The Three Whisky Happy Hour: The New Tariff in Town

Well, whiskey, come and take my pain, the money, the rain, Oh whiskey. Don't why think alone when you can drink it all in.

With Ricochet's three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders, Steve Hayward, John You, and the international woman of Mystery, Lucretia.

Where this lap slapping? David? Ain't you easy? On the show? Taps gott a.

Giving Welcome everybody to the three Whiskey Happy Hour. It's a somewhat somber occasion for us tonight because we are without one co host. Our good friend John You is feeling a bit under the weather and didn't feel quite up to a beating down by Lucretia tonight, so he begged off. We miss him terribly though. I mean, what am I gonna do? I'm just gonna have to double up on Steve again like in the old days.

Well this was this is the dilemma here is Is this going to mean that we both beat up on John or they're going to doubly beat down on me?

Now we know the answer, So I'm afraid.

Yeah, you know, I have a Oh you're.

The hostess, so you have to be at least to pretend to be neutral.

For at least seconds. No, no, no, no. I listened to our podcast last week when I was working out, and by the way, you guys interrupt me way more than I interrupt you. Number one and number two, you talked more as host and made more points as hosts than I ever had the opportunity to do. Just want to get that out there. I know all of your fans believe that I talk too much and I interrupt too much,

I think that is so much. I'm just going to say that that is all fake news and leave it at that.

But it's not fake news. You would know nothing about fake news. Oh, by the way, Steve, I'm drinking. I am drinking this amazing bottle Jake and I picked out actually at Costco today because we were looking for a bottle of whiskey to give to our accountant, who actually you know, his aren't done yet, but the family ones are and this wasn't for the accountant because it is a orphaned barrel. And I had mentioned this before, but

Actually except the grassy part.

I mean, that's what I don't like about sauvignon blancs and a grassy You know.

I don't detect the grassy. The apple. You can smell the green apple, you can smell the lemon, and the honeycomb very much so. And of course vanilla. You know, most good Scotch if it's not that nasty ashtray stuff actually has the hints of vanilla, which I like. So anyway's quite wonderful, orphan barrel woven honor, so I imagine, because you are, as usual, hobnobbing with the rich and famous and important, not drinking anything anymore.

Well, no, I had a March teeny and then red and white wine with dinner with with some Yes, I'm impressive people.

I'm not gonna all right, I will blow after names. I was at dinner with Steve Forbes. You're yeah, I just did well.

I'm tired, that's the problem, and worn down from four weeks on the road with one more.

Week to go. Uh. Yeah.

I see their dinner with Steve Forbes and Charles Kessler and most importantly of all, Gordon Chang, who I've never met before, but I've been reading him for years, and boy does he have some sobriety to bring to the party about China. And also in a room full of free marketeers, including you know, like Steve Forbes, he's very pro tariff uh and he's all on the side of Trump, especially if Trump sticks to his guns with regard to tariffs towards China.

Which may be the grand scheme. Maybe we can come to all that.

I just like to say, there's a new tariff in town. That's that's I'm sorry, I couldn't help it.

Oh god, I actually I was going to ask you what his view of views on tariffs were. And it doesn't surprise me, but I do want I want to see that kind of for last, because they told you I was going to ambush you on that with my with my uh absolutely rock solid rationale about why Trump is right, and you're.

Okay, well your your tear?

What what are you? What would you call it? Terriphobic?

I mean, well, I'll give you my views on that.

I will say, though you have already falsified one prediction I made to a listener who email mean saying, now, this is sarcastic.

I don't know if I can do his voice. Oh. I can't wait to hear what Lucretia has to say about the tariffs. This is a guy who's.

Against them, right, I said, well, economics, this is true, isn't that, Lucrecia, Economics usually bores you, and so I.

Didn't think you'd have much of an opinion at all. But if you do this will come as a surprise.

And uh okay, and and by the way, this is one of those things that pulls together all of your failing Steve, I.

Can't wait, wait so perfect ten no.

No, But but you know you you're you're his historical analogies and your reliance on economics. History is a perfectly good topic for study. You know, we all should be studying history, the right kind of history, of course. And what we make of that that I'll leave that for another day. But you and I both know that economics is a fake science. It was in fact invented by the damn progressives to pretend like they could do uh, they could steer the economy, the national economy, and you

So no, I have to tell me that's not true.

The latter part you can disagree with, But the first part I'm right.

Oh no, no, that that's what I disagree with.

That I mean, I think the first great breakthrough in economics was by a moral scientist, Adam Smith.

Right, there's that people before him.

