107. The Trump Doctrine: America First, Ukraine Last

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Welcome to The Rest is Politics U.S.

in the lovely state of...

We're in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

We're in the beautiful state of Wyoming.

And unfortunately, our background doesn't do justice to how beautiful this is.

But I've been driving around in a car out here, Caddy.

I'm like driving through a postcard.

It's quite magnificent.

Also, the most conservative state in the country and the highest number of Trump voters per capita in the country.

But that's just an aside.

Anyway, we're having a lot of time.

Well, there's only 500,000 people here, but anyway, this is also...

Five of them voted for Cameroon.

Yeah, this is the largest state per person, said differently.

There's 500,000 people on a tremendous land mass.

And a lot of cows.

Yeah, a lot of cows.

And beef is good, as we know, because we tried the steak last night, which was delicious.

Anyway, here we are.

We are going to talk about Trump and Zelensky and all that's been happening in the White House this week.

First of all, of course, we had the Alaska meeting that we already spoke about.

Then we had this extraordinary display of European unity descending on Washington DC.

I don't think we've seen anything like that since the Iraq war.

Where we are, is there going to be a second meeting?

Is there going to be a ceasefire?

Are there going to be security guarantees?

All that up in the air.

But Europeans I've spoken to breathing something of a sigh of relief.

And then in the second half, Anthony, we're going to talk about where the US economy is.

There's kind of a lot of mixed messages.

Are there storm clouds on the Wyoming horizon?

So we'll get into that in the second half.

What do you think?

Well, I mean, so we are at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, and there are some Fed officials here.

This conference dovetails off of the Fed Federal Reserve Conference, and some of the Fed officials looking through the data

would tell you that there is weakening.

There is weakening on unemployment data, which would suggest that there's going to be a rate cut.

Obviously, Wall Street thinks there'll be a 25-basis point rate cut in September.

If the Fed wanted to loom large over the economy, they would cut 50 basis points.

But the economy is weakening.

The question is, is it weakening cyclically, Caddy, or is it weakening as a result of the tariffs that have been put in place?

Are they finally digging into the economy now with some level of gnashing of teeth?

We'll talk about that in the second half.

Talk about that in a second, but let's talk about Trump and Zelensky

and the other European leaders that descended upon the White House this past week.

I have lots of thoughts, but why don't you share some of yours first, and then I'll

go through my screed of ideas.

I've spoken to a few people this week from the European side but also from the American side on how they felt that meeting went.

Look, if Vladimir Putin has two goals, right?

One is to get Ukraine and the second is to destroy European unity.

And I think you can kind of broadly frame his goals like that.

On the first one, I think we don't know how he's going to do.

I don't think we know whether there is going to be a second meeting.

This is something that Donald Trump has said that is going to happen, but already we're recording this on Wednesday morning.

But the Kremlin is already kind of throwing a bit of cold water on that.

But I think on the thing of European unity, I just wanted to get your thoughts on that, because you sent me those photographs that look a little bit like the Last Supper from the Oval Office.

I think the Europeans did a pretty good job of showing unity.

They flew in, my understanding is, they all landed at in Washington, they went straight to the Ukrainian embassy, they met together at the Ukrainian embassy before going to the White House, they wargamed the whole thing, they discussed the flattery, they discussed the points that they were going to raise, and they presented Donald Trump with a unified Europe, and I think he responded pretty well to that.

The Europeans are feeling that they've put the wheels back on the train, the train back on the track.

At least there is now a process,

and

how the process pans out, I think there are still huge questions.

I'm pretty skeptical about quite a lot of this process.

But the Europeans feel they've figured out how to work with Donald Trump, or at least how to tell Donald Trump he is the best leader in the world.

Okay, I must have missed all that.

I don't know.

It must have gone over my head because I got a totally different vibe from the meetings.

Trump came back from the Alaska Summit flummoxed.

Putin basically dug in.

Trump is obviously a weakling.

You didn't give him anything, right?

I didn't give him anything.

Trump is obviously a weakling.

I've said on this program he's a beta male.

Let me now supply some evidence.

We're going to have a ceasefire, or I'm going to dig in with sanctions.

Well, guess what?

We're not going to have a ceasefire.

We're going to kill a thousand people a day until there's some type of resolution to the war.

Trump comes back and says, well, I don't really need a ceasefire.

But five days ago, sir, you said that there would be a ceasefire.

And if not, you'd dig in with more sanctions.

