Mmmmm... Fiscal Pie

ups and downs of the stock market. True, they're in the the long you know, the long game, and and and very little context ever around any of this stuff anytime. And I'm not just like now just always there's almost no context. Biggest point drop whatever. Sometimes they use points because it's more dramatic sometimes these percentage whatever and they go back and forth and it's all very it's it's it's designed to make it sound as great or as

awful as possible, to make it more exciting. But anyway, New York christ and known this has been a big down for the last week and a half or whatever since the Tarif announce But no doubt about that. New York Post headline today, buckle up NASGA, DAX suffers biggest loss in three years. Dow falls eight after Trump recession dodge after Trump didn't absolutely just flat out say no to the recession question. It's amazing how much news that

made that one answer. And he knew that, Like I said yesterday, he's aware of that, and he doubled down on air Force one essentially. Oh, the significance of it is he didn't say we will do everything we need to to avoid a recession. That's why that's significant, right, which gets to what we were saying last hour. I wish he would give some sort of speech where he explains what his long game end is and why I think he can get more people on board or calmed down.

I think that is so obviously a great idea it is shocking to me. It hasn't happened yet. Drudge hates Trump, but his headlines economy cracks, stocks lose four trillion dollars. Oh that That's one of the things about the news reporting. I feel like it's for people who don't understand that that money didn't actually disappear, never to come back. It's the stock is down and yet adds up to four trilli.

But unless you sold yesterday, you didn't actually lose the money, and it could be back up in two weeks and nothing happened. I mean, well, and you quote unquote lost the money from if you would have sold it three weeks ago. So it's all, yeah, imaginary, it's not even on paper. It's in the ether. Any who. So, getting to Mark Alprin's newsletter today, I think he is a fair arbiter of these sorts of things. He and he gets a lot of h He has a lot of

connections in left and right, Republican and Democrat. He wrote this Monday when job boning by all Trump economic advisors could not stop a market selloff or deter business leaders, economic analysts, analysts, Paul's and Trump supporters from calling, texting, and emailing me to say the sky is falling, and it is in their collective you explicitly and unambiguously Trump's fault. In my career, I don't recall anything quite like Monday as whoosh, Team Trump lost the confidence of a bunch

of key actors in one fell swoop. Thought that was interesting that behind the scenes, a lot of people that normally really really big on Trump, we're calling Mark Apperton and saying, what the hell is he doing? The business world, the American business world, was absolutely confident that Trump would slash regulations and make permanent tax cuts and that would

be his main thrust. This whole call it protectionism, you know, seeking a new global norm for trade, whatever you want to call it, is surprising to them and it's led to a great deal of uncertainty. Business hates uncertainty, right. And then got to get to what I was talking about yesterday, which I fully fully believe. I mean, don't feel like the Wall Street journal crowd has your best

interest in mind. They have the best interest of like, what's gonna make the Dow close higher today for a lot of the crowd who actually does day trade, or certainly this quarter, not what's best for America long term. And you know, fortunately or unfortunately, I guess Anne Ryan would say that's the way it's supposed to work. You know, they're looking out for themselves. That's what drives the whole thing.

But yeah, I would say as a guy who reads practically cover to cover the journal every single day, they have a wide range of opinions and writers there. Not all of them are merely chasing quarterly profits. But I wanted to get to this and I didn't know this. So Mark Alpernan has a bunch of links to a whole bunch of different newspaper articles talking about the how much damage has been done, whether it's temporary, long term,

blah blah blah. Than this team Trump came in with the theory of the case that they could rebalance the economy by shifting economic activity back to the private sector from the public sector. It's part of the whole doge thing and tariffs together. Trump advisors have said they think the government is now twenty five percent of the economy. Mark Awprin said, in reality, it's way higher, maybe closer to fifty percent. Wow, what fifty percent of the economy

is the gouver with Medicare and Medicaid. No one wants to admit it, but to a large extent, the US economy has really just become the US government spending in transfers. This is evidenced by the fact that we've been running huge fiscal deficits during strong economic times. And the new Treasury Secretary is proposed fixing this by cutting government spending with musk combined with tariffs to rebounce trade, to rebuild

American manufacturing, but to bring it home. He gets into, we live in a wah blah blah blah blah blah. The top ten percent. Studies have shown there's a very high correlation between their propensity to spend, with spending being you know, two thirds of our economies people going out and spending money, and where the stock prices are. For whatever reason, when the top ten percent are feeling wealthy, they buy stuff. But if they're not feeling wealthy, they don't.

