73. Trump’s War Plans, Group Chat Leaks, and Vance vs. Europe

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Honey punches the votes for all.

Hello, and welcome to The Rest is Politics U.S.

I'm Catty Kay.

And I'm Anthony Scaramucci on a text chain with Mike Walsh, the national security advisor.

So that's a different one from the one I'm on then, because I'm on with Pete Hegseth, who and I think they're bombing Greenland tonight, Anthony.

But I guess I shouldn't say that on air, right?

Because

are they changing the name to Orangeland?

I mean, I'm just sort of figuring that's the apropos name, right?

Okay, guys, you got the gist.

We are going to talk about this bizarre story of how a journalist was added to a group chat.

with top American officials about a military strike in Yemen.

We will break down the consequences, what the Democrats can do with this story, if anything, and more importantly, what it says about the administration's approach to national security.

And then in the second half of the break, we're going to look at Trump's latest economic headache, tariffs now affecting more than $1 trillion worth of imports, Musk's layoffs, what Wall Street is making about all of this.

And I think actually, very interestingly, what came out this week was also what American consumers, in other words, American voters, are making of all of this.

Okay, So if I told you we were going to go and take the Anthony Cattie K

Air Force bombers and bomb a rival podcast station, and then we put that out in the public, I'm assuming that probably would be pretty sensitive information.

What do you think?

Okay, I just want Alistair to know she said rival.

So you're you're part of our family.

Their family.

Yes, you're part of our NATO, you're part of our goal hanger NATO alliance, okay?

At this point, honestly, may have more teeth to it than the actual NATO.

All right.

Well, I mean, I have so many things to say, but I'm going to limit them to these following three things, okay?

Number one,

this is absurd, and these people should be fired immediately.

Just imagine President Eisenhower in a situation like this.

These people would be dispatched immediately.

This is completely absurd.

Number two, they won't get fired, and they can't get fired because they have passed the Donald Trump loyalty test.

Think of what Mike Walsh did during the January 6th situation, and think of how these people are barking and yelping on behalf of Donald Trump as evidenced by their text messaging between each other.

And so they're not going to get fired.

But number three, here's the glimmer of hope for the rest of us.

He can't replace them because nobody wants to take this loyalty test.

It's a very thin group of people that want want to be part of this absurd, incompetent force.

And that's good news.

That's good news for the world and that's good news for America.

What do you think?

So I think this is one of those interesting stories, and I'm going to put my kind of transatlantic hat on, where in Washington, and I agree with all of those, by the way, you're right, they won't get fired.

And Donald Trump made that pretty clear in the White House, and listening to Mike Waltz fall over himself to sound sort of Trumpian, both praising the president but also fighting and attacking the journalist who, by the way, Jeffrey Goldberg, I've known him for a very long time.

He's a very serious journalist.

The fact that he didn't straightaway release some of the more sensitive texts, although he did that again on Wednesday, is a tribute to how seriously he takes national security.

He knows a lot of people in the Pentagon, so I don't think his credentials are in doubt here.

I have to stop you because you're a journalist and I just have to ask you this question.

Yeah.

Is he or is he not part of Mike Walsh's contact list, Katie Kay?

I'm sure he is.

This guy's written books about national security.

Mike Waltz was a congressman,

and he's editor-in-chief of a major magazine.

There's no way that Mike Waltz wouldn't have.

I've never heard of the guy.

I've never spoken to the guy.

The guy is

awfully.

I mean, I wish I could go through the video and see of the times when I've seen, you know, find times where Mike Waltz and Jeffrey Goldberg have been in the same room together, but I don't think it'll take very long before the internet does that for us.

I am going to extinguish my soul in the lying for Donald Trump.

I want to get into the kabuki theater, known as the cabinet room, and I'm going to extinguish it.

I'm going to practice on Fox News.

I mean, and God bless Laura Ingram, by the way, because Laura Ingram is trying really hard to stay in line with state television, but she can't do it.

Because she's like, look at that.

I'm like, what are you talking about?

All right, I'm sorry I interrupted you, but I got to ask you, as a journalist, you know how full of shit this story is, right?