Well, no, we're not going to do that.

Everything that Putin wanted, he gave him.

So no ceasefire.

Number two, as it relates to European unity, the test of European unity will be when Trump breaks from them because he's Putin's advocate at the table.

Putin said, this is what I want, Donald Trump, and you're going to get this for me.

Trump said, roof, you're the boss.

That is the exact quote from the press conference, the mini 12-minute press conference.

You're the boss.

Roof, roof, let me go to the Europeans and get you exactly what you want.

Europeans push back politely, but the impasse is coming, Caddy.

The impasse is coming where Trump is going to say, I'm with Putin.

And the Europeans are going to have to say, well, you know what?

That's too bad because we're with the Ukrainians.

We're going to arm up and we're going to knock these guys off Ukrainian soil.

And that's going to be a very big test of leadership globally.

It's going to be a very big test of European unity.

But it's unfortunate that that's coming.

It did not have to come.

The president had way more muscle.

He had way more leverage in the meetings.

Some historians.

Even in the meetings with Putin, he had way more leverage.

Yes, some historians are going to have to say, well, why did he not use his leverage and his muscle with Putin?

One last very quick point.

Putin will never.

Okay, and by the way, somebody write into us, if he meets with Zelensky,

you can dunk me in a cold plunge.

I hate cold plunging, by the way.

There's morons outside cold plunging right now.

I don't know.

I think it's the stupidest thing I've ever seen.

But you can cold plunge me if Putin and Zelensky are in the meeting together ever.

That is such a bad photo op for Putin after all the propaganda that he spilled into his country.

So that ain't happening either.

There's going to be a showdown.

And when the showdown happens, we're going to see what Europe's all about.

Look, I think if you just look at that meeting, I think the Europeans handled it well.

It went better for Zelensky, obviously, than the first disastrous meeting.

He wore the suit, for God's sake, I don't know what it is about the suit, but anyway, he wore a suit.

Trump liked the fact that he wore a suit, so he was a little bit more amenable towards Zelensky than he was in that disastrous first meeting.

The Europeans were all on the same page, which I think was very important for Europe.

But the test is going to come, and it seems like it's already coming over this bilateral meeting that Donald Trump has said that he wanted.

Now, you know, I'm speaking to the Europeans officials on this, and I point out to them Trump can change his mind in a heartbeat, and he's likely to change his mind again.

I mean, the chances are that he rows back, sounds less friendly towards me.

He changes his mind in what way?

Okay, that he said

we're going to have this bilateral meeting and then the trilateral meeting, or there will be consequences.

Right, right.

Well, there won't be any consequences.

So that's the question, is that there won't be consequences.

So then what do they do?

Because what the Europeans are saying is, well, if there is no bilateral meeting, which I agree with you, and the kind of Russia experts that I have spoken to over the past few months have said Zelensky has no chance of meeting Vladimir Putin because Putin has such disdain for him and doesn't want to legitimize him.

So he doesn't want to have the photo with him.

It's horrific for the propaganda in Russia.

It would be bad for him.

So then the question is, and the Europeans are saying, well, at that point, Donald Trump will realize he can't trust Vladimir Putin.

But I think that's where they're dreaming because I don't think that Donald Trump is going to do anything.

There's not going to be any retribution.

There's no.

So

we'll talk about that in a second, but there's a dead person that's been looming over Donald Trump.

His name is Jeff Epstein.

You ever hear about him?

Because I haven't heard about him in the last two weeks.

This is Trump's genius.

Trump's genius is, wow, I got Jeff Epstein off this page.

I'm flying around visiting Anchorage, Alaska.

I'm over here.

I'm over there.

Jeff Epstein.

What Jeff Epstein?

So Jeff Epstein, as we predicted on this show, is being dispatched into the past and is not going to haunt or loom over Donald Trump in the future.

Again, that's my opinion.

I want to go to the pictures from the Oval Office, and I want to explain to the rest as politics listeners what that was, because people have to understand Donald Trump.

That was staged

television production, and that meeting, Ronald Reagan, George W.

Bush, Barack Barack Obama, that meeting, Jack Kennedy, would have been held in the cabinet room.

And they would have been around the table

and there would have been a little bit of more equality to the meeting, and there would have been a little bit more respect in the meeting.

But what Trump did was he created a semicircle, like he was the teacher and they were the students in the semicircle.

And he put the European leaders in the Oval Office.

