Like, this is so much power for one fucking moron to be exerting over the whole world. Who on earth would want to invest in the United States?

Speaker 2 Who on earth would view it as a good investment to try to plan your business in terms of building jobs here? It's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 It's wonky and nerdy, but like the fact that he's doing this with the IEPA authority, which is just completely unprecedented. This is basically the authority we use to sanction.

Speaker 1 foreign leaders and terrorists and stuff and bad people.

Speaker 1 It's never been used like this before. He's essentially creating a backdoor tax on every single consumer in the United States through this authority and just going around Congress.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know, unsurprisingly, the most hardcore MAGA faithful are still on board with Trump's trade war, which I got to say has led to some real North Korean levels of propaganda coming out of the administration and state media.

Speaker 1 Let's listen.

Speaker 8 You have to just let him do what he's going to do, give him some time, because he is a businessman, he's a billionaire, he knows what he's doing.

Speaker 10 And everything is working very smoothly, so the American people can

Speaker 10 be very

Speaker 10 take great comfort in that.

Speaker 11 See, what's going to happen is robotics are going to replace the cheap labor that we've seen all across the world.

Speaker 11 Remember, the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones. That kind of thing is going to come to America.

Speaker 2 Losing money costs you nothing.

Speaker 10 This is just the reality of life.

Speaker 1 Like, were you young and dumb? How much money did you lose? Everyone loses money.

Speaker 1 Everyone loses money.

Speaker 10 It costs you nothing. In fact, it builds quite a bit of character.
In fact, you learn a lot of lessons, actually. Wow.

Speaker 2 Just real, real, real white lotus vibes there. There's a lot of like

Speaker 2 just just close your eyes and think of England.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 for those who aren't watching but listening, that was Fox and Friends asking us to give Trump time. That was Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, who

Speaker 1 you know, really killing it on TV. Scott Besant, by the way.
He looks waxed.

Speaker 1 He looks like a...

Speaker 2 If guy to pride. I swear to fucking God, I'll spit in his feet.

Speaker 1 Scott Besson might be a smart guy. He does not quite have the reassuring presence that you want from a Treasury Secretary during a time of economic calamity caused by the administration.

Speaker 2 Better than Lutnick.

Speaker 1 So then the money is a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 Who looks like he's about to steal? He looks like a used car salesman. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, that's the Commerce Secretary trying to tell us that Americans can get excited because they're going to get jobs screwing in tiny screws into

Speaker 1 the world. Once we close the schools, it'll be a good thing for the the kids to do.

Speaker 1 Get their little hands in there.

Speaker 1 Besson also said somewhere else, by the way, that

Speaker 1 just remembered this, that

Speaker 1 all of the federal employees that are being laid off can be the source of new labor for these factories. So the cancer researchers that we're firing, they can make the iPhones.

Speaker 1 That's actually a good thing. That's going to be fantastic.
And the last person that was talking, that was Benny Johnson. Yeah.
That's great stuff. That was Benny Johnson that you began to say.

Speaker 1 That's the we don't really need money anymore.

Speaker 2 What is money? Ones and zeros.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like a fucking Bitcoin seascaping libertarian nightmare.

Speaker 1 Jesse Waters said, I'm not panicking because I'm not looking. My people are going to set me up.
So when this thing rallies, I can say in your face, hey, man, glad you're rich.

Speaker 1 Glad you can buy the dip. A lot of people can't, but also, like, for all the stock traders out there, in the past, when the stock market took a hit, the Fed rode to the rescue with a rate cut.

Speaker 1 And that is a lot more complicated this time because there's lingering inflation. It is not clear to me that they are willing to put that at risk.

Speaker 2 I was so sure, like, I just, I was over the weekend, I, I just,

Speaker 2 I've been trying to explain this feeling because I do think it explains, I think, the broader reaction a little bit, which is I just assumed based on nothing that, of course, there's going to be announcements of a couple of deals and Trump's going to save face and pull these things back like he did for Canada and for Mexico.

Speaker 2 Like this has gone far enough. You know, rationality and reason would prevail.
And then this morning, I was like, why did I think that?

Speaker 2 What evidence did I have to believe that other than just a fruitless hope?

Speaker 1 I mean, it's all crazy, of course, and nothing should be surprising coming from the Trump administration.

Speaker 1 But I got to say, like, we literally just had an election just a couple of months ago where Trump and the Republicans had been for four years

Speaker 1 bitching about inflation and higher prices and costs. And it was the whole election was based on that.
And in three months, they go from that to being like,

Speaker 1 Suck it up. Stop bitching about the economy.
What do you need money for? Who cares about prices?

Speaker 1 And put in place a strategy that seems to be designed to address unemployment when that's not the problem anymore. Like this, none of these solutions fit the challenge.

Speaker 1 Which is not even like maybe years from now, the reshoring will happen, right?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 But no, actually,

Speaker 2 no, not the way they're doing it. Like, they're not, they're failing on the, like.

Speaker 2 There is a critique of free trade that we all agree with that's from the left for the ways in which it has enriched like a small percentage of

Speaker 2 wealthy business owners, stockholders at the expense of working people.

Speaker 2 There are whole parts of the country that exist in a kind of permanent recession because of the hollowing out of whole different parts of our economy. Joe Biden cared about this a lot.

Speaker 2 The Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, the Infrastructure Bill, a lot of this was about trying to create an industrial policy to reinvest in American manufacturing. This is just

Speaker 2 so stupid that it is just, it is so counterproductive.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's all these reports out of michigan of these uh auto parts suppliers and and companies in the in the supply chain of making cars they're just we're gonna have to shut down production because people cannot afford if if they cannot afford to make these cars without raising the price by ten thousand twenty thousand dollars and consumers can't can't afford that big difference they're just not going to buy cars well it's like what tommy was just saying about jesse waters like all these people who are saying well suck it up it's like you got to have some you got to take some pain and take the medicine and this is going to work long term like like they're all fucking rich

Speaker 1 Donald Trump and Scott Besson and all these people they're fine with a little economic pain you know Donald Trump he's he's not running for re-election again we we have no idea what Donald Trump was doing with his money in the days before he knew he was gonna fucking

Speaker 2 Set this bomb off in the global economy.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. The chart of the S ⁇ P today, someone tweeted, looked like an EKG, just going up and down and up and down.

Speaker 1 The only people who benefit from that are traders and people with inside information.

Speaker 1 I would love, you can only imagine the sketchy stuff going on. So there are some signs that some Trump fans are starting to get a little bit uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 Here's billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, Barstool Sports Dave Portnoy, and most notably, Elon Musk.

Speaker 9 Donald Trump supporter Bill Ackman is now somewhat leading Wall Street's backlash to the tariffs, calling Trump's tariff plan a, quote, self-induced economic nuclear winter.

Speaker 1 This is like a decision that one guy made that crashed the whole stock market. That's why we're calling it Orange Monday, not Black Monday.

Speaker 1 Both Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero tariff situation. Ooh.

Speaker 1 I like the Elon Pirate. Bill Ackman's having like an op-ed-length emotional breakdown on Twitter at all times.
Yeah, he also went after Lutnick, too, and then apologized.

Speaker 1 And accused Lutnick of like personally profiting off of this because he's long bonds or because Cantor Fitzgerald, as his firm was.

Speaker 1 And you know that it's get all this is getting under Trump's skin because he posted a truth on Monday morning saying, don't be weak, don't be stupid, don't be a panican, which I guess is supposed to be like a Republican, but it's as he says, it's a new party based on weak and stupid people.

Speaker 1 Don't be a panican. Got it.
I don't think that's the best. I think he's had better names.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he sounded better.

Speaker 1 Better terms. But how significant do you guys think the criticism coming from Elon and some of Trump's most prominent fans is?

Speaker 1 I mean, look, I think a question we've always had is, is good information reaching people who are just kind of like Trump curious, right? The Joe Rogans of the world.

Speaker 1 Dave Portnow, I think, is actually a pretty smart, sophisticated person who consumes a lot of news. But, you know, last week we talked about,

Speaker 1 we didn't talk about it, but we all noticed that Rogan talked on his show about some of these worst immigration cases where people are getting sent to El Salvador with no due process and talked about how awful it was.

Speaker 1 And so it's good news that it's getting to him.

Speaker 1 I think the fact that the stock market and Bitcoin are crashing at the same time is hitting a lot of these sort of like guy influencers where it hurts in their wallets, and they're reacting to it.

Speaker 1 And they're also like, they're desperately trying to find some method to the madness, but they can't because there isn't really any.