And this especially is true now, and this could get us into a real doom loop of uh tariffs, negative feelings, stock market going down, people pulling back, et cetera, et cetera, cutting the government, which is half the economy. You see, there's the spiral. If Doge is laying off people and cutting the government and it's fifty percent of the economy, that automatically is going to drop the economy, which makes the rich ten percent spend less, which drops the economy.

And it's just that, you see, it's a cycle that could catch on. Yeah. My only objection to that theory or a question I have about it, is that what Doge is doing is nibbling around the edges of the actual fiscal pie. Sure, I don't appreciate it because I like the edges of the pie. Oh fiscal pie debitious. And it's funny because you have conservatives saying they're they're they're not attacking entitlements and that's most of the budget blah blah blah blah blah. But at the same time

it might cause a doom loop. I just I don't I don't know. Nobody ever knows on any of this stuff. As we've said for years, because if you were the old thing, if you ask you know, ten economists, you'll get eleven opinions. Or there's only two people that understand the global economy and they don't agree, you know, any

of those sayings. And but you know, if you could predict this stuff, well, you'd be the richest person on planet Earth, you know, immediately, so that you know, there's a lot of moving pieces and theory and everything like that. But I do find that very troubling. Yeah, all of

it's troubling. I find myself imagining if Trump were to craft the sort of message you've suggested, explaining exactly what his goals are, why it's going to be worth enduring a bit of pain or upheaval for a while, be it two years or more likely five or ten or fifteen or twenty years, because that would get the popular support. Doing something difficult would require, because there's one thing democracies

are terrible at. That's doing what is difficult. Like in your family, you could say, hey, we are going to severely restrict spending for this year to get a down payment together to buy the house or make the investment or open the business we've long dreamed of. People You're on the wall of a house with a pool and say this is why we're doing it. Yeah. You know, I've always been a fan of the like the thermometer thing where you actually track your savings, because it gives

you enthusiasm for it. Judy and I used to do that when we were young. Anyway, as a family, you can do that. But democracies are famously horrible at saying all right, we're all going to endure some pain for a while an austerity plan. It happens. I don't think it's hard to get going. I don't think we're grown up enough for this. I think we're too used to

easy sale in smooth saleing. But even if Trump were to do that, though, Wall Street would probably freak out for a while, and then people would see it, would check their four to one k's and freak out. And I just I don't know if we have the right stuff to institute what Trump's talking about before it's a horrible emergency. Well, imagine if Trump or somebody representing Trump came out and gave a speech says, look, half the economy is the government. Do you know that half the

economy's the government? And that can't be that's not sustainable. And our debt is this, and our deficit is this, and you know our payments are this, and blah blah blah. And if that wasn't go ahead, sorry there's more. No, that's fine. I was gonna say, and if if that wasn't bad enough, folks, here's the chunk of the economy that would collapse and you would starve if China decides to jump ugly. So A, we got to reign in the government. B we've got to wean ourselves from being

China junkies. Their economic heroin is they're gonna pull it back on us and we're gonna be on our hands and knees and our economy is gonna be puking and turning green and pooping on itself. Wow, because they're gonna pull it out cold turkey. Do you want that? Do you want that? Huh? Okay, we're going to restructure the economy. You would be a disgusting economics teacher. Yeah, but compelling. M Uh. There's no way this works because we have

an election every two years. We're already like a year away from constantly talking about the mid terms and uh, and the Democrats are gonna run on He says, we can't blah blah blah. We say you you we can lose with me. Everybody says, yeah, I want everything for nothing, and there you go. So to summarize, we're toomed I'm moving along aren't you glad you tuned in? Oh boy, Well, but everybody should me and everyone we should realize that