He's behind the resolute desk, and he's there looking at them.

They're his pupils.

Caddy, that was completely staged by the White House.

That's MAGA red meat.

That's being disseminated on True Social.

It's being disseminated everywhere.

It's part of the humiliation rituals that Donald Trump does to people, but it's also a signal to MAGA.

The U.S.

is back.

We're stronger than ever.

Look at all the kowtowing that's going on from the European leaders, France, the UK, these wonderful, historically great countries.

They're all here on bended knee before the orange maniac.

And that's a sign to MAGA.

It's a perfect image for Trump, and it's going to be used over the next six to 12 months.

I'm looking at it now.

Two things are interesting.

You'll point about how his chair is always higher.

He's on a bigger chair than they are.

They look lower than he is.

But if you look at the one of the leaders from behind Donald Trump, there's Georgia Georgia Maloney sitting like this.

And it's quite interesting because she is the one with her arms crossed and looking kind of grumpy to be there, looking like she's not happy with this photo opportunity.

Every time I turn my back, does the Oval Office get more gold than it?

I am serious.

Look at this.

I'm going to show Anthony this time.

President Liberace.

It's more than it was.

I mean, no, he's putting gold on everything.

But the other thing is that the more the media complains about the shock and awe of the decoration, the more he's going to to do.

I mean, he took the rose garden and he paved it.

He paved the rose garden.

He put like these stone tiles and there's little chairs out there like his little receiving area at Mor-a-Lago.

I mean, he took Jackie Kennedy's rose garden and demolished it.

Now he's gone gilded

in the Oval Office.

All of this stuff is triggering.

All of this stuff, believe it or not, is part of the culture war.

But I want to get back to Zelensky for a second because he is a leader.

Let me just explain this

to my opinion, okay?

You got to wear the suit with Trump, no problem.

You take the suit off the table, no problem.

But Zelensky has got the Europeans with him.

Zelensky, I believe, has convinced the Europeans that he's coming for you.

And I think they are convinced.

And that is new.

You know, I was up in the Scandinavian region last week, talked to a lot of officials up there.

We know that Finland and Sweden joined NATO.

There's an 800-mile border between the Finns and the Russians.

We said last week, Joseph Stalin took 12%

of formerly Finnish land, annexed it, made it part of the Soviet Union.

The Finns never got it back.

It's still in territorial dispute.

In their minds, that's 80 years ago.

The Finns have an unbelievable fighting force.

You and I both know that.

And they stand battle-ready ready at their border 24-7

against a perceived threat from the Russian army.

So there's no fooling around in Scandinavia.

You know the Baltic states, there's no fooling around.

There's lots of worry there.

Putin wants to annex these things, which is why he's gone to Trump and said, listen, give me the Donbass.

If I'm in the Donbass region, I'll cede this, I'll offer that, I'll provide security guarantees.

But that region, once he gets it, he'll be able to plow ahead deeper into Ukraine and cause more havoc.

So, this is a Chamberlain Hitler setup.

Just give me the Sudenland.

Just give me this area.

These are all German natives.

These are all people that speak German.

Just give me this, and then you can go back to London with peace in our time.

How did that work out, guys?

Did that work out well?

Yeah, so that didn't work out quite so well.

And I think you're right that there is particularly that strip, what's called the fortress strip in Donbass that he would like because with these four cities in it, from that, he thinks he can then launch more attacks into Ukraine.

He doesn't have it now, and they have well fortified that area because they understand strategically it would be like Israel

re-fortify further back, which is a huge, you know, exactly.

But if you look at the geography, that would be really bad for them.

It would be like the Israelis ceding the Golan Heights, that mountainous territory between them and Syria, which they took and they use as a defense fortification.

The Ukraine government cannot give up that region and Zelensky is not going to accept the flex from Donald Trump and his buddy Vladimir Putin.

The difference to this week with the Europeans, apart from the fact that they had choreographed this as well as they could, they got the show of the unity as much as they can, is that there is now this real feeling that the Russians are not going to go for Berlin, but there is more heightened fear in Europe at the moment about the possibility of Russia, after a year or two of rearming, first going for the rest of Ukraine, but also potentially going for the Baltics, or even if you're in Poland, the fear that they could go for Poland.

That's why it's interesting that you mentioned Finland, because I've been told that the guy who's going to lead this, Marco Rubio has set up a commission to kind of discuss what exactly these security guarantees would look like.

