76. Trump's Trillion Dollar Market Meltdown

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Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US,

to our weekly live stream for founding members only.

It's going to come out as a podcast on Tuesday.

We have people joining us from Dorset, from Sweden, from North Macedonia, as opposed to South Macedonia, Scottsdale, Alberta, Canada.

You're coming from all over.

Somebody's even skiing still.

We pointed out that that was late in the season.

Stockholm, Sweden.

Anyway, thank you all for joining us.

And we've got Anthony with us, moisturized, awake, caffeinated.

Somebody on the live stream said, Am I going to be on time?

Okay, I was on.

Look at the hair, Caddy.

Okay, can I just say something?

Somebody else the Princess Lane.

Just before doing this, you were on the Times radio.

So that is totally adultery in our book.

That's just before you came on.

Oh, is that right?

Oh, I thought

I was promoting your podcast, though.

No?

Well, hopefully it's our podcast.

Well, it's our podcast, but you know, you're the star.

Guys, send us your questions.

We're going to talk, of course, about the only,

well, there are actually quite a lot of stories, but the big story, which is the mayhem following Trump's tariff announcements last week, trillions of dollars have been wiped from global markets.

The Dow Jones, the American markets, the S ⁇ P, they have all been in free fall a little bit better today, Monday as we've speaking.

It's been a bit of a volatile day in trading.

We've had reaction from people in the administration over the course of the weekend.

And as we sit here recording this at one o'clock Eastern Time on Monday, I was wondering, Anthony, if you could tell me, is Donald Trump in a mood to capitulate, even if he calls it a victory?

Is he freaked out by the markets and the reaction that they've had?

Or is he determined to hold the course and reshape the American economy, whatever the cost to financial markets?

Well, first of all, he cannot reshape the American economy.

So let's just make sure everybody understands that.

I mean, we're not going to suddenly start making sneakers and t-shirts.

And even Neil Ferguson said if you it would be like you taking one of the Minecraft hammers you're trying to reset your laptop but you take a hammer and smash it on the top of the laptop and shatter everything that's that's not going to reset the laptop any more than what Donald Trump is doing to quote-unquote try to reset the economy and what's odd is that The people that are chanting alongside of Donald Trump, whether it's the Fox News anchors or the MAGA crowd and social media, media, they actually don't even understand the history of the trading situation.

And I'll be brief, Katie, but I think it's important for our founding members to understand this.

I'm being told by Fox News anchors, well,

you lived in a neighborhood.

What if somebody hit you?

How would you respond?

I said, well, first of all, nobody hit us.

Okay, the general agreement of trade and tariffs was set up by us.

We unevened the playing field.

We allowed goods to come into our economy unfettered.

We accepted barriers and tariffs from other countries because we were trying to protect these countries from Joseph Stalin.

We were trying to protect these countries from Stalinism.

And so we set it up.

So you can't say that the EU or Asia or whatever were trying to hit us.

They weren't trying to hit us.

We set it up.

If you want to reset it, it's okay.

Trump said something on the plane last night.

I'm like, okay, we set up the Marshall Plan.

We propose the the Marshall Plan.

Trump's now saying that he wants from the EU

not only for them to quote unquote pay their fair share, but he wants reparations from them.

So I don't, does he want them to pay back the Marshall Plan, which we've already proven from an infrastructure coefficient, it was remarkably beneficial to the U.S.

economy to actually do the Marshall Plan.

So he's got to think about being paid back because he has the same kind of idea for Ukraine, right?

That the Ukrainians should be paying back.

I mean, I think, in a way, one way of understanding everything that is happening at the moment is to think of Trump in terms of his retro, and sorry, I jumped in, but just that concept of retribution that he has, that America has been hard done by, or he has been hard done by, or bros have been hard done by, or whatever his tribe of the moment is has been hard done by.

And that, you know, you could look at the DEI stuff, you can look at the stock markets, you look at the tariffs as part of that, that he wants payback.

He thinks America Inc.

deserves payback.

You're right.

Yeah, I mean, so look, I mean, but the point is,

nobody did that to us.

We did it.

We created it.

If you want to reset it, it's okay.

Katie, you're my neighbor.

You're under attack.

I come over to your house and say, okay, listen, I'm going to put some barricades up.