But he doesn't write like an economist. And he doesn't he doesn't you know, he's not an economist in the economist discipline.

Yeah, and that's more to the pities of modern economists.

Right was Aristotle, my friend?

So they're not Xenophon this, uh wait, who are the econo economic Wait it wasn't Xenophon who wrote the on household management, which was oh, never mind, we're getting way off track, way off track.

Okay, back back back to where we were.

So well, I'll say that the progressive is perverted economics in the same way they perverted political science.

Right, yeah, they fair enough. They turned it into an academic discipline in which someone could become an expert based upon whatever stupid theories were being bandied about at the time of somebody wrote a PhD dissertation and you know that kind of stuff. And I would say the same thing. By the way, for international relations, which I think was in fact the worst of the perfectly legitimate studies, turned into something god awful by academics. I mean, the first

Leaving out the gnashing of teeth along with the whaling.

Oh yeah, whaling, nashing of teeth. I was trying to keep it sort of, but that's impossible. And one of the things I mentioned to Steve is that whaling actually includes a good number of rhinos. I know that surprises everyone that I think that. But anyway, that's certainly when it comes to tariffs, which of course also means that, you know, I saw on Twitter today that Jim Jim Cramer's in favor of tariffs. Proof that I'm right, Steve.

Oh, yeah, that's true. You got me on that one.

If everyone knows that trip anyway, So we're going to talk about a few of those things, and I'm actually gonna ask Steve to kind of give us his thoughts on all of these expose as these books that are.

Coming out where everyone's confessing or at least talking to people who are now confessing that Yeah, as a matter of fact, you know, wrong claim. As a matter of fact, it's kind of shocked at what a brain dead vegetable he was. I don't think those are exact words, but they're close.

Steve. Yeah.

So I mean, I I mean, we talked about a lot of this while it was in front of us in real time.

I mean, all you needed was a subscription.

The c Span to understand that Biden was a doddering fool who couldn't.

Do the job.

And yet anyone in the media. We talked about the six months ago when the Wall Street Journal in late May early June last year put out a front page feature story about.

Biden's inability to do the job.

And the story, by the way, made clear that the Biden White House and Capitol Hill Democrats were working furiously while they were reporting the story to try and blunt it.

And once it was published, which I thought this, we read.

That story carefully. It was astonishing and how bracing it was. And that's the news page. Just remember that's not the editorial page. Right, you can't say they're in the bag for Republicans. And what happened was they got savaged by the other media, right, And so now they're saying, oh gosh, you know, now people are telling us all this, and so the media is trying to cover their rear end. But I think there's a deeper subtext to this. So the media, first of all, they did Democrats no favors

Well here they covered up the cover up.

But now I think the media is doing the Democrats another disservice because what's going on here is they're going to say, oh, we lost the election because Biden shouldn't have run again. He was selfish, he was narcissistic. Oh that's true, and Harris was a terrible candidate. And then there's a period and the unspoken next sentences. Therefore, we

From red to blue.

And what they thought was what flipped it was all the illegal immigrants who came into California and voted whether legally or not, who knows.

But the point is they thought, oh, we should do that from whole country.

We want to have more immigration from Latin America and elsewhere, will flip Texas. They've been saying this for years, and it turns out that they're not only wrong about how the country would react to that, they turned out to be wrong about a lot of minority voters, including even a lot of people apparently who were recent illegals, say no, we don't want more people flooding across the border.

It's bad for us, bad for everybody. So, you know, California was their model has turned out to.

Be also a disaster for Republicans. I'm sorry for Democrats, and so.

I'm watching all this thinking, boy, they're in much more trouble than they think. And you know, we'll talk about tariffs later. And you know, if the tariff business, if the tariff business goes wrong, that's going to give them one more reason to say, we don't need to rethink anything. We're just fine, right.

I don't think it will, but let me leave that for later. I do want to relate to something I saw on Twitter. Somebody made the comment that Colorado is now going to prosecute parents that don't allow their questioning children to get gender reassignment surgery something along those lines. And it's like, what the hell happened to Colorado? And somebody responded, California went to Colorado and then they all smoked weed.

Well, well, now this is this is actually a good point.

Is conservatives left California moved to Idaho and Texas and maybe other places. Liberals who left California went to Colorado. I think there's a lot of truth to that. And you know the numbers. I mean, you can't trace out the party registrate. Well you probably could if you had unlimited time and money to chase people's registrations, but a lot of reasons I think that's quite true.

Well, I think those could do it, but they've got other things to worry about it. I do want to go back to something you said earlier and tie it to my earlier point, which is when you said that you thought that, you know, exposing corruption, getting to the heart of a really juicy story, etc.