And that from the European side, the points of contact are the Finnish president, who Donald Trump gets on well with because he's a good golf player, and the German Chancellor.

And he seems to have respect for both of those.

By the way, he commented on both of their suntans, which is always a good sign with Donald Trump.

It means he likes you if he comments on your suntan.

We're just going to leave it there.

We're not going to infer anything by any of this, but let me just go back to you for a couple of years.

Can I say one thing?

Hold on a second, because you talked about MAGA, and we heard Steve Bannon talking about, as he did with the bombing of Iran, saying that this is not going to go down well with MAGA.

This is is meant to be America first.

Why is Donald Trump offering security guarantees, even if that is only, we don't know what it constitutes at the moment, let's say it's intelligence, let's say it's potentially air support.

But Steve Bannon is talking about a potential split within MAGA over this.

I don't buy that.

They swallowed the Iran bombing.

If Donald Trump decides to give security guarantees of some sort and air defense and intelligence to the Ukrainians, I reckon that MAGA will accept this.

They'll take it while Donald Trump is in charge.

Mr.

President, listen, you can talk about a security guarantee, all you want, but I don't want you to give any.

And, Mr.

President, I'm eventually going to annex Ukraine because I am in my 70s and I'm better than Stalin, and I've got to reattach these things called the republics, the former republics of the Soviet Union.

And so, by the way, my

foreign secretary,

Lavroff, showed up in Anchorage with a CCP.

Basically, USSR sweatshirt.

Right, so

he was trolling.

You know, I'm trolling you guys because we've got something on you, obviously.

So, let's play, let's play, we've got a few minutes to go here in the period.

Let's play some strategy, okay?

So, I'm your intelligence officer.

You're the president of the United States.

So, Mr.

President, we have assets all over Europe.

We've got the 101st airborne in Poland.

Mr.

President, we have,

this is an opportunity akin to the Truman doctrine, where we can push this faltering country, this faltering economy.

We can push them back and send them a lesson.

We don't want their territory, but we don't want them encroaching on our friends' territory, a result of which the Trump doctrine could be, Vlad,

No USSR.

Go F yourself.

Push them back.

And we have all the assets and we have all the capability to do that.

We have the drone technology, intelligence operations.

We can completely do this in a non-nuclear way.

And the Russians are not going to nuke us.

We didn't nuke them.

They haven't nuked us even in the hottest parts of the Cold War.

No one's nuking each other over this.

Who's kidding who?

Medvedev can tweet all he wants about it.

Not going to happen.

You can knock their block off.

And then Trump says, Well,

my buddy is going to lose power if we do that.

But go ahead.

You beat President Trump and you tell me why we are not aligned with the European allies to have a new Trump doctrine, a new Truman doctrine, to knock these guys back into their sovereign territory and to restate the territorial sovereignty of the countries that are friends of ours.

Well, because if I'm Donald Trump, I'll say that actually it's all about trade negotiations and trade relationships and America first and getting the best deal for America.

And I will parrot J.D.

Vance and say, this is Europe's problem.

America has been financing this for too long.

The American public is not behind this.

The American voters, both Democrat and Republicans, and he's got a point here, do not support America being engaged in this.

But, Mr.

President, pay attention to me.

I have a really nice suntan.

Pay attention to me, okay?

But that's not true, Mr.

President, because if you do that, you're going to calm down markets, you're going to restate the predictability of America and what America represents to the world.

You're going to increase our soft power.

You're going to increase our global popularity.

You're also going to send a message to the Chinese about Taiwan.

You don't want to do all those things for the country.

I've got to be on too many details.

I want the moment.

I want the photo op.

I want this resolved today and then I want my Nobel Prize.

And you haven't mentioned any of those things.

Before we started, I texted.

You're actually scaring the daylight.

Katie Kay is scaring me.

She's telling Donald Trump now

on the 107th episode of The Rest is Politics U.S.

If you come next time we're together in an orange wig,

I'm running from the building.

I can't remember.

I flawed you with that.

That was pretty good interpretation, wasn't it, of Donald Trump?

I got it.

I scared the daylights out of me.

I could use other words, but I'm trying to be polite.

Okay, so what happens next?

The next steps are this bilateral meeting.

You and I both think that's not going to happen.

Just before we started, I texted Senator Barroso,

John Barroso, who I bumped into yesterday here in Wyoming, the senator from Wyoming, who is number two

in the Republican leadership in the Senate.