Speaker 1 And, you know, that doesn't mean that like they're all flocking from Trump yet or they're liberals yet.

Speaker 1 But I do think Portnoy, in his long nuanced rants today about this, was like, I support the broader principles Trump is talking about, but if this is still happening by the midterms, like I'm gone, I'm voting Democrat.

Speaker 1 I mean, the polling is, you know, it's getting worse for Trump, but it's still early days and polling always tells you about like what people felt like three weeks ago.

Speaker 1 So let's see what the next couple of weeks bring.

Speaker 1 But John Byrne Murdoch at the Financial Times, he had a thread of charts that sort of gathered all the data from like the economic surveys and the Michigan consumer surveys and all that.

Speaker 1 And a couple interesting points from that. Number one, Trump has had the same impact on economic uncertainty as the global pandemic.

Speaker 1 Number two, the share of adults who have a negative opinion of government's economic policy is the highest it's ever been in the United States. That is higher than the 2007 financial crisis.

Speaker 1 That's from the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Survey.

Speaker 1 And then the third one is: there are similar peaks in the percentage of people who expect the economy to deteriorate, who expect their own finances to deteriorate, and who expect like higher levels of inflation.

Speaker 1 And that the inflation number is as high as it was during the peak of the higher prices under Biden.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 this is, it's getting bad.

Speaker 2 It's, we're not even like,

Speaker 2 there's so much like kind of rationalizing and like kind of intellectualizing.

Speaker 2 Like, we're not doing it, but even we are just sort of, I think, like, this is the dumbest thing a president has done in our lifetimes. We have never seen a president do something this destructive.

Speaker 2 It is very hard for one person.

Speaker 1 Certainly, certainly with regard to the economy.

Speaker 1 The Iraq war is right up there. I'm saying.
But like even people say Herbert Hoover and like no one has single-handedly, by their own decision, no president, caused this much economic.

Speaker 2 No one has destroyed this much wealth in such a short period of time and done it so haphazardly.

Speaker 2 brazenly, stupidly, irrationally, without a plan, without a strategy, without any explanation for how it's supposed to lead to anything better other than sort of these sort of tilting at these ridiculous ideas that like, oh, tariffs are going to, they're going to cause a rebirth of American manufacturing.

Speaker 2 Even the charts were incredibly stupid. The tariff numbers don't actually make sense.
The countries on there aren't even countries.

Speaker 2 It's clear. There's

Speaker 2 penguins. It seems like maybe they really did go into a large language model and try to use it to do the work for them.
And so watching a president.

Speaker 1 It's just another job that's not coming back.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 And so when the president does the dumbest thing in the economy that any president has ever done in our lifetimes, maybe ever, you will get some feedback from his biggest supporters that are like, hey, hold on a second, buddy.

Speaker 2 I'm a little bit confused because I thought,

Speaker 2 we can fix this, right? We can still fix this. And they cannot accept that they've signed on to, you know, they've hitched their wagon to the dumbest, worst human being we've ever put in this job.

Speaker 2 And they can't obviously accept that. And so they're really like, well, actually, I think there's a strategy here.
If he just, there wasn't enough specifics. He has to give more clarity.

Speaker 2 There's still time to fix it. But they still can't face what they're a part of.

Speaker 1 If only there were signs.

Speaker 1 It's as if this guy has just come out of nowhere. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Not that we've been dealing with him since fucking 2015.

Speaker 2 Well, even on this shit, they all like even the most hardcore pro-Trump, let Trump be Trump people, benefited and lived in the luxury of a world in which his worst impulses were prevented in the first term.

Speaker 2 That's that's what they could they can't believe that he's actually following through on this stuff because the Jared Kushner

Speaker 2 coterie is gone. And instead we have these sort of sycophants and

Speaker 2 enablers and the supposedly serious people, the Marco Rubios, the Scott Besants, are either unable or unwilling to stop it because they're sad little weasels.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, the kind of economic equivalent would probably probably be Paul Volcker jacking interest rates up to like 20% in the early 80s and triggering a recession, but that was to deal with massive inflation that everyone hated.

Speaker 1 And there was like a clear purpose and end game. And it wasn't.
And no one elected that guy. Well, and it wasn't like 20% one day, 2% the next, 5% the day after that, right?

Speaker 1 There was some consistency.

Speaker 1 One more thing before we move off this topic. Like,

Speaker 1 I think Republicans in Congress are not getting nearly enough shit. No, they're not.

Speaker 1 They're not. So Congress could stop this at any moment.

Speaker 1 The White House did say on Monday that Trump would veto any legislation that curbed his tariff authority, which means that to override a veto, you'd need two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate, which we can barely get a majority right now.

Speaker 1 But Republicans should be held accountable since they're going to be up in 2026 in the House and in the Senate.

Speaker 1 So we have seven senators, seven Republican senators have signed on to this legislation that would curb his authority.

Speaker 1 Don Bacon, Republican in the House, has said that he's introduced companion legislation in the House.

Speaker 1 He's talked about maybe a discharge petition, which would be forcing a vote, because obviously Speaker Johnson won't put it on the floor. A discharge.

Speaker 1 A discharge. I know.

Speaker 1 Just so gosh. It would take...

Speaker 2 Nobody's discharging in this economy.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Everybody's too stressed.

Speaker 1 That would take 30 days, 30 legislative days. So

Speaker 1 we'll have no more economy

Speaker 1 by the time he's ready to discharge, you know?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 but we have electricity then.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I I will say, like, this, this whole, like, John Thune, the Senate majority leader, was asked about this, and he said, well, it's not happening because Trump's issued a veto threat.

Speaker 2 We're not that far from a veto-proof majority on this. We're just not, right? Like, seven, you know, you need another, what, like, 12? You need 67, yes.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 So you need another 12, you know, 12 senators, you know, and then in the House, you'd need basically roughly a third of the Republicans, if we can get it to a vote.

Speaker 2 You need a third of Republicans to join basically half of the Democrats, the half that is Democrat, to get this to a veto-proof majority.

Speaker 2 And if ever there was a moment that called for a veto-proof majority, it'd be this. Or

Speaker 1 Tim, our friend Tim Miller was talking about this.

Speaker 2 Oh, I saw this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, I realize it's fantasy politics, but

Speaker 1 we're in crazy land now. And he was saying it wouldn't take much for a couple of Republicans who were like retiring, moderate Republicans, vulnerable Republicans who don't like this.

Speaker 1 You know, you already got Don Bacon talking about it, like, would switch parties or not just totally switch parties, but at least say we're going to caucus with the Democrats and get a new speaker in there.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 2 you know what? It's not that crazy. Arlen Specter changed the majority in the U.S.

Speaker 2 Senate at a moment, not, I mean, mean, a very different moment than this, but when he had the same powers, worried about his own seat.

Speaker 2 So crazier things have happened, including Donald Trump declaring war on the whole world.

Speaker 1 As you said, the difference this time was I bet they'd feared that Donald Trump would literally send like proud boys to their homes to hurt them. Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 this isn't even in the outline today, but they did send armed U.S. Marshals to the home of a former DOJ lawyer who was going to testify against the administration

Speaker 1 in Congress, just to let her know that that was

Speaker 1 violating some employment agreement or whatever. Not at all intimidating.

Speaker 2 Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. You all know what speed dating is.

Speaker 2 Well, if you're the owner of a growing business, what if there was a feature like speed dating only for hiring?

Speaker 2 In other words, you could meet several interested, qualified candidates at once, all at a designated time, and then maybe you hire HR so you don't confuse hiring and dating.

Speaker 2 Unless you've signed the paperwork.

Speaker 2 Well, good news. There is.
It's ZipIntro from ZipRecruiter. You can post your job today and start talking to qualified candidates tomorrow.

Speaker 2 And right now, you can try Zipintro for free at ziprecruiter.com slash crooked. Zip Intro gives you the power to quickly access excellent candidates for your job via back-to-back video calls.

Speaker 2 You simply pick a time. Zip Intro does all the work of finding and scheduling qualified candidates for you.

Speaker 2 Then you can choose who you want to talk to and meet with great people as soon as the the next day. So easy.

Speaker 2 We've used ZipRecruiter here at Crooked Media and it's really helped us find a lot of great people.

Speaker 2 Is that how we found Peter?

Speaker 1 No, but it was how we found Peter? No.

Speaker 2 It's not how we found Peter, but it could have been. Yes.
I don't know how we found Ben. Ben just showed up at the office and we were just feeding him and feeding him and we let him come inside.