Yeah, I mean, and Laura also has had, we've all, every journalist in Washington has interviewed members of the Intel community, whether they're members of Congress or people in the CIA or in the Department of Defense.

And so to sit there and say there is nothing classified here, that is almost impossible for anyone who would call themselves a journalist to do.

I mean, it's and it doesn't pass the smell test, right?

We know that if you release to the any conversation about when the bombs are going to drop, the target is in that, is in the right position.

I mean, Houthis are not a joke.

They have anti-aircraft missiles.

Those planes were manned, as we all know by now.

They could have shot down, they could have positioned themselves to take retaliatory action if they'd got hold of that signal.

If the Russians had decided to give them, having broken into Steve Witkoff, the Ukraine advisor who was in Moscow at the time, all the Russians needed to do was listen in on Steve Witkoff's phone, which I'm sure they do.

You're in Moscow for God's sake, and say to the Houthis, okay, by the way, those American planes, they'll be over you in half an an hour.

I mean, of course, this doesn't pass any smell test that this wasn't classified.

But to what I was saying about the transatlantic thing, it's one of those stories that is being viewed quite differently from both sides of the Atlantic.

In Washington, this is a story about, is becoming a story about process, about how national security decisions are made, who is in the loop, what is classified and what is not classified, the conversation that we've just been having.

We can talk about what that means for Democrats in a little bit.

But on the other side of the Atlantic, over in Europe, the top headline from these text messages is that even in private, J.D.

Vance hates Europe.

I mean, the disdain for European allies, who may, by the way, now be thinking, hold on a second, how much am I going to share with the Pentagon?

Because who knows where it's going to go?

But the way he talks about Europe and freeloading and how disgusting it is and how spineless they are, I think that's it's just a story that is being viewed differently and has different consequences.

And once we've got through the process stage of this story, I think that is the long-term impact of this story, is the realization for Europeans again that they've got to get their own security together because they cannot rely on America.

I'm going to channel our brothers at the Rest is Classified for a second and ask you a question.

So now you and I are sitting at MI6 and I turn to you as my colleague and say, okay, so obviously the Russians lifted Witkoff's phone.

They know these imbeciles are on signal chatting with each other.

And just take you back to Enigma, you know, we cracked the code.

The Brits and Bletchley cracked the code.

And they let a lot of bombings happen, frankly.

They didn't prevent a lot of bombings because they had the code.

And so why would the Russians let the Houthis know?

Let them bomb the Houthis.

Let them think that they're okay.

Let's lull these imbeciles into thinking that we don't have them completely cracked.

And your response to that is what?

No, I mean, I think you're probably right on that one.

Would the Russians stick their neck out for the Houthis?

Depends how much their Iranian brethren wanted them to do so.

Maybe they wouldn't pass that information on.

But I don't think there are many people in the rest is classified's world who don't think that the Russians at least are looking at Steve Witkoff's phone while he's there and would then have that information.

And who knows, Anthony, we don't know how many other groups.

And we were joking at the top about, oh, I'm on a group chat, you're on a group chat.

We genuinely don't know how many other group chats there have been.

How many other times members of the national security team who are on those group chats are traveling to countries where the host country might want to listen in on what the Americans are saying and capture what is on their signal chat.

We don't know.

We don't know what information this gives away.

And I think that's the

real rest is classified concern here is that if I'm sitting in the UK, it's a bit, it reminded me a little bit of the Mar-a-Lago documents case, that the argument that I kept hearing from national security teams was, would you hand your, would this have any impact on

your willingness as an ally to hand over secrets to America if you knew that it could end up on a group chat with a journalist?

Right?

I think there's a chance if you're in the UK and therefore end up in the hands of Moscow.

Right?

I mean,

this stuff is classified for a reason.

I admire Jeff.

I admire him for his restraint.

I admire him for his patriotism.

And they can say whatever they want about him.

And obviously they're viciously attacking him and so forth.

That's the playbook, isn't it?

That's the playbook.

I have two more questions for you.

So first question is, get inside Donald Trump's head for a minute.

Oh, my God.

And that's what you do.