And I asked him what would happen if Trump didn't meet with Zelensky.

Would he support moving ahead with this big package of sanctions that Senator Lindsey Graham has put on the table?

And he then texted me and said, Lindsay just texted me this 20 minutes ago, which is an article about how they should go ahead with the sanctions.

And Barrasso says there's a lot of appetite for that.

So I think there are things that could happen now.

If, and this is specifically to do with whether if Trump says I'm not going to meet with Zelensky.

Go a step further though.

Explain politically why Barroso and Lindsey Graham would want to do that.

Because there is still in the Republican Party

a group of people who forever have felt that the existential threat to the United States is Russia and China and they want the Republican Party to resume its

historic

America

in the world position.

And so they don't want to see Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin being rewarded in the way for taking over Ukraine.

They don't want the Baltics to be taken over.

They don't want Poland to be taken over.

They don't want Finland to be encroached upon again because they see the threat, because they understand that in the sweep of history.

It will destabilize the economies.

It will destabilize jobs in America.

It'll disconnect the world.

We'll be in a fever dream.

That it is only America that can put the pressure on the Russians to stop this.

I'm going to switch rules now.

I am now channeling Donald Trump.

But listen, there's a triumvirate going on in the world right now.

It's me, Putin, and she.

Everybody else is a school child.

Everybody else has to sit before me as I peer.

at them from the resolute desk.

And so as far as I'm concerned, there are three great regional powers.

Let Putin have whatever he wants in that area of

those countries.

Let Putin have whatever he wants in those countries.

I don't care.

And you're Lindsey Graham now, and I'm sorry I'm doing that to you.

That's a horrific thing to do to you, Brother.

You're now Lindsey Graham.

It's seven o'clock in the morning.

I've already been dark.

I'm turning my back on you right now, Katie.

Now I'm going to be Lindsey Graham.

Okay, you're Lindsey Graham.

Now, tell me why you don't want that.

Go ahead.

Go ahead, Mr.

President.

If we allow the Russians to be rewarded for attacking another country, they will go after other countries and then the Chinese will go after Taiwan, which, by the way, is a major supplier of semiconductor chips to the United States.

There will be the markets will tank if there is war in Europe.

Europeans will stop buying American things, especially if there are tariffs on their own things that they're trying to export.

This is not a good idea, Mr President.

We do not want war in Europe.

Okay, so he doesn't pay attention there.

Because he thinks he can do this.

Okay, the reason he doesn't pay attention to this is because Donald Trump and the people around Donald Trump believe that Donald Trump is sui generis and that he conducts

all foreign policy, and we're going to talk about this in the second half, and all economic policy from a totally personal

top-down.

There is no negotiation with underlings.

There was no diplomatic preparation for either of these meetings because he is the great negotiator and it is about him and him alone.

Before we take a break, can I just make one thing?

Otherwise, you're going to ask me to become a hundred other people.

And this is like this really brutal.

I'm going to need the whole flight back to Washington to be true.

You may want you to imitate some other brutal people.

I'm going to come on this.

But before we take a break, I want to make a prediction.

My prediction is three or four weeks from now on this program, we'll be talking about the talks have broken down.

The Kinetic War continues.

The fighting season is ending as we go into the cold winter and there's a stalemate.

And the Europeans are arming the Ukraine.

Which takes time.

Takes time, but the Europeans are going to fill the American gap.

Three years, probably.

Three to five years.

And we are going to be fighting through the 2028 presidential election.

And then the question is: do the Republicans do.

Barroso, who is very close at the moment to Donald Trump.

So it's interesting that he is texting to say there's a lot of appetite for this sanctions bill.

Okay, we're going to take a break and talk about the economy when we come back.

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Welcome back to the Rest is Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci.

Me, Katty Kaye.

Katty, the cash register is ringing for the 45th and 47th President of the United States.

He's made $3.4 billion.

I'm putting my little pinky up like Dr.

Evil, $3.4 billion

since the inauguration, Caddy.

Okay, his net worth has doubled from $2.3 billion to $5.1 billion.

Six months.

Yep, and

he's getting, Caddy, a $400 million modified 747 from the Qataris.

It's going to be burled out by the U.S.

Air Force and the Secret Service.

And according to him, he's going to be able to take it with him when he leaves if he ever leaves the presidency.

So So, what's going on here, Caddy?

Is that a cool thing to have happen in a country?

He is doing well, right?

Donald Trump has done well in the first six months of his presidency.