Speaker 2 But we've used ZipRecruiter a ton to find great people and you should too. Enjoy the benefits of speed hiring with Zip Intro only from ZipRecruiter, rated number one hiring site based on G2.

Speaker 2 Try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com/slash crooked. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/slash crooked.
Zip intro, post jobs today. Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow.

Speaker 6 Try angel soft for your tushi.

Speaker 13 It's made by angels.

Speaker 6 Soft and strong, budget-friendly.

Speaker 13 The choice is simple.

Speaker 6 A roll that feels like paradise.

Speaker 1 And always at a heavenly

Speaker 15 Pick up a pack today. Angel Soft.

Speaker 13 Soft and strong, simple.

Speaker 1 Trump's economic meltdown has overshadowed what he's doing to turn America into a police state.

Speaker 1 He has now been ordered by a federal court and a federal appeals court to bring back a Maryland father named Kilmar Obrego Garcia, who the government essentially kidnapped and disappeared to a torture dungeon in El Salvador.

Speaker 1 The federal judge in the case called it a, quote, grievous error that, quote, shocks the conscience.

Speaker 1 And this is from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals' unanimous decision, which called the move unconscionable, quote, the United States government has no legal authority to snatch a person who was lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process.

Speaker 1 So the Trump DOJ has appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has said, okay, we will ask for a response from Garcia's lawyer by late Tuesday afternoon.
So they sort of pushed the deadline.

Speaker 1 The deadline was supposed to be midnight, Monday night. So the Supreme Court will hear this.
The DOJ also suspended the career prosecutor who represented them in court.

Speaker 1 for this hearing after he basically admitted to the judge that garcia shouldn't have been deported and didn't have answers as to why he was.

Speaker 1 This is a prosecutor who Trump's DOJ had just promoted a couple weeks ago for his good work on sanctuary cities. So this is not a a career servant deep state liberal squish, you know?

Speaker 1 There was also a 60 Minutes report on Sunday that found 75% of the Venezuelan men who the government has imprisoned in El Salvador with no hearings had no criminal records at all.

Speaker 1 Just tattoos that ICE, in most cases, wrongly assumed were connected to the Trende Aragua gang. The White House response to all this has basically been, we don't give a fuck.

Speaker 1 Over the weekend, they tweeted an AI-generated studio Ghibli meme of a J.D. Vance quote.
What a a sentence. Quote, we do not ask permission from far-left Democrats before we deport illegal immigrants.

Speaker 1 And here's what Trump himself said on Sunday when asked about an offer from Salvadoran dictator Bukele to house American citizens at his prisons.

Speaker 12 So that's El Salvador, the president there, said he would be willing to take American citizens and the federal prison population. Is that one of the ideas they're going to be displaying?

Speaker 7 Well, I love that. If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys that push people into subways and that hit people over the back of the head and that purposely run people over in cars.

Speaker 7 If he would take them, I'd be honored to give them. I don't know what the law says on that, but I can't imagine the law would say anything different.

Speaker 7 If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us, I'm all for it. But I'd only do according to the law.

Speaker 7 But I have suggested that, you know, why should it stop just at people that cross the border illegally? We have some horrible criminals, American grown and born.

Speaker 1 He loves that. He loves that.
He doesn't want to follow the law, even though he's not following the law so far, but he does want to follow the law.

Speaker 2 There was a concurrence,

Speaker 2 the Wilkerson concurrence, where he basically lays out

Speaker 2 the Court of Appeals that lays out just the simplicity of the stakes, which is worth mentioning. The government has admitted they made a mistake in one of these cases.

Speaker 2 They have made many mistakes that they're refusing to admit and lying about, which is its own

Speaker 2 huge problem. But they've admitted they made a mistake.
And instead of fighting to free this person, they're fighting the courts that are saying they have to free this person.

Speaker 2 And what the concurrence says is, if the government can take someone from this country and put them in a foreign prison without any due process, and then once they are in that foreign prison, claim they no longer have the ability to bring that person home, it's pretty clear where you are heading.

Speaker 2 You are heading to the place where the government can pluck anyone, including American citizens, as Trump is now suggesting he's willing to do, put them in a foreign prison without due process, And even if they know they were wrong to do it, say they have no recourse and that the courts have no recourse to force the government to try to bring this person home.

Speaker 1 Also, this is now the third time that Trump has mused about sending American citizens to this foreign gulag.

Speaker 1 He did it during the end of the campaign once, because I remember like seeing the clip and being like, what the fuck is he talking about? Did everyone see that?

Speaker 1 And then it just sort of, you know, it was the end of the campaign, so no one paid attention.

Speaker 1 Then remember, he was asked about Tesla vandalism and whether he would deport some of the American-grown American citizens who might be accused and convicted of terrorizing Tesla dealerships to El Salvador.

Speaker 1 And he said that sounded like a good idea. And now he just said he loves that.
Well, I don't remember the campaign piece, but Bukele pitched this idea in February when Marco Rubio went there.

Speaker 1 He was like, we offered the U.S. that we

Speaker 1 outsource part of their prison system, including for American prisoners, for a low, low fee. And Rubio called it an act of extraordinary friendship and said he would brief Trump on it.

Speaker 1 So I imagine that stuck with him. I just, there's been like shockingly little reaction to this.
And I don't know what you guys think. What is it all about? Like, do people think Trump's not serious?

Speaker 1 Do they think the courts would be able to stop him? Or do people just think, oh, it won't happen to me? I don't think anyone's hearing this. There's just too much going on.

Speaker 1 I mean, the stock markets are melting down. There's a trillion stories a day.
I just don't get, I don't think these gaggles are making it to people.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I also, there's a, I think there is a little bit of, if we're talking about immigration, we're losing.

Speaker 2 I think that's in there for some of these Democrats and I think that that's wrong I think part of it also is there is a helplessness which is okay I speak out about this I think this is awful I think it is terrible it has to play out through the courts it has to like you know the the process that they're the lawyers I what I what I can't get past is what if that time photographer wasn't there right i mean would we even time photographer who went to the prison this was on well just short i'll watch the 60 minute second 60 minutes is great no i think well i thought you were asking about i was asking about all of it okay well i think the deportations of u.s citizens of El Salvador, like people are just not hearing that, or I think it's Trump flustering.

Speaker 1 I actually think this has gone from a thing where people were not talking about immigration to once the specifics of the stories were public, people are talking about it a lot.

Speaker 1 Like the case of Andri, the gay makeup artist from Venezuela, once his photo was online and you could see just how fucking absurd it was to declare that man was a, was a

Speaker 1 gang member or some hardened criminal, I think it became very much in the public discourse. I agree with that.
I think I'm like Democratic, elected Democrats have not been talking about it.

Speaker 1 Like I said, I could count on two hands the number of statements I've seen. There's a couple tweets, and it's from Veronica Escobar and Pramila Jayapal.

Speaker 1 And I saw Rokana tweet about it and a couple other people, but it's been very quiet among elected Democrats, and I don't understand it.

Speaker 1 And, you know, you heard Ruben Gallego's answer to me, which was like, well, it's a trap and blah, blah, blah. And I have heard from some people.
I've talked to friends about this.

Speaker 1 And they're like, well,

Speaker 1 if it turns out that this guy's really ms13 it's going to be a crazy hill for democrats to die on and then you have to go to the process the due process argument right which i know that's more like esoteric and it's about due process but again

Speaker 1 there is nothing stopping them from grabbing anyone off the street and maybe they're not doing that now but like It's early.

Speaker 1 A couple months from now, they see some, there were protests and they're mad at the protesters and someone does something stupid and they send them tells us, what's stopping them?

Speaker 2 I also, I do think it's really important. The third piece of it, so

Speaker 2 there's the lack of due process. There's

Speaker 2 now the claim that they can't fix it if they've ever made a mistake. I do think the third piece of it is a very important piece of it, which is they are willing to lie about these people.

Speaker 2 That really matters. Tricia McLaughlin, who's a spokesperson for the administration, said in March, at the end of March,

Speaker 2 not only is Andre a part of MS-13 or Trende Aragua, there's a record in his social media that proves it. 60 Minutes goes through a decade of his social media.

Speaker 2 What you find is exactly what you'd expect in a gay stylist's

Speaker 2 makeup photo. It's makeup photos.
It's the gayest shit you've ever seen. It's just gay glamour shit.
And like the idea that this, she's just lying.

Speaker 1 She's just straight up lying.

Speaker 2 You don't think they're going to lie about the Americans they're going to grab and send to this place? You don't think that they're going to claim that these people belong there?