we're not retiring today. What the stock market does today, unless you are retiring today, somebody listening somewhere, and so I hope you would have restructured your you know, your investments. If somebody somewhere on our seventy stations is listening, is retiring today or yesterday, he retired yesterday, I understand while you're upset. Sorry, sorry, oh man, that's something I wanted

to tease. Well, yeah, there's a yeah, my golly. There are a couple of stories that are the classic if it was if the shoe was on the other foot, they would be enormous, enormous stories. We will bring them to you so you get a better rounded perspective on life in America. Well, yeah, and the arrest of that so called terrorist Columbia student kid. That's pretty interesting from a whole free speech standpoint. We need to talk a

little more about that. Yeah. I will not, and I'm sure most of you will not trade the principles that made this country great to keep it great. That's fascism and it's ugly. On the other hand. I want the jihaties thrown out on their ears. So let's strike a good balance, can we. I also want to tell you about Bernie Sanders trans rally he had over the weekend that didn't get enough attention. She had a penis No, he does not. He is, Oh, well, what did it

cost to come over with venus twenty seven dollars? Stay with us? I hate spring forward so much, and this to me, this is Donald Trump's big opportunity. We want to make America great again, and this daylight saving madness will ever look up puzzles, I dare way, thank you. By the way, We'll do this all over again next year on six months. But so we want whatever we got now right permanently. Is that what we want? Yeah, there's some problems with the kids having to get up

in the darkness. Scientists say, is really like I keep saying, let's try it once, let's try it once, and whatever he says. So he's choosing golfers playing in the afternoon meet and I'm happy over America's children. You must let's see if it's true. Try it once and see what

all that was? Horrible? My kid couldn't get out of bed and he got run over by the bus whatever, or find a way to move school back by a little bit of time, and employers that say, oh, you got to come in at nine thirty instead of nine for a while. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, it's not like it'll cause you know, cataclysms, rains of fire from the sky, a plague of front. The fact that Arizona doesn't do it, and there aren't stacks of dead children. I mean, I don't.

I don't get why are there the states around Arizona and the same you know, time zone of when the sun comes up and comes down. Me and I don't get it. We've got it. We've got one state that does it, and it's not like hell there, they don't. Everybody I wanted to live in Arizona, I had to move because I don't change the clocks. I got to call my dad to make sure he's still alive after the non time change in Arizona. Oh my, you're so right. These stories would be ginormous if the shoe was on

the other foot. And you know, the fun has gone out of beating up the media. Honestly, I think everybody's gotten the word. They're wildly ideological. They're uniformly left. They're just clickbait driven sensationalist cranks and should be mostly ignored. But the stories they ignore are also worth hearing. For instance, a leftist UCLA law professor, This is not some sort of gender studies dope. This is a law professor at

UCLA has called from military insurrection against President Trump. Oh my god, how do you keep your job after that? Professor Peter Aronella. At this point, my only hope for the US to avoid becoming an ally to Russia is a violent resistance by our military. Tragic to say that, because the military is trained to avoid any political motivated intervention. Yeah, firing all the Joint chiefs and military leaders blah blah blah,

and for good reason. Ultimately, we will get what we deserve by giving Trump a second chance to destroy our democracy armed exertion. All right, crackpot. America's law schools are absolutely as bad as any other province of the educational system right now in terms of being wildly woe. Your

kid got into UCLA law school. You're paying a ridiculous amount of money, and that guy is teaching your kid right right, and accepting some really really good law schools where they point out, hey, now this is my opinion on this. A conservative scholar would tell you this is the way to interpret these laws, and where that happens, it's great. That is far from universal. An adult male brandishing a firearm was shot by US Secret Service officers

near the White House shortly after midnight on Sunday. Saw that. Yeah, the local police at earlier reported a suicidal individual possibly traveling to DC from Indiana. You're in Indiana, you're suicidal, and so what is your plan exactly? They knew about this guy too. They suicide by cop. They'd picked up his social media or something, so they were aware of him before he even got there. Yeah, Trump was at mar Lago, by the way, so it was never at risk,

even though he wouldn't be much at risk. Don't have time for this, but Christy Noman has figured out a couple of the leakers leaking the ICE operations.