Etc.

It was what journalists did. What I would argue is journalism was ruined when it became a discipline A lot in the colleges because of course they just all became not just propagandized, but the things that really mattered, never mind the ideological bent, the things that really mattered were no longer taught. I mean, you're not. You never went to journalism school, Steve, and you wrote brilliant pieces. I don't.

Oh no, I could go on a long time about this, but I won't. But journalism isn't an ism, right, what's the old Churchill line?

All the old isms? There wasn's Now.

Look, I learned this very valuable point that you make right out of college again with my mentor in Stanton Evans, who was, let us remember, the youngest editor of a major metropolitan daily, the Indianapolis and Evening News, at the age of twenty six.

And it's like a phive bay to Kapa from Yale.

Right, a very accomplished guy did some graduate study with Ludwig von Meiss at NYU. Okay, he could have been a brilliant scholar if he'd gone the traditional academic route. But he wrote news and great columns. And you know, he said to us early on, wait a minute, journalism is not a profession like accounting or law or something

You know.

Steve Hayes, I know, you know, we're all critics of Steve Hayes. He's gone over to the dark side. But he went to Columbia Journalism School because he wanted to be a reporter. And he used to tell me about how awful it was and how idiological it was, and what a waste of time it is. And you know, the credential didn't do him that much good. You know, he doesn't regret he did it. But I had to say, I look out at the world, and you know, I knew David broke a little bit at the Washington Post.

In fact, I know this. He rose up to the ranks of local reporting. I think in Illinois.

Some of his earliest stories in the fifties were covering this Hollywood actor named Ronald Reagan who came to town to speak for ge and and you know, I remember hearing him, you know, at lunch with him one time. He got to tell the Reagan stories. And I couldn't tell what he liked the guy, didn't like the guy.

Or what right?

And that's what we don't have anymore, And that is you know, there, you're absolutely right about how academia has ruined it.

And in addition to destroying all.

The education schools, we should get rid of all the journalism schools, and then probably we'll move on to half the law schools.

At least half the law schools political. We could go on and on, but along those same lines, I want to bring back your your I think you should probably patent this statement, or you know, whatever the right thing is to do the media democratic nexus when I don't

But you know that.

Old saying that a conspiracy if it goes beyond one person, is very difficult to keep. But I don't think that, you know, a secret is difficult to keep it if it goes beyond more than one person, right right, In this case, they were able to rely upon, first and foremost an ideological viewpoint or perspective, but also inside the FBI, you had people questioning it, but you know, put the hammer down on them.

You know, I'm I'm almost afraid to You've had a busy week. I know, I'm almost afraid to ask if you saw any highlights of the hearing that featured the NPR president that wonderful bottle blonde Catherine Mayer.

I mean, hey, give us bottle blonde a break. I used to be completely toehead when I was younger.

No, well, but that's no. A bottle blonde is a fake blonde. That's what I'm saying.

I kind of am, but because my hair is a lot darker than it was when I was little.

But anyway, okay, well that's okay, and you know she sort of well she confessed.

Everything and said she changed her mind.

He said she.

Changed her mind, Well, she got caught. I think there's several ways of playing that. One is she's just lying. She's clearly a deep leftist.

But second, you could say or try.

To halfway excuse her by saying, she's a perfect example of a leftist who lives in a bubble and they don't ever think that what they say is going to be remembered, that it matters, or that someone would challenge it, or what would they say if they are challenged. And I mean the highlight was my favorite one was her saying, oh, by the way, there's an example of Republicans who came to the hearing prepared, which sometimes they don't do. And I said, well, are you for reparations? No, no, I'm

Here's this tweet says, you know you endorsed this book. And she said, well, I never read the book. What was unbelievable?

It's not that surprising, I know, on us on a much smaller scale, Steve, here's my here's my anecdote about that. I'm having a training something something with my faculty at one point and somebody brought up We were discussing plagiarism something like that, I don't know, and somebody said Wikipedia. I said, I'll fail a student. I put in my slip as you are not allowed to use Wikipedia. And a couple of the faculty, including one of the English professor,

You know. Well, No, I have a tiny partial descent on Wikipedia. Not that I mean agree generally. No, Wikipedia cannot be a source.

You cannot footnote Wikipedia in a claim they make, but their footnotes can sometimes be useful, and you can cross reference and cross check some of the footnotes they use.

And you know, I'm not.

Saying you can't look at it, you should just never quote it.

Okay, Okay, that's fine, I agree with that. Yeah, right, But look, they're gonna look at Wikipedia. And now what I tell students is check the footnotes and chase those down.