I'm going to protect you.

And if I protect you, it's actually going to benefit me and protect me.

And then we're sharing some goods in our two houses.

And then all of a sudden, I come over and say, hey, give me the money for the protection that I provided you.

Well, excuse me, I thought we were neighbors.

We're trying to help each other stay safe in the society.

You see, so it's what he's doing is so quintessentially not American.

And moreover,

we are still the richest country.

So I don't know.

I don't really understand all that.

But let me just say this to you, which I find amusing about Trump.

He's talking about inflation coming down.

You crush the economy.

Okay.

You have a 70% chance of a recession now.

So, of course, the prices are going to come down.

You had a $1.2 trillion trade deficit with the world.

You took $8 trillion

out of our market, $13 trillion out of all markets.

And now, now, Caddy, and please respond to this.

He's saying because the Chinese have reciprocated with a 34% tariff, he wants to add an additional 50%

on them.

On top of tariffs tariffs that are already existing on top of that.

We're over and now 100% tariffs.

So I want you to be a State Department official, and I want you to say, is this the way an American

the American president is the obviously the commander-in-chief, but he's also the chief diplomat of the United States.

So

this is the childish way that you would want the American leadership to so you don't you don't want to get in the room with the Chinese.

You don't want to get in the room with the Europeans.

You don't want to say, okay, listen, guys,

U.S.

worker wages are down.

U.S.

worker real disposable income is down.

Help me help you.

I got to fix this.

And by the way, if I fix this, there's more disposable income in the world.

Americans are consumers.

Help me fix this.

Let's do a reverse Marshall Plan.

Help me here in the United States.

Help me fix living standards for the American people.

And guess what that will do?

That'll have a positive effect on your economies because they'll end up buying more from your economies.

Why not take that approach as opposed to this sort of hammering approach?

Go ahead, you be the diplomat and you tell me what you would do.

Look, I mean, I think I had a conversation with David Brooks, the New York Times opinion writer this morning, and he said something, I would love to say it was my idea, but he made this great analogy, historical analogy.

He said, you look at the

great successful empires during the course of history, whether it was kind of Rome in the 500s or Venice in the 1500s or the Ottoman Empire or the United States, they've been crossroads empires.

So, and his term was, you know, they're the crossroads of trade and ideas.

And that's what makes them thrive.

I mean, you compare that to the USSR, I guess, which was not a crossroads empire in terms of trade and ideas and didn't have a free flow of trade or ideas and was massively weakened because of that.

And like you say, America has completely thrived on this system that it has built up and supported and benefited from from for the last 80 years.

I mean, actually, if you look at the number of people who are earning less than 35,000 in America, it has been dramatically reduced over the last 50 years.

And the number of people earning over 100,000 has significantly increased.

And we can talk about huge amounts of income inequality, which is a problem in America, and the fact that people have been left behind by globalization without a kind of safety net to secure them from the 1990s onwards.

But broadly speaking, the numbers support more trade making societies and countries wealthier.

And I think if you, if you were, thanks very much for making me Marco Rubio for the day on a great day like this.

I think the only thing you can do, and that's what we've been hearing from the Trump administration, is this bullying tone.

I mean, what's he, he said, anyone who is, don't be a panican.

I don't even know what a panican is.

Are you a panican?

No, no, I think

that's the thing.

And what he then says is that's the party for weak and stupid people

that's a former Republican who's now a Panican.

So

he's telling you that that's a new party called the Panican.

Which is basically anyone who's weak and stupid is what he then said.

Well, but it's not.

So

let me make Trump's case for everybody.

Okay, and then again, hear me out.

What if I said to you, okay, listen, we have declining living standards for our middle and lower middle class, and a result of which there's been a gradualism of increasing tariffs in places, even like Canada and the EU, that the U.S.

has accepted, but I'm the new man on watch now.

And I've got to get these living standards up for the American worker, Caddy.

But I also know that the American worker, like the Boeing plane, 60% of the components are coming in from the rest of the world.

So I've got to be delicate with this.

But what if I went to you, you were the EU or you you were China, and I said, okay, listen, I'm going to put a 10% across-the-board tariff.

Please accept that tariff.

Moreover, here are certain industries where I think you're dumping stuff in our market.

You got to stop doing that.