That's your job.

Yeah, but I want you to, because you have a different insight from me.

Get inside his head for a minute.

He has to be horrified by this.

It makes him look terrible.

He's going to support these people because of the loyalty thing, and he can't find other people that are going to disembowel themselves like these people.

But he's got to be horrified by this, no?

Or you think he doesn't care?

He wants.

It just makes him look terrible, Kat.

So let's flip this.

I was texting with a Democratic congresswoman last night about this story.

And she said, look,

when

we're arguing about process,

which we are at this stage,

and you listen to all the senior Democrats who have come out on television this week to say this is terrible and it should be the normal procedure for doing this is you get into a skiff and then you get into the situation room and you bring in all the departments and as soon as you go down that route, this very smart congresswoman pointed out to me, you're on a losing basis.

Process and argument about process has very little impact on voters.

And what Donald Trump, I believe, will care about is not whether this is shoddy national security protocols or makes his administration look like they're playing fast and loose with the national security procedure or makes them perhaps even look not particularly competent in the way they handle these things, what he'll care about is whether this is going to blow over.

Can he ride this one out by doing the kinds of things that he's done this week, you know, deflect, deny,

never apologize?

I don't think he'll be sitting there in paroxysms of angst about the fact that his national security team has behaved in this way.

There's nobody on staff to say the following, but I'm going to say it to you, and I want you to react.

Okay.

Mr.

President, the entire national security apparatus, the communication apparatus, has now been compromised, a result of which they may have information on these phones from your team that could damage U.S.

troops in the field.

We have to switch this whole thing up and possibly let a few of these people go.

And you say.

I say, the liberal media is making a storm in a teacup out of this.

It's really no big deal.

And look, we've shown the American people that we did the right thing.

We bombed the bad guys.

Bombing bad guys is popular with American voters.

By the way, look how long it took for President Bush to be held accountable over Iraq to the extent that he ever was.

We can get away with this because we'll paint it as strength, muscularity.

We dropped the bombs.

The mission was a success.

And in the end, the voters won't really care very much about this.

I mean, that is my understanding of the conversation that is taking place in the White House at the moment around Donald Trump.

This is for me, it's laughable, and I think adversaries and the...

But you don't think that's how he's thinking?

I do.

I just wanted you to say it because

I'm often saying it, and people are probably accusing me that I'm too much on the anti-Trump rant.

I'm just trying to be objective about it, but I just think it's embarrassing to our allies, and I think it's very comforting to our adversaries that we're in a situation like this.

Now, switch hats for a second.

You're now European.

Yep.

And I'm going to read you these text messages, and I want you to react to them, okay?

Vance has said,

I just hate bailing out Europe again.

And Hexeth wrote back, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading.

It's pathetic in all caps.

Okay, channel your European-ness,

and I want you to respond to that.

This is the bit of the text exchange that I immediately took more notice of, because clearly J.D.

Vance thinks in private what he thinks in public.

The fact that he's joining the trip to Greenland this week is another reminder of his kind of aggressive approach towards Europeans.

If I'm Chancellor Mertz sitting there in Germany, there is some glimmer of a world in which I'm thinking, okay, all of these things that you and I spoke about that Mertz needs to get done to help with the rearming of Germany, but also creating the security umbrella for Europe.

This is weirdly helpful.

I mean, this is actually something that adds more sense of urgency.

It reminds European, I mean, this has obviously been all over the European press.

Again, Donald Trump, well done.

You've the only topic of conversation in Europe this week.

And if J.D.

Vance were to be the heir apparent, which many Europeans think he may be, then I think this is yet again a reminder that they have to get their security act together.

You know, we can go into how much of the shipping that goes through the Suez Canal is actually, which they do on this text chain, is European versus how much of it is American.

But, you know, to some extent, Anthony, this administration's biggest weakness is not accepting that things are global.

So if European shipping is massively impacted, in some ways, that will affect American consumers and voters as well.

It's just the way the world works.

You can't totally separate out, oh, well, that's Europe's problem, so it has no impact on America.

Things travel, literally, in this case.

Well, I'm going to make your point with a little bit more emphasis.