And usually if you google.

A particular story, you'll see other stories that may agree with it or dissent from it, and now you're on a fruitful chain.

But okay, that's I.

Just thought it was funny that, you know, what she what she considered Wikipedia to be was a tool for propaganda. Ah, yes, what was her line about truth? Truth can get in the way of truth.

Can get in the way of doing all these good things with something like that that we want.

To do, we need to have done. So the last part about that I want to talk about for just a little bit. We could go on about all the things that left us wide about and covered up COVID et cetera, et cetera. But the other thing that came out that really annoyed the heck out of me. And maybe I'm in a tiny minority on this was how the brilliant Obama, the political genius of the last millennium that you know that they just they don't make anybody smarter than Barack Obama? Yet, how did he let this

Uh?

Since he wasn't being since he left office? And what what did he do that was clever? In a office? He managed to trade in on his unique status as the first half black American president and get everybody to back off and refuse to criticize him for his asinine decisions and asinine policies and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And when he said things like there's never been a scandal in my administration, idiots believed him. You know, I just thought he was despicable, dumb, and his wife is

Well, I've stayed away from all those speculations.

Put it that way, right, what, I'm sorry.

Here's the paradox of all from my point of view, which is one, well, first of all, premise he's a deep leftist at heart, but second part of the minor premise, he's always been about advancing his own career and status, which meant he would sublimate all that.

But now the next two.

Parts then flow from that, which is one he in a good honest book from a smart liberal would I think, argue about what a great disappointment he was to the left, and I can go through reasons why. But then the second part of that is he was actually quite insidious in some of the things he did set in motion in subtle ways. Some of that I'm sure he was aware of, and maybe it was the people he appointed around him. But I mean, I think I've said this before.

I met that first big eight.

Hundred billion dollar stimulus bill in two thousand and eight had a lot of that in there and other stuff. And I think they actually weaponized I don't I think that weaponized is overused, but I think they really did weaponize the federal grant making process to bolster left wing groups, to lobby on behalf of the Democratic Party and their agenda, and and bolster the bureaucracy. And then it accelerated even more under Biden with all the COVID blowout spending.

And so that begins under and then not to mention things.

Like the way a lot of the racial division was stoked by Obama once or twice, very overtly, but other times more subtly, you know Title nine and some of the other things they did, and you know the way they'd lean.

On universal.

All those kinds of things, right, And you know, he blew it when he talked about the police and Henry Lewis Gates at Harvard that whole being in the first term.

But for the most part he was very subtle about all that.

How much of that is deliberate in deep calculation or just his self interested cautiousness to want to advance the radical agenda with non radical language, I don't know, but I think there's a great book to be written about that, both as to the fact that could be unearthed about legal and spending changes, and then a careful analysis of the you know, the way he talked, the rhetoric he used, certain decisions that were made, certain people he empowered to

Uh and uh, yeah, that would make for a fastening story. Also, ask a.

Couple of weeks ago we talked about that that whole insidious, ugly development whereby you start You started the discussion by talking about the collusive lawsuits, right, but then you explained how they so aclusive lawsuit For what somebody doesn't know is where a say, a lobbying group or a public special interest group sues, say the EPA, where both of them have exactly the same goal in mind. It happened during the twenty twenty elections as well, but I'll stick

Well, there was one thing that Gingrich congresses in the late nineties did that I don't think I've been revived and kept up, which was when you and a couple of times I testified, I had to fill out the form and the checkboxes. When you testify before a congressional committee, you had to disclose whether your organization was a recipient of federal funds.

Just you know, sunshine, right.

Don't I think the Democrats got rid of that, and I don't think the subsequent Republican Congresses have brought it back, which I think is a shame.

They should. It's a simple, easy thing to do.

So we don't have John here to take the slightly rhino view on this. Let me ask you, I love you, John, you know it. Let me ask you, Steve that whether you think this is one of those areas where Republicans should play hardball what I call the Morris syntactic, the

Yeah, I like that idea. I think the difficulty is the collusive.

Lawsuits, especially on the environmental stuff, tilts and favor of environmentalists in ways that could not be exploited by say, the Heritage Foundation or you know, a public interest to conservative law group. And that's because you know, the statutes actually grant standing the citizens to challenge environmental laws. It was copied in not rights, but not taxes and not other things.

Right, So the DEI stuff, I don't know. I mean, if you can make it.

A civil rights complaint, you might have some legs there and that would be fun. Yeah, I mean the way it works is, of course, you know, oh, you're suing us, So what can we do to settle?