very clear. With Elon having said that yesterday. Then the other news is Trump has doubled the tariffs on Canada aluminum and something else twenty five percent in addition to the previous twenty five percent is now fifty percent. So

more on that later. Yeah, a couple of things. First of all, I came across a really informative but really complicated analysis of how medicaid medicare work and how they're funded by the states and the federal government and what the states do determines the amount of federal government support. But the states have flexibility that the federal government is

responding to. And the longest short of it is, it's so intertwined, so expensive, and there are so many people dependent on it now that undoing and Obamacare is a huge factor in it too, and compensation rates for I mean, it's all in medical procedures. It's all just a complex stew of Oh my lord, how do we untangle this? And I was trying to figure out if it was even conceivable to present it to you all, if you don't like, have the charts in front of you, and

I decided probably not. But I'm telling you, it is truly a Gordian knot.

the yeah, most likely outcome. That's pretty pretty good prediction. And he's a smart guy too, so I know him as well, and uh yeah, that sounds about right. Yep, wow, so yeah, I know. Wow. It's just hey, too depressing. I'm going to stop myself for once, that little self restraint. So that was the first point I want to make. The second point re Canada is I really truly don't get what Trump is trying to accomplish with Canada specifically,

which is one of our closest allies. And he set the trade deal with them last time around, which is, you know, four and a half short years ago. Well I guess the trade deal itself was more than that. But anyway, I'm confused, and so are the Canadians. And I don't think this is going to help us in the long time. We're going to build an igloo and Canada is going to pay for it, all right, Well

that's a plan anyway. Oh. Oh, the part of the tariffs thing that I don't quite get is the tariffs are super important to rebuild American manufacturing and steal and aluminum capacity and the rest of it, to forge the future and they're gonna go away as soon as Canada helps us with the fentanyl, or Mexico as soon as they give in to It's like, it's like a circular argument, and I just, I honestly don't get it. On the other hand, this I thought this was very, very informative

on the issue of Canada and the drug trade. Why don't you say you understand from a former senior law enforcement official in northwest Montana that the numbers that are being reported regarding drug trafficking across the Canadian border are off by at least an order of magnitude. It's more like twenty percent versus the two percent that's being reported I met, writes the former senior law enforcement official in

northwest Montana. I met with the local DEA folks regarding fentanyl precursors and finished products being sent across the border and being manufactured and distributed across the millions of acres of tribal reservation land as the staging area. He claimed to have no knowledge of this. A year later, it was a major priority for the DEA in Montana. What this indicates is a massive disconnect between what the federal law enforcement folks are hearing and the local sheriffs are

observing in their counties. This may account for the differential and what the FEDS now know and how those percentages are being reported in the news, likely sourced from old data that is misleading. On the street, sheriff's deputies and detectives are seeing a massive increase in the quantity of fentanyl and other drugs that are definitely not coming up from the Southern border. I thought that was an interesting perspective, and I had repeated the off sited. You know it's

two or three percent figure. That person seems to be in the know, I know who it is, has no acts to grind. Well, interesting perspective just from a logical standpoint. If you really crack down on the cartel's business coming across the southern border, they're not dumb. Well, what's a different way to get our drugs into the United States?

How about the longest undefended border in the world right right, and vast tribal areas that are effectively not under the control of most law enforcement other than the tribal police, depending on what country you're talking about. Although while all that I think is one hundred percent true, that's not why Trump is doing the tariffs. It's part of his restructuring the World Economic Plan. He's got to use the drug thing as a emergency reason to do it, right,