Speaker 1 They're willing.

Speaker 2 They have already admitted that they've sent someone there by mistake and they are fighting to keep that person there. You don't think that they will, that they will let an American rot in this place?

Speaker 2 And I, I keep like, I have this, like, this thought I can't get, I can't stop thinking about, which is these people don't know that there's a public outcry.

Speaker 2 They don't know that their lawyers know where they are. They don't know any of this is going on.
His head was shaved. He was put into this prison.

Speaker 2 He has not had any communication with the outside world since that happened. He is in a nightmare.
He is in a nightmare.

Speaker 2 And he's been there for three weeks, as have a bunch of other people who were sent to this place.

Speaker 1 And look, I mean, you remember my interview with Jasmine Mooney, the Canadian actress, and that was just U.S. detention centers.

Speaker 1 And those conditions, while they sounded absolutely fucking horrible, aren't nearly as bad as this fucking prison in El Salvador, where they literally house like rival gangs together so that they can commit violence against each other and just kill each other off.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's what we're talking about here.

Speaker 2 And, you know, Marco Rubio, who who spent so many years talking about the importance of freedom and how much of his politics draws from America defending freedom and the kinds of abuses committed by communist regimes, these are those kinds of abuses.

Speaker 2 That is what these are.

Speaker 2 We have disappeared people and we have sent them to a gulag where they are meant to rot without any idea how long they're supposed to be there, without any ability to question it or challenge it.

Speaker 2 We are doing the thing that all of these conservatives spent decades decades claiming that they got in politics to fight.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, yeah,

Speaker 1 these are the worst, but also these guys all defended like the worst excesses of the war on terror. So I just, I don't expect any better from them.
I do think we need,

Speaker 1 hopefully John Roberts will come back with something reasonable and force the administration's hand to get these guys back.

Speaker 1 Like the Fourth Circuit today was like, we're not suggesting you need to invade El Salvador to get this person home.

Speaker 1 You need to make a good faith effort to get this man back that you admitted you wrongfully rendered to a foreign country. And that doesn't seem like an unreasonable ask.

Speaker 1 That's not putting the judiciary above the executive branch when it comes to foreign policy.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, and one of the judges who had written a concurring opinion there, who was a Reagan appointee, I think, he even said, like, he took the government's like concerns seriously and that he's like, you know, I'm not saying necessarily that the government can and must order Elsella.

Speaker 1 You can at least try. You can at least call him up.
Try to facilitate. Christy Nooma's there filming a TikTok.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 well the thing that's also this is what I think is chilling about all of this too which is Trump could say like well if only we're we have to follow the law of course we're gonna follow the law Bukaley knows that Trump wants these people to stay there of course they know it's a fake request what's I'm sorry no then what I can't tell if I'm I'm more worried that the Supreme Court will rule against Garcia or will rule for Garcia and Trump will just ignore the ruling.

Speaker 1 Because I think either way, we're in fucking...

Speaker 1 I mean, maybe I guess the best outcome would be that they rule for Garcia and the administration backs down and tries to get him out of El Salvador, but that seems.

Speaker 1 I just think the administration has the politics of this wrong. They seem to think they cannot give an inch on any of these cases, no matter what, or it might unravel the whole policy.

Speaker 1 If they just showed a little human decency and were like, yep, we made a mistake. We're going to make mistakes every once in a while.
We're trying to deal with really bad people.

Speaker 1 I think that would actually get them some credibility, though.

Speaker 1 Maybe that's undercut by the fact that, you know, 60 minutes, I think, dug into the numbers and only 12 of 238 of the men sent to Venezuela have any like real like rape, murder, serious cases.

Speaker 1 There are others who had like petty theft or trespassing.

Speaker 2 And most had no, according to 60 minutes,

Speaker 1 no record at all.

Speaker 2 And again, if the Trump administration believes that that's wrong, they can just produce the evidence. They are refusing to, they are daring.
They are, they are enjoying this. confusion.

Speaker 2 They are dividing this chaos.

Speaker 2 And in part because I do think they want people afraid to be critical, because they're afraid that they're going to go to bat for somebody who's going to turn out to be in Trendearagua.

Speaker 1 And, you know,

Speaker 1 good for you, Gov, for asking this incredibly specific, dark question.

Speaker 1 But they asked in a poll last week, do you support or oppose deporting migrants who haven't committed crimes or had due process to El Salvador prison? 60% oppose

Speaker 1 and 46% strongly oppose. So I guess that's something.
Well, that's an American citizen. I think you're talking 80, 90%.

Speaker 1 I agree. But again, I hope that Democratic officials see that poll.

Speaker 1 And I get that they're all, you know, yet you're representing the people of Michigan and Arizona and American citizens, but it could happen to like someone's got to speak up for the possibility that this could start happening to American citizens, to legal residents.

Speaker 1 And also, like, if you want to deport people, again, the president has broad power to deport people and to deport immigrants. Why are we putting them in this like terror dungeon? This is crazy.

Speaker 2 Also, like, even if they do not claim to be targeting American citizens, as they ramp this up, which of course is what they plan to do, American citizens will be ensnared in it.

Speaker 1 Pots of America is brought to you by Armra Colostrum. Why are elite athletes, business moguls, and high performers using Armra Colostrum?

Speaker 1 Armra Colostrum is nature's first whole food with over 400 bioactive ingredients working at the cellular level to build lean muscle, accelerate recovery, and fuel performance, all without the artificial stimulants or synthetic junk.

Speaker 1 Whether you're running a business, training hard, or just want an edge, Armra optimizes your body for peak output.

Speaker 1 Probiotics and other supplements are touted as a gut health solution, but most products on the market are dead before they even reach your gut.

Speaker 1 Armor colostrum naturally fortifies your entire gut wall system and optimizes your whole body microbiome, which helps guard against irritants that can trigger digestive issues and compromise your immune system.

Speaker 1 Strengthen your gut barrier to guard against toxins, chemicals, and pollutants that can drive inflammation and slow down metabolism.

Speaker 1 Research has even shown that colostrum helps to enhance nutrient absorption. Armor colostrum can help stabilize blood sugar levels, modulate hormones, and ignite your metabolism.

Speaker 1 Colostrum bioactives have also been shown to reactivate hair follicle stem cells and activate collagen production, promoting hair growth and enhancing skin radiance.

Speaker 1 We've worked out a special offer for our audience. Receive 15% off your first order.
Go to tryarmra.com/slash crooked or enter code crooked to get 15% off your first order.

Speaker 1 That's T-R-Y-A-R-M-R-A dot com/slash crooked.

Speaker 5 You're tuned into Auto Intelligence live from Auto Trader, where data, tools, and your preferences sync to make your car shopping smooth.

Speaker 4 They're searching inventory. Oh, yeah.
They find what you need. They're gonna find it.
Can make a budget for your wallet to help you succeed.

Speaker 4 Pricing's precise and true. So true.
Getting smart at car shopping.

Speaker 4 Just for you.

Speaker 5 Oh, it's just for you.

Speaker 5 Find your next ride at auto trader.com, powered by Auto Intelligence.

Speaker 1 All right, so some potentially hopeful signs amid all of this god-awful news.

Speaker 1 CNN reports that over the weekend, quote, millions of people took to the streets in all 50 states to protest Donald Trump's new regime.

Speaker 1 Organizers of the rallies called Hands Off said the attendance was much bigger than they expected. 20,000 in Atlanta, 25,000 in St.
Paul, 25,000 in Boston, 30,000 in Chicago, 100,000 in Washington.

Speaker 1 We know a lot of friends of the pod were out there, which we love to see. We've also seen some Democratic leaders start to speak up and actually break through all the noise.

Speaker 1 We haven't all been together since Corey Booker's record-breaking filibuster speech last week. Kamala Harris was out there.
She started to speak up.

Speaker 1 And then our old boss, Barack Obama, held an event in Hamilton College, which got a bunch of attention for these comments on Trump's new regime.

Speaker 10 When I watch some of what's going on now, it does not.

Speaker 10 Look,

Speaker 10 I don't think

Speaker 10 what we just witnessed in terms of economic policy and tariffs is going to be good for America, but that's a specific policy.

Speaker 10 I'm more deeply concerned with

Speaker 10 a federal government that threatens

Speaker 10 universities if they don't

Speaker 10 give up students who are exercising their right to free speech. The idea that a White House can say to law firms, if you represent parties that we don't like,

Speaker 10 we're going to pull all our business

Speaker 10 or bar you from representing people effectively.