They say, what we want you to tighten? This regulation? Done? You know? Oh and by the way, here are your legal feasts. I mean, this has been going on for a year. This is not new. This is at least forty years old or longer.

And yeah, I mean they've but again, well this makes the general point. Republicans have taken some runs at this over the years. I can't name for you what initiatives they've actually tried to do beyond just the public disclosure thing I mentioned. None of it's worked very well. I mean maybe at the margins they've chipped away at it. And this is why I like what Trump is doing,

Kennedy has fired a bunch of people from the CDC.

And I'm saying, after the way they lied to about COVID, after they said racism is a public health emergency in the middle of COVID, so protests are okay, after they say guns are a public health problem, on and on and on barbecuing. Right, you know, if if Kennedy had fired everybody and burned a place of the ground, I wouldn't have been unhappy about it, right, because.

They worse off.

I'm sure they do some good stuff, but the problem is they've tolerated so much bad stuff that they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt by any citizens today.

Forgive me for this little bit of a tangent anecdote here, but I have to tell you. I was actually trying to do some research this morning on a on a medical condition, okay, and trying to get to the bottom

But yeah, well, I mean part of the problem there is again it's you know, follow the money, I think, without getting without knowing more about exactly what you're looking for and where. I think a lot of journals, a lot of medical associations are very afraid of dissenting from the party line of the government.

I'll tell you that. The aspect of this I knew to.

Know something about is drug regulation. So you know, we are the toughest druck regulators in the world. We're much behind the Europeans and approving new drugs and also allowing off label uses, so.

Doctors can prescribe to you a drug for an off label use to you and mean that you know, if I'm your doctor or or my doctor, we can do that, but the drug companies are not allowed to advertise it or talk about it, including when the drug reps are out at same medical conventions. And I've talked of your drug reps.

And I used to hear this from actually Scott Gottlieb when he was going into be FDAD director, and Trump won says, you know, drug reps will tell you an amazing story. When they go to Canada or go to Europe for a doctor's convention, they have extra literature that they can pass out at the conventions there to doctors saying, here are other uses for this particular drug that are perfectly safe, and we know they're safe.

But we're not allowed to even mention.

It to doctors in America because of the FDA rules and CDC and all the rest of that. So what do you think is going to happen when you look for a cause of a disease in the medical journals?

You think they're going to be bold? Right right?

I just thought it was interesting. Just happened to me today. I'll add to that, how more incredibly successful the CDC was at stopping information about in the accessibility of ivermectin over what they've been able to do about fentanyl. Yeah, you know, if they could be as successful as stopping fentanyl as they were at ivermectin. Yeah, respect from anyway, that was a terrible tenet. I'm sorry. I want to mention really well.

I was going to say, if only we could put it in some tariffs against fentanyl and all this bad stuff, but you know, I think.

We tried that with marijuana and it's not working out also terribly well, right, since tariff equals tax, if you ask anybody that is against tariffs, right, I want to mention that, out of all of those things we just talked about, it seems that not one person has been held accountable. Can you give me an example in the laptop incident, the COVID incident, the Biden's brain dead vegetable a cover up. Who has been held in any way really accountable for any of that?

Well, I mean I think they've fired a few people from the Department of Justice who were involved in, you know, some of the Trump persecutions and whatnot. I mean that's all I know.

Have you ever been fired, Steve, No.

No, only myself. I usually fire myself by yourself.

I got fired once when I was really young.

Yeah.

But I mean people get fired all the time, and not necessarily, you know, so I don't know that I necessarily consider firing a punishment for something, as you know, we were almost in World War three with Ukraine. I mean, the idea that that brain dead was and that everybody covered for them, they all should be taken out and shot as traders. But anyway, that's not gonna happen. I know that, But I want to I want to counter

Yeah, I smelled the rat from beginning on this. I mean I don't know about it. I mean, you know more about than I would.

But also I thought they were going to investigate him for bringing his wife to a meeting without a security clearance or something. Right, But look, this is an old fashioned tactic that really bit some people in Trump won In particular, it was what's his name, Representative Price, who was HHS secretary, and they told him, oh, you know, you got to go to something you should take the private plane that we have, you should take your wife with you.

And then of course they leak it to the press. I mean, and and by the way, Trump too, They've had briefings for senior appointees about all these tricks they will use to try and embarrass you with the press to get you out.

And they you know, so they learned from that. And you know, Haig Seth, I don't know.

I mean, I think it's crazy.

But the signal, I don't know enough about it. But they could have said, oh, you know, we use signal in the Biden national security account, so you can use signal.

It's fine. And maybe it is, I don't know. But the point is.