How is the rest of the economy doing?

Because

I feel like here we are in beautiful Wyoming, and it's a lovely blue sky out there, but just over the mountains on the other side of the valley, I'm seeing some little clouds peek up behind.

And what I can't tell is: are those clouds going to become a huge big storm that rains on the rest of the country, or are they going to flitter by with just a little drop of water or two?

He's inherited a very strong economy.

Lots of repairs were done during the Biden administration.

Believe it or not, policies were put in place to tame inflation.

Inflation is down now.

I always tell clients of mine at Skybridge Capital: go to trueflation.com if you really want to see where the inflation numbers are, because I believe that the Fed and others are aggregating inflation with old technology and old standards.

That's interesting because the last, I mean, the most recently publicized numbers suggest that inflation was actually up last month.

Yeah.

It's up slightly, but

they're saying inflation is trending from 2.7%

to 3.1%.

But if you actually look at the data on the ground, and these are people that are tying modems to cash registers and they're looking at wholesale receipts all over the country, inflation is actually closer to the 2% target that the Fed is suggesting.

And the economy is weakening and inflation is down there.

Okay, you know,

one of the Fed Board of Governors is here at this conference, Chris Waller, of course, he's a Trump appointee from 2020.

He would look at that data, and he obviously voted for a rate cut.

He was one of the Fed governors that voted for a rate cut, even though we didn't get one last time.

But if you look at the data, and I do agree with Donald Trump on this data, so I always want to be objective here about Donald Trump.

He does have uncanny instincts in certain areas.

He has suggested that we've needed a rate cut for some time.

I believe he is correct.

I believe if you get that rate cut, you'll create a soft landing in the economy.

There's no need with all the productivity gains through AI, robotic technology, the improvements in biotechnology, all of that stuff happening contemporaneously, there's no need for a hard landing, steep recession in the United States right now.

So, to my weather analogy, there are clouds brewing.

Yes.

But you think we could disperse the clouds with a rate cut?

Yeah,

there could be light rain, but there doesn't have to be a heavy hurricane coming through the economy.

The policies of tariffs and CEOs have said to both of us that by the end of August they can no longer swallow the costs of the tariffs anymore, that they will have to start passing those on to the American public, that those will not necessarily be inflationary in such a way that will hurt the economy and mitigate against a rate cut, and that the immigration policies are not driving up unemployment and labor costs.

So again, they start out inflationary, right?

Because they've added prices to the goods and services, but they end up being deflationary.

Just hear me out for a second.

Because what happens is, let's say I'm a middle-class worker or a blue-collar person, working class person in the United States.

It's a regressive tax on me, that tariff.

It's a sales tax.

Yes, exactly.

So it becomes deconsumptive.

So, okay, whoa, wait a minute.

General Motors absorbed the first few months, two quarters of tariff increases.

They're not doing it now.

Okay, you know what?

I can't buy that car.

So I'm going to delay the consumption.

And when you delay the consumption, you decrease the demand.

in the society and then you slow down the growth and that's when you could end up in a recession.

So if I'm channeling Jerome Powell, Jerome Powell would say to you, yep, the tariffs haven't really had their full effect yet, but by the first quarter of 2026, they're going to be in place and they're going to be really hurting the economy.

And I've got to look at and analyze the data to see when the inflation peaks before I start cutting rates.

I would be cutting rates faster than that because I can already see the horizon and I think that's exactly what's going to happen.

But here's the point about all this.

Rather than doing what past presidents have done, which is I have this wonderful decentralized economy and I have a bunch of lunatic citizens in the United States.

Why do I say lunatic citizens?

Well, that would be me.

My family comes in from Italy.

Nobody has any money.

They're super ready to work.

They're super ready to take risk.

They give birth to me.

I'm ready to take risk.

I'm ready to adapt myself.

If I got to move from hedge funds into crypto, wherever I got to go, I'm ready ready to do that.

The United States has the most neurally plastic, most flexible, most adaptive economy in the world.

And a good president would be like, I have this wonderful decentralized economy.

How do I keep these people going?

What are the right tax incentives?

What are the right motivations for these people?

But not Donald Trump.

Because it's all about him.

He has switched the game from this free market identity.

Calvin Coolidge once said the business of America is, remember what he said, the business of America is business, but not Donald Trump.

And by the way, Ronald Reagan, he had a portrait of Calvin Coolidge in the cabinet room, but not Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is

what about me of enough

enough of me making money for me.