Speaker 10 Those kinds of,

Speaker 10 that kind of behavior

Speaker 7 is

Speaker 10 contrary to

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 10 basic compact we have as Americans.

Speaker 10 I think people tend to think, democracy, rule of law, independent judiciary, freedom of the press, that's all abstract stuff because it's not affecting the price of eggs. Well, you know what?

Speaker 10 It's about to affect the price of eggs.

Speaker 1 What did you guys think of Obama there? I think the most important thing he said was it's not enough to just say you're for something.

Speaker 1 You might actually have to do something and possibly sacrifice a little bit. Yeah.
I was going to,

Speaker 1 the whole clip would have been way too long. And man, his pauses are getting longer.
1.5x seconds.

Speaker 1 He said at one point, he kind of basically said some version of like, i'm a little rusty it was kind of it was sweeter well it's also when i first heard about it i thought it was a speech equipment he was just doing it like a q a so it was definitely off the cuff which is when you get that but um but i do think that sacrifice piece has been missing right like i i have i feel badly for the law firms that were attacked by the trump administration and had other competitors go and try to poach their clients that's a disgusting shitty corporate thing to do but when you stand up for principal you might have to give something up and sacrifice something and sacrifice some profits and so that piece has really been missing, I think.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he had this, the other part of that, right?

Speaker 1 Where the quote that you were talking about, he was like, there's this idea, and I've noticed this among some wealthier folks who after George Floyd, they were right there and a bunch of companies were talking about how they cared about diversity and they wanted to do this and they were all for that.

Speaker 1 They're mute now. What that tells me is it's not, it was okay when it was cool and trendy and when it's not, not so much.
And I think we all have to examine like what we're willing to do.

Speaker 2 Yeah, look, these, their values are being tested.

Speaker 2 Their values as institutions are being tested. And a lot of these law, we've talked about this, these law firms, they are, you know, they have good values in certain respects.

Speaker 2 They are craven corporations in others, as are many institutions. The colleges, too, they have their

Speaker 2 intellectual principles,

Speaker 2 their great academic liberal spirit. And then they have the fact that they are giant financial institutions beholden to trustees and alumni.
And those things are in conflict in some of these places.

Speaker 2 And when those values are being tested, they're caving.

Speaker 2 And like, you think, like, you know, someone like Doug Emhoff is at one of these firms. He's at one of these firms.

Speaker 2 And his, and, and Kamala Harris is giving speeches about the importance of doing everything we can. Doug Emhoff recently talked about how important it is to do everything we can wherever we can.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he said he got outvoted.

Speaker 2 And that, and, and that, that must sting, must sting to get out voted. Yeah.
You know?

Speaker 1 I, I,

Speaker 1 Look, I just think it's, I'm, I think the purpose of, or the benefit of someone like Obama speaking out and others is it starts making others feel like, okay, maybe, maybe I should say, he said something, maybe I should say something, and then maybe it's someone else.

Speaker 1 You know, like it's, it's start, yeah, it's starting to give people cover. Let's talk about the sort of resistance more broadly in the rallies.

Speaker 1 What do you guys think of that? How do you think everything's going here? I mean, I think it's great to see people in the street. I mean, the protests themselves were kind of about everything.

Speaker 1 And I think that reflects, honestly, the challenges of the Trump era, which is there's so many things happening. It's like, where do we focus? Is it what we're doing to kids on campuses?

Speaker 1 Is it what we're doing to migrants? Is it the tariffs? Like, we're mad about everything. And these protests were people who are mad about everything.
There were protests about the Doge cuts.

Speaker 1 There were some against the arrest of Gaza protesters. There's some about cuts to park services, right? So it's just a little bit scattered shot.
But I think the hard part is getting people out.

Speaker 1 I think the next round of these protests would benefit from more specific framing if it's around a thing or a demand or a desire.

Speaker 1 But like, I think once you get people out and they see the power of it and they feel the community of being in the streets, hopefully they'll do it again and again and again.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like this is building the muscle, or at least like the muscle.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was, it's been, I think we're seeing more and more of this. We've been seeing this with

Speaker 2 the Bernie rallies. We've been seeing this.
I do think that the incredible response to Corey Booker, which I was surprised by just how much it caught on, I think was interesting.

Speaker 2 I think you see it in the results in Wisconsin.

Speaker 2 We have to keep, like,

Speaker 2 we don't know how this story ends, but as we, like, the mass mobilization will be increasingly important.

Speaker 2 And I do think, as we were talking, like, for me, the deeper question is, when does mass mobilization become not just a means of drawing attention, but about actually using power?

Speaker 2 And I think the more we have people out there, the better, because there is one dark path this ends where we have to get millions of people into the streets.

Speaker 2 And the more people get used to doing that and excited about doing that and being with each other, the more powerful and stronger the movement becomes.

Speaker 1 I thought about the Corey Booker speech for a while because I sort of felt the same way at first. I was like, oh, I'm surprised that this broke through in such a big way.
And

Speaker 1 love Corey Booker. You know,

Speaker 1 you ask him a question, he will, you know, give you a lot of civil rights quotes.

Speaker 2 He did the third longest filibuster on this show.

Speaker 1 But like, the reason I think it works so so well and the reason that like good for fucking Corey Booker is because the guy is genuine about what he believes. He genuinely cares.

Speaker 1 And in the last couple months and since the election, even during the election,

Speaker 1 it's like been a whole bunch of Democrats trying to figure out like, okay, how do I figure out my TikTok strategy? And how do I get the exact right message?

Speaker 1 And Corey Booker thought to himself, you know what? The platform I have and the one I'm comfortable with is speaking on the Senate floor. That is what he has done now for many, many years.

Speaker 1 And he's like, I'm going to use that platform where I feel comfortable to the best of my ability to like break through and do something. And that's what he did.

Speaker 1 And he like, and he fasted before and he thought about it and he figured out the speech together. And it's like everyone doesn't have to like strategize and calculate the exact right strategy.

Speaker 1 Same thing about the protests too. It's like, yes,

Speaker 1 we can figure out the message and the slogan and what it's called and all that. Like that'll all come later.

Speaker 1 But just using the platform you have, using the abilities you have, the talents you have to like go out there and just speak, that's a first step. And it's a step that a lot of people aren't taking.

Speaker 1 So good for Corey Booker for taking it. Yeah, I mean, my constructive criticism was a lot of the sort of tweets and coverage I saw of the filibuster was about the existence of the 25-hour filibuster.

Speaker 1 And he had the same challenge as the protesters. It was sort of about everything, right? So it's hard to sort of focus a message.
But again, he showed.

Speaker 1 personal sacrifice. You know, for 25 hours, his body was standing and speaking.
And that's hard. And it shows courage and a commitment.
And I think that inspires people.

Speaker 1 A similar thing that's happening that's not getting a lot of coverage, Brian Schatz is holding up like 300 Trump nominees in the Senate, just gumming up the works in a lot of different ways and using his power as one U.S.

Speaker 1 senator to constrain the Trump administration or at least try to piss them off enough to get some leverage to get something in return. Yeah,

Speaker 1 my criticism about the Corey Booker speech was not at Corey Booker, but it was like, there were so many other Democrats that were just praising Corey Booker. And I'm like, you do something.

Speaker 1 No one does praise Corey Booker. Like, like Brian Schutz, he good out there and he's, he's doing the hold.
Like, whatever works for you, whatever you're good at, you go do it.

Speaker 1 You know, and I'm glad, of course, we're praising Corey Booker as well, but it was just like a day's worth of like, okay, now I got to do my tweet praising Corey Booker.

Speaker 1 Go do something.

Speaker 2 I think, yeah, I think that, what, what is the kind of feel, like, I, I turned, I was sort of. I was really glad to see Corey Booker do.
I was really glad to see the response to it.

Speaker 2 And it's funny because like Corey Booker jokes us, like, he could be cheesy. And like, sometimes I asked him a question once, and I think we got a MLK quote and a Gandhi quote in the same answer.

Speaker 2 But that's a great, like, he was just down there, like, being himself.

Speaker 1 Who he is and what he really believes. And I really, I really like that.

Speaker 2 But I do think some of the kind of Attaboys were a little bit kind of like,

Speaker 2 it is, I think, in part like, we just went through a continuing resolution battle where they didn't do all that they could. And they know that.
And that's part of it too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, it is a performance

Speaker 2 and I'm glad we're doing it. That's the power we have to draw attention.