That this use for everything that classified information.

Yeah, and you know, okay, well, the point is that this looks like another put up job, right, No, it is.

It is. I guess what I'm trying to get you to. This is your your theme, Steve, But how do we actually hold it? How do we actually stop this nonsense about if the Democrats didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any standards at all. How do we stop what just is the frustrating reality that the Democrats get away with literal murder on a regular basis, Seth Ridge, whatever you want to say, but awful, awful stuff. And Republicans they look for every tiny thing they can and usually

Well, you would think.

So what I would do if I were the Trump people is if it is true the signal was used by the Biden administration or Bila whoever, I would somehow see if I could get some copies of signal chats. I guess they disappear though I don't know, But if I could get a hold of some signal.

Chats that happened, I would declassify.

Them and reasten to the media and then say, you know what, I'll bet they did similar sorts of things. I'll bet you know or you know, I mean, hello Hillary's server, right, Okay, I know.

Yeah.

I just want to say I feel like I'm Alice in Wonderland. Yeah sometimes, Okay. I do want to mention, speaking of all of that, that the NSA director who's also the director of US Cybercom was fired today. Oh my god, clutch my pearls. I actually have pearls on Steve, clutch my pearls. The country's sounds safe. I saw so many people say that the guy was a political hack, a swamp creature. But here's the real point.

I figured you might know about him. I was going to ask if you didn't bring it up.

Yeah, he was a fighter pilot. Okay, fine, good, you know, perfectly legitimate patriotic thing to do. Fighter pilots know nothing about cyber They're not trained in anything about national security. I mean, it's a little bit like putting. Who could I say. I don't want to say you, because I think you know more about national security than that guy does. I'm trying to think of someone. Really. Okay, you were

I was not worried, actually, and I figured you might have some direct knowledge of the subject.

I'll just say that.

Again. Nothing against fighter pilots. We really need fighter pilots, but we don't turn them into anyway. You get the point, Okay, let's talk about terriffs. Tell me why Trump's terrafts are bad, Steve.

Well, look, free trade is better than managed trade and protected trade full stop.

Except there I can now go into a whole bunch of exceptions. I think the problem here is it was chaotic. It seemed to be haphazard and almost amateurish in.

The way it was presented. I mean, they actually listed this island off off of Australia that's only inhabited by penguins. What was that? I mean, I don't know what that is, but it gives an easy.

Last week you said that the chaos was part of the plan.

Well, I don't know.

Well something else.

Well, I'm still open to this idea that I mean the fact that China retaliated here Friday with raising its tariffs.

Look, they have the most to.

Lose because we're their biggest and most important market. And you know Trump, what is that? Trump said, as Lensky, you don't have you don't have hold any cards here, something like that. Trump holds the high cards in this. I could This is a speculation on my part, but I could see us waking up in a week or two weeks and finding out that Trump is smooth. Themesed over with most of our training partners, and we've reached

Are having a big spat.

But Trump would be able to say, hey, you know what, We've smoothed this out with the country. You know how good Trump is a claiming victory, whether whatever degree of accuracy that is, but he could get up here in two or three weeks and he's smooth things over with everybody.

Some other countries have dropped their tariffs. A couple have already said they will, like Vietnam.

And say, you know what, most of the world has gotten on board, and we're doing great, we're making progress, and China's the problem. And now he's isolated them and polarized them and made them the bad guy.

If that's some countries are actually agreeing to stronger stances against China as well.

Right right, yeah, well exactly if you can get other people helping you on this, because I think a lot of the other countries they'll trade with China, they're afraid of China. They want to deal with China, but we might give them cover or reason to be tougher too.

So I don't know. I mean, you know, I'm not part of the Trump plays three dimensional.

Chess business, but I could see by the way, I mean, the parallel here is the ways handled Ukraine. I mean, everybody freaked out, always mean, does Zelenski He's not attacking Putin? And where do we stand right now? I actually thought this is the way it might unfold, which is he's gonna beat up Zelenski and then it's going to shift to Putin and is Putin going to agree to.

Negotiate in good faith?

And right now the answer appears to be no, and reports our Trump is mad at him. And I think, whatever you think about Zelenski, he may have deliberately or inadvertently played this just right and now.

So now we'll see.

And my money is still on Trump getting a deal. People will complain about it, and but I think the order he did that there maybe be quite shrewd, and so I don't know. I think that we could see the same thing with the trade and tariffs, but it's very risky. I mean, I think he's betting a lot on this working. And what do we know about Trump? He is willing to take big risks and willing to.

Step out there.