I got to get these living standards up for these Americans.

Let's revisit it in two or three years, and then we could negotiate again.

Would that have been a better approach, perhaps?

I'm just asking

as opposed to taking a hammer and hitting everybody over the head straight away.

He's got the tablet out.

He's got the tablet.

He's holding the tablet up.

And I'm looking at the tablet.

I'm like, okay, the math doesn't even make sense.

And the tablets.

The math doesn't even make sense.

And so I'm saying, okay, so now where'd you get that number from?

And then you figure out where he got the number from.

And then you're like, okay, but that's not even the number.

That's not even the weighted trading tariff in between the nations.

But then he's got these willing sycophants.

So explain that to me.

So these guys know better.

And so they're sitting around with him saying, this is good.

Like, I know Besent,

as we reported last week.

By the way, has been looking very awkward over the past.

But as we reported last week, he was not in the meetings.

His people are now leaking.

He wasn't in the meetings, try to save an aspect of his reputation.

We know that

Luttnick is in the crosshairs of several of the other cabinet officials now.

They're dropping bombs on him, not only leaking to Politico, but they're

letting

This crisis has caused a bit of a viper's nest because you've got Elon tweeting against Peter Navarro, who is another of the architects of the protectionist plan and has long been a supporter of tariffs, and was there with Lutnik coming up with this, and then other members of the administration leaking against Lutnik.

This is not, doesn't to me suggest a happy administration.

I do think the question of competence has to be raised.

I mean, I think we always hope that there is a plan.

And a couple of people have suggested to me there isn't really a plan.

This is just something that Donald Trump believes in, but he didn't make provisions beforehand for what would happen if the market fell and how far he was prepared to let the market fall and for how long he was prepared to let this pain

play out, that he didn't really have a plan for that.

And I think the other thing we have to wonder about is this issue of corruption.

There was, you know,

one of the Bill Ackman, a big hedge fund guy in New York, was raising questions about whether some of the people in the administration had shorted the market beforehand, been long on treasuries, and so were

had a sort of conflict of interest in this.

The Wall Street Journal had a really good line on Friday, which is that liberation, I think it was Friday, Liberation Day is buy another yacht day.

for everybody in the swamp because for all of those countries and industries that are making calls now to the administration which they're doing at the moment trying to negotiate guess what there's some lobbyist who's making a lot of money uh out of that

so i think the the corruption and the competence questions are big questions but then the other question and this is actually something that um

a couple of the people jay jay morrissey is asking this and i think this is the essential question i wonder what you feel about this does trump ever back down.

I was texting with somebody who's been pretty close to Trump over the last eight years, and he texted to me that Trump has to still prove that the world is wrong and that he will eventually capitulate, but he's not ready to yet because he has to win.

Trump, it's zero sum, right?

He can't be wrong, and he has to be right, and the world has to be wrong.

And he still hasn't finished proving that yet.

Yeah, well, I mean, he won't back down classically.

He'll declare victory and postpone the tariffs, or he'll declare victory, and

he'll probably try to find somebody in his staff to help him find some type of diplomatic way out where the Chinese say 10 and he says 10, and then they call it a day.

But I think there's a lot of different things going on.

I just want to bring up these three things, then we'll take the questions.

So, thing number one is Bill Ackman, U.S.

billionaire.

I know Bill a long time, in the cockpit for Donald Trump four months ago, Halcyon era coming, golden age of growth.

Now he's like, WTF, what are you doing?

You're about to destroy the global economy.

And I think this is the migration that people have with Donald Trump.

They start with him.

They say, okay, let me double down on the loyalty to show Trump how loyal I am.

Then they're like, wait a minute, the guy is completely wrong, completely wrong.

So how do we fix it?

How do we fix it?

Right?

I think that's what's going on now.

So you have a lot of people doing that.

You have even people in the administration doing that.

Number Number two, the tariffs have a weird thing, haven't been put in place yet, but when they do, they'll cause inflation caddy.

So, Trump's saying the inflation is down, but they will cause inflation.

But there's a coefficient to the tariffs, not to be wonky and an economist.

They will also slow down the growth.

But the tariffs are so high that they will cause more inflation than they will offset the slowdown in the growth, which caused deflation.