Oh right, that's just the legal pretext. Yeah, how soon until the Supreme Court rules on that whether his use of the emergency tariff powers is a legitimate use of executive power. I don't know. I'm always amazed how much

leeway governors and presidents are given re emergency powers. It takes way freaking too much, in my opinion, not this specifically, but if you want to talk about one principle that we all ought to be rallying around, it's that when the other guys in office, they will cite often imaginary emergencies and do things we abhor, so we can't let our guy do it. I was hearing about fentanyl. What

new story I hear today about fentanyl addicts? I never thought about a fentanyl addict because I just always assume you died pretty quickly. So it's not like, you know, RFK Junior was a heroin addict for what do you say, seventeen years or something like that, twelve whatever it was. It was long time, ridiculously long time to be. You can't be a fentanyl addict for that long, can you. No,

you're on a tight rope because it's so easy to overdose. Yeah. Hey, by the way, back to the tariff thing, And that wasn't an argument against the tariffs per se, but just emergency powers. If the tariffs are such a good idea, and as Jack said, Trump needs to make this speech. We need to restructure the American economy because the global economy is changing so fast and not for our good. And China were addicted to the heroine of Chinese manufacturing

and blah blah blah. That's screed. I on leashed earlier. Have Congress passed the laws. Have those useless cowards who are in the article one branch of government, not as Nixon said, a coequal branch. They're in the main branch of government. Have those lazy, rotten fundraising bastards do something if it's such a good idea, click baiting Instagram abusing

fundraising bastards. I stand by those words. One thing we do on the Armstrong and Getty radio show, if you're new to it because we've added new stations, is we try to remember what things like are actually going to matter to you in your real life today. I mean, like the whole tariff thing in economy, obviously that matters, but like getting a good night's sleep, and that sounded like that sounded like a transition into an AD. That's why we suggested to say, I don't I don't have this.

I don't have this AD really sounded like transition to it alive and dead. But that's not what I was doing. I mentioned earlier, I slept the last two nights all night long for the first time, and I don't know how long, many many many months, maybe a year, because I took Valerian root and magnesium, And I really think

that's why we got this text. Magnesium is vital for sleep and also regulates melatonin production and release, and studies show this Valerian roote currently has no strong clinical evidence of being useful for sleep. Just FYI from a fellow insomnia supper. So I don't know that both have kept me asleep, and I don't know which one might be keeping me asleep. But I'm just telling you I've taken them both, and I've slept all night long, two nights in a row. And then we run into the ever

present question. If you're taking like a multi vitamin, are you getting plenty of magnesium? And if you take a supplement, you're just going to secrete it right in the way that humans get rid of extra stuff. Yeah, keying, I'm sorry? What am I tap dancing around this? You're gonnat urinated out.

right right, good luck? Let us say your results, may Harry, let us know. So Bernie Sanders had a trans rally over the weekend in Milwaukee, of all places. He was a she, now she is a he, and we must respect that. The Democratic Party doubling down on an issue that is like ninety ten. Trump said the other day, I think it's more like eighty twenty, but still millionaires and billionaires should not be the only people to re genitals. Anyway, I got that and a bunch of other stuff on

the waist. Stay here.

somebody about that the other day. That would be someday, Well that'll be written. What is the financial deal he makes with these women? How much is it? Is it reasonably rich? Like ten million? Dollars flat fee, which would be awesome. Obviously that's a ton of money, or is it crazy elon money? I don't know. I don't know either. Does he you know if before you get married he got to sign a pre nup? Does he have them

sign a pre shtup? Hey? Now those are ryme. Hey. Oh, there's a little vaudeville humor, therefore you little cat skills nineteen sixties humor. Yeah, sort of thing Bernie Sanders would

have enjoyed, as he didn't had Sanders. So a fair amount has been said and written, includes said on this show of it's shocking that the left is continuing to hang on to the trans issue despite all the polling and the fact that their party got drubbed and everybody considers the most successful ad of the entire presidential election there for they them, He's for you, you know, that sort of thing. But they, at least the Twitter left continues to go down that road. Bernie Sanders had a trans

rally over the weekend in Milwaukee. For some reason, I just wanted to mention this part. Uh. The octagenarian lawmaker opened the rally in Milwaukee with a performance by a transgister transgender musician named Laura Jane Grace who built it out the lyrics and this is kind of rough. This is not for the kids. I will use initials. Does it rhyme with between us singing? No, it rhymes with rick. Oh boy? Does your God have a big fat D?