I really don't want to ambush you, but I want to bring in a totally different perspective on this, which is.

That you do want to ambush me. It's one of your favorite things to do. You know, you're being serious? Okay.

The number one, you know, the stock markets down what in the last two days, thirteen percent of the dows whatever. Actually, if you compare that to the worst times of the Biden administration. It's not even close, of course, But this is probably the elites who have continued to become wealthy based upon fake stock market money, while the middle class has suffered. The middle class has suffered very egregiously because

But.

A some of them are willing to say it's okay, it's okay. And I do think that this stock market nonsense is nonsense. It's elites wanting to punish Trump. They don't want his destroy the global economy. Outlook, I do have to laugh by the way little shod and Freud. I think it's appropriate. Here Clouds Swab right right, turns out he's a sexist, racist pig.

Duh.

As if we couldn't tell that just by looking at.

Aren't you gonna say he's ugly too? I thought you're in the.

He's ugly, okay, And you know how, there's nothing worse than like being harassed by a Klauds Schwab or a Harvey Weinstein. Oh, I mean, you know, I'm of the Tom Brady harassment type anyway. Anyway, my point is that I'm surprised at how much support Trump has a lot of people they don't know excuse me anything, They don't know anything about tarifts or economic policy. But the other thing I want to do, mister analogy man, is say, I don't think history proves that tariffs are all that

Yeah, I went and did a little bit of research on the smooth Holly business, which was by the way, that tariff was passed by Congress, not imposed by President Hoover. There's a whole question about executive power. That's uh, that's separate front. The tarriffs are wise or not. Uh look, no, I I I.

Well, wait, wait, I want to keep you on that point for a second. Do you remember the famous debate between al Gore and Ross Perot? Right? Yeah, and what did Ross What did Ross Parrot say? And was he right or was he right?

Uh?

Well, okay, uh, he was part right, Uh, but he was part wrong. That take a while to unpack. Remember that Milton Friedman opposed the NAFTA treaty. Why he said, a real free trade treaty should be three pages long.

NAFTA is over a thousand pages long. This is not free trade. And by the way, without even looking.

And it turned out that one of the reasons that pro is half right is we had lots of asymmetries with Mexico.

They could take a lot.

Of our jobs, but we limited some of what they could send back to US, and.

Or the other way around.

I forget, but it was all kinds of things that were not very well thought through. China was the real predator here, wasn't really Mexico or Canada. I think it's actually Mexico's had some factories moved there, but most of the stuff has moved over to Asia. But look, here's the real problem is, and this came out with the smooth Holly tariff, is there's a parallel with this. The real reason that Michigan and Ohio and you know, the upper Midwest rust belt has lost so many manufacturing jobs

Really change that very much at all. I don't think.

I mean, it might actually increase production at those plants, but it's not bring back Michigan and.

Ohio, and that's left out of the calculation here.

I don't think tariffs are a great weapon to try and restore the old industrial base.

But the water point I like the other.

Point you make, which is and I wrote about that on Substack on Friday, is by the way, I'm just going to brag here, I was still up on the year even at the end of the day Thursday this last week.

It wasn't until Friday that I went negative on my own. That's because I know what the hell I'm doing.

Unlike John Hughes says his four oh one k is ailing, I'm by the way, I'm licking my chops right now. I salivate over markets like this, but that's because I'm weird and contrariant.

My bonds are way up, Steve, Oh.

Yeah, I have a bunch of those, and yeah they're doing great.

Yeah, I got some to the ten years below four percent, which my way, by the way, be part of the purpose of doing these tariffs. If so, it's worked like a charm and that's going to pay some dividends literally.

Well, and not only that, but try to tell me that the stock market isn't greatly overvalued by an.

Interest, you know.

I mean, on I don't think it's well it's easy money and some stuff like that, but yeah, it's it's mostly overvalued, although if you took out the big seven that have dominated the market, then it's only a little under overvalued, not hugely, so somewhat.

I mean, I have my measures.

I could go through this, but I don't want to. I would bore everybody, including myself. I had two quotes in my sub stack on Friday. One was Reagan in nineteen eighty one when the stock market started going down after his tax cut past. That's because the stock market could see that we were going to go into a recession, which was a holdover from Carter policy, and some snotty reporter says to Reagan, well, gosh, it looks like Wall Street doesn't like your policy very much.

And Reagan said, I've never found Wall Street to.

Be a very good source of economic advice, which was great, right. But then if you go back further, I got to thinking about how again historical analogies, but there are some parallels here. It's when Churchill decided to break to bring Britain back on the gold standard, and that's a long tangled store. But the bankers wanted it and industry didn't for a bunch of reasons. And Churchill hesitated, and his quote was, I would rather see finance less proud and industry more content.