How are you going to make money for me, Katie Kay?

That is Donald Trump.

And that's what, because J.D.

Vance said something interesting this week, which really struck me, where he said, there's no meaningful distinction between the public and the private sector in the US.

I thought, I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I thought the whole point of what made America different from European countries is that there's a very clear distinction between the public and the private sector in the US, which is why when you get Donald Trump intervening in the private sector in the way that he has done over the last few weeks, because he clearly feels that he needs to be micromanaging the economy or directing the economy, doing things like saying that the CEO of a private company of Intel

should resign taking a 15% share of the revenue from China sales from NVIDIA and in exchange for giving it basically an export license to China to sell its chips.

But all of it is intervention in private companies.

I mean that feels like state capitalism, not

capitalism.

So

it would be state capitalism if he had state planners working with him and they said, okay, we're going to take a piece of capitalism

it's a good line it's overall office capitalism it's that's where we're capitalism by Trump decree

it is

he he is Louis the 14th

I am the economic state and oh by the way you're going to pay me patronage Tim Cook I weighed the gold bar that you gave me the 24 karat gold bar it just wasn't enough Tim Cook so send me something else and it's patronage And there are CEOs around America saying, well, I do have to meet with him.

I got to go to the Oval Office.

What favor am I currying to him?

What am I giving him?

What idea am I giving him?

Where he's going to walk out of the Oval Office and say, me and my family are richer as a result of this meeting.

And I got to tell you, that has a break in historical norms for the president of the United States.

And the real question, this is a question for you because I think you're more objective than me.

Is the next president

going to go back to something normal, Caddy?

Or is the next president going to say, hmm, Trump got away with a lot.

I could make a couple billion dollars off this job.

What do you think happens?

I don't think America necessarily elects another president who's motivated by making money for their family because there's not a ton of history of that in the American presidency.

But I could see the next president doing something else that Donald Trump has laid the groundwork for, which is thinking I can expand the power of the presidency in lots of different directions, and I'm going to use those levers of power because I would be a chump to not do so.

Because if that president has done so, if you let's say it's a Democrat who comes in, a Democrat who comes in is now going to say, well, hold on a second, I would be crazy not to expand the executive power as much as the last guy did, because that will allow me to enact my democratic agenda faster, more ruthlessly.

And why would I give away that?

Why would I go back to normal?

I'm more worried about that than America electing another president who comes in and says, I'm going to actually try and make however it's going to be.

What did you say it made?

What did he say it made?

He made like 3.4 billion.

I don't know that the country is going to elect another president.

Okay, but there's 3.4 billion.

There's this beautiful, unsun-tanned, cabbage-patched cherub.

Beautiful cherub.

And the guy's name is J.D.

Vance.

You ever hear of him?

He's much less of a money grubber than Donald Trump is.

Don't you think?

I mean, I don't see anything in J.D.

Vance's career that is where the primary focus is.

J.D.

Vance's primary focus is power, but not necessarily in the pursuit of personal wealth.

In the degree that the Trump family and the Trump organization has been singularly focused on shifting, building rules, building permits for decades in New York in order to expand, bending the rules, finding the loophole in the law, stretching that loophole as wide as possible, walking through that hole in order to profit the Trump organization.

Listen, I hope you're right.

My father did that too.

I hope you're right.

I just find, because I've been on Wall Street for 30, sort of believe, 37 years now, I find that money is a great temptation device for many.

And Trump has just shown people, hey, man, I'm clocking a couple billion dollars a month.

And, you know, I could probably make 15 or 20 billion dollars from the presidency if I can just keep this gig going.

And you're saying to me that that's not tempting to somebody like J.D.

Nansen.

And I hope you're right about that.

And I hope you're right.

I'm not tempting to anybody, but I think they, look, and there are plenty of presidents.

Barack Obama has made a ton of money since leaving the White House.

A lot of presidents make a lot of money after they leave the White House by selling books and having media companies and giving incredibly well-speech-paid speeches around the world.

And

they profit from having been president of the United States.

I think there's a quantifiable difference about what has happened with that amount of money.

There was an outcry in 1989.

An outcry.

President Ronald Reagan accepted a $2 million speaking gig gig in Japan.

And the guy left the White House with a modest amount of money, and he was looking to bolster his retirement income.

So he went to Japan and gave a speech.

And now, fast forward, it's 37 years later, and we've got a guy making billions of dollars, and we're really not even getting...

hardly any outrage over it, right?