The historian Nigel Hamilton wrote a trilogy of Franklin Roosevelt.

He basically, Roosevelt didn't get a chance to write his war memoirs.

So the British historian went to the library, went to all of the writings and the interviews, and he effectively wrote for Roosevelt what his war memoirs would look like.

It's sort of a Churchillian rendition from Franklin Roosevelt's side.

And one of the most interesting things about it is in the third book, Roosevelt is trying to put together the UN.

He's got the ideas for it.

He's taken elements of the League of Nations, which failed.

And of course, he worked for Wilson as an assistant Navy Secretary at the time.

And he says to his staff, we have to integrate with the rest of the world.

If we integrate with the rest of the world and we interlock with each other, there's a greater likelihood to reduce conflict.

There's a greater likelihood that living standards around the world will rise, a result of which we won't be fighting with each other.

Okay, so everything that you just said has been the workable dream of these neo-Victorians that set up the post-World War II order.

Now you've got this 40-year-old Vance who's coming into the game late without the historical knowledge, and he's saying these nonsensical things.

I think they get on the drums and they try to out-Trump Trump with the drums.

And so I think this nonsense in the group chat,

Advance, Walt,

Texeth, Rubio,

I got to out-trump Trump.

Remember, this is you have to outshine the master with his ideology because you are under the gun.

You have to have an ideological purity test.

Somebody told me that they've got some lackey running around the world with Rubio, who's a MAGA lackey, and he's taking notes and like a stenographer to make sure that Rubio is on message because Trump doesn't trust him.

He called his hands little in 2016.

And so you got to make sure

he's barking and singing off the MAGA chorus sheet.

But this stuff is actually, to me, is pathetic.

It's actually embarrassing.

And then the flip side is state television over at Fox is saying, isn't this amazing that we're getting a first-hand view of our leaders interacting with each other in such great orchestration.

I mean, I feel like I'm in Alice in Wonderland.

I feel like I'm in a hall of mirrors.

I often have this thinking of, you know, what if this was Barack Obama's national security team?

What would Fox News be saying?

And it's worth kind of going down that thought process for a second.

I want to ask you what you think this means longer term.

Democrats this week are clearly trying to make this a big deal.

I mean, they cannot get themselves off television over this.

But one congressperson pointed out to me: look, take a kind of step back from this a little bit, because we're going to talk about the economy in the second half of the show.

But only 1% of Americans are in active service, and only 7% of Americans are veterans.

Now, maybe that 7% is the more important group of veterans, but a lot of Americans are not actually thinking about OPSEC, operational security, and what the processes should should be.

What they're hearing, and I sent round

to our producers and to you, Anthony, this week, the kind of graph that shows how many more people are listening to right-wing online media compared to more left-wing online media in America at the moment.

What they are hearing is that muscularity argument.

So I don't know how much Democrats can make out of this.

I don't know that

They're trying to find a kind of message.

With everything that goes wrong, they're trying to find a message.

And I think the most compelling that I've heard from a Democrat so far, a senior Democrat so far on television, was tying this into a broader picture of incompetence.

And you can run through the list of the stuff that Doge has done that doesn't make some tiny stuff.

Like they wiped references to Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War, because it had the word gay in it.

I mean, that's a stupid example, but I use it because it's so graphic and shows how kind of unthought out this is.

Now, what the administration clearly, and these guys, and you can read it in this text process, they sound like, as one Democrat said to me, this sounds like a kind of bunch of guys in a locker room coming up with the next play on the field.

I mean, it doesn't sound like serious national security stuff.

And they think that's the point, that they're breaking the systems, they're doing things in an unorthodox way, they're bringing outsiders' hats, the kind of move fast and break stuff motto that they all seem to have.

But I think the question is, is that working?

I would say no.

The national security wins on Gaza don't look so great at the moment.

There is clearly not, you know, peace in Ukraine yet.

And if it's not working, how can Democrats kind of harness the messaging around this?

How could they point to that?

Or does it really just not make much difference to American voters?

Well, I mean, I think you're bringing up the fact that which we all know is that the country is in sore need of national service because when we have national service,

we're in better shape and people are more conjoined.