That is a Meganomics line. And Churchill later regretted.

Giving in to the Bank of England and said he if he had it, if he could, he would hang the chairman of the Bank of England for talking him into doing the gold standard at the valuation and timing that he did. But there I think that comment I would rather see finance less proud and industry more content.

That is very much a Trumpian sentiment.

And so you know what you're saying is I think has some good historical precedent.

No, I think so too, And you're absolutely right to point out that that it's much more complicated just than the fact that we're the world's piggy bank and you know, we pay their tariffs and their shock that we would ask them to pay ours. You know, that whole thing is just stupid if you ask me. But it is more complicated. We have, you know, on the other side of it. Let's point out let me tell you a

Hmmm, yes, yeah, because.

Nike is known for only having their products made in America anyway, So that was too much of a that was way too much of a but anyway, I worry about the middle class a whole lot more than I do about our global partners.

I am.

I'm becoming more and more America first, like Lindberg style. These days, I'm sick to death of other countries. Think you were, They're piggy bank.

Have you not to take it up now, especially since John's not here? Have you been following any of our back and forth debate with John on foreign policy?

On substack, I mean more to be played out there. It's kind of hard to do but in that format. But we're still having fun.

You'll notice I'm not weighing in thought about that.

That's all right. Well, well, I think he wants to talk about it with us.

Sometimes I have to say, since I know we're running close to the end here.

That so far, so far, I shouldn't jinx it myself. So far, I feel pretty unscathed from you tonight, and so is John. We've gotten off easy. You want to have a happy week, Oh.

I had anything but a happy week. I guess maybe I'm happy to be with a friend for a that's probably it. Okay, So that means you're gonna make me do You're gonna make me do a Babylon Bee. So on that happy note, I would need to you need to let me share, and I want you to see my favorite Babylon Bee, which I'm expecting you to post.

Oh shoot, well I can post it on substack. I still do that some too.

I'm starting I'm gonna have to shut it in the chat because again.

I turned on sharing for you, so I don't.

It's not you.

It's I'm a sharing that's always been true.

But I know you are that kind of guy. Can't I can't even get chat at the show.

Well, you can send it to me the text if you want to.

No, I think I could do this anyway. So my first one is, uh, hold on, I'm pulling it up. My first one is my personal favorite. I was, gosh, why is it being so difficult. So take a look at this one, Steve if it will work, and then I'll read it, and then you have to post it while you're looking for it.

Oh my god.

Oh you know what.

I will try and post this with the with the podcast the show notes.

I'll send it to you by text too.

It says what you've done? Did you make that? You must?

I did? I did? I saw it yesterday. So the is theologiends confirmed. We are all made in the image of God, even Steve.

And then someone's smiling round face has been photoshopped into the picture.

Listeners, so you get the picture, so to speak.

I did a decent enough job for not knowing what I'm doing.

Okay, so it's pretty good.

Tariff's Dodgers bankrupted as Trump places twenty five percent tariff on Japanese players. I don't get that. Steve explained to me how that works.

Oh well, the Dodgers have been buying up some of the most expensive players who are Japanese. And it's you know.

Yeah, this one, you know, just in case Nation's men honor Val Kilmer by quoting Tombstone all day like usuals. Yeah that's good, Yeah, genius. Trump tricks Democrats into hating taxes.

Oh yeah, that's correct. Yeah good.

I can't remember if I read this one last week because it's from before, but maybe not awkward. Pete Buddhajeedge returns the White House from maternity leading. Yeah that one is pretty good. British man arrested for silently praying for the person stabbing him.

Ah, yeah, that's too cuts, too close.

To home, so to speak.

Sometimes they're just not funny. JD. Vancy. I never actually heard anything come out of the whole visit by JD. Vance to Greenland.

Did you not much?

But here's JD. Van sweetens the deal by offering statue of liberty to greet. I know they're getting better, They're getting better. Wait, I'll end it with this one because you'll appreciate it. Breaking Corey Booker's filibuster record broken by your wife.

Oh yeah, that was a that was fun right, Well, I guess.

Well, I'm gonna do both.

Ends here of the ending since John's not here, so it's always drinking whiskey meat and this week.

Don't forget to milk the hard tariff dividend. Yay, okay, everybody. We'll have John back next week, I expect. And uh right, so.

I'll be mean to him just so you don't feel bad.

I'm like, you know, I'm all get here the day I got off, easy night. Okay, I'll let you go. Ricochet joined the conversation.

M