The American public, he's done such a good job of immunizing the American public from his behavior that people just shrug and say, well, well, that's Donald Trump.

You want to make $800 million off of meme coin?

Well, that's Donald Trump.

You want to accept a $400 million gift from the Qataris?

Well, that's Donald Trump.

Oh,

he's going to charge Nvidia 15%,

which doesn't even seem

I mean, it seems so arbitrary and capricious, it could probably be challenged in the courts, but oh, well, that's Donald Trump.

There's something in the American psyche.

There is something in the American psyche, and I've spoken to plenty of voters over the last five elections, that whether you vote Democrat or you vote Republican, whether you're working class or middle class in this country, you are okay with people making a lot of money.

In fact, you think good for them.

They've made a lot of money.

If I could get on the ladder, I too would make a lot of money.

So

it's something that I think in Europe is

more frowned on, people are more suspicious of, they don't like it as much.

But here it's seen as aspirational.

and Donald Trump has just taken that to the nth degree.

So

I think you're right about this.

But it's just frustrating for me because I think

it's too far over the line in terms of the conflicts of interest.

But I'm going to ask you this question.

And I have my answer, but I'd like to hear yours.

So China has an economic model where they've integrated the government into the private sector, and it's well integrated.

J.D.

Vance said that there's no distinction anymore.

Is that really true?

Or is this an oval office economic direction?

Is there as much integration as J.D.

Vance is suggesting?

Or is this just economics by decree?

This is oval office capitalism.

I think it's that rather than state capitalism.

But the risk for Donald Trump now is that he owns this.

He owns the economy.

He owns DC crime.

He owns it.

Joe Biden.

It's Joe Biden's economy, guys.

It's 2028 January.

This was Joe Biden's economy.

This is Joe Biden's war.

It's Joe Biden's eye.

In 2028, it's still going to be Joe Biden's economy.

It depends on how the economy is doing.

If it's doing great, it's Donald Trump's economy.

We're going to leave it there.

In our question and answers for the founding members, by the way, this week, we are going to talk about Jeff Epstein because we mentioned his name in this.

By the way, remind me who he is.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

Jesus.

We're going to talk about decentralization.

We need Jeff Epstein.

Trump is really good at this, Caddy.

He knows how to deflect it.

He knows how to do it.

He's got the National Guards on the streets of the nation's capital.

That's another good deflection.

We'll talk about all of that.

If you would like to become a founding member, we would love to have you.

You can join us at therestispoliticsus.com.

And if Caddy's excellent sales pitch still hasn't sold it to you, here is a clip from this week's founding members episode.

Hope you enjoy.

With Rupert Murdoch soon turning 94 and a half years old, who do you think will be the potential buyers of Fox News?

And my second question, do you think Elon Musk would be interested?

So, I, first of all, there are reports that Rupert Murdoch is ailing.

I hope that's not the case, obviously.

But

I wish him and his family well.

But in the event, unfortunately, as Mel Brooks says, relax, none of us are getting out of here alive.

I mean, he will likely pass.

If he passes during the Trump administration, Caddy, I do think Trump will call his buddies, which may or may not include Elon Musk, and say, hey, guys, we have to get a confederation of people together to buy Fox News, to keep Fox News in my camp.

Moreover, Rupert was not MAGA enough for me.

And so we need a pure form of network programming of MAGA.

And so I believe he will muscle and bully a confederation of billionaires to buy it.

And then he's going to install programmers.

He may have get somebody like his friend Sean Hannity run the programming or the editorial content to kick the thing off.

So that would be my idea.

So a group of people like Bill Ackman, Peter Thiel.

Yeah, you pick the people.

Pick the people.

People that are pure MAGA in Trump's camp.

He may call Tim Apple, okay, also known as Tim Cook, and say, hey, Tim, you're throwing a billion dollars into this Confederation for me.

The gold ignit that you gave me in the Oval Office isn't enough.

But you got to throw a billion dollars into this thing, or I'm going to bully you on sanctions and tariffs and all kinds of other stuff.

And to me,

if Ruper passes during the Trump administration, I really think Donald Trump is going to orchestrate and coordinate the buy of Fox News.

I hope you enjoyed that clip.

Go to therestispoliticsus.com to become a founding member, and then you can hear the full episode.

Thanks for listening, everyone.

Thanks, guys.

We'll see you next week.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

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When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

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Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

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