So, the tariffs are going to start out inflating, then they're going to crush the entire global economy, and then you're going to end up with 1933, 1934-style deflation.

And as Nicola King is pointing out, and I put this on Twitter over the weekend, he's Liz Truss.

He's putting everything out there like Liz Truss did in an asidine way, which was crushing the sovereign debt of the UK, and it forced an immediate removal.

I think she lasted like 4.1 scaramuccias, but he's in the job.

Unless you have a 25th Amendment, he's in the job.

One last point.

He is the virus.

This is just like March of 2020, COVID-19, except Trump is the virus.

And unless you're going to put through the 25th Amendment, you can't get rid of him.

And he's crushing the lower middle-income people who have their pensions.

Police officers, firemen, first responders have their money in the stock market as a result of their pensions.

and he's destroying them.

So

I don't get it.

You know,

it'll cause his poll numbers to drop for sure, and it'll cause a.

And the Democrats are in disarray, Gaddy, but this is going to be a big boon to them.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then we will come back with your questions.

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I want to ask this question, Katar Zinya Zavatskaya.

I hope I've got that right, Katazinia.

What should happen for Trump to back down?

Because I think that is what the markets are waiting for.

Everybody, there was a blip today when it looked like maybe

the administration was going to negotiate some sort of 60-day pause in the implementation of the tariffs.

The administration then came out on the record and said, no, that's not the case.

That was fake news.

But how far do you think it has to go?

Because if it, let's say, I mean, the markets are a little,

it's less freefall today as we're speaking.

Let's say it bumps along like this for the next day or two, and some people decide, okay,

I'm going to buy the dip, things are looking a little cheaper, and we see a little bit of a rally maybe on Tuesday, Wednesday.

At that point, does the administration say, does the president say, you see, I'm vindicated, we can handle the pain.

it's not going to keep on falling forever.

And

he has a real ideological commitment.

And

you laid out why he can't do this.

Several economists have said to me over the weekend why it's not possible for America to, and he didn't do it in his first term, right?

He imposed tariffs and there wasn't much of a boost in manufacturing jobs.

It's not going to happen.

But what would it take for him to say,

okay, this

This punt of mine, this experiment of mine didn't work out and

I'm going to have to pull back from imposing the tariffs.

I mean, I can see how politically he paints it as a win, but he'll just say there was negotiations and he got some sort of better deal.

That's fine.

He can do that.

He's very good at doing that.

But

what's the moment?

What's the breaking point for him, do you think?

Well, you know,

I don't see it.

I'm going to take the position that this is the 78, about to be 79-year-old Donald Trump completely emboldened.

I'll take the position.

He doesn't have to run again.

Your friend Ezra Klein said this over the weekend with Paul Krugman, which I agree with.

The family figure in the first administration was Jared Kushner.

He brought in the Gary Cohns, et cetera.

The family figure here is Donald Trump Jr.

They're bringing in MAGA people that are died in the Wool cultists.

And so they won't back down.

I don't see why he would back down.

Moreover, he just canceled his press conference with Israel's prime minister, Letan Yahoo, for supposed to take place today at 2:30, not doing the press conference because what does he want to do?

He's going to stand in front of the microphone and say, hey, you just blew up the global economy, Mr.

President, and for no reason, because this is not going to change manufacturing in the United States.

What do you say, Mr.

President?

I'm tripling down and want to have a global depression because Vladimir Putin would like that?

I mean,

what is he going to say?

So I don't see him, I don't see him backing down.

So, but what I do see

happening is a revolt.

I do see happening.

You see, it's an interesting thing because he went after all the law firms.

So the CEOs, like usually in a situation like this, the money center bank CEOs, the Monahans, Jamie Dimons, et cetera, would come out and say, this is absurd.

But they won't do it because Trump went after all the law firms.

And so the boards of these companies are like, hey, man,

don't say anything bad about Trump because we don't even have anybody to defend you if Trump's going to come after you.

These law firms have all capitulated to Donald Trump.

And so your sort of free speech rights and your rights to dissent have been chilled by Donald Trump.

So I find it astonishing.

You know, Jamie Diamond came out with his annual letter today, very muted on what's going on.

Stan Druckenmiller, thank God, brilliant guy, put out on Twitter, never tweets, very quiet guy.

He's like, I wouldn't accept anything more than a 10% tariff.