When we don't have it, we don't have it.

But I would flip it back to Senator Wicker.

Roger Wicker,

I believe he's from Oklahoma.

He's the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He's a Republican.

A responsible Republican that understands the Constitution, would offer a check to this situation and would formalize an investigation.

And so now the question is, is he too in the tank for MAGA or is he a process person that believes in the U.S.

Constitution?

And I think we're waiting on him to see what he's going to do.

But an investigation here, and as you and I are speaking, the Atlantic magazine is leaking more texts to prove, some of it redacted, but to prove that

Secretary Hekseth is lying.

Secretary Hetseth is lying.

War plans were in the chat.

Secretary Hekseth yesterday, no war plans were in the chat.

So we know they're all lying.

They're lying right to our faces.

And Trump is allowing them to triple down on the lie.

But this is where the founders would have said, okay, is Senator Wicker going to be the guy, profile and courage, where he says, hey, I'm sorry, guys, this is against the interests of the United States and our global alliances, and we have to reject this.

And a few of you have got to get fired, and we have to fix this.

The same way you guys would have gone after Hillary Clinton's server or other things that happen that were Democrat incompetence.

Let's see what the political fallout is from this and whether actually anyone gets fired.

We're still kind of in the early days of watching this story.

I suspect there may be more that we'll be talking about next week on this as well.

We'll be back after a quick break to talk about the economy.

Is that what the voters really care about?

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Welcome back to the Rest is Politics U.S.

I'm Anthony Scaramucci.

I am Katie Kay.

Katie, we're going to talk about Trump's economic, some would say nightmare, others would say golden age, but it

feels heavy, Caddy.

There's a little bit of stagflation in the marketplace.

Prices are sticky upwards, and yet unemployment is creeping up.

We're now into the 50% threshold on Wall Street about whether or not there will be a recession.

On January 20th, nobody thought there would be a recession for 2025, but the rhetoric and the jawboning from the administration has spooked people.

At the same time that that's going on, we're seeing massive capital allocation sending to Europe.

How ironic is that, Caddy?

Talk about that for a second.

The DAX, Germany on the verge of a recession.

The DAX is the best performing stock market.

That's, of course, the German stock market.

So, what say you about the Trump rhetoric and the Trump economic policy?

Two things.

I'm going to channel my inner Antony and have a list, although mine is only too long.

As soon as the story, and this is relating what we were talking about in the first half to what we're talking about now,

as soon as that story broke about the Atlantic's text, I had an economist from Europe text me saying, you see, it's time to buy German shares, invest in Rhein Metall, which is the big German defence prime.

And he was only kind of half joking, but not really, because of what you say.

And the irony of JD Vance saying, you know, he hates sniveling Europeans, doing everything to boost the German stock market and the sense of energy around European shares.

Nobody has not noticed the fact that while Wall Street is declining, the European stock markets are doing better.

Second thing is that just before the election last November, The Economist ran, The Economist magazine, which has been

fair on Trump and really tries to pull its

call balls and strikes, as you would say, ran a big cover article saying whoever is the next president is going to inherit a really strong American economy.

I think if you look at what is happening in the US right now, and everybody was saying this, the American economy was the envy, certainly of Western Europe, which was moribund and may still be moribund because they have serious growth and fiscal problems.

The American economy, we had low unemployment, inflation was ticking down, the energy was coming back largely because of high flows of immigration, growth was picking up again and companies were doing well.

Well, look at that.

It's all been reversed.

The question is, how much is he going to tailor his policies around tariffs in particular, but potentially even around immigration?

In Florida they're talking about getting kids to work because they don't have enough immigrant labor and changing their rules in Tallahassee so they can get even younger people into the workplace because they've got no migrant labor anymore, not enough migrant labor anymore.

So how much does this impact the administration and do they change their policies?

because of what you just laid out?

Well, I think a big tell will be April the 2nd, which is now called Liberation.

Liberation Day.

You know, January 6th, now called Freedom Day.

Also, the president's going to put together a reparation fund for the J6 people.