Speaker 2 But I think that's where I was a little bit like, well, hold on a second. You're holding the floor.
That's great. You're saying we need to do everything we can.
That's great.

Speaker 2 We just chose not to do everything we can. And maybe there was a difficult strategic choice there.
But that for me is why it rang a little bit. hollow, the praise of it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. One last thing before we get to Lovett's interview with Oren Cass.

Speaker 1 Ashley Parker and Michael Scher at The Atlantic are reporting that my guy, Doug Bergum, North Dakota governor, turned longshot presidential candidate, turned Secretary of the Interior, has been demanding that political staff at his agency bake him fresh chocolate chip cookies using industrial ovens at interior headquarters.

Speaker 2 And, quote, those things are for cooking moose.

Speaker 1 What is an industrial oven? That's a great question. I was hoping you would not see.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 And, quote, once instructed political appointees to act as servers for a multi-course meal.

Speaker 1 Apparently, staff have been asked at least once to redo a batch of cookies cookies because they weren't good enough.

Speaker 1 An interior spokesperson said these are just smears from, quote, unnamed cowards who just oppose President Trump's energy dominance agenda.

Speaker 2 But they're not smears because they also admitted that

Speaker 2 it wasn't like they were freshly baked.

Speaker 2 They were from store-bought dough.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was two additional unnamed cowards. They were trying to clean up the store.

Speaker 1 They clarified that the cookies are made from store-bought dough and are offered to

Speaker 1 Department of Interior guests as a treat.

Speaker 1 Doug the Diva.

Speaker 1 Should we be demanding more cookies? Yes.

Speaker 1 Apparently, Chat GPT says an industrial oven is a large, heavy-duty oven designed for high-volume or specialized heating applications in commercial or industrial settings, like large batches of bread.

Speaker 1 I don't see why that would be tougher on you for making cookies. I don't think it makes it harder.

Speaker 2 It may take longer to preheat. But the other part of it is the multi-course meal, the defense of the multi-course meal, is very funny because

Speaker 2 the anonymous staffer defending Bergman was like,

Speaker 2 it was salad lasagna dessert, three plates, three forks.

Speaker 1 Which I love.

Speaker 2 I love that spin because hold on a second. This is just a lunch.
Who's having a three dessert at lunch? You're going to need a nap after that.

Speaker 1 And this was all pre-tariff. Pre-tariff.

Speaker 1 Hope those cookies are made in America. Also, restaurants, I don't need a new fork.
I don't need a new plate. Just leave it there.
What a stupid waste of time and energy and dishes.

Speaker 2 Fall to the earth. This guy.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 This guy can eat salad and steak.

Speaker 1 He's serving the meal himself.

Speaker 1 I'm more comfortable back in the kitchen than out here at the table. But I was on the Iron Range.

Speaker 2 Also, like, Doug Bergam's in his, how old is he? He's his 50s, 60s?

Speaker 1 He's older.

Speaker 1 There's like 10 old billionaires in the administration

Speaker 1 who you wouldn't know if you fell over.

Speaker 2 You tell me midday at work, I'm having salad, lasagna, and dessert.

Speaker 1 I'm out.

Speaker 2 I'm laid flat.

Speaker 1 And you know what? He probably is.

Speaker 1 He's the secretary for Donald Trump's second term Department of the Interior. And as they're cutting National Parks and Forest Service all over the the place, what do you think he's doing?

Speaker 2 Think of the damage that would do to my interior.

Speaker 1 It's on fire today. Well, we started and ended with stools.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 All right, we're going to take a quick break, but before we do that, if you haven't checked out Crooked's newest series, Shadow Kingdom, God's Banker, you really should.

Speaker 1 Journalist Niccolo Mainoni uncovers a hidden story about Vatican banker Roberto Calvey, who was found hanging under a London bridge in 1982. The series takes all kinds of crazy twists and turns.

Speaker 1 It's got money laundering, secret societies, assassination attempts on the Pope.

Speaker 1 uh it's really wild you will love it listen to shadow kingdom god's banker now wherever you get your podcasts or binge all episodes now at cricket.com slash friends or on the shadow kingdom apple podcast feed

Speaker 2 pod save america is brought to you by policy genius look everybody works hard to achieve their dreams financial personal political relationship relational you know, goals.

Speaker 1 Goals.

Speaker 2 You know, we started a business. The only thing more important than achieving a dream is protecting it.
Safeguard your family's future by securing a life insurance policy through Policy Genius.

Speaker 2 It's crucial to protect your loved ones with a financial safety net that can be used to pay up debts, cover daily costs, or even invest that money to generate interest over time.

Speaker 2 Policy Genius simplifies the process of finding and purchasing life insurance, ensuring your family's financial security.

Speaker 2 With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage. Some options are 100% online and let you avoid unnecessary medical exams.

Speaker 2 With Policy Genius, you can compare quotes with America's top insurers side-by-side for free with no hidden fees.

Speaker 2 Their licensed support team helps you get what you need fast so you can get on with your life. They answer questions, handle paperwork, and advocate for you throughout the process.

Speaker 2 Secure your families tomorrow so you can have peace of mind today.

Speaker 2 Head to policygenius.com/slash crooked or click on the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com/slash crooked.

Speaker 5 Coming at you live from Auto Trader, here's New Car Energy.

Speaker 4 They're searching inventory. I can make a budget for your pilot to help you succeed.
It's smarter car shopping. Just find out.
Find your next ride at autotrader.com powered by auto intelligence.

Speaker 2 And we're back. It's been five days since Trump declared a trade war against the whole world.
Markets are tanking. We're seeing the worst decline since 1987.

Speaker 2 The Fed chair Jerome Powell is warning of higher inflation. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are saying it's increasingly likely we're heading toward toward a recession.

Speaker 2 So, I wanted to hear from a conservative who is among the right-wing voices arguing against the Republican consensus on free trade.

Speaker 2 He runs the conservative think tank American Compass, and he is the architect of Trump's current tariff policy. He's the one to blame Oren Cass, Welcome, Apothe of America.

Speaker 14 Well, I'm not sure about that introduction, but thank you very much.

Speaker 1 No, you are.

Speaker 2 I wanted to talk to you because

Speaker 2 you're someone that has been arguing for

Speaker 2 a

Speaker 2 different direction for conservatives.

Speaker 2 And I would have said if, you know, last year, last couple of years, that there was a kind of intersection between, I think, what some progressives have been saying about the economy and what you and some others have been saying from the right.

Speaker 2 It's all come to a head now as we see Trump kind of blundering into tariffs over the last week. So I do want to talk about what's happening right now.

Speaker 2 But before we get there, I think it's just helpful to understand what your critique is from from the right of the free trade consensus that was, that I think did span from center left to center right.

Speaker 2 And what you view as the goals of a reorientation, even if what we're seeing right now doesn't look like it.

Speaker 14 Sure.

Speaker 14 So I think the problem with the free trade consensus was that free trade in the real world was not operating the way that everybody seemed to think it would, you know, on the economics blackboard.

Speaker 14 I think actual trade between countries where we specialize in different things and we sell things to them and they sell things to us, that's terrific.

Speaker 14 What we have in the globalized economy, especially after embracing China, which is a non-market, authoritarian, communist, state-controlled economy,

Speaker 14 bears no resemblance to that.

Speaker 14 We have trading partners that pursue active policies to shift manufacturing out of our country to them,

Speaker 14 not so that they can sell to us and buy something else from us, but so that they can sell to us and not buy anything from us.

Speaker 14 And that's sort of strike one is the way that that hollows out our manufacturing sector. And then strike two is that it's not that we get this stuff for free.
Instead, they take back our assets.

Speaker 14 So they take ownership in our corporations, our real estate. They take our debt, which is just pieces of paper saying we'll pay you for this stuff some other day.

Speaker 14 And so we simultaneously hollow out an important sector of our economy and basically mortgage our future. And that's not a a model that I think has been working very well at all.

Speaker 2 Aaron Ross Powell, so I feel like a lot of different aspects of this get combined.

Speaker 2 One is a trade deficit versus a trade surplus. Another is tariffs, what the goal of tariffs is.

Speaker 2 And then there's what happens when you do free trade with a country like China that isn't a free country, that isn't a free society.

Speaker 2 And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about the difference between, say, a trade surplus with Canada, a country that is a a democracy, that has a high standard of living, that has benefits, that has environmental and labor protections, versus a trade surplus with China.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I think that's very well put, the way you've sort of separated that out. And so I would say China is its own problem.