There was a way to do this, Caddy.

If you're a Trumper and you said to me, okay, here's the problem and we're going to solve it MAGA-like, there was a way to do this.

And there was a way to do it gradually.

Trump could have gotten a win here economically,

but

there's no diplomacy.

He wanted the big show, though, Anthony.

A win diplomatically and economically is incremental.

A lot of the work is done behind closed doors.

You lay the groundwork beforehand in long, often private conversations and you don't announce this as we are the big strong guys.

As he's said a couple of times since imposing these tariffs, look, it's great.

Now we hold all the cards.

They are the supplicants.

Part of the reason for doing this is that he wanted the show, right?

He wanted the big numbers.

He wanted a maximalist position as a demonstration of his personal strength and power.

And I really think he thought he could bend the world economy to his will.

And that was the hubris of this.

And what the markets are telling him is, no, Mr.

President, you can't.

You cannot make black into white or two plus two into six just because you think you are that powerful.

And this is a man who clearly believes they've come into office incredibly confident.

I've rarely seen an administration come in this cocky.

They've got all the branches of government.

He feels he had this, he was totally vindicated from his loss in 2020.

And there's a sense that he feels he can do anything.

And the mistake he seems to have made is thinking that that actually then translates into policy, not just politics.

But this is a question from John Cannon.

My pension tanked the past few days.

Is it time to cut ties with America?

And the reason I brought up John's question now is that my understanding, speaking to economists over the weekends, is globalization isn't going to stop.

We're not going to stop having global trade or goods made in some countries.

And we haven't even talked about services and the amount of services America exports and services produced in another country.

But what will happen is that the global open free trading system

will carry on around America.

So America

runs the risk of becoming Brexited off, that was your brilliant phrase, with a moat around it.

And you're already seeing it.

Europeans don't necessarily want to have a closer trading relationship with China.

But at the moment, they're looking at America's instability and volatility and thinking they haven't got much choice.

I would just say to John that, you know, we have a tendency for self-correction in the United States.

And hopefully this is a bridge too far.

But I just want to say this to you and get you to react to it.

Okay, there's 11 people.

You know, one of my favorite numbers in life is 11, like in 11 days or son's birthday is on the 11th and lucky 11, right?

I was actually,

I mentioned this, yeah, I was actually married on the 11th, July 11th.

So, 11 shows up in my life a lot.

There's 11 people that could change the world right now.

You want me to tell you who they are?

Yeah.

Okay, there are three senators, three Republican senators, there are three Republican cabinet members, and there are

five members of the House.

Okay, if you had 11 people who are now Republicans and just in that configuration say, we're done, and they caucus with the Democrats, the senators, and the members of the House, and three cabinet members resign,

okay, you will start the locomotion to weakening Donald Trump.

And this is what I've said to you repeatedly.

He's only strong because you're willing.

to accept his strength and you're willing to be a willing accomplice.

So 11 people could save the world and save America right now.

And by the way, there are more, a little bit more because of this, of those voices are speaking up over.

Can we leave it to 11 though, Caddy?

Because it's like a big number for me.

Is that okay?

Yeah, no, 11 is very good.

It's an important number to you.

Therefore, it's an important number for me.

Therefore, the important number for the rest is politics.

U.S.

We will start liking 11.

So long as there are more than 11 founding members, we'll be happy.

Okay.

Well,

this is a group that is not speaking up.

And I wanted to bring this up.

Nino C has asked us: where are the U.S.

business leaders?

Why aren't they speaking up?

And I was going to ask you this question because it's been noticeable to me that the big leaders, the CEOs, the Fortune 500 companies who must be, forgive the language, bricking themselves over watching what's happening to their share prices.

Why are they not on Fox Business News?

Why are they not on CNBC?

Why are they not, are they that chilled?

Are they that?

I know that we've had some smaller ones in privately owned companies who don't have to worry about their shareholders.

But that, I think that it was, it has been striking to me because it's got to the degree of chill and fear.

We've talked about it in terms of law firms, we've talked about it in terms of universities, but it's there in the business sector too.

And the amount of

bullying is the wrong word.

It's

kind of a cultural gear shift where people are afraid to speak up and speak out.

And it's been interesting how we have not heard from the business community saying that's enough.