The tariffs, I don't know, it's $1.4 trillion worth of imports.

And so let's just explain this to viewers and listeners.

That is a consumption tax.

If you're in Europe, think of it as a VAT.

The goods and services coming into the United States are taxed.

Now, in some ways, I support a VAT for America because there's a lot of black market activity in America and there's a lot of people off the grid of taxation.

And if you had a VAT, you would sort of hit everybody.

In other ways, I don't support it because there's a lot of poor people in this country, and a good portion of Americans making less than $100,000 a year don't pay any tax, thank God, because they need the money to sustain their living standards.

So you can't have both.

If you're going to have a massive VAT, VAT, aka tariff situation like this, you've got to lower the income tax rates, particularly for middle-class people.

Otherwise, you're going to knock them out of the consumption cycle and you're going to deepen the recession.

The other thing that's going to happen, and I know this for a fact, CEOs are calling Donald Trump saying, by the way, you're killing us here in our own market, $15,000 more, $12,000 more for a U.S.

car, and you're going to kill us in the global markets because what are the global markets going to do?

They're going to apply the same level of tariffs.

And again, I would just like to point out to everybody, as it relates to Canada and the U.S.

MCA deal, over 90% of the goods between the two countries have absolutely no tariffs on them.

They go back and forth with no tariffs.

Agriculture, yes.

Dairy, yes.

Energy, metals, yes.

But it's not as crazy as Donald Trump is saying, right?

He picks that one thing and he stays on it, right?

He advertises the trans thing during the campaign, stays on it.

It's a culture war.

He says it's 243%

tariff to get Vermont butter into Canada.

It's a drop in the bucket of the overall economy going on between the two countries.

So

he's doing two things at once, though.

He's going to tariff everybody, and he's going to cut and force austerity from the federal government.

So you are a Brit, and you you know how austerity worked in the United Kingdom over the last decade?

Yeah, well, ask the Conservative Party by the end of its time in power

how well that austerity did for them, both economically and politically.

Ask Keir Starmer, who is now trying to boost growth in the UK, how well decades of austerity have done for the United Kingdom.

It's very hard to pull out of.

It's hard to boost economic growth without pumping more into the system.

But the problem for America over the last year has been you pump more into the system and of course inflation just doesn't seem to be coming down as fast as the Fed would like.

The counter argument from the White House is this is a revolution that we are trying to enact.

We're actually really trying to onshore manufacturing into this country, provide jobs for Americans rather than cheap washing machines from China.

Get more of that stuff made in America that Americans want to consume.

That will provide jobs.

In the short run, it may produce produce higher prices, but higher prices, an extra $100 on your dishwasher, is worth it, American voter, in order to have more of an industrial base in the country.

I mean, ironically, it's the same kind of argument that the Biden administration was trying to make, but with a carrot, the Trump administration is trying to make with a stick.

But the endgame is not totally dissimilar from the two administrations in economic policy.

Again, we don't know how many exceptions there'll be on April the 2nd to these tariffs, and I think that's the big question because the first time around in the Trump administration, there were a lot of announcements about tariffs for political reasons, but so many exceptions that they managed to limit the damage from them.

How long do you think that revolution would take?

And is it even possible how much pain, so for how long would American consumers and voters have to suffer the consequences of this change process?

And when would they start feeling that this was paying dividends?

So, first of all, I love your analysis between the carrot and the stick, and the stick never works.

So, let's just point that out.

And when you say how long, what I fear is happening in the U.S.

right now is the U.S.

is Brexiting from the world.

So, just let me give you that out for a second, what I mean by that.

They're disengaging.

They want to decouple themselves from the world.

They want to launch a tariff and trade war.

And they think that this is going to help them increase their manufacturing production.

And so the answer is a capital reallocation into manufacturing takes anywhere from seven to 15 years.

So to move that automobile plant from Canada and move it south to the border somewhere, seven to 15 years.

So if you're telling me we're going into austerity and we're Brexiting from the rest of the world for 17 to 15 years, what I would tell you, it's not going to work.

I'm telling you, you're going to change people's spending habits.