Speaker 14 And regardless of what we do elsewhere, I think decoupling our economy from China is what I call, I think decoupling sounds too nice.

Speaker 14 I would say really a quite hard break with China, recognizing that free trade with China does not promote a free market. It distorts our free market.

Speaker 14 That's kind of bucket one. I think when you get beyond that into our trade with the rest of the world, I think you're right.

Speaker 14 A trade surplus or a trade deficit with any one country is not necessarily a problem at all. In fact, you would expect those to emerge naturally.

Speaker 14 The problem is that we have large systemic trade deficits with virtually all of our trading partners. And that is, to a large extent, a function of policy.

Speaker 14 To some extent, it's a function of our policy.

Speaker 14 Running huge budget deficits here does not help. And we should do something about that too.

Speaker 14 But when you see countries like Japan, Korea, Germany that are explicitly pursuing an economic model that calls for them to be doing large amounts of exporting

Speaker 14 to pursue growth, and they're adopting policies to achieve that, we shouldn't then scratch our heads and say, gee, I wonder why the thing they said they wanted to do and made policy to do is therefore happening.

Speaker 14 And so I do think it's fair to say, yes, in a healthy free trading system, you'd have surpluses and deficits.

Speaker 14 But what we have is a much more systemic imbalance where essentially most of the rest of the world is all expecting to do more producing. And then we do the consuming on credit.

Speaker 2 So with a country like Canada, though, right, like

Speaker 2 We have an incredibly interconnected economy. We actually run a surplus surplus with Canada on manufacturing.
We run a surplus with Canada on services.

Speaker 2 We just have a deficit because we get a lot of raw materials from Canada. We get a lot of oil from Canada.
And yet,

Speaker 2 like, that's not something a tariff can correct for, right?

Speaker 2 We can't suddenly, unless we want to kind of cut down the Rocky Mountain, like all the forests in Colorado. Like, I just don't, what I don't understand, right, is like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 Like, I go to a hot dog stand. I buy a hot dog.
I have a trade deficit with the hot dog stand. I still really like the deal.
It's better for me.

Speaker 2 I'm eating hot dogs, he's making hot dogs, or she's making hot dogs.

Speaker 1 All right. Thank you.

Speaker 14 It's important to know. Thank you for calling her in.

Speaker 2 But if the government suddenly taxed that hot dog vendor into oblivion, like to ostensibly create more domestic hot dog production, yeah, like I guess I could go to the store and start buying all the supply, increase my domestic hot dog supply.

Speaker 2 But the reality is I'm just going to eat fewer hot dogs, right? And so like, I guess I just want to understand

Speaker 1 what the goal is, right?

Speaker 2 Like it is each of these examples seems to require a specific set of policies, right?

Speaker 2 And yet this ends up being this debate about kind of trade deficits and trade surpluses and tariffs, which almost feels like beside the point to me.

Speaker 14 I think it's actually useful to sort of start from the other end and think about what the actual goal is. Like, what is the end state we want to get to?

Speaker 14 Because frankly, a lot of what is going on here is at that sort of you know it sounds grandiose but like grand strategy level where the US has been pursuing this what gets called liberal world order for a long time where we want to advance markets everywhere you know when we were welcoming China part of the theory was this was going to liberalize them democratize them obviously we make a lot of defense commitments around the world and the idea was that you know yes we would absorb a lot of excess production from other parts of the world we would subsidize a lot of defense costs.

Speaker 14 But ultimately, as the hegemon, we benefited from that. We could have a longer discussion about how much that was ever true.

Speaker 14 But I think what certainly folks in the Trump administration would say today is that we no longer benefit from it. Part of the problem is that we are moving into a multipolar world.

Speaker 14 We can't be the hegemon even if we want to be. Secretary Rubio has talked a lot about how China is going to put aside trade.

Speaker 14 China is going to assert its own influences in the world and is going to have its own sphere.

Speaker 14 And then in the economic context, we are obviously not in the position we were in in the post-World War II years as the dominant industrial power.

Speaker 14 We, frankly, have a lot of problems in our own economy.

Speaker 14 And so I think what the goal is, is to say, you know, this sort of liberal world order needs to be replaced for the U.S.'s purposes with more of a U.S.-centered, ideally economic and security block.

Speaker 14 And we want to have high levels of free trade with allies in that block, but we would like to see overall trade within that block balanced. So we are

Speaker 14 overall both buying and selling in relatively equal measure, just as you don't worry about your deficit with the hot dog stand, but you do need to earn enough money from someone else to buy the hot dog, right?

Speaker 14 You can't just take out credit cards to buy the hot dogs.

Speaker 14 And for that to work, we're also going to then need everybody to agree to keep China out. We can't keep China out, but have Mexico welcome them in and then have free trade with Mexico.

Speaker 14 And so I think if that's the goal, big block, balanced trade, China out, how do you get from here to there?

Speaker 14 I think tariffs play an important role in that, potentially. And that's what you see the Trump administration trying to move toward.

Speaker 2 So there was an announcement.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about what's happening right now then. So

Speaker 2 in the wake of, I think this was just before Liberation Day, but you saw South Korea, Japan, and China announcing they're going to respond together.

Speaker 2 If your goal is to build a big kind of anti-China bloc with as many countries on our side as possible,

Speaker 2 can you come up with a way to be more alienating of the countries we need than what we've seen in the last week?

Speaker 14 Well, I would say two things about that. One, I agree with you to the extent that I think sort of how we treat our allies matters and we should be engaging with them constructively.

Speaker 14 And there is definitely room for improvement on that front. That being said, I do both think that that kind of, that reporting, I think, was rather overblown.

Speaker 14 And even in just the last few hours here on a Monday afternoon, we've both seen China announce

Speaker 14 it is potentially planning retaliatory tariffs leading to more retaliatory tariffs from the U.S., while Japan has announced, or I think it was Secretary Besson just announced, he's delighted that Japan has come forward to proceed with a constructive negotiation.

Speaker 14 So in fact, I don't think it's the case that countries like Japan and Korea are thinking about siding with China.

Speaker 14 I do think it's the case that we owe our allies very clear explanation of where we are trying to go, what our expectations are, and that we give them a fair opportunity to

Speaker 14 work that out.

Speaker 2 But the tariffs announced, they're described as reciprocal tariffs. But as you've noted, they're not based on tariffs.
They're based on trade deficits.

Speaker 1 And look,

Speaker 2 there's value to America rebalancing trade. I think Democrats, Republicans, or some Republicans now would agree with that.
But a country can't do that overnight.

Speaker 2 We just spent the last 75 years building up an interconnected system. People in Vietnam,

Speaker 2 just working people.

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 2 They didn't, they're not, they're not taking advantage of us. I don't feel taken advantage of by working class people in Vietnam.

Speaker 2 Auto suppliers in Michigan are terrified today, right? They're talking about the fact that you're going to have to shut down production, that the costs are going up.

Speaker 2 It's alienating allies.

Speaker 2 It may cause a decrease in domestic production, all because this is being done in this incredibly ham-fisted way.

Speaker 2 And at a certain point, do you worry that what you're doing is kind of intellectualizing, like coming behind Trump like an intellectual Zamboni, cleaning up what is just a rash kind of gut instinct 1980s pro-tariff mindset being put in place by people unwilling to tell him no.

Speaker 14 Well, I guess I don't worry about that broader dynamic that you just described.

Speaker 14 I mean, I've been writing about the need for the United States to start a trade war with China in particular and use tariffs for more than a decade now.

Speaker 14 It's certainly the, you know, where I see that the free trade consensus went wrong and we need to take a different approach. Even with something like these reciprocal tariffs, it was interesting.

Speaker 14 I wrote a piece sort of, I guess it was back in February, looking at just what the Trump administration was saying and inferring,

Speaker 14 I don't think it was that hard to do, that clearly what they meant was not tit for tat. reciprocal tariffs based on tariff rates.
What they meant was they were going to focus on

Speaker 14 trade balances. They were going to try to induce those countries to change change their policies.

Speaker 14 And by the way, just to give a concrete example of what that looks like when it works, this is what Reagan did in 1981 with Japan.

Speaker 14 I mean, under threat of heavy tariffs from Congress, Reagan got the Japanese to self-impose a quota on exports of Japanese vehicles to the United States.

Speaker 14 And the result was the Japanese auto industry in the U.S. South.

Speaker 14 So I share many of your criticisms about the details of how this is being executed, but I think it is important to separate the question of sort of tactics from strategy in a sense and work on getting the tactics right.