So, I mean, it's a great question, but I think it's related to what I was saying about the bank CEOs.

I think these very large companies are being told, don't speak up.

He's going to come after you.

It's going to harm you, harm your family, and harm our company.

And so, this is really, and again, Obama said this over the weekend.

Could you imagine if I pulled this sort of nonsense and I kicked Fox News out of the press room and I went after Republican-minded people and tried to silence their dissent.

Can I say one other thing about that?

Because what I was thinking about this morning, and I've got another question from you from Vance Cochrane, which I want to bring up.

But just before that, related to what you said about Obama, in 2008, when we went through a similar period of real anxiety in the U.S.

economy and in the U.S.

markets, the American public, and I know that not all Americans have money in the stock market, obviously, but a lot of Americans who are middle-class, working Americans who have pension funds, who have pensions, do have money in the US stock market.

And they're feeling very anxious at the moment, just as they were in 2008.

I was speaking to somebody just this morning who lost her house in 2008 and had to foreclose and declare bankruptcy.

And she said, this is like having, you know, PTSD all over again, watching this.

And

at that time, the American public knew that the administration, the Bush administration

and the political figures who were battling it out for the election were working around the clock.

All weekend, they worked to try to rescue the markets, to make sure that Americans didn't lose their pensions and

their assets when the markets opened on Monday morning.

What was President Trump doing this weekend?

He's playing golf.

I mean, again, but that's

any staff that had

guts and backbone would have said, what are you doing?

You can't be playing golf on a weekend like this.

But somebody, you know, Greg Allen's talking about why cabinet members, because I've got 11.

Well, if you had three cabinet levers leave, Greg, what would happen is it would fortify the other people on staff to start pushing back more.

And then he's got to get new cabinet members in that may or not be able to take his loyalty test.

And so remember, you got to get people inside the White House, like the Gary Cohn's, like the Stephen Mnuchins, that would push him back on a ridiculous policy like this, that General Kelly has.

Yeah, so you need cabinet members to resign, and you need a couple of congressmen and senators to say, hey, we're done with this.

And

by the way, you've had seven Republican senators speak out saying that Congress needs more authority over tariffs,

which is more.

Now, it's you know, it's seven, but it's not your 11, but it's more than we've had on any other issue.

But remember, Caddy, not to get overly procedural, but he's pulling an emergency.

He has emergency powers.

He's saying that the fentanyl crisis is causing this emergency, which is giving him the right to exert this influence.

So they would have to challenge that right in the court system, and then they would have to pass a law.

Okay.

And then they would have to measure that law versus the separate but equal branches of the government.

By which time, by the way, the damage is.

Yeah, it's too late.

The damage is done.

But Larry Fink is saying we are in a recession, just so everybody knows.

He says not to be selling your stocks here, but Donald Trump, it's a self-inflicted recession.

I'm going to wake up in the morning.

I'm going to take $10 trillion out of the capital markets and self-inflict the recession on the world.

The other thing is that America, obviously, as they did in 2008, Americans are feeling very anxious.

If you listen to

talk radio here, as I was over the weekend, and to the business shows over the weekend, the advice that Americans are being given at the moment is don't spend any money you don't have to.

Make sure your budget is good.

Make sure you have a rainy day fund.

Put those kind of that kitchen renovation on hold.

Don't buy that car.

And that, again, you know, to the extent, you know, this markets are psychology.

If people start getting super anxious about spending, paradoxically, you can, I see why everyone's doing it and I understand the rationale for doing it, but it's paradoxically the kind of thing that could also tip America at this moment into a recession.

Okay, finally, Vance Cochrane's question.

Anthony, how are you framing the current situation with your clients and how are you advising them to think about the future?

Well, again, I can't offer investment advice here, unfortunately, but what I do say, Vance, is to my clients is shut the news off.

Don't shut off the rest of Politics U.S., by the way, but shut the news off.

And, you know, listen, don't just let it go for right now, because I do believe in the powers of self-correction.

I do believe in the powers powers of organized dissent.

And I think that we will figure out a way to right-size this eventually.

And what you don't want to be is short the market when the market's on the way to recovering, or you'll be out of the market when the market's on the way to recovering.

And so just stay the course.

I try to tell clients

the best experience of my 36 years on Wall Street is sometimes doing nothing is the best thing.