Because it feels like he's effing me? Were the lyrics to the song to open the rally that Bernie Sanders was leading. You really just keep going, I keep going that good job of getting the working class back and Hispanic males and black males particularly back on your side with that you morons. Wow, it's astounding, is I mean? It's it's good for conservatism. You could be it's auto worker union member, blue collar democrat your whole life, your

parents were Democrats. You never considered voting Republican in your whole life, and you see that and think I'm voting Republican. Yeah, yeah, yeah, remarkable. One of my favorite writers with a headline, don't be fooled, Gavin Newsom is no moderate on trans issues. Worth looking into that next hour maybe. Yeah. So speaking of that sort of thing reminded me of I was in bumper around Los Angeles over the weekend. With my son and

his friends on their birthday. And we took an uber to the Peterson Car Museum from Burbank and so the decent ride like a half an hour and I don't remember how we got in this.

have you been here the whole time? He said, I was briefly up in the Bay Area, because he asked me where I was living, and I said, why'd you leave there? And he said that jobs just dropped and there just wasn't enough driving and everything like that. Between COVID and the crime, I said, oh yeah, yeah, I said, I was in downtown San Francisco and I'm talking about

how dead it is and everything like that. He said, well, if you let crime run rampant like that, you know, And I'm always surprised to hear that sort of thing anywhere in California really, but certainly in Los Angeles or San Francisco or something like that. So, I mean, he kind of hinted toward where his thinking was on this sort of stuff, and I said, yeah, I know, between the homeless and the crime. He said, oh, don't get

me started on the homeless. And anyway, we ended up at a place where we both you know, it's probably I never I've never was a pot smoker, but it's probably like the way you weed heads back in the day, sussed out whether somebody was, you know, on your side or not, with code words or with code words or whatever. I go, okay, where we're together, where we're both okay on this. So then we and I could both talk openly about how we filed about the politics at California.

And he said, I never talk about this. Give it uber rides for obvious reasons, he said, but you'd be surprised, he said, I voted for Trump three times, three times, This born and raised Los Angeles uber driver voted for Trump three times, and in he said, I never talk about politics, he said, but you'd be surprised how many secret conservatives I'd drive around this town just nobody has

the courage to say it out loud. And I feel like if more people said it out loud, we'd all, you know, we'd all feel like, oh yeah, there's more of us than I realized. Let's let's start saying it out loud, right, Yeah, Well, let's I remember, there are a couple of big articles right after the election or the inauguration about how the culture was changing and people were wearing their mega hats and you know, coming out as either pro Trump or conservative, which is not necessarily

the same thing. And I'd love to see more of it. Definitely, we're just not as mean as the woke left. That's part of it. Does that put that a thousand times? If it's fifty five forty five liberally conservative, that's a landslide in every single election. But you can almost have the population utterly unrepresented, unrepresented and bullied. But what drove his thinking was what drives a lot of people that

you know, voted for Trump who might not otherwise. He's got a couple of kids, He's got a six year old and an eight year old, and he said, I look around the city and it's too dangerous for him to walk down the streets that I used to walk down. There's almost crazy people everywhere. I mean, I got my kids in private school, which I gotta pay for because the public schools are insane and teaching them all kinds of crazy stuff. It's just I don't see this changing

anytime real soon. Unless you know, you got Bernie Sanders and Gavin Newsome's scared to say that dude shouldn't be in girls' sports and all that sort of stuff. Until you recognize, like that Uber Drivers needs, you're gonna lose a lot of elections. I need to design a T shirt or a meme or something that says, policies yield results. Good policies, good results, bad policy bad results. If you are seeing bad results around you, it's probably because of

bad policies. Because it's shocking to me the number of people for whom that little calculation is just they never even think about it. Yeah, as opposed to supporting whatever seems the nicest or coolest or whatever. Precisely and there are actually results from these policies. If you miss a segment Arnder the Hour, get the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand Armstrong and Getty