Speaker 14 And I think there are a lot of opportunities to get these tactics right

Speaker 14 and in fact achieve changes that are worth making.

Speaker 2 There's a little bit of a kind of trick there to me, which is You're pointing at a specific example of there was a strategic goal, there was pressure applied,

Speaker 2 people understood the stakes, they understood what the goal was, they could, the U.S. policy was predictable, all right? It was also targeted, right? And at a certain point,

Speaker 2 the markets, and I don't think the markets are a reflection of the economy in full, right? There's a lot of, you know, some,

Speaker 2 we have spent decades watching wages stay flat while markets went up. But the markets are responding terribly.
There's a warning of inflation. There's a warning of a recession.

Speaker 2 Our allies around the world are telling us that they're going to put retaliatory tariffs on us. At a certain point, you can't separate the tactics from the strategy, right?

Speaker 2 You are saying, oh, there's a strategy that I largely agree with, but I have some quibbles with the tactics.

Speaker 2 But fundamentally, are we watching kind of Donald Trump take what you view as the ultimate goal and kind of proving the opposite case, showing you that like show basically obliterating the argument you're making by by fucking this up so thoroughly

Speaker 14 I think that's a rather crass way to put it

Speaker 1 the way that I yeah it's a little crass it's a little crass or no but I should say you and I went to college together we did we weren't close no we must have taken a class together at some point I'm sure we did I'm sure we did but sorry I just was interrupting you

Speaker 14 What I would say is, and maybe they're even the term strategy sort of is two different things, because when I think about strategy, what I'm talking about is the way that we're defining and recognizing this as a problem at all

Speaker 14 which is I think a really significant shift and that goes a little bit to your point about you know even before the current Trump administration starting to see a new consensus developing on that point the the fact that we are actually now recognizing that this model of hyperglobalization is a bad one and we need to change it the fact that we're recognizing that manufacturing matters that trade deficits matter and that we should do something about those things.

Speaker 14 I think that's really important and a positive step.

Speaker 14 The fact that the tools we're talking about to do something about that, that we are talking about having a low, stable global tariff, the fact that we are really talking about very high tariffs on China, we're taking seriously the idea of disentangling from them, and the idea that we're trying to actually get to more balanced trade.

Speaker 14 I think those are the right things we should be doing and the tools we should be using. So

Speaker 14 I don't think that it would be fair to say, well, look, I don't like the set of things he announced on Wednesday. Therefore,

Speaker 14 I'm not even sure kind of what the punchline is. Therefore, forget about the whole thing.
I think the...

Speaker 2 Well, no, it would be to say, as much as I agree with the goals here, that as much as I believe we need a reorientation, the way that this is happening is so awful and destructive and chaotic that it is not the approach I would take, but it is antithetical to the way that I believe we should be pursuing an economic agenda.

Speaker 2 No, we should not rebalance the American economy by going through a recession,

Speaker 2 having all kinds of supply shocks, causing all kinds of job losses, and alienating our allies around the world. If that's the price of reorientation, we should not do it.

Speaker 14 I guess that strikes me as maybe a bit overdramatic.

Speaker 14 Just to give you a very concrete example, let's say we took essentially this policy that the administration is pursuing and we said it would make a lot more sense to phase tariffs in than snap them in on day one.

Speaker 2 Because it takes a decade to build some of these factories.

Speaker 1 It takes a decade.

Speaker 2 Because it's going to

Speaker 2 undo some of these interconnected supply chains.

Speaker 14 It takes a decade to do some things. I think we should be a little skeptical of people saying that it takes five to ten years when

Speaker 14 we've seen that when businesses really, I mean, it did not take that long, for instance, to massively offshore production to China, right? I mean, take a look at the drop in U.S.

Speaker 14 manufacturing employment and you will see how quickly these things can move.

Speaker 14 And so I think we said, look, frankly, I think the 10% global tariff is something that you do sort of do. And among other things, that conveys that you really mean it, you're serious,

Speaker 14 and that this is going to start changing the equation. I think something like the tariffs with China,

Speaker 14 ideally you do phase in.

Speaker 14 And by the way, there's very good bipartisan legislation in Congress right now to revoke permanent normal trade relations with China and go all the way up to 100% tariffs on strategic goods, but do it over five years.

Speaker 14 And so if you think about kind of the 60% that Trump is talking about at that point, if you did that 20, 20, 20 over three years, I think that would be a fairly reasonable approach.

Speaker 14 And I think when you then talk about these negotiations with specific countries, again,

Speaker 14 you make a very good point that we have obviously built up these relationships over a long period of time.

Speaker 14 If we're not happy with how they're behaving, we've certainly certainly tolerated it for a long period of time.

Speaker 14 I think if we say, look, this is what the consequence is going to be if we don't have a plan to fix this.

Speaker 14 Here's a period of time for having an initial negotiation and seeing if we have a way to fix this. If we can't agree, half of this goes into effect.

Speaker 14 And if, you know, a year from now, if you're just out on this project, then we do go up to the full level. I think that would be a reasonable way to proceed.
And so it's an interesting question.

Speaker 14 Obviously, this is a very significant question. Do you snap it into place or do you phase it in?

Speaker 14 But I think there is still a lot of room to take these ideas and say that there is actually a path forward here that accomplishes some really important things.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell,

Speaker 2 last question.

Speaker 2 Is there a version of this in which we wouldn't be seeing incredible economic disruption? the possibility of a recession, markets crashing.

Speaker 2 What does a version of this that you would think is working well look like?

Speaker 14 Well, we just talked about a piece of it, which is phasing things in.

Speaker 14 I think the phasing makes an enormous difference in minimizing the cost because basically what you're saying is you want the costs that, you know, the costs that you're imposing are intended to be an incentive.

Speaker 14 You want those to come into play as quickly as it is reasonable to expect people to change their behavior.

Speaker 14 If you impose the costs faster than that, you get the cost, but you can't get any faster change in behavior.

Speaker 14 So I think phasing these things in is a huge potential piece of the puzzle on the front end. And then I think the flip side is just greater clarity and certainty.

Speaker 2 Well, greater, yeah, but

Speaker 2 we have no idea even what the demands are, right? I mean, like,

Speaker 2 they're being implemented instantly, and we don't know what they want,

Speaker 2 what other countries can do to lift them. I mean, it's really like a,

Speaker 2 it's a blank, there's no hostage. We've taken the hostages, but we have no, we started killing the hostages, but there's no, there's no demand.

Speaker 14 Well, we know one demand, which is more balanced trade, and we know that they just prepared an enormous report documenting the unfair trade practices that countries are engaged in.

Speaker 14 So I think there's a start there, but I absolutely agree with you on both of those. And that's why I say these are the two things.
One, the phasing in to reduce the costs.

Speaker 14 And two, a much clearer description both of where we're trying to go and what we're asking people to do so that there is some certainty and some credibility of this is what the long run is going to look like.

Speaker 14 People can be reasonably expected to act accordingly.

Speaker 14 And at the end of the day, the actual benefit we're trying to achieve is a different pattern of investment, getting people to invest more in the United States.

Speaker 14 And if you want them to do that, you have to give them the stability and certainty about what the long run is going to look like.

Speaker 2 I guess what I want, you're so mild-mannered and measured. I really want you to say some version of,

Speaker 2 of course, I'm for a rebalancing trade. These people are behaving like fucking morons.

Speaker 14 Well, again, that's a lot crasser than I would tend to be. I work on improving policy and that's what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 Oren Cass, thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 14 This was great. Thank you.

Speaker 1 That's our show for today. Dan and I will be back with a new episode on Friday.

Speaker 1 If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.

Speaker 1 Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 1 And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Speaker 1 Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Faris Safari.
Reed Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer.

Speaker 1 The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 1 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant.

Speaker 1 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kilman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavive, and David Toles.

Speaker 1 Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Speaker 5 You're tuned into auto intelligence live from Auto Trader, where data, tools, and your preferences sync to make your car shopping smooth.

Speaker 4 They're searching inventory. Oh, yeah.
They find what you need. They're gonna find it.
Can make a budget for your wallet to help you succeed.

Speaker 4 Pricing's precise and true. So true.
Get smart at car shopping.

Speaker 6 But just for you.

Speaker 5 Oh, it's just for you.

Speaker 5 Find your next ride at autotrader.com, powered by auto intelligence.

Speaker 4 What's poppin' listeners?

Speaker 15 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

Speaker 15 Want to know about the fake heirs? We got them. What about a career con man? We've got them too.
Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. coins.

Speaker 15 Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more.

Speaker 15 Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.