You know, somebody called me today and said, hey, should I shift my equities for my children's college account into bonds?

I said, No, you're going to stay right where you are.

In a year's time, things will sort themselves out

and you'll be happy that you stayed in.

It's just that he's going to cause a recession, he's going to cause a setback.

It's going to require, it's going to cause more deficit spending in the U.S.

All the things that we don't need and all the things that we don't want are going to happen as a result of this superficial decision-making about tariffs.

It's not the cure-all.

It's not going to help us.

And there are other ways of going about it that would have been successful.

But your portfolio and your investment thesis should be a five-year horizon, not a two-minute horizon.

So just ignore that.

Of course, people who are about to retire who need to start drawing on that.

Right.

And even in 2008, those people, I said the same thing: stay calm because the Fed will have to come in and cut rates.

Midterm elections are coming.

You're in a position where you're drawing everything, right?

Right, exactly.

So you have time.

Yeah, I mean, listen, that's why you can't give investment advice.

I don't know each person specific.

It's not a cookie-cutter thing.

It's just a general statement.

There's one last question I want to take: Henrik Underberg's question.

When will this hit the MAGA base?

So I was having this conversation, and the reason I want to just finish with this is I was having this conversation over the course of the weekend with somebody who is very

supportive of Donald Trump and has become more supportive of Donald Trump over the years.

And my impression after that conversation is that this will not, the fervent people who support Donald Trump will not be put off by this.

It's probably about 20% of the electorate who are the real hardcore MAGA base and that a sort of sense of tribalism has set in.

and the more they feel under attack by the media or other family members in this case,

the more they are committed to Donald Trump and to his agenda.

And you see a lot of that around the world, I think, with politics in general.

People become incredibly tribal and people are tribal about Donald Trump.

But it's not all of the people that I've voted for him.

And I think that's important for people around the world as they look at America to remember there were a lot of people, millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump to bring down prices.

And it was pretty simple.

They didn't love the guy.

They've always said they didn't like his personality particularly, but they really didn't like prices and they didn't think that the Democrats were going to help them.

And so they were prepared to support Donald Trump and give it a go.

I think those are the ones he could be losing at the moment.

So a quick fun one, Tom.

Go on.

Barbara is saying, does Anthony have a figurine of himself behind him?

And I do, actually.

Okay.

That is a picture of me sinking in a Bitcoin boat.

See, that was my staff.

The New York Post, when I was getting killed in Bitcoin three years ago, they had me sinking in a Bitcoin boat.

And my staff, who's got a sense of humor, these SOBs, they made a bobblehead of me sinking in a Bitcoin boat.

So just a reminder, I didn't sell any Bitcoin there, and I was rewarded by not doing that.

But, Caddy, to your question, when Rupert Murdoch capitulates, then it is over.

So,

when the Fox News chant that starts at 7 p.m.

after Brett Baer's show, and those anchors are told by Rupert, hey, I'm done, pull the plug on Donald Trump, the cult will start changing.

But right now,

they're waiting to hear, oh, my God, the market's down.

But we're being told Trump is getting tough, and people are beating up on America, and Trump is fighting back.

People are not beating up on America.

Yeah, America is not beating up on America.

America is doing this to itself.

And actually, most leaders around the world are taking a calm-level approach, saying, Okay, let's not get involved in a trade war.

Let's try and see if we can negotiate this.

Give us a bit of time to see how the dust settles.

We're going to leave it there, but we'll be back with our regular podcast.

We'll be back next Monday with another live stream.

Look out for details on that.

Thank you again for being founding members.

I just want to say to Peter out there, I am a hypocrite.

I am giving advice differently than I gave to Rashid last week.

I want people addicted to the Rest's Politics U.S.

I want them to ignore all other news.

Of course, Alistair, if you're listening, they can listen to your show too.

And yes, bobbleheads of all of us coming your way in time.

I think your bobblehead would be the most flattering, though.

I look like a real stooge in that bobblehead, though.

Somehow I think that the Caddy K

bobblehead will be more flattering than Rory Alistair's or mine.

I'm not sure a bobblehead has ever been very flattering.

Guys, it's been a crazy few days.

We'll be back towards the end of the week.

So join us then.

Thanks for listening.