You're going to change capital allocation from CFOs, major U.S.

corporations around the world, and you're actually going to hurt the United States and hurt the American citizens.

And of course, you're going to put a dent in the global economy as well.

And so back to your analogy, the carrot would be the best idea.

And it would be very Trumpian to say, okay, listen, these are free enterprise zones.

Your state, red or blue, can apply for a free enterprise zone.

Upstate New York has the economic profile of Kentucky, frankly.

It's very underdeveloped up there.

No problem.

You apply for a free enterprise zone.

We'll put chip manufacturers, automobile manufacturers over the next seven, ten years, and we'll give them tax abatements.

That would be the carrot.

That would bring the jobs back without hurting the economy and without hurting the global economy or the footprint that the United States has established over the last 80 years.

So to me, investor sentiment is very, very negative.

Okay, and so that's why you're seeing breaking news.

The president may not take all of the non-tariff barriers into account.

He may go easy on this.

He may go easy on that.

Liberation Day, April 2nd, is mass confusion day.

That's what it is.

And the markets are sitting here saying, okay,

this guy's nuts.

His team is not talking to him in the way that they need to and explaining to him what you're saying about the global economic footprint is not applicable.

Yes, I know you want to be William McKinley, but he lived in 1890.

You're in 2025, and

you're going to hurt us.

And, you know, unless you have some kind of Putin-esque agenda where you want to hurt us, why do you want to hurt us?

And you've heard from every of the nation's CEOs, don't hurt us.

The White House is getting phone calls every week from CEOs, from Trump donors, from investors on Wall Street saying, please don't do this, that your economic theory of the case doesn't actually pan out.

Okay, you said seven to 15 years, that that's how long this would take.

I'm just going to read you some dates and you tell me what happens on those dates.

2028, 2032, 2036, 2040.

They're all presidential election years, right?

If that took 15 years, what the Trump administration is relying on is that you will have a MAGA person who buys into this economic revolution elected in a president in the next four election cycles.

What I heard when I was in Germany and I was in Berlin on the day they did that incredible thing of lifting the debt break.

I mean what Trump is doing to European economies is super interesting and the speed with which they're doing it, if they can hold it together, I don't know.

But what I heard on that day from a bunch of people who are looking at infrastructure investments, these are long-term planning projects, right?

If you're investing in infrastructure, it's not something that's going to happen today or next month or six months time.

It's going to be something that you have to have an investment plan for the next 10 years.

What they are worried about is those four dates I just read you, because all of this could be overturned in four years' time.

And so, if you are an investor into America Inc., you have no idea.

First of all, you don't really have any idea what this administration is going to do because it's slightly whiplash.

But you don't know what's going to happen in four years.

And that lack of certainty about the American system and who will be the next president and what their political economic ideology will be is what's spooking investors into America Inc.

at the moment.

Well, I mean, some of those dates did scare me, Caddy Kaye.

The 2040 one, where I'm like 80 years old, that one really did scare me.

As I wrote down 2032, I thought, really?

If I got it wrong, it must be 2022.

But no, 2032.

Yeah.

Two elections.

So those dates scared me.

So never bring those dates up again.

But no.

In a serious moment, let me ask you this question.

Who is the Democratic leader?

Tim Scott, the senator from South south carolina said something that i totally agree with we have never been more unified he said we're all magats now we're all in maga the republican party's never been more unified we've killed off all of the non-maga people uh who's the democratic leader and is the democratic leader

what what what is the dem are they three parties are they six parties caddy are they split now into two parties it's not the democrats only problem um but it's certainly a very big problem that you and i look around the landscape and both of us follow politics probably more than is good for us, honestly.

So we know who the players are.

And you look around the stable of potential Democratic candidates.

Not that there aren't good people there.

There are competent governors in there.

There are smart people who tack to the middle in there.

But there's no one person who jumps out at you yet.

And we are early in the election cycle, I guess.

There's no one person who jumps out at you apart from what Bernie Sanders, and we spoke about this on the last podcast, what Bernie Sanders and AOC have been doing, who you can say, wow, that person is generating excitement in the party and around the country and has crossover appeal to win back some of those swing voters.

And it's always worth reminding people that some of the people who voted for Donald Trump in this election were not MAGA types.

They were just swing voters who were understandably pissed off about the price of things in America.

Those are the people the Democrats want to win back, but there isn't.

I don't think there is yet one standout leader.

I don't know that that's necessarily the biggest problem for the Democratic Party at the moment, because they still have four years for that.

Well, they have two years, three years for that person to emerge.

Well, listen, I just think that April 2nd is going to be a big day.

The market is

down in the U.S., ironically up in Germany, up in other parts of Europe.

And so the Trump guys have done a really good job of scaring international capital allocators away from the United States and, ironically, towards Europe.

And if you're going to have a dystopian trade war, it's going to end badly for the United States.

And so we'll have to see if that's the direction they want to go in.

But as you know, I run these conferences.

I've got a couple billion dollars under management.

I talk to all of these different people.

Even the Trump supporters, Caddy, even the people that wear red hats on Wall Street are very, very nervous about all this and are starting to admit that there's trouble here in economic paradise.

I remember, and that's a great point to leave it on, but I'm just going to tell you one story.

Early on in the first Trump administration, I went into the White House and kind of spent some time talking to Trump officials, and one of them was Jared Kushner.

And I may have mentioned this before, but I remember Jared saying to me, we were talking about the Middle East process.

We believe that we can fix Middle East peace, and we believe that we can get the Palestinians and the Israelis to the table.

And we believe we can do that because nobody is like Donald Trump, because there has never been a president like Donald Trump with his negotiating skills and with his ability to make deals.

And I think the concern of some investors is that that sense of hubris that we alone can do this and the way we do this is right without any thought for precedent or systems or normal procedures.

The more we break, the better we are.

I think that's starting to be some of the concern of investors is that these guys think they are so good that they can enact an economic revolution in the country and they genuinely believe in all of this and actually it's going to cause an awful lot of economic pain and that disconnect between what the Trump people believe they are capable of and what investors believe they are actually capable of is what we're seeing play out at the moment in the uncertainty around this White House's economic policy.

Well said.

I like the fact that you, I mean, I just have a full disclosure, we don't offer investment advice on this podcast, but I like the fact that Caddy said, buy European stocks.

It was impressive, Katy.

No, I'm quoting somebody else who texted me saying, not just European stocks, German defense stocks.

Talking of buying, if you have not bought a founding member membership, we would love you to do so.

I hear that that is a great stock to buy at the moment.

You get extra access to content.

We have a live stream just for founding members, which is really fun to join.

We take your questions, we answer them live.

So Anthony thinks I've become a real salesperson, but we'd love you to join.

It's a great family to be part of.

Couple things.

I was on a BA flight back from London last night and met a couple of founding members.

So thank you guys.

I just want to say thank you to everybody that is a founding member.

And if you see me on the streets of London, please come over and say hello.

I'm very approachable.

Just don't throw like orange war paint at me or something like that.

Great to be with you all.

We will be back next week.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you, guys.

I'm David or the Shogun.

Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on.

You see spiritualism kind of working its way up the social hierarchy, up the ladder of respectability, because people are desperate and they will cling to anything.

And remember that we're still in an age of great religiosity.

And so, if kind of traditional Christian messages are not enough consolation, then you might seek something more direct, like trying to speak to a lost loved one.

It's also worth saying that historians have pointed out, I think this is really interesting, that in an age where telegraphy had just been invented, you suddenly have telegraphs which can send invisible messages across the ether, apparently.

Almost magically.

Almost magically.

And suddenly people can receive them.

It's not really that much of a stretch to then start to imagine people receiving messages clairvoyantly.

You start to think about telekinesis.

You start to think about the idea of invisible movement of messages, invisible transmission.

It's a really interesting idea, isn't it?

I mean, I think it's a really, really smart idea.

And it suggests the ways in which other cultural factors can help influence those kinds of trends.

Why would you suddenly believe in spiritualism?

Well, if telegraphs, well, why not?

Who says it's not possible, right?

If you want to hear the full episode, listen to Journey Through Time, wherever you get your podcasts.